Westministenders: Before the Fire Alarm of Rome goes off

[RedToothBrush]

I’m going to keep this one very simple.

THE DEADLINE TO REGISTER TO VOTE IS 22ND MAY.
www.gov.uk/register-to-vote

Postal votes start to go out on 23rd May.

Your challenge is to persuade someone to register to vote or to get someone who is considering not to, to get their arse to the polling station.

Go forth and harass. Especially women and the young.

That’s it. No frills OP.

And of course the pay gap between good it staff in the public sector and those in the private sector is huge. It is very hard keeping good tech people. We have a couple of people who are extremely talented and we live in quiet terror they will one day go and get paid vastly more in a nice tech company leaving the whole organisation to grind to a halt. They stay for complex personal reasons, but we lose a lot who get trained up and then leave for better pay and greater appreciation of their talents.

My MIL taught a level IT until about three years ago.

She can barely use excel

DH is senior IT. I could bore you all to tears about pay, lack of skills, public sector, private sector etc. His reaction to yesterday was "why is anyone surprised?"

Woman : Channel 4 journalist, Alex Thomson, asked him if he was being an agent provocateur, cheeky get.

It was a strange question, alright. Considering Barnier was in Swift Foods, Co. Monaghan, looking at the complexities of the cross border nature of trade in the region. Does Thomson mean a border will be provocative in the region? Considering the signs from 'Border communities against Brexit' saying 'No hard borders, respect the remain vote' . People Thomson spoke to across the invisible border in Crossmaglen (NI) were against a hard border.

Stephen Sackur was strange with Charlie Flanagan (Irish foreign minister), too. I think the problem is that British media now see mainstream parties (UCON) channelling rhetoric to outdo UKIP and think this is prevalent everywhere. He was talking about 'populism'. He was speaking as if it was a normal thing in Europe as represented by UKIP and the FN. There isn't any FN or UKIP type party in Ireland. It isn't a mandatory thing! Flanagan had to point out that Macron's policies were only the policies of another member state.

He also went on about Ireland's low corporation tax and the apple thing. You'd think UCON hadn't said the UK might lower corporation tax on exit as a type of 'in your face'. You can be in the EU and have low corporation tax, Mrs. May. Or that the UK didn't oversee such a large amount of offshore tax haven overseas territories. Flanagan pointed out that the apple thing is being appealed in court. Whether right or wrong, it is not settled yet.

Barnier's speech included a bit about how Ireland had a unique position as a bridge across the atlantic. And how many pharma companies were in Ireland. Enda Kenny pointed out how very suitable Ireland would be for the EMA. Since they have to find a new home in the EU anyway, now that the UK are leaving.

There is a Brexit discussion on BBC Parliament. Dan Mulhall, the Irish Ambassador points out that Ireland have more foreign born nationals than the UK as a percentage of the population. 17%. How FOM has changed the make-up (and size) of the non Irish communities in Ireland. Ten years ago, US citizens would have been the second largest group. Now it is Poles, British, Lithuanians, Romanians and Latvians. Remaining fairly constant even after crash. No anti immigration party or platform in Irish GE. Not the same issue with immigration, despite having a larger percentage of foreign born nationals than the UK. Only one non European country in the top ten in the list of these foreign born nationals. I think that is Nigeria. Numbers different from Eurostat, but Mulhall may be taking from most recent census.

howabout It is a metaphor / signifier isn't it? The meaning of the word chill isn't the issue, it is the fact that it is a metaphor that is commonly understood by part of society. The older generation may have hijacked the country and deprived them of rights and opportunities they valued but I don't think it can hijack their rhetoric too LOL 😉

I may have been stopped from buying the T shirt by a horrified DD

: "Immigration will remain a toxic issue until Britain faces up to its colonial past"
"The chauvinistic myth of the righteous empire is alive and well on both sides of the channel. The thousands of Kenyans arbitrarily rounded up and subjected to nightmarish abuses in British detention camps in the 1950s might take issue with foreign secretary Boris Johnson’s view that “the problem is not that we were once in charge [in Africa], but that we are not in charge any more”. Fillon described Macron’s “dislike of our history” as “unworthy of a candidate for the presidency”, while Gordon Brown proclaimed that “the days of Britain having to apologise for its colonial history are over”. Much Tory Euroscepticism is grounded in nostalgia for a fairyland version of empire, airbrushed of its systemic violence and exploitation, and now to be somehow revived as a post-Brexit trading network. In spite of its bloody record, 43% of Britons believe the British empire was a good thing."

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/may/09/immigration-toxic-britain-colonial-past-emmanuel-macron-france-algeria?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

"The reality is that in Britain and France much of our patriotism has been toxified by imperial self-satisfaction, an inherited sense of superiority over others, and a refusal to climb down from this through an honest reappraisal of our history. It is here that we find the roots of the post-imperial status anxiety that characterises the rightwing Brexiteers. It is also here that we find the instinct to see Muslims as uncivilised, immigrants as an economic burden, and refugees as “cockroaches” or just chancers on the scrounge.

What Britain needs instead is a collective sense of self that is open and pluralistic, with more room for humility and kindness. We need to be honest about British history not to feel guilty about crimes committed by other people before we were born, but to drain our sense of nationhood – and our relationships with others – of the toxins passed down from the days of empire. Above all, we need to dismantle the hard boundaries between “us” and “them” if a progressive politics, or just a politics of basic decency, is ever to be revived."

I agree with every word

I agree too Ron, thanks for the link.

On the NHS it system, another thing the Government could have done is asked Microsoft to continue to support XP for a further 5 years and given additional funding to manage the change. Microsoft might possibly have listened to the government (perhaps!) rather than be implicated in this awful publicity.

Another prediction

This time from electoral calculus

CON: 413
LAB: 159
LD: 7
SNP: 50
PLAID: 3
GREEN: 0

This makes me raise an eyebrow. No Green?

I hope the GE doesn't translate into results like that. The only bonus will be that Theresa May won't be able to whine about the opposition or lack of a mandate. The Brexit ball will very much be in her court.

I have already heard one real life Leaver whining because relationships with her son, with an EU partner, are now frosty. She couldn't see the connection with how she voted and how she continues to support May, at all.

Just been on the street with the Lib Dems gathering signatures against cuts to school funding. I can report that the legalisation of cannabis policy is not playing well in the suburbs. One woman was particularly exercised about it, and when the policy was explained yelled "I don't care about evidence!"

Who would be an MP.

That was why I was so surprised to hear it was in the manifesto Kaija. I personally fully support it and think it would make a huge difference, but I don't think the population as a whole is quite ready for it. There needs to be a lot more honest and grown up debate on the subject of drugs before we jump into proposing legalisation.

I thought legalising cannabis was more of a Green policy?

What an article ron. Something we've all made point of in these threads a lot.

On the cannabis thing, its rarely enforced in lots of places now so its almost a removing red tape exercise. I know a lot of people who wouldn't be happy with it. But kaija you forgot we don't like experts now. You need to get a cleb to be the face of it

I thought legalising cannabis was more of a Green policy? Nice pun pere

Yes, bigly. It was a bit surprising. It's certainly not increasing the chances of our lib dem MP holding his seat.

I wondered whether it was a desperate attempt to get some media coverage. On the other hand perhaps it's just a very small part of the manifesto that's been there all along unnoticed, and leapt upon by the right wing press now that it matters.

I agree with the legalising cannabis stance. The law is rarely enforced, certainly doesn't stop anyone smoking cannabis and just supports illegal activities. If you legalised it you could control access to different strains (and take the very strong skunk out of the equation) and make it a lot safer. You'd also save a lot of landlords from having their houses trashed by illegal cannabis farms!

My only issue is that you might be inadvertently promoting tobacco use, which is a far more dangerous drug in terms of health.

I think the policy is right, just politically impossible right now. It's tough in the middle.

My MIL taught a level IT until about three years ago. She can barely use excel

"This makes me raise an eyebrow. No Green?"

This is a bit weird. Caroline Lucas is pretty safe in Brighton Pavilion, no?

The Electoral Calculus prediction I find dubious.

It has this for Brighton Pavillion as a description for the seat as a whole:
15% Leave, 24% Left and 31% International.
(Chris Hanaretty's estimate of the leave vote is different. He suggests 25%, which makes electoral calculus's prediction seem even more crackers).

Lucas got 22,000 votes there. UKIP ARE standing but even with the UKIP and Conservative vote added together you get a mighty 15,000 odd votes. Labour are also standing and got 15,000 in 2015. The LDs are not standing.

So I'm very intrigued as to how they have got a CON win there.

Corbyn's Lab are in much the same part of the political compass. Are they really expecting a massive swing of Labour voters in such a remain area to the Cons?!!!

I can tell you exactly what they have done and way its wrong. They are applying national - or regional swings - to a single constituency without any consideration for local nuisances.

This is why Ashcroft whose data is based off actual canvassing is probably different.

The other flaw from the electoral calculus prediction is that its off the 2011 Census data. It now being 6 years later, there may have been a few changes to areas in that time!

What I take from that is this though: why is electoral calculus being so conservative about its prediction about the Green, LD and Labour seats compared to Ashcroft and Elections Etc.

The answer is very simple and I'm seeing it on a very localised level.

Where have the young and mobile professionals been moving and congregating in the last 6 years since the Census? Anyone know how they know where people who have turned 18 since then, now live? Or anyone who has moved into a home and started a new family? Cos I don't....

Its a fairly major flaw.

But the data is still useful. To a point.

www.commonspace.scot/articles/10963/siobhan-tolland-why-its-more-bluster-when-tories-spin-theyre-winning-scotland

I wonder if the 'Con win by a landslide' predictions are self fulfilling prophecy type things.

I am sure I remember reading after the last election that the youth are also harder for pollsters to get view on as most of them don't have landlines, so are hard to reach for phone polls and online polling tends to be self selecting. Is this right or did I imagine it?

Is cannabis illegal ?

Legalisation has been LibDem policy for yonks. It speaks volumes it's only just entered the MSM. (Or, cynically, in the face of a LibDem revivial, the MSM has whipped it out of it's back pocket).

The vast majority of cannabis users (the ones that grow their own, have jobs mortgages, and could teach the Daily Mail about civic duty) dumped tobacco years ago. Vaping is now the norm.

Of course quite a few don't drink either, which is another reason they are such a danger. Not to the public, of course. But to the big brewery profits.