Westministenders: Money, money, money

[RedToothBrush]

The big developments are that the government have signalled they are prepared to pay more and to involve the ECJ when it comes to citizens rights on condition that we move to talk of trade. But no apparent progress on NI. Which is significant with Ireland threatening to veto.

The EU has not changed its stance at all. Since Day 1.

There is always a worrying omission and lack of commitment to retain the Charter of Fundamental Rights. The bonfire begins.

Talk is of Green still going in a reshuffle, possibly with Gove replacing him as Deputy PM.

Coalition talks in Germany have broken down, and the British have got excited about it, whilst the German response have largely been a slight shrug.

Its been a much quieter week, despite the budget. Thank goodness. There are lots of outstanding issues that are lurking in the background like the Green one though.

The main message coming from the budget, has not been any new policy, but the dreadful economic forecast for the next few years.

Thanks red

Stewart Wood‏
@StewartWood

Remember this when you hear Tory housing promises today:

2014: Cameron launched the Starter Home project, 100,000 properties for young people at a 20% discount

2015: Osborne launched a £2.3bn fund to boost the number to 200,000

Today: Total houses built under the project: zero

"According to the rules adopted by the European Parliament and the Council (Decision 445/2014), this action is not open to third countries except candidate countries and European Free Trade Association/European Economic Area countries.

So out on those counts too.

Feel sorry for the poor sod who ends up running the Business Engagement unit in DExEU... There are surely only so many ways to say, "no, we don't have an answer to your (valid) concern, I'll let Ministers know"?

Olenna it's advertised as a "Communications / Marketing
Policy" role. Presumably he/she will be paid £31,029 - £38,484 pa to come up with interesting and convincing variants on the theme "no, we don't have an answer to your (valid) concern, I'll let Ministers know"?

Are the gov't just going to lock themselves into a bathroom on first day of Brexit? And refuse to come out.

It looks like the UK will leave. But the way it is being done is bonkers. The gov't had no plan, system or alternatives/ answers in place. Only then do you pull the trigger.

Daniel Hannan: Leave.EU and Arron Banks – the Brexiteers that the Remain campaign loved
www.conservativehome.com/thecolumnists/2017/11/daniel-hannan-leave-eu-and-arron-banks-the-brexiteers-that-the-remain-campaign-loved.html

Hannan is attacking both Farage and Banks now.

Why have we heard so little about this in the British press?
Cos Marine's boyfriend is imploding in a twitter snit with Jon Worth?
Not very BBCly language from Neil. Not worth my licence fee either.

@afneil
Your pathetic and pointless nitpicking is an even worse look. It’s especially not a good look to accuse anybody who has the temerity to disagree with you as ignorant. You don’t really have the credentials to be that superior.

www.ft.com/content/60ca2ebe-cf7a-11e7-b781-794ce08b24dc

Brexit fears for cancer patients over Euratom uncertainty
Imports of radioactive isotopes used in treatments at risk of disruption
80% of radioactive isotope products used in cancer treatments or diagnostic scans are imported, mostly from other EU countries © Alamy
YESTERDAY Andrew Ward, Energy Editor
Time is running out to prevent patient care being harmed by disruption to supplies of radioactive isotopes
used in cancer treatment after Britain leaves the EU, leading medics have warned.
About 1m UK patients a year receive treatments or diagnostic scans that use isotopes produced in nuclear
reactors and 80 per cent of these products are imported — mostly from other EU countries.
A House of Lords committee was told on Wednesday that Brexit — and the UK’s associated departure from
the Euratom treaty, which governs EU trade in nuclear materials — would create obstacles to these imports.
Access to medical isotopes is especially vulnerable to disruption. Tight regulation surrounds the
transportation of radioactive materials and the rapid decay of the products means they must reach patients
quickly to be effective.
John Buscombe, president-elect of the British Nuclear Medicine Society, said he was not convinced by
assurances from ministers that there would be no negative impact.
“We do not know what the situation will be [after Brexit]. We all hoped we would have an answer by now
and we do not,” he told the Lords’ EU home affairs committee. “We need more detail than just being told it
will not be a problem.”
Uncertainty over medical isotopes is part of wider concern
We end up with a patient
ready for treatment filling a
hospital bed and we cannot
treat them because the
product has decayed too
much
John Buscombe, British Nuclear Medicine Society
about the consequences of leaving the Euratom treaty,
which regulates activities ranging from the import of
nuclear fuels and reactor equipment to the storage and
inspection of nuclear waste.
New regulatory arrangements will be needed to maintain
the UK’s access to nuclear materials and skills but work to
put these in place has been held up by the broader impasse
in Brexit negotiations with Brussels.
Dr Buscombe said time was running out to build a new
regulatory system and hire the specialist staff needed to carry out the additional customs checks on medical
isotopes that may be required.
“You have to reinvent what we had 40 years ago [before the UK joined the EU] and all the people who were
around 40 years ago are either retired or dead so we do not have the knowledge,” he told the Lords.
Medical isotopes are used either to treat cancer by killing diseased cells or, more often, to diagnose diseases
by injecting a radioactive “tracer” into the body that allows scanner images to be taken of tissue and organs.
The most common forms of nuclear medicine are derived from an isotope called molybdenum-99, which is
produced in a small number of reactors around the world, none of them in the UK. Most British supplies are
imported from France, Belgium and the Netherlands.
The radioactivity of molybdenum-99 halves in quantity every 66 hours — meaning that any delay in
transportation reduces its effectiveness.
www.ft.com/content/60ca2ebe-cf7a-11e7-b781-794ce08b24dc
1/223/11/2017
Brexit fears for cancer patients over Euratom uncertainty
Michael Rees, co-chair of the academic staff committee of the British Medical Association, said imports
were typically made overnight via the Channel tunnel, when traffic was light. Increased hold-ups because of
post-Brexit customs checks would mean that larger quantities of isotopes would need to be acquired, raising
costs for the NHS.
Dr Buscombe said hold-ups on isotope imports from Canada in the past had forced the cancellation of
appointments for patients.
“We end up with a patient ready for treatment filling a hospital bed and we cannot treat them because the
product has decayed too much,” he said. “The possibility of that happening will increase if [isotopes from
the EU] have to go through custom checks.”
Brexit also risks exacerbating a skills shortage in nuclear medicine in the UK, the Lords were told, should it
become

• looks at job at DExEU looks at cv

If only I lived in London.

Why didn't they just put the job description as 'Make Up Bollocks'?
I think that would attract more qualified applicants.

Ken Clarke Says David Cameron Did "Some Sort Of Deal" To Win Rupert Murdoch's Support

"We had got Andy Coulson on board – I think he was Murdoch’s man, that was part of the deal I assume – as the press officer. I am not being totally indiscreet."

www.buzzfeed.com/jimwaterson/ken-clarke-says-david-cameron-did-some-sort-of-deal-to-win?utm_term=.ok32XyoK#.rbAjpAkq

I have heard about Cameron doing some kind of deal before in the past. I'm not surprised. Interesting for Clarke to be quite so candid about it though.

Re John Buscombe's comments on radioisotopes “We need more detail than just being told it^ will not be a problem.”^ .....

Sounds depressingly familiar

Same answer is given re concerns on NI, telecoms, Open Skies, customs ......

It was funny when Clarke said he regarded it as a very amusing conversation with Brooks but took no notice whatsoever.

Again, the standard of scientific knowledge in UK politics is woeful.

I suspect the Tory dream is to have the UKs scientific prowess provided by immigrants. Mainly because they can make money whilst not having the vote.

Hi everyone

Slightly off thread but I'm just sharing these really interesting talks by Timothy Snyder - an American history professor whose books I have only just discovered. Although he is focused on Trump in these talks, so much of what he says resonates in relation to Brexit - especially the role played by social inequality and the demise of local journalism. Have a listen. I think he is putting together a series.
twitter.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/931902832273391616

https://cen.acs.org/articles/95/i47/Brexit-reality-hits-UK-chemical.html

Prospect, the Trade UNion, surveyed science , tech, engineering, maths workers from the EEA (not just E27)
It found almost 70% considering leaving the UK because of Breixt
That’s ramping up fast - it was only 11% in March

Snyder has something specific to say about Brexit in the epilogue to his latest book "On Tyranny", in the Chapter "History and Liberty".

He says: "National populists are eternity politicians. Their preferred reference point is the era when democratic republics seemed vanquished and their Nazi and Soviet rivals unstoppable - the 1930s. Those who advocated Brexit, the departure of the United Kingdom from the European Union, imagined a British nation-state, though such a thing never existed. There was a British Empire, and then there was Britain as a member of the European Union. The move to separate from the EU is not a step backward onto firm ground, but a leap into the unknown. Eerily, when judges said that a parliamentary vote was required for Brecit, a British tabloid called them "enemies of the people" - a Stalinist term from the show trials of the 1930s."

Big Choc at this year's TUC, Mike Clancy, Prospect's General Secretary, was still saying that he believed that the reality of Brexit was so complicated that it would never happen.

Brexit fears for cancer patients over Euratom uncertainty

Pah, what's all this gloomy lack of patriotism? All these moaning cancer patients need to do is think positively and Believe in Brexit

Poor Pete North. ‏

1. What the europhiles don't understand is that we don't want splurges of EU cash for crappy civic statues and contemporary arts centres. They may be occasionally adequate additions to a civic space but they are not in themselves regenerative

1. A jamboree like City of Culture might add a few million to the coffers, and I emphasise might - but this is not genuine sustainable regeneration. It's propaganda and PR.

1. And no, sticking an ERDF blue flag plaque on it is not going to make us grateful to the EU. It might work on the council CEOs and the other dullards whose grossly inflated salaries depend on such venture, but for everyone else it's a slap in the face.

1. The basic message is "We've liberalised your markets (ie shuttered your largest local employer) but here's a nice statue to look at". Meanwhile your town becomes a welfare slum and a rehab town to keep the junkies out of the local tourist spots.

1. So yeah, you got a fucking nerve calling that regional development. Totally go fuck yourselves. Especially when whatever white elephant you install has no maintenance budget and falls into disrepair.

1. What one also notices is that crappy regeneration schemes are nearly always built on the site of the last shitty attempt at regeneration. There is no institutional memory and they do not learn.

7.But this is what you get when you quango-ise local authorities and regional development. Plenty of consultancy fees for spivvy PR wankers and knighthoods for council CEOS but it only really translates into a few hours overtime for Doris the cleaner.

1. And then to make all this wank even more intolerable it's infused with the EUs UN inspired "sustainable development goals" and climate targets which means it's going to cost ten times more than it should.

1. And then it will be adorned with all that commie diversity and tolerance bollocks - which is is risible at the best of times, but even more offensive when the local SS is turning a blind eye to child molestation.

10. And the point of this is that politics and development is not something we partake in now. It is something arranged by managerialists and technocrats - and is something done to us - not for us. The same mentality from Brussels all the way to Burnley.

11. And the longer it goes on the more out of touch it is and the more it travels up its own arsehole. So no, you really can't be surprised if the plebs vote to leave after decades of being patronised and taken for fools.

12. People know the steel mills are not coming back and the mines are not going to reopen, and the jobs aren't ever coming back. So why waste the money at all? And it is OUR money.

13. But that's the problem with you europhile tossers. You actually think we want your new jerusalem and that you know best. You don't. You can stick your ERDF plaque up your arse and fuck off while you're doing it.

I dunno
I keep telling ds1 I have hope
But...im not sure I do anymore
😔😡

SwedishEdith

Poor Pete North

What an obnoxiously foul-mouthed diatribe!

And I read elsewhere from a previous city of culture:

"Liverpool estimated it generated a return of £750m to the local economy from £170m of spending."

So why would he be so rudely dismissive of the aspirations of those cities who submitted recent applications? Sour grapes?

Wait till Trident is fucked and can't be maintained thanks to nuclear restrictions .... both the submarines and the warheads.

I wonder if the TSR-2 at Cosford could fly again ?