Off Topic Political Debate

I thought the cynicism and conflation of football with politics would be a dead give away! It is indeed me - how are you doing Yorkie?

 

The UK leaving the EU was always going to be contentious and difficult but the doom and gloom merchants have consistently been proved wrong so far. The recent surge of interest in further development towards an EU superstate by influential EU politicians has reinforced the view that the referendum result was the correct one. I am confident that Brexit will clearly be seen as a wise decision in a few years.

The splits in the EU have become much wider recently, there are serious democratic issues in Spain and Poland. Germany unable to find a stable government. Would anybody want to join this disjointed squabbling bunch given the choice?

 

All depends on the info you get I guess. I am far from confident about this ending well - and suspect you won't find many in Whitehall who disagree with that.

 

Funny you should say that SH. there are actually seven countries on the waiting list to join.

 

Fake news

 

The EU's own 'enlargement factsheet' lists eight - but that includes Iceland who, I believe, may have since changed their mind. So I'm not sure that it is fake news.

 

It isn't fake news - I was taking g the piss

 

Whitehall has an abundance of remainers that wish the democratic result could be magically reversed, EU style.

Best of three, five?

 

No - Whitehall is full of people trying to make this thing work. It is what we do. Funnily enough I have never seen so much passion, but I enthusiasm and willingness to work as teams as I have in the last 18 months - doesn't make the task any easier and we d be lying to say otherwise. The idea we are trying to stop it is wrong and, if you quite frankly, insulting. Still - we are used to that.

 

Do they know there will much less funny money to be given away by the richer EU members?. Last week I witnessed a very expensive EU funded project to 'improve' a beach in Tenerife. The JCBs spent the whole week moving loads from one end of the beach to the other, then reversing the process. This has apparently been going on for months, just to justify the huge cost.

 

I'll be doing that too - just as soon as my wife gets back from Inverness with it...

 

Little chance of it working out well. The government would not have even got this far without agreeing to the EU rules and regulations. The total incompetence of David Davis can only leave one bewildered as to what job he is supposed to be doing. Strangely when he is shown to be "misleading" he has not been sacked. Papers have been saying there is a large turnover of staff in his department. If that is true then experienced gained is experience lost.

 

I would expect civil servants to do nothing less than what they are paid to do. It has been well recorded that some employees have not been as helpful as they might. Didn't a select committee criticise the behaviour of civil servants who took a biased view and actions during the referendum by supporting Cameron's pro EU stance?

 

The mind boggles. I've just seen an excerpt from an article doing the rounds in social media that suggests that public organisations in Scotland shouldn’t have names denoting that they are based in Scotland.

No prizes for guessing which organisation is circulating it - the Scottish Conservatives...

 

The turnover in all departments is phenomenal - I'd say at least 40% of staff still there since 2016 are on promotion. Worth noting that top brass apart DexEU isn't policy oriented - just coordinates responses from the expert depts

 

So that was during the referendum - not after. And yes - we are all doing our jobs.

 

The passports will also be changed in CI and IoM. There hasn't been any comment from the Jersey Government about this, but I don't know if the time frame has something to do with that as we have elections in May.

 

It wouldn't have anything g to do with elections - Purdah is about 6 weeks. Most likely your government wasn't aware and will announce it next week or in early January.

 

Our passports changed from being issued from here to Southampton about 8 years ago, meaning that the building completed in 99 for the passport office is now laying unused. I don't know the reasons behind the change, but if it was because of the EU, then there may be an opportunity to once again issue our own passports and it may be those discussions that puts off any announcement until after the elections. It is also possible that you may be right over the timing of the announcement, but adding that they are going to discuss the issuance being returned to the island.

 

Apparently they were going to change the passport over in 2020 anyway - they have just used it as an excuse to give everyone a Brexit Christmas present. I cannot believe so many people are so ungrateful