Westminsterenders: The Ersatz ImitationThread

[OlennasWimple]

I am no RedToothBrush, so I'm not going to try to emulate her exception OP style.

Here, though, in the interests of carrying on our conversations about WTF is going on with Brexit and the weird political world we find ourselves in right now, is a sort of continuation thread

(Hurry back Red, we need you!)

Wow, that is a really interesting article kofa.
I hate the way the Leavers keep harking back to an empire that no longer exists. There are really good cultural and historical reasons those countries might be wary of a deal with us, as that article shows.

Sam Coates Times @ samcoatestimes
Liam Fox department spends over £1m on headhunters for trade negotiators and it fails to deliver

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/headhunter-splurge-fails-to-deliver-brexit-negotiators-liam-fox-department-of-international-trade-jonathan-fried-crawford-falconer-jeremy-heywood-mvdbtd300?shareToken=292a4f04e5d4f668385561e80efc1dbf
Headhunter splurge fails to deliver Brexit negotiators

The article is not currently paywalled. Key paras:

Whitehall sources said that the department of international trade (DIT) had “thrown money” at headhunters to attract the best negotiators. So far ministers have only confirmed one senior appointment and refused to say how many officials with “substantial experience” have been hired.

Last year the department employed an international firm of headhunters to carry out a “global search” for a permanent secretary at DIT. It ended up promoting Antonia Romeo, a Whitehall career civil servant with little experience of trade negotiations.

The figures were revealed in a series of parliamentary answers to Lord Adonis, the former Labour minister. They show that on top of the £1.15 million paid to “organisations relating to the recruitment of staff” the department plans to spend £2.5 million this year training civil servants in trade policy. Officials also aim to spend £1.5 million on recruiting external trade lawyers.

Wasn't this pointed out in July/Aug last year that we couldn't hire (or afford) these people and we didn't have any? Looks like throwing money at the problem isn't helping.

Who would want Liam Fox as their boss anyway?

Real people' don’t care if chat apps like WhatsApp keep their messages private if they get new features, says Amber Rudd

Real people" aren't really interested in security features that stop the government and criminals reading their messages, according to Home Secretary Amber Rudd.

The Government should be allowed to look at people's messages and break through the security that keeps them hidden, she has written.

Most people won't be concerned about that because they primarily use apps like WhatsApp and iMessage for their "features", she writes, and not because of the technology they incorporate to keep messages safe.

Amber Rudd kindly points out that most people haven't got an effing clue about why encryption is used and why we benefit from it.

Also see how lots of 'real people' don't understand what the fuck the EU does and how we benefit from it.

If a measure of whether something is good or bad comes from 'real people' these days for anything the government wants to pass rather than whether it's a good idea then we are even more fucked than Brexit makes us.

So I trust 'real people' or people who work in tech security on this? Let me think about this for one millisecond. So I trust DH who has stopped massive security breaches that would make you go 'wtf' or do I trust the bloke down the pub who doesn't like them foreigners?

Wouldn't MN be great without encryption. Oh wait we tried that and it got hacked.

Liam Fox department spends over £1m on headhunters for trade negotiators and it fails to deliver

The problem is that anyone who wants a career will steer well clear. I would also wager that part of the suitability criteria is belief in unicorns.

Real people" aren't really interested in security features that stop the government and criminals reading their messages, according to Home Secretary Amber Rudd.

She really is the epitome of "dim".

Nick Cohen @ nickcohen4
Today's Tories are toddlers who blame everyone but themselves for the mess they leave behind

t.co/aAVVuG80SO?amp=1
For Brexit to work, we need Dunkirk spirit not 'Naysaying Nellies'
By Allison Pearson

And so say all of us. Dunkirk was very nearly an irrecoverable disaster. The forces arrayed against us were terrifying. But the British people pulled together and the tide of history turned. In a famous radio broadcast, the author JB Priestley said that little pleasure boats like Gracie Fields, along with many of her “brave and battered sisters”, didn’t make it home. “But our great-grandchildren when they learn how we began this war, by snatching victory out of defeat, may also learn how the little holiday steamers made an excursion to hell and came back glorious.”

We are those great-grandchildren. That was the spirit of our country once. It can be again.

Look a reference to it being a success generations in the future....

Dunkirk was in reality a success 5 years after it happened when we won the war. Not a few generations later. And what's this crap about being a great grandchild coming from a woman born in 1960, who in reality could be the child of someone who served at Dunkirk with relative ease?

Er hello. To be a great grandchild of Dunkirk, if you assume still a child of serviceman in 1940, aged 15, had first child aged 16 in 1942, then that child had the first grandchild aged 16 in 1966, and then the first great grandchild when they were 16 that puts you at 1982. At the absolute earliest. (Hang on, what have the great grandchildren of Dunkirk been taught?!! Something along the lines of jingoism is bollocks and International cooperation is preferable to conflict so we don't have another need for another Dunkirk) It seems who your parents and grandparents are and the year you are born is a challenging exercise for Allison.

Dunkirk worked because we had a shedload of boats. All manned with expert marniers even if they weren't doing their normal job. They had transferrable skills and knowledge.

What's Brexit got? 1 senior trade negotiator, a bunch of politicians who know jack shit about anything and some bunting.

It's a farce and a disservice to those at Dunkirk.

I used to really like Allison Pearson back in the day before she went bonkers when she wrote for the Independent on Sunday .

Dunkirk only worked in terms of getting most of the Army back. They weren't able to rescue the equipment. If Hitler had chosen to mount an invasion after Dunkirk, our chances of successful defence would have been slender.

But Dunkirk was the sort of improvisation that Britain is or was good at. Maybe the same plucky spirit will rescue something from the shambles of Brexit - which will then be passed off as a rip-roaring success, when in reality it will be a salvage operation.

Correction, first grandchild born 1942, first great grandchild born 1966. But still. She can at best be a grandchild.

My late dad faught at Dunkirk and right through WW2 (career forces)

I get bloody irritated at people using his courage, using all the dead mates he lost, because they cba with factual arguments

Especially because most of them haven't put their own life and limb in peril for their country, certainly not through 6 years of sheer bloody hell, terror and loss.

btw, his reward was that he and my mum both suffered from racist reactions to her, when he marrried her (an Arab woman) while stationed in the ME after WW2.

However, she had lived at home before and had no income, so he wouldn't have been allowed to bring her home now - a different set of problems.
Fortunately, his family were lovely and welcomed my mum with open arms & hearts. They didn't care about her income.

I would ask for people to be more sympathetic to those who fall in love with someone from a different continent & race.
Don't split up people who fall in love.
Don't split up families.

As Peregrina says, Dunkirk depended on the sort of improvisation that Britain was good at - at the time.

It also depended on utilising resources Britain already had - e.g. not only the Little Ships, but World War I vessels like the V and W destroyers.

My point is, what resources (economic, material, intellectual) do we have now to cope with Brexit?

We have very little manufacturing industry in comparison with the past, and a good deal of what we have is controlled by entities headquartered outside the UK. We have a service sector which depends largely on internal expenditure, and which is already slowing and will inevitably suffer more as spending power decreases due to inflation and stagnant if not reducing wages (note that the BoE is already worried by the increasing amount of private debt supporting household expenditure).

Agree, Allison Pearson used to be funny when she was a tv critic for the Independent. But she just tweets to JHB now so what do you expect. She sounds permanently terrified.

But, oh how I wish I could have been staying at this £700 per night establishment to get rid of my staid, protected-by-wealth image.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/2bf452c6-76f3-11e7-b874-f49df312558b?CMP=Sprkr--Editorial--thetimes--News--Imageandlink--Statement--Unspecified-_-TWITTER&linkId=40475973

'Theresa May defied her staid public image by leading a bar full of holidaymakers in a spontaneous rendition of God Save the Queen during her trip to Italy last week.

The prime minister and her husband, Philip, initiated the singalong after a lounge pianist spotted them entering the bar of the £700-a-night Villa Cortine Palace Hotel, where they stayed last week. The musician broke into the opening bars of the anthem after noticing Mrs May, who immediately stood up and led her fellow guests in song.'

Theresa May defied her staid public image by leading a bar full of holidaymakers in a spontaneous rendition of God Save the Queen during her trip to Italy last week.

I am really trying - honest - but it's hard to think of anything more cringeworthy.

One of the best things about the UK (used to be) the slightly low-key approach we take/took to "patriotism". Plenty of bunting at the right time, but then go back to a quiet reserve.

Certainly no pictures of our Head of State in every office. In every entrance hall to public - and private - buildings. A light smattering of the Union Flag (alongside others like the EU flag, until Brexit). No sound of schoolkids daily swearing allegiance to the country. No "special UK day" like Bastille Day, or Fourth of July.

Believe it or not, even our national anthem isn't actually laid down anywhere - it's by tradition (which means it's up to Charles to change it if he wants. And since I know he's a massive Parry fan, we might just get "Jerusalem" yet ).

I'm totally with that sage Dr. Johnson about patriotism being the last refuge of the scoundrel. It's like he knew Johnson, Gove, May and Fox would one day come into being.

Plus, of course, what patria are we talking about?

The UK is a cobbled together entity, and quite a few people feel that their fatherland / motherland / land of their fathers is one of its constituent parts, not the UK.

blogs.spectator.co.uk/2017/08/the-brexit-betrayal-bandwagon-is-growing/
The Brexit betrayal bandwagon is growing
Nick Cohen

Brexit is crying out for its Ludendorff; the scoundrel who can blame his failures on everyone but himself.
and
I think we are about to get right-wing and possibly far right-wing politics with a vengeance as a result.

The above was right next to this article on my twitter feed:

www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2017/08/01/the-far-right-is-re-inventing-itself-and-we-should-be-worrie
The far right is re-inventing itself and we should be worried

Since leaving Labour, she [Anne Marie Waters] has formed an alliance with former EDL leader Tommy Robinson, with whom she co-launched a UK arm of German far right group Pegida. She is now a front-runner in the Ukip leadership election, having launched her campaign by describing Islam as a "killing machine" and a threat to the "rights and freedoms of women." A prominentformer BNP member is helping to drum up support for her campaign.

Oh and about the 80% voted for Brexit shit:

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/remain-voters-tory-majority-election-labour-hard-brexit-conservatives-leave-eu-talks-minority-jeremy-a7871541.html
Remain voters destroyed Tory majority by flocking to Labour as 'best bet' to stop a hard Brexit, finds study
EU withdrawal was the crucial issue on polling day – despite barely featuring during the election campaign, voters tell researchers

Deregulation? Yeah sure thing:

www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2017/08/01/grenfell-prisons-a-shocking-report-into-fire-safety-failure
Grenfell prisons: A shocking report into fire safety behind bars

Next to no reg, no reports on fire safety and prison governors immune from prosecution...

...on and some have cladding.

Feeling reassured by Trump and Trade Deal???

I have been in 4 different airports in the last 8 days. 3 inside the Schengen area and 1 in the UK. The only one with endless queues was actually Newcastle. They evidently did not prepare for 4-5 large holiday flights landing at the same time as the usual business flights.

Not Brexit Related, but Hell Had to post this because its funny and shows up poor checking of the publication of articles.

Someone at the Torygraph is about to have a very bad day.
(Philip is about to do his final official engagement. He has not died. There was a press embargo that the Torygraph got excited about).

I wonder if Trump realises that UK = Great Britain + NI

or if he thinks Britain will stay in the EU, but the Uk will leave ?

Impossible to follow what passes for his thought processes

The Torygraph stopped being a serious newspaper when it went swivel-eyed sometime before the referendum

Younger Royals can laugh at exaggerations of their own deaths, but at over 90, such gaffes must sent a shiver down the spine of HM & Phil

Younger Royals can laugh at exaggerations of their own deaths, but at over 90, such gaffes must sent a shiver down the spine of HM & Phil

90 ?

That headline says 20

www.politico.com/story/2017/08/01/trump-wall-street-journal-interview-full-transcript-241214

Full transcript of that Trump interview

Scotland have just been through hell because of IndyRef but they won't leave because of the British Open.

He talks about an agriculture and service deal with the UK which sounds like British Beef will not be allowed to the US and doesn't sound too clever for British finance.