2016
Remainers: Brexit will be a problem for Northern Ireland
Leavers: no it won't
2021
Remainers: Brexit is a problem for Northern Ireland
Leavers: We didn't go far enough with Brexit / the violence is not connected to Brexit / the EU imposed the NI Protocol 🤦♂️
Further excuses:
it's Remainers' fault for not backing soft brexit (via @timmokx)
NI hasn't actually had Brexit (Kate Hoey, thanks @heeney77 for the reminder)
the EU imposed a hard border with Art 16 / vaccines
The EU used Ireland as a weapon in Brexit talks (@eufactsexplain)
*ALL* bullshit
Those who promoted Brexit, especially Johnson's Brexit: you made keeping peace in Northern Ireland one hell of a lot harder. This is ON YOU.
Ah yes. More...
you've failed to mention the actual problem there, the funeral (@Sidney1st)
it's actually all to do with organised crime
(those two are half valid - but had it *just* been these would anger be so high? I doubt it)
More excuses...
Drones and "alternative arrangements" didn't work (thanks @janeclout for the reminder)
It’s Meghan Markle’s fault, according to Piers Morgan (not sure this is true, via @ChrisGDwyer but who am I to judge?)
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Let's not forget that when the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement was finally sorted on 24 Dec, it was provisionally applied - allowing the EP to do its scrutiny this spring
2/25
Provisional application was extended from the initial end of February deadline until the end of April
The essential problem for Eurostar is UK Govt doesn't know what it *wants* from long distance international rail through the Channel Tunnel
The UK Government wants to minimise its costs, and doesn't want problems, but beyond that is *has no answers*
Does the UK believe in competition on the London-Paris/Brussels routes? And if so, what sort?
Is that people might fly instead competition enough? Or is on-rail competition also desirable?
Until COVID hit, Eurostar could afford to be more expensive than flights, because the time saved and better convenience meant people favoured the train
A fortnight ago I wanted to answer a question: would a 🇪🇺 vaccine export ban be justified?
I was somehow instinctively against any such ban, and still am
But digging into it revealed the worst of out politics, media and social media, and how badly we cope with complexity
1/22
The essence of the issue is that this is both an ideological/ethical matter, and a practical one - and the interplay between the two is complicated
No person's response to the question ban-or-not can be based either all on ethics or all on practicality
2/22
Or - putting it another way - export of a small number of vaccines might be easier to justify than export of a massive number that would slow down the exporting region's own vaccination drive
2 days ago I wrote about Janssen / Johnson & Johnson 💉, with the tentative conclusion that an 🇪🇺-based supply chain was solid enough to mean there would be no EU-US-J&J spat to mirror the EU-UK-AZ spat
OK, so next in the series of Jon looking at supply of each different COVID vaccine it's:
Novavax
This one is different to AZ, BioNTech, J&J etc., in that the EU has no APA with Novavax *yet*
Even that is somewhat confusing - Reuters reports that this is because Novavax is dragging its heels, citing production problems reuters.com/article/health…