Westministers: May Shares the Cake

[RedToothBrush]

May's Speech Abbreviated:

We still have nfi how we are going to do this. EU this is your fault. You sort it out. We are too lazy, workshy and fighting like high school children to work it out ourselves. Be our whipping boy.

I support democracy as long as I get to do whatever I like
I support human rights as long as I can ignore them when I like.
I support the rule of law except when it doesn't suit my agenda.

Waffle waffle.

"Creative", "Dynamic" PR for my Premiership.

Waffle waffle

We really need policing cooperation, PLEASE keep it with us. I know I threatened to withdraw this, but I'm sorry, I was wrong and a bit of a dick about this.

Gets to the point FINALLY.

"2 year transition period"

(With another time bomb lock which is still too short for IT departments. Nothing to do with the next general election, honest).

RULE BRITANNIA!

Polite Applause.

Will the polls change after both conferences finish ?

The most recent polls, before confs:

YouGov: LAB 43%, CON 39%, LDEM 7%
ICM/Guardian: CON 40%(-2), LAB 42%(nc), LDEM 8%(+1)
Survation/Mail on Sunday: CON 38%(nc), LAB 42%(-1), LDEM 8%(+1)
Opinium: CON 42%(+1), LAB 40%(-1), LDEM 6%(+1)

YouGov Best PM: May 37%
JC 29%

Scotland
Panelbase SNP 42%(-5), CON 28%(+6), LAB 22%(-1), LDEM 6%(-2)
(changes are from the 2016 Holyrood election)

Wales
CON 32%(-2), LAB 50%(+1), LDEM 4%(-1), Plaid 8%(-2), UKIP 3%(+1).
(changes are from the June GE)

@catherinemep
European Parliament releases Brexit resolution tomorrow(today) at 11am. Will criticise handling of citizens' rights. Vote next Tuesday.

Somerville Solidarity Hour.

BBC Breakfast currently covering the implications on travel of Brexit.

Cheap flights across the EU, visa free travel, being looked after a Brit when in the resort will all be impacted. Vital that a deal be done.

"Open Skies" (allowing flights even to happen), driving licences (will we need an International licence) and EHIC also still need to be sorted. We won't be getting out old hard backed blue passports back.

All things we have discussed as issues on here

Brexit is going to be awful we all know that but somehow the country is in denial.
It has harnessed the ideologues to promulgate a story and it will be harnessed by the extreme right or left to remake the country in the image they want.
A huge risk and in the meantime the disaster capitalists will make a killing.
The ideologues were had and it's taking them a long time to realise it. If you read Pete North's stuff you can see he is getting that it's going to be awful but he can't bring himself to see how his ideological naivety has brought this about.
jackscohen.wordpress.com/2017/02/28/beware-ideologues/

I find it telling that it's men rather than women with the attitude that it will be just fine.

What I will say about these public opinion on Brexit surveys is you gov have actually done a survey to demonstrate that the answers they are getting are really down to the questions being asked.

They took two groups and asked them about the Brexit bill with three values. In one group the large option was the smallest amount in the other group. People just picked the smallest on available as a rule rather than the value. The percentages were similar for both groups.

So I do rather think that people are saying things about Brexit because they have nfi. It's not real. It's imaginary and something politicians do that will have little or no effect on them.

That's why women are more worried. Political decision generally have greater impact and effect on women.

The only thing that is going to shift that is major job losses starting to appear. Opinion in NI is where you should look for shifts first.

It is human nature to try to avoid admitting to serious mistakes, particularly into being conned into doing something that will hurt us

• it means accepting someone has made a fool of you

However, imo, that admission is particularly difficult for those who are "authoritarian", i.e. want strong govt, are more likely to be nationalist, to support capital punishment, smacking etc
The EU ref analysis has shown that having authoritarian views is a far stronger indicator of being a Leaver than even age, education, income, left / right

Economic consequences for DUP voters ?

www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-the-tories-have-already-betrayed-the-dup-1.3233355?mode=amp

A beef farmer in Northern Ireland who followed the DUP’s advice to vote for Brexit might typically have a commercial income of £14,745.

The Brussels cheque is for almost twice that amount: £28,726.
What’s going to happen after Brexit?
The DUP has a simple answer:
London will send that farmer £28,726
< oh yeah ? >

www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2017-09-27/eu-is-said-to-consider-brexit-concession-on-transition-talks
EU to Consider Brexit Concession on Transition Talks

Would be a shift if true.

Another possible consequence of a serious Brexit recession:

Sterling's reserve currency status being put in serious jeopardy

It is only really a reserve currency for historical reasons: Britain's previous long reign an as imperial superpower

How long can a reserve currency be accepted, when its value has been declining against other major currencies for decades ?
Will Brexit be the final straw that loses Sterling its reserve status ?

It has been a tiny % of global reserves for decades
The dollar is of course dominant, but the Euro - which Brexiters keep claiming is doomed ! - has been the clear #2 since its inception

Losing reserve status has serious practical effects, e.g. wrt uk` public debt

Losing reserve status has serious practical effects, e.g. wrt uk` public debt

returning to the theme - and George Osborne would have a right to point this out - that austerity has failed.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I remember that one of the "selling points" of austerity was to enable the UK to keep it's AAA+ gold-plated status and enjoy cheap credit.

Adam bienkov @ adambienkov
With the Lexiteers at the Labour Leave fringe #lab17
Kelvin Hopkins says the UK is "on the verge of a new dawn" for democratic socialism thanks to Brexit. #lab17
The EU "is not nice" says Hopkins.
Hopkins says the "EU is a political construct imposed on Europe to create a superstate... to hand power to corporations" #Lab17
Paul Embery from the FBU says the "trade union establishment" all backed Remain despite trade union members being split. #lab17
Embery says free movement is "the embodiment of capitalism... treating workers like copper or coffee." #lab17
Embery says workers rights are protected by the EU but dismisses this because he says their real aim is neoliberalism #Lab17ِ
Embery says we shouldn't be worried about a no-deal Brexit: as "we're better off out" #Lab17ِ
Real diverse line-up here. #lab17
[Photo of five old white guys in their late 40s (?) to 60s]
Austin Mitchell mocks the "flag-waving fools" protesting against Brexit as "public school boys on community service" #Lab17ِ
"Bugger the single market" says Austin Mitchell. #LAB17
They're all here tonight. #lab17
[Picture of old white angry red faced men from question time audience]
Austin Mitchell: "we're not allowed to catch our fish... it has to go to other countries." #LAB17
Labour MP Graham Stringer says 75% of British people want to "get on with" Brexit.
Graham Stringer: "All the evidence is that the EU is reactionary" #lab17
Stringer: "The EU is there to export poverty to the third world" #lab17
Stringer says EU causes fascism: "If people can't make their own decisions they make bad decisions and go to the far right." #Lab17
Stringer "When May says we're going to give billions and billions to the EU, what is it for?" #lab17
John Mills now passing a begging basket round to fund Labour Leave: "The tank is almost empty". Asks for £20 donations.
Mills: "The good news is that raised just under £200" #lab17
Jonathan Isaby from Brexit Central (formerly of Con Home) asks why Corbyn isn't pushing his real views on Brexit. #lab17
Stringer says Corbyn's real views on Brexit have never changed. Says he's pleased he's now arguing against staying in single market #lab17
Audience member: "I'm fed up of being called a racist for opposing free movement" #lab17
Audience member: "It's global corporate. Why the hell do we want to stay in the EU? Keep going." Applause #lab17
Panel asked how they can convince young people to be pro-Brexit. Embery: "speak to young people in the language of democratic socialism"
Audience member: "All the EU has done has expanded the mechanisms of warfare" #lab17
Audience member: "everybody in this room has lost friends" by backing Brexit. #Lab17
Leaflet handed out at Labour Leave: "Eurosceptics may be arrested to face a juryless trial... on a xenophobia charge of insulting the EU."
Who knew?

(paywall) Mayor of London Sadiq Khan calls for Labour to back second Brexit Vote

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/mayor-of-london-sadiq-khan-calls-for-labour-to-back-second-brexit-vote-hlfmbwcdn

Senior Labour figures have urged the party not to rule out a second EU referendum in a case of a bad Brexit deal.

Leading the call, Sadiq Khan, the London mayor, said yesterday that he could see circumstances in which Labour would go into the next election pledging to re-run the Brexit vote.
He said he would back the plan, warning that he could not see how leaving the EU could make Britain better off.

Mr Khan was supported by Kezia Dugdale, the former Scottish Labour leader,
while Andrew Gwynne, the shadow communities secretary, also refused to rule out a second vote.

“I just think the reality is these negotiations are very hard,”
Mr Khan told the London Evening Standard.
“So a scenario which I see [is] where there was another general election and the Labour manifesto set out a policy that we should have a new referendum.
And Labour won the general election.

“That’s an example of where a Labour government would have a mandate to carry out a second referendum.”

Asked if he would support a second vote, Mr Khan said:
“I’d have my tuppence worth.
I have not been persuaded that this government has a plan that works for our country.
The EU has been hugely beneficial to us culturally, economically and socially
and I’m unclear how the government’s plan makes us more well off than we currently are.”

Ms Dugdale said that a second referendum was vital to keep faith with the public.
“If the UK parliament and the other 27 nations of Europe get a final say on the deal, why shouldn’t we?”
she said in the Daily Record.

“No one voted to be poorer but that’s what we’re all going to be.
Brexit is spiralling out of control and out of the interests of working people.
That’s why we the people should take back control with a final vote on the deal.”

Mr Gwynne said: “Who knows where we will be at the end of this process, at March 2019?
Certainly parliament, at the very least, wants to have that final say over what deal Theresa May comes back with.”

Jeremy Corbyn distanced himself from Mr Khan and said that Labour had always made clear that it accepted and respected the result of last year’s referendum to leave the EU.

“We are not planning any referendum.
Sadiq is obviously thinking through all scenarios and possibilities,”
the Labour leader told Sky News.
“He represents a city which overwhelmingly voted for Remain.
As you know, the referendum result across the country was a majority to leave.”

Asked on Five News whether he saw any opportunities from EU withdrawal, Mr Corbyn said:

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it is all going to be positive.
It is going to be difficult and complicated.
But there are positives there.”

< yes, after a Brexit disaster, you hope to remake the country - not that it doesn't need doing, but I don't favour the Chinese roast pork route >

Just like the Christian right nutters who pop up at the Conservative party conference.

"Eurosceptics may be arrested to face a juryless trial... on a xenophobia charge of insulting the EU."

Um ...who are condemned as saboteurs, traitors, Enemies of the People ?

I am neither male, nor public school educated, and I have waved my EU flag with others.

One characteristic of the far right, which Lexiters seem to share, is claiming imaginary persecution - usually to justify their own harsh actions.

LH
interesting point about the vast majority of workforce being protestant. Some historical as well as current reasons. [Cailleach]

---> Special Bs ?

If you mean B Specials - no, though they were a big part of the system of apartheid that was maintained in NI from 1922 until direct rule was introduced in the 70s (though it lasted until the GFA really).

Essentially, NI worked for the benefit of the loyalist community. This was done by gerrymandering on a massive scale, resulting in a situation where Derry (aka Londonderry) with a majority RC population had no RC representatives on the city council until 1973.
"Prior to 1969, elections to the Londonderry county borough council were based on block voting#. The electoral wards had been drawn and redrawn to ensure a unionist majority on the council even though more voters supported nationalist and republican parties.[14] With local government reorganisation in 1973, the old county borough was merged with the surrounding Londonderry Rural District to form the new local government district of Londonderry. In addition, a system of STV* was introduced which has resulted in a majority of councillors from nationalist and republican parties being elected, with the SDLP consistently being the largest party."
[Wiki].

Block voting: "Plurality-at-large voting, also known as block vote or multiple non-transferable vote (MNTV),[1] is a non-proportional voting system for electing several representatives from a single multimember electoral district using a series of check boxes and tallying votes similar to a plurality election. Multiple winners are elected simultaneously to serve the district. Block voting is not a system for obtaining proportional representation; instead the usual result is that where the candidates divide into definitive parties (especially for example where those parties have party lines which are whipped) the most popular party in the district sees its full slate of candidates elected, resulting in a landslide."

• STV = single transferable vote.

Majorities on the city council for the loyalist representatives meant that public services were delivered to loyalist communities and not to RC communities. So there was an acute housing shortage in the Bogside, substandard housing, hardly any new building of social housing for RCs, sewage and infrastructure problems, roads in poor repair, and municipal jobs were for loyalists only. Hence the Civil Rights movement, patterned on the American movement.

Belfast's enduring pattern of segregation -
www.lancaster.ac.uk/troubledgeogs/chap11.htm

In NI as a whole, the RC response to exclusion and patchy provision of social services was dedication to education, to the point where Queens University Belfast was in recent decades accused of being a hostile environment for loyalist students. NI nationalist/RC students also traditionally decamped to university in Dublin (UCD). Until the end of the ban on RCs attending Trinity College Dublin, unionists often attended TCD.

Have Lexiters been denied jobs, car loans, morgages, been refused as tenants ?

E27 expats in the Uk have.
That's discrimination

Um ...who are condemned as saboteurs, traitors, Enemies of the People ?

You must understand... when Brexiteers say or do stuff like that, it's a calm, legitimate and carefully-thought-through series of behaviours and actions, demonstrating the loftiest standards of intellect and ability. If Remainers so much as write some words on an Internet forum, that's hate speech, RAGE and ANGER.

Jeremy Corbyn distanced himself from Mr Khan and said that Labour had always made clear that it accepted and respected the result of last year’s referendum to leave the EU.

Someone really needs to work out what the shelf life of this referendum is. I really can't see any reason it should be more than 5 years (given our electoral system). But I can think of a few reasons why it should be less than 5 years.

I think there's also a case to be made that the 2017 election wipes out the referendum.

I do know the chances of the UK ever having another referendum - on anything - in my lifetime are slim.

mathanxiety

Tx for that. A lot has dimmed since I learned about the bad old days from my housemate (from Ballycastle, originally).

Peregrina I have EU flags proudly waving on the front & rear baskets of my bike.
But no problem in Germany, of course

I am identified at the gym via the flags, by those who don't know my name - one woman asked where to buy them and is now also flying the flag (we have about the only bikes there which have baskets to fly them)

I cycle everywhere, since I can no longer drive
I have only had one negative reaction: a car zoomed up agressively behind me, dangerously intruding into the bike lane, and a man bellowed lfull volume out of the window - but the car had UK plates

Ok can someone help me there?
I know very very title of the NI history. Most of what I know is what Ive learnt on this thread so it's patchy. (Being french I have neither lived through the Troubles or learnt about it at school iyswim - for me, the stuff in NI is basically a civil war between catholics and Protestants).

Yesterday we ended up talking about the DUP and the Troubles with Dc1 (they talked about it at school and even I could tell it was biased) but I found I couldn't quite explain what did happen in NI as well as what is the situation nowdays re the DUP/their government etc...

Does anyone have a link to nice summary so I can explain all that to Dc1?