EU referendum, brexit and the aftermath

I'll not try to persuade you otherwise. To do so would evidently be an exercise in futility.

There you go, you're getting the hang of it.

Indeed. I congratulate you on your ineffable omniscience. May all the heretics burn in the face of your uncontrovertible wisdom and sagacity, Oh All-Knowing One.

Get ready for Brexit Kent:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/dec/15/kent-lorry-park-to-miss-brexit-day-deadline

The lorry park is a great allegory for Brexit as a whole.

It won't be a problem > It might be a small temporary problem > It is probably going to be a long-term problem but we are solving it > We are behind schedule on solving the problem.

It's hard to feel proud of what we are doing as a country today, we're so evidently led by useless venal chancers who are devoted to the concept of power and will do anything tactical that they can to keep hold of it, whilst ignoring the strategic - presumably because they are convinced that tactics beats strategy all of the time.

I've never engaged with whether I feel British, or English, or European - being a middle class white man with a decent job who isn't subject to abuse in the street, and who has got at least one job purely due to my accent, I'd hope that I am in some small ways conscious of my own privilege.

I'm also a third generation immigrant, whose grandfather came to the UK when his country of birth was leaving the British Empire (or what was left of it).

I have a real love for places in England, those with which I am familiar and that I instinctively call home - which range from the water meadows of Winchester to the museums of London, but of course as we progress and in some small ways our society attempts to know itself we learn that our museums are monuments to looting and our landscapes based on feudal systems that are still in our very near history.

I have absolutely no identification or respect for and with Johnson, Gove et al - but I have the middle class white male respect for institutions, the belief that they generally try to do the right thing. I know that I'm looking at this through a very specific lens, however.

I don't really know where I'm going with this, other than to say that Brexit has made me feel increasingly unmoored from my sense of cultural identity, whilst at the same time some elements of that are rock solid and will forever be. It's entirely possible that what I thought was the culture into which I fit was always and ever a total fiction, however.

And we forgot to do a risk assessment so now we have extra costs due to flooding

https://newsthump.com/2017/12/11/country-that-gets-paralysed-by-two-inches-of-snow-thinks-going-it-alone-will-be-great/

Bloody foreign snow, coming over here...

Just like the fish, it may originate elsewhere but once its in our borders its British snow.

Parklife

Summer it up beautifully.

Not like furrin's within the British borders ;)

Are we fish to be caught and used or like snow just an inconvenience? Should ask Boris no doubt he'll have a 2 hour long ramble with Greek words in it on this ;)

the culture into which I fit was always and ever a total fiction

fiction suggests something made-up that isn't true. I think of it as a construct - it may be made-up but it's still real. what that culture is made-up of, and how you relate to it, is (slightly or largely) different person to person but there's always some common ground somewhere.

presumably the 'unmooring' you mention has meant a new re-appraisal/engagement with whether and how you feel British, English, European etc - has that been a good thing? or at least interesting if not positive. not that it makes up for the clusterfuck of Brexit...

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-55328102

Australia going to WTO over China tariffs.

This is going to be GBs (not NIs I'd say as we stay in the CU/SM so we still have both the rules and the protection of the EU in some areas) future if it's not careful...

ECJ has a role in operation of the Chunnel soooooo.....

"The EU's proposals for the continued operation of Channel Tunnel are "absolutely unacceptable", the Minister says, and cross the Government's red lines."

https://twitter.com/CommonsEU/status/1339219964876754951

Round and round we go...

"post Brexit issues here not just for the goods in the lorries, but the lorries in the trains, the trains in the tunnel, and the actual tunnel itself."

Fb messenger... brexit related?

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I think they're shifting all the UK users over to be based in California (i.e. the same terms).

If it's that I think it is Brexit based - I guess to subvert gdpr now that they can with the UK.

Such a great observation. I suppose now we just need to wait for the final phase, 'the solution we've delivered is significantly worse than what we had before and/or actively hazardous to human life'.

Or 'Our solution is not fit for purpose and we have now contracted a European business to fix it at a much higher cost than we originally planned for'.

Seeing the first delivery delays coming through now. Anticipating a January shitshow.

Ta.

Jan-Feb will be, interesting. Best stock up on Campag now.