Westminstenders: Operation Yellowhammer 1q

[RedToothBrush]

Boris Johnson is clearing the decks for a leadership challenge.

I guess that means that the Brexit we get all depends on what George, Michael and Boris decide over lunch and how good Operation Yellowhammer is.

The prospect of going for a 'couple of pints' then visiting somewhere to have your knees and ankles shot is.......

The opening of "In The Name Of The Father" has Daniel Day Lewis' character escaping such a punishment by the skin of his teeth.

Can't remember the "crime" (drugs ? The IRA was very down on drugs they didn't sell). The procedure was to pull your trousers down so the cloth didn't get into the wound. They blew the kneecaps out from the back of the knee, as orthopaedic surgeons learned how to reconstruct them if it was done front-on.

Can't remember the name of the main hospital in Belfast, but during the 70s and 80s they developed a worldwide reputation for dealing with bullet wounds. They designed the ambulance run into the hospital with a long curve, so ambulances could pull in as close to A&E as possible - a design now standard in US hospitals. (Or so I read in the "Readers Digest" in the 1980s).

Funny. I seem to have done a lot of reading in my life. What on earth is wrong with me ?

My primary school worked with old Lsd money and imperial units in maths,
but then Grammar school - a couple of years before money metrication in 1970 - was totally metric
(some of the teachers might have been a bit confused at first though !)

Doing what I do, when not wasting time on MN I work in inches and millimetres anyway. If doing some DIY like woodwork, I use whichever is the easiest number to remember. So if it is about a foot and 11 1/2 inches is nearest I remember that. If it is a bit more I remember 310mm.
I certainly don't get the 'press' idea equating volume or area to 'football pitches' or 'Olympic swimming pools' not having been to either.

'The world is sleepwalking into a financial crisis' – Gordon Brown

A second financial crisis - when real income for the average person in the UK is still below that in 2008 - only Greece & Portugal among EU members sharte this dubious distinction.

Brown doesn't mention Brexit as a cause,
but imo if there is a no deal taking the world no 5/6/7/ ... economy offline for months AND hindering the no 1 or 2 financial centre, then this could indeed trigger a worldwide crisis, if the system is as precarious as Brown thinks.

Since the ref, the UK has been shielded from the effects of the vote, because of a lucky worldwide boom meaning the UK economy only had a 2% cut in growth, rather than a 2+% cut in its actual size
btw, that worldwide boom is a significant reeason why "Project Fear" effects have been less / slower than expected.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/sep/12/we-are-in-danger-of-sleepwalking-into-a-crisis-gordon-brown

“Countries have retreated into nationalist silos and that has brought us protectionism and populism.
Problems that are global as well as national and local are not being addressed. Countries are at war with each other on trade, climate change and nuclear proliferation.”

Brown was scathing about the austerity policies pursued by the coalition government that came to power after he lost the 2010 election.

“Austerity was based on an analysis that what had caused the global recession was the high level of public debt rather than the reckless action of the financial sector.
Nobody who has looked at it seriously would come to that conclusion but the Conservatives dined out on it for five years.”

The problem, Brown added, was not that governments borrowed more to boost growth but that the stimulus had not been big enough.
“We have underestimated the power of fiscal policy because of an aversion to deficits and debt.
We got back to growth quickly but couldn’t sustain it because of over-rapid fiscal consolidation.

I ‘ve posted on here a couple of times before about the profound distress I caused my Y8 Maths class by giving them a Christmas Carol related “fun” lesson in £sd.
However kids would cope well enough if taught properly from an early age - it might even improve their Maths. But their parents would be soooooo pissed off! (My tactic if parents complained vexatiously that their offspring were not getting enough homework was to set extra and suggest that parents would be keen to help, worked well.)

As a scientist and after 50 years of maths in metric, I've only ever worked in that, including measuring at home.
So much simpler and I am happy with something like 310 or 312 mm; my brain easily rates that sort of number as part of a meter.

There are a huge number of parameters, e.g. material characteristics, energy, acceleration etc that I need in metric for work
(well I did need them: I'm currently retiring early because of my eyesight)

I do tend to think of weight & height - for people & dogs - in feet & inches, though

Political pics @politicalpics
Breaking: Mark Carney the Gov of Bank of ENGLAND just been smuggled into back door on No10 to join the Cabinet Brexit meeting in top range electric car made in the USA

Beth Rigby @bethrigby
Another top spot by @PoliticalPics - Carney inside Downing Street as cabinet discuss no deal preparations

@BCF
Have you looked at the ultimate smokescreen thread?
An interesting point of view.
Regarding the Gordon Brown article, it is quite obvious that 'political points scoring' was the name of the game rather than appreciating the financial crash was not a UK specific issue and that the global view was necessary rather than 'blaming' the other kids in the playground.

No worries BigChoc thank you for explaining stuff about which I havenae a clue.

Oh Gordon, Gordon. If David Milliband had been the successor and Brown was still Chancellor............ Tragic hero of this tale. He and Darling made sure we dodged a bullet. The narrative is that he was the assassin.

Conservatives dined out on it for five years
2019 was when it was supposed to end. Something different is about to end.

born I had no trouble learning my times tables, up to 12, by rote before I entered primary school

Mum and I had a 2 mile walk to kindergarten - before ordinary folk like us had cars - so I used to skip along reciting them.
I suspect that is a major factor in why I have always found numbers & maths so easy - I have an inherent understanding and "feel" for them.

Also, "I spy with my little eye" on some jorneys helped spelling

journeys !
My problem now is having a visual disability and autocorrect.

BCF, turn off the autocorrect and let the 'force' be with you!
Your brain is better than a plastic box 'guessing'.

I suspect some part of no dealing is going to involve some sort of mechanism to fix sterling to avoid a repeat of the ERM fiasco.

(So much for BoE "independence", by the way. That flew out the door with very little farewell).

Who can remember what happened in the 70s when the IMF got involved ? How does a freeze on the exchange rate work ? I'm no economist ... are there things such as capital controls and limits ?

Do countries have an option to stop trading their currency ? I know quite a few smaller countries used to make it illegal to export their currency (including China till relatively recently).

Are they going to print new post-Brexit banknotes that can only be used in the UK ?

Why dont' Brexiteers come up with questions like this ? Surely they have to take a break from wanking over pictures of Farage[1] while singing the national anthem.

[1]A practice which deserves the monker "raising the flag for Nigel", simply because to see that make it as a meme would make me die happy.

I was at secondary school when Decimalisation happened and as such didn't have a lot of money so the IMF didn't feature for me.
Currency, On a work trip to Russia, on my return they were keen on checking I had no currency but couldn't care less about what I was carrying in my very interesting ,but totally harmless toolcase.
The only harm it would cause was due to the weight and dropping it.

Ref Sky news:
{A mass surveillance programme by the UK government breached human rights, the European Court has ruled.}
Another 'black mark' in the 'we want cooperation' spiel.
I was going to say the 'UK shooting itself in the foot again' as an expression but in the light of earlier posts it makes it a bit more awkward.

DGR I am reading a book on Eamonn Magee. A Catholic boxer born in 1973, he spent about half his life in that hospital.in Belfast. I can only read one chapter of the book at a time and the rest, it is so sad. The blurb:
"A book? Listen, I’ve been beaten with baseball bats, I’ve had my throat slashed, I’ve been kidnapped and I’ve been exiled out of the country. My family’s been abducted from our home as well. I’ve been shot twice, I’ve been in prison and my son’s just been stabbed to death. Amongst all that, I was the welterweight champion of the world while drinking the bar dry and doing enough coke to kill a small horse every night. My life’s not a book, it’s a f*cking movie script."

I was ready to post the same 1tisLeClerc, from the Independent instead.
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/uk-mass-surveillance-gchq-eu-human-rights-echr-edward-snowden-a8535571.html

Mass surveillance, breech of human rights.
Why is it that no one is making a bigger fuss about it all?
Orwell comes to mind. Or (sorry again) a totalitarian (far right) government.

I don't understand!!
Admittedly it is the SKY 'headlines' but it seems the Government believe the 'Tom and Jerry' capers are true, that you can drop a 10 ton weight on a cat and it will spring up again.
Fox and Raab issuing 'warnings' and 'statements' to the likes of Trump and the EU, unbelievable.

Either BCF or RTB posted months back about the UK 'acquiring' data from the EU that they should not necessarily have had, and then passing it to the USA. The fact that the security data was used when 'out of date' or not verified properly, to investigate possible terror suspects is just downright shabby.

We probably both posted on this.
I remember posting that the data was sometimes incorrect and that it was sometimes left unsecured in areas where the public could wonder in.

I have just looked on the BBC website. Is Brexit just a myth?
The only reference to Brexit at the moment is that someone says mobile roaming charges won't increase (questionable in itself but never mind).
They can't even manage a picture of Mark Carney getting out of a car.

DG I vaguely remember the 1967 devaluation, mostly for PM Harold Wilson's speech with "This will not affect the pound in your pocket"

• to me even at age 11 that sounded dodgy, for anything we imported and paid for in dollars.

Also, we had currency controls - the maximum amount you could take out of the country - from afetr WW2 right up until MrsT removed them;
That removal was as much because of the lead up to the SIngle Market as an ideology

Anyway, my memories of currency controls and of deposits in Cyprus banks simply being confiscated, was why my first action - after confirming acceptance of my job in Germany -
was to put my flat on the market.
I transferred the money out, in chunks of 100k, right after the solicitor paid it in

Stopping ordinary bods sending their savings out of the country is an easy way to reduce capital flows - and prtotect UK banks - without discouraging business to come / stay.
Of course, the super-wealthy won't be inconvenienced by this, any more than they were affected by the previous controls.

If it comes to confiscation, I can imagine that if Corbyn comes to power durting total chaos and economic meltdown, he might just copy the Cyprus method and just confiscating all deposits over 10k or whatever.

Outside the EU and possibly even the ECHR, if there is a Moggite inter-regnum, people may be shocked at how much a govt can do to them, because long-standing safeguards have been removed.

I've not met anyone younger than me that can accurately work with old money.

Posh people still use Guineas.

Introducing a new quiz:

What's the most stupid statement Andrea Leadsom has made?

Here's today's contribution in the HoC:

"On concerns raised over a 'no-deal' Brexit, she says "planes flew before we joined the EU" and she can't believe people are concerned about that."

We're fast reaching the make-or-break turning point. It's no-deal or pull the plug. The latter now seems a pipe dream ...