I genuinely worry who they would replace him with. He's probably the best of the current bunch, which is absolutely terrifying to think about...
If Scotland leave the union, but rejoin the European Union, I can see an awful lot of investment leaving England and going north.
In the current situation would Scotland close the border? Is it even possible? I suspect that it would be a difficult as the Irish border.
The most ridiculous comment I have heard from the present government was the one which stated ''We didn't have a blueprint for dealing with Covid 19'' - I mean which part of the word Pandemic didn't they understand ? Apparently King Edward the Second realized in 1342 that you need to close all the points of entry to a country as your first step in such cases (thus meaning the death toll in England during the plague was less than in other countries). And governments have been dealing with pandemics in the same way ever since. But apparently they cannot learn from nearly 800 years of history, and thus threw away any natural advantage which the UK may have had in being an island. So, although the Brexiteers had been screaming about taking back control over borders that is exactly what they didn't do when it really mattered - they prevented a few Polish NHS workers from coming, but at the same time were allowing planes to land from the USA and South Africa with absolutely no hygienic controls at a time when most EU states had closed their borders.
"As anticipated, in a blow to the City of London, the European Commission has announced that the US’ financial regulator’s rules are equivalent to the EU’s, allowing American competitors to operate in a market that London’s clearing houses have dominated." As anticipated it hasn't taken long for Biden to show that he will be happy to work with the EU. Although trillions of £s have moved to European banking centres from London, it was always believed that New York would take the bulk of the trading.
"Credit where credit's due, the DfE have upped their game with remote learning support. We have been sent 45 Chromebook covers. They clearly care about us protecting the 2 Chromebooks they've sent us."
"Brexit et Covid-19 provoquent l’exode des expatriés européens du Royaume-Uni. Ils seraient 700 000 rien qu’à Londres, qui aurait donc perdu 8 % de sa population en un an". Le Monde. The effect on the economy to lose 8% of the population in one year is difficult to imagine. Rental prices, restaurants, supermarkets etc will all suffer, and with so many jobs going now to Europe and the USA, it will need something new to get back to the current situation.
Might get a bit more space on the tube when things restart though. Probably the only Brexit bonus so far
https://yorkshirebylines.co.uk/brex...lise-what-going-over-a-cliff-edge-feels-like/ An article that describes just what is happening to our exporters.
Johnson insists that now is not the time to reflect on the lessons from his handling of the pandemic. I don't know about anyone else, but I classify that as a contender for 'The Stupidest Thing Said' award in 2021. By extension, he is really saying that the only time to learn from what you are doing is after it's too late to change the outcome. Over 100,000 people have died in the UK because of his poor handling of the crisis - poor handling caused by his proven lifelong inability, or refusal, to learn from his mistakes. In continuing to lurch from one blunder to the next, he is simply condemning many more of us to join that number - and I for one don't want to join that number. He is simply incompetent and needs to be kicked out. The US showed us the way recently with Trump - maybe we should follow suit... https://archive.is/zuubZ Sorry for that brief outburst - it was fueled by the news this morning of the death of a cousin attributed to Covid, in a care home in deepest Suffolk. I guess that, when the reality starts to hit closer to home, the angrier one gets.
"Up to 142,000 tonnes of food could be wasted over the next six months because of Brexit border disruption, ministers have admitted". "An estimate drawn up by the government as an "illustration of what we could reasonably expect" suggests food, drink and feed equivalent to 96 million whole chickens may end up being thrown away." When people around the world as well as in the UK are hungry, to see waste on this scale is beyond belief. And why is it happening? Because a bunch of wealthy people decided they didn't have enough, so manipulated a population for their own greed.
From The Scotsman - a very pro-union newspaper and one not noted for printing articles exposing shady dealings by the Westminster government. In spite of constant denials from the government, it seems that the NHS is indeed being opened up to private US healthcare companies. Bye bye NHS. https://www.scotsman.com/news/opini...hcare-companies-professor-harry-burns-3114271
please log in to view this image Without doubt the UK has done really badly when you look at the above table. Why is there such a difference between North and South in Ireland, especially when the southern figures include all deaths, not the 28 day cut off that the UK uses?
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/01/world/australia/perth-lockdown.html?smid=tw-share I am sure there is something here that governments could learn from. At the moment the number of cases is far too high to implement such a policy, but when cases were very low in number it was taken as a route to open everything up too quickly.
And, dare I say it, the four State governments there that took immediate action to protect their citizens had one thing in common - all from the centre left Australian Labor Party. The other three right wing governments were reluctant to follow suit. The centre right Federal government had little say in how the States each handled the situation - something that a self-important Westminster government would never dream of sanctioning.
Tories trying to avoid prosecution by wasting public money in an attempt to price the prosecutors out of the court. 1 February 2021 - Jolyon Maugham QC - GOOD LAW PROJECT (1) Correspondence with the UK Government has revealed they expect to spend a staggering £1 million defending our judicial review of their decisions to award contracts criticised by the NAO. This is a sum unprecedented in our lawyers’ experience of judicial review proceedings. We can’t but wonder whether they are trying to scare us off – using the bottomless public purse to avoid accountability to the public. (2) The UK Government also says, remarkably, that finding out whether they acted lawfully in channelling hundreds of millions or billions to their VIP associates, is not in the public interest. (3) We had until recently been working on the understanding that we had raised enough money for our challenges to the UK Government’s awards of hundreds of millions of pounds of PPE contracts to Pestfix, Ayanda, and Clandeboye. (4) We were shocked to learn that – having failed to provide the evidence we’ve been asking for since July – The UK Government is threatening a vast disclosure exercise going well beyond what would normally be undertaken in a judicial review. And not just that they have hired an expensive international commercial law firm. They expect to have a team of 30-40 working for up to 3 months on an exercise that has not been requested by us, or by the Court. (5) In the experience of our legal team, costs incurred by the UK Government in judicial review proceedings rarely exceed £100,000. Here Government says it has already spent over £325,000, and estimates their total costs will amount to £1 million – a staggering sum for a judicial review. (6) Government knows full well that we cannot take existential risk on bringing a single case. So we wrote to the UK Government asking it to agree and order ‘capping’ both our costs and the taxpayers’ costs in these public interest proceedings. (7) We were shocked this week to receive their response contending that the litigation is not in the public interest, and refusing our proposed reciprocal cap: “In particular our client does not agree that the proceedings are ‘public interest proceedings'”. These are cases involving on Government’s own admission hundreds of millions of pounds being spent on unusable facemasks on companies that went through the VIP lane. (8) NOT IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST ? WHAT ARE THEY ON ! (9) The point is all the more remarkable given that a barrister employed by the UK Government Legal Department in her witness statement of 30 November stated that: “We acknowledge that there is considerable public interest in Covid related procurement, particularly of PPE.” (10) We have now applied to the court for a Cost Cap. In line with our transparency principles I am publishing my Witness Statement. But if we don’t get one, unless a white knight or white knights emerge, the simple fact is we will have to abandon the litigation. We are not in a position to bear a £1 million risk. Jolyon Maugham QC Director - Good Law Project
I had seen that BB and couldn't believe how quickly the country has descended into a rogue state. Handing out taxpayers money to companies that had no experience and often provided unusable goods, then refusing to say why these companies had the contracts seems to be an admission they are trying to hide shoddy and shady deals. The government was warned three times in the past decade that the NHS did not have the equipment to deal with a pandemic, and ignored the warnings. It is not difficult to see why they do not want any transparency about their failure to look after the nations health, and for questions to be asked as to what a small pest control company had to offer.
