Trade Deal, or No Deal...

[french frank]

What an intriguing viewpoint he has. So pursuing his line of reasoning to its logical conclusion, under Magna Carta and common law I don't consent to the crime of murder and so can simply toddle along to where he lives and shoot him !

I suspect he hopes to gather round him a network of protesters (which to a pathetically small extent he has). That was before the Tier 3 regs came in, and he can now open officially, I think, along with hairdressers - as dear old ferney maintains 'as long as they serve Scotch eggs with all the dressings'. I'm not even sure they have to serve it with the dressings.

[oddoneout]

What an intriguing viewpoint he has. So pursuing his line of reasoning to its logical conclusion, under Magna Carta and common law I don't consent to the crime of murder and so can simply toddle along to where he lives and shoot him ! Personally, given where he is coming from, that sounds like a result to me. Now, where does he live ?

It does seem to me that while you are all discussing angels on pinheads that people are still getting infected and people are still dying. BJ is a total idiot but let's not forget what's really important.

Would make any difference if we stopped discussing such things? Staying at home and exchanging thoughts about the trade deal, or lack of,via the forum seems like one way of not making the Covid situation worse, and doesn't mean we have forgotten about it.

[Bella Kemp]

Matthew Parris in yesterday's Times was very perceptive - observing that no-one in government seriously wants BREXIT, but they painted themselves into a corner in order cynically to win an election and now they're stuck.

[oddoneout]

Matthew Parris in yesterday's Times was very perceptive - observing that no-one in government seriously wants BREXIT, but they painted themselves into a corner in order cynically to win an election and now they're stuck.

Putting the Party first was what started the big-time mess off in the first place and led to the referendum, but I gather there are those whose financial arrangements would be 'inconvenienced' by remaining in the EU post January, and they have/had influence?
The (Tory) constituency MP here did a career motivated volte face days before the ref vote and did a strenuous(and to some a convincing) job of maintaining that view, but the 2019 election jobs didn't pan out as he'd expected and increasingly he has been critical of arrangements post-Brexit, which is as far as he presumably can allow himself to admit that he was wrong. I suspect there are a good few in his position but, like him, won't do anything that might affect their future prospects.
Michael Heseltine also refers to the silence of the doubters in his Guardian article, https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...inet-so-silent but I assume his questioning of it

worst peacetime decision of modern times. I know of members of the cabinet who believe this as firmly as I do. I cannot understand their silence.

is rhetorical.

[DracoM]

The BBC has an enviable record for raising issues of critical importance, and steadfast failure to allow time to even begin to solve them. This happens almost every morning, five minutes before the conclusion of Toady. "Yes well I'm afraid we're out of time".

I'm glad people are now waking up to this - no pun intended.

Dead right.

[french frank]

I find John Harris's argument - that this all begins with Thatcher's transformation of the Tory party (rather than seeing her as the 'champion of the single market') - very persuasive.

This Brexit disaster has been brewing in the Conservative party for 30 years

[DracoM]

Yes, indeed. Read it over the weekend and cheered........... erm... v. quietly.
BUT
is there a 'quiet plotter' somewhere behind the curtains rustling round the Johnson scrapheap-throne up and preparing with the agenda Harris suggests is necessary?

Rory Stewart?

[Serial_Apologist]

Yes, indeed. Read it over the weekend and cheered........... erm... v. quietly.
BUT
is there a 'quiet plotter' somewhere behind the curtains rustling round the Johnson scrapheap-throne up and preparing with the agenda Harris suggests is necessary?

Rory Stewart?

Well I'm sorry to sound cynical, but Rory Stewart is that rare commodity, a Tory with a moral conscience, which never achieved anything beyond hand-wringing, apart from in the post WW2 period of "one nationism". He always reminds me of the "nice general" in romanticised period dramas about The Empire.

[DracoM]

<< This Brexit disaster has been brewing in the Conservative party for 30 years >>

Indeed.

[Cockney Sparrow]

Yes, indeed. Read it over the weekend and cheered........... erm... v. quietly.
BUT
is there a 'quiet plotter' somewhere behind the curtains rustling round the Johnson scrapheap-throne up and preparing with the agenda Harris suggests is necessary?

Rory Stewart?

Surely Jeremy Hunt. Seems to have studiously followed the path of presenting himself as sane, steady and after that, with actual experience of running a big department.

Not many un-expelled MPs around with that sort of profile untainted by Johnson/Brexit extremism association. He might do a John Major and stay at home, waiting for a phone call after the rest of them have slugged it out. Having said that the BMA won't forget he picked an unnecessary fight over Junior Doctor's contracts and we shouldn't forget he handed on an NHS with - to say the least - run-down ITU provision, 99% bed occupancy, shambolic pandemic preparation and a huge level of vacant nursing posts.

(BTW Stewart isn't in Parliament (its easy to lose track of these things..... in / out (in case of Johnson, shake it all about)).

[french frank]

Interesting article: From Rebellion to Extinction: Where have all the Tory Remainer MPs Gone?

So many of those who weren't actually forcibly ejected just stood down at the last election.

[DracoM]

(BTW Stewart isn't in Parliament (its easy to lose track of these things..... in / out (in case of Johnson, shake it all about)).

Aha, but Cummings was not an MP either and look what he did behind the scenes???????

[Frances_iom]

If I were trying to fix the fisheries I'd suggest looking at the relative catch percentages immediately pre UK joining the CFA and adjust these to reflect the common scientific consensus on safe catch sizes as this should reflect the various 'grandfather' rights claimed by the Dutch + the French - and as the UK fishing fleet has reduced in size since then it cannot grow overnight so move to new arrangement over a few years. Obvious technical points re size of boats + fishing techniques to be hammered out (some techniques wreck a fishing ground).

The level playing ground could use the WTO mechanism except that this is glacial - however just as the UK has allowed an EU 'office' to 'police' the NI situation possibly a joint committee EU/UK could be established under a WTO appointed chair to look at disputes and if no agreement found (by adjustment of quota/tariff) then a dispute tribunal be set up to decide possibly drawn from WTO/ILO etc organisations

[oddoneout]

If I were trying to fix the fisheries I'd suggest looking at the relative catch percentages immediately pre UK joining the CFA and adjust these to reflect the common scientific consensus on safe catch sizes as this should reflect the various 'grandfather' rights claimed by the Dutch + the French - and as the UK fishing fleet has reduced in size since then it cannot grow overnight so move to new arrangement over a few years. Obvious technical points re size of boats + fishing techniques to be hammered out (some techniques wreck a fishing ground).

The level playing ground could use the WTO mechanism except that this is glacial - however just as the UK has allowed an EU 'office' to 'police' the NI situation possibly a joint committee EU/UK could be established under a WTO appointed chair to look at disputes and if no agreement found (by adjustment of quota/tariff) then a dispute tribunal be set up to decide possibly drawn from WTO/ILO etc organisations

The fisheries issue is a difficult one and as you say things can't necessarily change quickly. Neither is it wholly 'all the EU's fault' as so many claim. Quotas were set centrally, and allocated to individual countries to distribute to its fishermen. In the UK a rather familiar scenario appears of control being in the hands of a very few very rich(aka influential) people.
This has more information http://www.marinet.org.uk/who-owns-t...ng-quotas.html
The immediate problem is what exactly happens come 1st January for the likes of Brixham's fishing fleet in terms of what they do with their catch, 70% of which goes to Europe, and the likes of the seafood fisheries in Scotland whose time critical products depend on seamless transport straight to the continent. There are apparently arrangements for 'fish and chicks' (day old, again time critical) to be fast tracked through the Kent lorry park, but whether that will work reliably or at all remains to be seen.

[french frank]

I don't quite understand the fishing problem. It's known that more than half of the English fishing quota was sold off years ago by fishermen to big foreign-owned companies (unlike in Scotland and N.Ireland). So are we talking about 'jobs in the fishing industry' where some English fishermen are working for the foreign companies, and some workers are employed onshore? Or just a very small number of English-owned boats in an industry which is already, in its entirety, only a very tiny part of the UK economy?

Or is it just back to the principle of British sovereignty: British control over British waters?