Fish for banks, as the UK turns beige

The Graun  has the egregious L Varadkar who has recovered a bit and has some new lines from the EC. Strangely, it is no longer about the Border, and now seems to have a French accent. On the issue that seemed to cause so much trouble earlier, he said:

there will be checks required at ports and airports in Northern Ireland. But it is absolutely our wish and our desire that they should be minimised.

  In the up-to-the minute Graun coverage:

The BBC’s interview with Leo Varadkar, the Irish taoiseach, was thorough and candidate [sic -- their speech recognition kit must be worse than mine! ]... Varadkar suggested that the UK would fail to get a trade deal allowing its banks access to the EU’s financial services market unless it agree to let EU boats carry on fishing in its waters...He said he thought the EU would be in a stronger position than the UK in the forthcoming trade negotiation. 

 A bit lower down, it is symbolic politics after Jan 31st and Garunistas will be mortified. If you admired the way the French Army humiliated Dreyfus -- tearing off his epaulets and breaking his sabre (after it had been specially weakened) -- you'll appreciate this :

[In Brussels] On Friday evening, flags will be taken down, British access to EU diplomatic cables will be switched off, the UK will go beige on EU maps – the neutral colour of a foreign country....Technicians are working to update hundreds of webpages to update references to the UK, from updating technical points on EU law, to the educational output aimed at teachers and children, such as online quizzes and the commission’s “Europe and you” activity book for children under nine.... miniature models of British MEPs are to be removed from mock-ups of the parliamentary chamber....Passes and keys must be returned.

 Some people will be sad, apparently:

“I think it will bring back the feeling of the day of the referendum. The sorrow, it was tangible, it was almost something you could hold.”...On that grey midsummer morning in Brussels, some EU officials, British and non-British alike, cried in their offices, several EU sources have said. 

An 'emotional rollercoaster' is reported by a LibDem MEP, but then they spend their whole lives on one, while other UK MEP opinions are mixed:

The European parliament’s ecologically costly two parliaments policy – protected by the French presidential veto – is the only thing that unites British MEPs in complaint....For the Brexit party MEP Nathan Gill, the job has become a way of life. “The travel is nice and you get to meet lots and lots of people and have experiences you would never normally have".

Elsewhere there are still chances simultaneously to flaunt cultural capital and demonstrate the barbarity of Brexit:

Philip Pullman calls for boycott of Brexit 50p coin over 'missing' Oxford comma

Critics fume over the omission of Oxford comma from phrase ‘Peace, prosperity and friendship’ as new coin enters circulation

“The ‘Brexit’ 50p coin is missing an Oxford comma, and should be boycotted by all literate people,” wrote the novelist on Twitter, while Times Literary Supplement editor Stig Abell wrote that, while it was “not perhaps the only objection” to the Brexit-celebrating coin, “the lack of a comma after ‘prosperity’ is killing me”...when it was erroneously reported that the Oxford comma was being dropped by the University of Oxford style guide, one punctuation lover asked: “Are you people insane? The Oxford comma is what separates us from the animals.”