The now-enacted will of (some of) the people

[lapal_fan]

12 hours ago, Chindie said:

Businesses in Canada, India, Japan and the US have voiced concerns over Be now too.

I dunno what they're worried about. No Deal and there'll be a clamour to do business with us in places like Canada, India, Japa... Oh.

Also BMW piped up again, in even stronger terms, saying they would be forced to close down sites in the UK if customs issues caused delays in production for them. Given that Brexit in many eventualities will cause havoc for JIT productions... Ahem.

And the result is that once they move to another country, it strengthens them against an already weak UK.  It's like doubling down on a bet you know you can't win. 

[Chindie]

1 hour ago, PieFacE said:

It's all a bit of a **** mess really, isn't it. 

Pretty much.

There was a story yesterday from someone working at the EU who was exasperated that it just seemed like the UK has no idea what it's doing. The issue is, we're on the clock. If things aren't sorted by March next year, the current mess will look like paradise, because then, if nothing else happens, we'll be out and all the chickens will come home to roost at once.

And whilst we aren't making any headway, businesses need to understand what the situation will be. It's no shock a lot of them are looking at things and seeing a worst case scenario and making preparations for it, which generally isn't good for the UK.

And of course a few of those businesses are headed by people that were, and still are, cheering on Brexit. Like the odious Rees-Mogg.

[StefanAVFC]

Those businessmen cheering it on, on cheering it on because shorting the pound benefits them. 

An Aaron Banks (quite possibly the most odious man in the UK right now) wanting Brexit to happen for his own purposes, is exactly the same as an Airbus not wanting it to happen for their business purposes. 

Yet banks is a champion of the people and Airbus are traitorous remainers. 

The whole situation has been quit brilliantly manipulated to make millions of complete idiots fall for it. 

[Chindie]

Trigger warning - contains discussion of planes and no deal Brexit.

Quote

If the U.K. leaves the EU without an aviation agreement, flights would immediately cease between the islands and the EU27 since EU-issued operating aviation licenses would no longer be valid, and British airlines would no longer have the right to fly to EU countries. The U.K. would also cease being a member of the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), which issues the certification and licenses EU aircraft require.

The Commission told officials and diplomats at the briefing about the problems that additional customs checks on cargo would impose on airports under a no-deal Brexit.

More on link.

[ml1dch]

I definitely remember reading stuff like that somewhere before.

[bickster]

55 minutes ago, ml1dch said:

I definitely remember reading stuff like that somewhere before.

C'mon this is just Project Fear. We flew our aircraft everywhere in the 1940's, I see no reason why this will be any different to that

[HanoiVillan]

Yeah, but we all know it'll sorted *waves hand dismissively* somehow or other . . . 

[ml1dch]

"Business" just won't stand for it. BMW will phone up Merkel and get her to change the rules of the Single Market.

Any day now...

[ml1dch]

The Americans get it at least. From that C4 documentary filmed in the US embassy.

"The government isn't interested in telling people, this thing that 52% of you voted for, here are your range of options - there's less good and there's very, very bad"

The smirks on all the faces around the table seem to say "well, at least there's one major democracy even more politically incompetent than our lot..."

[NurembergVillan]

On 26/06/2018 at 07:44, Amsterdam_Neil_D said:

When all the truth comes out about Brexit it should become a film or series.  Style,  It should be cross between the UK The Office,  The thick of it,  On the buses, local and regional news and Spinal Tap.

I tempted to start a thread, 

Scene 1.  Dave is going to the EU to get a deal,  he's a tough negotiiator so there will be no need for a referendum anyway:

Dave looking into a mirror "You can do it Dave" shakes fist at mirror.

 

[Amsterdam_Neil_D]

^^^Brilliant,  exactley how I pictured it.

Nice one.

[StefanAVFC]

 

 

Edited June 28, 2018 by StefanAVFC

[Chindie]

May reverted to type and threatened the EU at the meeting tonight. Said she would not guarantee UK support in European security if the EU wasn't more flexible in negotiations.

'Nice continent you've got there. Be a shame if something happened to it...' said the one armed blind mafioso with a limp.

Edited June 28, 2018 by Chindie

[Chindie]

Nissan reportedly halting investment plans until they have some idea what the hell is going on with Brexit.

Seems they no longer believe that, cough, 'reassurance' they got last year...

Who next in the business community will pipe up?

...

What say you Boris?

'**** business'.

[snowychap]

26 minutes ago, Chindie said:

Nissan reportedly halting investment plans until they have some idea what the hell is going on with Brexit.

Seems they no longer believe that, cough, 'reassurance' they got last year...

Who next in the business community will pipe up?

...

What say you Boris?

'**** business'.

Tbf, the Bamfords have come out and said that they don't give two shits.

They were vociferously in favour of leaving beforehand, too.

Like Tim Wetherspoon.

[Xann]

 

Quote

 

How the ‘Bad Boys of Brexit’ forged ties with Russia and the Trump campaign — and came under investigators’ scrutiny

What do the "Bad Boys of Brexit" have to do with Trump?

Three British men who played major roles in the Brexit vote had several meetings with a Russian Ambassador sometimes days before meeting with Trump's campaign. (Video: Joyce Koh/Photo: (Wigmore/Finn/WENN)/The Washington Post)

BRISTOL, England — On Aug. 19, 2016, Arron Banks, a wealthy British businessman, sat down at the palatial residence of the Russian ambassador to London for a lunch of wild halibut and Belevskaya pastila apple sweets accompanied by Russian white wine.

Banks had just scored a huge win. From relative obscurity, he had become the largest political donor in British history by pouring millions into Brexit, the campaign to disentangle the United Kingdom from the European Union that had earned a jaw-dropping victory at the polls two months earlier.

Now he had something else that bolstered his standing as he sat down with his new Russian friend, Ambassador Alexander Yakovenko: his team’s deepening ties to Donald Trump’s insurgent presidential bid in the United States. A major Brexit supporter, Stephen K. Bannon, had just been installed as chief executive of Trump’s campaign. And Banks and his fellow Brexiteers had been invited to attend a fundraiser with Trump in Mississippi.

Less than a week after the meeting with the Russian envoy, Banks and firebrand Brexit politician Nigel Farage — by then a cult hero among some anti-establishment Trump supporters — were huddling privately with the Republican nominee in Jackson, Miss., where Farage wowed a foot-stomping crowd at a Trump rally.

Banks’s journey from a lavish meal with a Russian diplomat in London to the raucous heart of Trump country was part of an unusual intercontinental charm offensive by the wealthy British donor and his associates, a hard-partying lot who dubbed themselves the “Bad Boys of Brexit.” Their efforts to simultaneously cultivate ties to Russian officials and Trump’s campaign have captured the interest of investigators in the United Kingdom and the United States, including special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.

Both inquiries center on questions of Russia’s involvement in seismic political events that have shaken the world order, with the European Union losing a key member and U.S. voters electing a president critical of Washington’s traditional alliances.

[Trump associate Roger Stone reveals new contact with Russian national during 2016 campaign]

In Britain, recent revelations about Banks’s Russian contacts have triggered scrutiny of whether the Russians sought to bolster the Brexit effort. In the U.S., congressional Democrats who recently obtained a trove of Banks’s communications have begun exploring a different question: Did the Brexit leaders serve as a conduit between the Kremlin and Trump’s operation?

Banks rejected the notion that he was a go-between, insisting his contacts were routine business and diplomatic exchanges — and that the investigations are a “witch hunt.” But he acknowledged that the interactions raised reasonable questions about whether the Brexiteers were “a back channel to the Russians,” as he put it.

“The only problem with all of that is that not one shred of evidence has been produced. . . . It doesn’t go anywhere,” Banks said in one of two interviews with The Washington Post in Bristol this week.

Asked whether Russians had been probing them or seeking to win influence or intelligence, Banks conceded, “They may have. But if so, it wasn’t a very good probe.”

Throughout the 2016 campaign, the wealthy insurance executive built a first-name rapport with the Russian ambassador as Banks briefed him on the breakaway campaign — exchanging frequent, chummy texts and emails, and meeting with him in person four times in about 12 months, according to Banks. At the same time, he and other Brexit backers also intently pursued entree to Trump’s world, according to interviews and dozens of emails and text messages Banks provided to The Post....

In recent weeks, British parliamentary investigators have sought information about Banks’s relationship to Russia and allegations that he was offered financial inducements, including a potentially lucrative gold-mine deal with a Russian businessman he met through the Russian ambassador...

In the fall of 2015, during UKIP’s annual convention at the Doncaster racecourse several hours north of London, Wigmore, a Farage confidant, met a Russian diplomat named Alexander Udod, who then helped arrange a lunch for the UKIP leaders with the Russian ambassador, Yakovenko. (Udod was one of 23 suspected Russian intelligence officers ejected from Britain this year after the nerve agent attack against Sergei Skripal, a Russian double agent, and his adult daughter, in Salisbury in south England.)...

Banks and Wigmore said they were interested not only in briefing the Russians on Brexit, but also in seeking possible Russian backers for their various offshore investments, including banana plantations in Belize.

 

Washington Post

A gold mine! Inflation gone mad! It was 30 pieces of silver 2000 years ago.

 

[VILLAMARV]

Being in Italy last week was interesting. Big news that they vetoed the EU's immigration bill until they got what they wanted. Which is a lovely freedom loving load of 'Reception Centres' (You literally cant make this shit up - in case anyone is in doubt they mean 'detention centres' or, you know by any other appropriation of the language 'holding facilities' or maybe 'prisons' if you like [see Group4's previous work in Nauru/Manus off Australia and I'm sure you get the idea] ) Reception Centres sound nice though. Maybe they'll get canope's and that.

Shades of "IED's" when they really mean "bombs" or 'mines' eh?

And they are to have an 'irregular Immigration' overhaul - you know 'irregular migrants' - we sort of used to call them 'people' and they had protections under the Rule of Law, but don't worry about that - Merkel says they shouldn't be allowed to chose a country of residence once in the EU (I guess she thinks that's her job), so that's ok then, nothing like the UKIP/Brexiteer line of quotas and selection based on perceived merits then. And definitely no racism involved or anything especially in a lovely big economy like Italy or Germany.... no siree bob. And of course, Nothing at all like the uproar on the US-Mexico border where Trump is having his own fun with 'irregular immigration'.

Whether that will play into the hands of enough of the much lauded demographic of 'racist leavers' in the UK to sway another referendum should it happen will certainly be interesting imo. It could potentially take a lot of wind out of the Farage sails if they start to match his policies - but I doubt the people profiting from this appalling system will really care as long as the humans keep coming to be processed and monetised. I'm sure we are all envisaging an EU where the big boys take the great unwashed and all the struggling economies get pumped full of doctors and nurses and highly trained workers to aid them and so on right? Or do you detect the sarcasm in my tone? Because this is an actual real life problem of International Law happening right now in front of our eyes and from my point of view the Leavers, the Remainers and the Trumpistas or whatever group identity label they're called over there right now are all voting for the same shit sandwich whether they know it or not. And judging by the rhetoric, tone and general condescension in this thread at times from decent people I can only guess some of you don't.

At least the reporter from La Republicca got my hilarious 'joke' when we witnessed Rome's version of Banksy - Sirente - dropping some street art under cover of their ski-mask while we were having a beer or 2 and wondered what the resulting fuss was about. He seemed to be making a similar point to me here to be fair with a dig at the lack of humanity shown by the ex-MEP, Interior Minister and Deputy PM Matteo Salvini who seems to be driving the EU's new immigration laws from behind the Italian veto.

No seriously I was quoted in an Italian newspaper on Thursday

https://roma.repubblica.it/cronaca/2018/06/28/news/a_roma_la_street_art_provocatoria_di_sirante_cercasi_umanita_-200255637/?refresh_ce

Google translated version (Maybe our Italian lovelies could tidy the random bits up if they have the inclination - if nothing else I'd like a good translation for the archives!!)

Quote

The one represented by Sirante, as he explained this morning, the street artist on his Facebook page is "a utopian request for help" from the Minister of the Interior. "After bad choices on the problem of immigration - he reads - he seems to have realized that he needs a bit of humanity.It is no longer a political but a human question.As a first step we must not solve a problem, but save lives ".

The work shows Matteo Salvini sitting on the ground in the act of begging. The sign in front of him reads "Italilano, 45. I lost my charity, I profit from the weakest ones." Give me some of your charity. " "I have to say that it was convincing - explains Giada, as she drops a heart with a 20% written in the trash can - that boy approached me and invited me to give Salvini a little humanity, I decided to give him 20% , maybe he rinsavisce ".

There are those who are amused, those who confess that they were afraid to meet Sirante ("with that ski mask at the beginning I thought he was going to do something terrible," says Cristina, a student of political science), but above all it is reflection and the political debate to become the protagonist of the Montician night. "I am frightened by this total lack of humanity in power, how can you call the boats of desperate migrants?" - says Ilaria, enrolled in the history of art - I am happy to participate in this small act of protest, I believe that art has a fundamental role at the moment, we need new Pasquino ". Sidy Lamine, a Senegalese street vendor, is approaching.

He observes in silence the effigy of the minister, and then he takes off one of the dozens of bracelets he wears on his wrist and places it in the basket. "This is a lucky charm for Salvini - he explains - I am happy to stay in Italy, here I work and I can keep my wife and my two children in Africa and I plan to come back, and then have the chance to come back to Italy but tourist: Italians have a good heart ". Gianluca intrudes, a boy from La Spezia visiting for a few days in Rome. "But do you know that Salvini is making policies against migrants?" asks Sidy, who impassively repeats "I know, but Italians have a good heart". (MrsVM) and Marv, tourists from Wales, come to ask for information on the work. They know of Salvini: "but what humanity, we give him 0%!" joke.

Molto, Molto LOLs! MrsVM being as unpolitical as they come agreed with the ascertion that it was an issue of humanity and not politics but basically wanted to take one of the little red hearts as a souvenir! But her love of all things art won over and she resisted the temptation.

I was surprised to come home and read nothing in here about it (The EU's adoption of new Immigration Laws, not the quote on the street art). Maybe the news over here has been talking about Airbus n that for more than one reason?

So what is it that the Brexit lot are left voting for that's different on immigration than the great freedom of movement loving (as long as you're in the club obviously) Bremainer lot exactly? The organisations and governments that brought you the calais migrant camps and such like have just legalised and monetised the whole game and they're getting you to both pay for it and vote for it at the same time.

 

[ml1dch]

That's an absolutely excellent post, and one that deserves a good and thorough answer. I can't give you that, so I'll have to go with a short, massively insubstantial answer, which is:

I completely agree, the world is full of real, complex problems to which all the possible solutions are just differing shades of awful. Many of them on our doorstep and with our fingerprints all over them.

Which is why it's extremely aggravating that rather than investing our significant political capital into that, our entire focus is on a load of trite blather about imaginary sovereignty and the minutiae of trading regulations.

[HanoiVillan]

This all sounds very **** optimistic:

Cabinet anarchy as Chequers summit looms

'[. . .]

Westminster is always a hothouse in high summer, in which disagreements and splits within parties seem more important to those inside the bubble than they do for the world outside. Now, arguably, the reverse is the case. Last week’s burst of Tory bloodletting came less than a week after the EU withdrawal bill had passed the last of its big parliamentary hurdles en route to the statute book. But rather than bank that success and move on, as one, to the next, even bigger challenge – agreeing a united negotiating position on what Brexit will actually mean, at an awayday at Chequers this Friday – the cabinet did the reverse. It went into meltdown.

It began last weekend with some of the most senior ministers in May’s team falling out over whether the UK’s biggest businesses had the right to speak up about the risk to jobs from a hard Brexit. What Brexiters fear most is that employment and contracts will go abroad and that this will turn public opinion against a clean break with the EU. The cabinet infighting was triggered by a chilling warning from Airbus that it could leave the UK in the event of a hard Brexit, putting around 14,000 jobs at risk. BMW then gave similar gloomy assessments. The foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, is supposed to have reacted at a private reception by saying, “**** business.”

So great is his, and the Brexiters’, desire to leave everything to do with the EU that he even seemed prepared to put at risk the Tory party’s close relationship with their friends and donors in business in the name of Brexit purity. It all went downhill from there.

Cabinet unity and collective responsibility crumbled. The health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, went on television to say that it was “entirely inappropriate” for big businesses like Airbus to say such things, only to be contradicted by the business secretary, Greg Clark, who slapped his colleague down, saying “any company and any industry that supports the livelihood of so many working people in this country is entitled to be listened to with respect”. Tory donors in business despaired. Alexander Temerko, who has given hundreds of thousands of pounds to the party, said that May was not suited to be leader. “There is no economic and business agenda,” he argued. “Business will support clarity. All of us, with small exceptions, say we need to be in the customs union and be part of EU regulation. Theresa is a good lady with strong morality, but she doesn’t have political intuition.”

Throughout last week the arguments spiralled like a playground brawl, with everyone piling in, working off their own frustrations, showing they could throw good punches too. Perhaps fearing their time in high office might be limited, ministers appeared to be deliberately raising their profiles while they had the chance. The defence secretary, Gavin Williamson, was seemingly sore that the NHS had received promises of an extra £20bn a year while his department had got nothing. If it did not get the same, some of his people briefed, he could bring May down.

Asked why cabinet anarchy had descended when unity was demanded more than at any time in recent history, a former minister said she could only think it was fear of failure and the human instinct to blame others for impending catastrophe. “A sense of doom seems to have stirred selfish instincts of self-preservation. They all fear we are heading for no deal and disaster. Now it’s every man, every woman for himself and herself. It is about salvaging reputations.”

Levels of farce were reached on Tuesday night when Liz Truss, chief secretary to the Treasury, targeted Michael Gove and other ministers for meddling too much in people’s lives. “Too often we’re hearing about not drinking too much, eating too many doughnuts, drinking from disposable cups through plastic straws, or enjoying the warm glow of our wood-burning Goves … I mean stoves,” she said in a speech at the London School of Economics. “I can see their point: there’s enough hot air and smoke at the environment department already.”

Was she joking? Perhaps, but cabinet ministers would not risk such attempts at humour in normal times. Her comments about doughnuts came just three days after Hunt had announced a long-awaited anti-obesity strategy. Brexit disunity was spreading like a virus across the government’s entire domestic agenda. “Brexit is destroying the party,” said another former minister. “What are we now? Are we pro-business? Are we internationalist? Are we pro- or anti-regulation?”

This Friday the disunited cabinet heads for Chequers, charged with agreeing the content of a white paper that is supposed to contain the vital elements of UK policy on Brexit that can then be negotiated on with Brussels over the next few months. The prime minister is said to want an agreement that would involve staying closely linked to the customs union and single market in goods, though Downing Street insists, to placate Brexiters, that will definitely not mean accepting free movement of workers.

It looks like another unrealistic attempt to square the circle. EU leaders have already made clear they will never accept what they regard as more demands to pick their cherries on departure. And another problem for May is that Johnson and Davis say a customs deal that in any way keeps the UK linked to EU customs rules and institutions will be unacceptable to them. It would be Brexit in Name Only (Bino). The likes of Clark and Hammond, on the other hand, want maximum closeness to the customs union and single market. Cabinet ministers are split many ways. One arch-Eurosceptic in the cabinet told the Observer that in the end they may have to accept temporary membership of the customs union beyond Brexit and the two-year transition, and decouple later. This, the cabinet minister argued, was because Tory Remainers might well win the next round of parliamentary battles over the trade and customs bills and insert pro-customs union amendments into them. The prime minister has decided the meeting will not end until ministers have reached a deal. But no one is betting much on a puff of white smoke rising from the Chequers chimney on Friday night, signalling a truly meaningful deal. Too many “crunch meetings” have been and gone over recent months to allow that kind of optimism to take hold.

There are now only about six weeks of negotiating time left on Brexit, when parliamentary and Brussels holidays and the party conference season are taken into account, before a deal has to be done in October. Any agreement then has to be voted on by the European parliament and by MPs at Westminster before Brexit day on 29 March next year. Without a deal, there will be no two-year transition period, no soft landing, and instead a hard descent into chaos of the kind that businesses say will drive them abroad. Brussels looks on in despair.

After May attended a summit there on Thursday, the prime minister of Belgium, Charles Michel, said: “The feeling that dominates is the impression that the Brits continue to negotiate with the Brits and not with the EU. The red lines set by the UK are globally incompatible with the fundamental principles of the EU.”

More than two years on from the referendum, with time fast running out, and the cabinet unable to agree a negotiating position on issues as fundamental as customs and trade, there seems to be only one thing that everyone in the UK and EU agrees on: the prospects for a good deal for all on Brexit look bleaker than ever.'

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jun/30/cabinet-anarchy-chequers-summit-brexit-negotiations

I did manage a hearty **** LOL at the guy who has ploughed hundreds of thousands of pounds of his money into the political party taking the country out of the customs union and regulatory alignment, when that's exactly what he wants to be in. 

[Chindie]

You can always rely on the Tories to start tearing apart themselves like rabid dogs when their arses are on the line. Like clockwork.

Except they're doing it at the time we most could do with political strength.