Westminstenders: From Russia with Love

[RedToothBrush]

Things just got scary.

The colony of US puppet state or a vassel state of the EU?

Why not just let market forces take their course and let Russia buy the UK?

How did we get to stories of spies and mafia who buy politicians?

Just who are our enemies and allies?

Won't someone think of the effect on house prices in Salisbury?

Try not to don your foil hat, brace yourself and resist shouting 'money laundering too loud'.

More turbulence ahead.

Brexit still seems like such a cracking idea doesn't it?

Sorry, forgot to include title
UK set to back down over fishing quotas during Brexit transition

Oh look, another back down

Cue another noisy tantrum from the ERG group and noises off from Farage, but precious little practical action from them. I really think it's time they put up or shut up.

Personally I am agnostic about whether it was a Russian state intervention or something else. I don't have the expertise to make that judgement, even if we had access to the evidence, which we don't.

My comment was directed at the naive idea that there is nothing in this for the Russian government - it's fairly easy to come up with rational arguments for why Russia might have done this, why they chose the UK, and why they did it now: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/13/spy-poisoning-why-putin-may-have-engineered-gruesome-calling-card?CMP=ShareiOSAppp_Other

I thought the FT article on fishing a little muddled and it wasn't clear who has been the more skillful in negotiations.

Under the current arrangements the Westminster Govt has given the fishing rights to a large part of the N Sea catch to a Dutch firm. I would have thought that it would be in their power to renegotiate this, and give these rights to British vessels, which would go quite a long way to solving the problems. Once again, it's the Westminster Govt which is primarily at fault.

I've always been a floating voter with no attachment to any party and similar to Dobby I've always chosen the "closest match" - that being the case, for the foreseeable future my vote will be going to an anti-Brexit party (at the moment there's no point searching for a party that hasn't swallowed the self-ID KoolAid).

www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/the-switch/wp/2018/03/16/facebook-bans-trump-campaigns-data-analytics-firm-for-taking-user-data/?tid=ss_tw-bottom&utm_term=.2e1c396d3f01&__twitter_impression=true
Facebook bans Trump campaign’s data analytics firm for taking user data

Facebook is suspending the Trump-affiliated data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica, after learning that it failed to delete data that it had taken inappropriately from users of the social network, Facebook said late Friday.

Facebook said it was suspending the accounts of Strategic Communication Laboratories, the parent company of Cambridge Analytica, as well as the accounts of University of Cambridge psychologist Aleksandr Kogan and Christopher Wylie of Eunoia Technologies.

Hmmm.

So what happened in the UK?

Data Protection Act looms here.

The imformation commissioner specifically referenced GDPR in the fight against using people’s data in analytics without their knowledge during a Committee hearing

The thing is here that Prof David Carole is an American but he's forcing it through suing in the British courts using British law.

So what happens next? Who gets sucked into it?

David Carroll even.

Legal challenge to Labour over shortlists and transwomen

Campaign launched as Labour states women-only shortlists are open to self-defining women

amp.theguardian.com/society/2018/mar/17/legal-challenge-to-labour-over-shortlists-and-transwomen

Banks, Assange, wigmore and nix were all throwing blame about and accusing each other of lying, and I think even offered to testify (or might have suggested that the others testify - my memory’s not great!) so I hope it isn’t just left there and there are more investigations into who paid whom and who transferred data to whom.

Sorry, that’s a bit context-free. This happened when Alexander nix, the ceo of CA, appeared at the fake news committee and was asked about CA and working with Leave.EU. Wigmore/banks and I think Assange all tweeted along with the live broadcast of the committee meeting, which were then brought up and discussed in the committee. Was a bit like a periscope session!

These Leaked WhatsApp Chats Reveal Just How Brexiteer Tories Fight The "Smeary" BBC

A huge cache of leaked messages show how Eurosceptic Tories have repeatedly pressured the news outlets to shape coverage of Brexit – and joked about cutting off a BuzzFeed News reporter’s testicles.

www.buzzfeed.com/alexspence/these-leaked-whatsapp-chats-reveal-just-how-brexiteer

Well Ben Bradshaw MP is following the CA story, so it isn't going away here, and if more comes out in the US it will be harder to ignore too.

I showed DH the article (he has lot of experience in relation to data protection and law). His reaction was "oh! There a breech of the computer misuse act in there" and commented on how FB were willing to be complicit in that and must have known but are now distancing themselves from the trump administration and thats probably an indication that they know whats to come with Mueller. They suddenly don't want to be anywhere near this.

This is far from done.

It’s a bit depressing that it’ll be mueller’s investigation that’s likely to propel any findings here in the uk, though obviously that’s better than nothing. Why are our politicians content with a small fake news committee dealing with it? I’ve seen than Bradshaw has been on the case but that’s been the situation for awhile and not very much appears to be done about it (though I may have missed things!).

I asked a neighbouring Lib Dem mp about what the appetite was like for digging deeper into this about a month ago and he said it was weren’t set up like America to have a special prosecutor but it seemed a bit of a cop out.

Still, hopefully the sunlight, whatever it’s source, will act as a disinfectant.

Still, hopefully the sunlight, whatever it’s source, will act as a disinfectant
Haven't we been conditioned to SM corruption/manipulation by our very un free media, and gov caving to Leveson 2?
Free, intelligent and analytical press, is/was at least embedded in US constitution and culturally normalised; it just isn't here.

__ Reminder: European Council on 22-23 March will also discuss "Brexit transition"

Hopes for EU backing on Brexit transition plan ‘may be premature’

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/hopes-for-eu-backing-on-brexit-transition-plan-may-be-premature-1.3428395

Differences on transition and Withdrawal Agreement still unresolved

UK optimism that next week’s EU summit will endorse an agreement on its Brexit transition may be premature, EU diplomatic sources have warned.

London has in the last few days been raising expectations that accelerated talks in Brussels this week
and over the weekend could lead to an announcement in Brussels by Brexit secretary David Davis on Monday that differences over the draft agreement on transition have been resolved

< no surprise if there is misunderstanding on the Uk side - iirc, DD hasn't attended the talks so far this year
great way to avoid hearing anything he doesn't want to hear >

The UK government is particularly anxious to give an increasingly edgy business community a clear commitment to the arrangements for transition, as soon as possible
– specifically on the suggested continuity of current rights and obligations over close on two years.

< sounds like the business community is out to get a lot edgier soon >

Reading the Buzzfeed report about the WhatsApp group complaining about the bias of the BBC, I think this is a question of if you can't beat them join them. OK we don't have the contacts that they have, but we can certainly fire of complaints to the BBC with John Humphreys and Question Time being prime candidates.

Differences on transition and Withdrawal Agreement still unresolved

So the Leavers will come back to these threads whinging about the EU 'bullying' poor little UK.

peregrina That seems the only agreed Brexit plan the govt & ERG have:

Ask for unicorns and blame the EU bullies when they are not forthcoming.
Then blame them again if there are empty shelves and lorries covering most of Kent

We are both old enough to have experienced what happens when the plebs are sacrificed to an unswerving ideological revamp of the UK economy:

Unemployment over 2 million (over 12%) in the 1980s, when the Tory ideology then was monetarism
Now it's Brexit

At least MrsT & her cabinet had talent, plans and didn't believe in unicorns.
(They famously just didn't believe in "society," either)

The deindustrialisation and shattering of the economy in the North was done then
and the damage has never been repaired.
Hence the resentment, hopelessness, anger there

Strange that folk memories there have faded enough to believe an even more hard right version of the economics that screwed them the last time

So the Leavers will come back to these threads whinging about the EU 'bullying' poor little UK.
Its been a while since Chipolata made an appearance. That'll be the biggest giveaway.

In the Bonkers Brexit project, we seem to be stuck in phase 1, but have already started phases 3-5 in parallel

The 6 phases of a large project

1. Enthusiasm
2. Disillusionment
3. Panic and hysteria
4. Hunt for the guilty
5. Punishment of the innocent
6. Reward for the uninvolved

Well we've had hubris

So...

Next is nemesis

Then catharsis??

Blimey, Gibraltar has started its emergency Brexit planning:

Gibraltar Is Ready to Let Spain Share Control Over Its Airport

That's a massive shift from the position of all previous Gib govts

They clearly want to get Spanish support for a soft Gib Brexit,
since the UK govt & public doesn't give a shit about a tiny enclave that voted 96% Remain.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-16/gibraltar-is-ready-to-let-spain-share-control-over-its-airport

Gibraltar’s Deputy Chief Minister Joseph Garcia said the British enclave is ready to share its airport with Spain
as it seeks to keep officials in Madrid onside during the Brexit process