Westministenders: Transition

[RedToothBrush]

Last thread opener, it was all about the government buzz word being shown to listen at every opportunity.

Now transition is creeping in as people realise that no we can't just do a settlement, arrange a new trade deal with the EU and have a whole host of other deals in place in two years.

Who'd have thought.

We will be getting Brexit because we give in to threats of terrorism. Not quite getting how that takes back control.

But Brexit will be good. It will be glorious. And in the long term we will be better off for it.

Er ok.

I fear that twitter has the real picture:

France seem to be punching with an increased weight.

www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/17/france-macron-denounces-state-role-holocaust-atrocity-paris-1942

Not completely fair in that cartoon. After all, the farthest guy has a copybook in front of him. And maybe a pen. Brexit is probably underlined 5 times in red on the first page. Maybe dated too. They is plenty prepared.

I hope DD is just lying when he says no one has calculated the cost of no deal
What he means is no one has run any figures that come out the way we want them to. But they aren't believers so aren't people and therefore no one

“There are also serious risks that standards of food safety will decline if the UK ceases to adopt EU safety rules, and instead accepts free-trade agreements with countries with significantly weaker standards.”

Did anyone see the programme on Victorian bakers a while back (BBC, of course) ? Looks like it was an early attempt to get us used to the New World Order ....

to look back nostalgically and assume, for example, that the bread which formed the staff of life was home-baked, or, if bought, was wholesome and nutritional, is romantic nonsense. By the 1840s home baked bread had died out among the rural poor; in the small tenements of the urban masses, unequipped as these were with ovens, it never existed. In 1872 Dr. Hassall, the pioneer investigator into food adulteration and the principal reformer in this vital area of health, demonstrated that half of the bread he examined had considerable quanities of alum. Alum, while not itself poisonous, by inhibiting the digestion could lower the nutritional value of other foods.

The list of poisonous additives reads like the stock list of some mad and malevolent chemist: strychnine, cocculus inculus (both are hallucinogens) and copperas in rum and beer; sulphate of copper in pickles, bottled fruit, wine, and preserves; lead chromate in mustard and snuff; sulphate of iron in tea and beer; ferric ferrocynanide, lime sulphate, and turmeric in chinese tea; copper carbonate, lead sulphate, bisulphate of mercury, and Venetian lead in sugar confectionery and chocolate; lead in wine and cider; all were extensively used and were accumulative in effect, resulting, over a long period, in chronic gastritis, and, indeed, often fatal food poisoning. Red lead gave Gloucester cheese its 'healthy' red hue, flour and arrowroot a rich thickness to cream, and tea leaves were 'dried, dyed, and recycled again.'

As late as 1877 the Local Government Board found that approximately a quarter of the milk it examined contained excessive water, or chalk, and ten per cent of all the butter, over eight per cent of the bread, and 50 per cent of the gin had copper in them to heighten the color.

I should be grateful I make my own sourdough bread (Starter now nearly 2 years old) but I still need flour with which to make it

Not sure my garden is big enough to grow the required wheat and rye

You'd also run the risk of attracting stray Theresa Mays furtively running through your wheat garden.

Not sure my garden is big enough to grow the required wheat and rye

Generally, it isn't. Quite aside from the skills and knowledge required to actually prepare food from scratch. How does the seed you plant become flour ? Who will mill it for you, or do you keep the old school theme going, and mill your own flour ? Where will you buy a quernstone ? Or will you hew that yourself, from the appropriate rock ? Have you the physical stamina to grind grain for two hours a day for your daily bread ?

OK, that's bread sorted . Now, about that butter (unless you know how to make your own margarine) ...

It's when you stack all the generations upon generations of knowledge and experience into the activities (briefly) listed about you start to realise that a lot of "preppers" and Brexiteers are full o'shite.

Animal husbandry ? Water management ? I guess they've heard of it.

But there I go again, being negative about the wonders of poking my eyes out so I don't have to see anything offensive.

You'd also run the risk of attracting stray Theresa Mays furtively running through your wheat garden.

Tbf with the burning of regulations I expect you'll easily be able to get your hands on some effective but dangerous pesticides that will rid you of a flock of tms in your wheat.

Tbf with the burning of regulations I expect you'll easily be able to get your hands on some effective but dangerous pesticides that will rid you of a flock of tms in your wheat.

It would be fitting if it were a pack of hounds.

at the thought of May running round my garden.

My title deeds say I can't have a tannery, soap factory or mine in my garden. They probably also mention no farming

My dad has a wheat field just next to him. We could sneak some from there. And along the road from him there is an old mill which I'm sure could be converted back again

He also used to be a cattle farmer (before he came to the UK to study to be a doctor) - although not dairy. I'm sure he could apply his knowledge to different coos. He has talked about getting a goat to manage to grass on the piece of shared ground that goes down to the loch. And some bees.

And with my veg beds starting to produce potatoes, peas, radishes, broad beans, beetroot, asparagus, French beans, carrots, onions, rocket... and I also have raspberry canes, black and redcurrant bushes and a Victoria plum tree, as well as a giant pear tree (whose fruits we can never harvest as they fall from such a great height ), so I should be ok!

A relative of mine used to get his water from a well until an EU grant gave them funding for a group water scheme. As a child, I went with him or my mother to fetch it while staying there. There were a few wells located around the 'village'. There were a variety of 3 or 4 wells where they went with buckets to collect it. Maybe 9 houses. It was fabulous. They grew oats. Cut their own turf and had a donkey to bring it home in baskets. Everyone helped cutting hay and putting it into cocks of hay, the domed kind. It was Meitheal in action. I used to spend ages jumping/sliding down them. English wasn't used in the house. Raidió na Gaeltachta the only radio channel ever on. There was a cavernous open fire and a three legged pot used for cooking as a kind of dutch over for home made brown bread. There was a gas cooker which wasn't used much. Completely different way of life even then. He grew his own veg and kept a few cattle as well. When he was growing up in the early part of the 1930's, his parents had chickens, ducks and geese. They had pigs too. They lived by the sea, so fresh fish very much part of the diet. It was subsistence, really.

Wonderful memories in my treasure store of nostalgia. The utility improvements came in the 80's and 90's. EU funding and policy transformed neglected regions. Educational funding opportunities as well which benefitted Irish speakers.

All that talk of 'the good life'. Just a hint pretty . If you are neighbouring a field of oats or whatever and there is a dry stone wall, it is very easy to remove one or two lower down to reach a child's hand in to grab some to give to, for example, a donkey. Evidence will be the bare area around the hole. If you are a child, you may be told off __this never happened to me, of course-- . An unscrupulous adult could always blame it on their child.

Goats are brilliant for keeping the grass down, but they are mischievous. My brother keeps some on an island. He had just got a new one and he was temporarily put for a sojourn at my sister's summer house. It kept coming to the back door and she tried giving carrots, lettuce and other veg, but the goat wasn't happy. She found out the poor mite had been used to a little warmed milk.

DD and MB. Davis talking about 'negotiations' for home reporting. Barnier talks about the 'discussions on the separation'. It will be going through documents line by line. Davis wants to give the impression it will be a standoff with shirtsleeves up.

Meanwhile in the foreign office:

• so, what did we send over with the dexeu lads?
• um, nothing. We got nothing.
• shit, no one will notice will they?
• they're already noticing.
• well we have only one option. Deploy the infant royals.

Faisal Islam‏Verified account
@faisalislam
Cabinet Sec, Dec "Anyone found to have leaked sensitive info will be dismissed even [if] no compromise of nat sec"

instruction against leaking, was circulated by Sir Jeremy Heywood last December, specifically included "ministers". It was, itself, leaked.

That Guardian article highlights worries about post-Brexit food prices and quality:

The government is “sleepwalking” into a post-Brexit future of insecure, unsafe and increasingly expensive food supplies, and has little idea how it will replace decades of EU regulation on the issue

After 50 years of generally stable supplies and prices, the authors say, the UK could return to the sort of volatility last seen in the 1930s and earlier, calling the scale of the challenge “unprecedented for an advanced economy outside of wartime”
< Churchill planned. DD is too arrogant to think that necessary >

“The silence about the future of UK food since the Brexit referendum is an astonishing act of political irresponsibility and suggests chaos unless redressed.”
< We are supposed to lie back and think of Brexit England .... >

Faisal Islam @ FaisalIslam
Electoral Commission: 2.9m register to vote applications made between May announcing snap election & deadline a month later. 69% under 34
... by contrast just 8 per cent of new electoral registrations after the snap election was called were for over 55s
38 MPs have written to complained about allegations some voters cast two ballots - Electoral Commission conclude a "lack of evidence"

Election Data @Election_Data
Electoral Commission said that 38% of applications to register to vote in EU Referendum were already registered. In GE they say 30-70% were.
Should clarify - "estimates from ERO's [of proportion of duplicates] have ranged from 30% in some areas to 70% in others". Still estimating
2017 had record high 46.8 million electorate, up 500,000 from 2015 according to Electoral Commission

While I love the idea of all this frolicking about growing veg and keeping animals I have discovered from experience that I am just absolutely crap at it. Plus I find it mind numbingly tedious. I'm afraid in any post-apocalypse scenario I'm just going to have to join the cannibal raiding parties.

I'm afraid in any post-apocalypse scenario I'm just going to have to join the cannibal raiding parties.

Kuru ?

But I would contend it's massively inefficient to eat other humans. Once they're gone, they're gone.

Far more sensible to enslave them, and get them to do all that hard work growing crops, harvesting, etc etc.

When even MPs feel empowered to use racist terms in public, then members of the public feel increasingly empowered to do likewise
Apparently it is OK to tell racist "jokes" even to someone of that race now ...

https://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/amiibeingunreasonable/2981436-Did-someone-just-tell-me-an-Irishwoman-an-anti-Irish-joke

I totally disagree with howabout - if I understood her correctly before - that English people can't be racist about the Irish, or the Scots or Welsh.

As a mixed race woman of colour, my personal definition of racism does not necessarily include colour or religion.
It involves prejudice against any race, combined with some power for that prejudice to have effect, even just the power of superior numbers.

Racism is a set of beliefs and actions underpinning a racial hierarchy and social structure
that yield superiority and power for the privileged,
but disadvantage, discrimination and oppression for the victims.