EU referendum, brexit and the aftermath

Missus tried this and Airlo doesn't work on her XCover 5. Maybe something for the future though.

Simple first step is joining yourself. If nobody joins because nobody else has joined, ain't never gonna happen. So why not be the leader?

This is a good read:

https://unherd.com/2023/01/labour-is-winning-the-brexit-revolution/

I am not really somebody who can lead this or anything else that needs "selling".

I was a member of Unite, then McCluskey and his shite on FOM came up. But the new leader is pretty good...IDK.

Somebody else at work is a member of the CWU.

UK expected to be only major economy to shrink in 2023 - IMF

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-64452995

Lol its some laugh here.

No mention of the B word in the article of course!

Thread:

https://twitter.com/simonharris_mbd/status/1620350111791595520

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-64482445

No chance of NI protocol agreement soon due to the UK wanting to cherry pick on the role of the EJC.

Knew it...and it's a strange one as Sunak otherwise seems reasonable. Red meat for the ERG issue?

lol - “we may be shit but they are more shit”

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We are a long way from 'sunlit uplands' and 'no downsides' aren't we

"a failing unreformable basket case"

hum. No government in Northern Ireland. Scotland pissed off. Still no agreement on the NI Protocol. No reform of voting for Westminster. I mean...if the shoe fits.

Sure, there are downsides to being part of the EU, but so far the only bonuses are (perhaps as it is complicated) farming reforms and fishing reforms.

But again the UK doesn't go far enough to really go for hard reforms to ensure farmers are paid well and it doesn't buy back fishing rights to give these to small fisheries with rules to protect the fishing grounds.

So, eh.

Sorry, didn't explain myself properly. I meant being a leader by doing, not by telling (or "selling to") others what they should do. Personally, I've never had any choice of union (I'm a medic, so it's the BMA or nowt) but I still joined - and in fact they were pretty helpful to me on an individual level a number of times. I've been in France the last few years, and despite it being a massively more unionised country than the UK, there doesn't seem to be any union for doctors that I can determine. And the system for doctors is a mess! Most in the public service work ~50-60 hours a week, they still do 24 hour on call shifts and so on... These are things that are prohibited by the European Working Time Directive, implemented in the UK for doctors 10-20 years ago, but in France there's just no force that unites medics and really sticks up for their rights, instead the doctors just say "well, it's always been like that". It frustrates me enormously.

Huh, that's surprising.

As the rail unions are very strong and the farmers take no nonsense either.

Lots of involuntary overwork in France?

Here it seems to be doctors don't have to work that much but many do so out of a sense of duty...

Smashing article here https://www.dailymail.co.uk/columnists/article-11714171/amp/10-awkward-questions-throw-EU-Rejoiner-corners-dinner-party.html

The author, a passionate supporter of Brexit, has dual British French nationality

Classic Mail that isn't it!

Some quality bits in the article including

“Disgruntled ‘Remainers’ – those politicians, civil servants and lobbyists who have wanted to pull us backwards since we voted decisively to leave the European Union – have a spring in their step”

and

“Every day, they tell us that Brexit has failed, defying the facts. And they think if they repeat this mantra often enough, people will believe it”

Gobshites like that often don't know where Brexit might be better.

Fishing restrictions and farming payments.
Sectors with lots of illegal underpayment, sometimes.

Maybe. The rest is unmitigated shite.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/feb/06/negotiators-make-breakthrough-in-northern-irish-protocol-dispute?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

If Frost and Johnson hadn't been such obstinate types, this would have been sorted years ago.

Onwards and upwards? Maybe as Sunak still has to fight the ERG.

https://www.ft.com/content/13026db9-1251-41f2-beea-de8f6c08a44f

Admin clusterfuck sees 141K applications for EUSS refused, with many pending for months and months.

Am sure some of those are genuine refusals but now suddenly benefits etc. paid for many months have to be paid back.

And the woman I know that got trafficked is still waiting...last year she got told she'd get it, now it's this year. By Dec 31?

The home office needs to gets its shit together.

An extraordinary cross-party summit bringing together leading leavers and remainers – including Michael Gove and senior members of Keir Starmer’s shadow cabinet – has been held in high secrecy to address the failings of Brexit and how to remedy them in the national interest, the Observer can reveal.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/feb/11/revealed-secret-cross-party-summit-held-to-confront-failings-of-brexit

I hope David Lammy showed Norman Lamont the 'blue gold fish'.

This EU summit could be massive. Why invite Labour, could rishi be hoping to do something with Labour votes to face down the ERG lot ? There doesn’t seam to be any other reason for them to be there.

It’ll be interesting to see what the hard brexit Tory’s have to say. They’ll have to kill off the eu retained law bill for a start.

We avoid a recession, i geniunely hope that they realised we won’t avoid it next time if they continued their current course of making us poorer.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/feb/12/farmers-post-brexit-payments?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Farmers "take care of nature" payment scheme that replaces EU CAP has not replaced the amount of cap funding.

The CAP now also includes funding for biodiversity... The UK scheme goes further but if farmers just quit as it doesn't pay then we just import and another country then ends up with the issues, and I don't think biodiversity is part of UK tradedeals.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/feb/12/disaster-is-right-brexit-is-a-self-inflicted-wound-that-cuts-dangerously-deep?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Bank of England claims Brexit and immigration rules push up wages, but I'd like to see a breakdown as wages have risen in many EU countries due to labour shortages.

Not that this "no low income jobs immigration" model is great for all sectors, from care workers to research assistants at universities,many jobs are still not paid enough.

If it was as easy as "keeping jwestlands out who came in on a lower wages job" we'd not have a mess of strikes and a care workers staffing crisis.