bendan

They are indeed, but it's still sh*te to say they saw Brexit as an opportunity to export more *to the UK* as has been claimed.

You might well be right. There were certainly Brexit loons creating strawmen to tear down. But you are inserting this into a thread in which a non-Brexiteer has literally just claimed you 'might as well shut down the countryside'.

Your first two points are entirely correct (Ireland exports a lot of beef to the UK, the UK exports little to Ireland) and not disputed by anyone. But you've said nothing that suggests they thought Brexit was an opportunity for them to export more to the UK. It makes no sense at all to believe it would, and in the many, many Irish press articles I read about Brexit, I never read aa single person make that claim. Here's what Meat Industry Ireland thought before Brexit:

Can you explain to someone as thick as me how Brexit would help RoI farmers to *increase* exports to the UK? You're in flat earth territory. They may well have believed it would help them increase exports to the EU, due to less competition from the UK. Perhaps you misunderstood?

Irish farmers did not see Brexit as a good opportunity to export more to the UK. You simply don't know what you are talking about, and are thus forced into the kind of 'catastrophising' mentioned earlier.

So the Irish farmers are laughing. But they're not laughing. Scott Morrison is laughing. And the Galloway farmer is threatened by beef imports. Unless they come from Ireland. Or any of the other 26 EU countries.

I don't know if it's a modern phenomenon but 'catastrophising' seems more and more common (minor inconvenience = 'lives destroyed'). Like you said, we end up worse off but it's not that dramatic and no one really notices in their day to day lives. The catastrophisers look like arses.

You seem to be contradicting your earlier post. Why would higher UK prices be bad for Scottish farmers? In the past the Irish price held down the UK price. Now non-tariff barriers allow a gap. Australian beef will be more competitive, but it will still face non-tariff barriers.

Both Australia and the EU face substantial non-tariff barriers to the UK market now. As part of the EU, there were no real barriers to EU beef imports. Again, your argument doesn't stack up against reality.

This is absolutely true, but the Tories do the same thing in reverse.

We already have a tariff and quota free deal with the EU, or were you forgetting that? We imported, and still import, boatloads of Irish beef, though that fell in the immediate aftermath of Brexit: https://www.irishexaminer.com/farming/arid-40250537.html Other reports say UK beef prices up: https://www.fwi.co.uk/livestock/taking-stock/record-uk-beef-prices-lead-to-irish-cattle-imports Hard to see how that is terrible for Scottish farmers.

For me the strange thing is that some supporters of independence constantly take at face value very obvious anti-Brexit scaremongering ('utterly ruin domestic beef production' etc) when we all know that in any independence campaign, there will be very obvious scaremongering by Unionists ('utterly ruin the Scottish financial sector' etc).

I thought it was the Brexit gammons who thought our BSE meat was better than the foreign muck.

I used to pay much more than that 20 years ago. At the black market exchange rates, 38p would have been about a week's pay for a local. But they got the odd ration coupon for a beer.

Only the majority? Which charlatans were you thinking of keeping?

I don't think the life expectancy in posh bits of Edinburgh is close to the lowest in Europe. Morningside and The Grange are the Labour heartlands now.

Probably. Live games on the BBC are usually online as well Yes, they usually are. I watch games on the BBC Scotland channel online. It's just with Premier Sports also showing it I thought they might have online rights.

Is this going to be streamed online by the BBC? Took down my aerial and can't be arsed replacing it.

Does Mike Ashley own JD Sports?

Quite a sensible piece on Xinjiang. Surprised to find it in the Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/05/sanctions-uyghurs-plight-china-policies

This is very true. But given the pish most Scottish people eat, isn't it an argument in favour of free school meals? The main problem is that companies providing the meals take excessive profits, the kids don't want to eat nutritious meals (parents fault IMO), and most of the staff don't know how to do anything other than heat something up.

You probably think that's some kind of rebuttal of what I said, but it's not.

It's a bit of a myth to say that anyone who criticises the government online (or elsewhere) in China gets put in jail. People criticise the government all the time. The main difference is that there are certain things people can't say when they are criticising the government that they can say here. And they'd still only get a warning in 99.999% of cases.

Relative to the size of crowds, haven't Hearts spaffed as much money up the wall as anyone else in recent memory?