It's, almost, as if she doesn't know what she's talking about: https://twitter.com/JuliaHB1/status/1641679131552231425
Being able to travel to Calais on a coach trip is a luxury. Foreign travel is nothing more than an obsession of the tofu-munching Islington elites. No normal people go on holiday because they're too busy working 14 hours a day six-and-a-half days a week at the top hat factory owned by a cigar-smoking imperialist. Every single child on those school coaches is called Tarquin or Felicity and will be rescued when Daddy's helicopter comes to pick them up and take them back home to the Cotswolds. So it's really a complete non-story. And anyway, I once queued up at Dover in the 70s when the Austin Allegro in front of me broke down as it tried to drive up the ramp so it's nothing new either. And also it's also all the fault of the French for being jobsworths, taking ages to check each passport. Don't they know it's us who've taken control of our borders, not them. Sort it out Macron and employ some more workers at border control and make them all work till they're 68 like what we do. Edit: I forgot lazy... the French are lazy jobsworths.
By now you would think the sheer incompetence wouldn't surprise me....yet here I am, surprised again.
How toxic must a political issue be (as insane as this one is) if a government with a 66 seat majority 'drops it': Government retreats from Brexit bill plan to ditch EU laws Climbdown likely after cross-party Lords revolt threatens to defeat Jacob Rees-Mogg’s retained EU law bill
The rumour amongst the Brexit loons and DUP is the bill has to be ditched as a direct result of the Windsor Framework. Regulation divergence is now not possible while the UK has to comply with the Framework they say. Not sure if that is true but hilarious if it is.
UK predicted to have the worst performing economy in the G20 this year, even when compared to Russia. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-65240749 Just think about that for a second: Russia, under global sanctions by other world governments designed to hurt its economy as much as possible, is set to do better than the UK. Brexit has to be the worst self inflicted injury by any country in modern history.
Wowsers. That's a spread of less than two percent for all but China. And Germany, the heart of the EU, is just ahead of us by a sliver, also on the wrong side of Russia. Brexit, despite the economic issues, is still the best thing this country has done, especially with the EU's recent swing towards the far right.
First European trip this Easter since the change on checking passports. It was pretty efficient at Barcelona airport, with a dedicated set of gates in a mini dedicated area, terminal M, with the full visual checking of passports. Mind you the moaning around us was still going on. Can see chaos at smaller airports without the space. Heyho!
Having spent the past 10 days in Europe it's hard to avoid the conclusion that the scam perpetrated on the British public that 'everything's just as bad / worse' in Europe has worked brilliantly on some. The UK, in comparison to our friends directly across the channel, currently resembles the closed down branch of Radio Rentals with a smashed window. Maybe I spend all my time in the ridiculously posh bits of Europe, I dunno, but the general decrepitude in even the wealthier parts of England is becoming very hard to ignore and is especially obvious on return to these shores. Literally everything is broken. When did it become like this? The great paradox is that we have very rapidly become a poor yet very expensive country. Of course it's all Ukraine or Covid. Things that clearly aren't affecting France or Belgium to the same extent, weirdly. Oh but they're really right wing. Unlike the UK, which is currently hell-bent on illegally deporting refugees and defending the right to gratuitously display Gollywogs. Alice in Wonderland stuff really.
My experience is the same. I've been to Europe several times in the last 12 months. Fortunately, as I have an Irish passport, I don't have to endure the queues. But, to be fair, the airports I have used have all been very well organised and the Brits, including my wife on a couple of occasions, have been processed as quickly as possible. But I totally agree that the continent seem to be doing better than us. From their full supermarket shelves, pothole free roads to their clean and efficient hospitals, things just seem to be working there when they are clearly failing here.
I’ve been here a week on my first trip back since last September, and I was trying to figure out whether I remembered the roads being so awful the last time I was home. I’ve done a fair amount of driving over the past 7 days, and as somebody who hasn’t been here in a while, it’s really been noticeable that for whatever reason, a lot of roads are in terrible shape.
You can take your wife through the EU channel if she is travelling with you and trips with you don't count towards the 90 day rule.
Must admit Barcelona was pretty impressive. A clean city, with infrastructure upgrades to tram ways, etc. all the major attractions had pavements in a state the National Theatre and South Bank can only dream of. The parks and streets lined with trees looked in a good state, despite a near three year drought, so severe the city fountains have been turned off. The decline in UK infrastructure maintenance and state of the public, (of course there are examples of new stuff like the Elizabeth Line), over the last decade is a bit depressing. I suspect most European states have more powerful and effective local and regional authorities, and a more rigorous approach to regulating public services even if delivered by private business. The shocking performance of UK water companies is one that would be interesting to compare to say France, Spain and Italy.
I took my parents to Spain a couple of years ago (literally just before Covid) who are both in their eighties. They had not been since the 1970s. They couldn't believe how clean and modern it was. They still had the Franco backward and poor Spain of donkeys and sombreros in their heads. A place where you certainly wouldn't drink the tap water. Now Spain is on the up. One of the former "PIGS" nations, they and the likes of Ireland are, I'm afraid, moving ahead of us now.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/apr/17/jim-ratcliffe-ineos-electric-grenadier-austria It's that man again!
I find the names of the vehicles chosen by the great patriot very amusing: Surely F*silier, Freibeuter, Brigadier, Quartiermeister, Sapper and Richtsch*tze. Unpaywalled Torygraph link: https://archive.ph/WFx5V
FFS - this is a major 'Olive branch' from the EU? UK will not have to pay for last two years if it rejoins Horizon scheme, EU says Confirmation by officials makes it more likely Britain will be re-admitted to €95.5bn European scientific research programme Are they that ideological about working with the EU?
Thread compiling all the Leave attack posters you’ll want to cut out and keep. Here’s a favourite. https://twitter.com/laura__fox/status/1648731206408601615?s=46&t=oqOMSJXE_g7J5C7kNPG9LA
https://twitter.com/Anna_Soubry/status/1648945900646014976 The, frankly disgusting, tale is summarised in PE's, excellent, Page 94 podcast.
