This is fucking amazing work… https://www.youtube.com/embed/V7707zEX9X4
I have spent years watching F1 and no-one has come close to explaining the intricacy and beauty of the engineering involved with the clarity of this video.
This is fucking amazing work… https://www.youtube.com/embed/V7707zEX9X4
I have spent years watching F1 and no-one has come close to explaining the intricacy and beauty of the engineering involved with the clarity of this video.
Nitin Sawhney was on Desert Island Discs this week, so I thought I would make an Apple music playlist of the eight discs he selected…
The interview is well worth listening to. The attitude of music teacher at his school is a shocking revelation.
Dear Mr. Buckland,
Thank you for your recent email outlining your reasons for voting in favour of your Government’s Withdrawal Agreement Deal.
As became clear last night, there is no appetite in Parliament to support the Prime Minister’s approach to Brexit. She attempted to placate the far right elements of your party by imposing unobtainable or mutually exclusive red lines that have merely painted you into a corner that has led to this most humiliating defeat.
You lost because you united a divided Parliament that represents a divided country that is united only in its opposition to your misguided interpretation of a Brexit no-one wants.
The referendum result of 2016 was based on a constituency of 48% of voters who were united (To different strengths and with different motivations) in a single proposal: to remain in the European Union on our current terms.
The 52% who voted to Leave was always a precarious coalition of the discontent, the dispossessed and the disturbed: from those who admired Switzerland or Norway, who believed that “…no-one is talking about leaving the Single Market….”; the safe-seat voters ravished by 40 years of Thatcherism and desperate to have their voice heard for once; the poor sops who entertained the bus-borne idea that the Conservative Party would increase spending on the NHS; to the far-right anarchists and libertarians, those of the ERG and the yellow tabards yelling bile about betrayal, patriotism and democracy, whilst dedicating themselves to making reality Putin’s fantasies.
There never was a single “Will of the People”. The closest approximation was 48% of voters coalescing around retaining our rights as European citizens on our current terms; the one defined proposal offered by that referendum. You and Your Prime Minister have seen homogeneity in that 52% where in reality there was only division, resentment, and cranks and unicorns.
Your Government has failed in its attempt to build a consensus around the desires of extremists in the Tory Party. By lumping together the Anything-Else’s, the None-of-the-Aboves, the Bus-Believers, the Sovrintists, the Norway-Plussers, the Canada-Plussers, the Ukrain-Minussers, the racists, the bored and the trouble-makers, you have wasted two years of possible coalition-building both internally and externally with imperious cakeism and navel-gazing, and squandered the patience and respect of our European partners.
As the European Parliament Election campaigns warm up, It is time face reality; to recognise that no EU27 Leader wants to be associated with your lame-duck loser of a Prime Minister, that there will be no more favours, no more explanatory letters. Expect cold-shoulders and contempt from now on.
It is time for MP’s of all colours show some leadership, to grow up, accept the mistakes and hubris of the last 3 years and to build a consensus around the 48% who voted positively in favour of a known set of defined proposals, to remain in the EU.
If we learned anything yesterday it is that you will never succeed in pleasing more than half of the 52% with any one, single, concrete proposal. Stop paralysing the country with your failed attempts to appease the unappeasable.
You have 72 days to stop the madness, your reputation depends upon it, because come March 30th you will have to be very sure that it was worth throwing away our opt-outs and our rebates. As GDP falls and investment dries up unemployment rises, inflation picks up, the 52% will melt away faster than collaborators after an occupation, leaving only those politicians who allowed it to happen as the reviled perpetrators.
Yours sincerely,
etc..
I have written to my MP in the UK: Robert Buckland MP, asking him for his advice on my situation in light of his government’s Brexit Deal.
Dear Mr. Buckland
I moved from Swindon to Toledo in 2005. I am a UK citizen. I vote as an Overseas Elector in Swindon South and will do again in any UK National Election or Referendum for as long as I am able.
Your government’s decision to prioritise the removal of our Freedom of Movement threatens my ability to work and provide for my family.
Since moving to Spain I have worked in corporate IT jobs that require me to travel and work across the the EU, often travelling at short notice and without delays, visas or work permits to offices and customers across the EU.
When I lose my Freedom of Movement as a result of the Withdrawal Agreement negotiated by your government, it is probable that I will no longer be eligible for my job at my current employer or any similar role in Spain (there is no department or process for managing visas or sponsoring work permits. It would be an unecessary overhead they are not interested in bearing).
What should I do?
The options I see open to me are:
Ending Freedom of Movement is an unnecessary misguided, small-minded attack on normal hard-working working people across the UK and Europe. We contribute to our host countries in infinite ways, this is the most hurtful and painful upheaval that a government can impose upon its citizens.
I would be interested to hear what your advice to me would be. Should I renounce my UK Citizenship to maintain my life in the UK?
Is selling my family home and downsizing to account for my diminished status and earning capacity as a UK Citizen in Spain part of your Brexit Dividend?
Will you vote to put your government’s Brexit deal to a People’s Vote so that it can be endorsed as the “Will of the People” against the other options of Leaving with No Deal or Remaining in the EU?
Yours sincerely,
Simon Pike.
I have downloaded my data, and finally deleted my Facebook account.
What a bunch of abusive fucks.
In some kind of Jungian counter-projection spasm, Boris Johnson is using Project Fear to sell his perceived benefits of Brexit on the basis that the EU wants political unity . At some level his government clearly feels threatened by unity, and so prefers the comfortable tantrum of discord, division and divestment.
The founding fathers of the European Union did not create the common market to tear down barriers to trade but to pursue a political project.
As opposed to the disunity that shaped the European experience of the last century?
Of course the European Union is a political project. It is a project to put aside the petty, destructive nationalisms of the 20th Century and build a sense of commonality and community using education, culture and business to bring people together, to pool our resources and to align our interests. To foment peaceful cooperation and neighbourly partnerships rather than competition. The EU’s very founding as the European Coal and Steel Community was an attempt to unify access to the raw materials of war and to nullify any one member’s advantage or ability to wage war on its neighbours. You can’t get more political than that. We tried competitive disunity across Europe for 2,000 years and it led to a constant cycle of conquest and resentment, bloodshed, violence and poverty.
Despite its obvious democratic deficit the European Union is the only body currently capable of standing up for its citizens and defending the integrity of its internal markets in the face of rapacious international capitalism. The EU governs the behaviour of these bullying trans-national behemoths, generally in the interest maintaining of a productive healthy environment in which to do business. The EU has enforced rules and defended its citizens against the overbearing power of Microsoft, Google, Apple, Facebook and Volkswagen, in ways that British politicians (with the admirable exception of Sadiq Khan’s stand against Uber) have singularly failed to govern. Those who flout the rules of the EUs internal market should rightly lose access to the second largest consumer economy on earth.
The EU is undoubtedly a force for unity in Europe and Boris Johnson and the English nationalists with whom he marches are doing a sterling job of promoting that unity to an extent that no one could have ever imagined.
La pregunta del ayer fuesido, “¿Puigdemont ha declarado la independencia o no?”. La respuesta simple y claro es:
No.
No se declaró la Independencia de Cataluña. Si lo hubiera hecho los indepententistas de Cataluña habrian despertados con resaca, un defecit de Cava y un corralito de su sistema financiero.
Pero eso no es la pregunta con que nos deberíamos entretener. Después de la intervencion de Carles Puidgemont ayer, y bajo la sombra del artículo 155, las preguntas pertinentes son:
Entiendo que hay quien interprete que las actuaciones del Govern y El Parlament durante las ultimas semanas permitarían una respuesta afirmativa a una, ambas o ninguna de esas preguntas. Pero esas interpretaciones no cambiaron ni con el discurso del President en el Parlament ni con su actuación posterior.
Lo que hizo Carles Puidgemont en su intervención en el Parlament fue aprovechar el despliegue mediatico internacional para reiterar su interpretación de como hemos llegado a ese crisis constitucional y pedir al Gobierno Español tiempo, aire y diálogo.
Luego firmó una carta simbólico para tranquilizar a los radicales de su apoyo domestico y tuiteó en varios idiomas europeos para reforzar su mensaje de diálogo.
Con la petición de clarificación y su amenaza de intervenir en Cataluña, Mariano Rajoy ha firmado su carta simbólico para tranquilizar a sus radicales en C’s .
Seguimos a la espera de que se convierte en políglota.