Greetings on Christmas Day to all Christendom and to the wider world.
Historical note
An historical note from Christmas 1939:
https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/christmas1939.htm
From 1942:
Brexit
It might be said that I should not write about ordinary political matters on Christmas Day, but the news having just been announced yesterday about Brexit, a few more words are needed.
As I said yesterday, “Boris” has decided to put on the mask of a tragi-comic Chamberlain rather than a tragi-comic Churchill. He says now that he has, belatedly, delivered Brexit. Of sorts, arguably. It is all rather underwhelming.
From what I have seen so far, it seems that the agreement made is all right in many respects, not very satisfactory in others (continuing security and intelligence co-operation, for example). https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/dec/24/from-tariffs-to-visas-heres-whats-in-the-brexit-deal
This goes beyond BRINO (Brexit In Name Only) but not very far beyond.
Having said that, the agreement has pretty much shot Farage’s fox as far as the EU is concerned. I think that, though opposition to EU norms will continue on the fringes, this means the end of Brexit and EU matters as central in UK political discourse. Effectively the end of 20 years of Brexit/EU being political drivers in the UK.
To a large extent, the agreement has also shot Labour’s fox re. the EU, too. Labour under Keir Starmer has become almost invisible. Unsurprising. Starmer-Labour has, with minor carping, supported the “Conservative” Government on almost every issue in the past year, from the “virus” messaging and the facemask nonsense to Brexit. It seems that that support will now continue in the Commons vote on this agreement (next week, unless delayed). The agreement will thus be approved, with minor rebellions on the fringes.
As far as the general public is concerned, this agreement will draw a line under Brexit, politically.
The agreement seems to cover most of the factors important in the public mind, such as (by implication) the Roma gypsy element looting the UK from foreign bases, and also the low-paid foreign workers, Poles etc, coming to the UK as of right; the food standards now staying where they are (because the UK will not drop below EU norms, so no American chlorinated chicken etc).
It looks as though animal welfare in farming etc is covered (the UK is ahead of most of the EU states in that respect anyway).
Yes, there are sacrifices made: the fishing part is not very good for the UK, though at least there will not be the first Anglo-French naval engagements, in the Channel, since Napoleonic times. Britain’s fishermen have been, to some extent, sacrificed for the wider good. That means that the head has ruled the heart, fishing being only 1% of the UK’s GDP.
Also, British people will (or may) find it less convenient to live or work in EU states, though most live rather than work (retired people etc) and that happened even before the UK joined the original EEC in 1973, though on a smaller scale. People just had to apply for a carte de sejour in France, and the equivalent elsewhere.
There will be some grumbling about this from both “Brexiteers” and Remainers but, as a major political issue, Brexit has been finally put to bed.
Tweets seen today
The above Twitter accounts are always worth looking at.
Afternoon music
Interesting tweet thread
More music
M.R. James
A Pleasant Terror… Well worth watching…
Goodnight, and wishing well all who wish me well. Meine Ehre heisst Treue…
God bless blessed memory…
Ian Robert Millard 
I don’t The no it is surprising that Boris-Idiot is such a fan of Churchill instead of a genuine Tory PM like Chamberlain. After all, Churchill was a flashy showman who showed more regard for his image than little things like details or this country’s long term geopolitical future.
As we know, Boris doesn’t do fine detail which is why he didn’t take the virus at all seriously until he himself was affected and that shows with Brexit too.
As with his hero, Churchill, who wanted to flog off NI to the terrorist infested Irish Free State Boris has also betrayed Ulstermen and put them on a trajectory towards a ‘united’ Ireland. His botched ‘Brexit’ is a disgrace and if this deal is not amended it puts the UK’s future as a united country at risk.
NO ONE voted for that in that now infamous referendum on June 23rd 2016.
Boris and the fake CONServative and ‘Unionist’ Party has given succour to terrorists in NI and the Republic and to the SNP and Plaid as well. Didn’t Boris drop the Internal Markets Bill? He only introduced that after signing a deal that anyone with a grasp for detail knew would be immensely flawed last year and then disingenuously ‘winning’ an election after claiming the deal was ‘oven ready’🙄🙄🙄🙄
Hopefully, Starmer will get a bit of gumption at long last and either order his party to abstain or vote against this botched rubbish.
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M’Lord of Essex:
Starmer and the misnamed “Labour” Party *will* support it, bar a few rebels.
This is not so much about what people may have voted for in 2016 as it is about kissing the issue goodbye.
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The issue will never truly go away especially when we haven’t made a clean break, the deal poses a significant threat to the continued survival of the United Kingdom as once NI ‘unites’ with the Republic I can’t see Scotland staying. NI’s unionist population has ethnic and cultural connections with Scotland and that may well have been the difference in 2014 in persuading some Scots to vote No. We must always remember that the separation referendum in 2014 was far too close for comfort.
At any rate, there will always be a debate as to what sort of links we should have with Europe particularly in an economic sense as not unnaturally countries tend to do most trade with their nearest neighbours.
This vision of Tory Brexiteers of a extreme globalist free market ‘Global Britain’ is a unrealisable fantasy for the most part and was only really true at the time when Britain was a super power and had a huge overseas Empire.
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M’Lord of Essex, there will be smaller or lesser arguments over this or that, but as a *major* political issue, Brexit is now dead.
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Starmer and company should learn to do principle instead of endlessly looking at opinion polls and looking which way the political wind is blowing and abstain or vote against the deal so that the Conservatives fully own their grotesque mess.
If they don’t it will come back to haunt them.
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The fishing sell out might well make sense economically speaking but I am not sure about it politically. In Scotland especially it might well play very badly. After all, the Tory Party’s decline there began in earnest under Heath when he originally sold out our fishermen in order to get his EEC accession. Those seats in the North East near Aberdeen were staunchly Tory before Heath arrived on the scene and then they went SNP until May got them back In the referendum on separation in 2014 they voted No but with this renewed fishing sell out they may vote yes to ‘independence’ in a future referendum.
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Continuing security and intelligence cooperation makes some degree of sense. If the EU were solely concerned with Europe’s security and defence, its geopolitical influence in the world and perhaps the customs union as well then I don’t think that many Brits would have voted against our membership. It was Thatcher’s free market obsessions and her signing us up to her silly Single Market vision from which we never really benefited along with the later mass Polish and others immigration that was connected to it that sounded the death knell for our EU membership,
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Oh, so we won’t be going to war with France in the near future then? Damm, I was looking forward to that!🙄 I don’t know who would have won! We have two, new aircraft carriers but the French still have the Charles De Gaulle nuclear powered carrier.
Still, going to war with France over fishing was not on the side of that bus, was it?🙄🙄🙄🙄
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We should have gone to war with the French when they burned our sheep.
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Or when they banned our beef back in John Major’s day.
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That bus’s strapline didn’t say ‘We send £350 million to the EU every week, lets go to war with France instead’!🙄
Oh well, now that show has been cancelled I shall have to entertain myself with watching that excellent war film The Dambusters instead!😂
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Ha, ha, Ian, are you wishing Israeli Jews a happy Christmas? Not that they celebrate it! Israel is one of the few countries that doesn’t ‘do’ Christmas officially. Japan doesn’t either in a religious sense as their main religion is Shintoism but, apparently, they do go in for the commercialised nature of it etc with buying gifts going shopping more often than normally and having meals at Kentucky Fried Chicken of all places! The restaurants of that company are booked months in advance.
The Japs are a strange people😂 but I admire them in many ways and kind of like them! 😂😄 They certainly add to the gaiety of the world with their weird customs!😂
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M’Lord of Essex: the blessings of the sun fall on the just and the unjust alike…
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