Is one necessary?
Sure, I was wrong.
I do not understand Brits. I think I underestimated the support Boris has with the British press. The reporting in British media is…something.
You were wrong? You could not have been more wrong if you put your shoes on your hands and wore your underpants over your head and did a handstand and pretended to have a differant identity.
You’re prediction was utter hyperbole and has nothing whatsoever to do with UK newspapers.
How on earth did you become so disconnected from UK citizens around you, or do you only have pro-rioters for friends?
Sure there was always going to be plenty of butthurt amongst remoaners, and there might well be serious regrets by Brexiteers as the full impact of Brexit is felt - but riots?
This is the UK, the most you are going to get on a substantive issue are strongly worded letters to ‘Points of view’ - we save our riots for meaningless gestures that will not change anything at all - such as ‘Kill the Bill’ and ‘Earth emergency’
Compared to the total bullshit the Brexiteers spun I was only moderately wrongish.
350 million a week and all that.
(P.S. I’m safely on the other side of the Channel: I’m sorry if I ever gave the impression that I’m in Britain)
Much as I think leaving the EU will cause long term harm to the UK, the utter clusterfuck that is the EU vaccination program shows how deeply flawed that institution is. The EU is in urgent need of reform and a culling of bureaucracy, and without the UK being a member the pressure to do so is reduced.
While I agree that things could go smoother regarding the vaccinations in the EU. There is no EU vaccination program. If the EU organized that it would, however unlikely that sounds, probably be more efficient (it is statistically impossible to do worse than the individual members are doing on their own)
Trade deals should be a win-win for both sides. But you were wise to incorporate the word “should” into your post.
Fairly typically, your post makes vague references to the sunny uplands of UK independence but it’s pretty much entirely divorced from the reality of trying to negotiate advantageous trade deals from the weaker position of no longer being in the EU. There’s a reason countries form trading blocs. Nobody in history, ever, said “I want to negotiate a good trade deal, let’s get smaller“. You wouldn’t be arguing it for a moment if it wasn’t for the fact that you’re trying to find ex post facto validation of a dumb decision.
Let’s face it, at the time of the vote, Leavers were not talking about trade deals. There’s a very good reason for that: even Boris and Nigel didn’t think they could sell it with a straight face. That’s why they focused on xenophobia and lies concerning payments to the EU and NHS funding.
As for being the sixth largest economy in the world, historically the UK used to be a huge economy because of its colonial empire. Then when it lost that it began to fall to bits (in the early 70s) until saved by North Sea Oil, and the EU. Now the oil is pretty much gone and the EU is gone. Your financial industry might survive in some form but currently banks and insurance companies are shifting focus to EU offices as fast as they can go. With “just in time” systems and multi national manufacturing, the only reason the UK had investment from the Asian tiger economies like the car manufacturers was because of seamless access to the EU. Manufacturing in the UK will survive for a while because of the investment in factories and tooling that those manufacturers had already made but after that, no sane multinational is going to set up in isolationist UK when they can set up across the channel and have total access to the EU market.
Trust me, you and other fanatical Leavers are the only people I know who think that the UK is still gonna be the sixth largest economy in the world, very shortly.
Oh look - another Leaver projecting onto Remain things that much more strongly apply to Leave. What else is new.
Could certainly have been more wrong. Could have said the NHS would get an additional £359m a week. Could have said the UK would be getting even better trade terms with and outside of the EU. Could have claimed that the UK would have more control over trade regulations rather than significantly less. Could have claimed that the UK would be better able to identify and control criminals coming into the country. Could have claimed that there would be a net inflow of companies and jobs instead of an outflow. Could have claimed that there was a threat of the entire population of Turkey overwhelming the NHS and that rape gangs would be roaming our neighbourhoods.
All those claims would have made him/her far more wrong.
Also: when comparing “largest economies”, Germany alone is higher up the list than the UK. What’s the economy - and the trading clout - of the entire EU like?
We now will get to see the beautiful mental gymnastics of a True Sovereign mind.
Somehow Brexit will be a good idea, despite the 350 million being “just a slogan”.
I just noticed the typo in my previous post - “£359m” was obviously supposed to be “£350m”.
Hah hah hah that totally screws your argument! See? You are just as bad as the Brexiters!
Your prediction was that there would be riots by the end of January - you are so currently invested in that prediction that you revert to pointing out the flaws - which I will not deny - in the Leave campaign.
However, being wrong is not moderated at all by others being wrong about different things - but thats the trouble with remain, they cannot imagine another outcome to the holy gospel of their own scriptures, anything that differs even slightly is heresy to them.
You were wrong, there were no riots, there was an almost, but not quite, zero prospect of riots and you find it hard to admit it.
Out of interest, just who would have been present at those riots - Leavers or Remainers?
Are you suggesting that Brexit is a success because there weren’t any riots? That is utterly bizarre to me.
Where did I say thart Brexit success was to be measured in terms of riots?
I’ll let you look for evidence for that.
Meantime, typical Remainer exagerration, typical way to try poison the well with an argument that was never made - the fact that you seem to have inferred it seems to me to be indicative of the Remain mindset of hyperbole.
Maybe it should be pit material but its so weak and such a thread would be instantly derailed - but let me make it a little clearer for you.
A claim was made that following Brexit there would be riots in the UK in January - I stated that this was so unlikely as to be vanishingly small probablity and on that basis I pointed out the person making this particular point was so wrong that it was hyperbolic.
No other claim was made about the benefits or otherwise of Brexit - that has already been argued endlessly.
I hope I cleared that up for you
To be fair, I didn’t predict that at all.
That’s a lovely strawman you’ve built, but you forgot to add “sheeple” or “hivemind” to it.
Nothing in your characterisation of the Remain campaign is remotely true. It is, however, a commonly-repeated false narrative told by supporters of the Leave campaign, once again projecting its faults onto its opponents. Leavers that told us over and over again that “Leave means leave” and Brexit was the immutable will of the people and that the government had no choice but to withdraw from the EU immediately no matter what the terms or consequences. We were told that anyone daring to point out that what the Leave campaign had promised wasn’t remotely deliverable (what were you saying about being unable to “imagine another outcome to the holy gospel of their own scriptures?”) and that leaving the EU would have significant negative consequences to the UK was “undemocratic” and an “enemy of the people” and a “traitor”. And we were told - over and over - that the reason that what the Leave campaign had promised wasn’t remotely deliverable was all the fault of Remainers and the EU (yadda yadda “outcomes” yadda yadda).
And even though most of what the Remain campaign predicted is coming true (including big hits to the financial, manufacturing, education, cultural, agricultural, fisheries and law enforcement sectors), Leavers are still telling us what a success it’s all going to be.
I have no problem admitting it. Because I thought it was hyperbolic at the time and said so.
Gee, I guess I have no problem straying from the “holy gospel” of the Remain position. You appear to be struggling to do the same with yours.
But I understand - as long as you can find one person on a messageboard to prove wrong, you can pretend the Leave campaign wasn’t materially wrong about pretty much everything else.
Ah, the “in this hypothetical, you would be the bad guys” scenario. Pass.
Unless of course you want me to point out that in a very non-hypothetical world there was a spike in hate crimes against foreigners and ethnic minorities in the UK immediately following the referendum. Out of interest, just who is more likely to have been responsible for those - Leavers or Remainers?
More projection. Because blaming everyone else is the core of the Leave mindset.
Your posts are rather fixated on the lack of riots.
If all you are saying is that there weren’t riots, then sure. But I don’t think your posts are merely saying that. There is a common tactic to fixate on one weak or false facet, which gets so tiring. If you truly are saying only that there were no riots and agree with everything else then that would be one thing. But that isn’t what you are saying, is it?
You are replying to someone else, but I’ll take the bait:
What the fuck do you call this?
(not the riots I predicted, but close enough for Brexit work)
This:
and this:
Are not quite the same thing.
Unlike people in a not-to-be-named anti-EU movement I won’t name, I have zero troubles (pun intended) with admitting my ignorance.
Here:
I’ll give another demonstration of my ability to be utterly wrong:
Another prediction where I was wrong: it were
You will even admit that there were flaws! I would not suspect a True Sovereign Mind to be capable of that.
Do you mean that literally? I’m not trying to pick on you, it’s just that lately I keep hearing expressions like “deeply committed”, “unbelievably proud”, “extremely determined” and I find this really (no, I mean it, really 
) jarring. Can’t figure out if it’s just normal language evolution or people simply can’t express themselves in a nuanced way anymore.
Because I don’t see the utter clusterfuck. Sure, EU countries could and should have done better with the vaccination program, but I wouldn’t say it’s a clusterfuck. Nor a disaster or a catastrophe. The word I’d be using is “subpar”.
Let’s have a look at the global vaccination numbers: Coronavirus (COVID-19) Vaccinations - Our World in Data
I sorted the list by number of vaccines per capita administered (not entirely representative since at least one of the vaccines - the one from Johnson, IIRC - requires only one jab, but I think most of the others are a two jab deal). Leaving aside tiny countries and territories (like Monaco, Bermuda, Gibraltar, etc), as of today the top performers are:
Israel (>110%),
Chile, UK, US (>50%),
Serbia (~40%),
Uruguay (27%),
Morocco, Turkey, EU (~20%)
Within EU most countries are around 20%, except Hungary (~40%) who is also using Chinese and Russian vaccines on top of the EU-approved ones.
Very interesting that China and Russia are both at about 10%…would that make them a disastrous utter clusterfuck of a catastrophe? 
The EU vaccinations seem to be speeding up lately; my guess is that EU as a whole will reach the 70-80% “herd” level 6 to 8 weeks after the US and UK. Not ideal, but not a disaster either.
For me, US is the only real success story in the list above (so far). Chile is actually in a strange position right now: 60% of the population got at least one jab, but they’re still having high numbers of daily cases (apparently due to a combination of premature easing of restrictions and using almost exclusively a Chinese vaccine with an efficiency of less than 60%).
Back to EU: there’s this article that goes a little bit deeper into the vaccine procurement programs of EU and UK: Has the UK really outperformed the EU on Covid-19 vaccinations? | EUROPP (some of the comments are also interesting, but unfortunately they descend quickly into a fight about the AstraZeneca contract, so they’re not so relevant for the big picture).
From that article (a little bit dated by now - it’s from 2 weeks ago, and some of its sources are 1 month old), and looking at the total number of jabs, it appears that:
-
EU countries administered about 90 million doses so far
-
EU countries exported about 80 million doses (half of that via the Covavax program, which goes to poorer countries)
So vaccine production in EU appears to be ~170 million doses - that’s about the same as US production.
FWIW - the article quoted above notes that only some EU countries are making vaccines; those countries have a total population of 220 millions, so, assuming they would have kept the whole production for themselves, they would have topped the worldwide vaccination list. -
UK produced about half of the jabs it used; apparently the rest came from EU countries (including 13 million Pfizer jabs) and India.
UK and US did not export any vaccines so far. However, US might have played a significant role in the production of Pfizer vaccines in EU (IIRC some ingredients for it are coming from US).
I find it a little ironic that UK actually benefited from EU’s countries decision to procure vaccines together; if they would have acted separately (which was a real possibility - one year ago EU had very limited powers when it came to healthcare, emergency supplies, emergency planning - all this was handled mostly at national level, and, AFAIK, still is, is just that EU countries decided to delegate the vaccination procurement to EU), then UK would have had a lot of competitors for a limited supply of vaccines. If only one of these competitors - Germany, France, Italy, Spain - would have done a similar deal to the one UK had, then UK’s supply would have been halved instantly.
I don’t think the vaccine production could have been ramped up significantly faster; all vaccine manufacturers had issues with ramping up production, and I think only Pfizer (and maybe Moderna?) caught up with the promised delivery schedule. AFAIK AstraZeneca is still lagging behind; by the way, how come AstraZeneca is not approved yet in US?
So maybe an earlier order from EU would have increased production by 20-30%, but i doubt it would have doubled it.All in all, my verdict so far is: not great, not awful.
AIUI, there’s also the point that vaccine production, at least in the UK and the EU, is not a “mono-national” supply chain. Factories in both depend upon each other for the different components. There isn’t a simple explanation as to why some countries get vaccines into people earlier than others