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.

amp.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/27/port-of-rotterdam-infrastructure-plans-stall-amid-brexit-uncertainty?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other&__twitter_impression=true
Rotterdam reveals Brexit fears over port capacity – but says Dover has it worse
Dutch delay spending on new port facilities amid hope of British U-turn on customs union

Ooh...

Sam Coates Times @ samcoatestimes
So @NSoames as a strong defender of her on Thursday, do you think her response tonight is good enough?

Nicholas Soames @ nsoames
#yesmostdefinitely

Sam Coates Times @ samcoatestimes
Urgent “shore up Amber on Twitter” operation underway, which is as spontaneous as it looks

Don't forget that to many people in small towns and villages, and immigrant is someone who comes from the town ten miles away!

Weird Brexit news from Ireland !

NI farmer, a former president of the Ulster Farmers' Union, became the 1st Unionist ever elected to the Seanad (RoI Senate)

• he is a Remainer who has been very active in opposing Brexit & highlighting its effects on NI farming.

He was supported by all parties including Sinn Fein unionist, in this week's Senate by-election

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-43920260
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-43887956

Ben Glaze @ benglaze
Michael Gove has just suggested on #bbcr4today that Home Office officials are leaking documents against Amber Rudd to divert the news agenda from Labour's problem with #Antisemitism

#Politics2018
A variation on 'but her emails'.

BTW.
Happy Ed Balls Day.

Dutch delay spending on new port facilities amid hope of British U-turn on customs union

Is it possible that internal communications take place? Like Message from the U.K. "Er don't spend that much yet."

Presumably, if the Dutch spend billions acquiring land, building sheds, employing staff etc then they'd have a justified compensation claim against us if their quite proper and helpful advance planning proves unnecessary?

What. A. Bloody.Mess.

All born of our 'but we are different, more important, islander isolationist, non team playing, arrogant' hubris.

Goes off humming ABBA's new " I Still have faith in EU "song.

Home Office officials are leaking documents against Amber Rudd to divert the news agenda from Labour's anti semitism.

How ridiculous.

Gove is in my view one of those batshit crazy though highly intelligent people who generally manage to conceal the craziness behind a facade of reason, but occasionally it will break through, as in the Tory leadership backstabbing of BoJo. Whenever I hear Gove on the radio I expect him to suddenly start speaking in tongues and rush out of the studio knocking people out of his way as he careers down the corridor (I may have an overactive imagination).

Agreed about Gove. As the parent of a young child I am incredulous at his education ' reforms' and how there hasn't been more resistance.

I see him more as a sinister puppet, though he could still speak in tongues.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=jwuSXfbkI-U

So if the current home secretary didn't input the policy of targets then who did? A civil servant? A predecessor? If AR steps down does that save any further questions from being asked?

I've been struggling to articulate my discomfort at the government's "defence" of the Windrush/Commonwealth immigration fiasco.

They've been deflecting criticism by saying that they were never illegal. That is true - and fantastic that they have finally been forced to acknowledge this - but highly disingenuous.

The point was that in the run up to this, they were assuming that they were illegal - and putting all the onus onto the poor and disadvantaged (and even the not-so-poor and the -not-so-disadvantaged) to prove that they were legal. Whatever happened to the so-called British sense of justice? To "innocent until proven guilty"?

And even if Amber Rudd didn't know about targets for deporting "illegals" (and while I have some sympathy very little about the fact that she was only cc-ed in - if it was for "information only", then that assumes that it was for an already agreed policy - so she was indeed responsible for its content), it is naive at best or incompetent at worst for her not to considered how the government was going to achieve its objective of making sure that illegal immigrants left . How would they know if they'd achieved it? How did they think it would happen?

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/26/hostile-environment-britain-disabled-people-windrush-benefits

As someone with a partner suffering a chronic, incurable, capricious disease (Multiple Sclerosis) I can't really argue.

It's hard not to accuse anyone who has a disabled friend or relative, but votes Tory of being a cnut.

Meanwhile, it seems DexEU certainly haven't any faith in tech solutions for the NI border

inews.co.uk/news/politics/brexit-department-fails-to-consult-on-technical-solutions-to-irish-border/

The Whitehall department in charge of Brexit has failed to approach a single external company to obtain ideas of how technology will help solve the Northern Irish border issue.

(contd)

Oh, you know that EU Visa scheme ?

In the absence of any guarantee of FoM, it's probable that UK citizens travelling to the EU will be subject to criminal record checks, and may be refused entry if they're not up to scratch.

I wonder if there's a window of opportunity to make unpaid child maintenance an issue ?

Surely the EU visa is only supposed to work one way - we charge the furriners £10 to get in, but they let us in for €0 because we are speshul - we had an Empire, dontcha know?

Remember the surprising % of Leavers who wanted to retain the same rights to work, live & retire in the EU
but were against FOM

Maybe like the Trump supporters who regarded Obamacare as the devil*s work
but demanded to keep the Affordable Care Act

T'other thing that I meant to mention is that this issue of non illegal perfectly legal immigrants caught in a Kafka-esque nightmare of trying to prove their legality is Not. New.

An SNP MP was raising it in the House of Commons Two. Years. ago . But of course, because it was the SNP, the issues she was raising were dismissed as the SNP just making a mountain out of a molehill and her constituent's nightmare problem was just an anomaly.

"Surely the EU visa is only supposed to work one way - we charge the furriners £10 to get in, but they let us in for €0 because we are speshul - we had an Empire, dontcha know? "

Absolutely spot on, Peregrina Completely sums up Little Englander Leavers' mentality.

I wonder if this EU visa proposal is like a real visa ? Not only with no guarantee of entry (see: US immigration) but also the power to expel (and ban) people who get into trouble whilst in the EU ?

If so, there is going to be the mother of all backlashes, as sports fans (among others) discover the joys of being deported - permanently ...

as sports fans (among others) discover the joys of being deported - permanently ...

A genuine bonus of Brexit then! I am sure that some countries would be delighted to be rid of some UK sports 'fans'. Would this include stag and hen parties which got out of hand too??

But, but, but they need our stag and hen dos

www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/feb/14/boris-johnson-urges-remainers-recognise-benefits-leaving-eu

Robert Peston@Peston
Seems to have been a jaw-dropping £300bn swing in foreign investment flows to and from UK, in a negative sense, between 2016 and 2017 according to latest OECD figures.
Nothing to do with Brexit, of course
3:44 PM - Apr 27, 2018

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-deal-talks-latest-eu-immigration-free-movement-offer-a8326101.html?amp&__twitter_impression=true
Brexit: Britain set to offer EU immigration deal 'very similar' to free movement
Exclusive: A new deal would see EU citizens benefiting from visa-free travel after the UK leaves

Don't recall this being linked:

US farmers say chlorine-washed chicken should be part of a UK free trade deal
www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-43899603

I did like () this quote..... "I would not argue that it is a lower standard, I would argue it's a different standard," from Roger Johnson, president of America's National Farmers Union

I did notice however that he claimed that we would be able to see from labels where meat came from (but would we be able to tell it was chlorine washed/hormone grown?) - some suspect that a US-UK trade deal wouldn't allow labelling that would let UK consumers boycott such products. And how much choice would (eg) school children or NHS patients have?