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.

I don't want another referendum, but if it does happen it should be outsourced to an independent Referendum Commission and legislation passed to govern the campaigns and the neutral provision of information. THERE ISN'T TIME TO DO IT PROPERLY. Which is why Farage is happy to have another I guess, though I'm sure mostly he just wants to boost his profile.

When did most of British society become so pitiless?

journals.openedition.org/mimmoc/1828
"'The Times' and the Great Irish Famine"
18
Among the recurring themes in the articles published in the selection of 1880, four of them, which are interrelated and which prepared public opinion for the Poor Law Extension Act of 1847, will be studied. Firstly, the Times repeatedly made the point that Ireland was not poor, that it was richer in fact than England, or at least than the English labourer whose taxes financed relief in Ireland. In other words, there was no justification for spending money from the Imperial Exchequer to pay for Irish distress. A second recurring theme is that the problem in Ireland was not the famine itself, which was generally minimised in the Times’ columns, but the character of the Irish, whose apathy and indolence were presented as the primary cause of all their difficulties. This meant that relief was not a long-term solution; the only effective remedy was to reform the people and Irish society in general. A third point was that the British acted honourably during the famine and that they could not be suspected of having reneged on their duties; the numerous attacks, both at home and abroad, against government policy were thus groundless from that point of view. Finally, the Times insisted that the only satisfactory solution to the Irish crisis was a Poor Law on the English model, by which landlords would pay for the relief of their poor – in other words, Irish property should support Irish poverty.

Keep on reading from #18 on. It's an eye opener.

The basic assumptions about the poor remain completely intact, BigChoc

Trending on twitter: #Waton We are the opposition now: pro EU alliance
No idea if it has any effect; no idea, full stop, but it's a bit like 'top of the pops' waiting to see where it gets to in the trend chart thing. But with no music.

May and Corbyn are obviously utter idiots and Lord Buckethead is promoting Vince Cable's latest statement, because it looks like the lib dems are banned from the BBC too.

The poor have always been vilified. The whole structure of British society is built on the remains of a feudal system that placed the poor as intrinsically less worthy than the rich. During the creation of the middle classes the poor than became food for the factories and blamed even more for their failure to have money because the attitude of the poor as lesser was mixed with the idea that they could be rich if they really tried (though only new money off course not proper aristocracy!). The idea of the undeserving poor became very strong at this point in the Victorian era (though it was always there).

The homeless are particularly vulnerable and hated. They are often seen as the worst of the undeserving poor. The story of the homeless guy who had his coat taken is shocking, but sadly not surprising. Attitudes to the homeless have always been revolting and many people see it as perfectly acceptable to make assumptions about why they have ended up in that position. I have called out people on their comments on homeless people more times than I care to count and plenty of those times have been to guardian reading liberals who would be horrified to hear racism or sexism, but will argue with me about whether someone on the streets deserves respect and care.

I don't think I could stand to live through another referendum. However if the current article 50 challenge is successful (fingers crossed) there would be plenty of time for another one.
I don't doubt Theresa May would try to force parliament to ratify the old referendum and then trigger article 50 again immediately but I like to think she would face hefty opposition in such a case.
Lord Buckethead is keeping his profile up -I'm telling you all, he will be mp for Maidenhead before the year is out!

I don't think I could stand to live through another referendum. However if the current article 50 challenge is successful (fingers crossed) there would be plenty of time for another one.
I don't doubt Theresa May would try to force parliament to ratify the old referendum and then trigger article 50 again immediately but I like to think she would face hefty opposition in such a case.
Lord Buckethead is keeping his profile up -I'm telling you all, he will be mp for Maidenhead before the year is out!

sorry for the double post!

math, bigly You're right
I fear I am looking back to a short window of kindness, 1950s to 1970s, when the Welfare state was in full swing

• and many people then had lived through WW2 and experienced the feeling of the country all working together

Those were my early formative years and I was aware then that it wasn't perfect, but I think there was more social cohesion and empathy;
the ruthless individualism was kept under wraps and hadn't seeped down from the ruling class into general societal behaviour.

The poor have always been vilified. The whole structure of British society is built on the remains of a feudal system that placed the poor as intrinsically less worthy than the rich. During the creation of the middle classes the poor than became food for the factories and blamed even more for their failure to have money because the attitude of the poor as lesser was mixed with the idea that they could be rich if they really tried

BBC iplayer is currently reshowing Ian Hislop's very good documentary on the subject of the Victorians and their attitude to the poor. I do recommend.

Attitudes to the poor in the Victorian era are generally better known than earlier and are thought of as Victorian but you are right. It definitely goes back much further and is about the effective 'ownership' of labour.

The Settlement Acts of 1662 was the predecessor and was repealed under the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act which introduced the workhouse.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_Relief_Act_1662
Poor people were restricted by law in ways that rich people were not.

What does this have in common with Brexit? Well apart from hating the poor, they also put restrictions on the movement of people.

In doing my family history i've done a far amount that relate to both, including a landmark law case which relates to one of DH's ancestors.

The case is interest and is about a man and his family moved from one village to another. In order to get his settlement rights he had to remain working in continuous employment for so many days. Except he had a special exemption so he could help with the annual sheep shearing with his family.

20 years later he needed poor relief and was denied it by the new parish he lived in who said he had to return to the parish of his birth. The two parishes went to court.

In the end, this guy, his wife and his two grown up daughters - who had only ever known life in the new village - were removed and sent back to where they came from because they deemed his contract with the exemption meant he did not remain working in the parish long enough to establish his settlement rights.

The ruling took the view that he was essentially the 1700s version of a gig economy worker. And this set a ruling that labourers were essentially free of masters and could set their own terms of labour. This didn't really work out for this fella though as although he was 'free' it just meant free to get fucked over.

The story is eerily reminiscent of the current day.

I won't talk of how attitudes to crime and punishment changed over time. That one is even more depressing.

New thread
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/eu_referendum_2016_/3139851-Westminstenders-Stuck-in-the-twilightzone?watched=1

Funny story about EIHC cards and a Sun Article about how easy it is to fool the EU and how anyone anywhere in the world can get one:

Harry Cole @Mrharrycole
What a story. @matt_dathan blows open EU scam that leaves NHS millions in the red.

Sam Ashworth-Hayes @ SAshworthHayes
The 'EU scam' is the European Health Insurance Card. It's something you apply for to entitle you to treatment - paid for by your government - when you visit another EU country.

The problem seems to be that the UK isn't doing due diligence on the people it issues them to.

I will save you a click. The Daily Mail did exactly the same story two years ago.

The 'scam' is people trying to persuade you that this is all the EU's fault. The Conservative government has had two years to get to grips with this problem, and tighten up the issuing system. Instead, they've just waited for it to drop off the front pages

Then again, that might be because (again, back in 2015) they could only find a few cases of 'suspected' fraud. £712 worth, in fact. And 56p.
m.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/09/10/migrants-nhs-fraud-european-health-insurance-card-_n_8115354.html

To be honest, this is all kind of beside the point anyway. The big thing is that this story is a prime example of 'big number blindness'; £20m a year is a tiny figure in the context of NHS spending. It's 0.01% of the budget. It's less than the NHS spends on gardeners.

Red your family history would make such a good book; we have so little real people's history. People's Palace in Glasgow is so brilliant as it is so rare.
This caught my eye: Serco. Sorry I can't verify it, but Money Box on R4 has also run stories about people having to 'borrow' from what are ostensibly government agencies.

I know there’s a new thread, but just to comment on that NHS story - I don’t have the figure to hand but I believe the cost to the nhs of fixing botched private operations is somewhat larger than £20m (£100m rings a bell, but I might be wrong).

Wouldn't be surprised at that Eeeowwwfftz - my dad (now a retired doctor) used to say that the private hospital used to regularly send its botched - or too difficult to complete - back to the NHS to sort.

Woman i'm in the process of writing up DH's entire family history. Last year I wrote 160 pages on just one part of his family and did get it printed up for the family. I have another one 3/4 done but I still have a few outstanding bits of research to do. And Ive got the shell of a third. My mum is writing up my side of the family. Ive got one book done from that which was largely written by a long lost relation. Its so time consuming though. You don't just research all the direct ancestors but the siblings too because they reveal additional pieces of info by putting things into context about the direct ancestors you wouldn't otherwise find.

Its utterly fascinating and a very different way to do history which isn't so dry.

It does really make you rethink what you think you know too. The women on my father's side of the family are particularly fierce and independent, running businesses at a time when women didn't do that. They have brothers or husbands or friends who allowed them to do it but its very much their venture. This is from the 1860s to the 1910s.

After doing it, I do think every single family has an interesting story to tell.

One particularly interesting thing is how the fortunes of a family can turn so rapidly and for so few reasons. This change in fortune seems to last for generations. Just a single bad marriage or action can be utterly devastating. No different to today at all.

The political ideology of today is so little removed from the ideology of the past. We still keep believing in it though...

That is brilliant red! That period 1860s-90s was a great period for female emancipation; there seem to be pockets of it in western history.
It's another interesting thing about women's liberation: it is not a trajectory, more of a patchwork.

particularly fierce and independent, running businesses at a time when women didn't do that.
We have a family member who wrote a family tree on DH's side. He got out of Russia and made it to Israel in the 1980s.
Many of the women of the family (from Georgia, I think) were scientists and educated workers in that period; late nineteenth century.

On my maternal side my aunt got as far back as us getting slung out of Scotland in the 1600s
Then she decided she didn't she didnt want know anymore 😁

You pretty much can't get back further than around 1600 in most cases. General records only really began around that period. And the significant barrier is that what records there were aren't in English. The church adopting english as its language was hugely important to what history we now have preserved. If you want to get back further you more or less have to have some sort of nobility in your blood. This is more common than you think simply because of the number of generations that could come from that in your ancestry.

I find it fascinating that not all cultures have this barrier. The continuity of arabic, for example, means that if you can read it, you can read history as it was written much further back than we can. This has has implications for anyone studying history and how history has filtered down to our understanding today. The Islamic age of enlightenment also saw many texts from around the world, translated into arabic, including many that now no longer exist in their original form.

We are very much restricted by our english heritage and our search for our english identity. (Which the irish, welsh abd scots all fell foul of).

Re that EHIC story, this seems like a peculiarly British problem. In countries with a social insurance system, you can only get an EHIC card if you are already registered with the health insurance system.

Someone did our family tree (on my dad's side) and got back as far as 1508 in Germany! It's a very distinctive name and I know all sorts of unusual facts about my ancestors (so unusual I can't mention them as they would be too "outing" ) but one includes working for the Swedish king in the 17th century and the other is being amongst the first settlers in South Africa.

It is interesting though how the fortunes of families ebb and flow.

prettybird

We might be related . Did working for the Swedish king involve books by any chance?

This is more common than you think simply because of the number of generations that could come from that in your ancestry.

We are all descended from Charlemagne

Biocarb - a later one was known for his study of numbers - but would have left Sweden by the 1800s but who knows? The earlier one was a medic.