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.

[mathanxiety]

www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-43707535/ex-taoiseach-bertie-ahern-people-would-pull-down-irish-border

Bertie Aherne speaks on the anniversary of the GFA, which is upon us.
Border infrastructure would be torn down, he says, and Ireland may end up playing hardball.

www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-politics-43673264
Sinn Fein managed to winkle Brexit impact models out of the NI Civil Service. A bleak picture no matter how you look at it.

[DGRossetti]

Make it illegal for any MP to lie in parliament or knowingly deceive the public.

Or, alternatively, remove parliamentary privilege for things said inthe HoC. (Lying in parliament is already supposed to be out of play ...)

[RedToothBrush]

Owen Smith @ owensmith_MP
David Davis’ claim in @thetimes this morning that concerns about Brexit & the Irish Border only emerged with the collapse of Stormont and the new Taoiseach are utter rubbish. Enda Kenny, Martin McGuinness AND Arlene Foster all warned about it.

John Ruddy @ jruddy99
I seem to remember John Major and Tony Blair actually warn about it before the referendum.

AAAaaaaarrrrrrrggggghhhhhhhhh!&#=*%!!!!

Just how much did these politicians stick their fingers in their ears going la, la, la I can't hear you!

This was the no1 reason I voted remain! Its like 2008 all over again and Gordon Brown declaring we could not have predicted nor seen the financial crisis coming. DH and I saw it coming a bloody mile off and it influenced our decision making process buying a house in 2007. We know it was talked about in the press for at least eighteen months before it happened.

What parallel dimension do these people who are paid to know this shit, live in???!!

[RedToothBrush]

www.politicshome.com/news/uk/political-parties/labour-party/news/94259/ex-northern-ireland-secretaries-issue-stark#sthash.x9w9aIsp.uxfs
Ex-Northern Ireland Secretaries issue stark warning over Brexit risk to Good Friday Agreement

Five former Northern Ireland Secretaries have joined forces to warn that a hard border on the island after Brexit would threaten “the very existence” of the Good Friday Agreement.

In an open letter, Peter Mandelson, John Reid, Paul Murphy, Peter Hain and Shaun Woodward urged the Government to put peace in Northern Ireland “above its desire to have Brexit at any cost”.

[Cailleach1]

This is amazing. The difference in gun restrictions and gun deaths between the US and Japan.

twitter.com/MiraSorvino/status/965412515025846272

This is from the BBC. Once you could depend on it. I'll look for another source, too.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-38365729

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/gun-deaths-eliminated-america-learn-japan-australia-uk-norway-florida-shooting-latest-news-a8216301.html

Not to divert. Just thought it was amazing.

[Cailleach1]

Theresa Villiers was never really pressed on NI during the ref campaign. By any interviewer or presenter. The only time she was put a tad under pressure to give a fuller answer was once by Jon Snow after the result.

As for Owen Patterson. Well, what can you say?

Owen Smith had/has a really good grasp of things. Don't know anything about Tony Lloyd.

[BigChocFrenzy]

Let's fight not to follow the US; stop the oligarchs trapping journalists to spout hard right myths

How America's largest local TV owner turned its news anchors into soldiers in Trump's war on the media

Those anchors and journalists are trapped by contracts that force them to pay 20% of their annual pay to leave before their contract ends and forbid them going to work for a competitor.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/08/sinclair-broadcast-anchors-us-labor-contracts

Local News Anchors Recite Script In Unison

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/04/02/598794433/video-reveals-power-of-sinclair-as-local-news-anchors-recite-script-in-unison

[DGRossetti]

The UK is allegedly (because I don't trust anything they say) to stop the collection of schoolchildrens nationalities.

www.theregister.co.uk/2018/04/10/government_climb_down_pupil_nationality_country_data/

Which confuses me, because I thought the Home Office claimed it didn't collect this in the first place

Personally I'm not really a big fan of censuses trying to record too much data. Has bad antecedents.

[lalalonglegs]

There's a good Long Read in the Guardian today about the dangers of relying too much on Commonwealth trade written, with unusual candour, by the head of the Institute of the Commonwealth Studies:

One sign of the Commonwealth’s diminishing significance is just how little people know about it. When, in 2010, the Royal Commonwealth Society published a survey of attitudes across its member states, it found that only half of those questioned knew that the Queen was head of the Commonwealth. A quarter of Jamaicans thought it was the US president, Barack Obama, and 10% of South Africans and Indians thought it was the former UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan

For Britain’s administrative elite, the Commonwealth is a bit like a grandfather clock that has been in the family for generations. It hasn’t told the right time for decades, but no one has the heart to take such a treasured heirloom to the tip. All the same, in recent years, Britain’s mainstream parties had become increasingly reluctant to place significant weight on the Commonwealth as an instrument of the UK’s diplomatic, economic or even overseas aid policy. Then, in June 2016, a seismic shock was delivered to the UK’s sense of its place in the world when 52% of voters in that month’s referendum opted to leave the EU.

...It is worth noting, too, that in the run-up to the referendum, Commonwealth member states were virtually as one in wishing Britain to remain part of the EU. Behind this uncharacteristic outbreak of unanimity is the simple fact that Brexit throws the UK’s future trading relationships into confusion. The working assumption is that the current EU agreements, which allow many developing Commonwealth countries access to the UK market on advantageous terms, will lapse in Britain at the moment that Brexit takes effect.

[lonelyplanetmum]

OMG. I'm just catching up on thread so this may have been posted.

Is this FT article about a sovereignty museum an April fool?

If not - I'm incredulous with the dishonesty, misrepresentation and sheer ignorance.

www.ft.com/content/d4a3a5c8-3be9-11e8-b7e0-52972418fec4

We -never -lost -bloody -sovereignty. It's so disingenuous.

I hate what this country has become.

[Icantreachthepretzels]

Sounds like a new pet project for Farage now he's got nothing better to do and wants to remain relevant. It's an embarrassing joke of an idea, but it will never got off the ground. And who the hell would pay to visit a museum whose star exhibits were snippets from anti -EU speeches? Colour me fascinated!

I did enjoy Nick Clegg's contribution to the article, though

[BigChocFrenzy]

Brexit Broadcasting Corporation – it’s how they tell ‘em

http://www.bbc.com/news/live/business-43670311

HSBC have carried out a survey of over 6,000 businesses (from smaller firms to large corporations, in 26 countries and territories worldwide".)

38% of them felt negative about Brexit
33% felt positive
28% think it will have no impact

BBC report on this: "at least 62% of companies surveyed feel that Brexit will be positive, or at least neutral for their business"

1. 66% felt negative or neutral about Brexit, beating that 61%
   
   
2. They rounded up the maths: - 33+28=61%.
   Even allowing for rounding down of 33 & 28, this should be at most 62% positive or neutral
   
   Also reported
   “We know that countries like India will grow in their UK imports by 13%”
   
   BUT
   13% growth to UK exports to India – if 13% is really achieved after Brexit - would only be about £745M annually
   
   UK annual exports to the EU are about £236 Bn
   plus exports to countries that have EU trade deals or currently being negotiated are another £171Bn
   giving a total of £407Bn.
   
   ==> UK exports due to EU if we stayed = 546 x the expected growth in exports to India
   Not 546%, but 546 x , i.e. 54,600 % of export growth to India
   
   What a gamble !
   Risking losing part of a huge earner, in the hope of gaining something that is a tiny % of the size.
   Betting on a 546:1 outsider

[frumpety]

Place marking

[RedToothBrush]

We need to talk about power cuts.

We've just lost power, just outside manchester. Simultaneously in Mansfield the power went.

DH has just rung from central manchester. No apparent issue there.

He has heard of several issues in the last couple of days relating to power surges.

Apparently a number of companies have been affected and the register was reporting that the LDs and UKIP were affected.

I have my tin foil hat on at this point.

So far the power has gone three times here. The fuse for the lights has blown.

[mathanxiety]

You have to wonder if there are people who are not really able to visualise the difference between a million and a billion.

[RedToothBrush]

Birmingham had one earlier today

www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/birmingham-plunged-darkness-power-cut-14514449#ICID=sharebar_twitter

[BigChocFrenzy]

maths Most of the public - and the politicians - have more than your "anxiety" about maths !

[HesterThrale]

Watching the Zuckerberg Senate hearing live on YouTube. Very interesting. Lots of incisive questions about Cambridge Analytica and Russian interference.
Zuckerberg does look rattled. But is he going to get away with just saying he's 'so so so so sorry'? I wonder.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=Tuln2V7FZuE

[Dobby1sAFreeElf]

I was about to have a but have just read that Nick Griffin is backing Labour and I can only assume I'm already smashed

[SusanWalker]

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-brexit-strategy-barry-gardiner-frontbencher-jeremy-corbyn-european-union-uk-leave-a8297641.html%3famp

Barry Gardiner on tape calling labour's Brexit policy bollocks as we will not be able to have same benefits. Which of course we all know.

[BigChocFrenzy]

ALERT !!

mobile.twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/983814656249794560?s=20

Carole Cadwalladr
@carolecadwalla
Say WHAT?
…
"Market dominance"
"price-fixing cartel"
"European Commission"
Weird how keen @sun was on Brexit

European Commission raids Murdoch's Fox offices in London over sports rights 'cartel'

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2018/04/10/european-commission-raids-murdochs-fox-hq-london/amp/?WT.mcid=tmggsharetw&twitterrimpression=true

The British offices of the Murdoch entertainment empire 21st Century Fox have been raided by investigators from the European Commission
…
Article discussed by author:
https://mobile.twitter.com/ScottMStedman/status/983810080339406848

Important to note that the raid was conducted by the European Commission which has the power to investigate "businesses suspected of abusing their dominance of a market or being involved in a price fixing cartel."

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

My eyebrows were raised by simultaneous power cuts in our region earlier this month due to power surges.

[BigChocFrenzy]

Irish Times has Dr Johnson's Brexit Dictionary

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/dr-johnson-s-brexit-dictionary-1.3455897

BOTS
A species of small worms found in the entrails of horses.
Virtual worms which infect the body politic.

FUSCATION
The act of darkening or obscuring.
So, foxation: a cunning act of obscuring one’s own tracks.
Also, forfucksation: resigned feeling among Remainers.

EXIT
The term set in the margin of plays to mark the time at which the player goes off stage.
Recess; departure; act of quitting the stage; act of quitting the theatre of life.
Passage out of any place.
Way by which there is a passage out.

BREXIT.
Term set in the margin of history to mark the time at which Britain wanders towards the edge of the stage.
Act of trying to quit the stage of history.
A desired but elusive exit from Europe.
As ‘Though the ministry looked long and hard, they could not find the Brexit.’

BROATS:
A kind of coarse grain on which Britain will depend after Brexit.

[BigChocFrenzy]

Comedy or Tragedy ? Typical ignorance from DD

Speaking at a conference in London, the Brexit Secretary said that he had not anticipated the tough approach to negotiations taken by Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, who took over from Enda Kenny last June.

“We had a change of government, south of the border, and with quite a strong influence from Sinn Féin, and that had an impact in terms of the approach,”
he said

– though he was corrected by members in the audience, who told him that no change of government had taken place (just the Taoiseach)
< wake up, DD ! >
…
In a statement to The London Times, the Irish government quickly rejected Mr Davis’s claims:
“(The Irish) position is unchanged since the time of the 2016 UK referendum on EU membership and is one which has cross-party support in Dáil Éireann.”

Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney also described the comments as “way off the mark” and “nonsense”.
< i.e. typical DD >

Mr Coveney told RTE’s Morning Ireland that it would help if Mr Davis came to Dublin where he could learn about Irish politics
and would realise that the idea of an Irish government being influenced by Sinn Féin was “nonsense”.