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

[Chindie]

Apparently there were seats offered to numerous European top rank politicians in Florence. None bothered to turn up.

Who could blame them?

Hence why the room was filled with British journalists - they gave away seats to prevent the room looking empty.

Utterly embarrassing.

Edited September 23, 2017 by Chindie

[Chindie]

In more embarrassment, the government has paid for tweets on the continent in local languages with platitudes in the style of the speech ('Britain wants to be friends with Germany' and so on) that are apparently quite poorly translated.

[ml1dch]

So, having had a day to think about the speech and what it actually means for how things will pan out, it would seem to be two things and both seem utterly plausible.

(a) she's basically saying we want a transition, and is happy to pay what it costs until everything is sorted. And the longer it goes on and the more cack-handed it's dealt with, the less likely it is to happen. Enough changes in politics / the country / the world  to mean that minds change and we either end up not leaving at all or in a transition period in perpetuity because there is nothing to transition to.

(b) the whole point of this speech was to "kick start the stalled negotiations". So she makes what a bunch of nutters have told her is a generous offer. The fourth round of negotiations start this week, and nothing has changed, as per Barnier's response. So, another frustrating week and seeing her "generous offer" rejected out of hand, May gets to grandstand at conference with her very own "I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received..." moment, we crash out in a blaze of hubris and the country is properly buggered.

I genuinely can't work out which of these is wrong. They're complete opposites, and yet they seem equally inevitable.

Guess Tory party conference will yield the answer.

Edited September 23, 2017 by ml1dch

[bickster]

On 22/09/2017 at 13:20, darrenm said:

How do you know that? Labour have Keir Starmer who by any measure is way more appropriate as brexit secretary than David Davis

It’s easy to be a Brexit Secretary better than either of 5hose two.

walk in th3 room and say... sorry about this, country went mad, we're calling it  off, how much do we owe you for the inconvenience? Can we be friends again now. Go back to he U.K. and resign having done the job to the best of your or anyone else’s ability

[darrenm]

22 hours ago, bickster said:

It’s easy to be a Brexit Secretary better than either of 5hose two.

walk in th3 room and say... sorry about this, country went mad, we're calling it  off, how much do we owe you for the inconvenience? Can we be friends again now. Go back to he U.K. and resign having done the job to the best of your or anyone else’s ability

And remove your party from government for a generation

[magnkarl]

I picked up some furniture that my wife had bought on eBay yesterday and it turned out that the people selling said furniture have been in the UK for 17 years but now feels the need to go back to Sweden. It sure feels like our community down here are losing a lot of highly educated people who feel betrayed by their government and 52% of the populace. I asked why they are moving and the biggest thing was the fact that there has been no in depth information from our government. The Swedish government on the other hand sent out a pamphlet to all Swedish nationals in the UK two weeks after the vote.

I'm sure Theresa thinks she's getting rid of a load of Lithuanian truck drivers, when the fact seems to be that she's losing surgeons, nurses, professors, IT-technicians and engineers (the husband in the family worked for SSE on renewable energy). 

He asked me plainly "why should I stay in a country that has voted against the very nature of European community - I've paid taxes to this country for 17 years and now I feel like I'm being pushed out by someone who wants to remove my rights as a citizen." In a sense the trade off seems to be that we're losing people who are highly skilled because some grumpy old people decided they wanted things "the way they were". The 60-70's was no picnick so I can't quite put my finger on what they mean by that.

 

[lapal_fan]

23 minutes ago, magnkarl said:

I picked up some furniture that my wife had bought on eBay yesterday and it turned out that the people selling said furniture have been in the UK for 17 years but now feels the need to go back to Sweden. It sure feels like our community down here are losing a lot of highly educated people who feel betrayed by their government and 52% of the populace. I asked why they are moving and the biggest thing was the fact that there has been no in depth information from our government. The Swedish government on the other hand sent out a pamphlet to all Swedish nationals in the UK two weeks after the vote.

I'm sure Theresa thinks she's getting rid of a load of Lithuanian truck drivers, when the fact seems to be that she's losing surgeons, nurses, professors, IT-technicians and engineers (the husband in the family worked for SSE on renewable energy). 

He asked me plainly "why should I stay in a country that has voted against the very nature of European community - I've paid taxes to this country for 17 years and now I feel like I'm being pushed out by someone who wants to remove my rights as a citizen." In a sense the trade off seems to be that we're losing people who are highly skilled because some grumpy old people decided they wanted things "the way they were". The 60-70's was no picnick so I can't quite put my finger on what they mean by that.

 

This is the thing, it's not 52% of the populace, it's 17,410,241 out of 65.64 million (2016 fig).  44,230,388 can potentially vote, so that's 39.3% of the potential vote (give or take some Brexit votes for the non-voters of course ).

 

[Chindie]

Immigration is a dirty word.

The zeitgeist of immigration in the UK for years has been dirtied by cowardly governments, ambitious politicians and a grim popular press. Immigration has become a single entity when in reality, and certainly with an EU member, they're different. And it has had things like asylum subsumed into it, a fundamentally good thing that is now in the UK a completely tainted subject because every bad story was blown up into a frenzy.

What does that mean? EU immigration was associated with massed hordes of brown bombers in waiting completely destroying 'British culture'. The reality is most migration, let alone EU based, is something Britain desperately wants and needs. EU people tend to be trained people earning in fields we need people in, costing very little, mostly from very similar 'cultures' that don't even largely look very different.

Immigration isn't entirely faultless - not everyone is going to be a saint after all, rather like not all British people are either - but it's a poisonous subject and has done rather a nice job for the people that want it to be poisonous.

Immigration in the UK is basically defined by Nigel Farage stood in front of a huge poster of desperate different people fleeing a war as if that defined the debate he claimed to be a part of.

On the plus side, all those people that hated the immigrants they couldn't pick out of a crowd? Think of their faces when the nice Italian lady at the hospital pharmacy is replaced by the nice Pakistani lady. And the family from Poland who started that plastering business is replaced by Mr and Mrs Jayawardana. Because that is what they'll get. I'm sure they'll be very progressive about it.

[choffer]

5 minutes ago, Chindie said:

On the plus side, all those people that hated the immigrants they couldn't pick out of a crowd? Think of their faces when the nice Italian lady at the hospital pharmacy is replaced by the nice Pakistani lady. And the family from Poland who started that plastering business is replaced by Mr and Mrs Jayawardana. Because that is what they'll get. I'm sure they'll be very progressive about it.

Too much spin.

[NurembergVillan]

On 23/09/2017 at 21:46, bickster said:

It’s easy to be a Brexit Secretary better than either of 5hose two.

walk in th3 room and say... sorry about this, country went mad, we're calling it  off, how much do we owe you for the inconvenience? Can we be friends again now. Go back to he U.K. and resign having done the job to the best of your or anyone else’s ability

I've noticed on some of your recent posts that your keyboard seems to be replacing letters with numbers, almost as though you've been caught moonlighting in your new role of coming up with band names for X-Factor rejects about to embark on a tour of Oceana nightclubs around the country.

[tonyh29]

13 minutes ago, choffer said:

Too much spin.

I wanted to give you a like ...but

he's Sri Lankan ... and he's also a right arm medium bowler

 

edit -  and he's also spelt Jayawardene .. so that's a fail for me as well

 

Edited September 25, 2017 by tonyh29

[bickster]

26 minutes ago, NurembergVillan said:

I've noticed on some of your recent posts that your keyboard seems to be replacing letters with numbers, almost as though you've been caught moonlighting in your new role of coming up with band names for X-Factor rejects about to embark on a tour of Oceana nightclubs around the country.

iOS11, it also replaces it with I.T 

[Chindie]

Well then.

May's intervention speech seems to have achieved err... Nothing. Barnier and Davis are still at loggerheads.

There's a surprise.

[Amsterdam_Neil_D]

11 hours ago, Chindie said:

Well then.

May's intervention speech seems to have achieved err... Nothing. Barnier and Davis are still at loggerheads.

There's a surprise.

Well we know they have 20 B knocking about doing nothing.  They come across like there is an exam on the way and they haven't revised.

Will play out well when old people are are left to die in the corridors of hospitals in a few months.

"Strong and Stable"  

 

 

[Chindie]

Donald Tusk met May today.

He's said there's still not been enough progress to move to trade talks (...no shit). He also seems to think we've moved beyond Cake and Eat It expectations. I think he may be quite wrong on that front. Unless behind closed doors May bangs a different drum. Her Florence debacle basically had a section dedicated to having cake and eating it.

[snowychap]

More from the Home Office:

Quote

The Home Office is still sending out letters telling lawfully resident immigrants in Britain they must leave the country, a month after the home secretary had to apologise for “an unfortunate error” in mistakenly informing 100 EU nationals that they faced possible deportation.

The Home Office had to issue a further apology on Monday to a research scientist, who received a letter out of the blue on Friday telling him his driving licence was being revoked and he “should take steps to leave the UK immediately”.

The Immigration Enforcement letter, in which his name was spelled incorrectly, warned Dr Mohsen Danaie that he could face six months in prison, forcible removal from the UK and a ban on returning to Britain for up to 10 years if he did not leave voluntarily. It was issued by the interventions and sanctions directorate of the Home Office.

Danaie holds Canadian-Iranian joint citizenship. He is an electron microscopy scientist who has worked since October 2016 at Diamond Light Source, the UK’s national synchrotron, based at Harwell science and innovation campus in Oxfordshire. He has a work visa valid until September 2019 and previously worked at Oxford University’s department of materials.

Danaie went public with his case after the Guardian highlighted the introduction of “hostile environment” immigration status bank account checks last week, and following an assessment by the chief inspector of borders that there was a 10% error rate in Home Office records used for some forms of enforcement action.

“I happen to be in that 10% statistic. Despite having a valid work visa, I received this letter,” he said. “It hurts on so many levels. They even have a typo in my name. Such disarray is astonishing in an office responsible for security.”

The Home Office letter, despite being headed “important notice concerning your driving licence – please do not ignore”, told Danaie he had no lawful basis to be in the UK and that it was working with the NHS, banks and DVLA to stop access to benefits and services, saying: “This includes you.”

Prof David Dye of Imperial College London backed Danaie by making a direct appeal to the home secretary, Amber Rudd, saying: “It’s hard to staff places like @DiamondLightSou when you do this. It’s beneath you. Please apologise and fix.”

After Danaie contacted the Home Office and insisted he did have the legal right to work in Britain, he received a terse apology, saying it had updated its records and, following a further review of his case, decided not to revoke his driving licence.

“We appreciate your assistance in this matter and apologise for any inconvenience that might have been caused,” the Home Office said.

...more on link

 

 

 

[HanoiVillan]

Makes me ashamed to be British, to be honest, 

[ml1dch]

I can't imagine why the EU would be concerned about the rights of their citizens post-April 2019.

All the available evidence points to complete competence, fairness and clarity.

[tonyh29]

5 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

Makes me ashamed to be British, to be honest, 

It's a document sent in error , hardly representative of Britain and all who live in it  ... I'd be ashamed to be British if the population took to the streets en mass demanding Dr Mohsen Danaie and others are deported .. but that isn't happening 

you should be more proud that a British person intervened (Prof Dye ) directly to the home office and got it over turned , no ?

[StefanAVFC]

A document that keeps being sent 'in error'.

When it happens so many times, it's embarrassing and pretty shameful, as HV says.