Westminstenders: Rebel or Reveal

[RedToothBrush]

The EU Withdrawal Bill made it through the Commons. Though May did not manage it unscathed.

In an attempt to divide and conquer the Rebels, May might have damaged trust. We shall find out. The Grieve Amendment faces the Lords. We also will see if the Lords will back down on their amendments or apply some new ones for the Commons to deal with in Parliamentary Ping Pong.

Aaron Banks has been exposed as being pally with the Russian Embassy in a plot twist that absolutely everyone saw coming.

Meanwhile the EU thinks we have already run out of time and is preparing options to extend talks beyond the a50 deadline. These include having MEPs for the 2019 - 2024 session.

There is also growing talk around Europe that freedom of movement in its current form is unsustainable. Ironically we might see the EU adopt something akin to Cameron's pre-referendum proposals as the EU reforms.

Theresa May has also announced - at a moment when she is looking particularly weak - a new tax for the NHS, cunningly disguised in spin as 'the Brexit dividend'. Of course shareholders don't always get dividends and at times of poor economic performance instead might be asked to stump up extra capital...Expect to see buses with £350 million of the side just in time for the next general election cycle.

And so the Zombie PM limbers on towards the end of the summer session and the relative safety of the summer holidays. More drama, cringing and disbelief guaranteed before we get there.

the Netherlands was expected to take a big hit from Brexit - but looks like a big grab instead

Also look at how kind the politicians & institutions are being to UK expats, in contrast to the fear E27 expats still have in the UK

https://inews.co.uk/opinion/columnists/amsterdam-brexit-dividend/

the European Medicines Agency (EMA) will move here from London in 2019 with 900 skilled jobs

^ The Dutch are excited because the trickle-down economic boost is an estimated €1.5bn^

The EMA was only the first major European agency to announce a move.
Corporations from banks to airlines are making similar plans.
…
Property prices are back to 2008 levels here, booming at a post-Brexit rate of 15 per cent plus.
< the whole Frankfurt region is booming too, so is most of Germany >
…
Amsterdam has found €10m to fund 1,500 extra school places for the children of visa holders

The mayor wrote to all 16,000 Britons who call the city home, guaranteeing a maximum protection of civil rights post-Brexit.

The University of Amsterdam even published a report into how best the city could do so.
…
Cities abroad are fighting over the spoils of Brexit, which has a tangible social and economic dividend.
Our leaders must take note, and be more honest with us.

Well said red 👏

If you really believed that all humans are equal, your house would be filled to the rafters with the homeless, with drug addicts, with adopted children, with former convicts, with MH sufferers, with refugees. Or you'd simply have given it away to them.

But like 99.999% of the human race, you in fact naturally prioritize its inhabitants above the countless strangers its resources could help if your actions matched your utopian ideological signalling.

Laura Kuenssberg @bbclaurak
1. Morning all - Cabinet rapidly convened for this morning - remember they didn’t have full Cab agreement of tax rise for NHS before the announcement
2. Meeting is to discuss NHS announcement generally - would be worth being fly on wall to hear if Hammond says anything on the supposed Brexit dividend that Treasury doesn’t believe in
3. And will be interesting later to see if PM tries to stick to that language or ditches it altogether

Given what Hunt has already said this morning, and how May has just magicked up money that Hammond has repeatedly said, just isn't there, it could well be interesting.

To be a fly on the wall of the cabinet in 2018.

www.thehindu.com/news/international/uk-excludes-india-from-relaxed-student-visa-rules/article24181294.ece
U.K. excludes India from relaxed student visa rules

^The list has been expanded to cover China and other countries
Britain’s efforts to reform the visa application process for international students from a number of countries will not extend to India — a development that highlights recent strains in the bilateral relations between the two countries since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to London earlier this year.^

Announcing a wider overhaul of the U.K. immigration regime, the British government said it would be expanding the list of countries from which students would be able to provide reduced documentation when applying for Tier 4 student visas to include China and other countries, including Bahrain, Indonesia, and the Maldives. However, India was not on the list.

U.K. excludes India from relaxed student visa rules

One of the questions on my last YouGov survey was whether I supported the proposed reported relaxed visa requirements for nurses and doctors.

I didn't - and don't - for various reasons. Mainly because it removes any incentive to reform the UKs pisspoor STEM sector. But also because it would (if implemented, but I remain deeply cynical) just be another tool to discriminate and ferment divisions.

I wonder how spreadsheet Phil is going to deal with this. Bet he is seething.

Amsterdam has found €10m to fund 1,500 extra school places for the children of visa holders

The mayor wrote to all 16,000 Britons who call the city home, guaranteeing a maximum protection of civil rights post-Brexit.

The University of Amsterdam even published a report into how best the city could do so.

Yup two of our friends families with mixed British/ French and Italian/French parents had lived and worked in London and planned to send their DC to Uni here.

The families don't know each other. Both of them changed their mind after the ref and opted to spend their money sending the DCs to Uni in Amsterdam instead.

A very unpleasant rant there from @Commonaware.
Not sure it has anything at all to do with Brexit. Maybe there should be a thread heading of 'Rabid Rants'
The only ones out of the list I would have serious reservations about would be drug addicts, particularly as their 'issue' is/was a personal choice. A 'former convict' has paid their 'debt' to society.

Yes, very unpleasant, and weirdly "off", like many "visitors".
They just don't get the tone right, however hard they try.

Oh, I dunno. I think they've finally stopped dissembling and have their tone exactly right. No more trying to pretend that anything good will come from Brexit, or that Brexit makes any sort of sense economically, politically, or militarily, or that they were ever in it to stand up for ordinary people (the food bank rants put paid to that) - just an endless stream of posts that make it clear that it's all just an excuse to plant a boot in someone's face.

I am glad they are letting it all hang out.

just an endless stream of posts that make it clear that it's all just an excuse to plant a boot in someone's face.

You wonder where the anger comes from. Is their life really that shit that they want someone else to suffer? Or have they just been indoctrinated by the tabloid blame culture?

As a defender of free speech it is good that all voices are heard.
It becomes apparent very quickly how ill thought out some of the 'claims' of the more extreme are and given a fairly short time they will contradict themselves.

I always think the opening up your home analogy is very odd. Your home is your own personal private space, whereas the country in general is a public space. They are just people, like all the other people who live in your road or street. I wouldn't invite my neighbours to live in my house either. That doesn't mean I think they shouldn't live on my road.

Oh, god woman that report in the US is so distressing 😔😔😡

commonaware

U ok hun?
(PA head tilt)

😁

What the relationship between the fact human beings are all equal and letting anyone and everyone coming in to live in a country??

The fact that we are all equal and should be treated equally has nothing to do with the fact that unfortunately we do not all have the same luck re money/war and peace/illness etc...

Being equal means you are treated with respect and according to laws, incl human rights. It doesn’t mean giving everything to everyone and never has.
(Having said that, if we are all about giving everything away to others, I wouldn’t be against a slice of the cake that JRM and others have for themsleves)

Well with withdrawing from ECHR we won't have to worry about our human rights...

...We won't have any

I wonder how many rabid leavers realise that Churchill was one of the architects of the ECHR?

"Rabid rants" - yes. Someone shpuld ask mnhq about this!

If common humanity were so common, why is there so little of it about?

(Paraphrase of what a colleague once said about common sense)

I think that certain posters need to look at what the word "humanity" means. Most people have it. There are, however, exceptions Ditto with empathy

Whoop!!

Just heard one of my funding applications has been agreed!!

Phew!

Marking place (belatedly). Thanks Red.

mrsr amazing!

I believe in the state's role in ensuring that human beings are not treating people like rats. In terms of 'doing it myself', you don't know what anyone here, does or doesn't do for charitable causes. There are limitations to what the individual can do which have an effective impact. Its generally speaking far better to pool resources to achieve those kind of aims.

Personally, as I say, I think its a collective responsibility, that is enshrined within the principles of human rights, which I do believe in strongly.

We have, as a nation, managed this for the last 70 years. In recent years, Tory thinking has been to cut back on this, by keeping taxes lower than they need to be. As a nation we pay less per head for the NHS than our EU neighbours, yet expect our health care to be on a par with them. Which is utterly bollocks. We also have had incredibly poor planning for our aging population. Instead we have for decades ignored the issue. Now we have all this come and bite us on the arse. The same can also be said for school places, because we've been more interested in ideological schemes like academies and grammar school and free schools rather than just making sure we have school places in the areas we need them. We knew there was a baby boom years before it hit schools, but we sat on hands and did nothing because 'it would all just work out fine'.

Our entire mentally as a country is to abdicate responsibility and take the attitude that it will all just work itself out. Except it won't. And when the shit hits the fan, its everyone else's fault but our own. Its just other people who are undeserving leeches, rather than people who have been utterly failed by lazy middle class policy makers who live with their heads in the sand and their bigotry as an excuse for not understanding that its just not that simple. As long as they are ok, its just fine.

But hell yes, do carry on spouting from the 'Fascism for Dummies' handbook and justifying it because everyone else is just virtue signalling. God forbid anyone should know or even have been a person who has been in an unfortunate position in need of help and might actually 'get it'.

We NEED to pay more taxes and we NEED immigration. Don't get me wrong, we also NEED better education and training for British Born and Bred People (that includes people who are not white), but when you ignore the chain reaction of events and decisions which lead to the problems we as a world now face, you really are not going to find the solution. Unless, indeed, your solution is one which is rather final...

It's a relief!!!

I wonder how those who are against immigration are going to cope with the fact that more students from other countries will be able to come here.