Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Josquius]

And I think I'm off by a Saturday aren't I?
Next Saturday is the one where they're allowed and they're saying not till 2 Mondays time.

[Sheilbh]

And I think I'm off by a Saturday aren't I?
Next Saturday is the one where they're allowed and they're saying not till 2 Mondays time.

I think they're allowed from 4 July?

Insane crowds on beaches, street celebrations of Liverpool finally managing a result after a 30 years temporary drop of form, and today to me it seemed traffic is 100% back to normal. Plus when I entered my car I saw these 4 Karens walking down to the river in a close little group chit-chatting. That's 4 households exchanging germs right there.

I'd also point out Mayor Joe Anderson got a huge amount of stick from journalists for saying that would happen and Liverpool demanded an apology from him (which he didn't give). No doubt the journos and Liverpool will be apologising to him.

One part of this, I think, is the media's slightly crazy swings in tone. So they'll go from bad people abandoning social distancing on Bournemouth people to good and fun pictures of the Liverpool team or Liverpool fans celebtraing. I think that is really noticeable to normal people watching the news and has an impact.

[garbon]

One part of this, I think, is the media's slightly crazy swings in tone. So they'll go from bad people abandoning social distancing on Bournemouth people to good and fun pictures of the Liverpool team or Liverpool fans celebtraing. I think that is really noticeable to normal people watching the news and has an impact.

BBC Breakfast had a strange piece on Liverpool this morning where they were trying to be positive about fan enthusiasm but also pointing out that it isn't safe to gather like that and they should hold off till better days.

[Sheilbh]

They're saying the quiet bit out loud

No.10 has refused to say business minister Nadhim Zahawi was speaking on behalf of the government when he suggested people should pay to attend Tory fundraising events if they wanted similar access to politicians as wealthy developer Richard Desmond.

Housing secretary Robert Jenrick is fighting to keep his job after documents revealed the extent of the contact between himself and Desmond, a Tory donor.

Jenrick signed off Desmond's 1,500-home Westferry Printworks scheme in east London following a meeting at a Conservative Party event in November.

Documents published on Wednesday evening showed officials in Jenrick's department described him as being "insistent" that the project be given the green light before a new levy added millions to the cost.

Under pressure to explain why a wealthy businessman could have such access, Zahawi this morning said anybody could deploy similar tactics.

"If people go to a fundraiser in their local area, in Doncaster (for example), for the Conservative Party, they will be sitting next to MPs and other people in their local authorities and can interact with different parts of the authority," he told BBC Radio 4′s Today programme.

[Sheilbh]

One part of this, I think, is the media's slightly crazy swings in tone. So they'll go from bad people abandoning social distancing on Bournemouth people to good and fun pictures of the Liverpool team or Liverpool fans celebtraing. I think that is really noticeable to normal people watching the news and has an impact.

BBC Breakfast had a strange piece on Liverpool this morning where they were trying to be positive about fan enthusiasm but also pointing out that it isn't safe to gather like that and they should hold off till better days.

Yeah - I know Tamas raised it but I think it's also true of the protests. On the other hand I think the cross-over of people worrying about social distancing at a BLM protest and #alllivesmatter is quite significant. So Tamas is in good faith but I am less sure about others.

Edit: Also I see the Prime Minister is out condemning people for taking too many liberties with the rules...........

[Sheilbh]

Interesting by YouGov - UK pollsters are very behind on ethnic breakdowns in their polls (I think Nate Silver has said this is the main reason he repeatedly makes catastrophically wrong predictions in the UK ), so interesting to see:
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2020/06/26/nine-ten-bame-britons-think-racism-exists-same-lev?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=website_article&utm_campaign=Tanya_BAME_article

[Josquius]

Knee jerk reaction would be to disbelieve it then I recall 30 years ago is 1990,not the 70s. So. Yeah. Believable.

[The Larch]

'We've bought the wrong satellites': UK tech gamble baffles experts
Bid for 20% of OneWeb to replace Galileo after Brexit 'looks like nationalism trumping industrial policy'


The UK government's plan to invest hundreds of millions of pounds in a satellite broadband company has been described as "nonsensical" by experts, who say the company doesn't even make the right type of satellite the country needs after Brexit.

The investment in OneWeb, first reported on Thursday night, is intended to mitigate against the UK losing access to the EU's Galileo satellite navigation system.

But OneWeb – in which the UK will own a 20% stake following the investment – currently operates a completely different type of satellite network from that typically used to run such navigation systems.

"The fundamental starting point is, yes, we've bought the wrong satellites," said Dr Bleddyn Bowen, a space policy expert at the University of Leicester. "OneWeb is working on basically the same idea as Elon Musk's Starlink: a mega-constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit, which are used to connect people on the ground to the internet.

"What's happened is that the very talented lobbyists at OneWeb have convinced the government that we can completely redesign some of the satellites to piggyback a navigation payload on it. It's bolting an unproven technology on to a mega-constellation that's designed to do something else. It's a tech and business gamble."

Giles Thorne, a research analyst at Jeffries, agreed. "This situation is nonsensical to me," he said. "This situation looks like nationalism trumping solid industrial policy."

Every major positioning system currently in use – America's GPS, Russia's Glonass, China's BeiDou, and Galileo, the EU project that the UK helped design before losing access to due to Brexit – is in a medium Earth orbit, Thorne said, approximately 20,000km from Earth. OneWeb's satellites, 74 of which have already been launched, are in a low Earth orbit, just 1,200km up.

Bowen said: "If you want to replace GPS for military-grade systems, where you need encrypted, secure signals that are precise to centimetres, I'm not sure you can do that on satellites as small as OneWeb's."

Rather than being selected for the quality of the offering, Thorne suggested the investment was made to suit "a nationalist agenda". OneWeb is nominally a UK business, with a UK HQ and spectrum rights registered in the UK through Ofcom.

"Let's give the government the benefit of the doubt: if the output the government wants is a UK-branded positioning system, a projection of UK power around the world and supporting the UK satellite industry base, then it is probably quicker and cheaper to smash the square peg of OneWeb into the round hole of a Galileo replacement than it is to do it from scratch," said Thorne.

On Friday evening a government spokesperson said: "We have made clear our ambitions for space and are developing a new national space strategy to bring long-term strategic and commercial benefits to the UK. We are in regular discussions with the space industry as part of this work."

OneWeb filed for bankruptcy in March in the US, where most of its operations are located, after failing to secure new funding.

Previously, the UK aimed to build its own global navigation satellite system, which independent experts estimatedwould cost £3bn-£4bn.

In December 2018, Theresa May, the then prime minister, said the UK expected to work with the US and other "Five Eyes" partners – a term for the multilateral intelligence agreement – to do so. But in May this year that project was put on hold, just weeks before a feasibility study into the scheme was due to be published, as its estimated cost ballooned to £5bn.

[Tamas]

I am SURE this isn't because this company paid the highest bribe.

[Sheilbh]

I am SURE this isn't because this company paid the highest bribe.

It's because they've gone bankrupt, not least because their major backer was SoftBank, but have a lot of valuable assets (spectrum rights and satellites)- so there's an auction which is probably the cheapest option. Especially compared to building a new system. And the UK had previously been considering a loan of the same size, personally I atually prefer the idea of taking equity instead of providing loans

The FT is probably a bit better on this:

UK ready to invest millions to back OneWeb bid
Move comes as government explores options for global navigation system
Peggy Hollinger and George Parker yesterday

Boris Johnson has pledged hundreds of millions of pounds to invest in the collapsed satellite operator OneWeb, in a move that underlines the government's push to put the UK at the forefront of space technology.

The prime minister's decision to put up about £500m of taxpayers' money to invest in UK-based OneWeb — as part of a wider private-sector consortium bid — confirms the government is confident about acquiring state ownership in leading sectors. If the bid is successful, the British state could end up with more than 20 per cent in OneWeb.

Dominic Cummings, Mr Johnson's chief adviser, was instrumental in pushing the case for the investment, which seeks to secure a frontline position for Britain in cutting-edge satellite navigation systems.

The decision to invest was taken after an extended meeting between Mr Johnson and chancellor Rishi Sunak on Wednesday.

The government declined to comment, but it has a manifesto commitment to invest in industries of the future, including space, life sciences, clean energy, robotics and artificial intelligence.

British companies were barred from the EU's Galileo global navigation system after Brexit. But following 18 months of studying proposals for its own service — with the price tag soaring from £4bn to more than £5bn — the UK government decided to bid for OneWeb instead.

OneWeb, which has its global headquarters in the UK but substantial operations in the US, entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in March after failing to secure $2bn in new funding from investors including Japan's SoftBank, its biggest backer.

Bids for OneWeb are due in by Friday and several bidders are understood to be lining up offers, including from France and China.

The prime minister appears to have been won over by proposals from the Satellite Applications Catapult this year to develop an innovative positioning technology that could be installed on OneWeb's low-earth-orbiting satellites, several people with knowledge of the discussions said.

The company, which originally intended to offer affordable internet services to the remotest parts of the planet, has 74 satellites in orbit and plans for several hundred more. OneWeb also has a significant advantage in that it has priority on broadcast spectrum over SpaceX's Starlink, a rival low-earth satellite internet service, people close to the subject said.

In April, OneWeb approached the UK government for a £500m loan as part of a wider $2.2bn financing from private investors. However, the government has decided on an equity investment to preserve its influence. The company is regulated by the UK's Ofcom, but its management is largely American. Its satellites are also manufactured in Florida in a joint venture with Airbus. It has promised to repatriate manufacturing to the UK.

The government's potential participation in a OneWeb bid has been the focus of fierce opposition in some parts of the space industry, which had hoped to win positions on a Galileo-style navigation project. Critics have dismissed the low-earth technology as unproven and fraught with risk.

However, a deciding factor appears to have been support from US defence officials who have told the government they do not want the UK to develop a replica of the GPS system. A low-earth navigation service would complement the US system and offer extra resilience to US allies, say several parties close to the subject.
/quote]

[Tamas]

So it's essentially a bailout then? Cronyism can be spotted anywhere

[Sheilbh]

Yep. But I have no issue with enormous state involvement in the economy - especially innovative sectors. So this is a start

It's a bit like infrastructure - I've never seen a project to concrete over some part of the country I haven't loved

[Sheilbh]

The Daily Star is not letting go

[Sheilbh]

So government is going to start with their civil service reorganisation.

According to the FT Mark Sedwill, the Cabinet Secretary will be got rid of. They are also going to split the role because Sedwill has been both Cabinet Secretary (head of the civil service) and National Security Advisor. National Security Advisor is a new role the Cameron created (again - British politicians love American politics) nad had previously been held by someone different than the Cabinet Secretary and I think there is a consensus that they are probably both full time jobs.

This is part of a wider reorganisation. But it's not entirely unusual Tony Blair replaced his Cabinet Secretary after winning in 1997, in 2005 he appointed Gus O'Donnell from the Treasury (so someone Brown was comfortable with), he was replaced by Cameron after about a year and, he sadly died and May brought in Mark Sedwill who had previously been her civil servant in the Home Office. It is reasonably common after about a year of being PM to make change and they normally bring someone from their previous department - I wouldn't be surprised to see Johnson pick someone from the Foreign Office (if civil servants choose among themsleves, the Treasury dominates ).

But there's a lot of talk of this being part of a wider civil service reorganisation. As Dominic Cummings told the SpAd Zoom call "a hard rains going to fall"

[Tamas]

Cummings reorganising the civil service. During a pandemic and the proper exit from the EU. What could POSSIBLY go wrong.