Concrete Achievements

Author: anthonyzach

  • Links from the week of 26 March 2018

    Articles, reports and other links I shared on Twitter this week.

  • Links from the week of 12 March 2018

    Articles, reports and other links I shared on Twitter this week.

  • Links from the week of 5 March 2018

    Articles, reports and other links I shared on Twitter this week.

  • UK rendezvous with reality has a clear path: customs union has Parl majority > single


    UK rendezvous with reality has a clear path: customs union has Parl majority > single market with special treatment on immigration > EU says

    GTFOH on your special treatment > Norway plus has Parl majority > Norway plus vs Remain choice is discussed > (possibly 10 years out) >

    Britain stays in/rejoins EU.

    It’s a narrow road along a crumbling cliff, though, and we appear to be driving a clown car.

  • The “managed divergence” plane is obviously going to explode in the hangar let alone on


    The “managed divergence” plane is obviously going to explode in the hangar let alone on the runway, but I think this gives the EU side a problem more than the British. /1

    The U.K. are where they always were – unable to choose between Canada (no formal alignment on rules, free movement or courts, but lots of trade barriers and a hard border in Ireland) and Norway (stay entirely in the single market).

    UK’s new position is what it always was “we want trade on our terms and none of the rules or immigrants”. This is called cherry-picking because it sounds nice and bucolic rather than “arrogant entitled tosspottery” which is what it is.

    There is zero chance this will be accepted because it’s already been rejected – explicitly by the EU negotiating team’s PowerPoints the other day and more cautiously (“if reports are accurate”) by Tusk last night.

    But that doesn’t make the U.K. strategic position worse (it’s already dreadful), though it hurts May’s personal position. The EU however has to come up with negotiating guidelines which Tusk has says will be created whether U.K. have expressed a view or not.

    Given the U.K. will not have expressed a view (that is workable), the EU side will need to prepare guidelines without a U.K. position. If it weren’t for Ireland’s (rightful) special status, it would be easy. Start from the Canada model and negotiate up.

    That’s in line with the U.K. red lines, it starts from the bottom of Barnier’s “steps of doom” chart, and if calmer voices take hold in the U.K., they can move up. However – the Withdrawal Agreement will say that Ireland will

    (in summary) stay in the single market unless the U.K. does a Norway-type deal or discovers unicorns that can keep cross border trade totally free with no checks or infrastructure. The PM has said there’ll be no hard border in the Irish Sea

    (between Belfast and Stranraer in other words). So that means the whole of the U.K. is held in a single market type relationship, if there’s no unicorns or no special deal. So should the EU side prepare on that basis – that the final position will be Norway

    because Irish border is insoluble otherwise (see @fotoole in the IT today)? It’s basically trying to answer the U.K.s dilemma for it, which the EU side sensibly don’t want to do because they’ll be blamed for the inevitable bad consequences of Brexit.

    They can’t “make [May] an offer” or they will own the offer and it’s consequences. They can’t draft negotiating guidelines that cover both Norway and Canada because they’re incompatible. Nothing is insoluble and fudge is delicious but

    it’s a tricky task for @WeyandSabine and @StefaanDeRynck. Perhaps the simplest solution is for the U.K. gov to collapse over the legal text on Northern Ireland to be published in a couple of weeks. /end.

  • These are debates that could have been had before the referendum but are now swamped by


    These are debates that could have been had before the referendum but are now swamped by the urgent practical need to make Brexit happen. twitter.com/goodwinmj/stat


    In fact I see all these issues being debated – not well, not perhaps as a national conversation, but they are. To say that they should be debated *ahead* of phytosanitary standards or Norway models sounds good but is wrong.

    The U.K. has all the time in the world to debate coastal towns. It had two years, exactly, to work out phytosanitary standards and Norway models, or risk an economic crash – and half of that has gone.

    To say “there should be a national conversation on 1-5” during the most complex negotiation in British history is a counsel of perfection.

  • Links from the week of 12 February 2018

    Articles, reports and other links I shared on Twitter this week.

  • Links from the week of 5 February 2018

    Articles, reports and other links I shared on Twitter this week.

  • Nick Timothy taking dictation from the Kremlin here.

    Nick Timothy taking dictation from the Kremlin here. I would take it as a great compliment to be banned in Russia and Uzbekistan. twitter.com/birdyword/stat


    It just makes me angry. Trade obsessives who don’t understand the basics of international trade, people shouting about will of the people

    who parrot the talking points of the journalist-killing, Ukraine-invading, anti-democratic Putin gang; politicians who are so obsessed with

    Parliamentary sovereignty that they want everything to be done by Henry VIII clauses; the level of “does not fucking care” is beyond belief.

    All I hope is that the public humiliation these charlatans deserve comes to them in full measure.

  • Our (@demsoc’s) Commission Paritaire sets the bulk of our terms of employment and minimum


    Our (@demsoc’s) Commission Paritaire sets the bulk of our terms of employment and minimum wages based on roles. There are six Ă©chelons and

    @demsoc each job fits into one of them, which gives you the minimum wage. It sounds like red tape galore, but (like red tape in reality) it also is

    @demsoc pretty helpful for us as new arrivals, because it tells us exactly what the market (of potential staff) will expect of us.

    @demsoc Like a lot of Belgian things, it seems bureaucratic and slightly chaotic, but when you get into it, it’s not a bad way of doing things.

    @demsoc (I’m in a good mood with the bureaucracy because @VilleBruxelles took exactly 3 minutes to deliver my new Belgian driving licence today).