Westministenders: Groundhog Day

[RedToothBrush]

Groundhog day is 2nd Feb.

Its also today. And yesterday. And the day before. And the day before. And the day before. And the day before. And the day before. And the day before. And the day before. And the day before. And the day before. And the day before. And the day before. And the day before. And the day before. And the day before.

We have all turned into Bill Murray.

That's Brexit in the UK.

The only progress seems to be linguistic gymnastics not policy.

No action has been implemented, we are still on words going nowhere.

Tick tock, tick tock.

Even Ireland - still an EU country despite UKIP's and the more rabid Brexiters' desire for Irexit - imports more than double what Taiwan buys

It really is an Alice through the Looking Glass world

order-order.com/2018/02/17/vaz-reported-national-crime-agency-finances/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
VAZ REPORTED TO NATIONAL CRIME AGENCY OVER HIS FINANCES

Tory MP Andrew Bridgen has tonight reported Keith Vaz to the National Crime Agency calling for an Unexplained Wealth Order investigation to look into his finances.

I'm not a fan of Vaz. His track record for standards is appalling. I have no idea what to make of this at first glance.

BigChoc
How many of those with nationalist, authoritarian views in mainland-based organisations are NI Unionists, or from such traditions ?
What influence are they having on influencing policy in mainstream organisations, or in forming far-right terrorist groups ?

^There are some Lexiters, including on MN, who seem to prioritise Unionism, whether Scottish or NI, so much that they praise and vote for the most incompetent and nasty Tory govt in living memory

• Brexit in particular seems to have increased Unionist passion in Scottish & NI Unionists^

goo.gl/images/vSpWwV
goo.gl/images/B4nVPo
That 'No Surrender' that you see is a Unionist thing.
goo.gl/images/KsT9wt
It has been a slogan of Unionists for decades.

Queens University Belfast has long been seen as a bastion of Irish nationalism by the Unionist population. About 50% more Catholics than protestants go to university in NI - the article relates to Queen's University Belfast, The University of Ulster, Stranmillis and St Mary's Colleges and the Open University. Underachievement among working class protestant schoolchildren in NI has become a notable issue.
www.newsletter.co.uk/news/education/about-50-per-cent-more-catholics-than-protestants-enter-higher-education-1-7167390 The NewsLetter is a broadly Unionist paper.
(2016 article)

There have always been strong links between the NI protestant / Unionist establishment and the Tory party, and the officer class of the British armed forces. Also the legal and medical professions. There are currently about 4,000 NI students at university in Britain. How many will return to NI is anybody's guess. Historically, I think many have stayed.

Conversely, there have historically been strong links between NI's wealthy and middle class RCs and Ireland. An uncle of mine originally from Tyrone and all of his siblings were sent to boarding schools in Ireland (this was back in the 1920s and 30s) and all then went to university in Dublin. Some returned to NI, and some settled into professional life in Dublin, including my uncle.

Wrt the GFA...
I suspect the GFA will increasingly be portrayed by the DUP as -

• evidence of how low the UK sank while shackled to the EU;
• so low that it was forced by the EU (guided by Dublin) to negotiate with terrorists who had a ballot box in one hand and an Armalite in the other;
• how the EU was secretly plotting to return NI to Ireland by means of the all Ireland referendum provision (thus dismantling the UK, with the hand of Dublin behind it all).

I see the foundation of an anti-GFA narrative in the assertion during the last election that Corbyn was a supporter of terrorism thanks to his position on negotiation with SF during the Troubles. It's of a piece with Gove's remarks on the GFA referendum (in his 2000 pamphlet "Northern Ireland: the Price of Peace") - the assertion is being made that the GFA is an affront to the UK, a threat to the integrity of the UK, and illegitimate both as a process and as a set of protocols.

Ireland's position wrt Brexit and status in the EU during Brexit negotiations has also been criticised very undiplomatically by the DUP, with no reminder from the Tories that Ireland remains a partner with the UK under the GFA. Above all, the position of the DUP vis a vis the Tory government makes the operation of the GFA a joke and its fate very shaky.

The effect of continued attacks on the GFA and all the undermining will be to cause deep anger in Ireland. Ireland voted in a referendum on the GFA too. The result was amendments to the Irish Constitution. The yes vote was carried by an overwhelming majority. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteenth_Amendment_of_the_Constitution_of_Ireland

Lots of people are going to feel very let down at the least and kicked in the teeth at worst if the UK allows it to fail and especially if the UK ploughs ahead with a Brexit that renders the GFA null and void. The spectacle of a Westminster government having its strings pulled by the DUP and following policy hostile to the GFA will not go down well in Ireland.

If Gove returns from the political wilderness in the event of an upscuttling of May, I suspect Irish people both in Ireland and the UK will feel a lot of qualms about the position of nationalists in NI and Irish people living in Britain, with old tensions rekindled.

The argument for reunification will only be strengthened by any form of Brexit that cuts off the NI economy and agriculture from that of Ireland. It is economic suicide for NI, and will cause economic disruption in Border areas in Ireland that are already disadvantaged. Any return of a hard or even semi hard Border will foster deep personal resentment too.

While support for a united Ireland may now be muted, I think that could change very quickly.

Revealed: rightwing groups plot to ditch EU safety standards on food and drugs

‘Ideal’ UK-US trade deal would see banned products sold in post-Brexit Britain, says accidentally released memo

amp.theguardian.com/politics/2018/feb/17/revealed-us-uk-rightwing-thinktanks-talks-to-ditch-eu-safety-checks?CMP=share_btn_tw&__twitter_impression=true

Speaking of uk/us relations, i wonder why farage is taking this stance? Probs nothing to do with mueller’s 13 indictments that have established Russian interference

The Associated Press
@AP
BREAKING: FBI says a person contacted agency with concerns about suspected Florida school shooter, but it failed to investigate.

Nigel Farage
@Nigel_Farage
FBI failure in Florida. Perhaps too much time spent on false Russia investigations.

This doesn't fit with the rightwing Anglosphere Brexiters, but
It was mostly the US that pressured Britain into the GFA, using its economic and political might

The EU was always quietly supportive of the peace process and pumped in a lot if EU funds to support it,
but it was Clinton, Mitchell and other Irish-American politicians who really forced the Major govt into concessions they didn't want and more gently pressured the Blair govt

The UK concessions forced by the USA were especially over release of all prisoners - a concession especially hated by the Unionists -
and of the independent deChastelaine monitoring that IRA arms were destroyed, instead of the public handover the UK govt and Unionists wanted.
Another reason btw, why rightwing Tories hate both Clintons

Math has reminded me that the RoI actually voted to change its constitution to fulfil its part of the GFA
That would presumably make them even angrier at the Tories pissing on the GFA

Many Brexiters are now claiming that the GFA is no longer relevant
Another example of cake and eat it:
Brexiters presumably want to keep the constitutional concessions the RoI made
and they want the IRA not to bomb the City or assassinate Tory politicians - as they did during the Troubles

Farage is just echoing what his idol Trump has also said.

I hate the argument that it won't matter if American beef/chicken comes to the UK as you can just not buy it. For a large amount of people food choice is based, by necessity, on price rather than quality. A choice is not always a choice for everyone.

Farage has always reminded me of Oswald Mosely
It's just that a different decade requires him to use different language
but the nationalist hate and xenophobia , the posters demonising foreigners, are in the same transition

An example of his true feelings, before he learned to cover up:
Farage in his youth marching around Dulwich College chanting "gas the Jews"

Any respectable politician with such a past would apologise, say he was wrong then and knows better now
Farage didn't - he tried to justify his behaviour by saying it was at the time of some London riots
which were of course by Afro-Caribbeans angry at police actions, nothing to do with Jewish folk
Typical of fascists and white supremacists - we are seeing it in the US too - to blame Jewish people for everything the fascists dislike.

I wasn't around at the time of Mosely, but my parents were young adults then
and I naturally read about that worrying part of British history

Yes driven. And if you're at the supermarket with £2.50 to feed you and two kids for two days and are trying to get the most food you can for your money? What actual choices do you have in that situation? (That actually happened to me once and it's always quantity over quality.)

Math has made some excellent points which I completely agree with. My Irish gran voted against the change to the constitution even though the Irish government at the time strongly encouraged the population to vote for the change as being critical to peace and the GFA. Her view was that the Unionists and British Government would eventually renege on the agreement and Ireland would have given up the claim to the six counties for nothing.

Owen Patterson retweeting the Ruth Dudley Edwards (Irish Katie Hopkins) article in the Telegraph saying that the GFA has outlived its use.
twitter.com/OwenPaterson/status/964531995421368321

This is a dangerous and worrying position and one that is shared by many Tories. The day that TM went into an agreement with the DUP was the beginning of the end of the GFA. It seems my gran was right after all.

Jack Monroe was used as a bright shining example of how to not be feckless and actually feed her family with a tenner a week by the Bath Conservatives. She was understandably not pleased

jack monroe | 🍴 📚
@BootstrapCook
More jack monroe | 🍴 📚 Retweeted
Absolutely FUCK OFF using my work as an example when it was YOUR policies that left me hungry, cold, almost homeless, mentally ill, still recovering 6 years later. 1 in 4 single mums in poverty. Thousands dead after being declared 'fit to work'. I'm not your poster girl 🖕🏼 twitter.com/BathCA/status/964936341158072321 …

I tried to kill myself four times under Tory austerity - not to be used as an example of 'someone doing well' when 6 years later I still can't open my own front door, still am very ill, still scarred to my core by their penny pinching pissy policies. I am FURIOUS.

The fact that my 10p recipes get MILLIONS of views a month is not a testament to my skills (because pop tarts and bolognese fgs) but an absolute indictment of the fact that so many people CONTINUE TO NEED THEM. The NERVE.

So while we are here. Yes I managed on £10 a week in 2010.
Basics then/now:

                     2010.    2018.

Stock cubes 10p. 35p
Kidney beans. 17p. 35p
Flour. 45p. 65p
Fr. berries. £1.10. £1.70
Cooking bacon. 67p. £1.50

I work every day- 7 days a week for what amounted to less than living wage last year - to help people living in poverty find help, learn to cook, send them food, create mealplans on thr hoof from a scrappy empty cupboard, not to be USED by the FUCKING TORIES in a smarmy tweet

and I have patiently spent the last 6 years explaining to folk that people have convenience food because when you are living hand to mouth it IS cheaper than buying 'ingredients' for an empty cupboard

I have spent the last 6 years explaining that even a tenner is useless if you have an intolerance, or no gas or electric, or no fucking frying pans, or live in a B&B put on by the social

I repeat these truths - millions of peoples heartbreaking real life experiences - every single day. Yes I didnt die on £10 a week. I managed the odd risotto. BUT WHY SHOULD ANYONE HAVE TO?

Cowardy custards deleted their tweet after 70 people replied to it in outrage. Shame I got a receipt for that shit sandwich.

Your Gran was well ahead of her time with that opinion, Kofa. My RoI relatives reluctantly voted for it, in the end, and many of them now feel that the cost of UI both financially and politically makes it unattractive.
The more Irish-bashing from the government and newspapers, the more they change their minds though.

I like this tweet

Aidan McG - #FBPE
Aidan McG - #FBPE
@aidanjmcg
·
17 Feb
Replying to @OwenPaterson, @RuthDE, and 2 others
Hi Owen. There were 2 referendums to ratify the GFA: NI - 71% & RoI - 94%.

If you think these overwhelming results can be ignored a mere 20 years later, how quickly can we abandon Brexit's pathetic majority?

driven and that's why I think he's critising the FBI. Undermine them so whatever evidence of wrongdoing they find can be dismissed and ignored. Same tactics as Trump has been pushing the last year.

It's a interesting fact that the only other way to have achieved a 49/51 split in a single sweep is to divide men and women.

I've been ignoring all the trans stuff so far, but I'm wondering if the narrative of Brexit - the will of the people - is going to be the model for "trans rights" (or whatever) to be forced on the 50% of the population who don't want them either.

Now, where's that tinfoil hat ...

@Andrew_Adonis
2h2 hours ago
Retweeted Owen Paterson MP
This is the most irresponsible tweet I have ever seen from a former Cabinet minister. Its implications are terrible. It shows how far Brexit has corrupted the nationalist wing of the Conservative party.

Just to go back to a post from PainInTheEar earlier;
Revealed: rightwing groups plot to ditch EU safety standards on food and drugs.

Ideal’ UK-US trade deal would see banned products sold in post-Brexit Britain, says accidentally released memo

amp.theguardian.com/politics/2018/feb/17/revealed-us-uk-rightwing-thinktanks-talks-to-ditch-eu-safety-checks?CMP=share_btn_tw&__twitter_impression=true

This is exactly why a hard Brexit would have to result in a border and exactly why the likes of Owen Patterson and Unionists would happily see the GFA gone.

It makes me so angry and sad at the same time.