AVIATION - WILL IT FLY?

The BBC's John Humphrys was discussing this report (HERE) with Paul Everett, a spokesman for the aviation industry on the Today programme this morning. It's about the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) "rebuffing" a request from the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to begin talks on a joint transition plan to cover any future scenario, including a no deal exit. This is not new but the BBC have got hold of correspondence that seems to show a degree of panic on our part.

AVIATION OPTIONS - NOT GOOD

An organisation called the European Business Aviation Association (EBAA) published an interesting document in January giving what they claimed were the six possible options for the kind of deal the UK will have to make with the EU on aviation matters. One of the options is no deal at all and one is the status quo. See the report HERE. None of it will make happy reading for the hard Brexiteers, although I'm sure they haven't read it and never will. 

IRELAND AND THE AIRLINES

While the Irish border problem still lurks unresolved and unresolvable in the background, the focus at the moment seems to be on air travel, especially so since the Irish PM suggested recently that leaving without a deal would mean aircraft being unable to fly over Ireland - or indeed over the entire EU. As usual the pro Brexit press (HERE) and Jacob Rees-Mogg attacked him on his LBC radio show.

FARAGE AN EMBARRASSMENT AND A FOOL

Farage has been an MEP since 1999 but his time in Brussels has taught him nothing about the EU. During his phone in show on LBC, according to this account (HERE) in the Sunday Express, he "poked huge holes" in Airbus' so-called scaremongering. This is laughable. He didn't poke any holes in their warnings about a no deal Brexit, he simply demonstrated his own ignorance and lack of understanding why his life's work could now inflict fatal damage on Britain's aerospace industry. 

IDS COMPLAINS OF EU BULLYING

Ian Duncan Smith, one of the leading Brexit lights, still doesn't seem to understand it all, in spite of thinking about little else for thirty years. In this Telegraph article HERE he claims the EU is acting like a playground bully. I assume this is because they're giving us what he wants - the chance of a very hard, diamond tipped, Brexit. As I read the position papers, May's various speeches and the technical papers published last week, it isn't the EU which is acting like a bully but us. Article 50 has been triggered and we WILL leave the EU on March 29th next year. But it's clear the government, business and industry, the retail sector, the health service, trade unions, academics and probably a big majority of the people, including a lot of leave voters don't actually want that.

THE AVIATION INDUSTRY

A DEXEU press release (HERE) is full of warm words about the UK aviation industry but notably doesn't say we will be able to continue membership of the EASA. Professor Hussein Kassim of UK in a Changing Europe says it's "unlikely" that we will be offered even affiliated membership of the EASA.