Brexit Day #BriFri
Welcome to British Isles Friday! British Isles Friday is a weekly event for sharing all things British and Irish — reviews, photos, opinions, trip reports, guides, links, resources, personal stories, interviews, and research posts. Join us each Friday to link your British and Irish themed content and to see what others have to share. The link list is at the bottom of this post. Pour a cup of tea or lift a pint and join our link party!
Last week, I enjoyed some audio from BBC Sounds. Tina liked the latest Cormoran Strike novel, Troubled Blood by Robert Galbraith.
It looked like, after all this time, that the world might have been faced with a no-deal Brexit, where the UK crashed out of the European Union with no plan in place for orderly leave-taking. The deal came together on Christmas Eve, just a week before the deadline.
The UK has been officially out of the European Union since January 31, 2020. That date, however, commenced a transition period which ended yesterday.
Parliament approved the deal on Wednesday, less than two days before it went into effect.
The late arrival of the agreement means businesses are not as prepared as businesses like to be for big changes. Journalists will be on the look-out for yet more disruptions at ports.
The agreement announced on Christmas Eve is 1200 pages long. Fortunately, the BBC has compiled an annotated list of highlights. And, as usual, TLDR News made an animated video that explains things in an easy-to-digest manner:
At the end of the above video, TLDR promised another video about the border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, an aspect that has fascinated me from the beginning.
All of this news, which seemed so vital since the Brexit referendum in 2016, was dwarfed by continued rising cases of COVID-19 in Britain and increased restrictions as a result.
I hope all of you are staying safe and healthy through the holiday season and into the new year!
The videos help me understand better, British politics are confusing to me at times!
I hope you had a lovely and safe New Years celebration, Joy. I am grateful for your British Isles Friday linkups, it’s given me something to look forward to during this past year. Bright spot in my week!
January 2, a Saturday, I have been catching up on my emailing, discovering your BriFri blog. I will enjoy reading and watching your posts! Still celebrating the holidays, here I share a link to video shenanigans from the GCN team (Global Cycling Network) which filmed its adventures pedaling the hills of Bath, England. While I was touristing there a few years ago, walking along the sidewalk in front of our B&B lodging, I was excited to see the GCN racing team peloton streaming down a hill at the corner, flash by us in their kits and fly up the street before us on a practice run. I had completely forgotten their HQ was Bath. For anyone who wants to learn more about the recreation and sport of bicycles, Go to the GCN network on YouTube for fun and sometimes hilarious training videos. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rs-99KjlaCo
Pingback: The Archers 70th Anniversary #RadioReview #BriFri – Joy's Book Blog
British tv has been our salvation in 2020. Right now, we are watching All Creatures Great and Small that began in the late 70s, and we are looking forward to the new series.