Westminstenders: The Brexit Apprentice

[RedToothBrush]

Theresa May is increasing looking like she is running an episode of the Apprentice with two teams trying to compete in their plan for Brexit. Complete with the obligatory reprehensible contestants.

On one side we have Team Creationists intent on hard Brexit and on the other we have Team Sensibles desperate to get a softer deal.
May herself has been held hostage by seasoned expert negotiators the DUP. Once No 10 has reported the deal was done, only for the DUP to say it wasn’t. Then it said, it would be settled today. But the DUP disagreed and said ‘the weekend’. Now its 'next week'.

Meanwhile the Queen has been messed about with a scapegoat over when her Queen’s Speech will be. It’s likely to be a week on Monday.
Meanwhile the Brexit department is also in chaos.

The Number two in the department was sacked and replaced by a Remainer, and the number three quit amongst reports that he no longer thought Brexit was achievable and that there was no way that the Great Repeal Act could pass through the Lords. He has been replaced by the Head of the infamous Arch-Brexit Whatsapp group.

Oh and Gove got hired. Nuff said on that one.

After some slight back tracking from David Davis, Hard Brexit is still on in all its glory. Negotiations are going ahead next week. Well that’s what we are saying. The EU, on the other hand, don’t won’t to go ahead until we have an officially sworn in government. Which seems pretty fair enough.

Tune in to find out which Team wins this week’ The Brexit Apprentice

I refer you to maths response...

I can foresee riots :(
Tory austerity is finally being seen for what it is...

Norman Lamb is great isn't he.

That's not a rhetorical question but a statement of fact.

You put forth a comment on a public forum that was based on prejudice

No I didn't.
It wasn't based on prejudice.

I am correcting errors in your assumptions and attempting to defend people whose suitability to work in construction in the UK you scorned and who were (in your mind) partly responsible for the fire at Grenfell Tower.

I didn't say this.

In fact, you kindly reposted my posts:

^This is what you posted:
"It's what happens when you cut corners with your construction crews as well as materials etc.
^
Mass amounts of cheap, imported, ready trained labour who have been trained to lower standards than in Britain & throw in communications issues wrt language barriers.^
Add in unscrupulous cost cutting on standards of materials used, poor checks & balances & wholly removed management focussed on profit & quantity over quality.

All part of the Human Factors & Maintenance Error chain which leads to failings."^

'

Your assumption that there might be a language barrier between white collar and blue collar employees on a job site speaks volumes.

I didn't specify blue collar/white collar.
In fact, what I meant was the actual tradesmen - not the managers.
No idea of 'the volumes' I'm speaking.

Your choice of the term 'Mass amounts' suggests that Farage poster.

Wtaf.

If you don't mean to say that foreign labour was partly responsible for this disaster, then don't say that foreign labour was partly responsible for this disaster.

Ffs.

This is not what I was trying to say.
I have explained this repeatedly.

Apologies for name change fail in a previous post.

I posted as 'AmethystGlitter' by accident.

I won't bite anymore, regardless of the inevitable lengthy posts from Math, and I have nothing else to say on this, other than (again):

I am not anti foreigner.

I just badly worded something.

Jo Maugham, lawyer, seems to be offering free legal help to Grenfelll residents with 'compensation and responsibility'. On Twitter, reported in this article:

www.google.co.uk/amp/m.huffpost.com/uk/entry/uk_594251dce4b003d5948d3415/amp

Jonn Elledge @ JonnElledge
I have an irrational sense that, when Theresa May starts losing popularity, it won't be a gradual decline. It'll be overnight collapse.
From 27th April

Who is the Tory twat on Question Time? Same old tired phrases. Give it a rest.

lh As another old fart, I'm also reminded of the late 1980s

After all this time, I can only specifically remember the nearly 200 dead in the Herald disaster, but there were other tragedies too that led to a wave of disgust against Profit Before People

Also, those who claim Labour didn't improve the NHS seem unaware of the dreadful waiting lists then after years of Tory cuts

• I had to pay several thousand for my late mum to have 3 operations privately, because the NHS waiting list for each was 1-2 years

Yes, some of the older generation, who have since become comfortably off, are reminded of the pitiless 1980s and we don't want to go back

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-talks-opening-position-papers-government-yet-to-send-submit-latest-news-a7792531.html
Brexit talks: Government yet to submit opening positions despite EU negotiations being days away

Exclusive: The UK has failed to submit 'positioning papers' as Theresa May tries to get her administration on its feet

I can foresee riots

Sadly, predictably, I believe this is where we are headed.

Austerity and capitalism, they end the same way. Money is increasingly seen as more valuable than some lives.

Thing is with social media and the increased connectivity of people, those some lives aren't going to stay isolated.

Anger will build to rage, things like this will kept happening.

Sorry, too much , feeling a bit bleak tonight.

Those poor fucking people.

As I saw upthread, the thought that they would be alive right now if only they had some more stacks of fucking paper. Paper!

It's enough to make any decent human beings blood burn.

Red I suspect our UK representatives will spend a week negotiating what tea to have and arguing that they shouldn't have to bring their own sandwiches

Norman Lamb: 'fire regs require all hotels to have sprinklers but not tower blocks..this has all the hallmarks of a major scandal' #bbcqt

Could it be that she is actually announcing yet another general election before the talks start, this time blaming I don't know who for making sure these Brexit "talks" fail?
Sorry I am very sleep deprived. Been a long week.

Matt Haig @ matthaig
A city with 100,000 empty properties and 200,000 homeless people has its priorities chronically wrong.

BigChoc:
We need to explain clearly to everyone that you only get the public services - and the safety standard regs - that you pay for.

We can't get European levels of services if we vote for a US-style race to the bottom on taxes and cost-cutting and especially tax cuts for the rich.

Americans carry a large tax burden at local level that is property based. For the most part, each municipality votes for its own tax rate. Where I am, the local/municipal taxes fund building inspectors, public schools, libraries, police force and local drunktank/lockup, special ed services, fire services, emergency services/ambulance, services for the elderly, parks and rec facility maintenance and development, maintenance of streets and alleys, forestry services for tree care on municipal streets, wild animal removal from private homes, youth services if any, and a good few other services. Municipalities also usually levy an annual registration fee for household pets and vehicles owned. As an example of where the money might go and how much money is involved, my local public high school has an annual budget of $77 million, with 97% of that supplied by local property taxes raised in two adjoining suburbs with total population of about 60,000. That $77 million is just one school. There are in addition a dozen elementary schools and three middle schools in the two suburbs too. There are four public libraries, one of which would put a university library to shame. Two public swimming pools and an year round rink, and lots more.

Each county also levies taxes, in the form of sales taxes and property taxes. County taxes pay for the county hospital, county jails, county courts, sheriff's department, and a host of other infrastructure services. All tax initiatives are voted for. Both county and local municipality take their portion of property taxes.

Property taxes are separate in most places from water and sewer charges. Where I am, water is metered, meaning you pay for what you use. Sewer charges are fixed. Waste disposal is also fixed per household. If you rent, a landlord factors water and sewer and waste disposal charges and also property taxes into the rent charged.

There are exemptions for elderly owner-occupiers, and investment properties are taxed at a higher rate.

Income taxes are a different kettle of fish. They are levied by both the federal government and the state. You could easily pay much more in local taxes via sales tax (levied on everything including food) and property tax than in income tax. I know people who pay $30K in annual property taxes.

People tend to move to lower taxing municipalities when their children are finished with the schools in places where property taxes are high.

What makes a difference in the US to the perception of taxes is local control of expenditure and tax raising, and also the acceptance that you get what you pay for. Most people in the US are willing to pay local taxes within reason as they perceive it because a community with excellent facilities makes for a good price when a house there is sold.

Putting a cap on house prices is only possible in a centrally controlled economy. It would not work to anyone's benefit in any other system.

The only way to ensure a housing shortage doesn't occur and to avoid creating an owner/landlord paradise is to build good, solid and well-conceived public/social housing to keep up with demand.

My hatred of the Tories stems from the 80s. No fucking buses or tubes, got ill when I was 18, had to wait a year to see a specialist, had tests on a mixed geriatric ward as there were no beds. Homeless teenagers in Trafalgar Square due to benefit cuts. 3 million unemployed. And of course further afield, the minors' strike and the Troubles.

(Telegraph paywall) The Grenfell Tower tragedy raises raw political questions – and the Tories better have some answers

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/06/15/grenfell-tower-tragedy-raises-raw-political-questions-tories/

The decision to sell off these flats, with a new façade to improve their market value, was political.
Politicians subcontracted the management.

Those who live in council houses usually depend, more than anyone else in Britain, on a political system that works properly.
Their lives are in politicians’ hands.

Theresa May didn’t meet any residents when she visited yesterday, which is unfortunate. The general election campaign made her look like someone who avoids awkward questions, and she is living down to this reputation.
Jeremy Corbyn did far better, listening to residents’ complaints about Mrs May and promising to “speak up” for all of them.

It would be dangerous for the Tories to think the public inquiry will depoliticise all this.
The Grenfell Tower disaster is a powerful metaphor for the inequality that Mr Corbyn talks about so regularly and it would be tragic if Labour asks the questions while the Tories – panicked and effectively leaderless – hide behind an inquiry.

There is no more visible manifestation of inequality than seeing high-rise council tower blocks next door to £3 million houses.
Kensington is the richest part of Britain’s richest city and Grenfell Tower is an oasis of deprivation.
The people who live there are among the poorest in the land, while those who live a few streets away have underground swimming pools.

Kensington is one of those parts of Britain where life expectancy falls by about 10 years when you cross a road, a place that seems to embody the failure of wealth to spread.
Or, for those with an eye to see it, the failure of capitalism and austerity.

When Kensington turned Labour in last week’s election, it was a stunning display of the progress that Jeremy Corbyn was making.
Only a third of residents there own their own home: for the rest, it’s rent
– at extortionate rates, in buildings that (we now know) may be fatally unsafe.

You don’t need to be a Corbyn voter to suspect that the high-rise penthouses popping up on the banks of the Thames are rather less likely to go up in flames.

When we learn about the dead we’re likely to see the most vulnerable, isolated people in society.

This calamity cannot help but raise fundamental questions about our society, our politicians and the way those at the bottom are treated.

And about why, when residents repeatedly raised their concerns, no one seemed to listen.

Fundamentally, the Grenfell Tower disaster raises a simple question: whose side are you on?
The Conservatives had better have an answer.

Who is the Tory twat on Question Time?

Tobias Elwood. MP who tried to help the copper attack at the Westminster bridge attack.

I had stopped watching the BBC because of the dire standard of Brexit coverage but tonight I have watched the news coverage and now watching QT and from Huw Edwards being caught on the verge of tears or Laura highlighting Mays lack of empathy, and the contrast between other politicians being there and May going back to focus on her shady deals on to cling to power and avoid reality.
I think that not only are you right Red that this is the issue now but the media are responding much more effectively .

It has all gone to shit now they are discussing Brexit and that Conservative woman? Words fail me, back shouting at the telly

Nancy Yes and I actually hate them again. I can feel it as I haven't done I decades. We are slipping backwards...actuallynot slipping but hurtling. And they have sold us off to the highest bidders and their friends

NO MORE

Otto English @ otto_english
Nah. Tobias Ellwood has all the eloquence of a reject turnip in a turnip recycling bin in Turnip central. Thornberry owning him. #bbcqt

Not that Thornberry could answer the question about Labour's position on Brexit.

Can't stand Fraser Nelson, but that's a good article. Is this the same Fraser Nelson who recently claimed 'the poor did better than anybody else' out of austerity?