EU trying to steal our vaccines

[ditchman]

1 hour ago, WalkedUp said:

EU has played this appallingly. Embarrassing for all involved. There needs to be censure for this. Boris has avoided getting involved but needs to draw a line under it rather than say “it’s a commercial matter between the EU and their supplier”. 

apparently............the french press has hardly even reported this............and there are reports....(not truly confirmed yet)...that france and the EU are already sitting on substancial numbers of vaccines ...which they are yet to issue ..but cant until they have their delivery systems in place.......

[243deer]

13 minutes ago, ditchman said:

apparently............the french press has hardly even reported this............and there are reports....(not truly confirmed yet)...that france and the EU are already sitting on substancial numbers of vaccines ...which they are yet to issue ..but cant until they have their delivery systems in place.......

even if they get their delivery systems in place how will the 28 countries agree who gets how many first? I rather suspect that it will be an Orwellian decision as usual.

[JohnfromUK]

Just now, 243deer said:

even if they get their delivery systems in place how will the 28 countries agree who gets how many first? I rather suspect that it will be an Orwellian decision as usual.

Thats easy - usual rules apply - France and Germany first (after EU officials).

[Mungler]

It is quite amazing, as too the U turn when the rest of the world went ‘you what?’ and now they are saying the threat of revocation was an accident.

Nice of them to let the mask slip and so we can all see the essence of what we are going to be dealing with, and have escaped.

I wonder what the remoaners and the Guardian make of this. 

Tell you what though, the next 5 years is going to be tough as we change and adjust, and they take every opportunity to kick us.

[JohnfromUK]

1 minute ago, Mungler said:

the threat of revocation was an accident.

A good thing they don't have a nuclear button if accidents happen that easily!  I thought now Junker was gone and we had someone in charge who wasn't drunk from breakfast onwards things might be a bit less 'accident prone'.

 

2 minutes ago, Mungler said:

they take every opportunity to kick us.

That, I'm afraid was always on the cards - though I expected the first skirmishes to be in relation to fishing.

[Raja Clavata]

Macron appears to have completely lost the plot. He is reportedly considering a third lockdown which the public are reeling at the news of.

The irony of his negative "quasi-effective" comment about the Astra Zeneca vaccine is that the Pasteur Institute in Paris announced earlier this week that they were abandoning their vacccine development as it has shown to not be as effective as hoped / expected.

The French consider this a national humiliation, Macron is not making many friends at home or abroad.

As already suggested, Macron and the EU have made Boris look like a legend, truly remarkable.

I think we should be justifiably proud at the rate of vaccine roll-out in the UK along with the good global citizen act of offering our leadership in the genomic sequencing of the virus to the rest of the world. 

IIRC didn't France and Germany initially block export of PPE? It's also reported that Germany has signed it's own contract with Pfizer for the vaccine although it's unclear on the agreed supply of that contract into relation to the rest of the EU supply.

Strange times indeed.

[ditchman]

this is going to cause emmense damage to the street cred of the EU...........that is if they dont put a block on the reporting of this............and as 243 says they have yet to dictate who gets what in the 27 states...........interesting times ahead for the EU

 

"i care not for your predicterment Jack......i am suffiencently provided for ..."

thats how the other member states will view Brussells......

[old man]

33 minutes ago, 243deer said:

even if they get their delivery systems in place how will the 28 countries agree who gets how many first? I rather suspect that it will be an Orwellian decision as usual.

Absolutely, I feel really sorry for the ordinary people of the smaller member states who are as usual being thrown under the bus first, They need the vaccine as much as anyone else? Maybe they need to think hard about the crooks they signed up with?

I wonder how many of the EU elite haven't had the jab?

 

41 minutes ago, JohnfromUK said:

Thats easy - usual rules apply - France and Germany first (after EU officials).

By the time the officials have been done there won't be any left over?

37 minutes ago, Mungler said:

It is quite amazing, as too the U turn when the rest of the world went ‘you what?’ and now they are saying the threat of revocation was an accident.

Nice of them to let the mask slip and so we can all see the essence of what we are going to be dealing with, and have escaped.

I wonder what the remoaners and the Guardian make of this. 

Tell you what though, the next 5 years is going to be tough as we change and adjust, and they take every opportunity to kick us.

We need to learn how to kick back maybe?

Restrict information from GCHQ for starters?

[loriusgarrulus]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9203435/GUY-ADAMS-UK-built-vaccine-triumph-Tory-haters-called-anti-EU-plot.html

Interesting article on our procurment and management of the vaccine.

[Mungler]

This is a good article 

 

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-eu-s-vaccine-opportunism-will-not-be-forgotten

 

 

[WalkedUp]

9 minutes ago, loriusgarrulus said:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9203435/GUY-ADAMS-UK-built-vaccine-triumph-Tory-haters-called-anti-EU-plot.html

Interesting article on our procurment and management of the vaccine.

Unfortunately I find that to be a divisive and twisted article. Tiny quotes abstracted from any context, it’s pretty much a showpiece of disinformation for the  masses. 

9 minutes ago, Mungler said:

This is a good article 

 

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-eu-s-vaccine-opportunism-will-not-be-forgotten

 

 

Agree, good article. The threat of Article 16 is unforgivable and unites the UK’s disgust at the EU’s actions. People are defined by their actions in desperate times, the EU are certainly showing their colours. 

Edited January 30, 2021 by WalkedUp

[oowee]

2 hours ago, JohnfromUK said:

Thats easy - usual rules apply - France and Germany first (after EU officials).

The EU joint purchasing agreement had rules to stop EU members buying the same supplies and pushing up the price. Somehow Germany managed to buy extra supplies of BioNTec and Cure Vac apparently in breach of the rules. 

The EU regulator must sign off the vaccine's yet Hungary have bought doses of Sputnik V. 

EU is going to the dogs. 

 

 

 

Germany, a country of 83 million people, said it's getting 94 million doses of the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine, 64 million from the EU and 30 million from a separate bilateral deal. On top of that, Berlin will buy doses that other countries don't buy, securing 50 million of 160 million Moderna doses — far more than its pro-rata allocation.

[Raja Clavata]

1 hour ago, WalkedUp said:

Agree, good article. The threat of Article 16 is unforgivable and unites the UK’s disgust at the EU’s actions. People are defined by their actions in desperate times, the EU are certainly showing their colours. 

This is a good one too.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-eu-vaccine-debacle-poses-a-difficult-question-for-remainers-like-me

However, as far as I'm concerned "Remainer" is past tense. If we're to apply to the present then a "Remainer" is an advocate of remaining outside the EU, I think that means I'm a Remainer. This week has certainly been a bad one for any Rejoiners...

[Mungler]

This is a good ‘un too.

Oh this will run and run.

 

https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/01/30/the-people-were-right/

 

Brilliant opener:

 

We told you. We told you the European Unionwas not some hippyish, internationalist outfit but rather was a self-interested protectionist bloc. We told you it was a sclerotic bureaucracy whose centralisation of power made it more and more difficult for member states to behave as democratic nations and to respond sensitively and speedily to the needs of their own people. We told you the EU didn’t really give a damn about the Good Friday Agreement and was only using it as a weapon with which to beat Brexit Britain. We told you the EU was exploiting Ireland, cynically marshalling its concerns over a ‘hard border’ to try to further demonise Brexit, and that before long it would forget all about its concern for Ireland and relegate it once again to the status of a neo-colony. We told you all of this. And we were right.

Edited January 30, 2021 by Mungler

[grrclark]

1 hour ago, oowee said:

The EU joint purchasing agreement had rules to stop EU members buying the same supplies and pushing up the price. Somehow Germany managed to buy extra supplies of BioNTec and Cure Vac apparently in breach of the rules. 

The EU regulator must sign off the vaccine's yet Hungary have bought doses of Sputnik V. 

EU is going to the dogs. 

It is quite remarkable.  Some interesting quotes by Orban that he prefers the Chinese vaccine and they are actively now in commercial negotiations to buy that.

The fact that the supply agreements were made by the supranational EU, at their insistence that should be a collective endeavour, but there is talk of litigation by some individual member states against the producers is also pretty remarkable.

I can see that very quickly turning into the individual member states taking action against fellow member states or even the EU itself.

 

[Mungler]

Hanan in the Telegraph:

 

Remainers were right. Brexit has indeed led to an outbreak of populism, protectionism and chauvinism. But not on the side of the Channel they expected. 

The EU’s behaviour over the past 72 hours has been so demented, so self-wounding, that it is hard to know where criticism should begin. 

Let’s start with the bare facts. Brussels is in dispute with AstraZeneca, the British-Swedish pharmaceutical company, over the late delivery of some Covid vaccines. For what it’s worth, the EU seems to have a staggeringly weak case. It published its contract with the firm but, far from being any kind of “gotcha”, that contract showed that AstraZeneca had simply promised to use its “reasonable best efforts” to fulfil the order, the same form of words it used with the UK, which also saw some late deliveries. The rights and wrongs of that dispute, though, are beside the point. The EU’s quarrel is with AstraZeneca, not with Britain.

In pursuit of its quarrel, Brussels announced plans to block the export of vaccines from a completely unrelated company, the American corporation Pfizer, to Britain – vaccines which no one disputed that the UK had purchased, and on which the EU did not pretend to have any legal claim. 

In other words, Brussels was threatening to halt the sale of life-saving drugs to a neighbouring country, not in response to any provocation, but simply because it was cross that that country was further advanced in its vaccination programme. 

It gets worse. In order to deflect criticism from its hopeless record in ordering vaccines, the European Commission aimed its law expressly at Britain. Its export ban did not apply to other neighbouring states, such as Iceland, Morocco, Egypt, Syria, Ukraine or Belarus. The only country in the vicinity to be targeted was the UK.

It gets worse still. To make sure that no vaccines could enter the UK, the Commission announced that it was excluding Northern Ireland from the single market arrangements which it had previously insisted were so critical to the peace process. Incredibly, it didn’t notify Britain or Ireland in advance, and its move united every party in Dublin and Belfast against it (as well, for that matter, as every party at Westminster except the SNP), eventually forcing it to back down. Still, a point was made – a point that cannot now be unmade. For four years, EU negotiators claimed that the merest possibility of a border in Ireland would risk a return to terrorism, and worked to convince the world that this was a risk that Britain was somehow prepared to run. Yet it took precisely 29 days before the EU itself announced such a border.

It gets even worse than that. Annoyed at Britain’s success, European leaders started casting doubt on the efficacy of the AstraZeneca product. Engaging in the kind of nuttiness which gets people banned from social media, Emmanuel Macron claimed that the vaccine “didn’t work”. In other words, the EU is breaking every norm of civilised behaviour and threatening expropriation over a vaccine which, from sheer sour grapes, its leaders claim is ineffective.

Let’s summarise. The European Commission elbowed aside its member states, which had begun their own procurement programmes, and insisted on negotiating en bloc for the 27. It moved slowly and bureaucratically, reportedly because it was holding out for vaccines produced by Continental firms. In the end, three months after Britain, it signed a contract with AstraZeneca similar to that which some of its nations had tried to sign earlier. As criticism mounted, it panicked and lashed out – smashing the principles of due process, private property and free trade in the process.

Eurocrats are behaving not so much like mini-Trumps as like 1960s Nasserite dictators. They are deliberately disrupting supply at the height of a pandemic. And their petulance, shockingly, is aimed at the only pharmaceutical company in the world which is high-mindedly offering the vaccine to all comers on a not-for-profit basis.

The British government, like AstraZeneca, wants to spread the inoculation programme globally, reaching countries that can’t afford their own vaccines. This is the thanks we get.

For at least some British Remainers, the events of this week have served as what Western Communists used to call a “Kronstadt moment”. Kronstadt, the site of a naval mutiny against the Bolsheviks in 1921, became a shorthand for the moment when a previously loyal party member suddenly grasped the true nature of the Soviet regime. For some, it came with the 1956 Hungarian rising, for others the 1968 Prague Spring. For some, it never came at all. But it always involved a wrenching mental reset, a readiness to look again at old certainties.

Consider the assertions made by the two sides in the 2016 referendum. Eurosceptics argued that the EU was slow, introverted, bureaucratic, inefficient, ready to make up the rules as it went along, a bully and a bad neighbour. Europhiles saw it as principled, internationalist, effective, generous, rules-based and committed to global trade. If we treat those two views as verifiable claims, which has just been falsified? 

When Remainers, including Labour and Lib Dem MPs and every expert that the Guardian could wheel out, argued last year that Britain’s refusal to join in the EU’s procurement scheme would cause needless deaths here, they undoubtedly believed it. But it is Boris Johnson’s conviction that Brexit would mean a more agile Britain that turned out to be right.

More agile – and, I hope, more generous. It is a pity that, instead of quietly asking Britain to sell it some spare doses, the EU behaved so peevishly. But the UK should hold itself to a higher standard. Because of our successful procurement programme, we will end up with a vaccine surplus this year. We should use that surplus to benefit less well-stocked nations – our friends in the Commonwealth, naturally, but others, too. We might, for example, prioritise Ireland, to which every town in Britain has family connections. We might help our oldest ally, Portugal, currently experiencing a surge of infections. We should, in short, be the positive global force that the EU is failing to be.

.

Edited January 30, 2021 by Mungler

[Shufti]

Thanks, Thoroughly enjoyed reading that last post.

[Good shot?]

4 hours ago, loriusgarrulus said:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9203435/GUY-ADAMS-UK-built-vaccine-triumph-Tory-haters-called-anti-EU-plot.html

Interesting article on our procurment and management of the vaccine.

Very good read that link...

[Scully]

I really am enjoying all this....makes me feel all warm and gooey inside! 😄

Edited January 30, 2021 by Scully

[Mungler]

That Hanan article nails it for me.

So, I am friends on Facey with a couple of people who are hardline remainers and their friends and groups are all remain leaning.

Me, I’ll listen to all sides and all arguments, and I tend to see the points all sides try to make. Indeed, refusing to listen to an opposing argument doesn’t really help or strengthen any position. I digress.

Back to on-line, you would have thought there would have been some chatter on Facey about all of this - after all these group of reaminers are on-line every day and with the slightest euro anything in the news and they’re off - chat chat chat.

Today, not a peep. Not one has posted anything. Not a sausage. I’ve never seen that before. 

[TIGHTCHOKE]

They are keeping their heads down and hoping nobody goes looking for them!

[TRINITY]

44 minutes ago, TIGHTCHOKE said:

They are keeping their heads down and hoping nobody goes looking for them!

After all the flak and name calling plus the perpetual claims that leavers were thick, bigoted, racists who had not got the mental capacity to understand what they were voting for, pay back time !!!!

The ones that I know are getting it back big style as far as I am concerned. 

[The Heron]

Some of the members of the eu have very short memory's I am so glad that we left. 

[WalkedUp]

11 hours ago, JohnfromUK said:

Personally, I think it is sensible for politicians to keep from interfering - particularly 'our' politicians because the AZ contract as interpreted by independent lawyers (if indeed there is such an animal) supports 'our' case.

Post #1 

Gove made a clear statement today, confident and calming. He’s half-fish-half-man but done good today. 

 

Post #2

Saddening that some are still in the remainer vs leaver mindset of seeing our fellow compatriots. Weak. 

Edited January 30, 2021 by WalkedUp

[WalkedUp]

4 hours ago, Mungler said:

Hanan in the Telegraph:

 

Remainers were right. Brexit has indeed led to an outbreak of populism, protectionism and chauvinism. But not on the side of the Channel they expected. 

The EU’s behaviour over the past 72 hours has been so demented, so self-wounding, that it is hard to know where criticism should begin. 

Let’s start with the bare facts. Brussels is in dispute with AstraZeneca, the British-Swedish pharmaceutical company, over the late delivery of some Covid vaccines. For what it’s worth, the EU seems to have a staggeringly weak case. It published its contract with the firm but, far from being any kind of “gotcha”, that contract showed that AstraZeneca had simply promised to use its “reasonable best efforts” to fulfil the order, the same form of words it used with the UK, which also saw some late deliveries. The rights and wrongs of that dispute, though, are beside the point. The EU’s quarrel is with AstraZeneca, not with Britain.

In pursuit of its quarrel, Brussels announced plans to block the export of vaccines from a completely unrelated company, the American corporation Pfizer, to Britain – vaccines which no one disputed that the UK had purchased, and on which the EU did not pretend to have any legal claim. 

In other words, Brussels was threatening to halt the sale of life-saving drugs to a neighbouring country, not in response to any provocation, but simply because it was cross that that country was further advanced in its vaccination programme. 

It gets worse. In order to deflect criticism from its hopeless record in ordering vaccines, the European Commission aimed its law expressly at Britain. Its export ban did not apply to other neighbouring states, such as Iceland, Morocco, Egypt, Syria, Ukraine or Belarus. The only country in the vicinity to be targeted was the UK.

It gets worse still. To make sure that no vaccines could enter the UK, the Commission announced that it was excluding Northern Ireland from the single market arrangements which it had previously insisted were so critical to the peace process. Incredibly, it didn’t notify Britain or Ireland in advance, and its move united every party in Dublin and Belfast against it (as well, for that matter, as every party at Westminster except the SNP), eventually forcing it to back down. Still, a point was made – a point that cannot now be unmade. For four years, EU negotiators claimed that the merest possibility of a border in Ireland would risk a return to terrorism, and worked to convince the world that this was a risk that Britain was somehow prepared to run. Yet it took precisely 29 days before the EU itself announced such a border.

It gets even worse than that. Annoyed at Britain’s success, European leaders started casting doubt on the efficacy of the AstraZeneca product. Engaging in the kind of nuttiness which gets people banned from social media, Emmanuel Macron claimed that the vaccine “didn’t work”. In other words, the EU is breaking every norm of civilised behaviour and threatening expropriation over a vaccine which, from sheer sour grapes, its leaders claim is ineffective.

Let’s summarise. The European Commission elbowed aside its member states, which had begun their own procurement programmes, and insisted on negotiating en bloc for the 27. It moved slowly and bureaucratically, reportedly because it was holding out for vaccines produced by Continental firms. In the end, three months after Britain, it signed a contract with AstraZeneca similar to that which some of its nations had tried to sign earlier. As criticism mounted, it panicked and lashed out – smashing the principles of due process, private property and free trade in the process.

Eurocrats are behaving not so much like mini-Trumps as like 1960s Nasserite dictators. They are deliberately disrupting supply at the height of a pandemic. And their petulance, shockingly, is aimed at the only pharmaceutical company in the world which is high-mindedly offering the vaccine to all comers on a not-for-profit basis.

The British government, like AstraZeneca, wants to spread the inoculation programme globally, reaching countries that can’t afford their own vaccines. This is the thanks we get.

For at least some British Remainers, the events of this week have served as what Western Communists used to call a “Kronstadt moment”. Kronstadt, the site of a naval mutiny against the Bolsheviks in 1921, became a shorthand for the moment when a previously loyal party member suddenly grasped the true nature of the Soviet regime. For some, it came with the 1956 Hungarian rising, for others the 1968 Prague Spring. For some, it never came at all. But it always involved a wrenching mental reset, a readiness to look again at old certainties.

Consider the assertions made by the two sides in the 2016 referendum. Eurosceptics argued that the EU was slow, introverted, bureaucratic, inefficient, ready to make up the rules as it went along, a bully and a bad neighbour. Europhiles saw it as principled, internationalist, effective, generous, rules-based and committed to global trade. If we treat those two views as verifiable claims, which has just been falsified? 

When Remainers, including Labour and Lib Dem MPs and every expert that the Guardian could wheel out, argued last year that Britain’s refusal to join in the EU’s procurement scheme would cause needless deaths here, they undoubtedly believed it. But it is Boris Johnson’s conviction that Brexit would mean a more agile Britain that turned out to be right.

More agile – and, I hope, more generous. It is a pity that, instead of quietly asking Britain to sell it some spare doses, the EU behaved so peevishly. But the UK should hold itself to a higher standard. Because of our successful procurement programme, we will end up with a vaccine surplus this year. We should use that surplus to benefit less well-stocked nations – our friends in the Commonwealth, naturally, but others, too. We might, for example, prioritise Ireland, to which every town in Britain has family connections. We might help our oldest ally, Portugal, currently experiencing a surge of infections. We should, in short, be the positive global force that the EU is failing to be.

.

Agree