Be Excellent To Each Other

Can we get him a peerage?

From the Brexit white paper. This is the sort of attention to detail that'll stand us in good stead during the difficult negotiations to come.

Also, the PDF is date-stamped with when the final draft was completed: 04:17 this morning. I'm glad we took back control. Just feel really controlled right now.

Everything's super controlled, you guys.

ELI5 that graph and the mistakes/meaning?

I don't know your contract, but I don't have 14 weeks holiday.

They've fixed that graph in the document now, but basically the two "middle" columns are the wrong way around.

What it should say is that EU annual holiday entitlement is 4 weeks but UK's is 5.6 weeks (20 days + bank holidays) and that EU maternity entitlement is 14 weeks, but UK's is 38.

What the unfixed graph says is that UK holiday entitlement is 14 weeks.

Thanks guys. I was struggling to understand if this was a graph comparing how good it is, or how bad it is to be in the EU, or whether it was a plan to change it to this or simply a balls up.

It's a graph that is:

1) Wrong, they fucked it up
2) Meaningless - we have higher minimum vacation days that the EU does, so what? Leaving the EU makes no difference to that.

I skimmed the whole thing yesterday. It was pretty vacuous, full of weasly statements and empty clever-sounding words, the kind I would write during essay crises as an undergraduate when I would end up trying to fill up the word count rather than engage with the issue.

The TL;DR of the whole thing: 'everything will be fine, we know what we're doing'.

Still, we now have Mrs May on record as calling us 'losers'.

Few things that caught my eye:

This is an absolute howler. God forbid we should be doing all this for something more substantial than the "feeling" of sovereignty.

Completely substance-free waffle on an issue that deserves much more commitment. Peace in Northern Ireland was one of the defining accomplishments of our government during our lifetimes.

That's the entire section. No mention at all of, say, the €60bn the EU is already demanding the UK pay, which, sure, we might negotiate our way out of. But we also might not. Which brings me on to:

::crickets::

Only joking. The word "risk" only appears in the document twice, in irrelevant contexts. There's nothing in here that specifically itemises potential future problems and then outlines measures to mitigate them. For fuck's sake, I'm a worker peon, and I do that amount of diligence for my annual planning to my boss. If you did that in a project approval document to your board of directors with tens of billions on the line, you'd be laughed out of the room on your way to clearing out your desk.

"Vast". Hahahaha. 1.07% of tax, isn't it? Do we all feel massively richer when given a 1% pay rise? Or massively poorer given a 1% cut? Sad.

But the board of directors approved it all the day before they saw it. And nobody thought this was a problem. In years to come so many doctorates will be written about this, and, like the poll tax, we'll read them and think 'nobody could be that daft, could they?'.

(Which reminds me. I must re-read King & Crewe's superlative 'Blunders of our governments' at some point)

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... article-50

Well, would you just look at that.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-38762034

Data stuff.

If you're poor and less well edumacated, more likely to have voted leave.

Edit: huh, Shipley voted 60℅ remain.

Nice graphic in the FT today

Question - that specifies 'EU28' as the destination market. Does that mean it includes trade within the UK? If so, that's a highly disingenuous graphic.

Good interview with Ken Clarke.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... ic-as-this

The graphic does repeatedly mention "exports" so you'd hope not. I wonder if the EU28 is some sort of style guide thing the FT has? Otherwise I don't see why they wouldn't just use EU

It's entitled "goods exports" so I think it's pretty safe to assume not.

Ah yes, missed that. Would have been better to state EU or EU27 in that case, for clarity.

I would have liked to have seen Internal stuff on there as a conparison.

It is a good article, and he gave a fantastic speech in the first debate. I fear he's shouting into the wind though.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-38762034


So proud. That's less than a mile from where my parents live. And it's Brambles Farm, h'actually.

Bro, do you even survey. That is just the stupidest question ever. Who's going to respond "Nope, we just can't handle it. The moment this happens we'll just fold like a wet newspaper".

It's been one of my favored two questions* at interviews of late: " how has the firm insulated itself from the negative effects of Brexit?". Mainly by buying up currency now, it seems and optimization of supply chains.

*The other is "why do you like working here?"

I like "if I come work for you, what would my biggest challenge be in my first three months?"

Another 3 line whip from the Corbster.

Poacher turned gamekeeper.

It is mildly amusing to see him lead his troops through the Conservative lobbies. Ramsay Macdonald became a hate figure for the Labour movement for doing just that.

At least there was still a functioning Labour Party after R. MacDonald's leadership...

And the touch screens to order are pretty good too.

I always hated clowns, there's something sinister about them.

But that's enough about Labour's current leadership; the McDonalds' mascot is awesome.

Seems any vote will be on a "take this deal, or we leave with no deal".

Which is stupid.

Will the EU or its major economies suffer if we just fall out and rely on WTO rules? Because if not, I can't see how this is advantageous to us.

I doubt it, and well, yes,quite.

Still no word from my MP yet. On her website, she says she wants 'the best deal' for Britain. I'd like her to clarify on what 'the best deal' might look like, as well as 'an acceptable deal', and the 'actually, that's pretty rubbish' deal, but I'm not sure I can cope with any more rejection from her.

Well, yes. If you've actually got a negotiation where, if agreement isn't reached, both parties can walk away and the status quo is maintained ( I don't buy your Porsche off you for £500k or whatever, you still have your Porsche, I still have my £500k) this works. but if the default is "I get f*cked over" this isn't really a great tactic.

Yeah, I think that's termed an "ultimatum" rather than a deal.

You buy my Porsche for £500k or I slit your throat, basically.

Can't I buy a GT-R, keep £400k and just have a kick in the balls?

We're having a hard car sale, and it will be red, white and blue.

PS: you know we mentioned the 350kw stereo system? We made that up. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

We were just suggesting you *could* put this in your car, if you wanted.

We'll just buy cars from the US and China and India instead! They'll definitely sell us all the cars we want at a low price with no strings attached, just you wait and see! We don't need your fancy car.

Which is a good job, considering it would probably liquidise you and anyone nearby.

We've had enough of experts, thank you very much.

Pshh, your mate Nase would probably just 'lose' it somewhere in East London anyway

Right?

We had about two kilowatts, I think. Maybe a little more. The stuff we had didn't have an amazing SPL, but it was on the better end of the range.
We wired it all up to the disco bus once. We didn't do it again.