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.

Hasn't really bothered to reflect on her racist views much has she.

And this for me is why the Leavers claims that they are not racist and xenophobic tend to ring a bit hollow - because their campaign was driven forward by UKIP, and they were more than happy to jump on the bandwagon.

As for those Leavers who assure us that they are not racist and claim that their outlook is more global - I will believe that when I see them campaigning against the Home Office's disgraceful treatment of Commonwealth citizens who have lived and worked in this country for 50 odd years and are now being told to get out.

Re mueller and the uk indictments - I can’t see any other source for it so I’m not sure it’s credible (though it would be amazing if it would force the issue here)

Westminster city council’s deputy leader emerged as a contender for the title of "most schmoozed politician" in Britain

An illustration to explain why politicians fight so hard to stay in power

• e.g. the rats-in -a-sack Cabinet

Full list of Robert Davis's 514 freebies in 3 years

Warning: do not read this list if you have high blood pressure:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/feb/19/full-list-of-westminster-councillor-robert-daviss-514-freebies

I think that's why UKIP has had so many leadership problems. One faction of the party want someone more openly anti Islamic, such as the current leader who wants a ban on any more mosques being built in this country among other things, whilst another faction don't want this as they don't want the party to be viewed as racist. Hopefully soon they will eat themselves and the members will drift off either to Britain First or the Tories.

True, pain, I can't see another source for that Mueller story.

It's on a few blogs that are way out there, noone mainstream
What is concrete is that mainstream media - Guardian, Indie - have posted a few times that Farage and iirc Assange are what the FBI call "Persons of Interest" in the investigation

I don't doubt at all that they'll be embroiled in the investigation and ultimately found out. I just haven't see anything apart from twitter comments about the three indictments, though would be extremely happy if I've just missed it

Steering clear of the numpty "who needs Euratom" clique elsewhere ....

www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-19/u-k-nuclear-fuel-supply-at-risk-without-euratom-fix-edf-says

The U.K. still lacks the replacement rules needed to fuel its nuclear reactors after the country quits the European Union, according to an Electricite de France SA executive.

There isn’t much time to replicate vital aspects of the European Atomic Energy Community treaty before Brexit in March 2019, Angela Hepworth, EDF’s corporate policy and regulation director said at a conference on Monday in London.

(contd)

Ben Bradley is apparently apologising for his tweets re JC.

There isn’t much time to replicate vital aspects of the European Atomic Energy Community treaty before Brexit in March 2019, Angela Hepworth, EDF’s corporate policy and regulation director said at a conference on Monday in London.

UnBeLeaver! Talking Britain Down! We All Just Need To Pull Together And Think Positively And It Will All Be Fine!

(Trying out the Brexit Lagoon style of solutioneering. How am I doing?)

Why was the Leaver's Lagoon created? How is it different to the Brexit arms? And do any real posters post there -or is it just Russian bots?

Food shortages, fuel shortages, medicine shortages - not a Mad Max dystopia, but nevertheless a dystopic future of our very own. I'm just ...Theresa May cannot be going to do this - she just can't...she must realise that it would be better to be the P.M that got toppled before the Brexit finish line than the P.M that allowed a wealthy, peaceful and relatively powerful nation to plunge head first into an apocalyptic nightmare of its own making...surely she understands that?
Don't any of them think of their legacy anymore? How the history books will remember them?

The Leaver's Lagoon wanted positive solutions, which was different from the Brexit Arms in that it was pub bore chit chat. The problem with the Leavers Lagoon was they never proposed any serious solutions, but we had gems like the Good Friday Agreement could be renegotiated. Yes, it could, but only if all parties desired it to be so. Since it's currently only one party to the treaty which wants to renegotiate to get itself out of a hole, that suggestion was a non-starter.

The Brexit Arms has recently become a bit more serious although it's still pie in the sky stuff. It's still the same five or so Leavers, of the we won, you lost, get over it school. They assume that we won't need Euratom because we will have replaced it with something equivalent, because Theresa May said so. The fact that no-one has done a stroke of work to start creating a replacement was just a minor detail.

The only positive thing I could think of about Brexit is that it might stop all the foreign football players coming over. Then our clubs might have to promote their own junior talent. There's no shortage of kids who love football and I can't believe that they are inherently less talented than Spanish, German or Italian players. And who knows, we might just then be able to field a team which could win the World or European cup.

It would be excellent if the Leavers Lagoon could think of solutions,
i.e. actual concrete plans, not just dreams of cake.

They could then tell the Cabinet, who are desperately in need of such plans

peregrina I think the problem wrt football is the training system and lack of pastoral care
Plus of course we don't know how rife this dreadful abuse is, ruining young lives and careers long before they get to top level.

London racing to avoid Brexit driving license roadblock

As with aviation, the no-deal fallback needs to be done & ratified by Parliament 1 year in advance, i.e. by 29 March 2018
The Vienna Convention on Road Traffic would have to be passed by Parliament - not many sitting days left and there is all the other Brexit legislation to get through.

Ordinary motorists would have to obtain an International Driving Licence in advance, for a small fee
Commercial drivers / truck drivers etc would be in trouble - far too few permits available

www.politico.eu/article/brexit-driving-license-london-racing-to-avoid-roadblock/

EEK, I hadn't heard before of Boris's description of his Channel Bridge and plans for trade:

a “great swollen throbbing umbilicus of trade” between the two sides.

www.politico.eu/article/brexit-speeches-theresa-may-contrasting-fortunes-of-the-four-brexiteers/

I thought his obsession with bridges had something to do with inadequacy / compensation.

Spy stories have no effect on Labour or JC personal ratings

Presumably those whose vote would be affected by such scare stories made up their minds during his first leadership contest
Further stories are pointless without evidence of wrongdoing
Just makes it harder to get anyone interested if / when he does something that really need criticising

http://uk.businessinsider.com/yougov-poll-spy-claims-jeremy-corbyn-labour-2018-2

Just makes it harder to get anyone interested if / when he does something that really need criticising

It's become a bit of a crying wolf situation. Corbyn has had so much utter rubbish written about him that now anyone they isn't completely against him anyway has a default position of not believing anything bad anyone says about him. The problem is that as much as I like a lot of what he says, I do think some reasoned discussion of his faults would be helpful. Unfortunately that's not going to happen when people are chucking about pointless drivel about him being some sort of super spy selling secrets about Thatcher's breakfasts.

I'm taking a little step back from social media for a few days but in answer to the Mueller and possible uk indictments, there nothing but rumour.

But as far as rumours go, its quite funny how within the last hour a certain Nigel has tweeted a photograph of himself with his mate Donnie.

Do you believe in coincidences?

No neither do I.

You may also be interested in the detail of the last Mueller indictment against Manafort which IS known and public.

Chris Megerian @ chrismegerian
There's a new indictment of Paul Manafort. This one includes some allegations that were discussed in court earlier today. Specifically, he paid former European politicians to lobby for Ukraine

Why would this be of interest? Well isn't this a coincidence?

www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2016/04/nigel-farage-speaks-to-ukraine-treaty-no-voters/
Nigel Farage urges Dutch voters to say ‘no’ to Ukraine treaty

Or

amp.theguardian.com/politics/2014/mar/28/nigel-farage-eu-miltarist-ukraine-nick-clegg?CMP=share_btn_tw&__twitter_impression=true
Nigel Farage hits out at 'militarist' EU over Ukraine
Ukip leader says European Union pursued quasi-imperial foreign policy and encouraged Ukrainians to 'poke the Russian bear'

Hmm.

It really isn't difficult to see why rumours are abound.

I think I'm also right in saying that Mueller has apparently already spoken to Andy Wigmore and in December requested information from Cambridge Analyticia which has ties to Farage. But to my knowledge I've not seen anything that aays Farage himself has spoken to Mueller. Which in someways, seems, well quite an omission given what Mueller has been looking at.

www.google.co.uk/amp/www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-mueller-cambridge-analytica-firm-brexit-president-election-campaign-russia-probe-latest-a8112136.html%3famp
Trump-Russia probe: Mueller 'requests emails' from Cambridge Analytica firm linked to 2016 campaign and Brexit

Again this is all pretty coincidental.

And in June last year we had this:
www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/01/nigel-farage-is-person-of-interest-in-fbi-investigation-into-trump-and-russia
Nigel Farage is 'person of interest' in FBI investigation into Trump and Russia
Exclusive: FBI interested in former Ukip leader’s ties with people connected to US president and WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange

Again everything leads back to Farage. Odd eh?

At what point does this stop being the land of the tin foil and start having credibility?

Why is Farage visiting Trump atm? For what purpose? And is Trump the only person who wished to have a chat with him? And did he go to the US willingly or under pressure from who knows who?

It certainly is very easy to see why there is a rumour doing the rounds. Its easy to see that there is a definite arc here which seems to involve Farage.

How much truth in it? And what happens if Farage IS indicted? How much of a bombshell to British politics would that prove to be?

Don't forget this little story either:
www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/07/former-nigel-farage-aide-us-information-plea-deal-court-files-george-cottrell
Former Farage aide gave US information in plea deal, court files show
Files do not spell out nature of information George Cottrell handed federal agents after his arrest on money-laundering charges

This article is from June 2017 - same month as the farage FBI person of interest story.

But the story was quite old news by this point, and was only the plea stage of preceedings in which he made a deal. The story had been brewing for some time.

www.google.co.uk/amp/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/03/ukip-volunteer-faces-20-years-jail-admitting-attempted-dark/amp/
Ukip volunteer faces 20 years in jail after admitting attempted 'dark web' fraud
Jan 2017

Cottrell, who comes from a wealthy, aristocratic family, was arrested as he returned from the Republican Party convention with Mr Farage on July 22.

So arrested in July 2016 (pre election) at the Republican party conference.

Gosh we are going around in circles again.

Now I don't want to end up sounding like Louise Mensch, but something is going on with Farage. I don't think its a huge secret. I mean why the fuck was he going to see Assange at all?

For me the only question is really where in proceedings is this?

Is it indictment stage? Or was Farage just going for a 'friendly chat'?

And from that:
Is he making a show that he's got the president's protection? How much does the UK government know about all this? And what will they do if he is, indeed, implicated.

Because if Farage goes kaboom, what does that do to Brexit?

I think this thread from yesterday worth reflecting on

The Columnist @ Sime0nStylites
1. Some time ago, Eddie Mair asked Amber Rudd, how long the Brexit ‘remit’ would last. It is a powerful question and deserves to be remembered.
2. Both Vote Leave and TM’s dutiful govt have always considered their remit to have two key aspects - both leaving itself and the manner of leaving.
3. In turn, the manner of leaving has three crucial aspects i) taking back control (borders, money, laws ii) achieving a ‘frictionless’ deal with the EU iii) the unfettered ability to strike free trade deals with other countries.
4. For the govt, leave itself and the manner of leaving are now so conflated that they are virtually indivisible.
5. This can be seen in defying the will of the people type rhetoric when it’s directed at people arguing with aspects of Brexit - eg leaving the CU.
6. For the most zealous Brexiteers, even the stand-still transition period is objectionable. Put simply, any type of Brexit that conflicts with the chosen brand, isn’t really Brexit at all.
7. It’s not ‘ambitious’ or ‘creative.’ It’s not a ‘proper’ Brexit at all. It’s a ‘pointless’ Brexit - what was the point of the referendum?
8. This conflation of leaving with one particular manner of leaving (or it’s not really leaving at all) has been an enormous strategic mistake by the govt and many other leave campaigners.
9. The problem is that now, more than 18 months after the referendum, it is clearly apparent that the promised Brexit is not achievable.
10. ‘Taking back control’ has been compromised by the transition period and perhaps other concessions.
11. Control itself (as defined) effectively rules out a frictionless relationship with the EU. Those promised trade deals are not at all straightforward.
12. The Leave position is now so inflexible that the govt’s position is undermined on a daily basis. Why? Because the manner of Leave desired is simply undeliverable.
13. And this is why the Brexit remit has all but run out. Not because of the vote itself but because the govt and others chose to interpret it in a way that is simply not possible.
14. This isn’t just a point for Remainers - it’s equally important for Leavers (broad church that they are). Are any of the main Leave segments getting the Brexit they want?
15. Perhaps this point isn’t wholly apparent today. But it will be clear when (as seems likely) the EU rejects the U.K. future relationship proposal.
16. What will the govt do then? Change course to a softer Brexit? But it’s spent that last 18 months saying that’s not really Brexit.
17. Leave without a deal? There’s no mandate for this at all. As clearly evidenced by the lack of preparation for this outcome.
18. At this point, the Brexit remit has run out - most certainly the Brexit remit for this government and supporters of its Brexit approach.
19. What happens then? A new Brexit mandate will be required either by electing a new govt or through a second referendum.
20. The great irony is that the govt’s Brexit approach - its conflation of Leave and manner of Leave - has jeopardised Brexit itself.
21. They would have done much better to have left it at ‘Brexit means Brexit’ and been flexible around the approach. /ends

Stands alone as it is.

But you could also see it through the Farage prism too.

And if you really want to see it all through the eyes of a tin foil hat wearer, pose the question, why at the time when there are rumours of an actual British political spy (which in essence is what is being implied and rumoured) as we all being pointed in the direction of Corbyn as being a spy? If you were in government and you knew what was actually going on with Farage (which they almost certainly do) how might this affect you? How could you benefit from it?

As I say, when does a tin foil hat theory become plausible thought?

This could be a reflection of my current state of mind but I'll leave that for you to decide for yourselves.

While you are here Red - hope things improve, whatever they are - and look after yourself

Nigel Farage @ Nigel_Farage
Good to catch up. @realDonaldTrump in great humour and on top form.

📷 Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead.

I think they have tried to learn from the golden lift photo by having a photo taken in a really unglamourous boring magnolia corridor.

Thank you all for your messages btw. Much appreciated.

Nothing mindblowingly bad in the scheme of things I guess, just me not coping terribly well with real life more than anything.

The internet never helps when thats the case. It just sends me into a downward spiral if I don't step away for a bit.

Just hopped of briefly and saw the Farage tweet and thought 'eh?' And must admit it intrigued me so have got sucked in with it.

You nailed it, red

I've never been a JC fan, but I'm astonished & disgusted that newspapers publish wild rumours about him, but ignore evidence against the hard right.
Also that the MSM don't headline the oligarchs and politicians who will profit financially from Brexit

All those headlines about 1980s spy stories - before any voters were born - based on very dubious sources
vs hard evidence of fishy business going on right now with Brexit, that would affect the country for a generation