EU referendum are you in or out

[VNVObit]

Biggest element of divergence will be around taxation rather than anything else
UK is already lax about this as can be seen from the number of offshore companies operating in the UK.
Interesting to see how Freeports develop - possible within the EU but EU was coming to conclusion that they aided tax evasion (rather than avoidance)

Do think Scotland will leave the UK, NI probably but will take longer to happen and ROI will need to change to accommodate (think east/west Germany reunification).

Not so sure about either Gibraltar or Wales

Most of the deals currently done are roll overs of EU deals and not entirely new deals.

[The ghost of raids past]

Not sure what you are thinking when most of the Tax Avoidance is done through the Irish Republic. Why do you think the big Tech giants all are based in Ireland

[skab]

Scotland would be a tiny fish in the EU.

It's a tiny fish in the UK, at least that's how it's treated by Westminster. So what's better, being a suppressed satellite state within a dying "Empire" or a member with equal rights in the biggest trading zone worldwide?

[Harlequin]

ANNEX LAW-1: EXCHANGES OF DNA, FINGERPRINTS AND VEHICLE REGISTRATION DATA
…
5.4. Protocols and Standards to be used for encryption mechanism: s/MIME and related packages
…
The underlying certificate used by s/MIME mechanism has to be in compliance with X.509 standard. In order to ensure common standards and procedures with other Prüm applications, the processing rules for s/MIME encryption operations or to be applied under various COTS (Commercial Product of the Shelves) environments, are as follows:

• — the sequence of the operations is: first encryption and then signing,
  
  — the encryption algorithm AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) with 256 bit key length and RSA with 1024 bit key length shall be applied for symmetric and asymmetric encryption respectively,
  
  — the hash algorithm SHA-1 shall be applied.

s/MIME functionality is built into the vast majority of modern e-mail software packages including Outlook, Mozilla Mail as well as Netscape Communicator 4.x and inter-operates among all major e-mail software packages.

So nice to know we have agreed to employ only the highest levels of state-of-the-art security for transferring our private biometric data.

(https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... 2.2020.pdf).

[KlaxonCow]

I can't wait until they release Netscape Communicator 4 in June 1997. They've slated Communicator 4.8 (the last stable 4.x release) to come out in 2002.

It's such modern software, with all the latest encryption standards.

[VNVObit]

Not sure what you are thinking when most of the Tax Avoidance is done through the Irish Republic. Why do you think the big Tech giants all are based in Ireland

There's considerable amount done in the UK already as standard with parents offshore (while investors are in the UK)
That is likely to increase as no longer subject to EU wide anti avoidance rules

[(o)(o)]

Not sure what you are thinking when most of the Tax Avoidance is done through the Irish Republic. Why do you think the big Tech giants all are based in Ireland

Apple and others high profile corporations are already taking flight from Ireland due to PROGRESSION of anti tax avoidance policies - including the closing of the double Irish loophole. I understand Apple stashed $250bn in Jersey already. The Panama papers leaked emails which clearly showed discreet attempts to find suitable alternative jurisdictions, through which to abuse.

I cap the word because whilst Britain is going backwards, the EU is progressively tackling avoidance, obviously a key driver for Brexit. The background chatter about emulating Singapore and other territories which indulge in immoral abuses rarely entered the public consciousness, and it’s divisive and confrontational toward our European neighbours.

BTW on the day the U.K. left the EU transparency international published this : https://us.transparency.org/news/histor ... ecome-law/

[KlaxonCow]

Seeing as we've got Brexit - like it or not - can we at least deviate from the EU "cookie law" to make browsing the Internet slightly less annoying now?

(Don't get me wrong. Tracking cookies are bollocks. But the EU cookie law was the totally wrong implementation, by essentially saying "as long as you harass people to press some 'I agree' button somewhere, then it's 100% a-okay to track them".

It's not just that it's made browsing the Internet horrible, for constant "I agree" pop-ups, but it's actually kind of legitimising it all. Once you hit "I agree" - to some big, long "terms of service" that, come on, you've never read - then you've just made all that tracking cookie bollocks fully legal and just fine and dandy, as you've said "I agree" to it all. For all you know, the terms of service also oblige you to sell your eldest daughter into sex slavery, on her 21st birthday. Who fucking knows? No-one reads that shit. It could honestly say anything in there, as the only person who's ever read it was the lawyer who wrote it.

This targeted the wrong party. It shouldn't be an onus on everybody using the Internet to read a million legal texts and then "I agree" - which then explicitly sanctions any old fuckery that the website is up to - or simply not use certain websites at all. It should have been a law that says "no third party cookies". Or maybe, more specifically, "ads can't set cookies". Something like that.

The onus ought to have been on the criminals, not the victims. Like, the crime is rape and the rapist is responsible for the "do not rape" thing. The crime shouldn't be "well, you shouldn't have dressed so provocatively and you were clearly asking for it in such a short skirt" and then all the night clubs make women sign "I agree" before they enter the club, so if they get raped then, well, they said "I agree", so everything is now, apparently, just fine and dandy.

I don't disagree with the principle. I massively disagree with the shit broken implementation that doesn't really address the problem and, in fact, kind of legitimises it and, thus, even encourages it. Just put an annoying "I agree" button on your page and when folks click it to get it out of the way - as it's covering the content - then now it's seemingly 100% okay for you to track the fuck out of them all day long with cookies. Knock yourself out, it's now been sanctioned by the user who, of course, hasn't actually fucking read that massive page of text with the terms and conditions. Because it's massive, boring and, written in legal-ese, largely incomprehensible anyway.

The correct fix came from the browsers themselves. Block third-party cookies. So, no, it's not okay - and is physically prevented by the browsers - to sneak cookies, through ads, onto people's hard drives. So only the website you're on can make the cookies and then you can choose which websites you do or don't want to use. Less annoying and actually addresses the problem.)

Or, you know, though I was 100% against Brexit - and haven't changed my mind there at all - this doesn't mean I was 100% happy with everything the EU has ever done.

Yeah, the grand irony. When James O'Brien, on LBC, did his "name which EU law you disagree with" response to Brexiteers complaining about "sovereignty" from EU rules, they couldn't name any (except "straight bananas", which was just a lie that Boris made up years ago - and, as I've pointed out, you've never once been unable to buy curvy bananas in the whole 40 years of EU membership, so even if it was an EU law - which it wasn't - then the EU is no good at imposing its laws, because it never fucking happened).

But I'm 100% "Remoaner" - more than that, I actually stand with Churchill on the end goal of a "United States of Europe" as actually being a good thing to pursue - and I could totally have given him "the fucking EU cookie law" as a genuinely broken and egregious EU-imposed load of shit.

There is, of course, no such thing as a perfect system. But just because my computer's crashed once, doesn't mean I fling it out the window and refuse to ever use any computer ever again. Babies and bathwater, you know.

[gilesgoat]

*SNIP* cookies ...

It's totally broken/useless because the only 2 options are "Accept them ALL" ( so why do you even ask me ) or "Leave it" ( and don't see a shit ).

There's NEVER the "ok let me see something basic WITHOUT them", it's always "ALL or NOTHING".

And guess what ? I ALWAYS choose "nothing" !

[edit] i.e. I mean if a site asks "too much" about permissions of this and that in my book it's NOT worth being watched !

[tufty]

I work on the "let 'em try" principle. Cookies from the same domain are allowed, which means logins and shopping carts and stuff pretty much all work, 3rd party cookies are zapped by adblock / ghostery / the browser. So they can *try* and hook me into those ad networks, but it's not going to work. Which makes it easy. Click "yeah, whatever", and then - well - don't let them do it.

Chrome and Chromium have an option to nuke 3rd party cookies, Chromium probably has it set by default. I believe Firefox does it by default. Safari has an "allow from current website only" option as well. Not sure about Edge, as I don't use Windows.

[toxibunny]

Can you still buy plastic straws in the uk? They’ve all gone from shelves here.

[Harlequin]

Can you still buy plastic straws in the uk? They’ve all gone from shelves here.

I think they were banned a few years ago but I am not certain.

[KlaxonCow]

It's totally broken/useless because the only 2 options are "Accept them ALL" ( so why do you even ask me ) or "Leave it" ( and don't see a shit ).

Well, I have - rarely - seen sites that actually do have, like, a whole page where you can choose to accept different sets of cookies. So you could choose to just accept "functional cookies", for logins and shopping carts, but reject the rest.

But this isn't really a solution either. Because if I'm browsing around from site to site, it's really not useful to have to fill out a questionnaire on what cookies I do or don't want every single time.

Remembering, with grand irony, that if I don't select to allow the cookies that the website uses to store my cookie preferences, then it can't save them and I have to redo them each time I go on that website (!).

So, when a website says "accept cookies?" and you say "no", then it should re-ask you "accept cookies?" every time you revisit the page because, without cookies, it can't store your answer to look up what you selected last time.

But actually try this. See how many websites fail this test. I make websites in my job, and I've installed "cookie notice" plugins - and the simple truth is not all of them do it correctly. Like, you say "no cookies" and then they save a cookie to remember that you said "no cookies". But that's obviously paradoxical, to save a cookie that says "no cookies".

As I say, it's a dumb and broken implementation. The principle of "users should know about and be able to control cookies" is, of course, a sound and correct principle. But the way the law tries to make that happen is a gigantic nightmare of "unintended consequences", drawn up by clearly technically-illiterate politicians who don't really understand any of it, that ruins browsing, doesn't really give the user any true idea or control over anything, very often is not actually implemented correctly anyway, and then actually legitimises / encourages bad practice, as all they need to do is get you to hit "I agree" and then, suddenly, it's totally legal for them to act like cunts all day long. You agreed to it. They're now magically legally protected from acting like decent human beings, because you said it was okay.

What a fucking disaster.

Meanwhile, the browsers have fixed the problem the correct way. In settings, you can select "please nuke third-party cookies" (if it's not already on by default). There you go, you can only have first party cookies for the website you're actually on - and, like, you can then just never go on Facebook, if you don't want Zuckerberg's cookies, and they can't follow you, because, on any other site, they are considered "third party" and nuked.

Indeed, Firefox, at least, did have a setting I liked. It was an "accept first-party cookies until I close my browser". So, not only no third party cookies, but once you closed the browser, all cookies were nuked. Basically an "accept cookies for this session only" option. So you can use websites without problems, but once you close them down, it's all wiped. No trace from sessions to session. Does mean you have to login every time - no "remember me?" option - but otherwise was a nice option to have to let things work, but not retain any "long-term memory" in any cookies anywhere.

[Little stoned kiwi]

I thought the poor implement was down to reluctance for users to refuse. They are the ones pushing the cookies on you, even if it's done by their advertiser.

[merman]

Lorry traffic down 50%

Huge delays at the borders meaning rotting fish and a super-trawler that can not legally set sail.

Billions of pounds in financial transactions moved to European exchanges.

Companies drowning in red tape that Boris promised wouldn’t happen.

Oh, and plans to allow the use of neonicotinoids the EU BANNED due to their effect on bees.

This Brexit is broken and terrible inside a fortnight. The dire predictions that were labelled Project Fear are coming true.