Now the FT are reporting that the UK is planning to renege on the terms of the Withdrawal Agreement signed last year.
Government admits new Brexit bill 'will break international law' And this crowd apparently believe that the whole world is going to want to line up in order to make deals with them shortly. How will this not fall foul of the UK courts, to say nothing of the ECJ which is the ultimate arbiter in such matters?
I'm reminded here of Dayton forever telling us international laws are non binding, the sad thing being that in the vast majority of cases he was right. Laws are enforced by consequences, which Johnson and co will remain blissfully unaffected by. You and I, however, will be paying the price for decades to come.
This might be an apt analogy if Boris hadn't been one of the ones who smeared the lift walls with excrement by championing Leave in the first place BEFORE he even ran for the role of pushing the down button (we aren't going up, let's be fucking honest).
Yes, but we have a free trade deal with Japan, which apparently will allow for: and Just to be clear this landmark validation of Brexit means we can carry on selling cheese to a nation with around 70% incidence of dairy intolerance under pretty much exactly the same deal we already had as members of the EU. Plus cardigans. So it all worked out in the end.
Which Revenge of the Boomers clusterfuck of 2016 will have the longer lasting effects on their respective nations, Trump or Brexit?
You need to factor in Trump as a covariate of Brexit, since the same idiocy that gave you him also gave us Boris AND showed Boris that he could say fuck you to long-established parliamentary traditions.
Agreed, they are both related events. Whether that relationship can be said to be causal is another matter but they are absolutely pieces of the same puzzle.
Also, I grow tired of the narrative that holds that the UK is otherwise a bastion of international law. The affrontery of Tony Blair using that phrase has killed irony stone dead. And we had a documentary screened here last night about British intelligence collusion during the Troubles. I haven't seen it yet, but apparently they planned at one stage to arrange for gunmen to walk into a school to murder children and their teachers. It is fortunate that in the case of Brexit, they have an interlocutor in the EU that is powerful enough to push back on their law-breaking.
I don't think any country is, anywhere. "International law" is what you try to require others to accept, while doing all you can to get around it yourself. My guess is that you wouldn't have to dig too far to find flagrant violations of treaties to which they have agreed (the only kind of international law that has any real meaning, IMO) in the policies and practices of just about every country.
The problem, though, is that akin to the US we have a long history of casting ourselves as being the authority which gives international laws credibility. We are the Empire, the Commonwealth, founding members of the UN, the League of Nations, the seat of responsible civilisation so on and so forth. Other countries are the ones who get policed, we are the ones who do the policing and if we are breaking the law it's clearly the corrupt international "law" which is at fault, not Downing Street.
^ Oh, I don't disagree at all. But remember where I live: France champions itself as the defender of human rights, yet has major human-rights violations not only in its history, but in its current policies (though admittedly not as flagrant as during the final years of the colonisation period). So it's not just the US and the UK. Sure they are two major hypocrites, but there are plenty of others as well.
I'm not ashamed. Nor are the elderly lady in red leather, the homeless guy or the fishtank repair man.
So, Cummings is leaving - either very soon or reasonably soon. That's got to be good news for the rest of us. But it does get him off the hook for the mess that he's caused. I keep hearing that a deal needs to be done with the EU by mid-November to allow time for it to pass into law. And we're nearly there...
I was interested to note on Radio 2 this afternoon there was discussion of....drum role....a second referendum.
They have dug themselves a hole here, no Cabinet will maintain hard-core Leave support if they are seen to be giving concessions. The Daily Mail would turn on them faster than Fox deciding a post election Trump is no longer the golden goose. Given that pushing for a hard Leave has always been the core of Johnson's political career he simply can't afford that, nor can any potential usurper within the party given they have all hitched themselves to that particular wagon. No matter how tiny the concession if it is visible to the nation's press it would be political suicide.
Seems like Johnson caved on some important points. It's better than no deal, but vastly inferior to EU membership. And it's ridiculous that people have just one week to be ready.
Given the way the UK government works, I wouldn't be surprised if there are some departments still running Windows 3.1 just because the chinless twats in charge can't understand anything more advanced. We do still have some PCs at work running Windows 2000/XP because the kit they're connected to isn't compatible with newer OS. And I have seen a BBC Micro lying around in one lab.
