33 days to go .... What’s the Brexit plan?

I'll throw in my £4,000. Worth every penny.

Thanks Ug and petra. I'll try to get you the bank details for you to pay your contribution. You set a good example. I hope you can persuade the rest of the 17.4 million leave voters to pay up as willingly.

Gina Miller
Been discussing
@BorisJohnson
revised Withdrawal Agreement with a brilliant lawyer - Anneli Howard. Basically it's the May Deal with about 6 changes to the PD & 2 amended paras to the NI Protocol. If the Benn Act is akin to a surrender Act, this WA is a self-imposed knee capping

I’m in ?

In my view if we are so unlucky and insane to leave the EU.

The day it happens is the day of the start of rejoining

Absolutely Whitewave.

Urmstongran, my posts on the settled status scheme have been highlighting the difficulties it has created for some EU nationals. It has made me very cross to sit and listen to some elderly ladies who are tearful and worried becauses they cannot trace some documents. The fact that I have delayed my own application and the reasons for this is neither here nor there and does not make the scheme less flawed. I am not trying to hide anything.

About the cost Growstuff mentioned: I don't know if you have ever either translated documents yourself or have had documents translated. I worked as a translator for many years and can assure you that translations do not come cheap. If a minority language, like Danish, is involved the costs will rise

GrannyGravy 13, so you know some other cases where the application has been easy. Perhaps those applicants were also young and tech savvy. What do you suggest I tell my elderly ladies? ”Some people can do it in 10 minutes”. Do you think it will make them feel better?

Instead of regretting that the promise Boris Johnson, Priti Patel and Michael Gove gave EU nationals, i.e. that they would be granted an automatic right to remain in the UK, has been reneged on you keep telling us how easy the application process is. Why?

Windrush I hear you say? Lessons will have been learned, checks and balances put in place. Brexit applications will be more straightforward

Great, lessons a bit late for the people that died.

Greta just putting some balance into the debate as opposed to “how difficult it is”

It's really not difficult to do. A few colleagues of mine and student friends of my children have done it. I'm sure the CAB could help if you don't have access to a computer. You just need a passport, proof of residence.

www.gov.uk/settled-status-eu-citizens-families/what-youll-need-to-apply

Some people are just born with a lack of empathy Greta, I'm afraid.

GGMK3 I am extremely empathetic, just not a “doomsayer”.

Nobody is "doomsaying" GG13, just reporting on the actual situation that people they know have actually encountered. Those who just reply by telling them that they know better don't seem to be showing either empathy or sympathy.

However, just as they tell those who are describing situations they have encountered that they know better they can surely be relied on to tell me the same. After all, the people going through it could be seen as akin to experts in the challenges they have faced and we can't have experts actually being believed, can we.

A long but well written piece

politics.co.uk
Saturday is the most important day in the entire Brexit saga
Ian Dunt
6-8 minutes

Here it comes. After years of constant battling, constitutional crises, divided families, political implosions, and crunching, endless negotiations, events will finally reach their crescendo on Saturday. As hundreds of thousands of Remainers congregate outside parliament to demand a People's Vote, MPs inside the building will decide on Britain's fate.

We now, for the first time in a long time, have a pretty clear picture of what's about to happen.

The government will put down a motion on the deal Boris Johnson has just negotiated with the EU. MPs will try to attach an amendment accepting the deal on the condition of a referendum. If it passes, that will probably happen. If it fails, and MPs back Johnson's deal, Brexit is happening by the October 31st deadline.

If MPs reject the deal, the Benn Act will trigger. There will be an extension of Article 50 and, in all likelihood, an election. Don't listen to the attempts to dispel this notion from the British or EU side. They both want the deal, so they need to pretend otherwise, but the basic reality hasn't changed. British law says a request must be made. The EU will not allow itself to be responsible for no-deal, so it will grant it.

In that election, Johnson will run on the back of his deal. If he won, he'll push it through. If he lost, Labour would renegotiate and then hold a referendum on its deal.

This is not the same as the three meaningful votes held under Theresa May. It is much tighter. Johnson can carry more Brexiters with him.

But for the time being, the odds are - just about - against him. The DUP has held firm and will vote against. The ERG are mostly going with it, but some of them will probably waver. Most purged Tories will probably back the deal, but some may not. Some pro-deal Labour MPs will vote for the deal, but most will not.

That's unlikely to be enough. Without the DUP, Johnson needs every group to support him. But the DUP rejection makes that a hard sell. It offers an out to those who are wavering.

On the basis of objective reality, which is not at all a good guide to how MPs will vote, this deal should fail on the basis of the principles parliamentarians have said they hold.

It creates a customs and regulatory border in the Irish Sea. Johnson once suggested this was a kind of annexation. May said no British prime minister could ever agree to it. Jacob Rees-Mogg said he couldn't support a withdrawal agreement without the backing of the DUP. And yet here we are.

Technically Northern Ireland would stay in the UK customs territory, but this is a legal nicety. The truth is this: there will be large scale checks between Britain and Ireland. Those will be on regulations and on customs.

The UK's trading territory is being carved up. Those who said that it had to stay united whatever happened with Brexit should, by force of logic, vote against the deal.

That goes for purged Tories too. Many of them have said they would vote for any deal. That's perfectly consistent. But for some of them, the repercussions of this deal may be too much to tolerate.

The implications for the UK go well beyond what happens to Northern Ireland. Think about Scotland. It, like Northern Ireland, voted against Brexit. It is now being forced into the harshest interpretation of the vote against its will, but without the protections offered to Northern Ireland. There is no moral consistency to that position. It is as if Westminster were trying to write the SNP's independence campaign for it.

The group of pro-deal Labour MPs must also take a realistic look at what is being proposed. This is not single market membership. It is not even customs union membership. It will hurt the British economy and workers worst of all.

This group recently made level playing field provisions a red line. These are guarantees that the UK will stick to the EU rules on things like workers' rights and environmental protections. Johnson shifted on this overnight and put them in the deal. That could tempt Labour MPs to vote for it.

But look closer. The level playing field provisions were moved from the withdrawal agreement document, which is a legal text, and into the political declaration document, which is not. All it really constitutes is a recognition that the EU will insist on this if the UK wants a free trade agreement. It is not a legal guarantee. It is a recognition of the EU's future negotiating position being recognised in law.

So what does this really mean? It kicks the battle over what the UK does into the future. If it was passed, Britain would enter into the real debate: does it want to enter the embrace of America or the EU? It's going to have to pick one. Every law of logic and trading reality means it should pick its large, closer neighbour, but that is not necessarily how politics works anymore. That battle will take place. There is no guarantee of level playing fields. The Labour pro-dealers red line has not been satisfied.

That's the state of play. On paper, this deal should fail. But things are moving fast. Everything is happening very quickly. The EU and UK have hammered something together in days that they'll have to live with for decades. Parliament is being given just one day to debate it. It is a quite insane state of affairs, but that is how it is happening. And in that frenzied atmosphere, people can slip either way.

And yet in the back of their heads, they might well be thinking: how will this look in a few years time? How will this deal be considered in the future? And it is surely the case that it will be despised. It is a painful compromise which will make the UK poorer and weaker, made by an unelected prime minister with no majority, in which both sides - Leaver or Remainer - will be able to claim that it could have been much better if things had been done their way.

Either way, we're entering the crunch point now. Saturday will be the most momentous and nerve-shredding day since the Brexit vote itself. It all comes down to this.

Imagine varian if Leavers paid Remainers £4K a pop. .... it’d be worth it to stop the negativity!
???

About the cost Growstuff mentioned: I don't know if you have ever either translated documents yourself or have had documents translated. I worked as a translator for many years and can assure you that translations do not come cheap

Actually Greta we have had this done. Last summer our grandson sustained a nasty injury which necessitated being blue lighted by ambulance to Malaga paediatric hospital. Documents from the hospital (4 pages of A4) had to be translated into English for the insurance company here.

Whilst we were all out in Spain we got it sorted. It cost us €35 - about £30.

I wish I could throw £4,000 around just like that...….

Thanks for copying it all Whitewave. It's an interesting g read.

More attacks on the right of free speech UG it’d be worth it to stop the negativity! The comments are not the negativity of the person, who it seems is always the leave voters target, but of the situation. Millions of people see the situation in this way yet you want to close down their right to say so.

Don’t worry Labaik it’s only light hearted (but well intentioned) banter!
??

Well, Urmstongran, the rush to hospital with your grandson would have been a scary experience for you all. Hope your grandson is OK.

Translation agencies generally charge £0.10 to 0.16 per word, the lower rate for common languages such as English and Spanish and the higher rate for less common such as the Scandinavian languages. One cannot go by number of pages. If we use the lower rate of £0.10 per word and you paid £30 that would mean a total of 300 words; not a very long document. Of course, some documents are much longer than that. Also, for important applications one may have to ask an independent translator to certify that the translation is authentic and accurate. This would also cost money. The Danish lady in question may have had to ask Danish authorities for copies of certain papers/documents; again, this would add to the cost.

As so often in life things can be more difficult, expensive and time consuming than expected.

Of course it can be Greta I was only explaining the situation we had personal knowledge of to give clarity. It is doable - not a king’s ransom. Most people will have documents for translation that will not cost ‘thousands’!

Our grandson is well now, just a bad scar, but thank you for asking.
?

Of course you did Urmstongran! I'm a linguist by profession and I do translations. I charge £150 for 1000 words.

BTW The costs my friend's mother incurred have been for a lawyer and fees for documents, etc. She speaks perfect English and could translate any documents herself.

Solicitors cost around £200 an hour.

Oopsminty The only evidence of residence that my friend's mother had was that she was named on the electoral register, although the council tax bill wasn't in her name. Everything else has been in her husband's name. Apparently she is registered with a GP, but hasn't been for a few years and certainly didn't have any letters or appointment cards.

Don't forget that this all has to be done online.

How dare people imply that I'm lying and that it really is easypeasy for everybody!

Yes, you were being mean Urmstongran. Frankly, I wouldn't have expected anything different. I guess that's just how you are.