It is somewhat invidious to be making comparisons based on partial stats. Perhaps one of the reasons though is that Ireland has double the rate of tests per 1 million of population. Uk ranks pretty low on that scale. If you measure the death rate as simply the number of dead (which is fixed) divided by the number of positive tests (which is variable) the result is going to vary from country to country. If we doubled the number of tests we could possibly double the number of positive results many of which had few or no symptoms. This would pretty much halve the death rate mathematically.

All the statistics are frankly guesswork. The death rate generally discussed is approx 1-2%, but well over 5% if you are over 55 and have any underlying health issues such as diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure ( even if managed through medication) etc. which represents a pretty high proportion of the over 55 crowd. Compare that to flu which has an assumed fatality rate if aroubd 0.1%. So Covid 19 is about 10-20 times more fatal, which would imply 600,000 or more deaths. That said it’s all guessing- the rate could be much lower if in fact lots of people caught the disease but never even knew they were sick, or it could be higher if lots of deaths were mistakenly attributed to flu or sonething else.

On top of which there could be a huge burden on the health service if the seriously ill. One of the issues with this is its apparent virulence- expectations are that between50-80% of people will contract it. That’s 30 million or more. Now most won’t even know, only 20% are expected to have serious symptoms but that’s 6 million people who will need some form of medical support up to and including ICUs. You see the problem.

And it is a problem multiplied by the unknown. Can you get c19 more than once - there are anecdotal stories or Re-emergent or reinfected patients? How will the virus mutate- it doesn’t stay the same as it goes around the globe? The fatality rate in Italy seems disturbingly high, but that could just be coincidence.
The huge number of unknowns is what makes this so troubling. It may generally dissipate and die away and be little more than the flu, alternatively it could mutate into a new 1918 Spanish flu. We simply don’t know

Scotland has never been conquered - so you are plainly wrong. The Union was just that a union between two nations cinder a single monarch and then government.

let me put my bona fides out there - I voted Remain. Reluctantly and grudgingly but remain nonetheless, and mostly on the basis that whilst i felt that the UK needed to and would eventually leave an EU glacially but relentlessly eroding the notion of sovereign nation states within its borders, but now was perhaps not the best time. I was delighted in the end that leave won, and felt “very well, let’s get on with leaving” and i was pretty clear what that meant. An end to the CAP and CFP. An end to free movement. An end to automatically following and turning into law all EU laws, directives and regulations, and an end to primacy of EU law and and end to the ECJ have final say on domestic issues. Out of the CU and out of the Single market - which naturally follow on the requirement to be out from under the ECJ and EU laws.

Leaving has proven more contentious and difficult that any publicly thought, myself included, although the tenacity of the EU to maintain its red lines has been unsurprising - the project os a political project not and economic one and so of course they would weigh economic issues less highly than the integrity of the institutional and political structures which maintain that project.

What to make of the new deal? It is poor. It is troubling. It is definitely not the Brexit would most wish for. But.... First off of course it lets down NI hugely. There is a gossamer of a fig leaf to protect Boris’s promise that there would be no border down the Irish Sea, but it is plain for all to see that in effect there will be and this was the price he was willing to pay to get the official structure of the backstop out of the WA. It is a vast gamble with the Union - assuming that NI will put up with some from of second class status in the UK and domination and regulation by the EU ( in which they will have zero democratic input) at least for a good while and not then decide to say “to heck with it, we may as well join the Republic if the rest of Britain is going to let us hang like this. Possibly the fear of NBI wanting to join the republic might actually make Ireland more flexible - in the short term i don’t think they are ready for or want reunification just yet. But it is a mighty risk to the UNion. ON top of which it will inevitably bring calls from Scotland to have the same deal, and if not to leave and then have a similar relationship. As i say, another mighty gamble on the Union - i am guessing the thinking is that once Brexit is done Scotland will find it less appealing to have to rejoin the EU (euro, CFP and all) and be separated from the rest of Britain and the economics of that. But a huge risk.
And much of the clarity about the CFP is distrurbingly fudged and put into the political statement and the FTA discussions - so fisheries may yet be sold out like NI. All sorts of other issues have also been moved from the WA into the PS, and Boris’s history shows he has no compunction about breaking faith with colleagues or principles.

It is not much better than May’s WA, but it is a bit better. It is not nearly as fully renegotiated as i had hoped. But there is a very real threat that remainers may yet win another chance, that no deal or no brexit would end the dream of brexit itself, and anyway an election fought by Boris on his deal would likely mean a big win for him and this very deal.

So, reluctantly and grudgingly, much as i reluctantly and grudgingly voted Remain, i would now support this Bill, and hope that better things can still be arranged in the transition, and the FTA.

I fully and rely acknowledge there have been many benefits from EU membership - although at the m=same time many are overstated - for example enviro or work rights may or may not have been the same if we had never joined, that is an unkown. We have progressed further and faster on gay rights that many in the eu. Our animal rights would almost certainly be better out of the eu. But i don’t deny there have been many benefits, principally economic. But the mistake remainers make, although not the EU, is thinking that this is a bout economics and that membership is principally about economics. it isn’t; and never was. The EU is a political project which has trade and economic benefits and policies which accrue from that political project. But it is not principally about economics. And likewise Brexit is not principally about economics. The strongest arguments for remaining have all been based on economics, which misses the whole point of not only brexit but of the eu itself. When, and only when, the argument can be successfully made that we should join/ remain in the eu without using economic benefits as a lever, then the argument will change and a move to stay or return will truly flourish. Right now the non-economic arguments for remaining are derisory and negligible and have practically zero purchase with the people.

And your point? I don’t have a problem with a hard border between us and the EU especially if it is as flexible and vibrant as the one between the US and Canada which i have crossed multiple times on business, with goods and sometimes several times in a day. That is the benefit of good neighbours with a free trade agreement.
I don’t; quite see your problem with that.

You are overwrought i fear, and certainly overdoing my comparison. I simply am suggesting that in order to regain full sovereignty - and you surely cannot suggest we have the same level of sovereign powers as, say, Canada or Australia - we might need to follow the example of Ireland and achieve that aim over time and in stages. Our freedom to act as a sovereign state is severely curtailed by membership of the EU where EU law has priority over our own and foreign judges sit it judgement. There are now very few areas of policy - foreign policy and defence principally, which are not at the whim of a majority of EU nations and therefore not under our own sovereign control.

Well don’t want remain now leave later. What is crucial is exactly how far we have to leave now, and the trajectory we set on leaving. If the desired end state is a full degree of sovereignty, of a status akin to say, Canada in relation to the US, and i think that would be great, then just as the irish accepted they needed to do things in stages perhaps we do too. So if for now we leave the EU - legally and technically - and we end the priority of eu law, the automaticity of eu regulation and directives, end the CAP, CFP, have the right to stroke full free trade deals with whomever, an the compromise necessary FOR NOW is that NI doesn’t come as far out as that, then perhaps that is what we need to accept. As long as and provided that in time as we continue to move ever less close, and that NI can fully join us as and when there is consent of the people there to do so. It has taken 40 years and numerous steps and treaties to get us this far into the EU, it shouldn’t be surprising that it might take us a decade or so to fully disentangle ourselves. What is needed though is the commitment of the bureaucracy and successive governments to maintain the direction of travel away form EU orbit, which is why getting us as far out as possible now is important, since inter and the gravitational pull of the EU and the ongoing mindset of many remainers will be to try to take us back in - so we need to make any return journey seem at least as difficult and challenging as leaving has been, and with even more compromises needed.

If we are not subject to EU law, but commit NI only to follow EU law in terms of customs and trade (for as long NI people wish it) does that constitute leaving the EU? I think we have to say that it will have to do, for now. And perhaps that is a reflection of the relative narrowness of the vote to leave victory, and the fact that NI does have very different and unique politics. The danger will be when Scotland wants the same treatment.

Brexit is not worth breaking the union - true. On the other hand staying n the eu will only break up the union in a different form in the long run as well - since the intent is to essentially dissolve the nation states as fully independent operators into a federalized unitary state of europe - they have just appointed a commission president who has specifically advocated for that in the past. The british union won’t survive another 20 years in the eu with ever closer union

I think perhaps you are taking me too literally. All i was trying to suggest was that holding out for the perfect endgame of complete sovereignty now may end up failing to achieve a meaningful brexit at all, and that perhaps and incremental brexit, showing flexibility certainly on some outward forms, may achieve the desired result better in the long run.