Westministers: Happy New Year?

[RedToothBrush]

And so we enter a New Year full of hope that things might just be about to recover from our national nervous breakdown... or perhaps not.

As we have Damien Green ejected from his role as Deputy PM over allegations of inappropriate conduct towards woman and use of porn at the end of last year, 2018 sees a bright new progressive dawn with the appointment to the role of universities regulator of Toby Young. A man who has deleted 20,000 tweets including many which are inappropriate and offensive to women, is a fan of eugenics and hates the working class and disabled.

Meanwhile the NHS is facing a crisis which is totally unexpected to the government and couldn't possibly have been planned for by a man who has over seen it for over five years. Which naturally bodes really well for Brexit planning.

We are apparently planning to join the TPP. Never mind geopolitics we can move the UK to the Pacific region.

We still are not ready for trade talks because the Cabinet can not agree on anything. Not that it sounds like they have actually discussed anything along these lines yet.

Rumours are that the Cabinet - including arch leavers such as Gove - are leaning towards supporting May and a softer option, despite the disgust of Johnson, who once again is the subject of malicious chatter about his sacking in a forthcoming Cabinet Reshuffle.

There is talk of further Tory Party war with the revelation that membership of the party has dropped to a core of just 70,000 hardline authoritarian men, most of whom are over 60. Tory HQ now wants to (perhaps with some good reason to prevent the loons) rewrite the constitution and limit the power of local associations to select candidates. The Tory party is now lining up to be a power struggle between internal authoritarians, who don't like democracy voices or structure.

Meanwhile the Labour Party membership now apparently overwhelmingly looks upon staying in the customs union and single market favourably and is in favour of a second referendum. In opposition to the leadership who are utterly committed to Hard Brexit. Much to the annoyance of Lord Adonis who is pitching a fit about government corruption and incompetence and being accused of being elite because he going skiing. Unlike of prominent Leavers who are in touch with the working class.

And finally Nigel Farage has got a meeting with Barnier. Farage, unlike Clegg, Clarke and Adonis, will not be accused by the Right Wing Press of undermining the government's negotiating position because...

It appears that we are in for another year of Brexit nonsense then.

We've not even heard mention of Gibraltar yet.

It won’t include a psychiatric evaluation any how

Pain - is that the best the Labour party can come up with?

Oh my! Just watching a bit of DP on iplayer. Andrea Leadsom on with Debbie Abrahams.

It is a car crash. Maybe Abrahams is good at something or a well intentioned person or something. But she is completely on the back foot. I thought the sound had gone once.

AN was quizzing Abrahams about Jared O Meara being on the Labour back benches after his abusive posts. That is all very well. But then I looked at AL not being bothered by any queries of the sort. The Tories didn't get rid of Young. He resigned. The PM had defended his appointment. But ne'er a question. I've turned it off now.

House of Lords votes for fresh probe into press ethics more than 5 years after Leveson Inquiry

Peers backed an inquiry into the culture, practice and ethics of the media relating to data protection, setting up a possible stand-off with the Commons

www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/house-lords-votes-fresh-probe-11831235

Salted or Sweet everyone?

red imo, Ellesmere Port current & future job losses are affected by Brexit, an important one of several factors.

PSA were always going to look at cost-cutting and it is easier & cheaper to sack people / make redundancies in the UK.
Fewer of those pesky workers' rights.

BUT
The German workers are reported to be older - which most managers assume means slower
and they certainly have a higher hourly rate of pay

Brexit with its uncertainty about the supply chain, exports -and ease of access in the UK for French managers - affects that handful of folk in France who are thinking
"hmm, how much shall we cut in UK and how much in Germany ?"
"where do we invest for the future ?"

Andrew Neil was actually, shock horror, right in what he said to Abrahams. But he only did so to have a pop at Labour, rather than because he was really pointing out hypocrisy.

His political bias is the worst of anyone television political person out there.

She was rubbish on Brexit, though.

It was when you looked at AL sitting there as only Abrahams was being grilled. When the PM had defended Young's appointment.

WTF is Hammond on about ?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-42625478

Brian May has launched a blistering attack on Theresa May and Brexit
www.nme.com/news/music/brian-may-theresa-may-brexit-2216937
A lot of vintage gents joining in. Hope it helps.

May's voted tory. As in the Queen May, oh you know...........

@Effy_Yeomans
A few people are speculating about Toby Young's resignation. To clear up any doubt, I let him know that we were aware of his attendance at a eugenics conference and he provided a statement on Monday morning. He resigned that night; make of that what you will.

‏***@Effy*_Yeomans
I personally believe that his position was already untenable by Monday, and beyond that his exact reasoning is unknowable.

@Effy_Yeomans
But the real story here, in my opinion, is not that Young, a man who talks happily about eugenics, was at a conference. It's that there is a rich seam of well-funded racism under our noses, which is effectively laundered by 'reputable' academics.

A eugenics conference held annually at University College London by an honorary professor, the London Conference on Intelligence, is dominated by a secretive group of white supremacists with neo-Nazi links, London Student can exclusively reveal

Among the speakers and attendees over the last four years are a self-taught geneticist who argues in favour of child rape, multiple white supremacists, and ex-board member of the Office for Students Toby Young

A central figure in the London Conference on Intelligence (LCI) is the white nationalist, extremist Richard Lynn, who has called for the “phasing out” of the “populations of incompetent cultures.” Lynn, who is President of the Ulster Institute for Social Research (UISR), spoke at the conference 2015 and 2016, along with four of the six members of the UISR’s Academic Advisory Council

londonstudent.coop/news/2018/01/10/exposed-london-eugenics-conferences-neo-nazi-links/

University College London

Who's got kids filling in their UCAS forms?

The rest of the article contains even worse.

I've been ranting on and on about that today to dh DGRossetti to the extent that he's told me to "let it go" as I can't do anything about it

The EU has always been clear about what it wants. It's the UK that doesn't know what it wants. Well, it does - it wants to have its cake and eat it - which any sane person/organisation knows is impossible. The EU has not talked about "punishing" the UK. It has talked about the consequences about the UK becoming a "third country". That is not "punishment". It is the UK's choice to leave - no-one is forcing the UK to do so. The EU has been incredibly patient. I'm not sure Id have been as patient It is the UK - and the Brexiters in particular - who have talked about the EU punishing the UK because they won't agree to everlasting cake The EU has been clear from the start that the 4 pillars will not be compromised. That includes full, seamless because that's what the UK wants "access to" the Single Market (as an aside, every country has "access to" the Single Market - but that has to be under WTO rules and/or the various FTAs or MRAs that countries have signed with the EU. Jeremy Corbyn please note ).

And breeeaaaaathhe

I am not surprised about anything anymore, woman. In the age of such supposed enlightenment, progress and universal education, you seem to still have such codswallop dressed up as 'scientific'. There are more things we don't know than we do know. But that stuff is dark age bollcks. All those people cannot really believe such crp. So, who is funding this and why?

The UK may be being put through some sort of constitutional or legal convulsions. Or be forced through one in the future The Brexiteers really want these convulsions to be happening to the EU. There is a cohort who don't want it to exist. They are spitting about the fact that the negotiations wrt any future trade deal with the EU will be happening around what is possible within the EU's legal framework. According to the rules.

The EU has said what is available based on what the UK's red lines are.

People like that Digby fellow are rather 'Not possible you say? But we want it.'

I am not surprised about anything anymore, woman
I know, but who knew he went to it?
And in an age of alleged child protection, what are the legal implications?
He's paid for by us.

woman Horrifying that neoNazis can hold a race supremacy conference at UCL

Time for some no-platforming there ?

Unfortunately, even scientific genius does not preclude racial bigotry:

Remember - Nobel Laureate James Watson (DNA double helix) , told the Sunday Times in 2007 that while people may like to think that all races are born with equal intelligence, those “who have to deal with black employees find this not true”.

btw, Rosalind Franklin should have shared the Nobel Prize with Watson and Crick, but she died of ovarian cancer a few years before the award and the Nobel rules are that they only award to living recipients
(I expect it's to prevent Da Vinci, Socrates & all the historical greats from winning most years)

DD, Hammond and DigMeUp are in Germany. pleading with

• I'm not sure who -
• to great national indifference here -

pleading to let the UK cherrypick to avoid a deal that would cause some very lucrative financial services in London to relocate ..... to Frankfurt, mainly

They may not have realised that Germans are likely to support Frankfurt over London
and
they STILL seem to think they can negotiate with Germany rather than Barnier < drums fingers >

Germany politicians are even less likely to stick their neck out for Britain when they are all preoccupied discussing a coalition.
No coalition means the caretaker govt trundles along following all the current rules and doesn't do or say anything radical.

I'm not a scientist, but aren't there ethical mores BicChoc?
The Express is running with the Brian May story: lots of pun potential.

That is a fair point about Young and still relevant considering his involvement in his state funded 'free' (ha, they get the dosh, and then some, which is withheld from the community schools) school projects.

woman As far as actually working on this topic, if anyone is:

Scientific ethics are about not falsifying results, not plagiarising etc
Morals about doing some kinds of scientific work don't really come into it - or e.g. we wouldn't have WMDs

So, if racial differences in IQ were genuinely found, the research wouldn't be censored; before publication,
it would be subject to standard peer review for scientific quality.

In this case,
Watson didn't actually do any work on racial differences:
so he just declared his racial prejudices to a newspaper, not a a scientific journal.
On no more of a factual basis than any other typical Daily Heil reader.

BUT
a Nobel Laureate - especially for the exceptionally important DNA / double helix work - would normally be coining it, raking in millions even long after they stopped producing in their field
Ever since he revealed his vile racism, he has been shunned in the normal scientific community and has not invited to make the usual prestigious lectures or take up lucrative sinecures

So, he has lost a huge mount of money and prestige - and thoroughly deserved to lose both.

Paul Lewis @ paullewismoney
So it wasn't "the one-sided caricature from his armchair critics" but this stunning revelation in Private Eye about Toby Young that would surely have got him sacked. He attended a recent secret eugenics conference with neo-nazis and paedophiles (c) Private Eye

I think it might take more than Kirsty Allsop's support to pimp that into something cutesy, twee and harmless.

It's utterly grim.

You called him ages back, red.
Question is, who knew?
Full fat nazism; complete with 'Jewish problem' : who knew?

UCL to investigate the 'secret eugenics conference' held there:

www.theguardian.com/education/2018/jan/10/ucl-to-investigate-secret-eugenics-conference-held-on-campus

This goes way back to Michale Gove's tenure.
www.theguardian.com/education/2010/sep/06/new-free-schools-next-year
Who knew?