Month: July 2018

The sunny uplands of Brexit

Two years ago Brexit proponents were promising an easy negotiation, followed by ponies for all. Now this:

The government has demanded that companies and industry groups involved in Brexit planning sign non-disclosure agreements in an attempt to prevent alarming details leaking out.

I think it’s a characteristic of most really auspicious, well-considered government policies that everyone involved in the planning needs to be bound to secrecy to prevent panic. It’s a lot like a national surprise party. Really, nothing says “strong, stable leadership” like nondisclosure agreements to prevent alarming details leaking out. The Times article continues:

That explains why the plan to publicise no-deal preparations throughout the summer has been canned. The original plan was scrapped after a meeting last week chaired by Philip Rycroft, the senior mandarin in the Brexit department. A source said: “People will shit themselves and think they want a new referendum or an election or think the Tory party shouldn’t govern again.

Project Reassurance

The EU has recommended in a new document that member governments make specific preparations for the possibility of the UK leaving the bloc without any negotiated arrangement.

Among other issues, it highlighted what a no-deal Brexit would mean for citizens, saying: “There would be no specific arrangement in place for EU citizens in the UK, or for UK citizens in the EU.”

Asked specifically about this, Raab said: “Well, I think that’s a rather irresponsible thing to be coming from the other side. We ought to be trying to reassure citizens on the continent and also here.”

Raab said it was “far-fetched and fanciful” to think that, in the event of a no deal Brexit, the government would not act “swiftly” to secure the legal position of EU nationals in the UK.

Irresponsible to be recommending preparations for an eventuality that leading members of the UK governing party are promoting as their preferred outcome.

Utterly fanciful to think that the UK parliament would not be capable of coming to a rapid consensus, particularly when it comes to assuring the human rights of foreigners, whom the political class all hold so dear. Why could anyone suspect that the UK government would not act with the utmost humanity and sensitivity to the situation of long-time UK residents whose legal position is not clearly defined. I can’t think of a single reason. What’s the worst that could happen?

And it’s not as though the UK hasn’t specifically refused to provide legally binding assurance that Europeans resident in the UK will maintain their current status. (The most charitable explanation for this is that they wish to threaten the EU citizens in the UK in order to raise pressure on the EU in the negotiations. So much for the EU document being irresponsible and “obviously an attempt to try and ramp up the pressure”.)

The world’s easiest job

In six US states — Arizona, Idaho, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Dakota — pharmacists are permitted to refuse to fill prescriptions to which they have moral or religious objections. In Idaho they can still be required to fill the prescription in life-threatening situations if no one else is available, and in Arizona they must at least return the prescription so they can get it filled from another pharmacist. In the other four, apparently they don’t even have to do that much.

So, I’m thinking, there’s hardly an easier job that Christian Scientists, in the last four states particularly, if they’re looking for easy work should apply to pharmacies. No matter what prescription anyone brings to them they can toss it in the bin and go back to playing solitaire, or reading the works of Mary Baker Eddy.

(You may think they’d have difficulties getting hired, and they may indeed have to acquire some formal qualifications. No lunch is completely free, though presumably they can obtain religious exemptions from most of the requirements of their course. But the drug store can’t refuse to hire them on religious grounds.)

Nerve agents and the World Cup

Here’s a crazy theory that I need to write down, because no one else seems to be saying it: Could it be that the Novichok poisoning of two ordinary British people in Amesbury was not, as most have assumed, an accidental effect of residual Novichok somehow lingering after the Skripal poisoning in eight miles away in Salisbury, but rather an intentional effort to keep Theresa May away from the World Cup.

British politicians and royals are staying away from the World Cup in protest against the March assassination attempt. Of course, no one cares. Putin has his spectacle. But May was hedging recently:

THERESA May has hinted that her World Cup boycott on royals and ministers attending the football tournament in Russia could be dropped if England were to make it to the final.

When questioned whether her stance could change, the Prime Minister said she is taking the decision “every game at a time” but the Government had been “very clear” about why the position was taken.

Wouldn’t that be just the sort of psychopathic trolling that would appeal to Vladimir Putin, to raise the embarrassment level for British politicians to come, or prevent them from basking in the reflected glory of their football team?

Boris Johnson has an attack of the sads

Haunted Boris Johnson

Now that Theresa May has forced her cabinet to acknowledge a tiny portion of the reality of Brexit, Boris Johnson has apparently taken to moping around Whitehall to make certain that no one will think that he’s happy to now be conspiring with reality to betray his cause.

The best line is this:

Those close to the foreign secretary say that he feels he has been “bounced” into agreeing to a deal that is a world away from the hard Brexit he campaigned for. “He thinks that what’s on the table is so flawed we might even be better off staying in,” one said.

Continue reading “Boris Johnson has an attack of the sads”

Brexit negotiations halfway concluded!

A classic joke:

A rabbi announces in synagogue, at the end of Yom Kippur, that he despairs at the burning need for wealth to be shared more equally. He will depart for the next year to travel through the world, speaking to all manner of people, ultimately to persuade the rich to share with the poor. On the following Yom Kippur he returns, takes his place at the head of the congregation without a word, and leads the service. At the end of the day congregants gather around him. “Rabbi, have you accomplished your goal? Will the rich now share with the poor?” And he says, “Halfway. The poor are willing to accept.”

I thought of that on seeing this headline:

Theresa May secures approval from cabinet

A mere 15 months after formally triggering the formal two-year process for exiting the EU, Conservative politicians have negotiated an (uneasy) agreement among themselves about what they hope to achieve from the process. Now, all that remains to wrap up in the next nine months is to get the approval of EU negotiators, the European Parliament and 27 national governments.

Update (7pm, 7/7/18): The Guardian website now posts this article with a different headline:

Theresa May faces Tory anger over soft Brexit proposal

Tory Brexiters voice concerns over ‘common rulebook’ plan for UK-EU free trade area

So, my suggestion that the first half of the Brexit negotiations had been successfully concluded was perhaps premature.