Random Rant Thread

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If the "deal" that has been on the table is to actually happen, with some modifications, it will be basically a hard Brexit all the same, because it WILL make British access to the EU market significantly harder.

No tariffs? The EU was offering no tariffs from [checking notes] well, the first day of the negotiation. Literally.

Aside from political performances, I can't imagine Brexiters privately unhappy with this. There will be no freedom of movement, no customs union, no EEA, no nothing. Why wouldn't they like it? Only the crazy, true believers in Great Britannia would honestly complain.

I told you many times that a hard Brexit, including No Deal, was the only option. There never was any other scenario to happen.

It'll be very bad for Britain, and also bad for the EU in a way since a shit load of EU citizens will view it as Brussels conceding way too much to a rogue state as many European politicians will definitely frame it that way. They don't like the no tariffs thing.

It's true that the EU could've played a lot harder ball with the UK, but didn't. But the EU is not really "conceding too much." You could say that if the UK somehow gets a soft-ish Brexit now, but the chances of that happening are zero. No tariffs, but we won't concede much more, was the line that they drew in the beginning, and they didn't cross it.

If you are a British citizen with some Irish lineage that you can claim, lucky you.

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It's been many months since the pandemic has started, and amazingly we still haven't addressed the problem of scientists saying "There is no evidence" being interpreted as "It's not true" by liberal arts types = media people & most of the general public.

I think the scientists, including the WHO, should just stop using that expression ("There is no evidence") altogether, at least in public. I keep using that expression here because frankly I don't care if you misinterpret it or not, but public messaging is hugely important.

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I took a little deeper look at the "deal" on the table, and well, I wasn't really right, but wasn't completely wrong either. I totally expect various problems to pop up every now and then, and each time the UK and EU will have to do a quickie somewhat-hush-hush ad hoc negotiation-lite to basically converge, with the UK doing most of the concession. So, even though they will trumpet to the world that the negotiation will be finally over, it's done, congrats everyone, go back to your Covid-plagued home town and lock yourself in, etc., it's still an incomplete, uncertain deal.

At this point most Brits are so sick of the whole thing that they will just take anything as long as it's a "deal." This is absolutely medium-long-term negative for the UK, as obviously it is a significantly worse deal than what they had as an EU member, but I think those who kept saying that there will be no deal were misguided.

I was super-annoyed by Johnson's reference to the "Australian option" precisely because I knew he was playing a stupid political game with that terminology. The excessive emphasis on fishing was such a giveaway; It was on the front page so that Johnson will be able to declare victory as that's the area where the EU would have to concede the most because of the very nature of the issue. It's a tiny part of the British economy, and they export most of it to Europe anyway.

I suspect that Johnson knew all along that No Deal wasn't going to be an option no matter what.

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Er, No, Britain can NEVER be a Switzerland. What an absurd idea. There's absolutely nothing in common between the two. 

What, a big banking sector? Are you talking about the one that is backstopped by a high-profit-margin manufacturing sector that is one of the most competitive in the world?

So, nope.

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Britain simply cannot live totally independent of Europe, and that reality will just come back and bite them sooner or later. The EU is standing on the very shaky ground too, especially in terms of economic structure, but in whatever form Britain will desperately need Europe.

I expect significant reconvergence to happen down the road unless Brits are a completely, completely suicidal people with deep-seated death wish, but I guess those who are "experts" on UK politics will probably laugh at me for saying that.

And if you are an EU citizen, well, I think your side won. Because, what has the EU lost over this? Flemish fishermen's loyalty to the project?

I can't think of anything significant. You do know that you couldn't just tell them to take a hike, right? The UK is not a Greece that you can just slap around until morale improves.

And the EU successfully demonstrated, at times with brute force, how absolutely painful the whole process of leaving the union is *even if* you are not part of the eurozone.

But that's my definition of "win." Your mileage may vary.

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This is indeed correct, with no sarcasm.

Anyway, I wonder how many people, inside and outside Britain, understand that this is the *beginning* of the next phase of Brexit: Building a new relationship within this framework.

Needless to say, it will be even slower, and longer than what they've gone through, and for many, a lot more painful.

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This is bold.

www.gov.uk/government/speeches/prime-ministers-statement-on-eu-negotiations-24-december-2020

And there will be no non-tariff barriers to trade.

To straight-up lie like that in a somewhat historic speech is pretty bold.

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It seems that Americans couldn't care less about Brexit. I only see a very, very low level of interest even among the informed news consumers. Even reporters don't really seem to care much. I suppose it's almost like yesterday's news for most Americans; The whole thing does feel outdated and even out-of-place given where the global trend seems headed now.

Anyway, I don't think anyone has any concrete idea on what will happen to an extremely service-sector-oriented economy like Britain's after a deal like this. 

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Over the last few decades many people began to talk about the rapid decline of the quality of Oxbridge, particularly Oxford, but this is astonishingly bad. How could this happen?

Special Report-How a British COVID-19 vaccine went from pole position to troubled start
www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-britain-vaccine-sp-idUSKBN28Y0XU

The shipment, batch K.0011, had undergone the Italian company’s quality check using an established genetic test - quantitative PCR, or qPCR - to determine viral matter per milliliter.

Oxford ran its own analysis for good measure. The university had been using a different method known as spectrophotometry, which measures viral material in liquids based on how much ultraviolet light the viral matter absorbs.

Oxford’s measurement showed that the batch was more potent than the Italian manufacturer had found, the documents show. Oxford trusted its own result and wanted to remain consistent with a measuring tool it had used throughout an earlier trial phase. So it asked Britain’s drugs regulator for permission to reduce the volume of vaccine injected into trial participants from the K.0011 batch. Permission was granted.

I won't go into details, but trust me, this is super, super dumb.

And this makes me feel dumb as hell too. I defended these people.

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Still I see nearly zero interest in Brexit outside Britain and Europe. Holiday seasons and Covid and all that, yes, but around here - by which I don't mean the geographical "here" but a figurative/abstract one - I seem to be the only one who cares.

It's almost baffling actually. It's not a small event.

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Paul Krugman seems to think that it will certainly make Britain poorer but not substantially enough for the average briton to really feel much of it, and that it isn't as (geo)politically devastating as one might think since it's not like the EU is succeeding in building a democratic Europe either anyway. So who cares, he says.

That seems to be the plurality opinion among the American liberal economists. Well, I'd only half-agree. That's a very "economist" way of thinking.

Krugman must be aware that Brexit will end up significantly weakening Europe (EU + Britain + Switzerland + Norway + Serbia + etc.). But that's not really bad news for American liberals like him after all.

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So, anyway, AstraZeneca/Oxford now claim that their vaccines are as effective as their mRNA rivals = 90-95%, I suppose.

That's a bold claim after all the trouble, and they'll really need to get their shit together to give us ample evidence for that.

But huge if true, indeed. Complete game changer particularly for poorer nations.

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LOL @ Alec Baldwin's wife impersonating a Spaniard for well over a decade. Turned out to be just a New Englander, as Yankee as one can get.

I admire people like her, though. Hell, I often wished I had started posting here as a Chechen living in Dubai or something more interesting, but to keep lying coherently just anonymously should be hard and tiring enough. To do that in real life like that takes a lot of effort, determination and... frankly, insanity.

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The new variant may be more transmissible than the others, but it seems to me that the latest big Covid-19 surge in the UK was started by school children. There have been an absolutely huge number of teens and even younger testing positive left and right, who are spreading it to the older generations.

Adults should avoid children outside their own households. Grandparents should just forego seeing their grandkids.

Children are less susceptible to this virus, in terms of both transmissibility and illness, but like I said a few months ago, they are still human, and schools turned out to be a major transmission hub especially if no preventive measures have been taken. As far as I've heard, the Covid-related restrictions/rules at schools were somewhere between shockingly loose and virtually non-existent in England, at least compared to the ones around here. It's impossible to social-distance in school, but there are some things that you can do to reduce the chances of outbreaks.

You should keep schools open IMO, but on the condition that you try to minimize the risks as much as possible. It seems to me that far too many countries have neglected to do that. Let's not hop from one extreme - "OMG, WE GOTTA CLOSE ALL SCHOOLS NOW, NOW, NOW!" - to another - "Hahaha, children are fine, so who gives a shit."

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No surprise at all. You just can't hide excess deaths forever.

Russia admits to world's third-worst Covid-19 death toll
More than 186,000 Russians have died due to coronavirus, three times more than previously reported
www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/28/russia-admits-to-world-third-worst-covid-19-death-toll-underreported

I suppose the Russian government wants to scare people into getting vaccinated ASAP with Sputnik V, which, predictably, few Russians are willing to take at this point. Needless to say, not even a supporter of the regime trusts the government over there. They'd rather take Moderna's if they had to get vaccinated.

Other countries - including the ones whose numbers look absolutely awful already - undercount Covid deaths too, as wildly as Russia in some cases. Chances are that your country's actual deaths per capita is somewhere between its official number and Belgium's. As bad as it looks, Italy's number for instance should be really off.