FlyTheNest

PorFavor wrote:

Trump: FBI 'spending too much time' on Russia inquiry and missed Florida shooter signals

The president’s attempt to use the shooting to make a political point about the Russia inquiries into the Trump campaign drew swift criticism


The US president’s attempt to use the shooting to make a political point about the FBI’s Russia inquiries into the Trump campaign drew swift criticism, including from John Kasich, the Republican governor of Ohio, who told CNN it was an “absurd statement”. (Guardian)

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... a-shooting

wikipedia wrote:The episode is one of Colonial America's most notorious cases of mass hysteria. It has been used in political rhetoric and popular literature as a vivid cautionary tale about the dangers of isolationism, religious extremism, false accusations, and lapses in due process.

tinyclanger2 wrote:

PorFavor wrote:

tinyclanger2 wrote:something to look forward to (before it's harder to borrow stuff)

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesig ... ondon-2019" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Cup of sugar?

Depends whether we're in a neighbourly customs union or the Neighbourly Customs Union.
Which is it?
And don't think I haven't noticed Constance slipping into my kitchen via the back door while you're distracting me at the front.

gilsey wrote:

"We would start with viable options, staying in a customs union and a single market variant which means full participation in the single market.

"You can't sweep the customs union and the single market off the table on the one hand and also say you don't want a hard border in Northern Ireland... You can't have no hard border if you don't have alignment."

https://news.sky.com/story/kier-starmer ... u-11165090" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Sunday 10 December 2017

Also

The only way to avoid a hard border is for the UK to remain in the customs union, the shadow Brexit Secretary has said.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-42853018" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
29 January 2018

He admitted that "freedom of movement can't stay the same - the status quo is not an option", but said future migration to and from the bloc should be "negotiated".

tinyclanger2 wrote:The more I live in the post Brexit referendum, post Trump coming to power world, the more I believe that the Salem witch trials are becoming increasingly relevant.

wikipedia wrote:The episode is one of Colonial America's most notorious cases of mass hysteria. It has been used in political rhetoric and popular literature as a vivid cautionary tale about the dangers of isolationism, religious extremism, false accusations, and lapses in due process.

Willow904 wrote:

PaulfromYorkshire wrote:To follow on from my comment above, did anyone notice that the EU recently announced plans for the remaining non-EU Balkna states to join by 2025?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/ ... s-brussels" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

serbia-and-montenegro-could-join-eu-in-2025-says-brussels

It's in nobody's interests, apart from big business, for there to be wholesale migration from Serbia to the rest of the EU when they join. It is time for a better version of freedom of movement iMHO.

I'm not sure mass migration is particularly in big business interests, though. If it was why would they move factories to Poland etc? Eastern Europeans are mostly coming to the UK to do jobs that can't be moved to them, such as in bars and hotels, cleaning cars, building, retail and working in the NHS etc. A lot of these employers are small, independent concerns. It's not just about big business. I'm still very much with Ed Miliband on this. The focus needs to be on ensuring no worker in the UK is exploited, wherever they are from. I don't see why Serbians shouldn't be allowed the benefits of freedom of movement, just because some countries like the UK fail to protect workers and allow a black market economy to flourish. That's on us, not the EU.

Willow904 wrote: What about the status quo is not an option, exactly, if we still want "easy movement"? As with Emily Thornberry above, Starmer references vague objections without spelling them out as if we all know what objections they mean, except I really don't. And if we're negotiating migration "to and from the bloc" that strongly suggests we wouldn't be part of the single market but dealing with it as an outside party.

PaulfromYorkshire wrote:

Willow904 wrote:

PaulfromYorkshire wrote:To follow on from my comment above, did anyone notice that the EU recently announced plans for the remaining non-EU Balkna states to join by 2025?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/ ... s-brussels" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

serbia-and-montenegro-could-join-eu-in-2025-says-brussels

It's in nobody's interests, apart from big business, for there to be wholesale migration from Serbia to the rest of the EU when they join. It is time for a better version of freedom of movement iMHO.

I'm not sure mass migration is particularly in big business interests, though. If it was why would they move factories to Poland etc? Eastern Europeans are mostly coming to the UK to do jobs that can't be moved to them, such as in bars and hotels, cleaning cars, building, retail and working in the NHS etc. A lot of these employers are small, independent concerns. It's not just about big business. I'm still very much with Ed Miliband on this. The focus needs to be on ensuring no worker in the UK is exploited, wherever they are from. I don't see why Serbians shouldn't be allowed the benefits of freedom of movement, just because some countries like the UK fail to protect workers and allow a black market economy to flourish. That's on us, not the EU.

But all those ancillary jobs exist, for example in London, on the back of the obscene wealth of the big finance companies and so on. I'm a big fan of freedom of movement as long as it is indeed a benefit to the individuals. But I reckon many of the Eastern Europeans who moved to the UK would have rather stayed at home and done good, well paid jobs there had they been available. As it happens the Eastern European economies seem to be generally on the up of late, which is great news. Wait for the Brits complaining they aren't allowed to go to Warsaw to work!

Please don't forget that the Single Market with its four freedoms is a capitalist construct. Thatcher loved the idea didn't she? I know the EU has done a lot of good socially, but it's a Single Market not a Single Social Area.

SpinningHugo wrote:V good on nationalisation

https://amp.ft.com/content/d3b3ecfc-149 ... ssion=true" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The real problems are not cost but producer capture (McDonnell seems to actually favour that, but what do you expect) and politicisation of prices.

Water is the best case for nationalisation, rail terrible (to the extent it isn't).

Willow904 wrote:

PaulfromYorkshire wrote:

Willow904 wrote: I'm not sure mass migration is particularly in big business interests, though. If it was why would they move factories to Poland etc? Eastern Europeans are mostly coming to the UK to do jobs that can't be moved to them, such as in bars and hotels, cleaning cars, building, retail and working in the NHS etc. A lot of these employers are small, independent concerns. It's not just about big business. I'm still very much with Ed Miliband on this. The focus needs to be on ensuring no worker in the UK is exploited, wherever they are from. I don't see why Serbians shouldn't be allowed the benefits of freedom of movement, just because some countries like the UK fail to protect workers and allow a black market economy to flourish. That's on us, not the EU.

But all those ancillary jobs exist, for example in London, on the back of the obscene wealth of the big finance companies and so on. I'm a big fan of freedom of movement as long as it is indeed a benefit to the individuals. But I reckon many of the Eastern Europeans who moved to the UK would have rather stayed at home and done good, well paid jobs there had they been available. As it happens the Eastern European economies seem to be generally on the up of late, which is great news. Wait for the Brits complaining they aren't allowed to go to Warsaw to work!

Please don't forget that the Single Market with its four freedoms is a capitalist construct. Thatcher loved the idea didn't she? I know the EU has done a lot of good socially, but it's a Single Market not a Single Social Area.

Not an accident, but part and parcel of their joining the EU. And part of achieving greater equality worldwide is wealthier countries giving up a little so poorer countries can catch up. Just as West Germany had to in order to re-unify with East Germany, western Europe has experienced some significant pain in order to accommodate eastern Europe. The aim is as much about peaceful cooperation across Europe and bringing their standard of living up to ours rather than dropping ours in the west to compete with them, as could have happened far more if it was all about capitalism. The EU has been as active in protecting environmental standards and workers rights as it has been in reducing economic barriers and facilitating trade. I think it's because of this side of the EU project that those on the far right of the Tory party have fallen out of love with it. Not to mention the size of the EU means it can stand up to powerful interests in the US, Russia, China and elsewhere - interests right wingers like Rees-Mogg, Farage, Boris and Gove seem more interested in promoting than our own. In a fight between Europe and various factions of the Republican right, Putin and China plus tax dodging UK newspaper magnates, I find myself willing to overlook Brussels' faults. It's not Thatcher's single market anymore. In recent years Tories like Cameron have found themselves outvoted on things like financial transaction taxes, tax haven transparency and in future look to have to conform to EU wide protections that will limit job trial periods to 6 months as opposed to our current much longer 2 years. Such details make it hard for me to see the EU as the bogeyman in terms of social progress. Almost everyone agrees that some of the most equal, progressive socially democratic countries in the world are in Scandinavia and they have all managed to be so as members of the EU or single market. And we can too. Our problems stem from domestic government, not Brussels. You'd think a Labour Party keen to overturn neo liberalism and more recent austerity would be a lot more vocal in making this point.

PaulfromYorkshire wrote: But your words that I highlight are the heart of the problem I think. My sincere hope is that the EU will seek to address some of those faults and that will allow the UK to stay in.

SpinningHugo wrote:

PaulfromYorkshire wrote: But your words that I highlight are the heart of the problem I think. My sincere hope is that the EU will seek to address some of those faults and that will allow the UK to stay in.

Will you be maintaining this line that each of the 27 other countries will be happy to renegotiate the EU's basic structures with the UK, which voted to leave, after March next year when we've left?

When will you be accepting that the issue is whether Hard Brexit can be avoided, not whether the UK can have new terms of membership?

Or will you be saying we could negotiate re-entry on new and much improved terms?

"By all means acquit Corbyn of the charge that his meetings with a Czech diplomat in the 80s make him unfit for the highest office in 2018. But don’t pretend that they are an irrelevance. Who controls the past controls the future, as all totalitarians know. But it is also true that those who insist upon understanding the past have the best chance of safeguarding both their own liberty and the prospects of progress. Be warned: the idea of “year zero” only has value to those with something to hide."

• Matthew d’Ancona is a Guardian columnist

May's Brexit transition demand 'would penalise EU citizens'
Unthinkable for EU to agree to PM’s key demand on citizens’ rights, says Verhofstadt

PorFavor wrote:Night night.

citizenJA wrote:Some of the comments under d'Ancona's article are hilarious