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Distracted by Covid? What else is going on.


welshbairn

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Thought I'd start this after seeing a post by @Snafu that I'll post below. Meanwhile there's the annexation of the West Bank by Israel, leaving Palestinians without a vote in what can only be described as a fully blown Apartheid regime, with full backing from Washington.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/11/israels-annexation-of-the-west-bank-will-be-yet-another-tragedy-for-palestinians

 

Edited by welshbairn
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On 05/06/2020 at 11:52, Snafu said:

Meanwhile, while we've all been distracted, another important decision/u-turn was made behind our backs.

How Boris Johnson dropped his promise to reject America's chlorinated chicken

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-chlorinated-chicken-trump-us-trade-a9549876.html#gsc.tab=0

Ps and campaigners are angry about Downing Street dropping a pledge not to accept US foods like chlorinated chicken and hormone-fed beef and pork as part of a US trade deal.

A quick look at the timeline of events makes it clear how this happened.

10 January 2020

 

Environment secretary Theresa Villiers was clear: "We will not be importing chlorinated-chicken. We will not be importing hormone-treated beef," she told the BBC's Countryfile programme. This was effectively reiterating a longstanding policy, assumed to have been in place since 2017 when Michael Gove said the UK would not lower its food standards.

30 January 2020

Less than three weeks later, something changed. US secretary of state Mike Pompeo was interviewed by LBC radio and made clear that if the UK wanted a trade deal, it would need to open its food cupboards to US producers. “Our ask will be as it has been in the other negotiations,” he said. He suggested British farmers were scared of competing with the products, adding "We need to be open and honest about competitiveness. We need to make sure we don’t use food safety as a ruse to try and protect a particular industry.”

 

23 February 2020

What happened next suggests the message was heard loud and clear in London. Asked about the pledge to keep the food standards less than a month after Pompeo's intervention, the new environment secretary George Eustice refused to guarantee the ban – stating only that the government had "no plans" to change the law.

5 May 2020

This is when trade talks with the US formally opened. On this day Chuck Grassley, the Republican senator from the farming state of Iowa who chairs the US senate - which has sweeping powers on trade - elaborated further. Getting banned US food on British plates wasn't just part of the deal... as far as he was concerned, it was the deal. "All I'm hoping to do is if we get a good deal with the UK on agriculture, it's going to embarrass Europe," Mr Grassley said.

4 June 2020

With trade talks running for less than month, Downing Street appears to have folded - or at least put the issue of American food on the table. An article in the Daily Telegraph quoted a government source spelling out the UK plan, which Boris Johnson's spokesperson wouldn't deny when questioned later during a briefing of journalists. He also refused to repeat the pledge on chlorinated chicken, which is now apparently history.

 

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Self-serving b*****ds - all of these 'kin tories.   They'll sneak through a number of questionable decisions, that would otherwise be decried by the majority of the public, whilst the current chaos endures and attention is elsewhere.

This manoeuvre isn't the sole preserve of tories, but i'm fairly confident this current shower are the most inept and sneaky underhand bassas to have run their shitshow from london since - teresa may's cabal of f*uckwits.

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21 minutes ago, Melanius Mullarkey said:

Ive stuck £1 e/w on a horse called Elgin in the 5.55 at Newmarket today.  Could go someway to solving the financial crisis. 

I'll report back later. 

Sadly I think you're doomed to fail, it's running at Newbury at the same time. And it comes from a joke family.

image.png.3204a935a5464278415d9161cc36d4a4.png

https://www.racingpost.com/profile/horse/933304/elgin/form

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7 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

Sadly I think you're doomed to fail, it's running at Newbury at the same time. And it comes from a joke family.

image.png.3204a935a5464278415d9161cc36d4a4.png

https://www.racingpost.com/profile/horse/933304/elgin/form

Maybe the race is from Newmarket to Newbury (132 miles) and nobody has told the other riders.

 

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3 minutes ago, Snafu said:

How the Hard Brexit strategy coming along?

Very quiet in the mainstream media right now and with everyone focused on Black Lives the Government who don't give a shit unless the peasants are trying to break down the gate at Downing Street can work quietly away out of sight on the Brexit they really want with little or no opposition. We are probably going to hear about it from German or French media first before the alarm is raised.

Unless they change the rules, which is quite likely, the deadline for asking for an extension of the transition period is the end of this month. Barely any mention of this in the media. By all accounts the chances of putting together a trade deal that the UK and all 27 EU members can sign up to by December 31st are zero. I remember one Belgian county stalling the EU/Canada deal after 8 years of negotiation.

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7 hours ago, MixuFruit said:

I suppose it's covid adjacent but the economy shrank by *TWENTY*  percent in April. We all know they're going to push through with a no deal brexit but it'll be a complete bloodbath.

https://www.ft.com/content/f25dc58b-32c9-499d-af66-f677f20c53a2

image.png.a7b1d23e211e486ebf8372b2e5abdcfb.png

It's mildly amusing that the people who were most horrified by a potential 5% less GDP growth over multiple years from Brexit absolutely love the lockdown and want to keep it going. 

 

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5 hours ago, welshbairn said:

Unless they change the rules, which is quite likely, the deadline for asking for an extension of the transition period is the end of this month. Barely any mention of this in the media. By all accounts the chances of putting together a trade deal that the UK and all 27 EU members can sign up to by December 31st are zero. I remember one Belgian county stalling the EU/Canada deal after 8 years of negotiation.

Give told them today they aren't asking for an extension.

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30 minutes ago, Detournement said:

It's mildly amusing that the people who were most horrified by a potential 5% less GDP growth over multiple years from Brexit absolutely love the lockdown and want to keep it going. 

 

What ever you think about the Government's strategy of containing the Covid outbreak, it is a reaction to an unforeseen crisis. Brexit is purely voluntary scheme invented by the furthest right wing fringes of the Tory party and their short selling hedge fund backers.

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18 hours ago, welshbairn said:

 

With regard to the chlorinated chicken issue, it has to be remembered that legislation in this area used to be devolved. It will be Westminster that sells Scottish, Welsh & NI farmers down the river.

If only there had been a convention not to take away powers from the devolved governments without agreement. 

Oh. There was

Just shows what a Westminster promise is worth!

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23 minutes ago, lichtgilphead said:

With regard to the chlorinated chicken issue, it has to be remembered that legislation in this area used to be devolved. It will be Westminster that sells Scottish, Welsh & NI farmers down the river.

If only there had been a convention not to take away powers from the devolved governments without agreement. 

Oh. There was

Just shows what a Westminster promise is worth!

Hopefully Scotland will have labelling power. Made and Chlorinated and Stuffed full of Hormones in the USA! could drop their sales a bit. But that's something the Americans are very insistent about, they don't want people to know where their food comes from, so most likely that will be a reserved matter. 

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1 hour ago, welshbairn said:

What ever you think about the Government's strategy of containing the Covid outbreak, it is a reaction to an unforeseen crisis. Brexit is purely voluntary scheme invented by the furthest right wing fringes of the Tory party and their short selling hedge fund backers.

The fact that you think leaving a political institution was invented by anyone is exactly why we should leave. 

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1 minute ago, Detournement said:

The fact that you think leaving a political institution was invented by anyone is exactly why we should leave. 

And so because BritNats think leaving the UK was invented by the dastardly SNP is another reason why we should leave?

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26 minutes ago, MixuFruit said:


Consumers will drive supermarkets to voluntarily label stuff even if they try to change the rules. It's not American chickens on the meat shelf in Tesco that concerns me, I and millions of others simply won't buy them. It's the chicken in processed foods that would worry me, where it's not so easy to check and vet it. There are barcode scanner apps to make your shopping more ethical which I use for palm oil avoidance but even so I still find things I've bought that I never thought to scan contain it (organic baby dried apple crisps FFS). We're all going to have to be more careful with what we buy.

I think there's even less chance of a trade deal with the USA than the EU myself. Pork Barrel politics was given its name for a reason, and there is no way Congress will give the UK a better deal than the EU, and even the Tory MP's will blanche at totally fucking their farmers. Congress decides on trade deals, not the President.

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1 minute ago, Antlion said:

And so because BritNats think leaving the UK was invented by the dastardly SNP is another reason why we should leave?

I don't think the union has taken on the same sort of magical qualities as the EU has since June 2016. People's ignorance of the EU's functions combined with the shock of the first political defeat most middle class people have experienced in their lives led to mass hysteria for most of last year. 

The perception of the union whatever you think of it is far more grounded in realities like currency and cross border networks of family and economic relations. It's far less cultural than the EU split. 

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56 minutes ago, Detournement said:

The fact that you think leaving a political institution was invented by anyone is exactly why we should leave. 

That makes absolutely zero sense. All the polls showed that the EU was bottom of the list of the public's  priority issues until the right wing of the Tory party forced a referendum on it. Are you claiming there was no agency involved?

Edited by welshbairn
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