Westministenders: Oh No Not Another One. Thread that is.

[RedToothBrush]

In this edition of Westministers we play a game of ‘Where are they now?’

In June 2016 our screens were subjected to the sight of a number of particularly vocal MPs who participated in debates and stood on soap boxes to talk about the referendum.

The most noticeable of these for Leave were perhaps Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Andrea Leadsom, Gisela Stuart, Nigel Farage, Priti Patel and Kate Hoey. For Remain it was David Cameron, George Osborne, Jeremy Corbyn, Ruth Davidson, Sadiq Khan, Nicola Sturgeon, Nick Clegg and Tim Farron.

It is starting to seem that anyone involved in campaigning either for or against Brexit in June 2016 has faced an epic battle for survival. Just how long can they last before being defeated or conceding defeat.

David Cameron’s scalp was the first to go, as he swanned off leaving everyone to clear up his mess.

Boris Johnson, who was keen to stamp his mark and pitch for the leadership by stitching up Cameron, got stitched up by Michael Gove who also lost his own bid for leadership as a result.

Johnson, of course, still lives to fight another day by getting a nice job as Theresa’s whipping boy. He’s occasionally let out by himself, but its Michael Fallon who does the ‘Grown Up Business’. He was said to be one of the last to support an early election. I can’t think why that might be.

Poor old Gove is now confined to a straight-jacket, the back benches where he’s been told to think about what he’s done like a naughty school child and a column in the Times

Andrea Leadsom was sent to a field of cows never to be seen again except to pop up for the odd cameo line shouting about ‘Jam’.

Queen Theresa also dealt with the other Conservative Leader Leave Candidate Mr Liam Fox, by shipping him off to every dodgy corner of the global to get pampered by state hostility.

Stephen Crabb simply crawled back under his rock.

The announcement of the General Election seems to be like the major soap incident episode where half the cast get killed off by a totally unrealistic disaster because their acting contracts weren’t being renewed.

The quitters and abdicators who now have legged it at the sight of a General Election are Gisela ‘Champion of the Brexit Bus’ Stuart and Nigel ‘Too chicken to be defeated for an eighth time and risk losing my nice EU pension’ Farage. George Osborne took the advice of his school teachers and had another career to fall back on when he didn’t become successful in his first choice.

Its rather starting to look like the curse of being a leading Brexiteer is to be made to disappear off the face of the earth or fuck off when the going gets tough. Have you seen Priti Patel lately? Does she even still exist? And Chris Grayling? He was convinced he was going to get chancellor when he supported May in her bid for the leadership.
Instead he got packed off transport and disappeared off the face of the earth much to the annoyance of everyone caught up in the rail strikes.

The only one who is remotely visible seems to be David Davis and is like May’s pet poodle who just tries to please his owner.

It’s almost like the only one still standing or hasn’t been banished is Kate Hoey. And the Lib Dems are trying to work on that one and make her sink beneath the waves, on board her Alan Partridge Titanic once and for all.

Conversely the visible Remainers seem to be – on the face of it - fairing rather better at the moment.

Sadiq Khan is hugely popular and actually does his job rather than fannying about on zip wires. Ruth Davidson is also well respected and apparently has saved Priti Patel’s job from abolition. If the rumours are to be believed bored with scrapping with Nicola, she might be lining herself up for ‘Big Things’ in Westminister. Cameron’s one time love interest, Nick Clegg hasn’t shaken the tarnish of the coalition but he is enjoying a new reputation as the Brexit Soothsayer and some people actually know who Tim Farron is now, which is progress. Nicola Sturgeon is of course riding high and seems to be a permanent thorn in Theresa’s side.

Jeremy ‘I’m a Remainer, honest comrades’ Corbyn is the one who seems to be something of a walking disaster area yet is also thriving with it like a zombie who just keeps going regardless of what you throw at him.

And then of course there is Queen Theresa. The Remainer. Who has crushed everyone in her party. Not just the saboteurs. Even her supposed ally Hammond and BBF Rudd have been thrown under the bus at her wimb when its suited May personally.

The General Election now sets a new scene and opportunity for new characters to emerge. Now the rats have left the ship or been put in their place.

Will May set course to the left or to the right or simply plow on like a bull in a china shop?

Anyway I’m now looking forward to the shocking soap opera moment where your favourite hero or villain gets killed off in a twist you didn’t see coming. Role on June 8th. If only to get pass the upcoming horror of the next six weeks.

Bingo Peregrina

This "GDR clause" seems to be causing fury to some Brexiters, e.g. the Ultras in the Guardian Comments section

It's almost as if they hadn't any clue as to what Brexit would bring.

But that can't be the case, surely ?

www.theguardian.com/education/2017/apr/28/headteacher-and-deputy-send-resignation-letter-to-parents-longparish-primary-school-hampshire
A couple working as headteacher and deputy head at a Hampshire primary school rated as outstanding have written to parents saying they are quitting because they are so disillusioned by the direction of education policy
Not funding, exactly but still......
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08n4lkg
Fact-checking Boris Johnson
More or Less
The foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, appeared on Today this week, where he fired off a salvo of highly questionable statistics. We examine them
Good item on the £350m and Bojo's claims about French/British Londoners.

My dad did national service in Cyprus. It's still a thing in France. A friend of my husband completely buggered his knee during his.

One godmother of mine was in the WRENS and another worked for SOE but not in the field - in WM & Egypt.

Women were allowed to do very little of interest in WWII unless they were posh and had amazing connections.

Women were allowed to do very little of interest in WWII unless they were posh and had amazing connections.

Quite the contrary, actually.
WWII revolutionised the roles of women in work.

From building & maintaining ships, aircraft, vehicles, operating the barrage balloons, saboteurs, radio & comms operators & experts, working on the canals etc etc

Far more interesting & varied opportunities than life before.

Horrible Histories WW2 what women did - top source!

I think the argument that women weren't able to do much unless they were posh, was probably more true for WW1. It would only have been the rich gels who had had access to cars and learnt to drive, and been able to go off to drive ambulances. Certainly in the early years.

Life for women changed dramatically during the war because so many men were away fighting. Many women took paid jobs outside the home for the first time. By 1918 there were five million women working in Britain. www.bbc.co.uk/schools/0/ww1/26439020
Ammunition workers, factories, farms, nursing ... men marched off to fight and women filled the gaps. Even more so in WW2. If you need more drivers, then you teach them - the army is very good at intensive training at simple tasks - driving etc.

www.gov.uk/government/news/the-women-of-the-second-world-war

We're looking at this from different perspectives. I'm not disputing that WWII opened up the workplace to women. But only on narrow terms.

Who wants to building and maintaining ships/aircraft when you could be flying/sailing them etc? Operating barrage balloons - is this a joke? I wanted to fly a Spitfire.

You mentioned saboteurs and that is good example. My godmother only got the job she did because she was aristocracy and had good connections. The majority of women in SOE were from upper middle class backgrounds - other than women like Violette Szabo & Odette Churchill who were French (Szabo technically half). She used to call 'SOE' 'Stately 'Omes of England' - because of the class thing and because they did much of their training at gracious homes round the country.

Class was still massive in WWII. One had to remember it was only 20 years after the end of WWI and Britain hadn't changed that much. Public school men were put forward for officer training far more readily than anyone else. To get a something at the War Office you had to know people.

I always found it odd that women were allowed in SOE but not allowed to fly on the front line. It must have been very galling for women who had pilot's licences to see young men straight out of school, who had never flown before, trained up to be fighter pilots.

Nothing like what the men were doing is the point.

Women did fly spitfires in WW2 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Transport_Auxiliary - no ammunition, ferry flights to/from factory to airfields. It wasn't until the 1990s that women were allowed to serve at sea along side male colleagues and not till 2016 were women allowed to serve in army front line combat www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jul/08/uk-army-female-soldiers-close-combat-ground-role-ban-to-be-lifted
As to serving with SOE, needed to speak French - which generally meant middle/upper class or French.
As to officers, it was Wellington who said 'the playing fields of Eton' provided his officers - and it still does for the top regiments.

Who wants to building and maintaining ships/aircraft when you could be flying/sailing them etc?

For many women, MIL among them, building aircraft was a huge step forward. She had been shy and retiring before then; it really brought her out of herself.

I do take the point about class, though. MIL's sister went to enlist, in the WRAF, I think. She went along with a bank manager's daughter, who was offered skilled work. MIL's sister, being the daughter of a man with a trade, was offered the chance to be a batman to the bank manager's daughter. She told them to forget it, she wasn't signing up to be a servant, and went off to do something else for the war effort.

I've read several books about female WWII pilots and what they got up to, that's why I say what I do. Shifting Spitfires from Brize Norton to Wales is in no way comparable to flying in the Battle of Britain.

That's not to say it didn't have it's own dangers, particularly as they flew without instruments.

Not sure why you're providing links about women in the armed forces, I'm well aware of what they have been allowed to do, when.

SOE didn't just require French, but other languages too. So you either had to be educated (in relative terms for women then) or another nationality.

Just to say that women serving on the front line did not happen until the 1990. But just because women were serving on the second line does not diminish their contribution in any way. My DM was a telephone operator in Plymouth dockyards - lots of air raids etc whilst my DF was at sea.
But this is not about Brexit so I am off to read about 'strong and stable' leadership ...

Just to say that women serving on the front line did not happen until the 1990

Which most women are presumably aware of.

Not diminishing anyone's contribution. Quite ordinary jobs were dangerous. Just living through the war itself was hard. But I find what women were actually allowed to do in WWII quite frustrating. I would have found it very frustrating then.

I would have found it very frustrating then.

I think you would have found the 1950s even more frustrating. When the men returned the women were booted out of the demanding jobs they had been doing, and were expected to be happy housewives.

To derail the derail , yesterday I mentioned the Orwellian powers our government is being allowed to give giving itself.

Coincidentally, this is a Facebook conversation the friends I mentioned were having today....

Electronics Communications Lawyer:
I remember at school a teacher laughing at the notion of a country like ours having the sort of surveillance powers George Orwell wrote about in Nineteeen Eighty Four.

Having spent the afternoon in the depths of the Investigatory Powers Act I have concluded Orwell totally underestimated the authoritites in the UK.

(and yes that means you GCHQ when you're reading this) ;-)

Risk Manager/former ISP head
Not wishing to spoil your weekend or anything, but have you read the Digital Economy Act yet? Rushed through before the dissolution of parliament. Couple it with the IP Act and 1984 was for kiddies....

Lawyer
read it? have been working against aspects of it for years
removes rights of appeal against bad regulatory decisions. Not a great idea (unless you make such decisions of course)

(Me again) This Orwellian world is where we are sleep walking into - and the lack of either and both a credible any opposition or proper investigative journalism means that many of us don't even realise . Or perhaps it's just that people don't care as long as they think they are ok

With the rush to Brexit and the GE, we really should be concerned

Damn right. And preference at universities was given to returning soldiers to complete their education. Cambridge didn't even award women degrees until 1948. Grr.

Sorry if I was snippy btw I'm just in a bad mood.

prettybird I agree, and the Digital Economy Act and 'great' repeal act are what makes this country feel unsafe. I wouldn't choose to move to a country with this sort of regime, ever.

Ds - who had no idea what I was typing about - has literally just said (while watching HIGNFY) that if Scotland doesn't manage to achieve her Independence, he wants to leave

Dh said he agreed

These are intelligent people (as am I ) who will take their skills elsewhere (Ok, ds still has to go to Uni and develop his skills but he's planning on studying STEM subjects - at the moment Theoretical Physics but that might change - so who knows what he'll contribute to world knowledge? )

Not sure exact where we'd go: I can claim a South African passport but with Zuma's shenanigans, I'm not sure I want to go back there.

Fully back OT - don't think that this has posted....

@JolyonMaugham: It's Brexiters who wildly over-promised; but it's all of us who will pay the price.

It's not something that most of us on these threads haven't been saying for months. What's frustrating - both for us and even more for the EU officials who'll be doing the negotiations - is that no one in the government appears to be listening. It's as if they are living in a virtual reality world of their own design

Prettybird - please don't leave

I'm still hopeful Calyx so no plans yet

Ds still has one more year of school and then 4 years at Uni....

My dad (who is looking into getting his Irish passport - but more importantly is checking it out for his sister in SA with her South African non Schengen passport) has said he want to see Independence before he dies. He's 80 now but his aunt lived to 101

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tory-election-campaign-north-england-banners-without-conservative-branding-general-election-thersea-a7708831.html

"Tory election banners in the north of England don't have 'Conservative Party' branding on them
Theresa May's name takes pride of place as polls show her popularity soaring
It later emerged that Ms May’s speech, which was held at a community regeneration project, had been packed with Tory activists after users of the building left for the day".

Creepy.

www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/apr/28/tories-imperial-vision-post-brexit-trade-deal-disruptive-deluded?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard

"The head of the African, Caribbean and Pacific group of nations has ruled out a free trade deal with the UK until at least six years after Brexit and taken a sideswipe at the idea of a new British trade empire.

The ACP chief, Dr Patrick Gomes, condemned “reactionary” Whitehall talk of a second era of British colonialism – dubbed “Empire 2.0” – and poured scorn on the government’s trade strategy.

A six-year delay to any post-Brexit deal would be a bitter setback to the government, which had hoped to use the 2018 Commonwealth summit in London as a springboard for closer trade ties with Anglophone states such as South Africa, Nigeria and Jamaica.

Gomes said: “Any trade deal would take a very long time. A transition period of at least six years would be necessary and, within that, you can’t introduce uncertainty to traders and exporters in an abrupt manner.”

He said that it had taken six years for his home country, Guyana, and other Caribbean states to negotiate a trade pact with the EU and that it would be “very disruptive” to push for a deal with the UK within two years of a formal Brexit."