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 He has been replaced by the Head of the infamous Arch-Brexit Whatsapp group.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

Agree Lurking.

lisa o'carroll‏*@lisaocarroll*
Angry crowd has now headed to Downing Street chanting "May must go". Last speaker warned it would be "a long hot summer" of protests

Rupert Myers‏*@RupertMyers*

Six years ago London went into chaos & meltdown over a single death. People need to be very careful in what they say & how they act

This is not an unpredictable sequence of events...

No, it's not an unpredictable sequence of events Red.

Tbh I'm sure there is a list somewhere of who was living in those flats (see the regular visits that the council was doing, checks etc...).
A simple tick exercise (present or not) would give a pretty accurate figure of the number of deaths.
We also have the long list of people missing as well as family/friends who do not know that xx was in that flat and has never come out.

We can a have a ball park evaluation.

But as a PP said, I don't think the government wants that. Too dramatic and showing how bad the situation is. A trickle of NOW the toll is 30 deaths and then a few days later now it's 43 etc... will be much mor acceptable and easier to handle.

In terror attacks, people can SEE the bodies and there are eyewitnesses. They sensationalise and instantly report because of it.
That's not wholly true, it depends on what sort of incident.

I don't think the police should change their stance btw. They should only give official tolls. But certain media outlets have been keen to publish so called death tolls in circumstances it raises fear or hatred towards certain sections of society. When it doesn't suit their agenda they stick with official. I think the media should be called out in a proper way more for maliciously reporting though, rather than the other way around.

I'm watching the handmaids tale...
"I was asleep before..."
Maybe that's what's happening now
We are waking up

Is that since the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes ?

De Menezes set off my spidey senses in the first 24 hours... I was like 'this is not right'... Too much silence. That's what people are hearing and reacting to now I guess. Too much suspicion of authority. Too much cynicism which is probably reflective of their experiences rather anything dodgy.

My spidey senses think there is nothing sinister from the police this time. Lots of crap from Johnson and Council but not the police. The reaction of the Mail and Sun doesn't help either though.

Its all building up. I don't think its started yet either.

The interview on the BBC with Dr Tom Best, Intensive Care Consultant of King's College Hospital was heartbreaking.

An easy thing to do for example is to say xx people are still missing like they do after a hurricane or a landslide.

We know these people will be dead now even though number of deaths aren't confirmed iyswim

When it doesn't suit their agenda they stick with official. I think the media should be called out in a proper way more for maliciously reporting though, rather than the other way around.

Well yeah that's about immigration and racism isn't it? Not a cover up.

While I think that it's correct for the police not to issue estimates of the number dead, it is normal in any mass disaster for the authorities and the press to discuss the numbers "missing". It does strike me as odd that nearly 48 hours on, we are only just now getting estimates of "at least" 70 missing.

This absence of information is leading to the circulation of much higher estimates via social media, and is entirely counterproductive. Nearly two days on, the authorities must have a good idea how many are on the "missing" list. Not discussing this implies either that there has been a breakdown in coordinating the support of victims and their families - leading to the authorities being unable to establish a reasonably reliable list of those unaccounted for - or that someone is hiding something. I don't know which of these is more likely, but both are equally damning ..

From Twitter
#GrenfellTower is a 21st century Aberfan. Disaster befalls the poor & dispossessed in a society that only cares for money. Austerity kills.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/eu_referendum_2016_/2956340-Westministenders-The-bookends-to-a-year-of-political-chaos-Just-how-far-have-we-come?watched=1
New Thread

From another thread, excerpt from a Facebook post by Robert Peston

The horrific corollary of a faceless, irresponsible system of public-housing governance is that many of the poor and vulnerable people who died in the fire are not even being given the respect of formal identification as victims - because they live on the fringes of the state, and the authorities seem unable to be confident they even existed, let alone that they have died.

link to the complete post

The risk of more innocent people getting hurt is rising

The difficult thing, and the important thing, is that in the end one has to speak truth to power. We have the right to know, as citizens how many have been killed in this disaster. Most of all the families and loved ones.

Ethnically diverse, and proletarian, many, probably hundreds, have died in a foreseeable and avoidable fire. People are angry. The reasons for the deaths are racialised and because of class. This will play out.

British people are still nice. After this tragedy millions of people are doing more good than harm. That we are angry proves a morality. And that things might change is a possibility.

Cynicism is a dangerous state to drift into
Oh that I had the gender and money to do a Phd on that one LH

You've all heard of Herbert Mercuse and how the media and this sort of malarkey works?

Well yeah that's about immigration and racism isn't it? Not a cover up.
But theres a fair few from Grenfell that fit into that category. This time not causing it, but being victims. There's a disparity keenly felt.
I agree with others that estimated numbers of missing should have been given far sooner. I don't instinctively feel cover up, more injustice that the poor/people of the wrong skin tone/people of the wrong religion/immigrants/refugees don't matter.

They don't do they? They are just taking up 'other people's houses'. That's exactly what that Irish Conservative woman said on QT and on her website.

More dog whistling.

I agree this is incompetence rather than conspiracy. It usually is in my experience. There is often a view on public sector (and I say this as someone on the inside) that you should never say anything until you know everything. This underestimates the importance of constant communication in situations of high tension. It also underestimates the value of saying what you don't know.

Often being open and saying 'we hear you want to know this information, but right now we just don't have it. This is what we are doing to get it and I will be here again at this time to update you on what we have and what we are doing'. By being open about what you don't know and why you can fend of the talk of cover up and deal with the difficult questions before they escalate into riot. They have failed to do this. They have failed to give people a human face to hear them and respond in a human way.

lh Harold Wilson was "white heat of technology" - that was led by Tony Benn in his early incarnation as minister of technology or something similar

McMillan was "Events, dear boy, events" in a very plummy voice

I remember a bit about Wilson and people still related SuperMac tales when I was a nipper

• btw, he was a brilliant One Nation Tory, who e.g. kicked arses to push through building an amazing 300,00 homes per year, never been bettered.

To think the Tory party sank so quickly from those great heights to cowardly Cameron and cowardly May

Also Macmillan was no Thatcher fan. He described her privatisation programme as 'selling off the family silver'.

Continuing the history lesson, May is probably nearest Ted Heath in temperament. Shy, awkward, inflexible and rejected by the electorate when he called a snap election looking for personal support.

I was a nipper in those days too, but a political one.

The war, the war. Thatcher was the first PM since 1940 who had not either served in the forces or had been in government during the war - she graduated from university in 1947. No wonder her premiership felt like a sea-change in the country. Gorbachev was the first leader of the Soviet Union who had been born after the 1917 Russian Revolution - and he was the last. These generational experiences matter I think. I wonder what the equivalent will be in the near future. For me I suppose it will be the first Prime Minister born after 1989, but maybe there will be a different point of change that we don't quite see yet.

2 protests going on one outside BBC. This is going to go on for a long while. But what can be done? identification is going to be almost impossible.?

This morning I thought there might be 144 souls lost. This evening after hearing the firemen could not get past 12th floor during the fire I will amend that figure to an average of 244. One woman said they were carrying out lots of bodybags overnight but only declared another 12. If they carried out a lot more last night but could not identify them they should still say how many bodies they retrieved.

May on Newsnight on BBC at 10.30. This extract just released.