Westministenders: Wake up and smell the coffee, shit just hit the fan.

[RedToothBrush]

Since the last update 12 days ago:

1. We have had the proposal to give barista visas. If we are giving out visas for this, what aren't we going to give visas for. Its just the announcement of a lot of red tape.
2. EU Banking and the Medicines agency are moving so they can serve the EU. In the EU. As serving them outside the EU is just weird. This is apparently a punishment for leaving the EU.
3. The number of students applying to become nurses has plummeted due to the removal of bursaries. This is as EU nurses leave.
4. The Brexit department published a couple of graphs promoting staying in the EU.
5. Theresa May said we were unified behind the idea of Brexit in her Easter message
6. The environment is being sacrificed for trade.
7. Turkey apparently has voted to become a dictatorship. This was a vote that Erdogan won by a whisper. His executive will not need scrutiny from parliament. Rather the UK referendum which at 0.6% more than the Turkish one is decisive. Donald Trump has congratulated him for it.
8. Trump has been dick swinging about nukes over North Korea. China are telling the children to behave.

And now we have a General Election.
Well if she can get 434 votes in the HoC tomorrow. That's ANOTHER broken promise. I'm sure its nothing but a formality.

What will Labour do? Support it? To get rid of Corbyn? Corbyn has backed the election. Given Corbyn is in charge, I'm not sure I'd have confidence to say that Labour will all vote for it, even with a three line whip. One Labour MP has already said he will not stand for reelection. (Tom Blenkinsop‏) I suspect there will be more.

Tim Farron has given support to the GE though, so it seems likely it will pass as that's a few of the votes that would be needed to block a GE.

(Note here abstentions do not count to the 434 votes needed.)

Trouble is what would happen if they didn't? Would the government collapse anyway? Might take May's head with it, but...

I guess the good news is that Corbyn will be gone by the end of June.

Otherwise the news is shit I fear. We will vote to give power to the executive with no parliamentary scrutiny. This is about getting rid of any opposition even from within her own party.

How will the campaigning go? Here's a clue:

Tim Montgomerie @montie
Tories want the exln to be about Corbyn and May; LibDems want it to be about Brexit; Labour want it to be about ?

then there is this:
fleetstreetfox‏*@fleetstreetfox*
I wonder what'll happen to the SNP. Polls not too chuffed about 2nd indy ref, Labour screwed... could parts of Scotland go blue again?

there will be lots of this about:
Dan Rebellato‏*@DanRebellato*
^Right. If we don’t want a huge Tory majority, we must all hold our nose and vote tactically. This MUST happen. How to organise that?

and the strategy is this:
Laura Kuenssberg‏*@bbclaurak*
Clear from May and hearing IDS that tories will go after idea of Labour Lib Dem coalition as risky

Council officials are now seeking legal advice over the Gorton By-Election that is scheduled for next month.

One more thing: Does this bury the election expenses row that is brewing and involves May's close adviser Nick Timothy?

Oh and the bottom line?
Alberto Nardelli‏ @AlbertoNardelli
Difference size of Tory majority will make to EU27 negotiating position: 0

Sigh.

Pretty I also have insider personal knowledge of GB and I beg to differ. Next you'll be telling me the Global meltdown of collateralised debt repackaging etc etc was all his fault - see Mervyn King on this who points out if there is not sufficient real growth we will eventually be back in meltdown as nothing has been resolved.

Not actually sure how losses due to offshoring investments to Iceland were GB's fault either, although I would not have been inclined to bail anyone out.

On teachers you misunderstand. I went to school in the 80s in one of the few Tory seats in Scotland. My school was therefore on strike for the best part of 2 years. Localised vindictive strike action targeted at particular school children who just happened to be living in the wrong place. That was Labour's fault, but shows the issue with putting win at any cost at the heart of political thinking.

woman Scotland already doesn't fully recognise English professional qualifications and vice versa.

Kaija I am ever the optimist but am somewhat surprised you can tell the difference between the Tories and the LibDems, especially given that the LibDems are already holding out the prospect of coalition compromise.

Why bother with refs and GEs? Lets just do a poll of the top 100 richest people and let them decide for us. Save us hassle in the long run

Refusing to rule out coalitions is not the same as angling for them.

According to the Mirror No 10 press secretary and communications director left this week.

Well-respected Number 10 press secretary Lizzie Louden quit the Tory Government and told pals she will “move on to other things”.

Ms Louden had previously worked on the controversial - but highly successful - Vote Leave campaign.

She was Mrs May's most senior political spinner left in Downing Street following the sudden resignation of communications director Katie Perrior earlier this week.

It comes amid reports of a grim atmosphere inside Number 10 under the leadership of Mrs May and her all-powerful chiefs of staff Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill since they came to power last July.

One source told the Financial Times that the mood has turned “from day to night” under the new regime.

Link

lala thanks for that, couldn't get links to work, but math did some great posts on this too. www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-leave-eu-electoral-commission-investigation-spending-donations-arron-banks-a7695841.html
peregrina those resignations speak volumes.

Darren McCaffrey‏***@DMcCaffreySKY
BREAK: @ElectoralCommUK* begins investigation into Leave.EU referendum spending return, saying there were "potential offences under the law".^

Darren McCaffrey‏***@DMcCaffreySKY
BREAK: @Arron_Banks attacks @ElectoralCommUK*, "they are an official arm of the Remain campaign" tells me they will fight any allegations.

Darren McCaffrey‏ @DMcCaffreySKY
NEW: Banks goes on, @ElectoralCommUK allowed for Govt leaflets to be published for Remain, @LeaveEUOfficial should have no case to answer.

Sigh

Well if they were, they were fucking shit at what they were 'supposed' to do, so I'm not sure what you have to worry about Mr Banks.

Also, just because Remain did something you don't see as fair doesn't mean you didn't do anything far more worthy of investigation does it?

The expenses deadline for the EU ref was only December. The expense allegations for 2015 first came out in March 2016 (and are still rumbling on). And here you are complaining about the timing being dodgy which seems pretty consistent by Electoral Commission to me.

Its dead unfair they are questioning something dodgy, if you indeed did do something dodgy. I seem to remember a few boasts about disregard for the electoral rules. Wasn't that in your book? And in interviews. By you.

Or are you trying to construct a way of getting out of standing like you said you would now Douglas spoiled your little game.

You know like the pro-Brexit march you planned with Nigel, and then 'cancelled' even though you never bothered to ever seek police approval for.

Meh. I'm sure you can generate lots of publicity out of it anyway.

Sigh. Its as predictable as it is boring to see this news story and your reaction to it, Mr Banks.

Oh I missed Peregrina's link, sorry.

The investigation is focused on whether one or more donations – including of services – accepted by Leave.EU was impermissible; and whether Leave.EU’s spending return was complete.

Oh hello. I'm noting the explicit wording of that.

Didn't Cambridge Analytica donate services to Trump's campaign?

www.ft.com/content/7482ec7c-01c9-11e7-aa5b-6bb07f5c8e12
Watchdog probes Cambridge Analytica’s poll role
Review to see if data protection rights were breached during EU vote

The company said that “Cambridge Analytica did not do any paid or unpaid work for the Leave.eu campaign. In 2015 the company was in discussions to potentially work with them. That work did not go ahead”.

However, Andy Wigmore, the communications director of the Leave.eu campaign told the Financial Times he “confirmed” that Cambridge Analytica provided “initial help and guidance” to the Leave.eu campaign, which then went on to develop its own artificial intelligence analysis methodology.

“The AI machine learning was developed in Bristol by 20 mathematicians and actuaries with input from Cambridge Analytica at the very beginning and then executed by [US political consultancy] Goddard Gunster,” he said.

Labour had decades to show what they could do for Scotland, but the party was mostly lazy, incompetent and corrupt.

Labour knew most Scottish voters would never vote Tory, so they thought they had a captive pool of voters.
I'm very glad the SNP came along: Labour abandoned Scottish voters, so there was a political vacuum waiting that almost any new party could have filled.

The idea of the SNP being "totalitarian"
A party is not "totalitarian" just because it sweeps aside your decrepit party - in democratic elections.

btw, do SNP supporting papers refer to opposition as "enemies of the people", "traitors", "saboteurs" like the Brexit papers do ?

I haven't noticed NS refusing debates or to answer questions
I haven't seen her bodyguards intimidating members of the public who aren't worshipping her.

"When you are used to privilege then equality seems like oppression"

Scottish Labour supporters were used to their team running everything and handing out the plum jobs to supporters.

My family in the NE would love to see Labour kicked out there too,
because several are public service workers who have been ostracised and continually passed over for promotions, just because they are Tories and Liberals.
So they'll vote tactically with the aim of kicking out Labour.

Not every vote will be about Brexit.
There seems a mood in the country of kicking back at whoever has shit on you, whatever party that is.
And bugger the consequences.

The Lib Dems make their policy based on what members put forward at Conference. I would be extremely surprised if anyone felt going into coalition with May was likely to win many votes at present.

There seems a mood in the country of kicking back at whoever has shit on you, whatever party that is. And bugger the consequences.

This could backfire on the Tories too - May's speech was all about her, what she wanted... The electorate don't like being taken for granted.

Scotland only rebelled against Labour after decades of being taken for granted.

May's problem is that she has raised expectations of Brexit that are totally unrealistic.
So she will have to carefully manage the climbdown.

The Fail gang may turn on her, but they would aim to replace her with a Tory wingnut - unless maybe ArronBanks / Cambridge Analytica manage to puff up their new "Patriotic Alliance" party ?

Yes, well, I tried ISideWith:

I should vote Plaid Cymru - I must therefore go and live with my brother for a while, in order to do so
Then Sinn Fein - a bit of a surprise!
Green
SNP
LibDem

At least the Tories came last!

Howabout - no, I'm not saying that the pre-packaged debt was his fault - but I am saying that (amongst other things) - that the lack of financial regulation is his fault. In Iceland they jailed their bankers - we bailed them out (BTW - my Icelandic customer did manage to pay their multi-million Euro contract in early 2009 - although they did have to get special permission to transfer the money as at the time the Icelandic government had imposed strict capital controls).

There were warning signs that our government chose to ignore. You're right: we were not alone. But we chose to ride the "we've banished the boom and bust cycle" which he had the hubris to boast about , enjoy a world-wide Ponzi scheme and then make all of us suffer the consequences (and brought on austerity) while the "super elite" that lot again still made millions. We He also could have started a Sovereign Wealth Fund. Even though Maggie wasted the early years of North Sea oil, there was nothing stopping him doing so in 1997 - for the benefit of the whole of the UK. Then he might have been able to say that he had put in measure to mitigate boom and bust.

Interestingly, Iceland, by not following full austerity measures, actually was commended by the IMF for the way that it came out of recession and its economy was growing. Easier with a smaller economy, I know - but the project I was involved with, as it happens, was one of the ways it could grow its economy using its natural assets and building the appropriate infrastructure with which to exploit it (which had already been identified as such well in advance of the crisis and which was why it still got permission to transfer the capital funds required).

As I said, it's far too big a topic for this thread (we have big enough topics to be getting on with ) and I also no longer have my work computer so I no longer have access to all the papers that I saved at the time some of which predicted the crash before it happened, one in particular which identified UK, Iceland and Switzerland as the ones at risk (I had a major battle to get my company to continue the project I was literally in tears of anger at one point as they wanted to pull the plug ) and I am trying to extract 8 year old waning memories

Times: _The only real question of this untimely general election is how low the Labour Party can go

"It is an unusual election in that every party has a reason for wanting it.

The Tories to seek a crushing victory,
the SNP to gain a mandate for a second independence referendum,
the Liberal Democrats to lock in recovery
and Labour to get shot of Jeremy Corbyn." [[https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/has-theresa-may-saved-the-labour-party-j57wth57b

www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/has-theresa-may-saved-the-labour-party-j57wth57b
]]
"Labour enters the campaign on 24 per cent in the opinion polls.
Mr Corbyn is thought to be the best option as prime minister by only 15 per cent of the country.

More people think the moon landings were faked than think Labour will win on June 8.

If the broadcasters proceed with the plan to put an empty chair on stage where Mrs May should be, Mr Corbyn has a decent chance of winning that exchange, as long as he doesn’t turn up.

Labour MPs in tight races are giving up and nobody with a majority of 5,000 or fewer expects to win.

Labour MPs believe that a poll score of 24 per cent flatters them and that,

once the election campaign moves on to Mr Corbyn’s views on the IRA (which it will), the party might flirt with the high teens."

"The abject weakness of the Labour Party means that this election will produce the largest majority for an empty political project in British electoral history."

"The post-election cabinet, with the best people leaving parliament or in exile, will be of very poor quality and the government will soon look empty of purpose.

An opposition led by a grown-up could be back in clover quickly.
Yvette Cooper is being lined up.
Keir Starmer is an option.
Perhaps Chuka Umunna or Dan Jarvis"

I know we are all in election-watch mode, and this is off-topic, but did we already talk about the Dortmond bus bombing being perpetrated by a Russian stock market trader and not ISIS? Extraordinary.

I think most people in the UK missed that news.
The Fail wrote that an "Islamicist" had been detained and has not given the same prominence - or even a mention? - to the bombing by a Russian trader, entirely motivated by profit.

For anyone who hasn't heard:

www.theguardian.com/football/2017/apr/21/dortmund-bus-attack-suspect-arrested-as-police-allege-share-dealing-plot

After any attack, we should always wait before assuming the attacker is Muslim, but one is often called an "apologist" for that on MN nowadays.

Really? What is going on with the world?!

that the lack of financial regulation is his fault

If Brown had called for further regulation pre-crisis he would have been regarded as a socialist lunatic. The Tories were predictably calling for less regulation. One lone voice in the UK couldn't have changed international financial regulation. And even if UK financial sector had been better regulated - like Germany or France - we still would have been more exposed due to the size of our financial sector.

Brown has many faults and he was not a leader, but the idea that he could have fixed regulation in the city pre-crisis is a dream - he would have been dismissed across the board.

While anyone with half a brain knew some kind of downturn was coming, few grasped the true extent of it. Other than the handful of economists who predicted key aspects of the crash, the general consensus was that things were fine. Roubini called it on credit and subprime bubble, Pettifor and Keen on global debt etc The ones who did see warned the world and no-one listened.

What is Lexit?

BTW: I've never come across any teachers who talk politics to their pupils: neither in my own (ancient blush) experience, nor my mum's (albeit she retired 20 years ago), nor (more relevantly grin) in ds' experience or that of his friends at other schools. Not during the local, Scottish or national elections, nor during the Indyref. The closest ds gas experienced to that is some anti Trump discussions before and since the presidential elections (as one of his teachers is very obviously Muslim and was planning a family holiday to Disney World not happening now)

My 9 year old seemed remarkably well informed about Trump in the run up the US election. We were talking about it at home with the kids a bit, but it turns out his year 4 teacher is very political and there has been discussion in class. My son was very cross about the travel ban, as many of his classmates are Muslims. He also knows that Trump is a sexist and could explain what that meant when I asked.

misti thanks for that, I'd missed it and I'd been keeping an eye on that for a while . What the hell has this world come to?

bigchoc absolutely.