Westministers: The Lords Strike Back

[RedToothBrush]

This needs no fanfare or lengthy post. Just this:

The Lords are demanding amendments unilateral protection for EU citizens.

Labour was split 358 for an amendment to 256 against.

This is after Amber Rudd had tried to reassure the Lords by writing a letter assuring peers that EU citizens would be treated with the utmost respect.

Utmost respect = an amendment to guarantee unilateral support.

Today is a good day. It should have been done in the first place.

www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/211152/trump-data-analytics-russian-access
An example of Tory party links to shadowy figures glossed over while the Russia = Bad And At The Back Of Everything Bad story is pushed.

Firtash was incidentally associated with Viktor 'Orange Revolution' Yushchenko, a political opponent of Kuchma and Yanukovych, who were both friendly towards Russia.

The Tablet article also illustrates that there seem to be a good few people with far too much money to dispose of, apparently paying far too little tax, and availing themselves of loopholes you could drive a truck through, stashing their money in the Channel Islands and British Virgin Islands and probably elsewhere, and playing political games while the poor and disadvantaged see their lives ruined.

It will be interesting to see who buys up the NHS when it is all divided up for sale, and how much back scratching will go on.

"The fighting spirit language will appeal to a lot of leavers wanting to put the Great back into Britain or whatever the saying is."

But they don't need to appeal to those people. Unless they're worried about reactions to the budget and future cuts.

There is peace and there is stabilisation, and stabilisation is extremely important as a precursor to peace. At the present, stabilisation is being achieved.

The Irish terrorists came to the table when they realised they had reached stalemate, and the British government likewise. The Muslim fundamentalists may or may not come to that point, but one thing that is sure is that they will not come to the table without realising that no alternatives are open to them. The government fighting against them has absolutely no reason to try talking to their opponents when total military defeat is a possibility. Military defeat must be the aim of anyone interested in peace. This is how WW2 ended.

The British lost Ireland in the 1920s because they had no appetite for escalating war to the levels necessary for victory, and the same occurred in NI decades later. Thereafter Ireland has been peaceful. But Britain lost a province in the first round of fighting. (It was a loss that the British public got over quickly.)

It is a mistake to project British guilt for colonial sins onto current events that others are involved in and to try to 'see the point' of the opposition when the opposition is ISIS.

Peace would break out if ISIS managed to overrun all the territories it has its eyes on. That peace would be a defeat for the west and a disaster for the people living under ISIS rule. The Caliphate would continue to threaten peace in the rest of the ME and would continue to sponsor and inspire terror elsewhere.

Just because you are not going to eliminate the ideas or the disaffection behind terror everywhere doesn't mean you should not wipe out the main body of terrorists and the magnet that draws disaffected young people to it when you can. Syria and Iraq simply cannot be left to the mercy of ISIS.

I'm starting to wonder if Hammond's strategy is to prepare people for the shittiness of Brexit and turn public opinion away. Risky strategy but he wasn't a Leaver.

Or have the Tories always been latent right wing authoritarians and Little Englanders?

They have always contained that faction, but they have been kept in check.

Oh God and this is the opposition.

www.google.co.uk/amp/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/39175570

They have indeed always had that faction, and they have always been comfortable calling themselves the Conservative and Unionist Party, and hob-nobbing with the DUP despite its very unsavoury street element and its links with South Africa, and its right wing authoritarian bent.

It is not only a minority of the ISIS militiamen in Syria and Iraq that want to cause harm. That is where the military action is now proceeding.

What happens in Muslim ghettos in Europe is up to individual states to monitor and deal with within the parameters of their own legal systems.

They are two different kettles of fish and nobody is suggesting wiping out people in Europe who happen to be Muslim.

But ISIS militias, fighting in military formation, using advanced weaponry and setting themselves up as a state, policing, controlling communications, treating local populations brutally, etc - they are legitimate targets of war.

Peugeot-Citroen agrees to buy Vauxhall -Opel, raising concerns for the 4,500 Vauxhall workers in the UK.

I imagine that what will happen with all the car makers is that they will move production of new models elsewhere, leaving the UK plants to wither on the vine. I could be completely wrong.

I agree peregrina

[[http://peterjnorth.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/yes-brexit-is-worth-hassle.html
Peter North]] declares that for him, Brexit is worth the hassle. The comments tend not to agree with him.

Peter North to me, is just saying, "I don't like it, so I will smash it". The burning your house down scenario, before finding another. Talking of having solutions to make a go of Brexit - he for one, doesn't have any. Nor, do I recall, Mrs May having any, her talks were of making the UK a tax haven, not developing manufacturing. I don't yet see any talk about major investment. When the country was open for business, c 1850, we used to make stuff to export around the world.

Peregrina When choosing which factories to close, remember that it is much more difficult & expensive to make people redundant on the continent, especially Germany.

This is a major reason why unemployment is lower in the UK - easier to fire people - but the downside is that jobs are less secure and the first to go unless the UK factory is very clearly more profitable.

Also, politicians & unions there are used to joining together to pressure any employee considering this - and currently the UK govt has a lot less clout than the German or French govts
The UK is a supplicant, so won't want to get really tough with business who cut jobs, for fear other businesses will decide to quit.

Other car manufacturers:
Probably manufacturers would stay as long as their current models are profitable - which with components whizzing back & forth across the channel may not be the case

However car manufacturers need to retool every few years for new models.
This is when they may well move abroad if the investment won't pay off, or if Brexit terms are unclear when the board are making their decisions.

Remember that there is overcapacity of car manufacturing in Europe.
So, it has long been forecast that there will be a clearout and the weak will go to the wall

• and the weakest now look to be British manufacturing sites and jobs.

Interesting post, Peregrina, thanks. It's nice to see someone on the Leave side being more explicit about their motivations. I disagree with pretty much all of it, but at least I understand the thinking. Overall, I can't help feeling that all of the negatives regarding the status quo that are cited are absolutely bugger all to do with being part of the EU and everything to do with the fact that we are a naturally conservative nation with a preference for solutions to be determined by market forces rather than such tedious and expensive things as planning, investment and strategy.

Maths My problem with Putin is that he doesn't just kill ISIS - who are legitimate targets - he carpet bombs and slaughters the far more numerous Muslim civilians, who have no choice about ISIS moving in.
He increases the number of militants - who fo for softer targets in the West

He also deliberately channels MENA refugees towards Europe, using them as a technique to destabilise EU countries.
He uses them as a weapon of cold war against the West

In NI, over-agressive tactics didn't beat the IRA into submission; they massively increased IRA support and escalated the conflict:
. Bloody Sunday
. killing hundreds of other unarmed civilians
. mass internment without trial
. the "5 techniques" verging on torture - condemned by the ECHR and the USA
. miscarriages of justice with so many innocent Catholics imprisoned for years.

The EU can't do much about stupid / doctrinaire decisions of national govts
About decision to loot national assets, abandon the poor, wind down the welfare state - and give the savings as tax cuts or privatised shares to the rich

and the weakest now look to be British manufacturing sites and jobs.

Quite.

For those of you terrified by concerned about what Brexit might look like, I would advise you not to read Lionel Shriver's latest, "The Mandibles", which deals with an imagined US in the late 2020s which has an authoritarian government, a devalued currency meaning it can't import anything and subsequent blackouts and rationing. The country's resources have become a target for foreign-owned multinationals and, unable to kick-start its manufacturing sector, it has nothing to export. Walls have gone up along neighbouring countries to stop the starving Americans getting in. It was not a comfortable read in the current climate .

....and if Scotland does end up becoming independent, FUKD loses its whisky, forestry, gin, oil, gas, fish/shellfish, biotech off the top of my head .....to add to its export figures

Maybe it's just as well we no longer have any car manufacturing

Big new £450 million investment in car parts manufacture up by the aluminium smelter near Fort William
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-39131491

I think they're being quite canny: if Brexit happens with Scotland, then it'll form part of the investment needed in intra-UK supply chain investment; if Scotland leaves FUKD/retains Single Market membership (whether as part of the EU or EFTA or sone other arrangement), it continues to have access to the EU markets. Win:win

< contrary >
I admire & respect the Norths, because they are highly knowledgeable Leavers, who don't lie or believe in unicorns.

I totally disagree with their aims, their wish for drastic changes for very nebulous national aspirations.
I have freely chosen the EU.
I'm impressed by their great depth of knowledge about Brexit issues and I trust their forecasts more than any others atm.

They are brutally honest:

"Whichever way you look at it, Brexit is going to be a bloody mess.
There was a way to do it intelligently via the EEA but that window is now closed. Consequently we will lose substantial trade with the EU while sending our own governance into chaos."

"With exports badly hit we will see prices fluctuating as producers find ways to sell their surpluses on the domestic market. Some prices will crash, others will skyrocket.
Meanwhile the government will be doing a lot more and we can expect to see the normal business of government shelved"

"Even if the UK secures a free trade agreement things are not going to settle down for a while. On the whole the economy will take a hit and we can expect to see a reordering of the economy....

I expect it will hit the NHS quite hard.

... I think we are going to see crisis after crisis and we will be faced with the stark reality that things cannot continue as before.
Hard choices will have to be made and they are likely to have deeply unpopular consequences.
It is likely that we will see considerable inflation and it will be harder to make ends meet....

A lot of things we have taken for granted over the last twenty years are going to change.
As a less affluent country, lifestyles will change and so will the highstreet.
The left have moaned about austerity for years. They are about to find out what it really looks like.

I think it will take a decade or more just to get back to normal.
There are no guarantees that we will be better off. All we can say for certain is that things will be different. "

I purchased something from the Radical Tea Towel Company recently.

Their latest email was worth sharing, I thought:
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Niemöller, Schindler and Winton
By Luke
It's difficult to be the odd one out. To resist conforming; to speak out when everyone else is quiet.

If everyone's responding to a situation in the same way, it's hard to put your hand up to propose an alternative and weather the social pressure to fit in with the crowd. Even if deep down you know people have got it wrong, or their actions are immoral.

"I don't care what you all think: the cola-flavoured Haribo are the worst!"

On a serious note: imagine how much harder it is to speak out when it's something that really matters, but where your physical safety is also in the balance.

Like intervening to defend someone on public transport who's being subjected to abuse.

Or protecting people from the worst kind of crimes against humanity.

Martin Niemöller, a German pastor, wrote a poem after the Second World War speaking about how hard it was for him to speak out against what was being done to the Jews in 1930s Germany, and how he regretted that inaction later.
"Then they came for the Jews,
and I did not speak out -
Because I was not a Jew."
But remember watching 'Schindler's List'? Some people did resist the horror - despite the odds.

Today is 'European Day of the Righteous'. It's a celebration established by the European Parliament in 2012 to commemorate those people who have resisted crimes against humanity and totalitarianism.

It's not just about the Holocaust during the Second World War, but includes events since then too.

The memorial takes place on 6th March to mark the anniversary of the death of Moshe Bejski, a Holocaust survivor thanks to Oskar Schindler's famous list. Bejski was President of the Yad Vashem Righteous Commission which recognised non-Jews who had saved Jewish lives during the Holocaust.

Reading more about this, I found that the UK in fact has its own Schindler figure.

Nicholas Winton, a stockbroker and socialist during the 1930s, went to Czechoslovakia and organised the evacuation of 669 children (including Alf Dubs, currently a member of the House of Lords) to Britain just before the war.

Unlike most of their parents and friends, those children survived the war. Of 250 more children due to be evacuated on a final cancelled train out of Czechoslovakia, only two survived.

Winton's achievements went largely unnoticed until 1988, when his wife found a scrapbook in their attic and shared it with historians and the media. Winton was reunited with several of the children he saved during an emotional episode of 'That's Life' with Esther Rantzen. He was later knighted for 'services to humanity'.

I'm writing all this having just watched the film 'Denial', about Holocaust denier David Irving's libel case against Jewish historian Deborah Lipstadt.

I recommend you watch it.

It's a timely reminder of the need to remember history. To speak the truth, and fight for it in the face of in the face of the liars of this world and their falsehoods.

Today on the Day of the Righteous, the world needs that reminder as much as ever.

In solidarity,

Luke
@ The Radical Tea Towel Company
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