Off Topic Thread 5.0

Deleted User wrote: »

My understanding is that AZ are saying they can't legally send vaccine from UK > EU due to a clause in their contract with the UK around delivery.

EU are saying, no, we also have a clause around delivery - we've sent vaccine EU > UK, so sort us out here so we are at worst sharing the pain.

AZ seem to be concerned there are legal consequences but the UK can obviously wave these and should having received vaccine from the EU.

They appear to be refusing to do this and the media in the UK is turning it into a massive 'EU failed on vaccines now want to steal ours' which is bollox. EU adopted two different approaches to the UK.

Firstly they wanted to complete regulatory approval before beginning vaccination. Secondly they didn't want just wealthy member states buying up doses so took an EU wide approach.

Ultimately - the right thing to do here is for AZ to send a similar amount of vaccine back to the EU to cover the shortfall. They seem to think they need UK Gov approval to do this.

Now the EU is looking to ensure (because they no longer trust AZ) that vaccine isn't ported EU - IRL - NI - UK, hence they are adding checks. This isn't a border, but again - it's being turned by the UK media into another piece of anti EU propaganda.

You might want to do a wee fact check there. This is complicated and tense enough without inaccuracy.

"Gallina, shaken by the move, dived into the customs records to find evidence that AstraZeneca had shipped EU-produced doses to the UK – but without success."

This, from the profoundly pro-EU Guardian, is as clear an outline as I've seen.

https://amp.theguardian.com/society/2021/jan/29/we-had-to-go-it-alone-how-the-uk-got-ahead-in-the-covid-vaccine-race?

Deleted User wrote: »

I think the Guardian opinion pieces are like anything - opinion pieces and I rarely read them. In terms of it's news reporting they seem to be fairly neutral.

And I disagree about the equivalence between how Johnson treats NI and how the EU treats Ireland / NI. The EU immediately backed down when the Irish Government reached out. When was the last time any of the devolved Governments got that kind of immediate response from Westminster?

And the EU wasn't going to block vaccine going to NI, it has obviously lost all trust for the UK gov and wanted to make sure (given that UK supply chain wasn't being shared) that no vaccine going to NI was being sent to mainland Britain.

I think it was both an overstep and a misstep, but I can also understand where they are coming from. The UK chose to look after itself, that's fine - Germany, France etc could have done the same but instead delayed it's roll out so the wider EU community wasn't left behind. However you choose to view both approaches, only one party is taking a victory lap whilst pointing at the other mockingly.



It's highly entertaining looking at how the UK media has reporting on this in comparison to the many huge domestic **** ups. They really are a lost cause.

I think you've two false equivalences there - I didn't say the EU is treating NI the same way as Johnston does, and I don't think there's any point in talking about "how the EU treats Ireland/NI". It treats the North very differently to how it treats the South.

Ashlyn Delightful Voter wrote: »

Do you think there is real potential for violence again?

Truthfully, I'm starting to wonder.

It will never be as bad as it was, but I do wonder if there may be trouble ahead.

Deleted User wrote: »

The deep inequalities that drove the troubles in the 70s are not a factor so I don't see troubles 2.0 happening.

However, I do think a couple of things are coalescing at once in a potentially dangerous fashion.

1. Sinn Fein are increasingly talking about preparing for a united Ireland.
2. Unionist communities have been badly scorned by the UK Government
3. Austerity and potentially severe austerity is likely coming which will disproportionately impact Northern Ireland within the UK.
4. Frustration levels with the pandemic are high
5. UK - EU relationship is completely toxic now with the UK even denying the EU full ambassadorial status.

If the Tories need to rally their voting base anytime soon they'll create a new conflict with the EU. The only place this can really happen is Northern Ireland and I honestly question whether it would bother them in the slightest if things turned violent.

No one item above is enough to spark trouble - but all at once? If it kicks off it will fuel itself too - so it just can't be allowed to kick off again.

It's worth bearing in mind that a significant amount of PSNI manhours still go into collecting intelligence, prosecuting bigots for planning "operations", defusing viable explosive devices, responding to paramilitary "justice" and punishment beatings and collecting intelligence.

Even now, there's a weird, unspoken acceptance and presumption of an "acceptable" level of threat. Lyra McKee was killed a year or two ago, and there was a fair amount of outrage as she was so young, and a generation who had never faced their peers' deaths responded. I know a number of young folk who knew/worked with Lyra McKee who thought this would be a watershed moment - those of us that have lived through more of the Troubles knew it wouldn't be. There would be anger and a feeling of intense loss, and then it would blow over. As had happened with the appalling deaths of hundreds of other innocents during the Troubles. Fish suppers are wrapped in yesterdays' news, as they say.

But before that, the previous death had been a man, Adrian Ismay, who had a bomb put under his car in East Belfast - it detonated and he died in hospital. That was in 2016. (He had been on his way to an Ulster match.) In 2019, a peeler had a bomb put under his car intended to go off at a golf club. A bomb exploded in a car outside a Derry courthouse the same year.

These things happen and then are quietly resigned to the dustbin of history - we have a working pretence that these things aren't that egregious, because it allows us to get on with practically functioning as a society. The reason that more people haven't been killed is the sheer incompetence of the small numbers of those still left who are prepared to employ violence. If those numbers rise, their chance of success will as well.

The biggest issues are the two borders, and what form they persist in. Each is a definable thing affecting the "footsoldiers" lives in real ways, and is a much more potent tinderbox than more abstract, political issues. The threat of renewed Republican violence was a very real, explicit, acknowledged part of the discussion about the border on the island. What happens with Loyalists as the Irish Sea border wreaks havoc with trade and after April, who knows, but it needs to be managed.

Here's the PSNI figures from Oct '19 to Sept 20, thus covering half a year of lockdowns. As I say, we have a shared pretence that it's not as bad as it is, so we can get on with things without creating even more political logjams and blame-throwing than we have. But if a substantial paramilitary operation is successful, we might have to open a very ugly can of worms and address it.

https://www.psni.police.uk/globalassets/inside-the-psni/our-statistics/security-situation-statistics/2020/september/security-situation-statistics-to-september-2020.pdf

Paul Smeenus wrote: »

Banworthy

No greater compliment can be received.