SPAR-tan Measures

 The self-styled Spartans of the ERG have finally won their long battled-for Brexit, and the UK has left the European Union. 

But not all of it.  

In short, because of the historic sensitivities around the border between Eire and Northern Ireland, the Withdrawal Agreement committed to maintaining a open border between the EU and Northern Ireland, allowing for the free-flow of goods, service and people between the two.  Essentially, Northern Ireland remains in the EU, whilst still being part of the UK, whilst the rest of Great Britain is a non-EU country.  This, effectively, puts a border down the Irish Sea.  Although the government claims that none exists.  Indeed, only three days ago, the Northern Ireland Secretary, Brandon Lewis, a man suited to High Office in a very specific and limited way, said Brexit had "not created a border in the Irish Sea". 

Because there is no border, anyone now wishing to ship a product containing any animal part from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, and vice versa, must now fill out an Export Health Certificate for each product. Every time that product crosses the Irish Sea. These certificates have to be completed by specialists.  Such as vets.  They cost up to £150 per certificate. 

Because there is no border, the government has set up a scheme to compensate anyone who now has to fill out Export Health Certificates.

Because there is no border, Sainsburys has entered into a deal with Henderson Wholesale, who supply the SPAR grocery chain and have distribution centres across Ireland, to stock some SPAR branded products on shelves in their Northern Ireland stores so customers aren't faced with empty shelves. 

Sainsburys reckon they will 'lose' around 700 products from their shelves - bacon, sausages, pasta sauces, deli products, dairy items, ready-meals, desserts, etc. - due to Brexit.  The measure is a temporary one until such time as local replacements can be sourced and/or "border arrangements are confirmed". It's unprecedented, certainly in the UK, for a major supermarket chain to be stocking branded products from a rival chain on its shelves.  

Leonidas would be so proud.

What A Difference A Day Makes ...

 

Compare and contrast ...

You Say Po-tay-toe

 

We are in the midst of a second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic to really hit the UK.  Medical staff are reporting that hospitals in London and the South East are overwhelmed, with ICUs running, in some cases, at 137% capacity and patients having to be transported by ambulance as far away as Bristol for treatment. And yet none of the media are showing anything of the over-crowded wards, the NHS staff struggling - this time, largely without the moral support of the weekly 'Clap for Carers' that was such a feature of the first wave.  It was fine, seemingly, to have shown us the fleets of mortuary vehicles arriving at night in Spainish and Italian cities to remove the dead when the pandemic first hit Europe.  It was equally ok for us to be shown the piles of coffins and the temporary mortuaries at the back of New York hospitals when America was first hit.  But it's a feature of the UK experience that has been curiously absent.

Absent, too, is the media coverage of the nonsense Covid 'deniers' such as those filmed gathered, maskless, outside St Thomas' hospital on New Year's Eve, chanting "Covid is a hoax".  Although I can quite see why one might not wish to give them the oxygen of publicity, I'm at a loss to really understand why there is no factual reporting on the conditions inside British ICUs to counter these baseless conspiracy theorists.  One theory is that it is insensitive to the feelings of those whose relatives are currently in hospital being treated for Covid, and that it would make the stress and the fear so much worse for them.  Hmm... we weren't so concerned about their sensibilities before.  Indeed, reporting rarely is.

There are suggestions that individual medics have been threatened with dismissal, and entire NHS Trusts threatened with having their funding cut, should they allow journalists to see what is really going on in hospitals right now.  It's a theory that more than holds water when you know respected journalists have been struggling for weeks to get access.

So one does have to ask oneself just what kind of government would suppress the media in such a fashion?  One answer might be that of a Banana Republic, but I can't quite see the UK in that light.  Bananas are, after all, foreign, exotic things.  No, we're more at home with the humble British spud.  So a Potato Republic, then?  There's certainly more than a whiff of vodka about the place ...

I came across this on Twitter today and very much suspect, for the hard-core Brexiteers, this to be the case.

England remains stubbornly hostage to an unwillingness to disengage with the idea that past glories are just that: past. We choose to bathe in of the glories of Agincourt, when our superior English longbowmen stuffed one up the Frenchies, ignorant of the fact that many were, in fact, either French or Welsh, and that the longbow was only elevated to a weapon of prestige by our Norman (French) conquerors after the Welsh gave such a good account of themselves using it. We are stirred by the nonsense tale of Good Queen Bess riding to Tilbury to fire up the troops in the face of the Spanish Armada; and the utter lie of plucky little Britain standing alone in Europe against the Nazi threat. And for all the good they do, you might at well genuflect to Lego Windsor as the family Windsor.

Film Review: Stan and Ollie

Not a fan of Laurel and Hardy, and can only endure limited doses of Steve Coogan. BUT have just seen 'Stan & Ollie' and high recommend it. A sensitive portrayal of the nuanced light and dark within a flawed partnership heading towards joint and individual sunsets. Probably Steve Coogan's finest performance and well worth seeing.

Film Review: All Is True

All Is True. Meh. Pleasant enough, I suppose - certainly quite pleasant to look at - but not very interesting and struck me as being a big old dollop of self-indulgence on Brannagh's part, with a portion of mawkish nonsense regarding Hamnet. Nice scenery, though.

Film Review: Green Book

An engaging story that skates across the thin ice of America's 'Jim Crow' era. Whilst the subject matter certainly has room for more weighty treatment than this, 'Green Book' nevertheless delivers in spite of its simplistic 'broad-brush stroke' portrayal of the rampant prejudice of the 1960's.

The redemptive nature of the relationship between the two leads is obvious from the outset but the film contains enough twists to upset the most obvious of expectations.  But it is the performances from both Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen that lift it above what might otherwise have been leaning too far towards the 'Jim Crow LIte'.

Mortensen's appears the bigger role: he more obviously to fill the screen with his portrayal of the overweight, uncooth, mouthy Italian American thug Tony Lip (he put on over 3 stone for the role!). But it's Ali whose portrayal of tightly controlled emotion - often in the face of brutality on many levels - who steals the film. Highly recommended.