Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Egan_BW]

He's in the game.

[smjjames]

Marie Le Pen says she supports the UK returning to a reformed EU, though theres kind of an implied caveat in that how is it going to be reformed to the way the UK would like it if they aren't in there.

Also, she wants an alliance of European states rather than the EU. Not sure how that would be different from the current makeup of NATO other than maybe it's goal and some membership changes, and doing things besides just military.

[TD1]

Doing things besides just military.

That... kind of sums up how it would be different, yes.

[Loud Whispers]

Unarmed football hooligan who attacked three armed jihadists during the London Bridge terror attack shouting "fuck you I'm Millwall" spared jail sentence after pleading guilty to possession of amphetamines
Classic

[martinuzz]

Meanwhile, plans are made to evacuate the Queen if a no-deal Brexit leads to riots.

https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/god-evacuate-the-queen-plannen-om-koningin-naar-veilige-plek-te-brengen-als-brexit-op-rellen-uitloopt~b153e468/
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6661457/Whitehall-plan-evacuate-Queen-Brexit-sparks-riots-streets-London.html

[Loud Whispers]

The Queen has been dragged into an extraordinary ‘Project Fear’ row after it emerged that civil servants have drawn up plans to evacuate the Royal Family if a No Deal Brexit causes riots on the streets of London.
The Mail on Sunday has learned that Whitehall contingency planners have included among their ‘worst case’ scenarios the need to move the Royals to safe locations away from the capital.
Officials in the Civil Contingencies Secretariat, the Government department responsible for emergency planning, have ‘repurposed’ a secret operation under which the Royals could have been accommodated in various country houses to protect them from enemy forces during the Cold War.

classic whitehall
if they actually believed this was an outcome they would not leak their secret plans; because they believe it to be useful ammunition, they leak their useless plan

[smjjames]

Meanwhile, plans are made to evacuate the Queen if a no-deal Brexit leads to riots.

https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/god-evacuate-the-queen-plannen-om-koningin-naar-veilige-plek-te-brengen-als-brexit-op-rellen-uitloopt~b153e468/
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6661457/Whitehall-plan-evacuate-Queen-Brexit-sparks-riots-streets-London.html

I saw that (well, the far less alarmist Politico version) earlier and was going to post about how I laughed at it since it talked about evacuating to the continent, but I re-read the article again and realized that it was an initial reading comp failure on my part since the plan seems to be to evacuate to more defensible country estates (I don't suppose they have any old castles handy?) rather than outside the country. Also, I had made a quip about 'whatever happened to the 'stay calm and carry on' mentality?' in the post I decided not to make since it seems like a time for the Monarchy to be a bastion of (outward) calm during such a time rather than panic.

If the riots aren't about them, then they shouldn't really have anything to worry about. But as you might expect, they do make contingency plans.

[smjjames]

Theresa May still not budging on the backstop, and neither is the DUP on their position.

Also, the BBC article mentions Theresa May saying that 'the technology to manage the complexities of the Irish border does not exist or has been implemented', which I completely do not buy. She's obviously referring to the political complexities since the economic complexities are no more complex than anyplace else, but there are certainly borders elsewhere that are just as or more politically complex than the NI-ROI border and are managed just fine. Sure, it would take time to calibrate whatever technology to the borders needs, but the political complexity isn't between ROI and NI (who see each other as friends AFAIK. Far from the tense relationship it has with the UK.), it's between NI and UK.

Also2, with all the gridlock and chest-thumping the DUP is having over the Irish border, inaction (that is, a no-brexit crash through) looks like it's going to apply exactly what they don't want.

edit: It's also, IMO, way past time for them to start coming up with unconventional solutions since the conventional attempts aren't working. I had an idea a while ago to have part of the border be the hard border DUP wants and parts of it being the one May wants and it'd look like a dotted line or something. Obviously such an idea would be completely and utterly unworkable for a variety of reasons, but it's an unconventional solution.

[Loud Whispers]

Of course the technology doesn't exist, there's not a software engineer in the world capable of updatin the Theresabot to a functioning Prime Machiner

[TD1]

Also2, with all the gridlock and chest-thumping the DUP is having over the Irish border, inaction (that is, a no-brexit crash through) looks like it's going to apply exactly what they don't want.

I'm not a fan of the DUP, but to claim they're "chest-thumping" as though it were some sort of neandrathalic power display is not a fair representation. It's not some casual childish stubbornness; this is a subject which is directly relevant to their voters and which their voters feel passionately about. To back down would be a betrayal.

[Loud Whispers]

I'm not a fan of the DUP, but to claim they're "chest-thumping" as though it were some sort of neandrathalic power display is not a fair representation. It's not some casual childish stubbornness; this is a subject which is directly relevant to their voters and which their voters feel passionately about. To back down would be a betrayal.

I believe such sentiment stems from a general incredulity at the notion of MPs representing the beliefs of their supporters
It's not an untrue notion either

[hector13]

I'm not a fan of the DUP, but to claim they're "chest-thumping" as though it were some sort of neandrathalic power display is not a fair representation. It's not some casual childish stubbornness; this is a subject which is directly relevant to their voters and which their voters feel passionately about. To back down would be a betrayal.

I believe such sentiment stems from a general incredulity at the notion of MPs representing the beliefs of their supporters
It's not an untrue notion either

They’re also supporting a government that has zero interest in providing a solution to the border, despite voting against them because of their issues with the solution for the border the government said was the best they would receive.

[Loud Whispers]

"Supporting" is generous, I prefer the term Kingmaker with benefits

[hector13]

I guess “support” on it’s own has a broad definition, but they still did it :p

Having not paid that much attention recently, has anything about the Brexit deal actually been changed or clarified since December?

[smjjames]

Seems like they simply got more entrenched on the Irish border backstop, so, no, it doesn't seem like anything about the Brexit deal has changed. If there were tweaks or something, I don't know what they are, and it seems like the Irish border stuff is the last thing that they haven't figured out what to do with yet. Unless they've internally decided at this point that they are just going to let Brexit crash through and deal with the aftermath.

Though I could see them still being unable to come to an agreement since everybodys positions wouldn't have changed (EU says 'no special perks', May says 'don't rock the GFD boat', and DUP says 'no sea border'), even if the conditions have.