Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Admiral Yi]

They don't pay their drivers & there is no profitability. Where will it come from?

Revenue expansion as people leave lock down and start going out again.  Phase out of new driver bonuses and new customer bonuses.

[Jacob]

Revenue expansion as people leave lock down and start going out again.  Phase out of new driver bonuses and new customer bonuses.

Is that your expectation (i.e. you'd invest based on that) or your explanation of what Uber investors think (but you don't think it's likely that Uber will succeed here)?

[Admiral Yi]

Is that your expectation (i.e. you'd invest based on that) or your explanation of what Uber investors think (but you don't think it's likely that Uber will succeed here)?

Not only would I invest in that, I have invested in that.

[Jacob]

Not only would I invest in that, I have invested in that.

Gotcha, thank you.

[Admiral Yi]

You betcha.

[chipwich]

My alternative is that people acquire skills (the most easy to acquire being punctuality and dependability) so that their marginal revenue product increases.

Punctuality and dependability are unrelated to wages.

[The Brain]

My alternative is that people acquire skills (the most easy to acquire being punctuality and dependability) so that their marginal revenue product increases.

Punctuality and dependability are unrelated to wages.

In which organization?

[Tamas]

My alternative is that people acquire skills (the most easy to acquire being punctuality and dependability) so that their marginal revenue product increases.

Punctuality and dependability are unrelated to wages.

IDK. One thing I discovered to my amazement as a young recently first hired professional was that being dependable to do my job as and when expected already put me ahead of a not-insignificant number of my colleagues.

[Sheilbh]

Cannot emphasise enough how extraordinary the goings on are in Holyrood right now:

Holyrood censors Alex Salmond inquiry evidence after prosecutors intervene
By Tom Gordon Scottish Political Editor

HOLYROOD bosses have censored evidence submitted by Alex Salmond to a Holyrood inquiry after an intervention by prosecutors, deleting five of its 33 sections.

It followed a 36-page submission from the former First Minister being removed in its entirety from the parliament's website "with immediate effect" this morning.

The Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body held an emergency meeting after the Crown Office asked it to remove or redact material published last night.

The Crown Office raised "grave concerns" there could have been a breach of a court order related to Mr Salmond's criminal trial last year. However that would ultimately be a matter for a court to decide.

In response, the SPCB agreed to redact parts of Mr Salmond's evidence and republish it in a revised form to avoid any possible breach of a court order.

It has now reissued the material with five sections spanning six paragraphs removed and replaced with purple lines and the word "redacted".

Controversially, one of the paragraphs deleted is wholly unrelated to Mr Salmond's criminal trial, and alleges Ms Sturgeon breached the Scottish ministerial code by making an "untrue" statement to Holyrood in 2019.

Other claims to the same effect remain untouched.

A Scottish Parliament spokesperson said: "Following representations from the Crown Office on Monday evening, the SPCB agreed collectively this morning that it will remove the Alex Salmond submission on the Ministerial Code from its website with immediate effect and republish it later today in a redacted form.

"The SPCB will respond formally to the Crown Office shortly."

The SPCB decided last week that the Holyrood inquiry into the Salmond affair could publish a revised submission from Mr Salmond in which he accuses Nicola Sturgeon of repeatedly misleading parliament and so breaking the ministerial code - a resignatiion offence she denies.

The inquiry published the material last night alongside another submission from Mr Salmond in which he claimed senior SNP figures, including Nicola Sturgeon's husband, plotted to ruin and even jail him.

The former First Minister also criticised the Crown Office, saying it was withholding key material from the inquiry which would corroborate his claims.

He criticised the Lord Advocate James Wolffe QC, and said the Crown Office under his leadership was "simply not fit for purpose".

He also said Mr Wolffe was "manifestly conflicted" in his dual role as both the head of Scotland's prosecution service and the Scottish Government's top legal adviser.

Mr Salmond is due to give evidence under oath in person to the inquiry tomorrow.

He had made publication of his evidence a pre-condition of his testimony, as it ensured his claims could be included in the inquiry's final report and used as the basis for questioning witnesses.

The last-minute change could put his appearance in doubt, however sources believe he will still be able to speak on a range of issues even after some redactions.

Ms Sturgeon has rejected claims of a "concerted effort" against Mr Salmond, and challenged him to produce hard evidence to back up his alllegations.

The inquiry is looking at how the Scottish Government bungled a probe into sexual misconduct allegations made against Mr Salmond by civil servants in 2018.

He had the exercise overturned in a judicial review in January 2019, showing it had been unfair, unlawful and "tainted by apparent bias".

He was later charged with sexual assault but cleared of all counts at a High Court trial last March.

The Government's mistakes left taxpayers with a £512,000 bill for his legal costs.

The SPCB is chaired by Presiding Officer Ken Macintosh and includes one MSP from each of Holyrood's five parties.

The Crown Office says that in all cases where it becomes aware of issues of potential contempt, these will be considered carefully and action will be taken if considered appropriate.

It had no comment on the specifics or Mr Salmond's evidence to the Scottish Parliament.

Mr Salmond has been asked for comment.

Meanwhile, the union representing senior civil servants has criticised the inquiry for treating civil servants with "almost open hostility".

FDA general secretary Dave Penman said MSPs on the cross-party committee had made "derogatory comments" about officials and deliberately twisted some of their oral evidence.

Inquiry members - like Mr Salmond - have frequently criticised evidence from the Scottish Government's most senior official, Permanent Secretary Leslie Evans.

Ms Evans has been recalled several times and been forced to clarify errors in her testimony.

Mr Penman told the Scotsman: "From the outset, members of the Holyrood committee have operated with almost open hostility towards civil servants, including an initial attempt to seek evidence in a way that could have caused them to breach the Civil Service Code.

"They chose to operate in a quasi-judicial manner, requiring evidence under oath, yet the obligations this brings appear only to apply to witnesses and not to the committee itself.

"Committee members have made points or personal remarks during questioning, including deliberately misquoting a response on official record made by one witness when questioning another.

"They have been happy to make public comment, as well as retweeting press articles that make derogatory comments about civil servants and their evidence.

"Is it any wonder that this leads to a perception that some of the committee members reached a conclusion long before the process was concluded?"

The Scottish Tories, who have two MSPs on the inquiry, said they had acted with "courtesy and professionalism" while being "routinely obstructed".

Mr Penman's comments sounded "like an attempt to distract from these serious issues".

Edit: Also in Scottish news after noises about English recklessness in the "roadmap" to leaving lockdown last night, the Scottish government have announced their "strategic framework" for leaving lockdown. It is fairly similar to the English plan

[crazy canuck]

My alternative is that people acquire skills (the most easy to acquire being punctuality and dependability) so that their marginal revenue product increases.

Punctuality and dependability are unrelated to wages.

In which organization?

Every one I can think of.  Punctuality and dependability are minimum requirements. 

[The Brain]

My alternative is that people acquire skills (the most easy to acquire being punctuality and dependability) so that their marginal revenue product increases.

Punctuality and dependability are unrelated to wages.

In which organization?

Every one I can think of.  Punctuality and dependability are minimum requirements.

[The Brain]

I just got an email saying that my UK TV license wasn't authorised. This isn't the Brexit someone voted for!

[Agelastus]

I just got an email saying that my UK TV license wasn't authorised. This isn't the Brexit someone voted for!

From the Belgian email address that seems to be the source of most of the emails about my TV License that I receive these days?

[The Brain]

I just got an email saying that my UK TV license wasn't authorised. This isn't the Brexit someone voted for!

From the Belgian email address that seems to be the source of most of the emails about my TV License that I receive these days?

Didn't check.

[Zanza]

Brexit is a machine to generate perpetual grievance. It's doing its job perfectly
Rafael Behr

Brexit has changed everything about Britain's relationship with the European Union, and also nothing. For anyone trying to do business across borders newly gummed with bureaucracy, the comparison is stark and painful. But in politics, an old pattern is playing out – a cycle of suspicion and self-sabotage that began long before the 2016 referendum.

It starts with the belief that Britain does not depend on its neighbours for trade or anything else. That leads to neglect of the diplomacy required to make the partnership work. Going against the grain of economics and geography escalates every negotiation into a test of national self-esteem. Each adjustment for reality is resented as a surrender of sovereignty.

Euroscepticism is a machine for generating perpetual grievance. It works by making Brussels the enemy, spoiling relations and serving up the soured mood to a domestic audience as proof that the other side does not want to be friends.

Brexit has dismantled the institutional platform on which that drama used to be played, but it does not change the economic and strategic dynamics. The UK still needs things from Brussels, but it has lost the leverage it had from a seat at the EU summit table. This makes it harder for Boris Johnson to play the old double game of public belligerence and private compromise. (On that score, EU membership was the way previous prime ministers used to have their cake and eat it.)

Johnson has no interest in the practical side of European diplomacy. His 2019 promise to "get Brexit done" expressed a personal preference for changing the subject of British politics – a preference that chimed with the enervated public mood. Since Johnson only applies his brain to things when he can no longer hide from them, not talking about UK-EU relations allows him also to stop thinking about them.

That task has been outsourced to David Frost – formerly chief Brexit negotiator, now UK chair of the partnership council that oversees implementation of the EU deal. Frost was given a peerage last year, and his new role comes with a seat at cabinet. His rapid elevation was propelled by dogmatic Euroscepticism and personal devotion to the prime minister. He is a true believer in the cult of sovereignty. He was converted to the faith when his career in the Foreign Office stalled, then made zealous by the pursuit of an alternative career clinging to Johnson's coattails. Nowhere does his record speak of subtle or creative diplomacy.

Frost's appointment is not a malicious provocation, but a typical act of Johnsonian negligence. The prime minister likes to delegate the many aspects of leadership that bore him, but he trusts very few people (because he presumes his own tendency for deceit and betrayal is the norm). He needed someone, like Frost, who will obediently try to mop up the grief spilling out of his leaky, rickety EU deal.

Tension is already high over the Northern Ireland protocol, which creates a customs border in the Irish Sea. The mere existence of that trade barrier has infuriated unionists even before the full cost is felt. A "grace period", waiving some checks, expires at the end of March. The UK has demanded an extension on terms that amount to major renegotiation. The European commission responds that Britain must honour the treaty it signed. And so the Brexit that was "done" turns out not to be done.

Were it not for the pandemic, loose ends and lost jobs would be making more headlines. Whether they would also be changing public opinion is a different question. Some enthusiasm is surely dropping into the chasm between Brexit as liberation theology and its real-world incarnation as rotting fish undelivered to a Calais market. But British political culture contains deep reserves of stoical resignation to adversity (especially other people's adversity). There is no simple road back, no better deal on the table, and it is easy for ministers to spin the pain mandated by their deal as aggression by vengeful Europeans.

Leavers will be attracted to that story because it spares them the discomfort of admitting that they voted for a con, and then made a prime minister of the con artist. Keir Starmer will not fight on that terrain since doing so gets him no affection in constituencies that were lost by Labour in 2019. Thus (in England, at least) the folly of Brexit is being buried for excavation some time in the future, perhaps by a different political generation.

It might happen sooner, but I suspect any shift in opinion on the EU will come only as a consequence of some wider collapse in Johnson's personal standing. He is the denial that people elected. For many voters, disillusionment with Brexit is downstream of disappointment with the whole "Boris" shtick in the flow of political events.

Meanwhile, there will be endless negotiations, largely unreported, except when they escalate into rows. At which point the rusty old template will be applied: plucky Britain standing up to bullying Brussels. It is the story the Eurosceptics used to tell when the UK was an EU member, but more potent because the 27-against-one dynamic that was a paranoid myth has become a fact. Over time, that dynamic will make it ever harder for the opposition to express a pro-European position without inviting the charge of siding with an enemy.

It is frustrating for remainers who still crave a moment of vindication, when the fraud is proved beyond doubt and the tide of opinion turns. But for that to happen, Brexit would have to be measured in terms of trade and diplomacy. Those aren't the leavers' metrics. They long ago swapped economic argument for culture war bluster.

There is no defence of Johnson's deal if the ambition was serious advancement of the national interest. But there is another test. It is the one that matters most to the architects of Brexit, although they never admit it, even to themselves.

For the true believers, a good Brexit is one that keeps the grievance alive; that makes foreigners the scapegoat for bad government; that continues to indulge the twin national myths of victimhood and heroic defiance. Measured for that purpose, Johnson's pointless Brexit is perfect.

https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/23/brexit-machine-perpetual-grievance-britain-brussels?__twitter_impression=true

Good argument why Brexit will be perpetual and will continue to poison EU/UK relations.