BREXIT! BREXIT! BREXIT!

[Scot Dutchy]

Wait for the details. He has won bugger all. Still at least a 4% dent in the UK economy. Half a million jobs. Nothing for the City. How will the Hard Brexiteers like it? They wont. Keeping up EU standards. Good bye chlorinated chickens and hormone beef.

[rainbow]

Even if it is all smoke and mirrors some deal is still better than no deal.

Not for a certain Dutch hater.

I don't hate the Dutch!

...but really, putting their dodgy 'mayonnaise' on chips is really beyond the pale.

[Scot Dutchy]

The nitty gritty of this wonderful deal is being exposed:

Boris Johnson admits Brexit deal falls short for financial services

PM says agreement ‘does not go as far as we would like’ over sector’s access to EU markets

Boris Johnson has conceded that the Brexit trade deal “perhaps does not go as far as we would like” over access to EU markets for financial services, while insisting he had achieved an accord his critics said would be impossible.

In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph, the prime minister said he had defied accusations of “cake-ism” – seeking the impossible – in getting a trade deal that allowed divergence from EU standards.

It had been, Johnson said, billed as out of the question “that you could do free trade with the EU without being drawn into their regulatory or legislative orbit”.

While service industries, the bulk of UK exports to the EU, could face potential regulatory or other non-tariff barriers, Johnson said there had been “access for solicitors, barristers” and a “good deal for digital”.

But on financial services, he said the deal “perhaps does not go as far as we would like”.

There are measures in the agreement for the possible imposition of tariffs if the UK diverges notably from existing standards. Johnson said this should not be viewed by Brexit-minded Conservative MPs as too restrictive.

“All that’s really saying is the UK won’t immediately send children up chimneys or pour raw sewage all over its beaches,” he said. “We’re not going to regress, and you’d expect that.”

The stitching wont hold too well.

[Scot Dutchy]

Wonder how long this will last? It is meant for poor kids, we will see.

UK to pay more than £100m a year to fund study abroad after Brexit

Turing scheme for British students is claimed to be ‘truly international’ replacement for EU’s Erasmus programme

More than £100m will be spent on the post-Brexit replacement of the Erasmus exchange programme for UK students next year, it has been announced.

The Department for Education (DfE) said the Turing scheme will provide funding for about 35,000 students to go on placements around the world from September.

The DfE said the scheme, named after Bletchley Park codebreaker Alan Turing, will cost £100m in 2021-22 but that funding for subsequent academic years will be set out in future spending reviews.

The government’s decision to end involvement in the European Union scheme has proved controversial, particularly as Boris Johnson had previously said Brexit did not threaten participation.

But the education secretary, Gavin Williamson, said: “We now have the chance to expand opportunities to study abroad and see more students from all backgrounds benefit from the experience.

Brexiteers will be on the scrounge with this one. The Erasmus scheme was too expensive?

[rainbow]

Can anybody explain to a unsophisticated African what are the nuances of this deal that are significantly different from that of Tessy May's one?

If so, why did it take two years to get these details sorted?

Surely they could've just said "so long, and thanks for the fish"?

[Scot Dutchy]

Can anybody explain to a unsophisticated African what are the nuances of this deal that are significantly different from that of Tessy May's one?

If so, why did it take two years to get these details sorted?

Surely they could've just said "so long, and thanks for the fish"?

Tessy's deal did not go far enough for the Brexiteers and they thought a man would get a better deal. Even her husband told her so. This is the conservatives you know. The trouble is now they have it they think, but the ultra small print has still to be read and there is plenty of that. Johnson of course will claim victory, he cant do much else, but the City and fishermen know otherwise.

[Scot Dutchy]

Was fear they main reason why Johnson pulled out of the Erasmus scheme?

I was an early Erasmus scholar, and I grieve for what British students have lost

My time in Europe transformed my outlook; those who think Brexit is all about trade deals ignore what else was at stake

The prime minister offered the country a “feast” this Christmas but many of us still haven’t been able to digest it. The truth is it was never very appetising, not so much an oven-ready treat as a cheap ready meal. Boris Johnson’s trade deal does not bring “glad tidings of great joy” but final confirmation that a special relationship has been turned into a purely transactional one.

To the mercantilist Brexiteers, any losses incurred are mere trifles. Take the end of the Erasmus scheme, which enabled students to spend time in other member states’ universities. Compared with fish quotas and level playing fields this may seem like small fry. But a feast without the trimmings is just another meal, and a trade deal without cultural ties makes for a much shallower relationship with our European neighbours.

I learned this first-hand. In 1989, I was one of the earliest British students to participate in the scheme, which had begun two years earlier. Confusingly, I spent my autumn term in the Erasmus University in Rotterdam.

Now that six months or more travelling the world on a gap year is the (albeit suspended) norm, 10 weeks on the other side of the Channel may seem modest in comparison. But Erasmus allowed for a depth of engagement with other countries that no amount of carefree backpacking can equal.

My first inkling of this came when we were invited out for beers with some of our new Dutch peers. One asked me what my special interests in philosophy were. I was thrown. No one back home would ever ask such an earnest question about your undergraduate studies. I mumbled something about Kierkegaard, the subject of my dissertation. “Hhhhm,” said the student. “I think he was melancholic. What about you?”

In an instant, the absurdity of British anti-intellectualism had been exposed. It was not that the Dutch student was taking himself too seriously but that our affected insouciance towards our studies was ridiculous.

Other Erasmus students will have had different epiphanies. By becoming embedded in foreign universities, we see not only what is valuable in cultures we are often quicker to parody than to understand, but what is strange in ourselves.

This concerned the matter as well as the manner of our studies. Philosophy in most British universities largely ignored 20th-century continental European philosophy. I may have known that there were more things in heaven and earth than were dreamed of in our philosophy, but reading Merleau-Ponty and Foucault I discovered that philosophy itself contained more than we dreamed of back home.

It was fitting that the Berlin Wall fell while I was in Rotterdam. Erasmus was a symbol of the erosion of walls, the freer movement not only of goods and services but of people and ideas. This was always what mattered most about the European project. The Britain that we know and sometimes love today did not become what it is by seeking isolation.

Finally realising what Europe means.

[Scot Dutchy]

Committees, visas and climate change: Brexit experts' verdicts on the deal details

From practical impacts on business travellers to odd references to obsolete software, three Brexologists dive deep

Experts are still poring over the 1,246-page Brexit trade deal, but the devil is always in the detail.

Dozens of UK-EU committees overseeing all aspects of the deal will now have to be set up, committing the UK and the EU to semi-permanent Brexit negotiations.

New business travel rules will mean fashion models and musicians may need work visas for Europe. And the economic damage from restoring trade barriers previously demolished could be felt for years to come.

While the deal is thin, as expected, there are positives, including, say experts, on climate change, aviation and haulage.

Here, three Brexologists shed light on some other details they have found so far in the deal.

The ultra-small print, there are 800 pages of it are slowly being analysed. The UK has been screwed. Johnson will never admit that. What does he care as his money is safe.

[Svartalf]

Can anybody explain to a unsophisticated African what are the nuances of this deal that are significantly different from that of Tessy May's one?

If so, why did it take two years to get these details sorted?

Surely they could've just said "so long, and thanks for the fish"?

Simples, they waited until our negociators collaped with fatigue, then turned them on their bellies and fucked them to their treacherous hearts content, whereas tessy would have been satisfied with saddling us with something dissatisfying enough to get some bragging rights.

[Brian Peacock]

Northern Ireland's science-denying religious fundamentalists, the DUP, are standing against the deal because the Tories have gone back on their promise to erect a big wall along the border with Eire and to make the Irish pay for it!

[aufbahrung]

Compatible with windows XP and the BBC micro...soon to include the latest in valve technology (put your money in valves)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-55475433

Brexit deal mentions Netscape browser and Mozilla Mail
By Cristina Criddle

References to decades-old computer software are included in the new Brexit agreement, including a description of Netscape Communicator and Mozilla Mail as being "modern" services.

Experts believe officials must have copied and pasted chunks of text from old legislation into the document.

The references are on page 921 of the trade deal, in a section on encryption technology.

It also recommends using systems that are now vulnerable to cyber-attacks.

The text cites "modern e-mail software packages including Outlook, Mozilla Mail as well as Netscape Communicator 4.x."

The latter two are now defunct - the last major release of Netscape Communicator was in 1997.

(continued)

[rainbow]

Compatible with windows XP and the BBC micro...soon to include the latest in valve technology (put your money in valves)

...meanwhile in a basement somewhere in darkest Luton, someone is dusting off a telex machine.

[Hermit]

Compatible with windows XP and the BBC micro...soon to include the latest in valve technology (put your money in valves)

...meanwhile in a basement somewhere in darkest Luton, someone is dusting off a telex machine.

Or one of these electric communication devices.

[Brian Peacock]

-- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. . / -- -.-- / .- .-. ... .

[JimC]

Same to you with knobs on!