Posts by Phil O'Sophical 7402 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Oct 2011
slightly more complicated in space than it is in a corporate server room: before they can have a go at it, detailed procedures will have to be drawn up, and busy schedules will have to be cleared.
Some ISPs and banking businesses could do with applying that level of diligence to their corporate server room updates as well...
The six towers will be collapsed into two:
Let me guess, "service desk, network, hosting devices, cross-tower service management and tower service management" will go to Atos, and "productivity, user states, software, core apps, in-house apps, code apps, CPTS, and SaaS." to Crapita?
and for £7m, will those consultants manage to write decent penalty clauses into the contracts, for non-performance? Somehow I doubt it.
Not quite sure how using the credit reference agencies helps BA grab more data?
Those agencies don't operate for free, and if you're not paying them someone else must be. That someone else will want to get something in return. Your data is the obvious coin.
As always, if you're not paying for the product, you are the product
come November the UK Data Protection rules might drop the level for fines.
There's no reason to think so.
If UK businesses want to continue to do business with EU companies they will have to maintain GDPR-level data protection after Brexit, just as other non-EU states like the US have to.
Before GDPR the UK already had higher maximum fines (£500,000) than either France or Germany (€300,000), indeed UK consumer protection legislation is consistently better than the EU minimums.
Back then BA was pleasure to fly on. How things have changed.
True, but in the mid-80's it cost close to £200 for a London-Belfast open return shuttle ticket, today Easyjet will do it for a quarter of that, even cheaper allowing for inflation. Hard to maintain the same level of service in a market like that.
We want to close the borders, and stop freedom of movement, but then expect people to want to come here?
There's a big difference between asking people who want to move permanently to prove they will make a useful contribution before you give them permission, and wanting to increase short-term tourism.
The UK has the worst rich-poor divide in Europe.
Not even remotely true. As far as disposable income goes, the EU's own figures place the UK slightly better than the EU average. For wealth distribution the OECD also places the UK pretty much in the middle of other OECD countries (I couldn't find EU figures for wealth).
Workers rights? Long holidays??
In my personal experience we are, again, not far from the average. Much better than the US, but among the best in Europe for minimum paid vacation days. We do suffer in terms of public holidays, with around 8 (there are regional differences) even the US is better (it has 10).
We don't even have decent weather to make up for it.
>30C today, Glastonbury is even handing out free sunscreen!
after family commitments are sorted, I'm off.
I'm curious to know where you'll go, since I think you'll be very disappointed. I left the UK to live elsewhere in Europe many years ago, and am looking forward to moving back. The grass is rarely as much greener elsewhere as you might think.
With all those Europeans working in the hospitality industry gone,
No reason that should happen, have you actually read the various agreements that have already been signed?
Anyway, maybe you don't remember the 1980s, when most of the bar staff in London were Australian or Kiwi. Plus ca change...
A few years ago I needed to change a headlight bulb in a Mazda 6. I had the spare bulb, as legally required, but the official instructions for changing it started with "remove the front bumper assembly". With some fiddling and a pair of forceps I was able to do it without dismantling the car, but some designers need serious reeducation.
In the last referendum, the counties just north of the border voted solidly 65+% to remain in the UK. There's not been a practical border there in three centuries, many of those people live on one side but work, or send their kids to school, on the other. You think they'd be happy if that became a hard border? How many of those communities will ask to have the border redrawn so that they can stay in the UK? How much opposition will the SNP raise to that? The equivalent border commission in Ireland in the 20s did not go smoothly. Solving a few customs issues in Ireland will be child's play compared to resolving that.
We as a country have various issues with tax and corruption
We could do something about it. This is nothing to do with the EU.
Every country has some such issues, the UK actually sits much higher (better) in Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index than most EU members (11th out of 180). It's not germane to the issue at hand, which is that the over-complex legislation created by the EU to try and satisfy the conflicting requirements of 28 countries inevitably leads to a situation which can be exploited by multinational businesses, much more easily than those of a single country can. It's just another proof that the so-called "union" is fragile and unsustainable.
At least the EU is (very slowly) trying to crack down on this sort of thing
What, by arguing over what colour of band-aid they should add to the existing band-aids?
teh BSE scandal. The EU acted (corerectly) and applied the precautionary principle - no UK beef in the EU food chain until it can be proven to be safe.
Not quite so simple. The cause was contaminated food, meal that contained material from sheep with scrapie. EU banned the use of that meal but, as usual, left it up to individual countries to implement the ban. The UK banned all use immediately, farmers had to destroy any stocks. France simply banned new sales, allowing farmers to continue to feed existing contaminated stock to their animals. For some time after that ban, UK beef was probaby safer to eat than French beef.
And what does that have to do wth Brexit anyway, other than to show that the UK applies higher hygiene stadards than other EU countries (as it does for most consumer legislation)?
The only way it's possible to address huge corporations with 'optimised' tax schemes, is to be part of a large trading bloc that has a uniform policy around moving around income,
But the EU isn't such a block. It's 28 countries all with their own policies, and a lot of very ambiguous treaties saying that they'll all do their best to play nice. All those countries break policy when they want to (France and Italy with debt/GDP for example) and it goes unpunished.
If there was a single EU tax policy, with no exceptions, and a central treasury that took all tax income and redistributed it, and central rules on benefits etc.,you might have a point, but you know as well as I do that hell will freeze over before all 28 of those countries will agree to that. Even within those countries they can't agree (England/Scotland, Spain/Catalunya, North/South Italy, etc.).
The result is fudge, and company tax accountants just love fudge.
Phil, you truly can't believe that in the event of Brexit the UK will crack down on tax?
It's nothing to do with us cracking down, the problem is that the EU tax codes are so horribly complex, to give the idea of a union when there isn't one, that there are loopholes these companies drive a coach & horses through. The tax issues aren't related to what an individual country does (cf Ireland and Apple) but to the fact that they can game the whole EU system to apparently make their profits wherever they can pay the least tax.
Maybe after we leave we will be a low-tax jurisdiction, but as long as the taxes paid in the UK come to us, and don't get shunted via the "Double Irish With A Dutch Sandwich" tricks, it will be an improvement.
As I've said many times in these forums, Brexit isn't a magic fix for any of these issues, it's the opportunity for us to address them. I share many of the concerns over the incompetence of some of our politicians, and clearly it's every bit as big an opportunity for us to fuck up as it is to succeed, but I'd still rather have the freedom to try & fail. Some people are happy to be living with mummy & daddy when they're 35, and it certainly makes life easier (and gets your washing done) but others are willing to take a chance and get out of the comfort zone. It leads to hard choices and some pain, but the possible rewards are worth it. IMHO.
it's better to be inside the train pissing out, than outside the train trying to piss in.
I'd prefer that people did their pissing in the toilets, not anywhere near my train. I'm certainly tired of EU politicians pissing over their voters.
despite the 'no deal' rubbish going around
I think that you fundamentally misunderstand the reason that "no deal" has to remain a credible option. It's a basic and simple fact of negotiating tactics, if you can't convince your partner that you're willing to walk away, you'll never get the best deal.
Obviously there has to be a deal long-term. One of the principal reasons for leaving the EU is so that we can (re-)negotiate our own deals with our partners, and that will of course include the EU. How well those deals will turn out is a subject for debate, but is not the issue here. "No deal now" does not, and cannot, mean "no deal ever", and no-one is suggesting that.
The question is whether we need such a deal before we leave, or not. The EU is pushing for a deal before it lets us leave, because it will have more influence over such a deal while we're still subject to EU control. It makes perfect sense for the EU to take that position, but that isn't necessarily the best for the UK. This is why the UK has to convince the EU that we're willing to leave without a deal if the EU won't offer a good deal. It most certainly does not mean that we'll never do a deal.
The problem with all the idiots in Westminster saying "we'll stop you leaving without a deal" is that it plays directly into the hands of the EU negotiators, they have absolutely no need to make concessions in order to get a deal if they can see that we'll be forced to take whatever they offer.
It's like going into a dealer to buy a new car. You might have all your negotiating arguments lined up, and be ready to convince the salesman that you'll walk out if he doesn't come up with a good price, but if your wife tells the salesman "I love that car, I've told him we can't leave without buying it" she completely blows all your arguments out of the water. The salesman knows that all he has to do is wait, because your threats to go elsewhere are just a bluff.
That, sadly, is the position that Toxic Theresa and the clowns who voted against no deal have put us in. Can Boris & IDS convince the EU that we really would just leave cold if we don't get a better deal? Maybe, but it's a much harder job now than it was 2 years ago.
And the EU has been hit by a number of scandals concerning food even though their regulation is excessive.
Ah yes, 1500 tonnes of Polish beefburgers bought for shipment to French food banks, and found to contain fat, skin, soya, starch but absolutely zero meat!
Eire is the Irish for the island we Brits call Ireland.
Article 4 of the Irish constitution is quite explicit:
"Éire is ainm don Stát nó, sa Sacs-Bhéarla, Ireland." or, in English, "The name of the State is Éire, or, in the English language, Ireland."
Calling it Éire when speaking English is like saying "I went to Deutschland on holiday", it just sounds silly.
And the racists don’t want that, remember?
Screw what the racists want, Brexit isn't about racism. It's about leaving a centrally controlled political union that is dragging the whole of Europe into mediocrity and stagnation, like most such unions do.
We had a common market that allowed free trade and movement between co-operating neighbours who could build on their individual strengths. It worked pretty well for 30+ years, but since it was turned into a political union in 1992 it's become a one-size-fits-none straitjacket. The only people who gain are the politicians, and the big corporations who can (ab)use it's over-complex tax fudges.
Also I'm not sure why the GFA which has no time limit is acceptable* but the backstop to uphold the GFA when the UK finally leaves the EU isn't.
Any completed agreement which sets out a clearly defined endpoint, like the GFA, doesn't need a time limit.
The problem, as you rightly point out, is that until the backstop to the agreement on the UK leaving the EU is resolved the UK won't have left the EU. It prevents the withdrawal treaty actually completing. That is what is unacceptable, not the fact of the backstop itself.
And, what is the EU going to do if the UK says "We have had enought of this backstop, by next month we consider it nulled"? Declare war on the UK?
If the backstop was part of the withdrawal agreement, and the UK said "We have had enough of this backstop," would that not be equivalent to withdrawing from the withdrawal agreement, i.e. pitching the UK right back into the EU? Can't see either side being happy there. It's why the two need to be separated, get on with Brexit while working on the border issue in parallel.
Go on then, tell us exactly how we are fucked by being in the EU.
Have you seen the state of the Eurozone? Not to mention the growing extremism across the continent? The EU's a stagnant, mediocre polity, run by people who can't see past their own egos, and when it finally crashes and burns it will be advisable to be as far away as possible.
The living and working part of the CTA is built on sand
Or, as the article linked to says, "It is a relationship built on trust."
It's not unlike much of the EU. Consider the situation of British citizens in the Channel Islands or IoM, they aren't in the EU and so have no freedom of movement rights, but many EU countries choose to ignore that and treat them like other British citizens.
As for control of people crossing the border:
Carry your passport, says man quizzed on Belfast to Dublin bus
Yes, that's another similar case. UK & Irish citizens don't need passports to cross the border, but how do you prove you're a UK or Irish citizen? With a passport. Just like non-Schengen parts of the EU, where citizens of EU countries can move freely, but need to carry ID to prove that they have that right. You'll note that the man in the above article was allowed to continue once he'd convinced the Guard that he was from NI.
I had a similar experience many years ago. I was flying from one EU country to a small airport in the UK, with a connection in London. I attempted to check my bags through, but was told that I couldn't, since there was no international customs presence at the arrival airport. I pointed out that EU citizens didn't need to go through customs but could use the Blue channel. I was told that I was quite correct, but just in case I was smuggling something there still had to be a customs point that I wouldn't go through, so they could carry out a spot check if required. I had to collect my bag and not pass customs in London first, and then board my customs-free domestic flight.
The backstop is that agreement
And is not, in itself, bad. The problem is that it had no time limit, so all the EU has to do is sit on its hands and refuse every solution and the UK would remain under EU control (but with no say in the rules) until the EU decided otherwise. A sort of "EU says NO!" situation. That's what was unacceptable, not the backstop itself. A backstop with a time limit, and some conditions, could well have been accepted.
Otherwise anyone can just drive through a border crossing with crates of bootleg goods or migrants in their boot with a strip of masking tape over their number plate and the system would not be able to do much about it.
And if if there's no border, because the UK is still in the EU, what's different? Even within the EU, illegal migrants are still illegal migrants and need to be processed in their country of arrival, so crossing an internal border is a no-no. Contraband is still contraband (if you doubt me, try driving a vanload of ciggies from Spain to France). That's why there are spot checks even on internal EU borders today.
The whole issue of immigration and smuggling is a red herring. The real issue is whether taxes/duties are seriously different on each side of the border since there is then an incentive for legitimate traders to cheat. A viable agreement, with low or zero duties, and technology to do the spot checks, is a very workable solution. It is, of course, what Toxic Theresa should have been working on, instead of wasting her time trying to repeatedly sell her leave-but-not-leave agreement to a parliament that had made it clear wasn't ever going to pass.
