registerme
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Post by registerme on Mar 8, 2021 12:32:26 GMT
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adrianc
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Post by adrianc on Mar 8, 2021 12:41:56 GMT
His feelings on the subject would hardly have been unknown to anybody, even without the sticker - however wise or unwise it may have been. All irrelevant in practice, of course, since he gets no vote in parliament, except on tied votes when convention sees his vote cast with the government. But strange, isn't it, how when the speaker is accused of bullying staff - not proven by any investigation to date - he should be hung from the lamp-posts. Yet when the serving Home Secretary is found by an independent investigation to have bullied staff, who then receive substantial compensation, it should be brushed under the carpet. It's hardly irrelevant when he determines who may speak on a debate and which amendments get selected for debate. You say irrelevant, I say corrupt. Those poor little brexiteer MPs, cut off without a voice, unheard through the entire process...
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Post by bernythedolt on Mar 8, 2021 12:54:29 GMT
Interesting how we read his fascinating account so differently. I see evidence of a brilliant strategic mind at work, outwitting the opposition at every turn and exploiting their weaknesses. Other than the usual stretched half-truth about '£350m/NHS' from Vote Leave, and the '£4k worse off' and 'kicked out if no job after 6 months' from the Remain camp, I see no lies in his account. Far from "lying their backsides off", I'm reading a very astute application of strategy to achieve a huge change against all the odds.
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adrianc
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Post by adrianc on Mar 8, 2021 13:23:19 GMT
I expected to leave the EU, I expected to get our fisheries back, I expected to leave the customs union and the CAP etc. Well, good. Because all those happened two months ago, at the end of the transition period. Congratulations. You've got what you wanted. Sorry, did you not realise that "getting the fisheries back" might mean export restrictions on fish going from the UK to the EU/EEA? Or that UK fisherman would lose access to CFP waters? That was warned about, but shouted down as "project fear". But it was. That is a simple statistical fact. www.politico.eu/article/graphics-how-the-uk-voted-eu-referendum-brexit-demographics-age-education-party-london-final-results/Even if that WAS true - which it very rarely, if ever, was - then it simply proves that the cause was the implementation of directives by the UK government, not the directives themselves. The Germans and Austrians are hardly renowned for being cheeky little rule-benders, are they? Where that IS true, then it will simply be because it's cheaper to do so than to recover the equipment and sell it. Like the Channel Tunnel boring machines. You'd like to think that things like environmental legislation would try to cap it, wouldn't you...? Ireland never had VAT on sanitary products - because they didn't charge tax before coming into the European VAT system. The UK did, as part of purchase tax, so couldn't then change them to be excluded. They could - and did - move them down to the lower-rate 5% tax, though - that was done in 2000. Moving from 5% to 0% happened as soon as the transition ended, 1st Jan. That doesn't affect anywhere but the UK. Other EU/EEA countries - including such staunchly macho and patriarchal societies as Norway and Sweden - don't even apply reduced-rate... I'm really not convinced there's a high overlap between staunch brexiteers and feminism, though... Perhaps this staunchly-feminist UK government will take today, International Women's Day, to announce that they're following the Irish government in legislating to make sanitary products freely available in all public places? And, of course, the only people whose freedom of movement has been removed is UK nationals. Everybody else just has one fewer country to move to.
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adrianc
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Post by adrianc on Mar 8, 2021 13:32:17 GMT
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Post by bernythedolt on Mar 8, 2021 14:46:59 GMT
Clearly not everyone sees it quite as black & white as that. 17.4 million obviously saw sufficient elements of truth there, or matters of concern, that they voted the way they did. That's an awful lot of people who didn't interpret these as the "blatant lies" you see, but took a more nuanced view of the direction of travel.
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Post by bernythedolt on Mar 8, 2021 15:04:05 GMT
Well, at least you can say that he didn't prorogue it illegally. Unfortunately, proroguing is exactly the undesirable sort of measure you'd be forced into when you can no longer trust the overseer of the assembly to remain impartial. Corruption begets illegality.
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adrianc
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Post by adrianc on Mar 8, 2021 16:10:12 GMT
Clearly not everyone sees it quite as black & white as that. 17.4 million obviously saw sufficient elements of truth there, or matters of concern, that they voted the way they did. That's an awful lot of people who didn't interpret these as the "blatant lies" you see, but took a more nuanced view of the direction of travel. Sorry, but there are facts and there are lies. There are not opinions or "alternative facts", just because you don't like the ACTUAL facts.
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Post by bernythedolt on Mar 8, 2021 17:59:12 GMT
Clearly not everyone sees it quite as black & white as that. 17.4 million obviously saw sufficient elements of truth there, or matters of concern, that they voted the way they did. That's an awful lot of people who didn't interpret these as the "blatant lies" you see, but took a more nuanced view of the direction of travel. Sorry, but there are facts and there are lies. There are not opinions or "alternative facts", just because you don't like the ACTUAL facts. Let's take the £350m as an example. It's an ACTUAL fact that the UK was sending at least this amount to the EU every week on average. That we got a proportion of it rebated - with strings attached about how we can use it - doesn't detract from the initial fact. That doesn't make £350m a blatant, outright lie. I would agree it makes it disingenuous. But the entire £350m wasn't ours to do with as we wish. That's politics, nuances everywhere to trip us up.
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adrianc
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Post by adrianc on Mar 8, 2021 18:30:31 GMT
Sorry, but there are facts and there are lies. There are not opinions or "alternative facts", just because you don't like the ACTUAL facts. Let's take the £350m as an example. It's an ACTUAL fact that the UK was sending at least this amount to the EU every week on average. That we got a proportion of it rebated - with strings attached about how we can use it - doesn't detract from the initial fact. It's an actual fact that we were not. You're conflating the rebate with the amount then spent in the UK. If you're buying a work tool that's nominally £100, but have a card that gives you a 50% discount, have you spent £50 or £100? That's the rebate. You don't hand the £100 over, then get £50 handed back. You simply hand over £50. If the tool comes with a cashback deal that sends you a £20 voucher back, has the purchase cost you £100, £50, or £30? That's the money then spent on projects in the UK. All of those projects applied for that funding. Many of them are also funded by the UK government. You could, of course, argue that you would never use the £20 voucher... that's a separate question. Here's an interactive map of what EU funding has been spent on in the UK in recent years - www.myeu.uk/ - and you may also like to read commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7847/Now consider, also, the lost income from the jobs that you couldn't do because you didn't buy the tool. That's the trade we're losing by not being part of the single market. And... if you then say "But if I don't buy the tool, I could give £100 to charity instead", then simply don't do that either... is THAT an outright enough lie for your liking?
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michaelc
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Post by michaelc on Mar 8, 2021 18:35:31 GMT
Let's take the £350m as an example. It's an ACTUAL fact that the UK was sending at least this amount to the EU every week on average. That we got a proportion of it rebated - with strings attached about how we can use it - doesn't detract from the initial fact. It's an actual fact that we were not. You're conflating the rebate with the amount then spent in the UK. If you're buying a work tool that's nominally £100, but have a card that gives you a 50% discount, have you spent £50 or £100? That's the rebate. You don't hand the £100 over, then get £50 handed back. You simply hand over £50.<Snip> So how much was it that we handed over ?
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adrianc
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Post by adrianc on Mar 8, 2021 18:54:01 GMT
It's an actual fact that we were not. You're conflating the rebate with the amount then spent in the UK. If you're buying a work tool that's nominally £100, but have a card that gives you a 50% discount, have you spent £50 or £100? That's the rebate. You don't hand the £100 over, then get £50 handed back. You simply hand over £50.<Snip> So how much was it that we handed over ? About £250m/week - about £3.70/person. After EU spending in the UK, about £175m/week - about £2.60/person. For context, remember, too, that total government expenditure is about £16,000/week... So the total net cost of membership was about 1% of total government spending. NHS England expenditure is about £2,200/week. So even if the post-rebate money had gone to the NHS, it would only have been about a 10% increase. For further context, the wife of the government's anti-corruption champion has got through about £40bn in the last year on the dismal failure of track and trace... £770m/week.
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dovap
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Post by dovap on Mar 8, 2021 20:06:30 GMT
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Post by bernythedolt on Mar 8, 2021 20:24:01 GMT
Let's take the £350m as an example. It's an ACTUAL fact that the UK was sending at least this amount to the EU every week on average. That we got a proportion of it rebated - with strings attached about how we can use it - doesn't detract from the initial fact. It's an actual fact that we were not. You're conflating the rebate with the amount then spent in the UK. If you're buying a work tool that's nominally £100, but have a card that gives you a 50% discount, have you spent £50 or £100? That's the rebate. You don't hand the £100 over, then get £50 handed back. You simply hand over £50. If the tool comes with a cashback deal that sends you a £20 voucher back, has the purchase cost you £100, £50, or £30? That's the money then spent on projects in the UK. All of those projects applied for that funding. Many of them are also funded by the UK government. You could, of course, argue that you would never use the £20 voucher... that's a separate question. Here's an interactive map of what EU funding has been spent on in the UK in recent years - www.myeu.uk/ - and you may also like to read commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7847/Now consider, also, the lost income from the jobs that you couldn't do because you didn't buy the tool. That's the trade we're losing by not being part of the single market. And... if you then say "But if I don't buy the tool, I could give £100 to charity instead", then simply don't do that either... is THAT an outright enough lie for your liking? It's all subject to one's interpretation. Boris was challenged in the High Court over whether or not the £350m figure was a lie. He won his case: www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jun/07/boris-johnson-wins-court-challenge-over-350m-brexit-claimsAs I conceded, I personally believe £350m was disingenuous and in reality your £250m is probably closer to the mark. But at this magnitude, the actual figure doesn't matter because it doesn't mean that much to most people. I suspect most just felt they were having to chip in "quite a lot" each week to support other countries they'd barely even heard of, much less have any connection with.
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michaelc
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Post by michaelc on Mar 8, 2021 21:34:00 GMT
So how much was it that we handed over ? About £250m/week - about £3.70/person. After EU spending in the UK, about £175m/week - about £2.60/person. For context, remember, too, that total government expenditure is about £16,000/week... So the total net cost of membership was about 1% of total government spending. NHS England expenditure is about £2,200/week. So even if the post-rebate money had gone to the NHS, it would only have been about a 10% increase. For further context, the wife of the government's anti-corruption champion has got through about £40bn in the last year on the dismal failure of track and trace... £770m/week. So I would say £250m/week is huge. 1% of the entire UK budget is also huge. Absolutely huge but I appreciate that is subjective. What is not is that the "total lies" or whatever that get trotted out when referring to the £350m side of bus claim. I mean come on, whether its 250 or 350 they are both the same order of magnitude. I suspect the Leave campaign made a tactical error by exaggerating as if they left it at 250, nobody would be able to argue about it. I agree entirely with you about the waste of track and trace although I'm not sure about the numbers. Has it all been spent yet? Even if it hasn't it does sound a ridiculous amount of money especially as they could have relied more on volunteers as they did with the vaccine rollout.
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