[flagged]
I am working on the assumption that you are admin and therefore enforce rules.
If this counts as something you wish to flag and remove then I'd like you to remove me. So could you drop me an email about deleting or otherwise permanently disabling my account, please?
It's not ambiguous at all. Everything in the UK going on right now -- everything -- has a "some of this is unclear or worse because Brexit has destroyed agreements or because proposed, nearly impossible agreements have not been struck" subplot.
Brexit has set fire to every kind of international complication.
And so here we are with a sucessful fusion lab in the UK, doing the hard work, that is a precursor to a European project that it is really not at all clear we will be able to participate in or benefit from, because crucial parts of the Brexit neo-establishment want the benefits of the agreements without acceding to the legal underpinnings of the agreements.
I actually rewrote it to the form it is now, about 15 seconds after posting it, to try to remove any suggestion it's about the report; it's possible I suppose that some people reacted to it before I did.
I went from "paragraph" (as in, in an article) to "parenthetical" in the colloquial sense. Like, literally every process or discussion about anything going on in the country has to have this sidebar about how much worse it is because of all the changes.
I don't really read it as confusing because I had the "thanks, disaster capitalists" bit, which should be unambiguous, but I haven't had my coffee, so I will note and upvote your point and think about it next time I write stuff :-)
It also doesn't help that you start with "Further evidence that...". You can't assume any of your readers are already on board with your conclusions. In my experience, the kind of people who make these kind of comments tend to be closed to debate and commenting in bad faith. For example "further evidence of political-correctness gone mad" is a classic one.
It refers to a kind of capitalism (and capitalist policy-making) that is poised ready to financially exploit the negatives of any economic shock precisely because the people involved have proximity to the very power structures that are unleashing that economic shock.
It was a prediction that came true.
The Brexit-leaning establishment has made a lot of money out of economic predictions and money movements triggered by Brexit, and the overlap between politicians and hedge funds/investment funds/large non-EU exporters etc. was so close as to suggest the possibility that the legislation has designs for them.
"Further evidence that" is just dry humour from a Brit. We are in absolutely deep, deep **** in this country for the next two years; everything is going to be bad because the Brexit transition has unilaterally, not bilaterally, failed.
... If I understand your nonsensical ramblings correctly.
If you think they are nonsensical, you do not understand what I am saying.
Yes, countries can "work together without being part of the same trading bloc" but trade is not the limit of what Brexit changed.
Brexit removes us from the international legal agreements that underpinned that trade. It also removed us from the free movement clause, which is crucial to a lot of science-industry collaborations (the free movement principle was essentially invented to allow professional collaboration in the energy industry).
Finally it also removed us from the legal frameworks that underpin several European science funding agreements.
Every agreement has to be rewritten, at cost to the process. And every time it is rewritten, the net result for Britain is substantially worse than if we'd not done it. Because you cannot hope to get full membership of any club without agreeing to all the rules.
From the article:
> The UK is a participant, too. Its full involvement in ITER, however, will require first for Britain to "associate" to certain EU science programmes, something that so far has been held up by disagreements over post-Brexit trading arrangements, particularly in relation to Northern Ireland.
Here is just one example of that:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/feb/08/uk-and-euro...
From that article:
> The EU agreed to associate membership for the UK as part of the wider Brexit trade deal struck on Christmas Eve 2020 but it has still not ratified the deal or a similar one with Switzerland, held up by a dispute over a draft treaty binding the country to the bloc.
We didn't need to do any of this, there have been no benefits from any of this, and there are no meaningful projected benefits for any of this in our lifetimes.
And I thankyou for clarification :)
> but trade is not the limit of what Brexit changed.
Here in lies the problem that many Brexitiers had with the EU - it wasn't just a trading bloc, the "club" had a lot of baggage that few people understood - and when people don't understand something, they fear/misstrust it. The message around leaving was focused on GDP and whether we would have roaming chargers or not... and this message fell flat with a lot of voters.
I blame the remain side with arrogance and a complete lack of understanding how to deliver a good message.
I voted remain BTW, but feel we had a fair vote and it is what it is.
The problem is they also came up against vile, populist hate about Syrian immigrants, Romanian neighbours, people not speaking english on buses, fake news about pillow regulations; it went on and on. And a lot of that stuff really was funded by deeply shady money.
Brexit was the first real demonstration of how good faith cannot possibly counter weaponised, well-backed bad faith, IMO.
It is what it is, I agree, and alas it is wholly irreversible. But at least within five years we won't have to worry about how Great Britain and Northern Ireland repositions itself within Europe, because the consequences of the vote will be the end of that too.
Except there is some truth/validity in all of these - they are proxies. The pillow/banana stuff was about over-regulation by the EU. People not speaking the native language on buses is an indication of a a loss of British culture (people will be generally protective of their own culture). Romanian neighbours is about a fear of losing one's low-paying job to an immigrant.
These are all valid worries of many people in the UK.
Calling them "vile", "populist" is what I'm talking about with regard to remain arrogance. Ignore voter's fears at your peril.
The Syrian immigration thing was based on a lie (and about specific fearmongering concerning Turkey's supposed accession to the EU -- a process that has entirely stalled and is even in reverse because Turkey cannot join the EU until it satisfies the EU's demands). It was backed up by one of the most despicable political leaflets in British history:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/eu-referendum...
(I received this pamphlet and it remains the only thing I have ever ceremonially burned while cursing people)
They were vile, populist-oriented slurs. It was awful, disgusting politics.
That's why I said they were proxies - please read what I wrote again.
"The UK will remain part of Iter"
A lot changed.
Basically, fundamental disagreements with Europe over predicate treaties mean that the thing we committed to do (remain part of ITER) is under threat, because other things we committed to do (uphold transition agreements regarding Northern Ireland) are in default.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/feb/08/uk-and-euro...
In this case, the EU is saying, sorry, you possibly can't stay a member of our science club because you promised you'd do certain things that underpin an internationally agreed peace process and you are undoing them.
It's a completely legitimate political bargaining point that would not be an issue at all without Brexit.
The intent to remain members of ITER and Horizon 2020 is genuinely at risk.
All of this underpins my point: everything is more complex because of Brexit -- even staying in things we've said we really really want to stay in.
What changed? The UK participate in ITER still, via F4E. ITER is not just the EU, it's funded by China, the European Union, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States.
Frankly, I don't see what Brexit has to do with HN. There are better places to "discuss" Brexit, and politics, than on HackerNews.
Under a common block, trading or otherwise, things are just easier and much closer together.
Consider only visas, travel and employment, the complications of these brought by Brexit, already distanced any existing and future collaborations by some measure.
There is still collaboration of course, and there will be, but it's not what it was before.
And this negative trend of distance in collaboration is more worrying in an increasingly threatening environment.
Under a common block, trading or otherwise, things are just easier and much closer together.
Consider only visas, travel and employment, the complications of these brought by Brexit already distanced any existing and future collaborations by some measure.
There is still collaboration of course, and there will be, but it's not what it was before.
And this negative trend of distance in collaboration is more worrying in an increasingly threatening environment
If I may perhaps suggest, perhaps, just maybe, it could be worthwhile for you to stop seeing politics in everything and focus on something other than politics, like these scientists are doing?
They don't care about EU, Brexit, who the hell is the British PM. Whatever. They just want to build a smart, sustainable and cheap way for humanity to harness energy from our universe. That's super cool. Imagine if they remained in their homes tweeting about Brexit all day long? We'd be burning fossil fuels forever until we kill ourselves out of smoke...
I don't know, just maybe it would be interesting, who knows...
(Not least because I snarked about Marco Arment yesterday. ;-)
It makes you think.