Interesting Links for 15-09-2018

[andrewducker]

An excellent summary of how badly the Brexit negotiations are going

(tags: uk NorthernIreland Europe doom viaFrancescaElston )

Beluga whales adopt lost narwhal in St. Lawrence River

(tags: whales )

Advocates hold birthday party for 30-year-old Boston gas leak

(tags: gas )

Dietary fiber reduces brain inflammation during aging

(tags: diet brain inflammation )

Scientists reveal drumming helps schoolchildren diagnosed with autism

(tags: music autism children drums )

Keep them guessing, keep them gaming: Uncertain rewards motivate consumers to make repeat purchases

(tags: psychology addiction )

Afghan father who sought refuge in UK shot dead by Taliban after being deported by Home Office

(tags: uk Afghanistan immigration OhForFucksSake )

The body in charge of ensuring the EU referendum was fair gave out the wrong advice and helped Vote Leave. This isn’t democracy

(tags: referendum UK Europe fraud OhForFucksSake )

BBC Question Time⁩ producer & person responsible for audience/panel selection revealed to be a member of British far right fascist organizations.

(tags: bbc racism politics tv OhForFucksSake )

Divorce law: Plans to overhaul archaic laws revealed

(tags: UK law divorce )

The UK's approach to negotiating with the EU continues to be...not good

(tags: uk europe fail )

Comments

[calimac]

Here's something I don't get:

If the EU insists that a customs line has to be drawn down the Irish Sea, how can they enforce this? It'd require domestic customs stations in the territory of the UK, a country which will not be part of the EU and over which it consequently will have no authority.

If the UK refuses to do this, and the EU wishes to protect the integrity of its customs zone, it'd have to set up a hard border between NI and the Republic, exactly what it doesn't want to do.

[andrewducker]

The EU will have to protect their own customs borders, under WTO rules. If Britain decides not to put customs stations on its side and let people smuggle things in, that's it's problem.

[calimac]

Yes, but that doesn't address my question. What the UK chooses to allow into its territory isn't the EU's problem. But what goes in the other direction is the EU's problem. They can only solve this by setting up a hard border somewhere, and since they'll have no authority to set it up across the Irish Sea, it'll have to be one against entering the Republic freely from NI, which again is exactly what they don't want.

(In any case, I don't think the UK would allow a free border, for obvious racist reasons.)

[andrewducker]

They currently only have the authority to set one up across the Northern Ireland border.

Which is what they're trying to avoid, by making alternative suggestions. Because their don't want to.

They're not insisting the border goes in the Irish Sea. They're saying that they need a solution to the good Friday agreement, and that's the only one they can think of, and if the UK doesn't like that then please can it come back with an alternate suggestion.

[redbird]

I think what they're saying is that Britain signed a treaty (the Good Friday agreement) that guarantees an open border on the island of Ireland, and an Article 50 withdrawal from the EU doesn't change that. Since the EU doesn't want Britain to leave, it's Britain's problem to find a way to maintain its treaty obligations to the people of the island of Ireland. (If I understand this correctly, the EU can't legally waive that even if they wanted to, a point which will come in handy if the British government asks them to.)

This feels like a "pick at most two out of three," where the three are the Good Friday agreement, the continued customs union between northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, and Brexit. The EU has the advantage here, because they only want the first of those things; it's Westminster that thinks it can have fast, cheap, and good.

(You're likely right that they don't want an open border, but they did sign that treaty.)

[calimac]

Yes, I understand all that; you've nicely described the dilemma. But it doesn't address my question: what does the EU do if it can't get the UK to agree to its solution?

[andrewducker]

Oh, it wasn't clear to me that that was your question.

If the UK refuses to do a deal over this then the EU refuses to deal with us, and leaves us as a third-party, having to enforce a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland. It doesn't really have any other choice.

[calimac]

OK, now we've at least reached the premise of my question. It was based on the premise that setting up a hard border is what the EU would have to do.

So my question is, how does the EU think they're going to avoid this fate by ordering the UK to put the border down the Irish Sea instead? Are they just trying to threaten the UK with the force of their personality? If so, they're as useless gits as the UK ministers are, because that's pretty much the UK's attitude towards the EU.

This is kind of dismaying because up till now I've imagined the EU as smugly holding all the cards while the UK government fumphs around like clueless bumfodder. But now I'm wondering if they're both like that.

[andrewducker]

"how does the EU think they're going to avoid this fate by ordering the UK to put the border down the Irish Sea instead"

I'm confused as to why you think the EU is ordering the UK to do anything.

The EU has said that any withdrawal deal between the EU and the UK will have to deal with the Good Friday Agreement, and how the UK is going to uphold its part of the agreement. They have suggested a method by which they believe this might be achieved, and asked the UK to make alternative suggestions.

The UK can absolutely force them to create that hard border - but at such a massive cost to the UK that hopefully it's not realistic for the UK to do that. The EU is, so far as I can tell, assuming that a No Deal Brexit is so catastrophic that the UK will have to cave on this.

[calimac]

"I'm confused as to why you think the EU is ordering the UK to do anything."

I explained that in my original question: "It'd require domestic customs stations in the territory of the UK, a country which will not be part of the EU and over which it consequently will have no authority."

And therefore these customs stations would have to be established and their rules enforced by the UK.

If the EU is only suggesting this and is inviting a UK response, then the order is conditional - "if we don't come up with a better idea." But the whole purpose of a backstop, which this is, is "if we don't come up with a better idea." And since it's perfectly obvious to anyone who isn't a Brexit negotiator that there is no better idea, the conditionality by which this EU suggestion becomes an order will be operative.

[edrith.co.uk]

I've read the Good Friday Agreement. It doesn't require there to be no hard border.

One might consider no hard border to be desirable or important to help preserve peace. And of course the EU can insist on this as a condition of a deal if it wishes to. But legally speaking, there is no requirement in the Good Friday Agreement that there be no hard border.

[calimac]

Since I had the impression that it was a violation, derived from everything I'd ever read on the topic, I did some research to resolve this contradiction. And found unanimous agreement that, while it doesn't technically violate the letter of the agreement, it's a complete and egregious violation of its spirit and to be avoided at all costs. Which is a lot stronger than anything you say. For instance here ("Any undermining of the operation of the CTA challenges a principal objective of the GFA, that the importance of the land border should be minimised") and here ("So yes, a hard Border would be, and be seen as, a total betrayal of the Good Friday Agreement") and here ("One key to the entire arrangement was the open border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland that the European Union guaranteed").

[edrith.co.uk]

Whether something is a violation of the spirit is subjective - international law also usually goes on the letter, not the spirit, so the fact that it isn't a technical violation. And agreement on how much of a breach it is is far from unanimous. I've avoided hard Brexiteer sources (Carswell, Hannan, etc.) but this briefing for the European Parliament refers to no hard border being 'a desired feature' and this briefing for the UK Parliament is similar.
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2017/583116/IPOL_BRI%282017%29583116_EN.pdf

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Gag0JHUGRnQJ:researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-8042/CBP-8042.pdf+&cd=12&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&client=firefox-b#8
(PS: How did you embed links in your text when replying?)

The key question is what is meant by a hard border. Putting up concrete walls and border guards would clearly do a lot of damage to peace; a system which had no checks for cars, but required lorries to cross on major crossings and checked 3% of them would be far less, and a bit of personal smuggling a la the old 'booze cruise' might well be a price worth paying. Ruling them all out equally under the phrasing 'no hard border' makes an eventual deal less likely which would be worse for everyone.

gas leak

[redbird]

That specific gas leak story is from 2015; I don't know whether it has since been dealt with, but whatever went wrong in Lawrence and North Andover is unrelated except in the sense of both involving natural gas.

Re: gas leak

[andrewducker]

Oh, I know. It just amused me.

You do not see that kind of thing in the UK for gas leaks.

Re: gas leak

[redbird]

I'm not sure if gas leaks get more community attention around here than in New York (where I used to live) or the UK because people care more about this specific issue, or because the local government and utilities are slower to fix them.

Re: gas leak

[andrewducker]

Oh, an unfixed gas leak in the UK would see the gas company in a lot of trouble. Those things get fixed very quickly indeed.

Brain inflammation

[agoodwinsmith]

Thank you for the information about soluble fiber and sodium butyrate.