BREXIT - Is This Really Still Rumbling On? 😴

rick_chasey

On what grounds?

rjsterry

TheBigBean wrote:

rjsterry wrote:

Some interesting thoughts on the interim report from the Alternative Arrangements Committee

https://mobile.twitter.com/davidheniguk ... 2130494464

It (the report) knocks the idea of no deal being compatible with an open border firmly on the head. And proposes what is effectively a British Isles single market. There are still plenty of holes to be filled/sewn up but at least one bunch of Brexiters are trying to come up with a solution.

Some of this was suggested by the UK in 2017, but was not accepted by the EU.

That was my thought. It's been rubbished by the People's Vote campaign, and it's only the interim report but they seem to at least be trying to address the difficult bits, which is refreshing.

rjsterry

Rick Chasey wrote:

On what grounds?

Presumably "There can be only one [single market]".

TheBigBean

Rick Chasey wrote:

On what grounds?

Why didn't the EU accept it? Because it compromised the integrity of the single market as it would allow small scale smuggling.

The extent to which smuggling is allowed is the nub of the issue. It's largely why the UK won't accept the backstop. i.e. the UK risks the EU never being happy with the smuggling risk.

rjsterry

TheBigBean wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

On what grounds?

Why didn't the EU accept it? Because it compromised the integrity of the single market as it would allow small scale smuggling.

The extent to which smuggling is allowed is the nub of the issue. It's largely why the UK won't accept the backstop. i.e. the UK risks the EU never being happy with the smuggling risk.

There's a comment on smuggling on that Twitter thread.

https://mobile.twitter.com/allierenison ... 4540958721

TheBigBean

rjsterry wrote:

TheBigBean wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

On what grounds?

Why didn't the EU accept it? Because it compromised the integrity of the single market as it would allow small scale smuggling.

The extent to which smuggling is allowed is the nub of the issue. It's largely why the UK won't accept the backstop. i.e. the UK risks the EU never being happy with the smuggling risk.

There's a comment on smuggling on that Twitter thread.

https://mobile.twitter.com/allierenison ... 4540958721

That's hearsay. And you were living in hope for fully worked up, referenced arguments!

After Brexit, if someone in say, Germany, wants a widget that doesn't comply with EU regs, they would have two choices (i) import to UK, sneak across the border to ROI and then ship not via the UK to Germany (ii) buy it on Amazon/Ebay.

rick_chasey

TheBigBean wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

On what grounds?

Why didn't the EU accept it? Because it compromised the integrity of the single market as it would allow small scale smuggling.

The extent to which smuggling is allowed is the nub of the issue. It's largely why the UK won't accept the backstop. i.e. the UK risks the EU never being happy with the smuggling risk.

Do you think this is a reasonable objection?

TheBigBean

Rick Chasey wrote:

TheBigBean wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

On what grounds?

Why didn't the EU accept it? Because it compromised the integrity of the single market as it would allow small scale smuggling.

The extent to which smuggling is allowed is the nub of the issue. It's largely why the UK won't accept the backstop. i.e. the UK risks the EU never being happy with the smuggling risk.

Do you think this is a reasonable objection?

Not really. My opinion doesn't count for much though.

I think it has been sensationalised. As I have said before, it's like self-checkouts at supermarkets - most people don't steal and the cost of those that do is relatively small.

robert88

TheBigBean wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

TheBigBean wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

On what grounds?

Why didn't the EU accept it? Because it compromised the integrity of the single market as it would allow small scale smuggling.

The extent to which smuggling is allowed is the nub of the issue. It's largely why the UK won't accept the backstop. i.e. the UK risks the EU never being happy with the smuggling risk.

Do you think this is a reasonable objection?

Not really. My opinion doesn't count for much though.

I think it has been sensationalised. As I have said before, it's like self-checkouts at supermarkets - most people don't steal and the cost of those that do is relatively small.

UK retailers are losing almost £11bn every year due to shrinkage - the highest amount of any country in Europe - new research has revealed.

The ‘Retail Security in Europe. Going beyond Shrinkage’ report, which was based on feedback from 23,000 stores in 11 countries, found that the problem cost UK businesses £10.96bn annually in 2017.

External and internal theft, administrative errors, non-compliant use, waste, expired products and damaged cold items and goods contributed to the loss, the joint Checkpoint Systems and Crime & Tech paper discovered.

Across Europe, shrinkage was found to most likely affect the grocery and cash & carry trade.

Grocers and convenience stores experienced an average loss of 2% with UK grocers alone reporting a cost of £4.4bn a year.

The top five stolen items by value in food retail were alcoholic drinks, cheese, meat, sweets and canned fish.

The UK net contribution to the EU p.a. is £9bn - relatively even smaller.

rjsterry

TheBigBean wrote:

rjsterry wrote:

TheBigBean wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

On what grounds?

Why didn't the EU accept it? Because it compromised the integrity of the single market as it would allow small scale smuggling.

The extent to which smuggling is allowed is the nub of the issue. It's largely why the UK won't accept the backstop. i.e. the UK risks the EU never being happy with the smuggling risk.

There's a comment on smuggling on that Twitter thread.

https://mobile.twitter.com/allierenison ... 4540958721

That's hearsay. And you were living in hope for fully worked up, referenced arguments!

After Brexit, if someone in say, Germany, wants a widget that doesn't comply with EU regs, they would have two choices (i) import to UK, sneak across the border to ROI and then ship not via the UK to Germany (ii) buy it on Amazon/Ebay.

Not sure that's representative of the smuggling that is going on at the moment.

The closer the regulatory alignment, the less advantage there is in smuggling. Previous arguments from Brexiters have all been about divergence, even suggesting zero tariffs. The thrust of that thread and I think Allie Renison's interjection is that the report is leaning much more towards close alignment. Probably still too close for some and not close enough for others.

On the scale of current smuggling, I found this:

In all, illicit trade in Ireland may cost the exchequer over €800 million a year and industry €1.59 billion a year, according to the study.

https://www.politico.eu/article/brexit- ... smugglers/

Not vast but hardly trivial.

coopster_the_1st

Another remainer lie shot down today

There is "absolutely no evidence" Russia influenced the Brexit result using Facebook

The bedwetters seem very slow to accept and share this good news regarding UK democracy. It's even better that this news come from one of the chief remainers.

rick_chasey

You literally don’t know what words mean.

briantrumpet

Coopster the 1st wrote:

Another remainer lie shot down today

There is "absolutely no evidence" Russia influenced the Brexit result using Facebook

The bedwetters seem very slow to accept and share this good news regarding UK democracy. It's even better that this news come from one of the chief remainers.

Funny, you seem to have omitted the fact that Nick Clegg was the source of this opinion, and that he's employed by Facebook. I'm sure that's a simple oversight.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_i ... referendum

imposter2.0

Coopster the 1st wrote:

Another remainer lie shot down today

There is "absolutely no evidence" Russia influenced the Brexit result using Facebook

The bedwetters seem very slow to accept and share this good news regarding UK democracy. It's even better that this news come from one of the chief remainers.

I'd love to know what daily life is like in your house, coopster...

bompington

Imposter wrote:

I'd love to know what daily life is like in your house, coopster...

Reveille was sounded, as always, at 5am - a hammer pounding on a rail outside camp HQ. The ringing noise came faintly on and off through the windowpanes covered with ice more than an inch thick, and died away fast. It was cold and the warder didn’t feel like going on banging.

The sound stopped and it was pitch black on the other side of the window, just like in the middle of the night when Shukhov had to get up to go to the latrine, only now three yellow beams fell on the window - from two lights on the perimeter and one inside the camp.

He didn’t know why but nobody’d come to open up the barracks. And you couldn’t hear the orderlies hoisting the latrine tank on the poles to carry it out.

Shukhov never slept through reveille but always got up at once. That gave him about an hour and a half to himself before the morning roll call, a time when anyone who knew what was what in the camps could always scrounge a little something on the side. He could sew someone a cover for his mittens out of a piece of old lining. He could bring one of the big gang bosses his dry felt boots while he was still in his bunk, to save him the trouble of hanging around the pile of boots in his bare feet and trying to find his own. Or he could run around to one of the supply rooms where there might be a little job, sweeping or carrying something. Or he could go to the mess hall to pick up bowls from the tables and take piles of them to the dishwashers. That was another way of getting food, but there were always too many other people with the same idea. And the worst thing was that if there was something left in a bowl you started to lick it. You couldn’t help it. And Shukhov could still hear the words of his first gang boss, Kuzyomin - an old camp hand who’d already been inside for twelve years in 1943. Once, by a fire in a forest clearing, he’d said to a new batch of men just brought in from the front :
“It’s the law of the jungle here, fellows. But even here you can live. The first to go is the guy who licks out bowls, puts his faith in the infirmary, or squeals to the screws.”

coopster_the_1st

briantrumpet wrote:

Coopster the 1st wrote:

Another remainer lie shot down today

There is "absolutely no evidence" Russia influenced the Brexit result using Facebook

The bedwetters seem very slow to accept and share this good news regarding UK democracy. It's even better that this news come from one of the chief remainers.

Funny, you seem to have omitted the fact that Nick Clegg was the source of this opinion, and that he's employed by Facebook. I'm sure that's a simple oversight.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_i ... referendum

So is Nick Clegg lying about this?

He was pretty the poster boy for remain. Has he sold out for £1m a year?

robert88

Coopster the 1st wrote:

briantrumpet wrote:

Coopster the 1st wrote:

Another remainer lie shot down today

There is "absolutely no evidence" Russia influenced the Brexit result using Facebook

The bedwetters seem very slow to accept and share this good news regarding UK democracy. It's even better that this news come from one of the chief remainers.

Funny, you seem to have omitted the fact that Nick Clegg was the source of this opinion, and that he's employed by Facebook. I'm sure that's a simple oversight.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_i ... referendum

So is Nick Clegg lying about this?

He was pretty the poster boy for remain. Has he sold out for £1m a year?

He's no poster boy of mine. He sold out by coalescing with a minority Tory government years ago. It's what he does.

He has no backbone.

pinno

bompington wrote:

Imposter wrote:

I'd love to know what daily life is like in your house, coopster...

Reveille was sounded, as always, at 5am - a hammer pounding on a rail outside camp HQ. The ringing noise came faintly on and off through the windowpanes covered with ice more than an inch thick, and died away fast. It was cold and the warder didn’t feel like going on banging.

The sound stopped and it was pitch black on the other side of the window, just like in the middle of the night when Shukhov had to get up to go to the latrine, only now three yellow beams fell on the window - from two lights on the perimeter and one inside the camp.

He didn’t know why but nobody’d come to open up the barracks. And you couldn’t hear the orderlies hoisting the latrine tank on the poles to carry it out.

Shukhov never slept through reveille but always got up at once. That gave him about an hour and a half to himself before the morning roll call, a time when anyone who knew what was what in the camps could always scrounge a little something on the side. He could sew someone a cover for his mittens out of a piece of old lining. He could bring one of the big gang bosses his dry felt boots while he was still in his bunk, to save him the trouble of hanging around the pile of boots in his bare feet and trying to find his own. Or he could run around to one of the supply rooms where there might be a little job, sweeping or carrying something. Or he could go to the mess hall to pick up bowls from the tables and take piles of them to the dishwashers. That was another way of getting food, but there were always too many other people with the same idea. And the worst thing was that if there was something left in a bowl you started to lick it. You couldn’t help it. And Shukhov could still hear the words of his first gang boss, Kuzyomin - an old camp hand who’d already been inside for twelve years in 1943. Once, by a fire in a forest clearing, he’d said to a new batch of men just brought in from the front :
“It’s the law of the jungle here, fellows. But even here you can live. The first to go is the guy who licks out bowls, puts his faith in the infirmary, or squeals to the screws.”

Nice Jackanory Unkle Bompy. If there was relevant metaphor in there, I believe you but it's gone woosh over ma bawdy heid.
Next week - extracts from Oor Wullie?

bompington

Ivan Denisovich wrote:

The days rolled by ... But the years ... never moved by a second

bompington

Coopster the 1st wrote:

Another remainer lie shot down today

There is "absolutely no evidence" Russia influenced the Brexit result using Facebook

The bedwetters seem very slow to accept and share this good news regarding UK democracy. It's even better that this news come from one of the chief remainers.

As always, failing (in some strange way, through both malice and sheer ignorance simultaneously) to understand what words actually mean, or even what words were said: for example, that Clegg was referring specifically to paid advertising, which, just possibly, might not be the only way to influence people via social media.

Here's the full text of a Times article: this snippet in particular stands out:

Hugo Rifkind wrote:

Last year, when it briefly looked as though his post-political career might be as a mere newspaper columnist, he wrote in the i newspaper that “we’re all familiar with the evidence of Russia-based bots and trolls spreading pro-Brexit messages online”. What was it about going to work for the fifth richest man in the world that changed his mind, I wonder?

Hugo Rifkind wrote:

Nick Clegg should come clean about Facebook

It beggars belief that the tech giant’s spokesman really thinks it has nothing to do with fake news and extreme views

Do social media and political populism go hand in hand? Or does the latter arise for wholly unconnected reasons, and the former just show us that it is going on? Sir Nick Clegg, now a vice-president of Facebook, appears to think the latter. He has said it several times, and I simply don’t believe it. What’s more, I don’t believe he believes it either.

Speaking to the BBC today, before giving a speech in Berlin, Clegg was asked whether he accepted that Facebook has been used by Russia to try to influence democratic elections. “I accept that we need to act,” he said, “but there is absolutely no evidence that it happened in the Brexit referendum.” Within minutes, the BBC published it as a news story — “Facebook: Nick Clegg says ‘no evidence’ of Russian interference in Brexit vote” — and on it went to morph and multiply, as the insatiable online news media found something else on which to chew. “It’s a bad day for the Remain conspiracy theorists,” tweeted a cheery Nigel Farage. All of a sudden, a bad day?

Clegg was referring to adverts. Thanks to the Mueller inquiry, we know that Russia paid for many Facebook adverts during the 2016 US election, and there is scant evidence of anything similar happening here over Brexit. He must know, though, that this is a dishonest foundation from which to build a broader defence. Exactly why was perfectly illustrated within moments, when stories about his remarks turned up on the Facebook pages of the Russian news services RT.com and Sputnik. This, before we even get into fake accounts, trolls and user groups of the sort that, once upon a time, Clegg himself used to sound quite concerned about.

Last year, when it briefly looked as though his post-political career might be as a mere newspaper columnist, he wrote in the i newspaper that “we’re all familiar with the evidence of Russia-based bots and trolls spreading pro-Brexit messages online”. What was it about going to work for the fifth richest man in the world that changed his mind, I wonder?

But if you think Russia is the point, then you still don’t understand the point. Inasmuch as Russia has managed to skew western politics via social media, it has done so only by plugging itself into the chaotic orgy of hate and misinformation that the rest of the world is already enthusiastically conducting. The growth of social media has not only run concurrent with Brexit and Trump. It has also happened alongside the rise of anti-vax movements, and of new currents of hatred towards both Jews and Muslims on the extreme left and right. There has been genocide in Myanmar, and anti-Muslim mobs in Sri Lanka. We have seen Rodrigo Duterte’s populist surge in the Philippines, and Jair Bolsonaro’s in Brazil, and Viktor Orbán in Hungary, and Le Pen and the gilets jaunes in France, and Matteo Salvini in Italy, and on, and on.

At The Times CEO summit a fortnight ago, I interviewed Clegg and I asked him if he felt Facebook was responsible for any of this. He said not. “Populism wasn’t invented fifteen years ago,” Clegg told me. “You must accept it’s having something of a ... heyday?” I said, a little weakly. Nothing to do with Facebook, said Clegg. He cited the populism of the 1920s and ’30s. Same thing, he said. Same roots, same drivers. In other words, it wasn’t only Russia that was innocent of fomenting division on social media, but everybody. It would all be happening anyway. Afterwards, a colleague asked me whether I’d been making those incredulous facial expressions on purpose. (No.)

The thing is, Clegg simply cannot believe this. If he does, then what on earth does he mean when he said in Berlin that Facebook failed in Myanmar? What can that mean? Failed how? Caused the anti-Muslim violence? Caused a bit of it? Similarly, why did Facebook make such a public effort to combat disinformation in last month’s EU elections? “We have already taken significant steps to tighten the rules on political advertising and to clamp down on fake accounts and malicious content,” Clegg also said. Why bother? Didn’t you just say that everything that happens in our politics would be happening anyway?

Both Brexit campaigns spent millions on Facebook during the referendum. Arron Banks spent a few million, too, and is under investigation by the National Crime Agency to find out where it came from. This stuff is not all in the past, either. Still on Facebook, a variety of shadowy groups, funded by God knows who, are running targeted ads that call upon voters to harass their MPs to deliver Brexit. Would Clegg really have us believe that none of this makes any difference to anything? Is his own advertising department running a huge con?

As it happens, I think Facebook is on broadly the right track with its political responsibilities. When compared to the opportune nihilism of Twitter, certainly, its newfound global civic aspirations are to be welcomed. What grates, still, is the absolute refusal of the company to accept its own hideous culpability for this global age of political madness. Far more than Russia, or even shadowy billionaires, the culprits are virality, peer pressure, and wilfully engineered addictions to both approval and rage. Many of us have come to live by them, so it is no surprise that politicians now campaign by them, too. I would be more inclined to believe that Facebook could solve that problem if just once, and with absolute clarity, it would admit it was actually there.

pinno

bompington wrote:

Ivan Denisovich wrote:

The days rolled by ... But the years ... never moved by a second

It is quite a leap of faith to compare a day in the life of Coopster with a Stalinist labour camp but good effort.

john80

Coopster the 1st wrote:

briantrumpet wrote:

Coopster the 1st wrote:

Another remainer lie shot down today

There is "absolutely no evidence" Russia influenced the Brexit result using Facebook

The bedwetters seem very slow to accept and share this good news regarding UK democracy. It's even better that this news come from one of the chief remainers.

Funny, you seem to have omitted the fact that Nick Clegg was the source of this opinion, and that he's employed by Facebook. I'm sure that's a simple oversight.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_i ... referendum

So is Nick Clegg lying about this?

He was pretty the poster boy for remain. Has he sold out for £1m a year?

Given he could not deliver a pretty basic and long standing commitment of free universities when he had the tories over a barrel post election i imagine he is the kind of guy that can be talked into anything. He should take some guidance from the dup.

TheBigBean

rjsterry wrote:

TheBigBean wrote:

rjsterry wrote:

TheBigBean wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

On what grounds?

Why didn't the EU accept it? Because it compromised the integrity of the single market as it would allow small scale smuggling.

The extent to which smuggling is allowed is the nub of the issue. It's largely why the UK won't accept the backstop. i.e. the UK risks the EU never being happy with the smuggling risk.

There's a comment on smuggling on that Twitter thread.

https://mobile.twitter.com/allierenison ... 4540958721

That's hearsay. And you were living in hope for fully worked up, referenced arguments!

After Brexit, if someone in say, Germany, wants a widget that doesn't comply with EU regs, they would have two choices (i) import to UK, sneak across the border to ROI and then ship not via the UK to Germany (ii) buy it on Amazon/Ebay.

Not sure that's representative of the smuggling that is going on at the moment.

The closer the regulatory alignment, the less advantage there is in smuggling. Previous arguments from Brexiters have all been about divergence, even suggesting zero tariffs. The thrust of that thread and I think Allie Renison's interjection is that the report is leaning much more towards close alignment. Probably still too close for some and not close enough for others.

On the scale of current smuggling, I found this:

In all, illicit trade in Ireland may cost the exchequer over €800 million a year and industry €1.59 billion a year, according to the study.

https://www.politico.eu/article/brexit- ... smugglers/

Not vast but hardly trivial.

That's the current loss which doesn't really indicate what the incremental loss would be after Brexit.

There are two elements of potential smuggling. One is around different regulation and the other is around import taxes. My reference above was about regulation.

With regard to import tax, there would clearly be smuggling opportunities, but again I suspect the savings on import tax would not be worth the additional cost in smuggling and laundering. For example, one of the highest rated non food items is shoes at 17%. Can you really envisage a widespread blackmarket in shoes to save 17%? Wouldn't it be easier to just do some sort of VAT dodge?

The current blackmarket is in non-perishable high value goods such as cigarettes, alcohol and diesel. These are the same things smuggled all around the world.

rjsterry

TheBigBean wrote:

rjsterry wrote:

TheBigBean wrote:

rjsterry wrote:

TheBigBean wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

On what grounds?

Why didn't the EU accept it? Because it compromised the integrity of the single market as it would allow small scale smuggling.

The extent to which smuggling is allowed is the nub of the issue. It's largely why the UK won't accept the backstop. i.e. the UK risks the EU never being happy with the smuggling risk.

There's a comment on smuggling on that Twitter thread.

https://mobile.twitter.com/allierenison ... 4540958721

That's hearsay. And you were living in hope for fully worked up, referenced arguments!

After Brexit, if someone in say, Germany, wants a widget that doesn't comply with EU regs, they would have two choices (i) import to UK, sneak across the border to ROI and then ship not via the UK to Germany (ii) buy it on Amazon/Ebay.

Not sure that's representative of the smuggling that is going on at the moment.

The closer the regulatory alignment, the less advantage there is in smuggling. Previous arguments from Brexiters have all been about divergence, even suggesting zero tariffs. The thrust of that thread and I think Allie Renison's interjection is that the report is leaning much more towards close alignment. Probably still too close for some and not close enough for others.

On the scale of current smuggling, I found this:

In all, illicit trade in Ireland may cost the exchequer over €800 million a year and industry €1.59 billion a year, according to the study.

https://www.politico.eu/article/brexit- ... smugglers/

Not vast but hardly trivial.

That's the current loss which doesn't really indicate what the incremental loss would be after Brexit.

There are two elements of potential smuggling. One is around different regulation and the other is around import taxes. My reference above was about regulation.

With regard to import tax, there would clearly be smuggling opportunities, but again I suspect the savings on import tax would not be worth the additional cost in smuggling and laundering. For example, one of the highest rated non food items is shoes at 17%. Can you really envisage a widespread blackmarket in shoes to save 17%? Wouldn't it be easier to just do some sort of VAT dodge?

The current blackmarket is in non-perishable high value goods such as cigarettes, alcohol and diesel. These are the same things smuggled all around the world.

As I said, it all depends how closely we remain aligned on regs and taxes, but all the rhetoric has been about the freedom to diverge, which would increase the problem. Shoes might sound absurd, but generally speaking if there is a market to be exploited, someone will. You can look at regs and taxes separately but they both boil down to an opportunity to undercut the legitimate market.

TheBigBean

Any discussion on the subject should assume no alignment at all. Shoes were the highest rated non-food item I could find. I am not convinced the margins are there to make a black market.

rjsterry

TheBigBean wrote:

Any discussion on the subject should assume no alignment at all. Shoes were the highest rated non-food item I could find. I am not convinced the margins are there to make a black market.

The margin is high but the market is not that large and you can already buy legitimate shoes at stupidly low prices. I would have thought things like meat and construction materials are more likely targets.

haydenm

john80 wrote:

Coopster the 1st wrote:

briantrumpet wrote:

Coopster the 1st wrote:

Another remainer lie shot down today

There is "absolutely no evidence" Russia influenced the Brexit result using Facebook

The bedwetters seem very slow to accept and share this good news regarding UK democracy. It's even better that this news come from one of the chief remainers.

Funny, you seem to have omitted the fact that Nick Clegg was the source of this opinion, and that he's employed by Facebook. I'm sure that's a simple oversight.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_i ... referendum

So is Nick Clegg lying about this?

He was pretty the poster boy for remain. Has he sold out for £1m a year?

Given he could not deliver a pretty basic and long standing commitment of free universities when he had the tories over a barrel post election i imagine he is the kind of guy that can be talked into anything. He should take some guidance from the dup.

That's a completely different reading of the situation to most, although our views differ on almost everything so I'm not surprised.

john80

HaydenM wrote:

john80 wrote:

Coopster the 1st wrote:

briantrumpet wrote:

Coopster the 1st wrote:

Another remainer lie shot down today

There is "absolutely no evidence" Russia influenced the Brexit result using Facebook

The bedwetters seem very slow to accept and share this good news regarding UK democracy. It's even better that this news come from one of the chief remainers.

Funny, you seem to have omitted the fact that Nick Clegg was the source of this opinion, and that he's employed by Facebook. I'm sure that's a simple oversight.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_i ... referendum

So is Nick Clegg lying about this?

He was pretty the poster boy for remain. Has he sold out for £1m a year?

Given he could not deliver a pretty basic and long standing commitment of free universities when he had the tories over a barrel post election i imagine he is the kind of guy that can be talked into anything. He should take some guidance from the dup.

That's a completely different reading of the situation to most, although our views differ on almost everything so I'm not surprised.

Given that the tories did not have a majority and needed the lib dems to form government then they were over a barrel. Do you care to enlighten me as to how most think he had a weak hand? Maybe getting a deputy prime minister role was worth the following electoral fall out for giving up a key lib dem policy.

bompington

john80 wrote:

Maybe getting a deputy prime minister role was worth the following electoral fall out for giving up a key lib dem policy.

Or perhaps, even, once he was unexpectedly faced with the real world, he decided that pushing a wildly expensive subsidy to the middle classes wasn't his highest priority?

Ben6899

Pinno wrote:

bompington wrote:

Ivan Denisovich wrote:

The days rolled by ... But the years ... never moved by a second

It is quite a leap of faith to compare a day in the life of Coopster with a Stalinist labour camp but good effort.

I wholeheartedly disagree.