Westministenders: Gin O'Clock

[RedToothBrush]

After disaster after Salzberg and a very predictable humilation over the Chequers Deal which the ERG reject, moderate Brexiteers reject, Remainers reject and the EU reject....

May does a press conference...

...which is delayed by a power shortage inside No. 10.

And....

I wonder how Brexit will affect situations like this:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-berkshire-45576741/cyprus-houses-torn-apart-by-what-s-thought-to-be-a-landslide

British families whose homes have been ripped apart in the village of Pissouri say they feel abandoned by the Cypriot Government.

Peter and Kayt Field from Newbury and Herefordshire, Jeremy and Katherine Yeomans from Surrey, and Mick and Louise Ellis from Buckinghamshire have all spoken to BBC Inside Out South about the devastation that's been caused.

A geologist says the houses have been built on an active landslide.

Governments are responsible for compensating for natural disasters, however the Cypriot Government has been investigating for six years and has not agreed a landslide is to blame yet, so there have been no payouts.

(contd)

It is certainly a lot harder than turning up at the local employment agency and getting signed up which is the THEORY now. More difficult scenarios may exist.

@bbclaurak
Starmer absolutely adamant decision of meeting last night was definitely not to take anything off the table - and a vote to remain may well have to be one of the options he told us

The wording of the motion is unsurprisingly vague. Steve Bullock's got the cheery interpretation of it. more.

Laura Kuenssberg @bbclaurak
McDonnell has announced many of plans for nationalisation before, but not that senior managers jobs will be 'readvertised' - ie top brass at some big big firms would be booted out by a Labour govt

Ok, so who replaces them?

Its a fine idea but not necessarily terribly practical.

Unless this 'jobs for the boys' just through via the union network.

(yes I am that cynical).

I've been warned by a friend about the job specific visas with the US.

Namely that if you lose your job for any reason, you either have to pretty much get a job immediately or leave the country immediately. Which if you have a house or children in school is a huge issue. You would have to come back to the UK, potentially with literally no where to go and no home to live in.

My friend is an ex-pat who has lived in the US for 20 years and is well settled. He knows the craic.

He's definitely Tory leaning but the job security and visa stuff was shocking (and hard) for him.

DH would love to go over. His father worked over in the US for a number of years too (his parents never moved over there - he never understood why, but again the visa thing explains a lot).

I'm dead against it. The country is far too volitile. Especially post-Trump. I'm currently refusing to even go on holiday.

And realistically, post Brexit civil unrest might still be safer / easier than every day living in the US in places. I'd rather take my chances here tbh.

Theresa arriving for the 'non' cabinet meeting.

Big shades??

Sleepless nights make us all look rubbish.

Is that the Guardian in her hand?

I recall it was the same in South Africa too but this was years ago. I knew some people who had come over to the UK to visit relatives and were told by the DH who had stayed behind, "don't come back. I have lost my job and am packing up the house here." I think Australia might be similar. But oh no, to Leavers this isn't a problem - you will still be able to go abroad to work, as though it is all about Tarquin and Clarissa doing a gap yah and not whole families having their lives turned upside down.

As for the Civil Unrest - it's probably better still to be in the country you know if it happens, rather than take your chance in another country that you don't know.

Starmer absolutely adamant decision of meeting last night was definitely not to take anything off the table
Well, based on last week's Guardian piece, Starmer does not get the secret numbered Labour memos.

On a superficial note, I love May's handbag. I have not seen today's Guardian yet.

Plus the scope for criminal record checks - again, why would they want to import people of dubious character

FOM is currently in theory limited to those with a clear criminal history. But the problem is enforcement in the absence of meaningful border checks, plus complications where other issues - such as the right to family life - arise.

I can't think of a country which doesn't operate a work visa system that offers both routes linked to a particular employer and more generally. In the UK, Tier 2 work visas are only available to those who get sponsorship by an employer for a particular role, and the employer has to demonstrate that they were unable to fill the post from within the resident labour market. This is broadly analogous to the US L-1 visa. If you lose your job in either the UK or the US, you have 30 days to find another and apply to switch employers, or to leave the country. Obviously the US "at will" employment system is higher risk than the UK, even with the various dilutions of worker protections over the years.

Tier 1 visas are for highly skilled migrants who meet a set of criteria based on age and qualifications, but who don't need a specific job offer (or therefore a sponsor). The US version of these is limited, I think, to those who have a large amount of capital to invest in business that will create jobs.

Tier 3 is currently on hold, but would be the route to open for low skilled migrants post-Brexit (it was designed that way; I don't think that there is a US equivalent). Tier 4 is for students (US has similar). Tier 5 is a mixture of niche elite occupations (eg sportsmen, ballet dancers) and not so elite but in demand for short periods (eg sheep shearers). Again, I'm not sure that the US has a direct equivalent.

The Green Card is a really interesting route, as some people can jump straight into it eg if they have a close family member who is a US citizen, whilst others can move into it having spent time on another visa route. Or certain nationalities (including the Irish, but not the Brits) are eligible to enter a lottery, which is as random as it says on the tin. I've always thought that this is an odd way to run an immigration process, but perhaps no more capricious than some others....

Could be any of the Guardian, Torygraph or Times.
Its not the first edition backpage of any though.
(could be another page or a later edition).

On visas, it's one of the reasons I'm married to dh dh came back from the States.

The Scottish company he worked for had been taken over by an American company and he was sent over to run the American sales office. He was promised a green card, which would have meant that his then wife could work, but when they backtracked on that, it didn't make financial sense for them to stay.

He came back to Scotland and resigned. (His wife was a teacher so was quickly able to get a job back here so they could cope with him being unemployed for a short period and he soon got a new job). 2 years later he split with his wife and 2.5 years later he and I got together (Got married 5 years later).

Been watching.politics on the telly all morning when I should have been cleaning. I enjoyed Jo Coburn pointing out to Len McClusky the impracticality of Not having remain on the ballot paper. As, if Labour vote down the deal because it's crap, then fails to get a general election so pushes for a ref, they can hardly then put the deal they voted against vs no deal which they agree would be catastrophic, on the ballot.

Good sleuthing RTB but her paper is a special one with lots of stories about unicorns. No nasty EU people with things like rules or information.

mobile.twitter.com/DavidHenigUK/status/1044161306918604800

Long thread summarising the presentation today by the institute of economic affairs. JRM and Theresa Villiers both there. Basically technological unicorns for NI, JRM admits people would rather leave with a deal than without and we are going to lower our food standards so we can trade with US and India. We are also going to screw over poorer third world countries by having zero tariffs on things like avocados for everyone rather than just the poorest countries.

I am actually in favour of taking back the water. Purely because in Cornwall we have some of the highest bills in the country yet i am unable to change supplier. There is no point in privatisation if you can't pay your bills to anyone else.

Haven't seen the detail of the Labour policy on re-nationalising water.

Have they fixed their ignorance of all matters Scottish and mentioned that they don't need to do that in Scotland?

With austerity enough people have to buy the cheapest food possible. God help them if standards are lowered. It will be fine for Rees-Mogg of course.

Some US immigration is pretty nuts, the lottery and the extended chain migration in particular.
I can apply to work because my dh has a transfer visa for a US company but no other working age people in our family, eg dc, could even if they had been permission to stay. It is a hotch potch of random rules that ignores the fact the US has tactically allowed illegal immigration to keep production costs low for decades.
I wouldn't copy US immigration rules.

It is also worth noting my food bill is double what it was in the UK. Anything other than very cheap, no quality fast food is very expensive.
My utilities are about double and although privatized (apart from water) I have no choice in company.
Insurance is four times the price of the UK as is my mobile phone plan.
Medicines and dental work are many multiples more expensive.
Salaries are lot more too but that only works for people in work.

Well, this could be fun - a new area to prepare for (or not in the case of HMG, no doubt)... From a colleague on Twitter: "From @ukbizforums recently "... added admin liabilities that will accompany VAT liabilities in the event of a no-deal Brexit. “If I’m selling to [EU country], I need to create a nominated personal business in that country to be responsible for my VAT liabilities in that country.""