EU Citizens' Rights Post Brexit

The EU has rebuffed the Prime Minister’s generous offer about the residency rights of EU citizens after we leave the EU.  Michel Barnier has demanded exactly the same rights for European citizens as under existing free movement rules.  Presumably Barnier feels that once a citizen has acquired rights then they should retain them and that EU citizens living in the UK after Brexit should be subject to exactly the same rights as any other EU citizen living in any other EU country.  He does not seem to grasp that post Brexit UK will be a sovereign country and not subject to free movement rules (or the ECJ). So, two snags strike me.  Firstly, what if, post Brexit, EU citizens’ rights change?  For example, suppose, in the future, EU citizens acquire rights about euthanasia that are not lawful in the UK.  Is UK expected to grant those new rights to those former EU citizens that were assimilated during Brexit?  Secondly, how will it be possible to govern our country wherein a substantial minority are subject to a different code of law?  There is a simple solution to this impasse.  EU citizens living in UK should either accept Mrs May’s pragmatic offer or return from whence they came – there are plenty, around the world, who would be happy to take their place.

Cam Force One - Not Such Value for Money?

Back in December 2015 I wrote about the illusionary accounting procedures used to make the RAF “Voyager” air-to-air refuelling tanker fleet, operated as a Private Finance Initiative, value for money to the tax payer.  The Times today has been rummaging through the Royal and Ministerial air travel statistics.  However, far from agreeing that converting one of the surplus fleet of Voyagers to be a VIP transport would be good value for money, the Time concludes that “it does not look so cheap after all.”  The Times report is still missing the point – it is much worse than that.  As I explained in my piece on 1 December 2015, “Tanker Aircraft, PFI and the PMs Private Jet,” Royal and Ministerial users of the VIP jet only pay the operating costs.  This does, indeed, look very good value for money.  However, if the true cost of providing the aircraft in the first place, currently being paid by the MOD, every month over the 27 years of the contract, to the PFI contractor were published then the hourly rates would be truly eye-watering.  The VIP aircraft conversion, “Cam Force One,” makes the best of a one-sided contract but that does not make it value for money.