Monday, 30 August 2021

Whither Brexit?

It’s August 2021.


The lack of recent posts on this Brexit-focussed blog exemplifies the difficulty of focussing on Brexit amidst the sociopathic mass-psychosis of covid19, the sociopathically engineered damage done in the name of “zero covid” policy “choices” and a sociopathic proto-government of (at least) the Western world by some sociopathic fascist cabal of occupation. They’re sociopaths, don’t you know?


And yet, there remains a strong media presence – mainstream/corporate and social – wittering on about Brexit. It’s rather like watching a small huddle of blinkered, ignorant middle-class snobs complaining about the deckchairs on the Titanic, as if nothing else matters. This trope of witterers are Remainiacs, continuing to peddle their narrative that Europe is essential to trade in the same way that vaccine boosters are essential to on-going survival and “freedom”. Their narrative is their raison d’être. They won’t let the narrative die, in spite of all the evidence to show that the narrative is dead and shall never return.


This blog post lists the major policy issues of day, rationalises how these policy issues have been allowed to become major, reflects on the relevance of Brexit in such context, and ends with a glorious and cathartic (purgative?) diatribe against Remainiacs.


The major policy issues of the day


Amongst today’s major policy issues are:

  • monetary policy since 1913 (the pseudo-science of “Keynesianism”), to eliminate wealth retention of individuals (“financial neo-feudalism”), with a particular desire to exterminate the middle classes;

  • overwhelming levels of personal, corporate and sovereign debt (“the Western Ponzi Scheme”), for which the sole solution permitted is ever-increasing taxation, to eliminate financial independence of individuals (“fiscal neo-feudalism”);

  • the weaponisation of the US dollar financial system, resulting in China and Russia seeking their own solution to by-pass the SWIFT banking system;

  • climate change (the pseudo-science of “man-made global warming”), for which the sole solution permitted is a centralised “smart-grid”, to eliminate energy independence of individuals;

  • a pandemic (the pseudo-science of “covid19”), based primarily upon false statistics, propped up by a false “test” (the PCR test), for which the sole initial solution permitted was medical martial law, followed by the final solution was a pseudo-vaccine, to eliminate health independence and bodily autonomy of individuals. Human rights were simply destroyed, and the peoples apparently clamoured for more communism to protect them! So much for human rights. Israel, France, Australia, New Zealand and Canada are now lost causes. UK and US are following closely behind. France has mandated pseudo-vaccines as a condition for participation in just about any retail trade transaction. Australia is building purpose-built concentration camps. New Zealand wants everybody – but especially the “unvaccinated” – to wear ankle bracelets;

  • the disruption of global supply chain for consumer goods (a planned methodology of “structured disintegration”), for which the sole solution permitted is a significant reduction in the size and scale of the retail sector, resulting in fewer companies selling fewer goods, to reduce consumers’ ability to find substitutes and thereby to erode freedom of choice by individuals;

  • the end of the American empire (“Afghanistan”) and the birth of the Eurasian century (“the New Silk Road”);

  • UN Agenda 2030 (re-named to the blandified and decoy brand of “The Sustainable Development Agenda”, since the riff-raff started to learn about it): a green-washed cover for centralising Marxist planned eugenicism (founded on the above pseudo-sciences), which nowadays includes Malthusianism as a design objective rather than a by-product to be avoided. This piece from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia of 1979 – itself a Marxist trope – gloriously points to the confusion between objective (intentional policy outcome) and outcome (unintended consequence of negligent policy), while shamelessly taking no ownership about Stalin’s numerous attempts to engage the same set of policies;

  • ageing demographics worldwide, where population birth rates have fallen below population replacement rates worldwide (except for Africa, but only likely for the next 30 years, after which Africa could fall into line), before consideration of any intervention to reduce population arbitrarily;

  • “The Great Reset”, the latest marketing campaign of the World Economic Forum (“You will own nothing and be happy”) to promise a trans-human, or cybernetic, new world order that looks exactly like Star Trek’s Borg (for US readers) and/or Dr Who’s Cybermen (for UK readers), supported by the usual motley crew of long-term eugenicists. Some of this motley crew are thought to aspire to a world human population of 500 million people worldwide; current population: 7.5bn. To achieve this aspiration would be either too long to be worth doing, or otherwise would require quite a holocaust (perhaps including many excessive doses of rivotril, midazolam and remdesivir given to elderly residents of care homes during a scamdemic, for example);

  • prior to and alongside covid19, a series of pseudo-scientifically determined animal diseases for which the sole solution permitted was the extermination of national herds and smallholdings, to eliminate nutritional and subsistence independence of individuals and families;

  • a culture war between the state and its people, with increasingly vicious and divisive emotional demands being psychologically programmed into the ideological wing of society, based upon Marxist – occasionally Trotskyist – ideology with Leninist methodologies (e.g. Anti-Fa, Extinction Rebellion, Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, social justice warriorism, trans-sexualism, veganism, equality-of-outcomism, continuous anti-historical revisionism, re-definitionism and hi-hackingism of existing words for politicised and ideological objectives, resulting in confusion, fragmentation, apartheid, divide-and-rule). This is a psychological attack by a state on its people, which this media outlet covers as part of a series focussed on the UK, starting with an analysis by Christopher Story, “European Union Collective: Enemy of its Member States”, page 6, “National Destabilisation Plan of KBG/GRU based on Soviet Defector Intelligence”, Yuriy Bezmeno via John Barron, “ 'KGB: The Secret Work of Soviet Secret Agents” (1974) and via Stanislav Levchenko, “KGB Today: the Hidden Hand” (1983).

  • on-going corruption within the scientific community, where the empirically-based scientific process of continuous audit has been replaced by a reverse anti-scientific process of, “Here’s the answer, now here’s some cash to go fake up some proof to prop it up, and we’ll have our marketing department do some ad hominem attacks on anybody with the brains to tell us we’re liars”, followed by the re-definition of this anti-scientific process as “the Science”, along with an implied falsehood that “the Science” is a body of fixed knowledge instead of an empirical process of continuous audit. The big-money embezzlement behind the anti-scientific “search for dark matter” is proof of such corruption; one has to ask whether “the search for dark matter” is actually a front for money-laundering, to fund covertly other seditious projects;

  • decades of agricultural malpractice, largely to the profit of agri-chemical corporations, resulting in attrition, desertification and wasting top soils, in turn resulting in a perverse dependence by farmers on the same chemicals that caused the destruction in the first place;

  • the only naturally-occurring issue on this list: a series of diminished growing seasons and harvests worldwide (2017 to 2021 so far), caused primarily by falling global average temperatures (featuring lower high temperatures in the days and higher low temperatures in the nights, i.e. an equalisation and narrowing of temperature worldwide, thus a general cooling in most – if not all – local geographies), caused in turn by reduced heat energy output from the sun (“solar minimum”). This, in turn, provided a good cover for the pseudo-scientifically determined animal diseases, thus causing a deliberate man-made worsening of an already-bad situation. (Meanwhile, the pseudo-science of man-made global warming, pissed off by nature’s refusal to obey the narrative, has changed the narrative somewhat and now wants us to emote that melting ice caps at the polar regions is proof (!!) that man-made “carbon emissions” (carbon, C, a gas?!) is boiling the planet alive.)


How does Brexit fit into this list?


So… Brexit caused which of these, precisely? Brexit enabled which of these, precisely? Brexit triggered which of these, precisely? Brexit leads to which of these, precisely? Brexit is the guiding set of principles for which of these, precisely?


The European Union had a hand in implemented and enforcing some of the major issues listed above, probably to the extent that caused the better informed voters in the referendum to vote to leave. But the UK’s departure from the European Union has not resulted in public policy in the UK to counter the negative effects of the major issues listed above. On the contrary, the UK government-of-occupation appears to be revelling to implement and enforce them.


In other words, Brexit just isn’t relevant any more. Other issues – those listed above – have all superseded, by-passed, trumped, over-taken Brexit. Brexit is already but a mere pimple – a distraction, a short-term inconvenience – in the history of today’s sociopathic globalist agenda.


It makes the happening of the Brexit referendum and the choice by the remain campaign to go full-on Project Fear even more inexplicable. The only rational purpose for the Brexit referendum, and the accompanying hysteria, was to have served as a distraction, to cover-up other events, perhaps to keep otherwise prying eyes away from the machinations of monetary policy and/or environmental policy and/or preparations for the covid19 scamdemic, etc.


As any stage hand knows, big scenery needs installation on the stage long before the audience arrives to the theatre to watch the show: there’s a limit to the scenery you can change behind the curtail while the audience sits in the theatre, munching on popcorn, patiently waiting for the show to start.


The Fourth Reich

Of the above list of major policy issues, all except the last point (the sole naturally-occurring issue) could happen concurrently only as a consequence of centralised planning, albeit plans frustrated by edge-seeking rivalry between the planners. The last point (the sole naturally-occurring issue) merely influenced the timing of when to co-ordinate which particular policy/scam.


The planners appear to be banksters (the currency monopoly), oiligarchs [read the word carefully] (the energy monopoly) and tech mafiosi (the data monopoly) (collectively, “the Fourth Reich”) playing a continuous, but unstable, game of rock-paper-scissors, with well co-ordinated supporting roles played by the pharma mafia, the agri-chemical mafia, the land mafia and the media mafia, and well-disciplined ranks of public sector officials (including the elected ones) keen to obey their corporate masters’ instructions to conserve the prospects of a plum consultancy non-job in later life.


These monopolies know full-well that their power depends upon perpetual expansion of their respective Ponzi schemes, all of which in turn depend on a stream of fresh new suckers to coerce into the bottom of the Ponzi scheme. But, like all Ponzi schemes, when the supply of suckers dries up, the Ponzi scheme collapses. Today, more and more ordinary people are waking up to their duping as a necessity of the covid19 scamdemic. As they do, they realise that their currency options, their energy options, their health options, their data options, all consumer options have been systematically closed down, resulting in their basic freedoms being arbitrarily curtailed. The Fourth Reich has only one tactic left in the short-term: a constant series of distracting, discombobulating psychological operations and scams to befuddle the masses into a psychosis of unthinking obedience to “the system”.


This whole show is run by corporations, on the advice of international standard setters (with hidden conflicts of interest) and facilitated by government regulation, with parliamentary democracy kicked well out of the way. Never let a good crisis – especially well-planned-in-advance pseudo-crises – go to waste. There’s an agenda to peddle – corporate survival at stake! – let’s get to it.


What is the role for Brexit within the Fourth Reich?

Although Brexit has (and will have) an effect at the sharp end of regulation, the bigger picture renders Brexit as a side-show that impacts only the British Isles. No-body else needs to care.


Bizarrely, it seems that the European Union (“EU”) itself is still paying lip-service to its role to keep Britain on a short leash. Even more bizarrely, the UK government-of-occupation seems keen to accept the short leash, whilst pretending to be mutinous. But the EU is demonstrably distracted with crises of its own. And many of those crises are of the EU’s own making. For recent examples:


  • the rapid divergence between member nations away from the strict discipline required to make the covid19 scamdemic hold the narrative (compare France’s vaxx-pass communism with Spanish courts declaring lockdowns to be unconstitutional); or

  • the European Commission’s bungling of the orders for vaccines (remember, these were supposed to be sole permitted solution, so screwing this up could only undermine the credibility of the narrative); or

  • the European Medicines Agency not quite realising that, in matters pharmaceutical, Pfizer tells the Agency what to do, not the other way around.


So, on the face of it, Remainiacism is a cause without a sponsor. At least, not a sponsor that is currently paying attention. Fundamentally, Remainiacs are redundant positions. Perhaps even redundant people.


Nevertheless, Remainiacs still lurk and, sadly, thrive in the UK. They still win platforms from which to project their delirium. They appear to be the vocal stormtroopers of the Fourth Reich, if only to the extent of shilling for a nihilistic psychological operation to keep Britain locked into a mental Ponzi prison.


The following section is a description of a pseudo-technical update from a professional services firm, offered as a small case study of above statement.


Case study: how British Remainiacs ply their cynical trade

Earlier in 2021, the American branch of a major global name in accountancy held a webinar, a technical update asking the question about the longer-term future of trade post-Brexit. The audience was almost-certainly mainly American, comprising typical clients of the firm (accountants, compliance officers, data officers, tax officers, all employees charged with implementing compliance rather than designing public trade policy).


There were three speakers: a Briton, an American and an Irishman. (Yes, this is sounding like a joke, but wait until you hear the punchline.)


The American spoke fluently and technically accurately about data law. He understood his audience and the requirements of the audience.


The Irishman spoke fluently, technically accurately, issue-literately and neutrally (as much as possible) about the history of Brexit leading up to the referendum and the immediate post-referendum period. He did an excellent job. He, too, understood his audience and the requirements of the audience.


The Briton spoke fluently, too. But, it seems, he didn’t give a damn about his audience and its requirements. The Briton was apparently still fighting the referendum. Billed as an influential member of his firm’s “manufacturing interest group”, he demonstrated a breathtaking ignorance of how international trade actually works by introducing the major part of his nonsense based on UK trade numbers. This didn’t work in the actual referendum, but, hey, why learn from mistakes? Worse, a country’s trade numbers has no relevance to the decision about whether to open or maintain a market in a particular jurisdiction, which would have been the maximum interest of this audience.


As if the Briton’s irrelevant choice of narrative wasn’t bad enough, he then resorted to sleights of hand to mis-present his trade figures. This was the proof that he was still fighting the referendum. The sleight of hand was to present trade figures of the UK with other countries, but to have clumped together those members of the only European Union, excluding those members of the European Economic Area (as if somehow they don’t count?), and rank this mishmash as if there were a common denominator, i.e. a fraud, presumably to denigrate maliciously the UK and Norway and Iceland and Lichtenstein and Switzerland. Racism, it seems, is acceptable if being racist props up Brexit. #DoAsISayNotAsIDo. Given the nature of the webinar’s audience, the audience would have spotted this. How many of the audience – especially those who were sympathetic to the remain campaign – might have held their head in their hands with embarrassment? How many of the audience asked themselves, “Is this how these clowns lost their referendum?”


The zenith of his embarrassment – it is doubtful whether he recognised the embarrassment to which he was marching – was a slide in which one of “his clients” was reported to have complained that it was easier to sell cheese to China than to Europe (cheese is manufactured, right? his interest group, right?). Well… duh... yes… selling cheese to Europe is like selling water to a whale, so of course it is damned hard. Apart from the sheer variety of German cheeses, Italian cheeses, Polish cheeses and French cheeses (including those which could count as a new species of life), Dutch food technologists are likely to be well on the way to developing a plastic cheese with some form of artificial intelligence. So, even if the UK had voted to remain, why would EEA members need to import British cheeses? And that’s before we get around to discussing the pseudo-scientific protectionism (“conformity assessment”) within the EEA to protect incumbents within the EEA from rivals (new entrants) also within the EEA (never mind exporting into the EEA!).


In other words, this dumb Briton’s equally dumb client was apparently complaining about his business’ best opportunity for the short- and medium-term. Just imagine a really, really angry rabbit marching stoicly headlong, on a fast road, towards the front fender of a huge, fast-approaching, speeding truck, the rabbit screaming to itself, “This is economic survival! This is the way forward!! This is the way I shall succeed!!! I am right!!!! Everybody else is wrong!!!!!” Splat. How many of the audience just wanted the earth to open up from underneath them? How many were laughing hysterically at their screens?


The Briton then played another sleight of hand. Having raised the issue of cheese to China, he then chose to ignore the open opportunity at this technical update to illustrate the range of technical issues involved in selling cheese to China. He chose silence about any differential conformity assessments between the EEA and, in this case, China. The choice to waste this opportunity must have been deliberate. To have taken the opportunity – at least, in the hands of a competent, depoliticised speaker – could have resulted in demonstrating issue literacy. But that, it seems, would never do. It would undermine the narrative, after all.


Overall, the message that the webinar’s mainly-American audience must have interpreted from this Briton’s eloquent demonstration of fundamental issue-illiteracy would have been unambiguously clear: Britain is closed for business. “Structured disintegration” is in motion. Go away. What a punchline. Who is the joke?


The diatribe

From the case study alone (!), we could reasonably find that Remainiacs are malicious brokers of bad faith, unwilling to participate in a civil society, unwilling to adhere to demonstrable facts and unwilling to work towards optimum public policy to procure the optimum public good, in good faith.


Beyond the case study above, a truism seems to have emerged in mainstream and social media alike. Wherever you see Remainiac comment, it seems almost always accompanied by the same set of crankery, false beliefs and ad hominem attacks at the first whiff of challenge. It cannot be a co-incidence that Remainiacs believe in the three pseudo-sciences of Keynesianism, “carbon emissions” as a source of “man-made global warming” and “covid” as a real pandemic. The more “worldy-wise” amongst them is likely to believe in the bonus pseudo-science of “the search for dark matter”. It cannot be a co-incidence that Remainiacs wrongly see trade as a zero-sum game, wrongly see command-and-control as a method of “safety”, wrongly see Marxism as the scientific way forward, wrongly see science as a fixed body of unchangeable knowledge instead of a continuous process of empirical audit, wrongly see coercion as a form of “freedom”. Remainiacs seem set to believe genuinely that the earth is flat, based upon the Remainiac creed to defer to pseudo-expertise (akin to deference to the Church instead of Galileo’s empirical methods and findings). It is absolutely no co-incidence that Remainiacs demand global totalitarianism, yet refuse to see how their own redundancy in such ambition. In any coup d’état, the the tyrant executes first the successful activists that helped bring the tyrant to power. Who are Remainiacs, but the very activists who want to bring tyranny into power? What sort of person accepts a quick death as a reward for the hard work of being an activist?


Are Remainiacs knowingly playing a role in a psychological attack against the ordinary people they seek to persuade?


Closing remarks

With Brexit now a side-show in world affairs, a quagmire in which the Remainiac portion (the greater proportion) of Britain’s ruling class fully intends to force the UK to wallow in perpetuity, it is time for those of us with brains to look beyond the scorched earth policy of the ruling Remainiac government of occupation. It’s time to think about living outside the Matrix, living off-grid. It’s time to switch from being a Roman to a barbarian.


It’s time to curl up with a nice, optimistic, forward-booking book.


Which book? Hmmm. Orwell’s 1984 is more an installation manual nowadays, rather than a warning. The ruling classes have clearly taken Huxley’s Brave New World as a manifest destiny. So perhaps a better starting point would be Davidson’s “The Next End of the World: the Rebirth of Catastrophism”. That’ll help us to plan when to seek a decent plot of land on which we can grow our own (illegal) food. Otherwise, if nothing else, we can look forward to the electromagnetic pulse from a micronova of our own sun to wipe out the electronic era and therefore the digital identity pass, central bank digital currencies and the power base of these offensive, parasitic sociopaths of the ruling classes.


But, hey, that too will all be caused by Brexit, right?


End of post. Thankfully.


Saturday, 2 January 2021

The draft Trade & Co-Operation Agreement of 24Dec2020

The draft Trade and Co-Operation Agreement (“TCA”) between the European Union and the UK Government landed on Christmas Eve 24Dec2020.


After many months of false promises of sky falling on heads, a year-long scamdemic hysteria around a novel coroavirus that failed to become the new bubonic plague (but, about which, governments around the world are still openly lying to keep the scam going), the second wave of the banking crisis having re-surfaced in Sep2019 (from 2008), the Brexit sub-saga has now excreted another odorous document to sniff.


The draft TCA is 1,246 pages long, comprising:

  • 409 pages of the heads of terms agreed;

  • 652 pages of annexes;

  • 185 pages of protocols.


In this blog post are brief initial reactions to two sections:

  • provisions regarding aviation;

  • provisions regarding data


Part Two, Heading Two, Title I: Air transport


One of the biggest hurdles for a “no-deal” Brexit was the prospect of UK aviation airspace becoming an island in a sky-locked sea of European Common Aviation Airspace. With no lawful means of over-flying ECAA, flights to and from the UK would be totally prohibited.


It seems that the penny/pfennig/centime/Euro-cent/etc has dropped.


Articles AIRTRN.2 and .3 provide that each party shall grant the other party's air carriers the right to operate as air transporters on what appear to be normal flight routes. Each party grants the other party rights to overfly (i.e. without landing) and to land for “non-traffic” purposes (i.e. for emergencies, fuelling, anything unrelated to passengers, baggage, cargo or mail, etc). The agreement explicitly states that neither party has the unilateral right to grant its air carriers the right to take on board passengers, baggage, cargo or mail from the territory of the other party.


AIRTRN.4 deals with code-sharing and blocked space arrangements. Broadly, air carriers of one party may cross-market with air carriers of the other party, such activities to include the sale of tickets.


AIRTRN.5 provides for freedom of flexibility of air operations, within the limits defined by .2 and .3.


AIRTRN.6 covers authorisations and permissions. Neither party intends to recognise unilaterally the authorisations of the other party. Instead, each party shall recognise the other party's authorisations of an air carrier to expedite its own authorisation of the same air carrier “with minimum procedural delay”, subject to a series of qualifications. The qualifications include safety and security (AIRTRN.18 and .19). The really illuminating qualification is set out in 1.d: “the air carrier meets the conditions prescribed under the laws and regulations normally applied to the operation of international air transport by the Party considering the application or applications.” (my emphasis). The importance of this subtlety needs highlighting: this is both parties agreeing to international regulations, from time-to-time varying.


However, AIRTRN.6.2 muddies the water substantially. .2 limits the authorisation of UK air carriers to those controlled by interests based in contracting states of the European Economic Area and Switzerland. Moreover, .2 does not limit its applicability to only the EU's regulators. So, on the face of it, the TCA aims to prohibit the UK's regulators from granting authorisations to UK air carriers unless they are controlled by interests based in the EEA+CH. For existing carriers, this is probably no problem.


But for new future carriers, perhaps based exclusively in the UK and controlled only by UK interests, it seems to make it impossible for them to obtain any authorisations from either EU or UK regulators. The net effect of this intention is that any EEA+CH air carrier may obtain authorisation from the UK regulators swiftly, but any future UK-only air carrier shall not obtain authorisation from either UK or EEA+CH regulators (AIRTRN.6.2(b)). This is probably intentional. The EU doesn't want the UK to succeed in any way shape or form. Nor does the EU want the UK to become a Trojan horse for, say, US-controlled interests to enter EECA without restriction. Fortunately, for the EU, the UK has a precedent of centuries of self-loathing to make its new-found enthusiasm for self-destruction via its Net Zero 2050 meme a credible excuse to accept a protectionist door being slammed in its face. At least in the short-term, for the sheer theatre of it.


Obvs, that's not the end of the story about the control of air carriers. AIRTRN.9 commits both parties to future negotiations, to commence within 12 months, to determine whether to liberalise the ownership and control rules to which AIRTRN.6 refer. Yet, AIRTRN.12 has both parties agreeing that they want to remove obstacles to air carriers' business. Given the UK's habit of self-destruction – its issue-illiterate use of lockdowns during 2020 are clear examples of “any self-harm justified by any idiotic excuse” – it seems that .9 and .12 are both fig leaves to cover continuing EU hegemony over UK regulatory governance.


In other respects, Part Two, Heading Two, Title I aspires for the status quo, with explicit reciprocity, with reliance on basic existing international rules. The outcome is substantially that of the UK never having been part of the ECAA at any time in the UK's history. AIRTRN.13 (commercial operations) covers ground handling operations, capital movements, leasing and intermodal transport (where an air carrier might use, say, road transport as part of its business) on basic international rules pari passu, and AIRTRN.14 handles fiscal matters similarly. AIRTRN.18 (aviation safety) and .19 (aviation security) both centre around international standards, effectively being a protocol between the two parties about how collaboratively to implement international standards between them (as if the protocol embedded within existing international standards are somehow insufficient: again, this smells like EU hegemony being imposed on a willingly subservient UK).


AIRTRN.23 (relationship to other agreements) maps the plumbing of regulation flows underpinning all of Title I:

  • First up, the TCA states that the TCA replaces all prior agreements, unless subsequent EU law replaces bits of the TCA (which, as a timeline, doesn't really make sense – why embed obsolete EU law in this TCA?).

  • Second up, neither the UK nor any EU member state can deviate from the TCA. This is bizarre clause in the TCA. In theory, EU members states can't deviate anyway, because they are signatories to the TOFU, and therefore cannot strike out independently of any matter reserved for the EU (including aviation airspace, regulated under the ECAA). How could an EU member state deviate from AIRTRN.23.2?

  • Third up, if the International Civil Aviation Organization thinks of a new rule, or if either UK or EU sign up to a multi-lateral agreement, then the two parties shall consult to update the TCA accordingly. This is another reference to the two parties committing to follow international regulations, irrespective of how implausible any alternative might be. Talk about covering bases!


AIRTRN.26 registers the TCA with the International Civil Aviation Organization, in accordance with Article 83 of the Convention on Intentional Civil Aviation, Chicago, 07Dec1944 plus annexes.


Comment:


Overall, the air transport title looks like an astonishing political climb-down by both parties. It seems that both parties have been forced to admit the hubris of their own rhetoric.


In substance, the parties are opting to revert to the same international rules that non-EU countries already adopt. The parties are also agreeing to follow international rules in the present and in the future. It's not as if they have much of a choice, if they still want their respective airspaces to be wired into foreign airspaces. There isn't much scope for re-inventing triangular wheels in the aviation regulation space.


Yet, the TCA reads like a heads-of-terms political agreement. The TCA says nothing about how it will achieve any of its lofty back-to-the-real-world objectives.


The devils in details have yet to come out to play. Ergo, the TCA is a very, very draft “agreement”. While the UK needs to erect its regulatory authorities to comply with the TCA, the EU will need to amend the ECAA to implement the TCA.




Part Two, Heading One, Title III, chapter 2: data flows and personal data protection


Chapter two comprises only two articles. The net effect of these two articles is vacuous, doing nothing more than kicking the can down the road for another three years.


The context of Title III (Digital Trade) is far wider than data protection, having the lofty objective of removing electronic barriers to trade, encompassing customs duties on e-supplies, e-signatories to execute lawfully-enforceable contracts, authentication and trust services, access to source code, consumer trust (possibly the closest to GDPR that Title III gets, at a stratospheric level only), open government data, regulatory co-operation and a broad definition of computer services.


Comment


The TCA has had little choice but to ignore the elephant in the room: the interruption of data flows caused by the GDPR border moving to sit in between the UK and the EU, GDPR's non-EU equivalents around the world, and the hole smashed into the EU-US Privacy Shield by Schrems II.


The Schrems II case destroyed the EU-US Privacy Shield, by revealing that the EU-US Privacy Shield could not replicate the enforceability of GDPR under American law. This implies that standard contractual clauses (“SCCs”) had no useful enforceability under American law. The root complaint of Schrems II is that American law prohibits the American data processor (or host) to tell the data subject that the data subject's personal data is being slurped by the US stasi state. This would be illegal under GDPR. So the EU-US Privacy Shield – including all contractual documents that rely upon the EU-US Privacy Shield – is insufficient to comply with EU-GDPR.


Yet, in spite of this huge hole blasted in the fabric of data protection regulation, countries are implementing their own GDPR equivalents. Brazil and California have both re-invented their particularly triangular GDPR wheels. The UK opted to photocopy the EU-GDPR and pretend that it is enforceable under UK law, to such an extent that the EU would accept its as some sort of mutual recognition or conformity assessment by proxy. Erm... nope.


Amidst such chaos, it is no surprise that part two, heading one, title III, chapter 2 is so vacuous. Kick that can.