Westminstenders: Throwing Boomerangs

[RedToothBrush]

British politics and media in a nutshell.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boomerang_effect_(psychology)#Political_beliefs

No EU progress, no discussion. Just this. Keep everyone in line by bouncing boomerangs.

Disaster capitalism looms, they just have to get us to the edge of the cliff before the centre reforms. That's it.

If the legal roads to stop Brexit are closed as David Allen Green says, then how do you force the political flood gates to open, especially with both the far left and the far right using micro-aggression against the public to keep the centre ground weak?

Answers on a ballot paper on 3rd May.

Mind you, even for a small country, £800 million should not be a devastating blow to the economy as a whole
In the UK, it would be rounding error, less than the DUP bung.

It would however have localised effects on the RoI beef producers, especially those who export mainly to the Uk

Barnier speech in Germany today:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-23/eu-s-barnier-warns-u-k-it-must-produce-its-post-brexit-vision

Signaling how talks have hit an impasse less than six months before a preliminary deadline in October, Barnier said the U.K. needed to explain its “vision” and come up with a solution to keep the Irish border invisible.

“It is now up to the U.K. to come up with its vision for the future, which should confirm the U.K.’s red lines or adapt them,”

Genius solution to the Irish border problem. We need a referendum on the island of Ireland to reunite ROI with NI and all will be happy in the UK out of the EU
If this is rejected all the Irish should be microchipped. Yep that will work
www.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/james-obrien/james-obrien-microchipping-irish-border-brexit/

They still have to find additional customers there for their beef, to replace lost UK ones
So it is a worrying threat for the RoI if Brexiters ever get control of negotiations
I would predict Irish beef would get extremely popular in other EU countries, particularly when the EU slap tariffs on British Beef (and whatever else) in retaliation.

Plus...www.rte.ie/news/2018/0416/954740-beef-agriculture-china/

Ireland has recently signed beef deals with Saudi Arabia and China.

The port of Cork is to be expanded.

The 18th century may invoke images of halcyon days for many English (inexplicably) but they were a dark age in Ireland unless you were born rich and a member of the Established Church, culminating in the violence of 1798 and the subsequent Act of Union.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Ireland_(1691%E2%80%931800)

I have to admit to being a bit conflicted over who to vote for in the upcoming local elections , I have had some dealings with the Conservative candidate at a local level and she has been factual, helpful and has been known to criticise national government policy, although as far as local council elections are concerned I would imagine that last bit would be true of all !

www.theguardian.com/society/2018/apr/24/food-bank-use-trussell-trust-universal-credit-figures

… food banks in areas where the full universal credit service had been in place for 12 months or more were four times as busy,
recording an average 52% increase in the number of three-day emergency food packages distributed.

The trust said many universal credit claimants had come to food banks after long waits for payment and administrative problems pushed them into debt, ill health and rent arrears.

JRM must be delighted at this uplifting behaviour

Thanks mathanxiety for the link to Irish history. We learn so little of it in school. A bit about Oliver Cromwell, and maybe the Easter Rising and that was about it for me, and I doubt whether subsequent generations have done better.

What surprises me about Rees-Mogg is that he is very much a Catholic, but I understand his Catholicism comes via Irish ancestors, (as it does for the majority in the UK), so why isn't he conflicted? Why is he now playing the part of an absentee Anglo-Irish landowner by talking about wrecking the Irish beef industry?

Why the heck isn't David Lammy on Labour's front bench? There is a lot of dross on the front bench, yet someone of Lammy's calibre is relegated to the sidelines.

I would qualify that by saying that some of the front bench haven't had time to up their game before they were shunted forward due to the dearth of Corbyn aficionados.

There are others who are there yonks and really are disappointing.

I wonder if Lammy could be leadership quality. Probably not Macheviavellian enough.

Peregrina, Thatcher's great granny was Irish. She remembered this after she stated she was completely English/British.

Sorry to go into a fourth post . Saying dross about people is a bit offhand. Not suited for that particular position would be more correct. More people who maybe would do better jobs in the background. Horses for courses.

I think Lammy is viewed as someone who does not play well with others, so even if he wanted I'm not sure how much support internally he would get.

I say that as someone who loves Lammy btw. I wish there were more of his type of politician around even if I don't always agree with him.

Microchip Irish people ????

Microchip Irish people
Holy crap I missed that earlier.
What if you're dual, do you get half a microchip? Or are you a second class citizen and full Irish citizens third class within their own country?
And there are people who claim that there's no anti-Irish sentiment around

That was from a mad hatter on James O'Brien's programme.

Great from JRM. He was saying how it was going to be wonderful for British people getting bargain basement food and shoes. Now if he wants to slap on 70% tariffs on Irish beef, he would have to do it to all other countries the UK does not have an arrangement with.

China has a nice big population. Of all Irish products, I don't think Irish beef will run short of people from countries around the world who desire it. Mainly a grass fed high quality product. The abundance of rain is great for the grass, you know. There is an anecdote about it in one of Richard Corrigans cookbooks. On visiting a restaurant in Germany, the chef pulled open the door to where the meat was kept. He said they used Irish beef because of the quality. And on this occasion, of course the plural of anecdote is data!

I must admit, I'd prefer to have good quality meat from animals kept to a high welfare standard one or two days a week than poor standards more often.

I must admit, I'd prefer to have good quality meat from animals kept to a high welfare standard one or two days a week than poor standards more often.

The problem is that is such a minority view, there are very few outlets that will cater for you

Can anyone read this and still think all the 3 million EU nationals have nothing to worry about?

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/apr/24/canadian-woman-told-to-leave-uk-margaret-obrien

First they came for the Communists, ...

Can anyone read this and still think all the 3 million EU nationals have nothing to worry about?

Doesn't really matter what UK readers think now. The EU has all the proof it needs - from the UKs own mouth - to ensure that every painful non-step of Brexit is nailed down (rather like the chairs in the benefit office described in that article ). Not only will the EU not trust the UK. They will make it 100% plain for the world to see that they don't - and why.

I always find what the individual sector publications are saying better than the MSM.Has this been posted from the farmer's weekly?

www.fwi.co.uk/news/farmers-face-labour-struggle-after-brexit.htm

In East Anglia, fruit growers Boxford (Suffolk) Farms said it was a “hard sell” but foreign workers coming to the UK helped support British jobs. It said the company group employed more than 300 seasonal workers – supporting the employment of 283 full-time UK staff.

UK workers were much slower at fruit picking, said Boxford (Suffolk) Farms in a submission to the migration committee. They were reluctant to take manual harvest jobs, didn’t want to work long hours and were less willing to start early if the crop and weather dictated.

Without overseas workers, UK-produced food would become more expensive and sales would diminish. “The worse-case scenario is of course that if there are no seasonal workers at all then UK grown fruit and veg will simply cease to be produced.”

It said the company group employed more than 300 seasonal workers – supporting the employment of 283 full-time UK staff.

Immigrants have to spend money somewhere ...

An interesting exercise to get an alternative measure of whether throwing in our membership is still seen a good idea would be to sort of do a survey of trade publications. It would be useful to see what all their editorials are saying. So, for example, what do:

Farmers' weekly
Cranes today
Estates Gazette
Dentistry magazine
Global reinsurance
Etc etc all think.

If April becomes less manic I'll investigate...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Britishbusinesss_magazines

Tide. Turning?

Daily Express Editor Admits Paper's Front Pages Have Been 'Downright Offensive.'
He said some were Islamophobic.

m.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/daily-express-editor-admits-papers-front-pages-have-been-downright-offensive_uk_5adf33ade4b0b2e811334429?pydn&utm_hp_ref=uk-homepage

Re tide turning - not really? New editor after mirror takeover - however the establishment obviously not keen on losing a tory mouthpiece - culture secretary 'minded to issue a public interest intervention' - one of the grounds being 'sufficient plurality of views in newspapers'