It's Official: We Remain.

[vetuste_ennemi]

According to Sky News Sir Humphrey has just ordered all civil service departments to cancel their No Deal planning.

Anybody got any further details?

[woofgang]

I don't see how that means we remain?

[jno]

odd use of "official"; it's no such thing. They'll be working on Deal rather than No Deal.

[ichkeria]

I don’t know, but as I said on another thread, “No Deal” was the “crash out” scenario if the Article 50 deadline happened with no agreement. But we’ve sort of moved on from that scenario now.
So it wouldn’t surprise me.
Don’t worry, other forms of Brexit are available :-)

[vetuste_ennemi]

Then you'd have to explain to me in what sense May's deal, or any compromise deal agreed with Jeremy ("Customs Union") Corbyn, constitutes "Leave", Woofgang.

[Old_Geezer]

Must mean they've already made sufficient plans.
Clearly we aren't remaining. No government would take such an irresponsible stance and responsibility for the consequences.

[klazomaniac]

No Deal planning cost the Tax payers £4 Billion.

How much more will this fiasco cost ?

I despair and despise.

[Zacs-Master]

Depends whether we leave or not.

[klazomaniac]

Did you actually read what Ve had just wrote.
If a deal is involved, We are not going to leave !

A deal is NOT leave.

To stand alone without any EU rules is leave.

[DTCwordfan]

Only 4 billion - 900bln of financial holdings have already departed these satanic shores for mainly Dublin but Paris and Frankfurt as well. We must be efffing nuts to tear our economy apart like this and on what, a less than a 4 percent spread, allowing for those who didn't even vote or those who could have but age prevented the next generate from voting. 'How to kill the UK economy' by Mr. & Mrs Retro-Innardlooking.

[Zacs-Master]

I’m afraid VE isn’t to be relied upon as the de-facto source of Brexit predictions.

[Davemano]

The government has stood down an army of 6,000 civil servants who had been preparing for a no-deal Brexit, at an estimated cost of £1.5bn.

The civil servants who had been seconded from elsewhere will now return to their normal duties, but there is no clear role for an estimated 4,500 new recruits after article 50 was extended until Halloween.

[Zacs-Master]

Source?

[tonyav]

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/brexit/uk-stands-down-6000-no-deal-brexit-staff-after-spending-%C2%A315bn/ar-BBVQRM4

[klazomaniac]

Have just read £1.5 Billion on the Guardian page.

Sky news offered this at the time of my post.
https://news.sky.com/story/may-warned-not-to-waste-halloween-brexit-extension-11690290

No doubt their will be several different accounts of the amount spent. Ludicrous all the same !

[Zacs-Master]

Ta.

[Davemano]

Zacs re 22.03
UK stands down 6,000 no-deal Brexit staff - after spending £1.5bn ...
https://www.theguardian.com/.../uk-stands-down-6000-no-deal-brexit-staff-after-spendi...
3 hours ago - Civil service to stand down its no-deal contingency plans in light of new departure date. ... UK stands down 6,000 no-deal Brexit staff - after spending £1.5bn ... careful, considered and orderly way,” said a letter leaked to Sky News. ... to do with its medicines stockpiles following the latest article 50 extension.

[Zacs-Master]

Ok

[Peter Pedant]

// No doubt their will be several different accounts of the amount spent. Ludicrous all the same !//

read this as - - Lucretia all the same
and thought - what a fazzie pun on lucrative, lucre, lucretia

and then thought - no hold on - this is AB ! they dont do things like that on AB

sozza having a bad sight day
( fazzie - fantazzie - fantastic)

[New Judge]

Of course if the government and Parliament had any integrity or respect for the result of the referendum they would use the next six months to prepare for a proper departure without any conditions imposed by the EU. The Civil Servants that have been working on a departure without permission should continue their good work. That way, when we face the same situation on Oct 31st as we have faced in the last couple of weeks we can simply wave bye-bye. Anything else is a waste of time.

[jim360]

No point wasting Civil Servants, not to mention several billion pounds, on something the government clearly has no intention of doing. All it has done is suck huge resources away from the other areas of government that deserve equal attention.

Meanwhile, there's something pretty tone-deaf about hearing the news about just how much has been thrown at no deal -- administrative, legal, financial efforts, and we'd barely even begun -- and still seem to think that such a route to Brexit is not at all difficult, or could be sorted out tomorrow.