Brexit Backstops. HIBN. Steel Guitars, Shark-art and Recycling Plastic

Art on the Guided Busway.

A lovely quote from BBC Katya Adler's article today, on the response of an EU official watching the UK prepare for the forthcoming Brexit negotiations. They said:
"It just can't work," an EU diplomat told me in exasperation this week. "Theresa May has so many nooses dangling around her neck that one of those nooses is sure to hang her."

Yes, there has been another Brexit storm-in-a-teacup, or Barney in Number 10, amidst threats that our ebullient chief EU negotiator David Davis threatened to resign if he didn't get his way. The cause was the UK proposal for a "backstop" solution, just in case negotiations fail. This was to counter the EU's backstop, which effectively says that to ensure that the border in Ireland does not become a hard one, the whole of Eire could be an EU consistent economic zone, effectively shifting the national UK border into the stretch of water between Ireland and the UK mainland. The hardline DUP can not stand for that.

The alternative that the Prime Minister proposed was that the UK would follow the practice set out below, I quote directly from the Government's technical document:
This arrangement would see:

• The elimination of tariffs, quotas, rules of origin and customs processes including
  declarations on all UK -EU trade; 
• The UK outside the scope of the Common Commercial Policy (CCP), except where it is
  required to enable the temporary customs arrangement to function. This will mean
  applying the EU’s common external tariff (CET) at the UK’s external border, alongside
  the Union Customs Code (UCC) and such other parts of the Common Commercial Policy
  that are required to enable the temporary customs arrangement to function; and
• The UK able to negotiate, sign and ratify free trade agreements (FTAs) with rest of world partners and implement those elements that do not affect the functioning of the temporary customs arrangement. 

The first two points are basically "we will continue to act as if we are within the EU"

Hard brexiteers were up in arms because it could result in an indefinite interim term, which could push any final EU-UK agreement into the distant future - or not at all.

The compromise reached was that the backstop could only last till the end of December 2021.

It is a fudge that appeases all sides and lets the government trundle on in deadlock within itself. Whether the EU will accept it by the deadline for decision making at the end of this month is up in the air.

I've started using my bike for trips to the station (yesterday) or to the Histon and Impington Business Network (today). At the latter, the topic of GDPR raised its head as we tried to clarify whether it required common sense (my opinion) or added an unusual burden on small businesses.

Made several interesting discoveries today. One of the HIBN visitors enjoying the morning teas, coffees and patisserie at The Geographer, played a steel guitar outside of work. I hadn't realised that playing a steel guitar involved not only using a steel (or teflon coated) slider, there were also foot and knee pedals to adjust the tone and pitch of the instrument whilst playing.

Cycling down the guided busway back towards Milton, I stopped and admired the impressive mural under the bridge which featured an excellent shark as you can see from the photo above.

Then stopped again to chat to a person who was testing out whether you could re-use the non-degradable plastic tubes used to protect young trees (internal diameter about 15cm) as simple waste collection bins.

Workwise, today was a day of video-editing a Quekett member's hour long talk. I'm about a third of the way through.