I understand your rationale, but remind you that this issue goes back at least 1000 years, in which there is a long history of the subjugation of Scotland by the English. We were led to believe that the act of Union which settled the matter was a voluntary Union of countries working together as one. Being voluntary, it is up to the people of member countries if they remain, or leave the Union.
Like you I wouldn’t want this to happen, I would gladly go back to how the world was before the referendum. But it was an act of constitutional upheaval which was inevitably going to have consequences. Something Cameron should have considered before calling the referendum.

Unfortunately we now have the circumstances where the break up of the Union is pretty much inevitable. Due to the clowns who have forced their way into Downing Street and are doing their Laurel and Hardy impersonation at our expense.

Looks like the debate has started.

Can Johnson say no?
If so, is it sustainable?

Thanks for linking to the channel4 article. Unfortunately I expect we will see more reports like that.

The double variant, and a triple.

Its the reality I’m afraid. Yes it is an unsourced tweet, but it describes a situation I have heard from a number of different sources over the last few days. There was a good discussion about it on Matt Frei’s slot on LBC yesterday (24th April, approx 11.30am).

There are people dying in the streets, cities with populations of millions where hospitals are in a state of collapse. Oxygen supplies all but exhausted. A black market for drugs which might help, etc.

Some harrowing stories come out of India.

https://twitter.com/akashstronaut/status/1385645544932929539?s=20

I couldn’t understand how India got off so lightly in the first wave. I was worried about them a year ago, I never expected my worst fears to come true a whole year later.

A catch up on Brexit Britain.
The trade situation is dire, small businesses are finding it expensive and with long delays, things getting lost etc, selling anything into EU. Larger companies are having to open warehouses, offices etc on the continent. Our imports are still not being checked, which is the only reason a lot of them are still coming in. Once they are following all the rules re’ imports, a lot will stop coming.
Good summary from Chris Grey.

https://t.co/MDaQlKMLNA?amp=1

Weird stuff.

I can only conclude that “infinity” is a figment of rational thought. Any notion that there is infinity other than this is beyond us to determine. Because everything about our existence indicates finiteness. I think there is confusion between endless sequences and infinite sequences. These may seem equivalent in thought, but when applied to existence they throw up weird philosophical conundrums. Suggesting they cannot realistically be applied in that way.

Index of business and jobs lost due to Brexit. This not exhaustive, but is a good illustration of the trends.
https://yorkshirebylines.co.uk/the-digby-jones-index/

“Brexit is coming apart at the seams”

Good update by Chris Grey.
https://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2021/02/brexit-is-coming-apart-at-seams.html

No, I don’t do anything like that, I’m mainly a cartoonist. The only other platform you’ll find me on is Twitter. #punshhh and I’m not the shady Russian on that tag, I’m the other one.

Oops, I should have said that the EU has banned the import of live shellfish from the UK. This will put the whole industry out of business.
https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/exclusive-eu-tells-british-shellfish-traders-that-a-post-brexit-export-ban-is-indefinite-not-temporary

The UK’s procurement was independent of the joint EU scheme. But this is nothing to do with Brexit, the UK would have been independent anyway if we were in the EU. The UK is more independent in this way. It was the experts in Oxford who made the vaccine in record time which presented the opportunity.

It is understandable that the EU reacted the way they did, it is an extreme global crisis. The UK government has been just as chaotic time after time. Also the reckless act of forcing the Brexit arrangements during a pandemic has destabilised relations between the UK and EU. This sort of thing will keep happening in the chaos. It was inevitable that there would be some delays in the EU vaccine procurement due to the size and number of countries involved. Within an hour of the triggering of article16 by an EU official the Irish prime minister and Von Deleyen on a conference call cancelled the action and defused the issue. Preferable to the headless chickens we have on this side of the channel.

I expect Johnson to trigger the same article any day now as the tsunami of Brexit chaos breaks. Today there are port officials in NI considering closing of ports due to aggression from couriers stuck due to NI protocol, making them unworkable. Today leaders of the fashion industry wrote to the PM saying that they are on the verge of collapse due to a total lack of preparation of any kind of agreement enabling fashion shows to go ahead, alongside a mountain of paperwork, just like the musician and artist crisis. Also the EU has just slapped a ban on tens of thousands of tonnes of shellfish which UK fishermen had to freeze, because they couldn’t ship them fresh, from being imported to the processing plants in the EU. All this chaos is going to explode at some point over the next few weeks.

Brexit dividends.

Yes trade with the EU has dropped by about half overnight. Different sectors hit as the penny drops. The fishing industry has virtually died and last week it was pig farmers and pork exports. When the sheep farmers go under in a few weeks the reckoning will start. mainstream UK media has kept quiet during January, you would think Brexit hadn’t happened.

Don’t be to hasty, I could give you a list as long as your arm of the political and administrative failures of the UK government in relation to Brexit. Including a threat from Johnson to trigger article 16 two weeks ago. Don’t forget who is the villain here.

Anyway the value of the EU is as an overarching agreement of cooperation and unity among the nations of Europe. Without it Europe would still be beset with squabbles, rivalries and even wars. Imagine the breakdown in relations between Britain and the EU multiplied 27 times. This is why the EU was created and in spite of its overbearing bureaucracy, it works and is a good foundation from which Europe can grow in mutual cooperation.

I recognised him when he said something about people having a few mega tonnes of nuclear weapons aimed down their throats. He said that before. I quite liked him, but I wasn’t exposed to the smut.

London has declared an emergency, I expect the army to be brought in now. I heard a virologist interviewed on the BBC just now saying that enough patients to fill a hospital are going into hospitals every day currently.

What I mean is I am of English heritage, but was born in Scotland while my parents were living there for only a few years, before moving back to England. While in the UK Scotland doesn’t have separate citizenship for Scots, everyone is classed as a British citizen. If Scotland becomes independent, I doubt I would have any problems in getting a Scottish passport.

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