Westministers: Operation Over The Cliff

[RedToothBrush]

Bit late and didn't realise the last thread was so close to the end... so this is a very quick OP

What do you think the secret continency plan name the government have in place for the No Deal?

Suggestions Please

That of course, smashed the then Tory party, half of them going off to join the Whigs, who became Liberals, and the rump of the Tories became Conservatives

Which of course is exactly what needs to happen now then p.r.

On Speaking truth to power...

As a re-cap it was Sir Ivan Rogers who resigned eighteen months ago ( UK ambassador to the EU) in January 2017 saying :

“I hope you will continue to challenge ill-founded arguments and muddled thinking and that you will never be afraid to speak the truth to those in power”

He then said his view remained as it has always been. “We do not yet know what the government will set as negotiating objectives for the UK's relationship with the EU after exit.”

This is exactly what the EU are still saying now 18 months later they still don't know. Why isn't the MSM and everyone up in arms about this.

When Olly Robbins succeeded Rogers in the poisoned chalice post of principal private secretary to the prime minister (from his DexEU role) he allegedly sought to have Roger’s old post of permanent representative in Brussels downgraded.

Reports at the time said people. who know both men said Rogers would have been frustrated by his much younger rival trying to seize control . “He would have thought, ‘Olly Robbins is just out of short trousers’”.

So a slight conflict between different Whitehall departments and then eighteen months later we have Robbins also telling ministers they have to be realistic about what could be achieved as Rogers did 18 months before.

Records of cabinet meetings and similar confidential documents go to the National Archives after 30 years - the 30-year rule. At this point most material is released to the public.Hopefully I’ll still be alive and compos mentis enough to read them. Where will we be then I wonder?

Historical context...

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jan/06/dexeu-ivan-rogers-ukrep-oliver-robbins-sms4

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-38503504

"One government figure said that the clear message had been that
ministers may end up having to choose between a Norway-style deal in which Britain remains in the single market but has to accept EU rules, or pursuing a simple free-trade agreement that is strongly opposed by business."

This has been obvious to anyone with the slightest intelligence for at least two years! It has been the premise of these threads since they were started pre-Referendum! The EU have made it clear on multiple occasions! How can ministers have failed to grasp it until now??

Unless I am missing something, Rees-Mogg is onto a loser.

By all means, he can organise a top-flight Tory revolt.

By all means, he could even depose May, and become leader himself.

And then what ? He'd still be the leader of a party which doesn't have a HoC majority, and is still unlikely to get his Hard Brexit anyway.

I think time is doing the work here. Every day that passes is showing that the Tories - especially the Brexiteers are terrified of another GE because it might blow their "will of the people" argument wide open.

Given todays headlines (The BBCs tone leaving casual readers thinking "Oh, good, Brexit was sorted over the weekend") about Mays new proposal whatever it might be, May should now resign and say this is it. Back me and this, or we'll have to change leader. Her equivalent of Majors calling the "bastards" bluff.

www.vulture.com/2018/06/michael-moore-trump-will-try-to-be-president-for-life.html

Michael Moore’s predictions about American politics have been consistently accurate and surprisingly prescient in recent years. (Exhibit A: An essay predicting Donald Trump’s presidential victory months before it actually happened. Exhibit B: An interview anticipating Trump’s Muslim travel ban.) And now, appearing on Real Time last night to chat with Bill Maher, Moore has another political prophecy up his sleeve. That being, Trump will get elected to another term — and maybe more beyond that. “You have to listen this time, because he is going to win the 2020 election,” he explained. “He won’t leave after the second term if he doesn’t have to, if nobody stops him. This man believes in being president for life. He said a few weeks ago, Roosevelt got four terms, why can’t I? He loves President Xi. President Kim. He loves the dictators.”

(contd)

Grease - Smug made the comment that Peel went against the majority of his MPs - who were against the repeal of the Corn Laws. The difference this time, is that a majority of Tory MPs voted Remain, and might just remember they did so if push came to shove.

A point made elsewhere about new laws protecting people with 'Mix n' Match' holidays - not brought to you courtesy of the Tory Government, which they claim, but because of the EU. It was the same with roaming charges.

Why do I feel that rather than presenting this magical 'white paper' next week there will be a call for someone to fetch a pencil and a bit op paper, preferably white and at the same time asking Mr Barnier to hang on another week because they hadn't sorted out the stationery.

Interesting that there's some renter-love mood music starting, as the Tories bleated realise that Landlords are Tories and Tenants are Trots.

(I apologise for the 1970s blatant political stereotyping. But however inaccurate it may be in real life, it's what a lot of Tories think - thus making it "real" FSVO "real" ....)

Say what you will about Thatcher - and her means - she did deliver home ownership to a generation that had probably given up hope. It's hard to believe she was a Tory ....

However, if you can access the Times article, the comments are not very favourable to the Leave camp.

Meanwhile the Mail and Mirror highlight the loss of jobs as shops on the High Street shut.

The 'tone' of the BBC is certainly more weird than I remember it being years ago. It is in the form of some decent information but with a line or two of 'unicorn' added to it. The level of reporting is also dumbed down far too much.
The 'Brexit is sorted' headline should be more on the lines of 'Our PM is pissing the EU negotiators off by refusing to do her homework for yet another week'.

Meanwhile the Mail and Mirror highlight the loss of jobs as shops on the High Street shut.

Of course there's a chance/danger (for Brexiteers ?) that most people will conflate the two ?

The High St. is dead. There will be the semblance of a "revival", as the survivors clump together out of necessity. But the old paradigm is dead.

Shops on the other hand, will probably be with us forever. Anyone who has wasted precious time reading history will be able to imagine the pre-High Street environment, when people had shops at the front, and lived out back (Roman - Medieval times).

It's interesting to wonder if the UKs rapacious commercial landlords have actually done us all a favour by providing such a challenging environment, and actually advancing the UK beyond other countries ?

Will (the few) future historians follow the industrial revolution with the retail revolution ?

In the last two weeks, I ordered from Amazon:

some kitchen scales, some clothes pegs, some bin bags, and a set of vacuum cleaner filters

Experience made Amazon was my first port of call.

If they can do eclairs by post, Sainsburys is **ed

One story I heard re council housing - Mum and Dad in the Council house, could never afford to buy, so would get a sub from adult children who had done OK for themselves. Once Mum and Dad pass away, the kids get a nice little inheritance via a house bought at a knock down price. Which they either flog at the market rate, or go into the lettings business.

Pffft! She took the council housing stock away from the working classes and put it in the hands of the middle classes, arguably leading to the housing crisis we are in today - but I take it you were jesting.

I did qualify myself about the means ... but quite a few working class people did get to own a home (and thus became middle class - which was the whole point).

I can't see Thatcher would have given Rees-Mogg the time of day, for some reason.

If they can do eclairs by post, Sainsburys is **ed
OK I'm working on it!

Are you saying that 'Arkwright' (Ronnie Barker) had it correct all along?

We were talking about the BBC and the way it is reporting Brexit with friends last night while having a braai.

We agreed that a generous interpretation is that it is trying so hard to be neutral that it doesn't ask hard questions and ends up being implicitly in practice pro-Brexit/pro the Government and its clusterfuck as it doesn't challenge often enough the unicorns and Empire 2.0 statements (eg Lilley's ignorance about aviation law).

A less generous interpretation is that our state broadcaster is no longer neutral and is actively promoting the government line John Humphries and Question Time, I'm looking at you

Can quite believe that about council housing ... the execution was (deliberately ) flawed.

Councils should have been allowed to build new houses from the proceeds of the sales. However, that's not what Balfour Beatty, Redrow, Persimmon, etc etc etc wanted.

That said, on a political-philosophical note, is it the job of the council to build houses ? Or indeed manage social housing anyway ?

I keep referring to "Parliament of Whores", but it's a fascinating glimpse into a completely different mindset. P.J. O'Rourkes starting point - quite reasonably - is to ask "what is government for ?". With very little sympathy for any social engineering or programmes. If you want government to stick it's nose into every aspect of citizens lives, then you need big government. I mean really big. Which runs completely counter to the Tories fetish with "small government" (which is of course a load of old bollocks, and always has been. Tories like cheap government, which isn't quite the same thing).

A less generous interpretation is that our state broadcaster is no longer neutral and is actively promoting the government line

There isn't a country in the world that wouldn't respond:

"Isn't that the job of the state broadcaster ?" (realises he hasn't heard of "TASS" for a while .....)

Are you saying that 'Arkwright' (Ronnie Barker) had it correct all along?

I don't really know. I do know that there's been an explosion in hydroponic gardening online and in industrial estates. Noticed 3 different units over the weekend. Which given how pisspoor commerical tomatoes have become is hardly surprising. The rot set in when they stopped selling sun gold tomatoes over 10 years ago.

It's the "actively" - and without question - that I object to.

But there again, I'd already learnt to be cynical about the BBC, having watched their shenanigans so-called "balance" during the Indyref campaign

The most generous interpretation I have for the behaviour of the Brexit ultras right now is that they are trying to keep the plebs quiet (hence all the outright lies and misdirection in the press) while they are waiting for us to crash out so they can trouser the money they've made shorting the pound and then reinvest it scooping up distressed assets (read: our homes and a good proportion of high street commercial properties).

For most of the Leave voters I know personally, this works for now because they are not big followers of politics anyway. They will get a shock when a crash out happens, because they have been constantly reassured that ANY negative consequence of their vote is just project fear.

I don't actually think there is a terribly developed well-developed plan to put the blame on remoaners/the EU/the judiciary/parliament, simply because the architects of this are so comfortable that they will not feel any adverse affects from this themselves that explaining themselves to the electorate is simply not an issue. They will have their "fuck you" money. Why would they need to be answerable to anyone ever again?

Morning all,

I thought I'd share two bits of good news to cheer us a little

• The Education secretary has announced that EU students starting in Sep 2019 will still be charged home fees by English Universities (the Scottish governement had already made a similar announcement) for the duration of their degree.

The alternative (EU students being charged overseas fees) or the lack of clarity would have deterred many from coming and would have lost Bristish Universities a substantial source of income

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-44676843

• In other news, Italy has won the 4x400 women relay at the Mediterannean games. The picture of 4 smiling and successfull black Italian women has been widely shared on Twitter. It must have made Salvini and his Lega chums choke on their morning coffee, which is enough to make my day

twitter.com/adangeloUK/status/1013689989929099269

Once again, the Goebbels playbook: tell a lie, tell it first, make it big and don't worry about facts or proof.

One of the clearest examples of this (and I have no doubt it was deliberate) is the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes. Which was investigated in forensic detail, and the official conclusions were:

1. he was not wearing a jacket
2. he did not vault the barrier
3. he did not run away from the police
4. he was not carrying a rucksack.

Yet if you were to ask anyone (who remembers the case - Wimbledon has started and Love Islands on) it's evens they'll trot the opposite out as "facts". Why ? Because some gobshite (who has never been identified ) was on TV within minutes of the incident as "an eyewitness" stating those 4 things. Since they never happened, he was clearly lying (not mistaken). But who cares ? The lie stuck, and no amount of truth restorer can erase the stain.

It seems that quite a few people are happy in their ignorance. Which raises another question about what right has anyone else to interfere with that ? Especially if those people aren't hurting anyone with their ignorance ?

Slightly off topic, but I am doing a fair amount of work with cops at the moment. One of the most interesting developments in policing since the de Menezes case has been the addition of bodyworn cameras to police gear, which would make a future de Menezes really, really hard to cover up - even with compliant "witnesses."

With Brexit, OTOH, I can't imagine a politician ever wearing a body camera into key meetings. (And now we're getting into The Circle territory...)

Slightly off topic, but I am doing a fair amount of work with cops at the moment. One of the most interesting developments in policing since the de Menezes case has been the addition of bodyworn cameras to police gear, which would make a future de Menezes really, really hard to cover up - even with compliant "witnesses."

As events in the US show, even with untampered and unedited footage, the police can get away with murder. You don't just need evidence, you need the political will to convict. Which Lord Denning openly demonstrated doesn't exist.