Christmas Tree

Oh, this as well

Basically what I told you yesterday, along with the re-drafting of the December agreement and oh look, even technology and pre border checks

See, the way you write comes across as though we are going to inspect every lorry carrying food. That’s simply not the case. The vast majority of goods will never be checked even if we left with no deal.

I think it’s fair to say that Decembers various paragraphs on the backstop are defunct which is why we are where we are, looking for new scenarios that will replace them. As for the 3, 5 or 10 years, May was pretty adamant today that chequers had not been discarded by Brussels and that the future trade deal would solve this. Im not going to get into a back and forth with you on this because I know your position, but I honestly think that the border situation is being made out to be a far bigger deal than it is. Something like 2% of stuff arriving from third countries to us is checked and the delay is about 2 minutes. I’m fairly sure technology, trusted traders etc could be used to minimise a lot of the checks.

I suppose that depends on your interpretation of meaningful.

It’s the backstop not the permanent deal

Every week there’s threats from one side or the other. Her plan is to get them to the vote and present the commons with deal or no deal. The assumption being that when push comes to shove, how many Labour and Tory politicians will really force the country into no deal.

First of all, I think the main thrust of expanding the backstop by a few months is mainly for the scenario where a deal has been agreed but some EU countries may not have ratified it in time. As for the backstop it seems as though we are heading for UK wide customs union and a NI wide Single Market. The U.K. can then make a sovereign decision to align with SM on goods too which would eradicate virtually all need for new checks anywhere.

PM about to have a torrid 2 hours in Parliament.

It’s all kicking off now in the commons as MP’s confront the government over their confirmation that the meaningful vote is take it or leave it.

You're behind the news cycle, keep up

It is the fucking autocorrect, look!

Glad he’s consistent. The bottom line is this. The refferendum was won (narrowly) by the leavers. Even a lot of remainers just want the deal to be done. Another refferendum would be bad for the country and the anti EU stance would drag on for years. Regardless of which way anyone voted, the best outcome now is a sensible deal that allows the U.K. and the EU to move forward as solid allies. If it all turns to shit then we can rejoin at some point in the future as proper members or move to efta. But agreeing a good future partnership is the best way of securing a lasting friendship whether that leads to success as a stand-alone country or future EU member.

That bits just a finger in the air though and to try and leave a bit of fear for his EU 27 mates. Overall he knows it’s going to be awesome.

You’ve said if nationalised it will make money for the government and the various things we can do with that money. Im saying that there would be no profit, only money redirected from other essential services such as the NHS to help keep it running because we are not good at running these sort of things. Labour (and unions) would want more staff, better wages, more rolling stock and lower fares. The taxpayer would end up paying more money for no benefit and that money would be better spent elsewhere. Since privatisation, rail journeys have doubled, it’s one of the safest networks in Europe, thousands of more carriages have been bought and thousands of more services introduced. Underpinning all of this, the railway system in the 70’s / 80’s was a disaster. Much more important things to spend money and time on such as social care than dabbling with a system that works a million times better than it used to.

Bomb scare currently ongoing in parliament

Read it again.

Has rings of ..... UK: We are not going to install a hard border in Ireland Ireland: We are not going to install a hard border in Ireland Yet 1 year spent discussing how to prevent a hard border in Ireland

We do.

Mots almost as though we are in a negogiation Macron, already a very unpopular president, would absolutely shit himself if there was no deal. Honestly, it’s all theatrics for the next 4 weeks and then lots of heroes when it’s finally signed.

Youre talking nonsense, the railways are still subsidised. Even if all the profits were reinvested it would still need subsidising. That’s money from other things like the NHS. That’s before we get on to the extra wages, perks, staff, rolling stock etc that would follow. So forget lowering fares. All to for what?

we wouldn’t have even got past the Maastricht treaty if she’d still been PM.