Beijing with its Greater China and Brussels with its Greater Europe project are natural allies. They can trade tips on how to deal with renegade island provinces.
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to deal with renegade provinces.
An UE that let a “renegade” make a referendum and respected its results ?
We wonder what Nicola Sturgeon think about that.
I have no opinion on what the Scots should do but if they decide to leave, the Irony is that the UK would be in the same EU position of the last few years. Funny to watch how the nationalists would react and behave toward Scotland…
I think most Taiwanese would be happy if Beijing gave them the same option as the EU gave Britain.
It’s not really related situation . That would be like the EU threatening to invade and take over UK somehow.
Article 50 was conceived as a means for kicking countries out of the EU, not letting them out.
The author of the provision (Article 50) did not originally see it as being necessary. “If you stopped paying the bills and you stopped turning up at the meetings, in due course your friends would notice that you seemed to have left,” the Scottish peer Lord Kerr of Kinlochard told the BBC in November 2016. He saw Article 50 as being potentially useful in the event of a coup, which would lead the EU to suspend the affected country’s membership: “I thought that at that point the dictator in question might be so cross that he’d say ‘right, I’m off’ and it would be good to have a procedure under which he could leave.”
Yet more proof that Britain made a major mistake getting out of the EU:
The European Union, stung by its slow progress on vaccinations, threatened this week to tighten rules on the shipment of Belgian-made shots to Britain. . . . For the European Union, problems with its vaccination campaigns have reinforced criticism of the bloc’s occasionally unwieldy, slow bureaucracy. Unable to speed up vaccine makers, the bloc’s leaders have instead resorted to threats about the export process, a sign of the severe pressure facing them as the European Union falls far behind Britain and the United States, which made advanced purchases of vaccines earlier, and have been quicker to authorize the shots and get people inoculated. . . .
“The prestige of the European Union is founded on a perception of competence, particularly when you go to different peripheries of the continent, where people think that Brussels is going to be more competent than the national authorities,” said Bruno Maçães, an author and a former politician in Portugal. “You can see a sense of desperation in the last couple days.”Analysts said the spat was indicative of rising tensions over the large lead Britain has in inoculation, having given vaccines to 10 percent of its people so far, compared to about 2 percent in the European Union. . . .Britain reached an agreement with AstraZeneca last May to buy tens of millions of doses of the vaccine, when it was still in clinical trials — three months before the European Union arranged its purchases.
Which nationalists the Scottish ones?
I doubt Scotland would be allowed to walk into the EU. Spain would protest due to the Catalan/Basque problem.
It will be interesting when Salmond sues the shit out of the SNP snakes that shat on him. Jimmy Crankie is toast.
They said they would block any break away region of a member state from joining. However the UK is no longer a member state . I think it’s highly unlikely that Spain would block Scotland now.
The latest with the vaccine supply chain. You couldn’t make these twists in the tale up.
From your article. Yet more proof that Britain made a huge error exiting the EU:
While Britain was setting up its logistics and sorting out supply chains, the EU’s negotiations with AstraZeneca became mired in bureaucracy, costing the bloc vital time which has now been manifested in its supply problems.
On Tuesday, the AstraZeneca CEO, Pascal Soriot, said separate supply chains, including manufacturing plants, had been created for each order – one for the EU and one for the UK. This was done explicitly to stop squabbling over supply.
The EU supply chain was behind because the bloc, late to the party, was still experiencing teething problems with production – problems the UK supply chain had also suffered initially but had overcome.
Mr Soriot added that AstraZeneca was under no contractual obligation to supply the vaccines but only to make its “best efforts” to meet the order. His interview – in which he pointed out that the vaccines were being supplied on a not for profit basis – further infuriated the European Commission top brass.
Brussels has made huge play of the virtue of negotiating as a bloc, a posture that has appeared increasingly ridiculous as it lagged behind Britain in the vaccination rollout.
The moderna vaccine was surprisingly effective and is manufactured and packaged in multiple sites around the world . Now they are adding Switzerland as a manufacturing site .
Merck’s vaccine fell through.
To some extent these things are pretty unpredictable and the supply chain and process is complex. The EU approvals board should have moved faster though.
On the other hand the UK approved it with only rudimentary data available and is stretching out the doses. So there’s a lot of hindsight is 20:20 going on.
According to the article I posted - if I read it correctly- Oxford university were teaming up their researchers with Merck, but the government asked than to switch to supporting AstraZeneca instead and threw a load of money in to support the research. Merck failed, and Astra succeeded and the UK is way ahead on vaccines now.
Looks like someone is answering Boris’ dreams. 
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Are exports to Europe really down 68% in January compared to Jan 2020?
They did not give us an option we were never the same country in the first place. It was Cameron that gave British people the option to be inside or outside the EU , not the EU who decided.
What exports ? Coal? Dr Who?
We should now ban all vaccine exports to the EU. 
Stuff that gets sold.
It’s from the Guardian, so I’m not believing it yet as it’s so unbelievable.
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I do not want to give the Guardian access to my cookies 
They lie more than the Daily Mail.
The 68 percent reduction probably refers to the export of newspapers.
Hopefully viz makes it through the crisis. 
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Just watching Tony Blair on Piers Morgan.
This interview saddens me.
Piers Morgan gets my respect though. Blair not so much.
Wespons of mass destruction