Westministenders: The Slow Reveal

[RedToothBrush]

The DUP are playing silly buggers.
The EU are getting nervous and turning down the pressure.
The ERG still want Schroedingers Brexit.
The Budget is coming. So is a government defeat or climb down.
The M26 is closing.

Keep thinking of the glorious freedom your blue passport will give up whilst you search waste tips.

Putin losing his grip in Russia ?

Only 39% of Russians trust him and only 45% would vote for him
(sounds ok,but a huge drop from the 65-70% support he used to have)

His party is down at 31%
AND he has been postponing / cancelling regional elections where his opponents were set to win

Downside is: who will he invade / bomb / murder next in order to regain his popularity ?

Trust in Vladimir Putin declines steeply among Russians, poll shows

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/08/trust-vladimir-putin-declines-steeply-among-russians-poll-shows-pension-changes

Communist challenger exposes cracks in Putin’s grip on power

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/13/communist-challenge-exposes-cracks-putins-power
An unexpected victory for an opposition candidate has panicked an unpopular government into cancelling the contest altogether

woman 150,000 demonstrated in Berlin against racism & the far right 💪🏻

I saw 250 000 across the country BigChoc Töll.

Smaller demos in Frankfurt and Darmstardt
The "Pulse of Europe" movement is active in this

I agree with pretzels. (Not sure about another ref, but how could it be worse than what’s happening?)
Actually we need to protest in any way we can, to show the government we disagree.
They will notice that ‘Remain’ marches are far better-attended than any others.
Anything we can do, we must. Even petitions... this one needs to get to 100,000 in 5 weeks so it’ll be debated in the HoC. Yes, the debates pay lipservice to democracy, but we need to keep the pressure of dissent as strong as we can.
It’s last chance time.

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/219905

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/223729

Thanks for your post pretzels. I will think about it again. I'd definitely decided to go a few days ago...

I didn't favour the push for a second referendum immediately after the June 2016 vote because I was worried that it wasn't democratic to try and impugn the vote just because I felt strongly that it was the wrong result.

However I naively expected the mother of all fudges, and never expected the CU/SM membership would turn out to be taken off the table, since so many Brexiters had chunnered about Norway and Switzerland pre referendum. I had also hoped for a Government of National Unity, or at least some kind of cross party initiative to try and build consensus around a Norwegian or Swiss model, seeing as the result was so close, and the structure of the vote didn't actually hand a clear mandate for any particular version of Brexit.

Now however I have come round to the idea for several reasons. First, the impact of Brexit looks like it will be even more catastrophic than many had predicted. Second, the negotiations have been handled so poorly that almost no one is content with the likely outcome(s). Third, there is no other practical way that the people can convey that they may have changed their minds.

Sadly I can't make it to London, but I would like to do whatever I can to support the cause. If anyone knows of anything I'm all ears!

Placemarking but agree with pretzels - marching/protesting is about saying 'I'm no part of this shit'. It's holding power to account.

From the Guardian - sorry can’t get the link to work

^Leaked emails reveal DUP chief ‘ready for no-deal Brexit’
Arlene Foster believes crashing out of EU is ‘most likely outcome’, following hostile meeting with Michel Barnier^

Theresa May has been told that the DUP leader, Arlene Foster, is now “ready” to trigger a no-deal Brexit and regards this as the “likeliest outcome” following a “hostile and difficult” exchange with the EU’s chief negotiator, an explosive set of leaked government emails reveal.

Foster emerged from a meeting last week in Brussels with Michel Barnier, the French official leading the EU’s negotiating team, convinced that the prospects for a Brexit deal were fading so fast that, given Brussels’ stance on Northern Ireland, an agreement had become the least likely outcome. Senior government advisers were swiftly informed that the DUP leader was “ready” for the UK to crash out of the EU without a deal.

According to a private email exchange between senior UK officials, seen by the Observer, Foster had expressed deep disappointment about her meeting with Barnier, and outlined her wider thinking, during a dinner with the leader of the Conservative MEPs, Ashley Fox. “She described Barnier as being difficult and hostile in her meeting today…” the leaked email from an adviser involved in the Brexit talks says. “AF [Arlene Foster] said the DUP were ready for a no-deal scenario, which she now believed was the likeliest one.”

The official added in his email, circulated at the highest levels, that it was not clear whether Foster was seeking to threaten the government or simply inform it of her plans.

Government sources said rumours that the Brexit secretary, Dominic Raab, might quit were overblown.

Poor Barnier having to deal with the deluded intransigence of the DUP.

Can you imagine having to deal with Foster? That Patrick Kielty documentary was enough to show she doesn't do flexibility.

Barnier has always been very diplomatic up to now, but he does tend to give clear answers
and the DUP are used to being the only ones that say NO

imo, he is fresh out of fucks at this stage.

he is fresh out of fucks at this stage
Here's Auntie Snarlene. We normally have to agree with her. Don't make her cross.

Guido Fawkes @GuidoFawkes
In the @thesundaytimes tomorrow Tim Shipman reckons as few as 4 more letters are needed to trigger a Tory leadership election. #tomorrowspaperstoday

A fun week ahead with that and the DUP stuff looming.

Nigel Dodds MP, the deputy leader of the DUP is supposed to be much worse than Arlene:

She of course shares the fanatical unionism and cronyism of all DUP politicians,
but wrt religion she is fairly normal Anglican / Church Of Ireland, whereas Dodds is hell-and-brimstone Presbyterian who regards it as his duty to return NI to the past of Prods keeping the Papes down

Lucius Annaeus Seneca:

"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful."

Hearing that Bavaria is predicting only 10% for afd, Bigchoc?
Nice if true.

Apparently the guardian reckons the tories are 4 points ahead in most recent poll .. I know the opposition is dire but that dire ?

Why the rightwing push for no deal

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/13/brexit-fanatics-no-compromise-go-for-broke-chaos-counter-revolution

... a no-deal Brexit, or one that cuts British business off from its largest market, will destroy the Tories’ unearned reputation for economic competence
and further alienate the young and the professional middle classes whose votes the Conservative party will need one day.

A people’s vote, a Labour government with Marxists at the top, a threat to the union – everything conservatives once abhorred – are being brought closer by the tactics of the Conservative right.

You can understand their determination to push Brexit to the limits only when you grasp that, to its promoters,
Brexit is the best and only chance they have to launch a counter-revolution.
< incl against the Welfare State that Attlee brought in from 1946 and all the EU protections later >

They have hardly made a secret of their ambitions to reverse protections for workers

"The weight of employment regulation is now backbreaking: the collective redundancies directive, the atypical workers directive, the working time directive and a thousand more,” said Johnson in 2014.

Liam Fox told the Financial Times in 2012 it was “unsustainable to believe that workplace rights should remain untouchable”.

Jacob Rees-Mogg said he could not “support all the employment rights that come from Europe”.

David Davis, John Redwood and the older Brexit crew were against the social chapter from the moment of its inception.

Meanwhile, Andrea Leadsom outbid them all when
she dreamed of a future when there was “absolutely no regulation whatsoever – no minimum wage, no maternity or paternity rights, no unfair dismissal rights, no pension rights^^
– for the smallest companies that are trying to get off the ground”.

Leaving the EU can make their dreams come true
< and the nightmares of many others >

It was a howl of rage from Thatcherites, who cannot accept that their ideology failed,
from the old against the young,
and from all who could not make their peace with the sexual revolution of the 1960s, the environment science of the 1980s and the multiculturalism of the 2000s.

Their leaders see the chance to abolish a modern world they neither like nor comprehend.
Hence their fanaticism.
Hence their determination to go for broke and tolerate no compromises.

Barnier unlike May understands that the DUP do not represent the majority in NI and that he has a duty to be even handed and respect international law and international treaties however much Arlene would like to pretend that they are not important and can be ignored

She must have found that really frustrating: she has no power over him.

Funny how the DUP are happy to accept being different to "mainland" UK when it suits them - like being able to continue to sell beef during the foot & mouth crisis and when maintaining their narrow minded bigotry and religious zealotry with regard to gay marriage and abortion

So why are the tories still seen as a viable choice by the average voter ?
I just don’t get this .... A potential bonfire of rules and regulations that over the years have made peoples lives better - environmental, health and safety, you name it but people would rather loose those than ever have a vaguely socialist government

Corbyn isn't vaguely socialist. And no, I despise the Tories, too.

Yes, woman, see table below, of October polls for Bavaria:

Merkel's CSU sister party, who stand instead of the CDU in Bavaria, made a bad mistake (immoral too) earlier this year, when they tried pandering to the anti-immigrant vote.

Most German voters are disgusted by the far-right and recognised this shameless opportunism, so the CSU image plummetted.
However, it didn't particularly help the AfD

The SPD are too weak in Bavaria, a very conservative state, so it looks like the Greens have benefitted and will come 2nd, but 15% behind, with the AfD probably narrowly beating the SPD to come 3rd

nice BCF.