Concrete Achievements

Tag: brussels

  • Links from the week of 9 September 2019

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

  • Links from the week of 22 April 2019

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

  • Links from the week of 22 April 2019

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

  • Please stop calling it Common Market 2.0.

    Please stop calling it Common Market 2.0. It’s a cheap sop to fool people who “thought we were joining the common market” and is hostage to whatever “trade but no migrants” vision they have in their heads.

    Call it “Norway Plus” or “EEA+” or “Great British Winston Churchill Old Maids Cycling To Communion Through The Autumn Mist Special Arrangement” but not Common Market 2.0.

    Otherwise the Mail will lead *for the next decade* on “we were told it was Common Market 2.0 but LOOK now we have to follow health and safety rules of BRUSSELS TYRANTS without even a VOTE”

    And the Mail will be right, to the extent that we won’t have a vote, and it won’t be like Common Market 1.0 – because in Common Market 1.0, EU Membership, we have a vote.

    Common Market 2.0 should be called Common Market Parental Controls Edition.

  • Please stop calling it Common Market 2.0.

    Please stop calling it Common Market 2.0. It’s a cheap sop to fool people who “thought we were joining the common market” and is hostage to whatever “trade but no migrants” vision they have in their heads.

    Call it “Norway Plus” or “EEA+” or “Great British Winston Churchill Old Maids Cycling To Communion Through The Autumn Mist Special Arrangement” but not Common Market 2.0.

    Otherwise the Mail will lead *for the next decade* on “we were told it was Common Market 2.0 but LOOK now we have to follow health and safety rules of BRUSSELS TYRANTS without even a VOTE”

    And the Mail will be right, to the extent that we won’t have a vote, and it won’t be like Common Market 1.0 – because in Common Market 1.0, EU Membership, we have a vote.

    Common Market 2.0 should be called Common Market Parental Controls Edition.

  • Post-Christmas downer: the plans for Brexit day events are already starting to be…

    Post-Christmas downer: the plans for Brexit day events are already starting to be published. @BOZARbrussels is staging a concert/lecture called Goodbye/Hello. passaporta.be/en/calendar/go….

    The Bozar listing reminds me how during 2018 the different masks of the Brexit project have been stripped away – economic case gone, optimism gone, ideology gone, even pub-bore diplomacy gone – until all that’s left is its fundamental core: pure political vandalism.

    I don’t mean that in the context of Leave voters – they voted for all sorts of reasons we can and can’t know – but of the Brexit leaders, who for whatever reason are determined to smash down 40 years of peaceful co-operation and damn the consequences.

    Some are nationalists, some are hyper-libertarians, some haven’t got over a teenage crush on the United States – but all of them are deeply deeply irresponsible, shallow politicians, happy to sacrifice people’s lives to finalise their hollow victory.

  • Links from the week of 10 December 2018

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

  • Links from the week of 24 September 2018

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

  • Links from the week of 20 August 2018

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

  • Links from the week of 13 August 2018

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