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Post by Latecomer on Sept 29, 2019 17:28:49 GMT
I've already said it a million times, but once more won't hurt - the referendum did not condone No Deal, so stopping No Deal is not dishonouring the referendum result. Fine distinctions are critically important, and it's astonishing how many people don't bother to think about them. Still curious about what you think the ref did and didn't condone? It is possible to chart exactly (scientifically ie a FACT) when “no deal Brexit” became a “thing”. You can look at how many google searches are done on a phrase/word to see when it came into existence. There is a good article in the Independent newspaper..... It was first searched for in the weeks before May struck her withdrawal agreement in NOV 2017 It did not begin in any substantial numbers until JULY 2018 when Johnson and Davis walked out of Government. So it is a relatively recent thing....no-one in 2016 voted for it as it was not talked about. No-one suggested the idea of leaving the EU without a deal. To think there was a time when we had never heard of words such as Brexit and Prorogue.....
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Post by n1david on Sept 30, 2019 9:29:52 GMT
Maybe this is what people voted for. After all, it’s what the head of Vote Leave said would happen.
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Post by poster J on Sept 30, 2019 21:46:53 GMT
I've already said it a million times, but once more won't hurt - the referendum did not condone No Deal, so stopping No Deal is not dishonouring the referendum result. Fine distinctions are critically important, and it's astonishing how many people don't bother to think about them. Still curious about what you think the ref did and didn't condone? Read almost any of my many posts in this thread, I've explained it many times before. The Leave campaign was not predicated on crashing out of the EU but on negotiating the exit deal that the Article 50 process is designed to achieve. And that's all completely separate from the fact that what it did or didn't condone is to a certain extent irrelevant, as it was not legally binding so it was and is still up to Parliament to decide what is in the best interests of the country.
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Post by londonpostie on Oct 1, 2019 7:15:38 GMT
How could it be - it was a referendum. By definition referendum's are not intended to be 'legally binding'. It's like saying a decision over breakfast to go to Alton Towers or Brighton for the day is not legally binding: we know.
But 33.5 million participated in that particular ref, in the same way tens of millions participated in the two EEC referendums in the early 70s. I don't remember a boycott - the entire political class willingly participated and the national media actively engaged. All on the basis the outcome would be enacted.
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Post by kathryn on Oct 1, 2019 9:21:16 GMT
Yes - on the basis the outcome would be enacted. But the 'outcome' being presented was not the situation we face now.
The outcome people voted for was £350m more a week for the NHS, 'the easiest trade deal in history', etc etc.
It was cake and unicorns.
We're not going to get that outcome. That outcome is impossible.
Again: do you give people what they voted for but actually don't want - food and medicine shortages, more problems in Northern Ireland, the disintegration of the United Kingdom. Or do you give them what you know they want, but they didn't actually vote for - the best possible economic situation for the country given the circumstances.
The fact that people voted for something doesn't mean that they can have it. Voting for unicorns doesn't force them into existence.
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Post by londonpostie on Oct 1, 2019 11:19:02 GMT
Woud you describe the loss of 100,000 City jobs as a unicorn? Or, if the vote was to Leave, an immediate GDP hit of 3% as a unicorn?
Am I right in thinking every one of these appalling consequences - or unicorns - would be a potential result of inept project management; one of those large scale January 1st-type jobs, perhaps a trade version of the millennium bug or the implementation of the euro currency?
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Post by kathryn on Oct 1, 2019 13:24:50 GMT
People rolling out the Millennium Bug argument are just showing their ignorance - talk to anyone who knows anything about IT and they’ll tell you exactly why it proves the opposite of the point you think you’re making.
The general public have no idea of the complexities of these situations - and they should not need to know about them, because government should be basing their decisions on real expertise, not on dumbed-down politically-motivated messaging to the general public.
If anything has become clear over the past 3 years it’s that the Leave campaigners were basing their arguments on what would be an effective political message, and not on an actual understanding of how the E.U. and our integration with it works. Even basic things like what the Single Market and Customs Union are!
The obvious sign that this is true is the number of Brexiteers who have been placed in the position of delivering Brexit and failed signally to do so.
Honestly, it really does make me despair for the state of our political leadership.
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Post by londonpostie on Oct 1, 2019 13:36:51 GMT
And unicorns? And inept project management?
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Post by Phantom of London on Oct 1, 2019 17:36:46 GMT
Woud you describe the loss of 100,000 City jobs as a unicorn? Or, if the vote was to Leave, an immediate GDP hit of 3% as a unicorn?
Am I right in thinking every one of these appalling consequences - or unicorns - would be a potential result of inept project management; one of those large scale January 1st-type jobs, perhaps a trade version of the millennium bug or the implementation of the euro currency? I have worked with Signalling Systems and have done for a number of years, so therefore I work with computers that drive signalling. Nothing happened on 01/01/2000, this is because many many hours of corrective and preventative maintenance before hand happened, this in turn was exhaustively tested, to make sure my business was 'operationally prepared.'
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Post by londonpostie on Oct 1, 2019 17:42:25 GMT
Well, that's effective project management -among other things. I won't expect a ration book to pop through the letter box just yet.
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Post by n1david on Oct 1, 2019 18:04:58 GMT
Well, that's effective project management -among other things. I won't expect a ration book to pop through the letter box just yet. Y2K mitigation was a multi year project - I was working on it in 1997. At the moment, businesses don’t know what their regulatory regime will be at the end of the month. You’re asking a lot of project managers to learn the requirements, define their desired approach and implement it in a month. No one’s saying there will be ration books, but even the Government is now accepting that there will be disruption. Remember, the chairman of Vote Leave, Stuart Rose, said “nothing would change” on Independence Day, and there would be no “turbulence or trauma”.
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Brexit
Oct 1, 2019 18:27:25 GMT
Post by peelee on Oct 1, 2019 18:27:25 GMT
Stuart Rose was the Chairman of Britain Stronger in Europe, corporate pro-Remainers. He was good, too, as I recall. Admitted at an early presentation to mass media that if the UK voted to Leave then wage rates for workers in Britain probably would rise. Amidst much laughter from many rank and file trades unionists amused he'd blurted out something that was part of their argument for Leaving the EU, he departed. And wage rates have indeed been rising since the Referendum vote. Fondly remembered for his honesty, though must have appalled the CBI.
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Brexit
Oct 1, 2019 18:38:48 GMT
Post by londonpostie on Oct 1, 2019 18:38:48 GMT
Well, that's effective project management -among other things. I won't expect a ration book to pop through the letter box just yet. Y2K mitigation was a multi year project - I was working on it in 1997. At the moment, businesses don’t know what their regulatory regime will be at the end of the month. You’re asking a lot of project managers to learn the requirements, define their desired approach and implement it in a month. No one’s saying there will be ration books, but even the Government is now accepting that there will be disruption. I still wonder at what was done onwards from only 2 years post Windows 95. Obv. people made a lot of money from the growing media scare narrative but, still, job.
The rationing thing was light-hearted.
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Post by Latecomer on Oct 1, 2019 19:01:58 GMT
My husband worked for 2 years at his company to identify and plan and lead a team implementing changes to their code for year 2000 (shop audit world-wide company). He knew what he had to do, as it was a simple case of changing the date format, and his whole team finished on time, meaning the data processing on huge mainframes continued. If he hadn’t done it THE DATA WOULD HAVE GONE WRONG. The government had a publicity campaign (we all remember the millennium bug?) and companies were clearly told what to do. Current situation - no-one (Including the government) knows what is happening 30 days from possible biggest trading change in 40 years. Good luck with that....
I get really angry when people say nothing happened at Y2K ....that’s because they got it right. It is a fact that if a programme had dates in old format it would have failed. A fact. Indisputable. Not some sort of weird myth!
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Post by Cardinal Pirelli on Oct 1, 2019 19:14:11 GMT
Well, if the latest wheeze of the ‘failing and blaming’ crew is to point the finger at businesses for not being ready for something that’s been a dumpster fire for the last few years, then they are pretty much at the bottom of the barrel.
The ones enjoying this most are the two extremes, the ‘socialist utopia arising from the chaos’ group and the ‘shorting the pound and making lots of lovely money’ group.
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Post by NeilVHughes on Oct 1, 2019 19:40:44 GMT
Concur with the above on Y2K.
We spent 2 years identifying all the software and machine code we used, evaluated the risk, updated and validated software as necessary.
Very little happened as we were well prepared.
Back to Brexit, Interesting today was the first time I read that No-Deal was the last thing that the Conservatives wanted from the start, a Deal would never silence the Brexiteers and therefore had to force it to make a Benn Act or similar occur to stop Brexit from happening at all before an election.
The issues around No-Deal would be difficult from a Political perspective, any shortages / impacts would be directly attributed with Johnson and Co and likely to make them unelectable.
With this strategy they can transfer the blame, kick the can down the road and go into an election as victims making it all about Brexit.
As a strategy it is valid and maybe best explains the cul-de-sac they appear to have driven themselves into but fraught with pitfalls as a lot of the parameters outside of direct control.
The performance of Johnson is the weak link, polls are beginning to show a lot of key voters are now associating him with incompetence and If the election is fought away from the Brexit battlefield it will be easy to dismiss the investments being made as only cancelling the austerity cuts and the 130,000 deaths (not sure if true but in the public domain) due to austerity are hard to defend.
The proof in the pudding will be around how the extension is managed and maybe the reluctance by the opposition for a GNU (Government of National Unity) is to force the Conservatives to request the extension and hammering home that Johnson is a failure and he couldn’t carry out his promise. Excuses are always a weak form of defence.
If a GNU is forced their best strategy is to hold a referendum before a General Election which is beginning to gain traction, the Conservatives would find it hard to win a post Brexit election.
Really enjoying Politics at the moment, the twist and turns are extremely entertaining and mentally stimulating.
No numbers in this one, only thoughts on the current state of play.
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Post by n1david on Oct 1, 2019 20:53:08 GMT
I still wonder at what was done onwards from only 2 years post Windows 95. Obv. people made a lot of money from the growing media scare narrative but, still, job.
The rationing thing was light-hearted.
Oddly enough, international investment banks don’t run their core accounting systems on Windows. I was working on systems that had been written in COBOL and PL/1 ten or fifteen years earlier, when people had assumed that they would be replaced by 2000 so they used six-character date fields (hence a calculation of elapsed time between 311299 and 010100 would have gone wrong). But hey, details.
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Post by Cardinal Pirelli on Oct 1, 2019 21:15:34 GMT
Johnson’s final offer.
Short version - not likely to shift either the EU, Northern Ireland, Brexiters, Remainers or, probably, anyone in between. Who on earth is this supposed to convince?
Even shorter version - Game over.
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Post by The Matthew on Oct 2, 2019 3:59:00 GMT
Johnson’s final offer. [...] Who on earth is this supposed to convince? His supporters. It seems to me that Johnson's whole "thing" is to play the thwarted hero. His plans won't work and are never intended to. They're intended to get shot down by someone that Johnson can then paint as an enemy hell bent on destroying his great vision.
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Post by londonpostie on Oct 2, 2019 8:24:59 GMT
What are the spending 'pledges' so far - £40-£50 billion plus min wage to £10.50 (in X years): northern Crossrail, £15 bill NHS, £billions for state schools, road infrastructure, etc. He is planning for an imminent election - after which he will either be out of office and so the pledges are irrelevant, or there will be unexpected economic conditions which require a revision of the proposed investments. Pretty much infantile-level bluster.
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Post by kathryn on Oct 2, 2019 11:28:35 GMT
I still wonder at what was done onwards from only 2 years post Windows 95. Obv. people made a lot of money from the growing media scare narrative but, still, job.
The rationing thing was light-hearted.
Oddly enough, international investment banks don’t run their core accounting systems on Windows. I was working on systems that had been written in COBOL and PL/1 ten or fifteen years earlier, when people had assumed that they would be replaced by 2000 so they used six-character date fields (hence a calculation of elapsed time between 311299 and 010100 would have gone wrong). But hey, details. Any large organisation will end up running on legacy systems with underlying code that hasn't been touched for years. So it wasn't just international investment banks, it was power stations and airlines and hospitals.... Just this week I've been raising bug tickets for our system because we switched on email validation for a part of the process and then realised the underlying validation coded into the system stipulates that email addresses have to be all lower case - that's how old it is. We're meant to be replacing this system with a whole new one we are building, but the first build doesn't even all the functionality we have in the current system, let alone all the new stuff we want. I've no idea how long it will actually take us to transition to the new system - the project has already been running for a couple of years, the first iteration won't roll out until January according to the current estimate, it was originally meant to be up and running for the first wave of products in July. IT estimates are like builder's estimates - the reality is usually double the time and cost. Poor project management isn't down to incompetence, usually, it's down to the people setting up the project not having all the information the manager needs to work out how to carry it out efficiently. Brexit is practically the dictionary definition for not having all the information you would need. No-one knows what is going to happen - no-one can know what is going to happen.
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Brexit
Oct 2, 2019 14:23:50 GMT
Post by Deleted on Oct 2, 2019 14:23:50 GMT
My views on Brexit are pretty well known.
But hopefully there can be some sort of consensus by those who could live with Brexit but don't want a No Deal and those harder Brexiteers who want us to leave but would accept a deal without further delays. But we've had 39 months to try and sort this. It almost needs the EU to perhaps say you have X time otherwise it's a no deal and you are out!
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Post by kathryn on Oct 2, 2019 14:31:45 GMT
The problem is the disaster capitalists want that! That way they can make a quick fortune from the chaos and blame the EU for it.
But yes, the failure of the last 39 months is that the government hasn't even attempted to get loser's consent. What the ref result showed was that the country was fundamentally split, and it remains so.
I could accept a well-organised Brexit that minimised the inherent damage and mitigated the risks. The couldn't-organise-a-piss-up-in-a-brewery level of incompetence that we've actually seen is just....beyond words. I wouldn't trust this lot to feed my imaginary cat, let alone undertake a massive re-structuring of our domestic economy and international socio-political relationships!
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Brexit
Oct 2, 2019 15:18:33 GMT
Post by Deleted on Oct 2, 2019 15:18:33 GMT
The problem is the disaster capitalists want that! That way they can make a quick fortune from the chaos and blame the EU for it. But yes, the failure of the last 39 months is that the government hasn't even attempted to get loser's consent. What the ref result showed was that the country was fundamentally split, and it remains so. I could accept a well-organised Brexit that minimised the inherent damage and mitigated the risks. The couldn't-organise-a-piss-up-in-a-brewery level of incompetence that we've actually seen is just....beyond words. I wouldn't trust this lot to feed my imaginary cat, let alone undertake a massive re-structuring of our domestic economy and international socio-political relationships! Good point about the disaster capitalists. They have money in reserve and if share prices fall they buy on the cheap and sell once the prices rise for a quick profit.
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Post by Latecomer on Oct 2, 2019 15:53:19 GMT
The problem is the disaster capitalists want that! That way they can make a quick fortune from the chaos and blame the EU for it. But yes, the failure of the last 39 months is that the government hasn't even attempted to get loser's consent. What the ref result showed was that the country was fundamentally split, and it remains so. I could accept a well-organised Brexit that minimised the inherent damage and mitigated the risks. The couldn't-organise-a-piss-up-in-a-brewery level of incompetence that we've actually seen is just....beyond words. I wouldn't trust this lot to feed my imaginary cat, let alone undertake a massive re-structuring of our domestic economy and international socio-political relationships! I would have double liked this if I could!!!!
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Brexit
Oct 3, 2019 7:35:52 GMT
Post by londonpostie on Oct 3, 2019 7:35:52 GMT
According to John Curtice this morning, Johnson seems to be establishing a very decent General Election position (based on the referendum and manifesto mandates to Leave): So on the Brixit question Johnson has 50% of the electorate. If you then add to that the £40-£50 billion on nonsense pledges (NHS, schools, etc) - which will have an effect - he's in a good place. In other news I got a call last night from my MP, who has been triggered. She is obv working the phones hard but it's almost impossible to see how she won't be replaced by a Corbyn supporting candidate. What is difficult to know is whether the constituency membership will choose a Leaver or Remainer as our next Corbyn-supporting MP - in the balance, imo. This process is happening across the country now in the Labour Party. My ward meets next week to vote on the trigger.
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Brexit
Oct 3, 2019 11:39:13 GMT
Post by Deleted on Oct 3, 2019 11:39:13 GMT
I could see the Tories looking to field as many Brexit supporting candidates as they can and Labour will probably have a lot of JC centric candidates in place of more centralist ones.
There are about 35 MPs currently classed as independent mainly Tory and Labour so any of them with marginal seats could be very interesting especially if the sitting MP stands as an Independent.
I can see a few informal deals being done where one or two parties stand aside in certain constituencies to allow the main challenger a clear run at the sitting MP. There will be no formal deals but like Tatton in 1997, a local deal was struck.
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Post by Nicholas on Oct 3, 2019 12:08:26 GMT
Johnson’s final offer. [...] Who on earth is this supposed to convince? His supporters. It seems to me that Johnson's whole "thing" is to play the thwarted hero. His plans won't work and are never intended to. They're intended to get shot down by someone that Johnson can then paint as an enemy hell bent on destroying his great vision. Not only are you right, but he's scripting the part right now - anyone who says words don't matter, bear in mind how specific - one could say uncompromising - Johnson's been with his language.
Benn is "surrender". This deal is "compromise". Presumably that makes no-deal "take back control", which he can build up to if needs must. Thwarted hero? Perhaps. If you're an MP called 'uncompromising' because you demand we 'surrender', on the other hand, maybe this thug will force you into signing it, making Johnson not thwarted, but the triumphant leader who never surrendered (at, lest we forget, a "war" he rhetorically started). I think he'd prefer thwarted, mind.
Either way, then, he can call Remainers "surrenderers" (truly terrifying to employ that language) or he can bully them with this rhetoric into making him pass a deal, for fear of being painted as uncompromising at best and surrendering at worst. Either way, his script for the next week will be "Compromise or surrender". The bastard's been setting this up. When the deal doesn't go through - which it probably won't - he'll either go to the electorate claiming that one half of the opposition wants to thwart Brexit and the other to 'surrender' to the EU's demands - or he'll go no-deal, because we tried to compromise, but we'll never surrender.
The worst thing is this'll work. Even as I disagree with "compromise or surrender", I realise how effective it is. If only he'd spent as long writing Seventy Two Virgins.
To Johnson's thuggish leadership, though, we all need to say "humbug".
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Post by Cardinal Pirelli on Oct 3, 2019 12:35:08 GMT
His supporters. It seems to me that Johnson's whole "thing" is to play the thwarted hero. His plans won't work and are never intended to. They're intended to get shot down by someone that Johnson can then paint as an enemy hell bent on destroying his great vision. Not only are you right, but he's scripting the part right now - anyone who says words don't matter, bear in mind how specific - one could say uncompromising - Johnson's been with his language.
Benn is "surrender". This deal is "compromise". Presumably that makes no-deal "take back control", which he can build up to if needs must. Thwarted hero? Perhaps. If you're an MP called 'uncompromising' because you demand we 'surrender', on the other hand, maybe this thug will force you into signing it, making Johnson not thwarted, but the triumphant leader who never surrendered (at, lest we forget, a "war" he rhetorically started). I think he'd prefer thwarted, mind.
Either way, then, he can call Remainers "surrenderers" (truly terrifying to employ that language) or he can bully them with this rhetoric into making him pass a deal, for fear of being painted as uncompromising at best and surrendering at worst. Either way, his script for the next week will be "Compromise or surrender". The bastard's been setting this up. When the deal doesn't go through - which it probably won't - he'll either go to the electorate claiming that one half of the opposition wants to thwart Brexit and the other to 'surrender' to the EU's demands - or he'll go no-deal, because we tried to compromise, but we'll never surrender.
The worst thing is this'll work. Even as I disagree with "compromise or surrender", I realise how effective it is. If only he'd spent as long writing Seventy Two Virgins.
To Johnson's thuggish leadership, though, we all need to say "humbug".
The most laughable part is those who suddenly seem to think that this (much worse than May's) deal is somehow amazing. Do they really not think that people will notice that they said one thing and are now saying the opposite? The DUP don't want a hard border but now think it's okay? The ERG fine with an open border with Europe?
They are panicking, there is a slim chance that a majority of MPs will acquiesce in that panic but, at least up until now, there have been enough rational voices to stop any disaster. If anyone in Labour/Lib Dems/Nationalists/Greens vote for this, they will own it. That's why Corbyn has just become tougher on his own MPs, if people like Kinnock, Nandy, Smeeth etc. vote it through, they will be known as the party that let Brexit happen.
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Brexit
Oct 3, 2019 12:54:01 GMT
via mobile
Post by musicalmarge on Oct 3, 2019 12:54:01 GMT
Why on Earth is this chat on a theatre board? How it affects the arts?
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