1. This is not correct by @BBCRosAtkins
New video on why the EU\u2019s approach to these Brexit trade talks should not come as a surprise. Whether you approve or not. Featuring @BBCChrisMorris @anandMenon1 & with thanks to colleagues Andrew Walker and Kevin Connolly. pic.twitter.com/ILeJAoSlRo
— Ros Atkins (@BBCRosAtkins) December 10, 2020
The EU demanded more alignment from Ukraine for 99% tariff reduction than it is asking from the UK for 100% tariff reduction.
The EU has never used dynamic alignment purely for LPF and outside the context of the DCFTA, and as @DavidHenigUK points out, it appears to need ironing out.
https://t.co/mc5BtSSpiZ
But note, there was no EU text precedent. Hence the first EU level playing field proposal contained non regression and a ratchet, but fudged enforcement, by suggesting implausibly, the establishment of new domestic bodies. 12/ pic.twitter.com/6irbr906rG
— David Henig (@DavidHenigUK) December 11, 2020
Here is Peter Mandelson at the time explaining that.
There was lots of unprecedented things in that deal.
We can probably not expect much in terms of our future trade deals outside the EU.
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This is shameful legislation, that does nothing to tackle the problems with UK elections.THREAD
Millions of people do not have photo ID. By forcing through mandatory voter-ID the government risk disenfranchising millions of legitimate voters. https://t.co/y0Upzof2FI
— Electoral Reform Society (@electoralreform) February 17, 2021
There is no evidence in-person voter fraud is a problem, and it wd be near-impossible to organise on an effective scale. Campaign finance violations, digital disinformation & manipulation of postal voting are bigger issues, but these are crimes of the powerful, not the powerless.
In a democracy, anything that makes it harder to vote - in particular, anything that disadvantages one group of voters - should face an extremely high bar. Compulsory voter ID takes a hammer to 3 million legitimate voters (disproportionately poor & BAME) to crack an imaginary nut
If the government is concerned about the purity of elections, it should reflect on its own conduct. In 2019 it circulated doctored news footage of an opponent, disguised its twitter feed as a fake fact-checking site, and ran adverts so dishonest that even Facebook took them down.
Britain's electoral law largely predates the internet. There is little serious regulation of online campaigning or the cash that pays for it. That allows unscrupulous campaigners to ignore much of the legal framework erected since the C19th to guard against electoral misconduct.
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The story doesn\u2019t say you were told not to... it says you did so without approval and they tried to obfuscate what you found. Is that true?
— Sarah Frier (@sarahfrier) November 15, 2018
In the spring and summer of 2016, as reported by the Times, activity we traced to GRU was reported to the FBI. This was the standard model of interaction companies used for nation-state attacks against likely US targeted.
In the Spring of 2017, after a deep dive into the Fake News phenomena, the security team wanted to publish an update that covered what we had learned. At this point, we didn’t have any advertising content or the big IRA cluster, but we did know about the GRU model.
This report when through dozens of edits as different equities were represented. I did not have any meetings with Sheryl on the paper, but I can’t speak to whether she was in the loop with my higher-ups.
In the end, the difficult question of attribution was settled by us pointing to the DNI report instead of saying Russia or GRU directly. In my pre-briefs with members of Congress, I made it clear that we believed this action was GRU.