cock-eyed octopus

yes, I thought that those bank executives who'd made fortunes from bonuses should also be made personally responsible for the losses. That might have concentrated their minds a bit when taking risks with other people's money.

The problem is he has the same attitude to the British Parliament as Farage does to the European one. He holds it in utter contempt.

The basic principles are the same though. If you aren't prepared to walk away from that rug then you, effendi, will be shafted.

'Leaving' expresses a will to go somewhere other than where you are. 'Leave the EU' is a label, just as 'puppy is a label. The meaning of either of these labels can be discussed as exhaustively as you like. A puppy can be defined as a young dog - but then what is a young dog? Is there a size variable? Is a 3 legged young dog still a puppy? But we all really know what a puppy is, & have common understanding of the puppiness or otherwise of any animal presented to us. In fact there may be differences of opinion about this - but democracy wins! If most people say it's a puppy it's a puppy ? Leaving the EU has not happened before, so the nature of this action was discussed exhaustively in the referendum run-up. It was then up to each person to decide what leaving the EU implied & vote accordingly. It's really no different to what we do when confronted with a GE. The implications inherent in voting for one party label or another are manifold & all we can do is vote on our best assessment of outcomes. And we voted leave.

I thought the 'people's vote' was meant to be a vote on what sort of deal we wanted, nothing to do with in or out - we've already voted on that.

Soubry saying she'll support the government tonight, but if No Deal looks likely she'll vote against it if Labour call another VONC.

As I understand it the legal situation is that we leave on 29th March & it would take a legal instrument to change it. Is that correct or not?

Steve Baker interesting on Sky News just now. He reckons we had a deal ready to be signed off but May & Ollie Robbins scuppered it. He's got a document: https://globalbritain.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/A-Better-Deal-and-a-Better-Future.pdf I'm going to have a bash at reading it.

No 'deal' was on the ballot paper. The implications of leaving were discussed exhaustively before the referendum, including what sort of deal could be done. It was up to each voter to make up their own mind as to whether to leave or remain.

Looks like I was wrong!

Having listened to her speech I reckon she's a goner. She really does seem to have staked everything on this vote.

Food shortages, diabetics going without insulin, outbreaks of salmonella and swine flu: a no-deal Brexit has become a dystopia of the imagination that gives even the Old Testament a run for its money. To lend it extra credence, the doomsayers are not muttering men with long white beards but business leaders and figures from respectable-sounding thinktanks. Yet in just 11 weeks’ time, a no-deal Brexit could become a reality. Will we really be impoverished, hungry and living in fear of infectious diseases? Or is it just Project Fear, ratcheted up to a new level by those who see the clock ticking down and have become ever more desperate to persuade the public of the foolishness of its decision to vote for Brexit? Some dismiss the predictions of chaos as mere scaremongering. Yet they are harder to ignore when you look at their provenance. The salmonella and swine flu warning, for example, came not from David Icke but from the normally sober London Port Health Authority — not a body that usually features in the rough and tumble of political debate. So just what is the truth about some of the most-quoted concerns? Supermarket shelves will empty. Hospitals will run short of drugs The risk to the NHS was made clear last month when Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, said he had become ‘the world’s largest buyer of fridges’, as hospitals prepare to stockpile six weeks’ worth of medicines. He didn’t explain why such a large stockpile is needed, but it didn’t sound very encouraging. Drugs that have regulatory approval on 28 March will still be approved in Britain on 30 March, so there should be no greater need for regulatory checks — although there could be traffic delays in delivering drugs. The NHS regularly has to deal with shortages of particular medicines: last autumn, for example, manufacturing difficulties caused a shortage of EpiPens. If such a shortage were to occur this spring, it would inevitably be blamed on Brexit. The same applies to a great many other things that could go wrong after 29 March: no-deal Brexit would be held responsible. What’s the case for stockpiling food? Much of our food does come from EU countries, and if there are extra customs checks, it might be harder to transport this food into Britain. It’s all very well saying we’d buy British — which we could for milk and potatoes — but a third of the food we consume is imported from the EU; overall only half of our food is sourced in the UK. The real problem could be with fresh vegetables (of which we import just over half) and fresh fruit, 84 per cent of which is imported. Plenty of it is brought in by refrigerated lorries from southern Spain; serious delays could leave their cargos rotting. That brings us to ingredients. Michael Gove, the Environment Secretary, has voiced concerns that two of a Mars Bar’s 20 ingredients are imported from the EU and that supplies could run out in weeks — news which might actually delight Public Health England. Will supplies really be interrupted, though? If the UK government is worried about this, it can wave lorries through and worry about paperwork later. But we have no control on the hold-ups these lorries might be subjected to on the way back to Europe (more of which below). Panic-buying is, in itself, a major risk and could empty the supermarket shelves regardless, just as filling stations rapidly ran out of fuel during the petrol protests in 2000, thanks to motorists filling up just in case. Roads will be blocked by queues of lorries. The M20 will become a giant car park According to the Port of Dover, which handles 2.6 million lorries a year, an extra two minutes’ delay to each lorry entering customs would cause 17-mile tailbacks along the M20. Yet a port strike at Calais in 2015 caused similar tailbacks, without mass food shortages. The Road Haulage Association says the proposed customs forms could take eight hours to fill in for a lorry packed with several different sorts of goods. But should we believe it? HMRC says that much of the delay at ports could be avoided by clearing loads ahead of their arrival — as already happens with goods from outside the EU. It says it is training an additional 5,000 staff to make sure there is a ‘functioning’ border in place — although this would not be ‘an optimal situation’. Calais and the Belgian port of Zeebrugge have recently introduced electronic clearing systems for customs forms. Jean-Marc Puissesseau, head of the Port of Calais, confirmed this week that, in the event of a no-deal Brexit, the port will not be stopping more lorries than it already does, so there will be no reason for any delays on the French side of the Channel when it comes to bringing goods into Britain. As with so much in a no-deal Brexit, the real concern is political. President Emmanuel Macron may seek to make life difficult for cross-Channel traffic, especially if Britain attempts to exit the EU without paying the agreed £39 billion leaving bill. Under WTO rules, punitive delays are not allowed at borders. But might the French bend the rules? In the past, they have banned British beef when it suited them, in defiance of EU law. International trade rules might turn out to offer Britain scant protection. The unknown factor is how motorists will behave in the event of a no-deal Brexit. If car drivers take fright and stay away from cross-Channel ports around the time of Brexit, traffic could end up flowing surprisingly well in the early days. Brits will need visas to go on holiday It costs $14 for an ESTA to visit the US and it lasts two years. A similar visa-free system has been proposed by the EU in the event of a no-deal Brexit. For €7, Brits would be granted the right to roam across the EU for up to three years and stay anywhere for 90 days without a visa. Passport-free travel between the UK and Ireland is guaranteed by laws that preceded our EU membership. Ordinary motorists are covered by the 1968 Vienna Convention on Road Traffic, which gives them the right to drive on the roads of foreign countries — so long as they don’t do so while inebriated or in contravention of other traffic laws. The government has committed to staying within the European Health Insurance Card (EHIC) scheme after Brexit — just like Norway. In the event of no deal, however, the government believes individual agreements may need to be made with each country, which might not be completed by 29 March. The situation regarding pet passports is still unknown. The EU operates a Pet Travel Scheme for travellers from non-EU countries and much depends on whether it would consider Britain a ‘listed’ or ‘-unlisted’ country after Brexit. If the former, nothing changes. If the latter, pets might have to spend four months in quarantine. As with much else, it all depends on how hard the EU wants to make life for the British. There would be some compensation: the restoration of duty-free shopping. However, the government could impose limits on how much alcohol and tobacco travellers could bring back into Britain. The EU says it will limit the quantities that can be taken from Britain to the EU. One positive outcome for UK shoppers is that they would be able to reclaim the VAT they had paid on goods bought in EU countries by filling in a form when they get home. Prices will rise; the economy will suffer as just-in-time exports and imports are blocked Until two years ago, the word ‘tariff’ rarely featured in pub debates. Now, even the abbreviation WTO (World Trade Organisation) is common currency. Under WTO rules, the UK would not have to impose a tariff on EU cars or food, but realistically it might echo EU tariffs for fear of exposing UK farmers to an influx of cheap imports. EU tariffs currently average 2.8 per cent for non-farm products but for many goods, it’s higher: 10 per cent for cars, 16 per cent for animal products and almost 40 per cent for dairy goods. So the price of Brie and BMWs might shoot up. Tariffs are, like all forms of tax, a source of revenue so the government could lower VAT to compensate for higher prices in the shops. Oxford Economics estimates that, overall, no deal would increase prices by 2 per cent for about a year. Annoying, certainly, but hardly a cost surge. Planes won’t be able to take off Agreement has already been reached on flights between the UK and EU countries: they would not be affected for at least 12 months. There is no agreement on UK airlines flying between EU cities, but this is easily circumvented: easyJet has recently set up a separate Austrian-based company to enable it to continue to fly throughout the EU. Ryanair is based in Ireland so won’t be affected (although you would never think so from the threats chief executive Michael O’Leary has made to ground planes in the event of Brexit). As for passengers, the EU has said that UK passengers travelling to, say, Amsterdam airport for a connecting flight to the US will not face extra security checks. What happens after 30 March 2020 isn’t clear, although there is little reason to see why the UK shouldn’t be allowed to join the European Common Aviation Area as an independent member state, like Norway. Again, this depends on goodwill. Expats will have to return home The EU has said that the 785,000 UK nationals who are legally resident in other EU countries on 29 March 2019 will retain the right to live and work there so long as they obtain a residence permit. Their rights are also protected under the Vienna Convention, which would also prevent the UK government deporting EU nationals. They are being asked to pay £65 each to renew their residency rights under the UK Settlement Scheme (so much for a post-Brexit UK being much lighter on regulation). Being resident in one EU state won’t give a UK national the automatic right to go and live in another EU state, although they will be free to visit other EU countries for a period of three months. The British government has introduced the Healthcare (International Arrangements) Bill to guarantee continuing healthcare arrangements for UK expats even in the event of no deal. The economy will collapse So dire have the warnings over Brexit been over the past couple of years that recent economic forecasts look relatively mild by comparison. The National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) sees economic growth of 0.3 per cent in 2019 in the event of no deal, a whole point less that it otherwise expects. Oxford Economics says economic growth will fall to zero after no deal, Capital Economics envisages a 0.2 per cent contraction and Fathom Consulting 0.8 per cent. Credit Suisse is one of the most pessimistic, imagining a fall of 1 per cent or 2 per cent in the economy. To put this in context: the crash of 2007 saw the economy shrink by 6.3 per cent. All these forecasts need to be treated with extreme caution given how wrong forecasts made before the referendum proved to be. Oxford Economics envisages a 10 per cent fall in sterling (it fell 15 per cent after the referendum). A currency drop would, as we saw last time, bring mixed economic results (higher inflation, but also higher exports and investment). And how reliable are such forecasts? In May 2016 the Treasury said unemployment would rise by at least 500,000 within two years of a Leave vote. In the event, the economy grew and unemployment fell to its lowest level in 45 years. The biggest problems could, of course, turn out to be ones that nobody has yet thought of. The magazine paper you are holding, for example, was imported and tends not to be stockpiled by our printers. After Brexit, might it arrive as quickly as it does now? To say ‘There is no reason why it shouldn’t’ is not the same as saying ‘It will’. No one can be sure. Panic buying, bureaucratic breakdowns, logjams in other parts of the supply chain: nothing can be ruled out. What we can’t know are the political implications. Chaos would be blamed on the Tories and might prove to be the catalyst Jeremy Corbyn needs in order to form a left-wing government. On the other hand, Corbyn — a lifelong Brexiteer until he was presented with the chance to campaign for Brexit in a referendum — might be turned on by his own party. The prospect of no deal, with all its uncertainties, will be seen by some as a crazy risk that should on no account be undertaken. Others might conclude that the risk is manageable and a few months’ disruption is a price worth paying for a clean break with the EU. Talks on a UK-EU free trade deal could, of course, begin at any time but without a ticking clock. At present, most MPs would rather not see what no-deal Brexit might look like. But unless they can agree on an alternative, they may be about to find out.

Who won then?

In that case Parliament could be in need of an even more substantial rebuild than that proposed. Parliament is sovereign. BUT it derives that sovereignty from the electorate. The referendum asked the question directly to the electorate, thus ceding sovereignty to that electorate. Parliament decided (& it was virtually 5 - 1 decision) to enact the result of a referendum which asked the question whether we should stay in the EU or leave. Ultimately the electorate are sovereign. It cannot be any other way in a democracy.

They outperformed Labour. Who also ran on a leave manifesto.

When?

I buy off of ebay

Any doctor doing that should be struck off & thrown in clink. A doctor's first duty of care is to his patients & any medical decision he makes MUST be guided solely by that consideration. Christ we don't even let politicians get away with that level of corruption.

A government which ran a manifesto of leaving the Customs Union, the Single Market, ending FOM & the supremacy of the ECJ in domestic matters.

Clearly you didn't like the result. You think your logic is clear. I can't see anything logical about it - except it gives you a chance of getting the remain result you desire. And how long before the next referendum? And the next one?? ....

All the article is saying is that there are no absolute measures which can be used to determine whether we remain or leave. I agree with that. I suspect you don't. Actually, I've never tried to change remainers' minds. I respect their priorities & assessments are different to mine.

It's impossible to stop human beings from being mislead (unless you live in a totalitarian state perhaps). It's up to everyone to make up their own minds.

And if you believed that you were an idiot so far as I'm concerned. Loads of BS generated by both sides. It's up to the individual to make up his or her own mind as to the validity of said BS, as is true of every other decision in life (" your baldness will be miraculously cured!!"). It's looking like I might have been fooled by one bit of BS: the entire political establishment - anyone in authority of any note at all in fact - said that, although the referendum was not technically legally binding, there was no way on earth that any government could fail to implement the referendum result, as that would mean our political system would lose whatever particle of validity it still retained. It's not looking good ...

The will of the majority was to leave the EU. Nothing about deals.

Will our Brexit conflict ever be resolved? There's a reason the debate has descended into a pit of pettiness and rancour GILES FRASER @giles_fraser 4 MINS 11 JANUARY 2019 One of the more interesting features of the Brexit debate is the way it raises a question of how human beings argue about incommensurable values. By this, I mean values that are not comparable on some common scale – values that are so intrinsically different that they do not lend themselves to any sort of direct comparison or ranking. You might say, for instance, that those who think the Brexit question fundamentally revolves around issues of sovereignty, and those who think it is all about prosperity, are appealing to values are so different in kind that they can only ever talk past one another. Could it be that much of the anger generated in the exchange between these positions comes from a frustration at managing debate between incommensurable values? Those, like the great Oxford philosopher Isaiah Berlin, who believe that there are incommensurable values in human life are known as ethical pluralists. Those who believe that human values can ultimately be reduced to one super-value – often something like utility, or happiness – are known as ethical monists. The dominance of economics over the way we talk publically about the things we esteem in human life, and the way this has played into so-called ‘evidence based policy’, has meant that public discourse is often, de facto, a form of ethical monism. The attraction of monism to the tidy-minded is that it promises to make comparisons between apparently different things easier, assigning each some common and comparable value. In other words, the monist argues that apparently different values, once properly understood – that is, translated in term of the super-value – can be plotted on the same scale, and thus easily compared, assigning each some sort of numerical value. Value A has X units of super-value Alpha, value B has Y units of super-value Alpha. Therefore, in deciding between the two, one has only to compare X and Y to see which is the greater. Moral decision-making is that straightforward. But, unfortunately, the monist achieves this simplicity at the expense of a proper estimation of why certain things are valuable. The debate over the importance of the arts in education, for instance, is often hampered by the dominance of monist assumptions, with the arts being required to justify themselves in terms of their utility, something that STEM subjects, for instance, find it much easier to do. The problem here, of course, is that music and engineering are valuable for totally different reasons, and cannot be compared by reference to some common scale of values. In terms of value, they are not just different, they are irreducibly different. In moral terms, the life of a nun and the life of a mother can both be seen as valuable, but in entirely different terms. Likewise, justice cannot be plotted on the same scale as mercy. Or creativity and security. Or equality and liberty. Or prosperity and liberty A few months ago, I wrote a slightly tongue in cheek piece for UnHerd expressing qualms about the global dominance of the metric system. “I’d love to return to pre-metric diversity,” I wrote, “If only to fight back against that politically dangerous mythology that there is only one way of doing things, and we must all submit to a common standard.” I could have written another piece, arguing for the reintroduction of £sd. The deeper point here, semi-seriously intended, grows out of a desire to disrupt the growth of monism. Because life is more complicated and messier than the instruments that we have chosen to measure it by. “Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made,” said Kant – a quote Berlin loved and often repeated. So to the presenting problem: the nature of the antagonism that exists in the current debate over Brexit. And I suspect our culture of default monism has something to answer for here. Because monism promises that moral decision-making is a relatively straightforward calculation between comparable goods, the monist has to reach for some alternative explanation if people keep on permanently disagreeing. And that alternative explanation is typically to question the ability or the good faith of one side. If the monist is right, and all moral disputes are simply disguised disputes between the same super-value – say utility – then one side is either too thick to make the right calculation or has ulterior motives for backing it. And that is precisely what Remainers and Leavers accuse each other of doing. Monism, with its promise of decision-making without conflict, is a noble aim. But misconstrued. Because if values are genuinely incommensurate then the contest between them is inherently agonistic. There is no right answer. That is why rationality can never act as some white knight Deus ex Machina that will rush on stage to sort out these sort of feverish disputes. And so for some, the argument will consist of trying to find the most captivating voice in which to articulate one’s own position (that, I suspect, was the essential genius of Dominic Cummings as brought out by James Graham’s Channel 4 film, Brexit: the Uncivil War). For others, unfortunately, it will mean screaming insults at those with whom they disagree. Isaiah Berlin credited an obscure Victorian judge, Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, with the first articulation of value pluralism. And I quote the following passage in full because it seems to sum up so precisely the situation we find ourselves in with Brexit: Berlin and Fitzjames Stephen lived long before argument was coarsened and weaponised by social media. But reading Sir James’s distinction between worthy and poisonous argument, you can almost imagine he was looking down on us from above as he wrote it, watching the yellow-jacketed thugs screaming “Nazi!” at Anna Soubry, watching the sneering superiority of those who think the other side to be ignorant fools, watching so many of us descend into a pit of pettiness and rancour.