Just came across this from A A Gill. On Facebook.

A. Gill (Sunday Times journalist and food critic) writing about Brexit before his death in Dec 2016.
“It was the woman on Question Time that really did it for me. She was so familiar. There is someone like her in every queue, every coffee shop, outside every school in every parish council in the country. Middle-aged, middle-class, middle-brow, over-made-up, with her National Health face and weatherproof English expression of hurt righteousness, she’s Britannia’s mother-in-law. The camera closed in on her and she shouted: “All I want is my country back. Give me my country back.”
It was a heartfelt cry of real distress and the rest of the audience erupted in sympathetic applause, but I thought: “Back from what? Back from where?”
Wanting the country back is the constant mantra of all the outies. Farage slurs it, Gove insinuates it. Of course I know what they mean. We all know what they mean. They mean back from Johnny Foreigner, back from the brink, back from the future, back-to-back, back to bosky hedges and dry stone walls and country lanes and church bells and warm beer and skittles and football rattles and cheery banter and clogs on cobbles. Back to vicars-and-tarts parties and Carry On fart jokes, back to Elgar and fudge and proper weather and herbaceous borders and cars called Morris. Back to victoria sponge and 22 yards to a wicket and 15 hands to a horse and 3ft to a yard and four fingers in a Kit Kat, back to gooseberries not avocados, back to deference and respect, to make do and mend and smiling bravely and biting your lip and suffering in silence and patronising foreigners with pity.
We all know what “getting our country back” means. It’s snorting a line of the most pernicious and debilitating Little English drug, nostalgia. The warm, crumbly, honey-coloured, collective “yesterday” with its fond belief that everything was better back then, that Britain (England, really) is a worse place now than it was at some foggy point in the past where we achieved peak Blighty. It’s the knowledge that the best of us have been and gone, that nothing we can build will be as lovely as a National Trust Georgian country house, no art will be as good as a Turner, no poem as wonderful as If, no writer a touch on Shakespeare or Dickens, nothing will grow as lovely as a cottage garden, no hero greater than Nelson, no politician better than Churchill, no view more throat-catching than the White Cliffs and that we will never manufacture anything as great as a Rolls-Royce or Flying Scotsman again.
The dream of Brexit isn’t that we might be able to make a brighter, new, energetic tomorrow, it’s a desire to shuffle back to a regret-curdled inward-looking yesterday. In the Brexit fantasy, the best we can hope for is to kick out all the work-all-hours foreigners and become caretakers to our own past in this self-congratulatory island of moaning and pomposity.
And if you think that’s an exaggeration of the Brexit position, then just listen to the language they use: “We are a nation of inventors and entrepreneurs, we want to put the great back in Britain, the great engineers, the great manufacturers.” This is all the expression of a sentimental nostalgia. In the Brexiteer’s mind’s eye is the old Pathé newsreel of Donald Campbell, of John Logie Baird with his television, Barnes Wallis and his bouncing bomb, and Robert Baden-Powell inventing boy scouts in his shed.
All we need, their argument goes, is to be free of the humourless Germans and spoilsport French and all their collective liberalism and reality. There is a concomitant hope that if we manage to back out of Europe, then we’ll get back to the bowler-hatted 1950s and the Commonwealth will hold pageants, fireworks displays and beg to be back in the Queen Empress’s good books again. Then New Zealand will sacrifice a thousand lambs, Ghana will ask if it can go back to being called the Gold Coast and Britain will resume hand-making Land Rovers and top hats and Sheffield plate teapots.
There is a reason that most of the people who want to leave the EU are old while those who want to remain are young: it’s because the young aren’t infected with Bisto nostalgia. They don’t recognise half the stuff I’ve mentioned here. They’ve grown up in the EU and at worst it’s been neutral for them.
The under-thirties want to be part of things, not aloof from them. They’re about being joined-up and counted. I imagine a phrase most outies identify with is “women’s liberation has gone too far”. Everything has gone too far for them, from political correctness — well, that’s gone mad, hasn’t it? — to health and safety and gender-neutral lavatories. Those oldies, they don’t know if they’re coming or going, what with those newfangled mobile phones and kids on Tinder and Grindr. What happened to meeting Miss Joan Hunter Dunn at the tennis club? And don’t get them started on electric hand dryers, or something unrecognised in the bagging area, or Indian call centres , or the impertinent computer asking for a password that has both capitals and little letters and numbers and more than eight digits.
Brexit is the fond belief that Britain is worse now than at some point in the foggy past where we achieved peak Blighty
We listen to the Brexit lot talk about the trade deals they’re going to make with Europe after we leave, and the blithe insouciance that what they’re offering instead of EU membership is a divorce where you can still have sex with your ex. They reckon they can get out of the marriage, keep the house, not pay alimony, take the kids out of school, stop the in-laws going to the doctor, get strict with the visiting rights, but, you know, still get a shag at the weekend and, obviously, see other people on the side.
Really, that’s their best offer? That’s the plan? To swagger into Brussels with Union Jack pants on and say: “ ’Ello luv, you’re looking nice today. Would you like some?”
When the rest of us ask how that’s really going to work, leavers reply, with Terry-Thomas smirks, that “they’re going to still really fancy us, honest, they’re gagging for us. Possibly not Merkel, but the bosses of Mercedes and those French vintners and cheesemakers, they can’t get enough of old John Bull. Of course they’re going to want to go on making the free market with two backs after we’ve got the decree nisi. Makes sense, doesn’t it?”
Have no doubt, this is a divorce. It’s not just business, it’s not going to be all reason and goodwill. Like all divorces, leaving Europe would be ugly and mean and hurtful, and it would lead to a great deal of poisonous xenophobia and racism, all the niggling personal prejudice that dumped, betrayed and thwarted people are prey to. And the racism and prejudice are, of course, weak points for us. The tortuous renegotiation with lawyers and courts will be bitter and vengeful, because divorces always are and, just in passing, this sovereignty thing we’re supposed to want back so badly, like Frodo’s ring, has nothing to do with you or me. We won’t notice it coming back, because we didn’t notice not having it in the first place.
Nine out of 10 economists say ‘remain in the EU’
You won’t wake up on June 24 and think: “Oh my word, my arthritis has gone! My teeth are suddenly whiter! Magically, I seem to know how to make a soufflé and I’m buff with the power of sovereignty.” This is something only politicians care about; it makes not a jot of difference to you or me if the Supreme Court is a bunch of strangely out-of-touch old gits in wigs in Westminster or a load of strangely out-of-touch old gits without wigs in Luxembourg. What matters is that we have as many judges as possible on the side of personal freedom.
Personally, I see nothing about our legislators in the UK that makes me feel I can confidently give them more power. The more checks and balances politicians have, the better for the rest of us. You can’t have too many wise heads and different opinions. If you’re really worried about red tape, by the way, it’s not just a European problem. We’re perfectly capable of coming up with our own rules and regulations and we have no shortage of jobsworths. Red tape may be annoying, but it is also there to protect your and my family from being lied to, poisoned and cheated.
The first “X” I ever put on a voting slip was to say yes to the EU. The first referendum was when I was 20 years old. This one will be in the week of my 62nd birthday. For nearly all my adult life, there hasn’t been a day when I haven’t been pleased and proud to be part of this great collective. If you ask me for my nationality, the truth is I feel more European than anything else. I am part of this culture, this European civilisation. I can walk into any gallery on our continent and completely understand the images and the stories on the walls. These people are my people and they have been for thousands of years. I can read books on subjects from Ancient Greece to Dark Ages Scandinavia, from Renaissance Italy to 19th-century France, and I don’t need the context or the landscape explained to me. The music of Europe, from its scales and its instruments to its rhythms and religion, is my music. The Renaissance, the rococo, the Romantics, the impressionists, gothic, baroque, neoclassicism, realism, expressionism, futurism, fauvism, cubism, dada, surrealism, postmodernism and kitsch were all European movements and none of them belongs to a single nation.
No time for walls: the best of Europe, from its music and food to IM Pei’s pyramid at the Louvre, depends on an easy collision of cultures
There is a reason why the Chinese are making fake Italian handbags and the Italians aren’t making fake Chinese ones. This European culture, without question or argument, is the greatest, most inventive, subtle, profound, beautiful and powerful genius that was ever contrived anywhere by anyone and it belongs to us. Just look at my day job — food. The change in food culture and pleasure has been enormous since we joined the EU, and that’s no coincidence. What we eat, the ingredients, the recipes, may come from around the world, but it is the collective to and fro of European interests, expertise and imagination that has made it all so very appetising and exciting.
The restaurant was a European invention, naturally. The first one in Paris was called The London Bridge.
Culture works and grows through the constant warp and weft of creators, producers, consumers, intellectuals and instinctive lovers. You can’t dictate or legislate for it, you can just make a place that encourages it and you can truncate it. You can make it harder and more grudging, you can put up barriers and you can build walls, but why on earth would you? This collective culture, this golden civilisation grown on this continent over thousands of years, has made everything we have and everything we are, why would you not want to be part of it?
I understand that if we leave we don’t have to hand back our library ticket for European civilisation, but why would we even think about it? In fact, the only ones who would are those old, philistine scared gits. Look at them, too frightened to join in.”

I’m not a Scot, although I was born there. The poling is at about 60/40 in favour of independence at the moment. Johnson is the poster boy of the independence movement and he is set to be in post for the next 4 years.

Now that the effects of Brexit will start being felt, the Union of the UK is going to fracture. It may be possible for a Brexit Britain to weather this storm and preserve the Union, but it would be a harder fight than Brexit and the current government in Westminster has neither the talent, nor the inclination to fight to keep it together. Indeed the government is going in the other direction towards a more centralised sovereignty in Downing Street, with talk of stripping away the powers of devolution handed out to the regions over the last generation, to bring them to heel.

Many Scots today simply say it’s to late, the government would have had to put their promises into action from the day following the independence referendum in 2014 to have a hope. But nothing happened, now they have broken their biggest promise, to guarantee EU membership for the Scottish people.

Watch this space.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/02/uk/2020-hurt-the-uk-2021-could-kill-it-intl-gbr/index.html

Looking forward to prospering mightily. Here is an example of what businesses will have to do to trade with the EU.
https://twitter.com/uk_domain_names/status/1344691904164855816

The Scots didn’t put border posts on the roads which connect Scotland to England. It was advice announced by the Scottish government. There might have been a few police patrols keeping an eye on things though. A similar thing happened with Wales a month ago.

Here is a good summary of the deal.
https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/future-relationship-trade-deal/goods

I agree, but most Commonwealth countries are a long way from Britain, so won’t replace a lot of the day to day trade we have with the EU.

Here’s the draft agreement
https://ec.europa.eu/info/european-union-and-united-kingdom-forging-new-partnership/future-partnership/draft-agreement_en

It all turns on whether the Scots think that being part of the EU will be of greater benefit than being part of the UK.

This is a big topic, it would probably divide into those questions about the politics and those about the economic future of the country.

Politically there is a democratic deficit north of the border, in which Scotland has little say in the decisions and governance of her people, delivered by an out of date southern England facing political elite. An elite steeped in the class system which has ruled over most of the population of The UK like privileged barons for centuries. Particularly brutal in reference to Scotland.

Economically, the English often repeat the claim that Scotland couldn’t stand on its own feet economically and that England support them financially. Some use this as a reason the patronise the Scottish as somehow inferior and that they should get real and stop grumbling. Then there is the economic effects of Scotland rejoining the EU. This also has a political dimension.

Can the Scots legally control their own borders? (I recognize my question may have built-in ignorance.)

I don’t know the legal position, but I expect they can, they do have a parliament. They did close the border with England a few weeks ago during a COVID lockdown.

Well the Scots are being dragged out of the EU against their will. The irony is that during the first independence referendum the UK government campaigned on a ticket of guaranteeing EU membership to the Scottish if they voted no to independence. Against the claim that they would find themselves out of the EU if they voted for independence.There is also a gapping democratic deficit in being ruled from Westminster.

The Scottish have been dominated by Westminster for about a thousand years. And now they have a Tory twat insulting them and being condescending at every turn.

I’m not exercised over the issue myself, but I couldn’t turn to a Scot and advise them to put up with this for any longer.

Its best to wait a few days for the reporters to read it and tell us what’s in it. But folk are saying that it’s similar to the “Canada deal”. There is tariff and quota free access to the single market, no passporting on financial services and less fish than the Brexiters wanted. Oh and Northern Ireland has been kicked down the road.

Wait, fishhhhhh.

Yet the thing is, thanks to the pandemic the Global economy is already in the gutter, hence the feared "Brexit recession" felt only by the UK, which would have been the worst thing for Boris, will not happen. So might be a great time to do the Brexit, already thanks to the new pandemic strain UK is quarantined. So, what's a Brexit in all of this hassle?

Yes the pandemic gives Johnson something to hide behind politically. However economically the hit of Brexit is systemic and hits different sectors of the economy. Compounding the economic fallout. There will be a long term shrinkage across financial services, industrial investment and farming will need to be propped up. With Tory’s in power there is a suspicion that they will not cough up the money for the farmers and so they will suffer gradual decline as well. Although there may well be some growth in some areas due to the more global approach, I can’t think of anything at the moment. The government is talking up green technologies as a way to forge a way forward, but I can see their incompetence resulting in a failure on that one.

Oops, it’s looking a bit shaky, their still around the table, it might all have folded by the morning when folk realise how far Johnson has folded.

I was only saying that Johnson would spin the disruption against Macron. Rather than any strategy, I’m suggesting that Johnson’s modus operandi is to keep blustering until most options have evaporated leaving a basic choice and then jump at the last minute.

Yes, Johnson might make an announcement at 7.00pm. Can’t wait to see what he says about fish.

Yes, he folded from 80% to 30% on fish and was told to get lost. Macron has got him on the run now. Teach him to threaten gunships.

It’s win win for Macron, good for the French elections and defrocks a confrontational populist on the periphery of the EU. Remember he has grand hopes and plans for EU reform, this is his agenda and pushing back against the populists is key.

Yes, it could be twaddle, but Johnson is definitely squirming. Apparently he spoke to Von der layen twice yesterday. The UK has gone to about 60% and 6 years phasing out on fish and the EU about 30% and 5 years. It’s very close, but this morning the British made a final offer and the EU rejected it and Johnson is vociferous that there is no compromise on fish. There are wild rumours of white smoke, we seem to be at crunch point.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-22/u-k-s-latest-brexit-offer-on-fish-rejected-by-eu-officials

There’s a lot of confusion in the UK about how virulent the new strain is. Because at the weekend government spokesmen were saying its a lot more virulent, that it’s out of control, that it was spreading exponentially during the November lockdown. It is comments like this which may have resulted in the travel bans. There is a wide spread view that they hyped up the new variant to justify their U turn on easing restrictions over Christmas and going back into lockdown.

Also there is the possibility that they are using the new variant as a pawn in a high risk negotiation tactic in the trade deal negotiations. By goading EU countries into taking strong measures against the UK and then painting them as trying to control, or punish us and creating the image of Johnson as our saviour. This works with either a deal, or a no deal. Also it creates a smoke screen of chaos, classic divide and rule tactics.

The state of talks as of last night.
https://twitter.com/tconnellyRTE/status/1341054043792261124

Talks haven’t been officially called off, so there is a small chance of something being agreed, I expect. But somehow I can’t see any way back from here. The way it was phrased when I read it was that yesterday was the deadline for any deal being implemented by 1st of January, so a period of no deal is inevitable.

There are two other possibilities, either there is some kind of extension of the transition period (being called for by all opposition leaders (nothing from Starmer yet) and Nicola Sturgeon). Or some kind of over arching bridging agreement directly from the EU leaders (not looking likely).

The sh*t show has started!
All traffic across the channel has been stopped. This is due to the emergence of a virulent strain of the virus in Kent (near the channel crossings). The part of the UK which is going to have to accommodate many thousands of stranded lorries is going into lockdown. Meanwhile parliament has gone home for Christmas and Jacob Rees Mogg has effectively prorogued parliament by introducing strict rules in debate and voting restricting remote access for MPs.

I expect the top of the Conservative party will be either turning on each other, or in a blind panic. While our supply chains are going into catastrophic crisis.

Oh and breaking news, the talks have stalled and there won’t now be a deal by 1st January, meaning we will be going into contingency plans dictated by the EU.

I see another (additional) dimension, or possibility opened by the burning of the book. Of course the act of burning a book is sacrilegious or at the very least shocking but that’s part of the style. It’s a hyperbole coding for something less shocking: the necessary distance one should take with tradition. Maybe the student wanted to write his own book, based on tradition evidently (the oral teaching of his master is seen by the student as primordial), but also radically departing here or there from tradition. Maybe he was not content with writing comments in the margins of someone else’s book.

Apologies for my late response, but it is 4 years since I looked into this and I don’t have time now to refresh my perspective on this particular teaching. However more generally one of the core aims of Zen is the freeing of the mind from human conditioning. Books condition the reader, although they also inform the reader. Rather like a koan, how to read a book and not read a book. How to clap with one hand.

Which also wouldn't make my advice wrong.

Who is to know if your advice is right, or wrong?

Yes, but if there is a breakdown over fish it could lead to a protracted period of tit for tat.
This morning Barnier is going back to the EU leaders to float the idea of giving back 25% of access, up from 18% (scaling down over 10 years). I expect he will get a frosty reception.

Meanwhile Johnson would find it a hard sell to accept anything less than 80% ( scaling down over 3 years).

Both sides are unlikely to move any further than that due to the political costs at home. Some people suggest Johnson will fold at the last second, some the the EU will.

Wise folk find either possibility very unlikely.

State of the negotiations over the last week. There seems to be a significant deadline tomorrow night Sunday 20th. If a way through doesn’t happen by then, the talks may stall.
https://www.rte.ie/news/brexit/2020/1219/1185362-brexit-trade-talks/

This one caught me by surprise. Most of the farmers around me grow sugar beet and sell it to a large sugar factory just up the road. I was thinking that these farmers, who mostly voted leave, would be ok after brexit, as there is strong demand for sugar in the UK. But already they’ve been sold down the river following a sweetener of tariffs reductions to start the US trade deal.
https://twitter.com/DPMcBride/status/1339227869957005314

Yes, it looks that there is a way through, but I expect a lot more ping pong yet and the possibility that Johnson will fumble it at the last moment.

Ratification will feature when we reach the new year, as it is to late for full ratification now. So the contingency plans which the EU agreed yesterday will be implemented, unless an extension is agreed, which I doubt. Meaning that the terms become gradually more and more dictated by the EU. Contingency is wafer thin, so there will be a lot of chaos in January even with a deal.

For example, many hauliers are not planning to send any lorries come January.

I sense that the government is getting worried about the chaos of no deal and are looking for a way out. There’s a small chance that the EU might find a way to help them out, but it’s not looking good.

The EU wants to force the UK

This is where the problem with sovereignty comes in. The EU is not doing this, the UK is free to adopt its own terms for the interaction it has with other countries. But when it agrees trade deals with those countries it negotiates a set of common terms, which it agrees to abide by.

I agree that some of it could be interpreted as political issues, but they all have affects on trade. Trade deals are very complex because they involve all the ramifications of various standards, regulations, state aid etc.

There is a particular problem evidenced in this negotiation caused by the hostile dishonest, caniving approach by one party, the UK. As a result there is very little trust and the EU, understandably wants every term legally binding. Particularly while the UK government states that it seeks to diverge from the terms when expedient to its own interests.

As one commentator said today, the level playing field is only problematic to a country which intends to lower standards, to deregulate, to diverge. If that country was intending to maintain high standards maintain good regulations and be cooperative with its partners, the level playing field would be no problem at all. There is a sliding scale here which has implications for trade.

I don't know either, but there are Tory donors to think of, the tabloids and Farige. All of whom are rabid dogs, radicalised.

I wouldn't want to be in his shoes.

I know, but Johnson will be toast, unless he can somehow put the ERG etc on the naughty step. I suspect they have him in a headlock, so they would take him down with them.

Is he a turkey who would vote for Christmas?

Quite.

Interesting interpretation here, suggesting that Johnson is hiding behind the bluster and looking for an opportunity to fold.
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/boris-johnson-fold-brexit-negotiations-level-playing-field

Yes, although I would point out that the climb down will have to come from the UK side, because it is they who are not happy with the rules as laid out by the members of the market they are seeking access to. These rules are simple and practical trading terms, whereas the UK position is conflating some vague notion of sovereignty with these conditions, thereby falsely concluding that by agreeing to these rules, the UK will become trapped or enslaved somehow by the EU. This is entirely unreasonable, illogical and stupid.

Following the bad smell last week (Johnson insulting Von der Leyen and Barnier over dinner), things are smelling rosier now. The mood music is that a deal is beginning to form, both sides have moved a little on level playing field. No mention of fish, as folk say it was never about fish (I doubt that myself). The important development though is that it is now to late for ratification, so some kind of delay process is going to happen along with the contingency plans which the EU had put in place in preparation for no deal. This will be a bare bones set of arrangements to keep planes in the air and lorries moving. Anything agreed in the meantime can be ratified in the new year, although it would take a few months. The EU is talking of 6 months for this to play out.

The upshot of this is that Johnson has now lost control, he has played his last card (unless he has a card hidden up his sleeve with a fish on it). As this process pans out, it will be the EU spoon feeding the UK towards something sensible and the UK will become less and less able to dictate terms.

Expect at some point Johnson to throw a fish out of the Pram when the rabid dogs bite back, but the UK is now powerless and adrift in relation to the EU. And the boil hasn’t been lanced.

The brexiters in the Tory party are a cult with all the warped ideology, (I was there during the eighties and nineties, I saw the ideology spawn and grow within the party). It shouldn’t be a surprise that Johnson has lost any common sense he might have had. It’s a cult with some very wealthy an influential backers. He will have to keep his base happy, or they will turn on him and spit him out. This includes pandering to the right wing mags who can sway the red wall. So he can only go for the hardest clean break Brexit. But it’s an express train about to run out of track, he is doomed just as surely as are the Tory party themselves. The people will not forgive them when they start to feel the pain, it’s the miners strike and the pole tax all rolled into one and then some. With Scottish independence as the cherry on the top.

As before the UK and the EU can’t square the circle. I remember the look on Johnson’s and Gove’s faces the morning after the referendum. You could see in those faces that they were lost and dumbfounded, as to what they were to do next and what they were going to have to spend the next few years trying to deliver. Between then and now the Conservative party has been going around in circles, fighting amongst themselves, becoming more and more chaotic, to the point now where the Prime Minister has humiliated himself in front of the EU leaders professing cakism.

The emperor has no clothes.

I’m not so optimistic, but let’s see what happens tonight. Will Boris hand her the shit hamburger, or roll over to have his tummy tickled.