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.

And organic or natural categories of foods will become 'premium' items, priced accordingly.

I agree that many other factors are more important in the US wrt health outcomes
but the evidence of large-scale population studies is that industrialised beef & chicken is inferior for human health
and we know the wealthy don't eat this inferior food

So it's just one of many ways in which Brexit may worsen quality of life for many people
It won't affect the top 5% or so, who can afford to eat the healthier forms of beef & chicken, rather than just the cheapest

I love good food, so it rankles that the 95% might be eating lower quality food than now
Such an insult for those Leavers who voted hoping for a better life and for those who voted Remain
I appreciate the other effects of Brexit may be more noticeably important

So glad I won't be eating that crap in Germany
or experiencing the other crap from Brexit.

.

Placemarking

I've long slightly worried that if Hunt is replaced we could end up with someone far worse whilst simultaneously wanting him out.

Given recent appts I'm half wanting him to stay as I suspect me fear may be proven right.

I haven't heard any suggestions about who might replace Hunt and Greening - has anyone else?

Anne Milton or Phillip Lee have both been mentioned as the new Hunt earlier in the thread. I don't know much about either of them.

Re house sales, DH and I have noticed that houses in the £500,000 mark bracket suddenly seem to have stopped shifting locally. If they can't shift here then there is a problem.

This seems to be the only thing that developers want to build around here.

I struggle to work out who would buy them. They are beyond our means and pretty much anyone we know in professional circles. The only people we know with kids who have houses in that bracket, are without exception ten years older than us and moved up from London benefiting from a windfall on property there.

These are family homes and not really the type of thing anyone older would be looking at.

Its interesting to see that there is talk of a collapse of upmarket family homes with some research backing it up as a result.

I made comment to a couple of people actively involved with a local house planning group only this week on the exact thing.

I now feel rather vindicated now as I did wonder if it was just our imagination and just an illusion. We've been saying for some time that we need to stop building this type of house as it wasn't what was demanded, it was houses smaller than that under the maximum of a £350,000 mark.

All luxury 5 bed things. There is a particularly high number of them here locally already. In the last 15 years the majority of land built on has these on them. Smaller 3 or 4 beds without the luxury tag haven't been as popular with developers. You can get more of these on the same amount of land so the profit difference isnt as much as it at first appears.

Given the size of families, few modern families in the uk really need a 5 bed which also has extra rooms beyond a living room and kitchen.

Dynamic

The market flooded by huge houses after years of building them.
Demographic that bought them in the past has experienced ten years where wages have stagnated and/or house prices have stagnated so you have middle class professionals in late 30s and 40s who can't afford what the same group ten years ago could.

You now have an over supply and reduction in demand which is made worse by a Brexit brain drain in this section of the demographic.

Yay for the new northern national forest from here to eternity.

Just what the north needs money for.

Has Gove been feeding May crack?

They need somewhere to reintroduce the wolves...

Ann Milton’s voting history is all about empathy and public service (NOT).intersting conflict of interest with hubs business...

I'm in a wetherspoons, my mates aren't here yet, I have a pen. Anyone got any ideas to correct their beermats? [Grin]

www.economist.com/news/britain/21734001-lords-will-rebel-culture-wars-will-ragebut-theresa-may-and-brexit-will-not-be-derailed-three?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ed/threepredictionsforbritishpoliticsin2018bagehot
Three predictions for British politics in 2018
The Lords will rebel, culture wars will rage—but Theresa May and Brexit will not be derailed

This is an article by a columnist in the Economist.

Their predictions:
2018 will be a year of two halves:
First half, will be political drift. May will hold on against backbench discontent. Brexit will continue but dissatisfaction will grow.
Second half, high drama with the possibility of parliament rejecting the draft deal and the government collapsing

Their three predictions:
HoL significant role in scrutising the Great Repel Bill and this will cause political crisis. A role reversal of the spectacle of liberals loving unelected and Conservatives regarding Lords as frustrating the will of the people.

Second prediction is that the culture wars will get more prevalent and significant in the UK.

Third prediction is that the prospect of high drama at the end of the year won't achieve much. Parliament won't vote down the bill and the government won't fall. Mainly because there is no 'hero' who has been cast to 'save' us.

Hashi, what do the latest beer mats say?

I would troll Leavers. What would wind them up most? Passports? Brexit Stamps? Nick Clegg?

Robert Halfon MP‏ @halfon4harlowMP
If we want to succeed as a Party we should not fall into Toby Young type elephant traps.
My article for @thesundaytimes @timesredbox here :

Heidi Allen @heidiallen75
I've stayed out of the Toby Young debate as I don't know much about him - but if the chair of @CommonsEd , @halfon4harlowMP who I respect very much, says no - so do I

Two Tory MPs ramp up the culture war - by rejecting Toby Young. Notable that both are at the more liberal end of the Conservative Party.

thelogicalindian.com/news/watch-shashi-tharoors-stirring-speech-on-why-britain-must-compensate-india-for-its-colonial-rule/

Came across this today. It is absolutely scathing about the UK and it's Colonialism. How the profits from industrialisation in the UK was helped by their de-industrialisation of India. Basically success based on skewing any level playing field. Those idiots who go on about how there is so much in common with the former colonies aka Commonwealth. Former colonies are under no illusion about what went on. Do they really think the Indians are sentimental about British occupation and exploitation?

'The sun never set on the British Empire as even God didn't trust the British in the dark'. Ouch.

Where are the brilliant for the UK free trade deals going to come from, then?

I heard someone on the radio say that membership of the EU was not a very good deal for the UK. So, do they really think they are going to get a better deal as a non-member state? How? And why would the EU give that?

Correction. "as even God didn't trust the English in the dark"

Personally I think it's a bit of a mistake to obsess about chlorinated chicken specifically because this generates a fisticuffs on the ills or otherwise of that one foodstuff that detracts from the more important general points about food safety and the fact that trade agreements always impact on domestic legislation. One might refer to the latter as a loss of sovereignty and the chickens themselves as a squirrel.

Interesting point from Thanoor about a well formed mind as opposed to just a (well filled) well educated mind. With the internet, you can google. What you need to be able to do is to synthesise information. A mind that can examine.

I suppose what used to be termed the aim of teaching people how to think. Maybe the lack of this has allowed the elevation of the Charlatans. People don't even properly google the facts, never mind analyse them for themselves.

How will the Uk on its own get a better deal with non-EU countries than the E27 trade bloc ?

The EU has about 50 full FTAs with other countries & trade blocs, plus about another 900 trade agreements, mutual recognitions agreements, standards agreements etc

The Uk hasn't even enough qualified trade negotiators for Brexit, let alone to handle negotiations with umpteen countries

Big issues with trade agreements:

1. A50 Extension Transition period 30 March 2019 - 31 Dec 2020
   Will all the non-EU countries agree to let the UK continue to participate in their EU agreements under the same terms ?
   There is no time to negotiate new deals just for the transition period. The answer for each country will be yes / no

2. From 1 Jan 2020
   Trade negotiations typically take 7-15 years per deal
   Will the Uk be able to negotiate 900 new agreements between now and 1 Jan 2020 - clearly NO

So, either there will be an extension of the extension transition
or British-based business will be dealing on WTO terms with countries where they used to have trade deals - meaning extra costs, huge increase in red tape, need for skilled personell to handle it all.
Some firms will move abroad - or go under

Johnson has refused move to DEXEU.

At one point last year there was speculation that May could move Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, into a beefed-up business department with responsibility for Brexit planning, but that idea seems to have been dropped in response to opposition from Johnson

It's now political black death to go any where near it.

www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jan/07/theresa-may-vows-to-stay-pm-cabinet-reshuffle

No mention of Pob in the Brexit Cabinet of National Salvation.