Skip to content

In a withering statement, Stella Kyriakides said the UK should not earn any advantage from signing a contract with AstraZeneca three months before the EU’s executive branch put pen to paper.

43 thoughts on “Eh?”

  1. And you still think ‘Free Trade’ means something? Trade is as free as the States you’re trading with allow it to be at any given time. Contracts mean nothing, physical reality trumps words on paper. Unless you control the actual assets you control nothing. Are you getting it yet?

  2. Bloke in North Dorset

    It doesn’t sound like they believe they’ve got contract law on their side.

    Someone tried to convince me that in the EU there’s such a thing as the spirit of the contract and its enforceable in law but when asked for links they went very quiet.

  3. Jim, the assets physically in the EU are 3 months behind the curve in developing the production process. Not even the EU can collapse time. This is just bluster

  4. “Jim, the assets physically in the EU are 3 months behind the curve in developing the production process. Not even the EU can collapse time. This is just bluster”

    Not true, Astrazeneca has a factory in Holland making its Oxford vaccine, and the Pfizer vaccine we have ordered is made in Belgium. Hence the EU’s strongarm tactics. They’d have nothing if all the factories were outside its borders.

  5. @Jim “Contracts mean nothing, physical reality trumps words on paper.”

    I new Donald would be to blame somehow.

  6. AZ is a UK company. So, is the contract made under The Law of England? If AZ is breaching the contract, the EU will get a fair hearing in the UK courts. On the other hand…

  7. 1. EU bureaucrats fuck up their AZ negotiations and cause a three month delay

    2. EU bureaucrats blame everyone but themselves

    3. EU bureaucrats want UK citizens to pay the price

    4. The Guardian cheers the EU bureaucrats

    Sounds par for the course for that lot. I’m just wondering if there are any Remainers left in the UK now.

  8. “Not true, Astrazeneca has a factory in Holland making its Oxford vaccine”

    Jim, have you considered, in your zeal to win an argument in which you seem to be the only protagonist, the possibility that your information might be incomplete?

    According to Pascal Soriot, the CEO of Astrazeneca, “First of all, we have different plants and they have different yields and different productivity. One of the plants with the highest yield is in the UK because it started earlier. It also had its own issues, but we solved all, it has a good productivity, but it’s the UK plant because it started earlier”

  9. @ Jim, Though, of course, it is generally a good idea to pay no attention to the Graun, they do state in their article that the vaccines are produced in British facilities in Oxford and Staffordshire. Which are not in Belgium.

  10. I wonder how much of this is just EU incompetence or some bizarre application of Roman law to an AngloSaxon contract.

    I used to get this a lot in Germany and Austria where I ended up with a standard template letter/email for suppliers that stated “We no longer have a contract, please fuck off.”

    The best example was a German company who said that they were going to release me at the end of the contract because “they couldn’t afford” me. I was secretly pleased, because although I actually quite liked it there, I was bored to tears. So I arranged another job, gave up my flat and moved onto the next contract. They were then really annoyed when I didn’t turn up for work the next month and the protestations that I no longer had a contract with them and in fact had signed one with another company left them bewildered.

  11. My standard response to matters like these is “if you want it 3 months earlier then order it 3 months earlier”.

  12. https://blog.jonasneubert.com/2021/01/10/exploring-the-supply-chain-of-the-pfizer-biontech-and-moderna-covid-19-vaccines/

    Attempts to explore the supply chains of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, not AZ.

    This bit amused, when he gets on to refrigeration;

    “Dry ice is simply compressed CO2 … a good option for keeping things cold or ultra-cold in locations where no freezers are available.

    Depending on who you ask, there is plenty of dry ice production capacity available or there isn’t. The key ingredient for dry ice is liquid CO2 which has been in shorter than usual supply during 2020 because it is a byproduct of natural gas production, of which there has been less of due to the overall reduction in economic activity.”

    Get fracking boys.

  13. Steptoe and Son – Divided we stand

    Harold “We agreed that Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays should be my nights while Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays would be your choice, with each having alternate Sundays”.

    Albert -“That’s right”.

    Harold – “Today is Wednesday. I want BBC 2 on”.

    Albert – “I don’t”!

    Harold – “You’re being very unfair. We had an agreement. I’ve got the law of contract on my side”.

    Albert – “I’ve got the KNOBS on my side“.

  14. Bloke in China (Germany province)

    “I used to get this a lot in Germany and Austria where I ended up with a standard template letter/email for suppliers that stated “We no longer have a contract, please fuck off.””

    Many contracts here self-renew unless one or other party cancels at some notice period before the end of the contract, differs from the Anglo-Saxon habit of the customer having to actively renew. Many expats find they have two mobile phones between their second and third year here, for this reason. The lucky ones, at least, since there are many more expensive ways to pay the “Lerngeld”.

  15. The Blessed Ambrose in the Tel kicks off with: “Brussels wants Britons to die so that Europeans should live.”

    Apart from acceding to those vile EUians claiming a monopoly of the word “European” it strikes me as a wonderful line.

    Another line might have been “Is it wise for Brussels and Berlin to try to bully a nuclear power?”

    I’m pretty confident that if we were to nuke the buggers the French counterstrike would consist of a back-of-the-hand “Merci”.

  16. Aren’t some of the ingredients for the Pfizer vaccine made in UK? Be a shame if the lorries exporting them kept being pulled over and taken off the road by the police.

  17. DJ- nope..it works both ways. It’s very important that production occurs in UK soveriegn territory but very unlikely that all the inputs, physical and service, are all done by Britons in Britain. This is realpolitik territory sure — but you have to be thinking a few moves ahead.
    – I can see that UK is being set up as a bogey man/ distraction for EU federalists ambitions. To obscure the very legitimate question of – do the Benelux countries have first dibs on the vaccines produced on their soil. EU’s like nope. you signed up on the dotted line. They’re exceedingly contractual on that i’m sure. One thing for a Government to bite that bullet, but there’s a feedback loop to the people in those countries(in theory anyway- not sure about Belgium)

  18. If I understand correctly, the EU is threatening to disrupt supplies of the Pfizer vaccine to the UK, because it is having an unrelated tantrum about the supply of the AstraZeneca vaccine, the use of which it has so far failed to authorise. It really is a marvellous confluence of incompetence and cuntishness.

    Of course if Jim’s ‘Well this is how the world of independence works, Brexshitters!” argument is correct, then we don’t need to worry about the details of contract law. Just ask Pfizer to deliver to a handy commercial airfield and send in the RAF. I hear the Luftwaffe isn’t much cop hese days and I can’t imagine the chocolate-covered kiddie-fiddlers are a major air power.

  19. ” Though, of course, it is generally a good idea to pay no attention to the Graun, they do state in their article that the vaccines are produced in British facilities in Oxford and Staffordshire. Which are not in Belgium.”

    I said the Pfizer vaccine we are using is made in Belgium, which it is. Which is what the EU are threatening to withhold. Astrazeneca do have a Dutch production facility for their Oxford Vaccine, but fortunately they also have 2 within the UK (and I believe a 3rd in construction at Harwell) so can continue to produce there whatever the EU does.

  20. “the vaccines are produced in British facilities in Oxford and Staffordshire. Which are not in Belgium.”

    YET!

  21. Aren’t some of the ingredients for the Pfizer vaccine made in UK? Be a shame if the lorries exporting them kept being pulled over and taken off the road by the police.

    “Sorry, sir, just carrying out a thorough search for ham sandwiches and processed vegetables, it is a service we’re carrying out on behalf of our EU friends.”

  22. @Andrew C

    First paragraph of methodology

    “Fewer reported cases and deaths, both in aggregate and per capita terms, point towards a better response to the virus”

    After that assertion I know the rest of the report is bollocks

  23. “Not true, Astrazeneca has a factory in Holland making its Oxford vaccine”

    Yes… Friend of mine works there. Actual production started three weeks ago there on modified lines, with the new specialised production line still in the finishing stages.
    My bet is they won’t ramp up to full output until halfway february.

  24. How are those vaccines manufactured? It’s obviously a liquid, do they have a large pot where they pour all the ingredients, mix it well, then transfer into vials?

  25. Jussi, it’s complicated. If you follow the link to Jonas Neubert, you can read in great detail. But, first of all you have to make the right kind of DNA, inject it into e-coli bacteria and nutrients and let it breed for a few days. Then you combine with nucleotides and RNA polymerase to create mRNA – it sounds rather like the PCR tests. Then you add a protective coating so that the ends of the mRNA strands don’t degrade. Then you add lipids to form a protective coating. Then you add a buffer of mainly salty fluids to keep the pH stable. Then you add sucrose and put into glass vials. Difficult to do in a magimix!

  26. They are surely gaining from the knowledge of improving the production process that the U.K. went through initially so can’t even be grateful for that, bastards

  27. Isn’t blocking vaccine coming here durring a pandemic rather a hostile act? And don’t they want us to recognise their ambassadors as a soverign state? One that isn’t in NATO? Just invoke article 5, tell our French, German, Belgium allies to keep out of the way and pop over to secure the route.

  28. “the vaccines are produced in British facilities in Oxford and Staffordshire. Which are not in Belgium.”
    YET!

    Frankly, if Belgium come in with a decent offer (say, a few Euro and a bag of chips) I’d be willing to offload Staffordshire in a flash.

  29. Diogenes, many thanks for the recipe.
    So it’s basically a mixture of nutrients (sugars maybe?), fats, some snot, and a dash of arse bacteria.
    And they are saying they can’t make this in Belgium?
    Have they checked the works canteen?

  30. @tomo
    A deeper analysis

    Steve Hilton investigates origins of COVID-19, links to US commissioned research
    https://www.bitchute.com/video/3LaI4aqeviBh/
    – Fauci the swamp dwelling con-man

    This has been ‘public knowledge’ since Trump discovered and banned the Wuhan Lab funding. MSM silent until after Trump ‘sacked’. Fauci has been ‘dirty’ sinse 1970/80s.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *