Westminstenders: Break Up or Make Up?

[RedToothBrush]

The next week or so appears to be yet another crunch point (not that any of these crunch points have actually resolved anything so far).

The EU is set to outline the plan for Ireland. Which everyone thought had already been outlined and agreed already. And it had been admitted was legally binding.

Except apparently we don't want to do that, and we are now crying about how the EU want to break up Britain (nothing to do with England wanting to leave the EU and Scotland and NI wanting to stay in it of course).

Jeremy Corbyn has now apparently decided that the customs union is a good idea. David Davis and Liam Fox have responded by saying that this would stop us making our own trade deals. Yes this has obviously stopped Turkey, and why aren't we doing as much trade with China etc as Germany anyway? A vote in the HoC looms before Easter. Will Tory rebels support.

Will Jeremy Corbyn bow to pressure over the single market too? The customs union alone does not stop the border issue in Ireland. Nor does it stop ridiculous queues at Dover. I'm not sure Corbyn is one for listening though. He's got a whiff of power and democracy and reality is just a hindrance to utopia.

As for the Great Repeal Bill. Word has it, its not going too clever in the HoL. The conservatives had something of a show of strength with an unusual number turning up for the debate. But few on the backbenches were willing to speak in favour of...

It all feels like we are making no progress at all. We are still bleating on about cherry picked deals as if this is a negotiation. Its not.

amp.theguardian.com/politics/2018/mar/06/voter-id-trials-risk-disenfranchising-vulnerable-people?CMP=share_btn_tw&__twitter_impression=true
Voter ID trials 'risk disenfranchising vulnerable people'
Campaigners write to ministers over plans to pilot compulsory ID for voters in May’s local elections

It also expresses concern about low levels of public awareness about the pilots and the issues they might cause, despite the local elections being just two months away.

The ID pilot will take place in Bromley, Gosport, Swindon, Watford and Woking. Separate trials about the security of postal voting will take place in Peterborough, Tower Hamlets and Slough.

This is the first i've heard about them actually trialling it.

Don't worry about rationing. Without access to the single market the uk dont have the capacity to print ration books nor to they have the capability to do an electronic system at short notice.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-43201586
Hi lonely! Seems like no time since last March...
Yes the focus is on fast/junk food but cals explicitly mentioned. Reminds me I need to drop some weight!

www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/brexit-see-scots-lose-over-12133264.amp?__twitter_impression=true
Ordinary Scots will lose £8000 from their salaries if Tories insist on hard Brexit
Workers will start to see their pay packets fall dramatically by 2020 if the Tories continue along the road of a hard Brexit, research reveals.

The new report predicts salaries will plummet by hundreds of pounds a year in the first three years of Brexit, with losses of £8304 by 2030 for workers on the average £23,000 salary.

The startling statistic was revealed by a Labour group set up to force party leader Jeremy Corbyn to offer a clear alternative to Tory plans to leave without a deal in place to protect wages and workers’ rights.

amp.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/05/home-office-immigration-data-access-eu-citizens-data-protection-bill?CMP=share_btn_tw&__twitter_impression=true
Home Office plans to deny immigrants access to data 'are illegal'
Digital rights campaigners threaten legal action if data protection bill clause is enacted

Plans to deny millions of people the right to access immigration data held on them by the Home Office are illegal and will be challenged in court, the government has been told.

Organisations representing up to 3 million EU citizens living in the UK and digital rights activists have written to the home secretary, Amber Rudd, giving notice that they will take legal action if a clause in the data protection bill is enacted.

In other words, if the government decided they wanted to deport you, you couldn't challenge the government and say their information on file is incorrect because you'd have no right to know what information the government had about you.

If there was some error in there, what chance would you have to stop the deportation.

If this government wanted to introduce rationing, they would do it by wishful thinking or by putting the responsibility on supermarket checkout staff.

Voter suppression and fierce and sometimes illegal pursuit of deportation of immigrants is straight out of the authoritarian handbook and is being played out in force in the US. Chilling to see it being more and more evident in use here too.

From a New Yorker profile of Christopher Steele yesterday, in case anyone missed it:

www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/12/christopher-steele-the-man-behind-the-trump-dossier

Even before Steele became involved in the U.S. Presidential campaign, he was convinced that the Kremlin was interfering in Western elections. In April of 2016, not long before he took on the Fusion assignment, he finished a secret investigation, which he called Project Charlemagne, for a private client. It involved a survey of Russian interference in the politics of four members of the European Union—France, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Germany—along with Turkey, a candidate for membership. The report chronicles persistent, aggressive political interference by the Kremlin: social-media warfare aimed at inflaming fear and prejudice, and “opaque financial support” given to favored politicians in the form of bank loans, gifts, and other kinds of support. The report discusses the Kremlin’s entanglement with the former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and the French right-wing leader Marine Le Pen. (Le Pen and Berlusconi deny having had such ties.) It also suggests that Russian aid was likely given to lesser-known right-wing nationalists in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. The Kremlin’s long-term aim, the report concludes, was to boost extremist groups and politicians at the expense of Europe’s liberal democracies. The more immediate goal was to “destroy” the E.U., in order to end the punishing economic sanctions that the E.U. and the U.S. had imposed on Russia after its 2014 political and military interference in Ukraine.

Although the report’s language was dry, and many of the details familiar to anyone who had been watching Russia closely, Project Charlemagne was the equivalent of a flashing red light. It warned that Russian intelligence services were becoming more strategic and increasingly disruptive. Russian interference in foreign elections, it cautioned, was only “likely to grow in size and reach over time.”

Bill Browder, a key advocate for economic sanctions against Russia in the form of the Magnitisky Act, is testifying today at the UK fake news committee. Will be interesting to see what he has to say.

And on the other hand we have threats to shut down debate and interference with the freedom of the press including a McCarthyist approach to gender critical women.

Nothing here is liberal. Liberalism is dead in the UK. 'Progressive' policy is actually regressive.

I think I'm becoming paranoid...this morning on the news Govt apparently wanting to reduce calorie intake (because of obesity crisis) to 400 cals breakfast, 600 lunch and dinner. While I agree that many of us eat too much, my first thought was - are they preparing us for rationing?

No.

They are preparing us for a 25% uptick in the cost of food.

I notice nowhere in any of these "discussions" was there a talk of the price of food being reduced in line with the calorie reduction.

Well it's good to know that they are capable of preparing for something, given they have shown no capacity for forward thinking to date.

threats to shut down debate
Feminist supporting Graham Linehan's ( of Father Ted and Black Books) twitter feed is interesting. The equivalent of 'four legs good, two legs bad' being barked back at him by the usual crew. They may be over playing their hand.

Radio 4 covering the Russian spy poisoning. Diane Abbott was on to say it needed to be looked at along with the 14 other russian deaths, though she wasn’t advocating all 14 cases be reopened (from what I caught).

Hearing Abbott on the radio has made me furious all over again at the disparity of how she is interrogated and derided on not knowing facts and figures but how David Davis, BJ et al are left unchallenged and giving an exceptionally easy ride. Not that I caught enough of this interview to gauge her treatment today but more from her past appearances. I’m sure it’s nothing to do with her being a BAME woman.

Pain, I thought exactly that too.

Abbott and Ash Sarkar have been absolute heroes trying to save the Yarls Wood women. Most SM and MSM comments about them both seem to breach Equalities Act and Libel Laws legislation.

www.independent.co.uk/voices/brexit-not-worth-it-theresa-may-donald-trump-statements-announcement-prove-a8241051.html

I so want to stay positive and think we will NOT end up with a WTO type of Brexit and we will at least have a norvegian style deal.
This article is interrest8b in itself because it highlights all the areas where TM has finally agreed that no we can’t have that.
May finally came clean on this dishonesty, saying: “How could the EU’s structure of rights and obligations be sustained, if the UK – or any country – were allowed to enjoy all the benefits without all of the obligations?”
So no we won’t have our cake and eat, full access to the EU market and pay nothing.
May dumped this promise in her speech, instead talking about as frictionless a border “as possible”.
So no you can’t have a no border situation if NI isn’t part of the EU. There WILL be a hard border (Canada-US style with armed guards, dogs etc... as per her latest proposal in the Commons)

Unfortunately, she is still clinging to her dreams of the pick and choose approach
she said we would seek to pick and choose those EU sectors we would like preferential market access to, and adhere to the relevant rules and regulatory agencies, in return for “making an appropriate financial contribution”.
Could I hope that she will finally relent in that one too? Just like she did on all the others (the divorce bill being one good example)

Thanks in part to the EU, the idea of another war pitting EU member states against each other is unthinkable.

I'm sure it was in 1919 too ....

Daily politics had some 'oh so confident in his own expertise on everything' MP on. He said that the UK was on the eve of a trade agreement with the EU. Does he mean the withdrawal agreement? Because nobody is doing an fta yet. However it also brought Katy Hayward on screen.

"Technology can be used to make border controls more efficient, and speed going across the border. And a trusted trader scheme is well established. But it doesn't replace the need for clarity about what that customs border arrangement is."

"A hard border is felt in the differences on either side. So, it is felt on what a business or a company have to do in order to move their goods or services across.".. "It is not just in terms of infrastructure." Barriers, obstacles and difficulties to businesses.

In studio, Alex Burghart Con MP, with his vast expertise in the area (snort), disagreed with her. He thinks the solution put forward by the PM is workable. Did I miss a solution?

The EU's policy department on citizens rights and Constitutional affairs published a paper called 'Smart Border 2.0' where they proposed exactly this (the technological border).... They looked at Canada and the US. So people in Europe (sic) say this is possible, the Cons are saying it is possible and this means it may be one way of getting to the end point.

Katy has to come back saying she was commissioned (with David Fenimore) to write a report for the same Committee.She sat beside Lars Karlsson as he presented the report to the European Parliament and it was vey clear that the smart border technology does not avert the need for properly enforcing a customs border. So if you are saying 80% of traders will not face any restrictions crossing the border you are essentially saying you are not enacting a customs border.

Katy Hayward said Lars Karlsson even says he is not clear about the particularities of the Irish case. The is a clear need for distinctive arrangements in relation to Ireland/NI.

This is the report they are talking about. As Hayward said, it doesn't change the barriers, obstacles and difficulties to businesses. Doesn't change regulatory obstacles to trade or business.

www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2017/596828/IPOL_STU(2017)596828_EN.pdf

Excuse mish mash of quoting and paraphrasing.

Katy Hayward links below. She is very good.

pure.qub.ac.uk/portal/en/persons/katy-hayward(a22013b2-7ab5-47ff-bbe9-6683e46c35b8).html

www.agendani.com/uk-eu-joint-report-scenarios-post-brexit-irish-border/

cailleach I was saying that last night on the “other thread”. Enjoyed the slap down to Alex Burghart when he was trumpeting the Smart Borders 2.0 as the answer to the Irish border - that you can’t have an invisible border between two different customs regimes.

This is the report by Katy Hayward and David Phinnemore. Sorry about my previous spelling.

www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/STUD/2017/596826/IPOL_STU(2017)596826_EN.pdf

Agree, Agnes. The trouble has been, and still is, wall to wall Alex Burgharts have commandeered the airwaves and print, with ne'er a whiff of someone like Katy Hayward to cut through the fog of equivocation.

Food prices ate already rising
But yeah I'm thinking 25% increase is a conservative estimate

Activated only in 2017, the ban on mobile roaming charges allows users across the European Union to use their mobile call and data allowances in any other EU nation without additional charges, while out-of-allowance usage is charged as though they were in their home nation.

I recall Theresa May crowing about how the Tories had implemented this. I posted on her twitter page to remind people that it was EU legislation. I doubt whether she will be crowing about how they have decided to take it away from us again, costing us all more money.

Cailliaech1 thanks for linking report. Katy Hayward was fab on the DP yesterday. Calmly and quietly stating the facts.

Rising food prices? Resumption of roaming charges? Trouble with the NI border? Giant lorry park in Kent? Can't book flights?

It'll all be (simultaneously) What Was Expected Because Leavers Knew What They Voted For, Any Price Is Worth It For Freedom
and yet The Fault of Traitorous Remoaners Thinking Negatively.

A pithy, inclusive summary Elements.