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.

Thank you BigChoc. No idea when I'll hear.

Anyone noticed that our Eurovision entry is an undercover remain anthem 😂

I will never give up on you
I don’t care what I’ve got to lose
Just give me your hand and hold on
Together we’ll dance through this storm
I will never give up on you
You’re the one that I’m running to
Just give me your hand and hold on
Together we’ll dancing through…

This madness, we’re running through
This magic, it’s inside of you
It’s madness, it’s madness…

Obama in recent speech on courage. Reposted from Trump thread.:

Jump to 23 minutes in for how courage affects now. Worth a look.

Completely relevant to what we're going through, I think.

Southern Ireland - assuming he means ROI/Eire not Waterford/Cork/Kerry...?

I was also unclear whether "Southern" Ireland was intended as a geographical description or (incorrectly) meaning RoI.

I checked just now and the Irish Times just refers to "Ireland" losing jobs

www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/brexit-could-cost-ireland-40-000-jobs-says-central-bank-1.3071259

The IMF doesn't quantify the jobs, or whether they mean RoI, but the Irish Times reports them officially estimating 'the impact of Brexit on Ireland would be “negative and significant”'

www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/impact-of-brexit-on-ireland-to-be-negative-and-significant-1.3081596

I don't know whether it is the journalists or the economists being imprecise

oops, links went wonky

Is this partly why the Brexit media and fans keep trying to boost the far right European parties ?
To stop this happening ....

A resurgent Franco-German led EU is Britain’s nightmare

http://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/a-resurgent-franco-german-led-eu-is-britain-s-nightmare-1.3080969

"A resurgent Franco-German partnership pursuing goals that will only suit the UK by coincidence is exactly the set-up that led successive generations of UK politicians to try and join the EU in the first place.

Lack of influence was a problem back then and is going to be an even bigger issue going forward.

In a very real sense the EU is setting itself an agenda that prioritises lots of things above Brexit.
Attention-seeking UK politicians may be surprised by the relative indifference they encounter in Brussels over the next few months.
And this is as it should be.
Brexit, by definition, is all-consuming for the UK but should not be that big a deal for the EU.

For the British, Brexit is an existential issue.
For the rest of the EU it is now just a matter of a few details.
Even potentially large ones such as the border on this island can be dealt with in a pragmatic way."

Anyone noticed that our Eurovision entry is an undercover remain anthem

Very much. DH started blubbing. Idiot.

We got twelve points in the public section of the vote. What do you reckon, all of them from Australia?

:( It was actually a half way decent attempt by the British.

Eurovision:
I thought it was thinly-veiled message.

'I'll never give up on EU.'

Didn't we do better than usual?
I thought we'd do worse, given Brexit.

About the border and the movement of animals. It is not always a case of animals being officially brought across the border to enter/leave one jurisdiction or go to another. Some farms straddle both sides of the border. I wonder what that means in terms of livestock grazing. Is it a case that the animals can do international trips between the top field and the lower one if someone has left the gate open? Or one end of the field is grazing in the EU and the other in the UK.

www.newstatesman.com/politics/june2017/2017/05/has-michel-barnier-just-changed-course-2017-general-election

Don't know if anyone has posted this. Apologies if so. Again more of the border issues. Farming, but other things too.

www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/03/04/ireland-forgotten-frontier-brexit/

Didn't we do better than usual?
I thought we'd do worse, given Brexit

Did well in the jury vote (except, pointedly, from Malta and Ireland) but pretty poorly (6th from bottom - above Austria, Australia, Germany and Israel and one other) in the popular vote.

Ireland threw the UK some serious shade this evening. I can't remember the last time we gave you nul points!

I love that up until now Anglo Irish Brexit relations have been so polite and cordial.....

..........But once Eurovision hits it was all 'let the cantankerous border busting bastards have it'.

Squoosh thats about the sum to of it, isn't it. The jury was kind because it WAS a decent entry.

Im not sleeping well again. Just checked twitter to see certain accounts going into melt down because a warrant has apparently been issued against Trump himself. Now it's being somewhat over stated so if you do see it, take with the pinch of salt you need. What is being talked about is an alleged warrant regarding surveillance, so is a big deal if true. It's is not how anything more nor a step towards impeachment as is being suggested (yet). There is still this issue of how do you prosecute people who decide who to prosecute. If there is something to hide trump will want someone in the FBI quick to kill off the investigation. The republican party still have to turn on trump too. It's being massively over egged from what I see.

amp.cnn.com/cnn/2017/05/13/world/prevezon-settlement/index.html
Russian money-laundering details remain in the dark as US settles fraud case

A major US investigation into Russian money laundering has come to an abrupt end.

The case aimed to expose how Russian mobsters allegedly stole $230 million and hid some of the cash in New York City real estate. Also sure to come up was the suspicious death of the Russian lawyer who exposed the alleged fraud, though US prosecutors weren't alleging that the defendants were behind it.

The trial was set to start on Monday, but late Friday night, federal prosecutors in New York announced they settled the case with Prevezon, the company accused of buying up "high-end commercial space and luxury apartments" with laundered money.

How odd. It's almost as if money laundering was the big thing ATM.

The $5.9 million settlement is three times the value of the $1.9 million in supposedly laundered money tied to funds stolen from the Russian state coffers. But it's far less than the value of Prevezon's real estate in Manhattan which Shelley estimates at $17 million that had been partially acquired with those allegedly laundered funds.

That's rather a lot.

11/05/2017 22:48 RedToothBrus
Justin Trudeau Won In Canada Through Strategic Voting - It Can Work Here In The UK

Who is the UK's Justin Trudeau?

Woman - math tablet is not fudge. Tablet is hard but melty in the mouth, fudge is soft. This could escalate, a la Hashi's computer game, so I'll leave it at that. smile Brilliant story, btw, on how easy schisms are to create.

Indeed it isn't fudge - it had always puzzled me that our 'fudge' tasted so much nicer than any other fudge, though my mum is a great cook.

I am not a fan of gooey, chocolatey fudge. I much prefer the drier, crumbly, sugary tablet.

Howabout: Will look up Helensburgh Toffee too. Many thanks.

...........

The only thing that will shake GOP support of Trump is a 2018/midterm election disaster for the GOP.

Thank you all for your kind words last night, you lovely people you. I hope you get the offer best and join us in the strange and mysterious world of public service.

Brexit, by definition, is all-consuming for the UK but should not be that big a deal for the EU.
This for me is what the brexiteers just don't realise. We are just not as important as they seem to think. This whole thing is so much ego!

Im not sleeping well again
Sorry to hear that. Hope tonight brings more rest.

The republican party still have to turn on Trump too

Adam Schiff (Democrat) on Bill Maher said something to the effect that GOP will only do so once they have received their 'payoffs' in terms of legislation they want.

I am watching the FBI replacement with great concern as it's mooted that HC will be prosecuted.

And wondering how May will control CPS and who she will prosecute. The attacks on the judiciary bode poorly. She has previous with the Police Federation.

The Bill Maher interview was good, and included a revealing town hall meeting.

What I would give for an intelligent political interview programme and politicians having the courage, and security against Britain First, to hold town hall meetings here.

Amy Siskind's weekly update on authoritarianism.
medium.com/@Amy_Siskind/week-25-experts-in-authoritarianism-advise-to-keep-a-list-of-things-subtly-changing-around-you-so-c9e266046627

Everything Trump does, I compare with what is done here already and what will be done.

Or what she plans to do.

Carole Cadwalladr is tweeting about why the Observer have published an article in follow up to last weeks despite:

So. One day ahead of publication, Squire Patton & Boggs, lawyers for Cambridge Analytica, drop @guardian a line....

The thread is interesting....

Everything Trump does, I compare with what is done here already and what will be done.

Yes! This is one of the reasons I have spent so much time on the Trump thread and been so concerned by what's going on in America. Brexit and Trump are linked in more ways than one, we should look at America and learn from these mistakes and also their successes in building a resistance. I fear though that once May is in with a huge majority she will be far harder to get rid of than Trump.

Trump has clear links to Russia and criminal acts. He is incapable of keeping his mouth shut and incriminates himself at every opportunity. May on the other hand is relatively clean and smart enough to know she is bad at talking to people, so just avoids doing it. She is clearly learning from the techniques that worked for Trump, while being contained enough to convince people she is stable and sane. May scares me more than Trump in a lot of ways.

Just looking at those posts red. You would have thought that a company like CA would know that nothing disappears on the internet and if you say you don't work with someone you better make sure there isn't a loads of evidence floating around the web that you did.

Uh oh, and rattling brexit bunny cages too, I see.
Carole Cadwalladr is my nomination for home secretary in the Westminstenders cabinet.

Newly elected Tory councillor in Stirling made racist posts

https://politicalscrapbook.net/2017/05/newly-elected-tory-councillor-exposed-over-racist-posts/

"In comments on three photos of African crowds, the Tory councillor suggests that black people are
. cannibals
. eat straw and
. carry spears"

e.g. "No, I am not lunch. I am your flight attendant"

< yes, hysterically funny to that group of voters who complain about "liberal / left PC" restricting their freedom

• it's why Bojo is so popular, they see him getting away with it >

What do the Scots think of their new Tory councillors ?

The work she is doing is incredible.

Bigly, the scary thing to me is that they aren't bothering to cover their tracks very well because they know it doesn't matter. Why would they care that Guardian readers know what's going on when it will never touch the millions on their database or make it to the Murdoch/Dacre press.

And if they've got Robert Mercer's lawyer on board, I imagine they feel pretty safe with regard to any possible prosecution here.