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


blandy

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8 minutes ago, ml1dch said:

That's not what (2) above is. They absolutely will put a border there. They will just lie and say that they haven't.

It's not as if any of the people who voted for them will know any different. 

No, I was referring to option ‘B’ from the tweet. This bit:

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“The Tories signed the WA/NI Protocol to get the first stage of Brexit (the irreversible bit) done. With the UK out, they’ve no intention of abiding by its rules and don’t give a stuff about breaking international law. moreover, they (irrationally) don’t care about the only stick the EU has (restricting access to the single market, because they want a race-to-the-bottom trade deal with the USA. So goods enter NI without customs being paid or inspections being carried out. In such circumstances, to protect the single market (as a last resort), Ireland would have to impose customs checks/inspections on the Irish border. And of course, for the Tories, that would be the EU imposing the border, not them.”

That would be the ‘hardball’ plan and I think the one they are going to pursue. 

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Could the Irish / EU just make sure there’s plenty of unchecked supplies of whatever it is they sell cheaper than the UK does.

Or is the tory master plan simply that everything will obviously be cheaper here as we’re business people?

 

If I had a neighbour that insisted they weren’t having controls on their border, I’d simply make sure lots and lots of business busting contraband went over that border.

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3 hours ago, LondonLax said:

That is as we discussed on here quite a few times. It will be option B.

The UK Government will not put a border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. If the EU wants to protect their market they will be forced into a Hobson’s choice. 

Though it's not quite as it was when discussed before as the UK has signed an international treaty with the Protocol on NI in it.

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EU touring artists will need visas to perform in the UK from 2021

The department announced Tuesday that artists and sports players from the EU would be subject to the same rules that currently apply to their non-EU peers once the Brexit transition comes to an end in December.

At the moment, artists and their crews can travel freely from the EU to the U.K. and vice versa without applying for work permits or visas. But once freedom of movement ends, both EU and non-EU artists will need a Tier 5 visa in order to perform in the U.K., take part in competitions or auditions, participate in promotional activities, attend workshops, give talks about their work, and take part in cultural events or festivals.

With this announcement, briefly mentioned in a policy paper, the Home Office has poured cold water on the hopes of the British live industry to achieve reciprocal arrangements between the U.K. and the EU that resemble freedom of movement as much as possible, enabling artists to continue to move around with their instruments and merchandising without facing extra paperwork or costs. Music industry groups in the U.K. had called for a two-year working visa to allow artists to travel freely around the EU and the U.K. for work.

The decision also reveals differences of opinion within the government, after Culture Minister Nigel Adams said last month “it was absolutely essential” to protect free movement for artists post-2020 in an interview with Music Week.

Deborah Annetts, chief executive of the Incorporated Society of Musicians, said they are “deeply disappointed” that free movement for musicians and other artists from the EU has been ruled out.

 

Politico

Have fun with your carnets, Indie bands.

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4 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

The average tory and the average Brexit voter are hardly the type of people to like live music, other than military brass bands.

So they’ll probably take this restriction of trade this tightening of travel and cultural exchange as a petty little victory.

Nasty little people. From Priti Patel to Ann Widdecombe and every angry white shrivel cocked racist, a union of the spiteful, pulling up ladders wherever they can.

Got to agree with this. There's a definite vibe of hatred of and contempt for young people in a lot of these TOWNS voters, or at least that's how it comes across.

Less spite in the Shire Tories perhaps, but then Ed **** Sheeran, Mumford and Sons, and that lass who sang the Bond theme don't need a visa to get in (sadly).

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17 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

Had to Mooney that, no recollection of that being in the film.

It's one of those scenes which is seared into my brain. I remember watching it as a youngish teenager, assuming it was just a musical set at some point in time in Germany. When it moved explicitly into "rise of the Nazis" territory with that scene I was shocked that a musical was allowed to do that.

To my naive mind, it was as if Mary Poppins had featured a bit where Mrs Banks is trampled to death by the king's racehorse. 

 

Edited by ml1dch
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Zersetzung Brexit

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During the Cold War, the Stasi perfected techniques of psychological warfare known as Zersetzung, sometimes translated as ‘disintegration’. Targeted at individuals and dissident groups, it involved “a systematic degradation of reputation, image, and prestige on the basis of true, verifiable and discrediting information together with untrue, credible, irrefutable, and thus also discrediting information; a systematic engineering of social and professional failures to undermine the self-confidence of individuals; ... engendering of doubts regarding future prospects; engendering of mistrust and mutual suspicion within groups …”.

...

What’s going on?

The truth is that no one actually knows what Johnson’s government is planning, or even if it has a plan.

...

The generation of constant uncertainty, the endless revisions of even very recent history, the half-truths and lies, the divisiveness and the distractions are all plain to see and they are intended to have the effect of confusing and manipulating the public. It is disturbing, destabilising, and exhausting to be exposed to it. That is partly what I meant by the comparison with Zersetzung and why several serious analysts are describing these developments as Orwellian. It is also the reason why, as I’ve often written on this blog, it is important to keep attempting to hold on to recorded facts and rationality as the only antidote to these dangerous and shameless tactics.

...

Brexiters do not suddenly become competent or well-informed just because they have red boxes to open, as David Davis’s career attests. They may be inflicting a swirl of confusions, lies, half-truths and disinformation upon the country, but they are also themselves lost within that same miasmic fog.


Of course, on either account the outlook for the country is not at all good. The government seems to have simply no idea what it is doing and, especially since last week’s reshuffle, to be populated by subservient nonentities in the grip of group think. If so, there is every chance that it will unintentionally lead us to disaster. Alternatively, it knows exactly what it is doing, the cluelessness is a smokescreen, and disaster is actually the plan. It’s difficult to know which is the more alarming prospect.


From this point of view, the metaphorical comparison with Zersetzung is not, as might be thought, so much to say that psychological warfare is being unleashed upon individuals and groups in order to effect their disintegration. Rather, with Brexit we have a country unleashing a kind of Zersetzung upon itself.

 

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Brexiters do not suddenly become competent or well-informed just because they have red boxes to open, as David Davis’s career attests

:)

3 hours ago, snowychap said:

The government seems to have simply no idea what it is doing and, especially since last week’s reshuffle, to be populated by subservient nonentities in the grip of group think. If so, there is every chance that it will unintentionally lead us to disaster. Alternatively, it knows exactly what it is doing,

Nah. it absolutely doesn't know what it's doing. It's not possible. At best it might know...sort of...a bit, what it would like to do. But actual competence. No. Not an earthly.

I think the propoganda aspects are the one exception, as the article says, really. They're good at that, having been taught by Trump's man Bannon, and with a bit of a side order of Russian input.

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6 minutes ago, colhint said:

It's not going well in the EU budget talks. It seems some countries want to increase the budget, to meet spending plans, and others don't want to pay anymore in. 

EU leaders at odds over filling €75bn Brexit shortfall

Is that particularly surprising?

Were you expecting them to all want to increase their contributions?

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