Bloomin’ remoaner Aussies. they want to be careful or we’ll stop buying millions of units of Vegemite and Tim-Tams from them
Should be noted he's a British expat, not an Aussie. I somewhat dread the next time I return to the UK, being afraid that it won't feel like home anymore, so reading that both he and his brother in law could see the changes is disheartening.
It was claimed on here that the Northern Ireland Protocol was illegal and breached the GFA. After a long, and expensive (financed by the usual grifting of the gullible), legal process it was, as expected, found to be perfectly legal by the courts: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-64558530
Quite enjoying the usual suspects among the right-leaning commentariat squealing about Astra Zeneca moving its operation to the Republic of Ireland. "It's the high taxes," they yell, and while that may be a factor, it's likely that the bigger factor is that the ROI has easier, cheaper access to the EU market and the UK does not.
Yeah but just wait until they launch their follow up case that someone in the European Commission once said something during the referendum campaign and that's 'tOtAlLy IlLeGaL bEcAuSe I mIsReAd sOmE EU lAw'. Still makes me chuckle that the only person in the whole world that apparently noticed this heinous, unlawful behaviour was a bloke on a football forum!
Cross-party talks have taken place “in secret” to try to salvage something from the Brexit disaster. Gove and Mandelson said to be taking the lead. Both Leavers and Remainers have been involved, suggesting that at long last some grown ups are going to address the issue and seek to find some sort of positive way forward.
Including David "Brexit is a Con" Lammy and Gisella "I'm alright Jack because I'm really German" Stewart. Unfortunately anything short of rejoining SM/CU will be moving the deckchairs.
Tough one as I think this dilutes the Tory ownership of the Brexit omnishambles - but Mandleson has the political nous to deal with the very slippery Gove. Interesting that GSK was at the table - especially as they've just announced that their new facility will be built outside of Dublin for "...tax reasons..." and their Jesduvroq hadn't got 'full' FDA approval (they have form for taking a very protectionist approach with non-US inventions).
The other parties can’t not join in with this, otherwise they will inherit the Brexitshambles on the basis they wouldn’t try to make it work. It's easier to play the if only Brexit was given a proper chance if the opposition can be blamed. Nevertheless, there is significant risk for all of the parties, especially the Tories, in lifting the toilet seat on the toxic bowl of Brexit shyte. Maybe the talks will simply lay out the contradictions and hasten the end of hard Brexit.
A couple of absolute ****s who are in a relationship with each other. Fortunately they are too old to reproduce.
Wonder if the Breggziters will be ****-a-hoop with the detail of the UK-EU agreement over the NI Protocol, or will they see it as a betrayal?
https://twitter.com/RemainerNow/status/1626875684982325249 Can anybody honestly say that since we left fully, the quantity, quality and variety of fresh fruit and veg at supermarkets hasn't nosedived? I've practically given up on Tesco Harrow, and no mainly shop at Lidl in Harrow Weald; even that is not brilliant, and you tend to take what they've got rather than what you really went for, but Tesco has almost literally nothing after 11AM.
The Frenchies have it all in their Supermarche. Obvs. The good news is that if we rejoin then our shelves at Tesco will be rammed with fruit and veg and Pierre will be bleating. Wake up you morons .
We actually have the same problem over here (although it does seem to be slowly improving) so I'm not sure Brexit is wholly to blame for it. The global supply chain issues have undoubtedly hit food quality. I'm sure it's a compounding issue though.
Well you'd never know, would you Zero, seeing as going abroad isn't for the likes of you? But astonishingly you are correct, French supermarkets still have masses of high quality fresh fruit and veg. Still, our shortages won't affect your working class diet of lard and suet; vegetables and fruit are strictly middle class obsessions (except of course for your Xmas orange).
The intense heat we experienced across Europe last summer has also had an impact. Lower yields, smaller fruit and vegetables, poorer quality. A lot more crops than usual died. There's a range of factors, including Brexit and the war in Ukraine, of course. A lot of imported fresh food now arrives older than it used to be so it has a shorter shelf life. Supermarkets don't want to increase costs by increasing delivery frequency to stores so smaller quantities make it to the shelves in the first place.
An independent group of grown ups should be appointed to run the NHS as well. Just get the thing working properly and hand the Government the bill every year. Other departments then get their budgets allocated based on whatever's left in the pot. This way the health service can't be buggered about or used as a prize in a pi55ing contest between sets of hopeless politicians
One of the best ideas I've seen on here. The health of a nation's citizens reflects the health of that nation. Of course, some people will argue that you can't give the NHS unlimited funds because BuReaUcrAtS will waste it on leaflets about gender or diversity. But that's just the point. A cross-party group, consisting of politicians, health service experts, civil servants to run the NHS like a service befitting all of us would be the most grown-up, common sense of ideas. Which is why it won't happen with this Government in charge. They don't believe in health for all. They believe in health as a business and have constructed arguments to get certain members of their base to argue their case. "Why should someone who ate a pie, or drank a pint, or smoked get health care when I've lived a virtuous life and I don't get any benefit for making those choices?" They ignore the fact that good health is the key that unlocks a good life. When it suits them they believe in freedom of choice – but they don't like nanny forcing restaurants to tel people how many calories are in the triple bacon cheeseburger so that people can begin to make informed choices. Maybe it's too late for today's adults but it's not too late for tomorrow's. Over and over and over again we see the same tactics. It's the most deft con job perpetrated on the public over decades by a concerted (right-wing) media that always, always knows the argument to put to ensure that not enough people start to put the jigsaw together. To put it in simplistic terms, the Tory Government is the NHS manager, the body that takes ultimate responsibility, and the NHS is rooted to the foot of the table, losing week after week, but the manager pays no price for that whatsoever.
It won’t happen because the NHS is too much of a vote winner or loser for any government to risk losing control of it.
That's the thing though. It should be out of the hands of the politicians. It is ridiculous that it fluctuates between a massively underfunded failure or a horribly over bloated drain on the taxpayer depending on who's in government. Get sensible people to run it sensibly and keep politics out of it
But how are you going to persuade any government to let go of the reins? Also, so long as it is funded through general taxation, it’s very difficult to keep politics out.
A sum of money would be allocated to the NHS each year. It would increase in line with inflation. This would be set in stone and it would be up to the hand picked non political team running the show to decide how to spend it.
Well, nothing is wholly set in stone in a system where Parliament is sovereign but… ok. And when something goes wrong? Who takes the blame?
I probably need a bigger fag packet to develop this a bit more, but something's got to be done to marginalise the power that the bloody awful people who choose a political career have before everything is irreversibly buggered up
Yes, the current approach of assuming people are savvy enough to recognise a useless shyster when they see one and then not vote for them is proving depressingly ineffective.
The depressing thing is that people get to choose between a bunch of utterly useless shysters and a well meaning but no doubt equally useless opposition. A lifetime spent in politics doesn't prepare anyone to run the country. A plague on both their houses
