Westministenders: Reality Bytes

[RedToothBrush]

Tonight the Corbyn and McDonnell Labour Party supported the Tory Party in improving the tax allowance for higher rate tax payers.

Yes you read that right. Did you even blink?

You've been so conditioned into seeing non existant opposition which seems to go against everything the Labour Party stand for that you no longer are shocked.

That's what 2 and a half years of Brexit has done to you.

You no longer care that Boris Johnson got £14,000 from the Saudis a couple of days before the Khashoggi murder. You know longer care that the former Defence Secretary is employed for £75,000 a year to advise a major Saudi Investor.

You are just happy that Trump hasn't started a war with Iran or North Korea yet. And hasn't started a civil war. (Though he's trying hard and next week is his best opportunity to stir it all up). You aren't surprised to hear that predictions are that the Democrats will fail to make gains in the mid terms.

You've suffered the 4657 story about how Therea May is just about to be challenged for the leadership.

You've heard about the squad set up at the Home Office to clear up all the cases the media get their hands on as the latest burning injustice. You are hearing that EU nationals who have been promised they are 'safe' are being subjected to questions about their right to stay. And you just shrug and say, "Yeah well thats the Home Office for you. The Bastards". And you do mean it, but you are so jaded by it all. And you worry that another 12 months from now, you won't even be interested in another story like that, and the press will stop printing them as they no longer interest the reader. What happens to your friends, your family, or even you then? Who is going to care then?

And then you have today.

A day where you hear that Bannon is being investigated by the Senate Intel Committee, Farage has been upgraded to the FBI's Really Naughty List and Banks has (FINALLY) been refered to the NCA. (We were only speculating on the possibility, on the 26th March...)

And you go 'Ooooooooo maybe there is hope'.

Maybe we COULD remain in the EU and avoid Turnip Soup and wiping your arse with leaves because of the national bog roll shortage. Or at least get a decent deal which suits us as a nation. Maybe, just maybe!

And that lasts for about 2 minutes before you log into twitter and the very first thing you see this:

Tom Newton Dunn @tnewtondunn
Excl: David Cameron tells friends he’d like a return to frontline politics, and fancies Foreign Secretary
www.thesun.co.uk/news/7639377/david-cameron-return-to-politics/

And you let out a high pitched screech as if you are were a dying cat as you remember this is 2018, and it just wants to beat the life out of you.

On the plus side, it shows you do still care enough to think 'Don't let that fucking bastard anywhere near power ever, ever again.'.

Ho hum.

Keep on, keeping on. Don't let the bastards win.
Keep caring. It matters.

• some not done

Maybe Banks will now donate 8 million to the Peoples Vote campaign to help combat the explosion in corruption

DExEU spend...nearly 600k waved goodbye on translator fees in September. Twice as much again on legal services...millions wasted...www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/751336/Spend_over_25k.csv/preview

I can't see Farage sitting within the confines of a big party where he is simply one of the rank and file (albeit with a higher profile than most)

Interesting that Mark Sedwill (Jeremy Heywood's successor) has retained the national security lead (he was the National Security Advisor before being appointed the temporary Cabinet Secretary, then made permanent when Heywood retired last month). It's now a huge job

Farage would of course hope to become leader, if he can only be 1 of the final 2 serleted by MPs, for the party members to vote on

If Farage becomes Cons leader I have buy more pot noodles. We will definitely go down the pan then.

I know Kipling is terribly out of fashion, but if senior Tories had bothered to actually read him, rather than quote him, they might have realised their mistake with Farage.

And that is called asking for Dane-geld,
And the people who ask it explain
That you've only to pay 'em the Dane-geld
And then you'll get rid of the Dane!

Farage is the Dane. They paid him. Now they are paying the price. He's back. For more.

DGR the Dandgeld applies to May and the ERG too.

In general, pandering to extremists has never worked out well. Ask Hindenburg.

Remainer MPs planning to launch NEW PARTY by CHRISTMAS in last-ditch bid to REVERSE Brexit

REMAINER MPs plan to launch a new party by Christmas in a last-ditch bid to reverse Brexit as ministers expect to unveil a deal with this week

www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1040518/brexit-news-latest-remained-ops-new-party-brexit-deal-european-union

The favourite to lead the party is Labour former frontbencher Chuka Umunna who it is claimed is one of the main organisers along with fellow Labour MPs Gavin Shuker and Chris Leslie, although there is speculation David Miliband could return as leader

"In general, pandering to extremists has never worked out well. Ask Hindenburg."

Or Chamberlain and Daladier.

Eurosceptic MPs are said to be buying microwaves to shield their mobile phones

Wrapping their heads in tinfoil would help, too
Apparently it is mostly UK govt bugging they fear

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6351609/Brexiteers-urged-buy-microwaves-offices-protect-phones.html

Eurosceptic MPs are being urged to buy microwaves for their offices to stop their phones being bugged.
The paranoia emerged today as the end game of the Brexit negotiations gets closer.
...
Members of the Brexiteer European Research Group fear monitoring by the security services so the Government could exploit private discussions.
...
According to the Sunday Times, one ex minister believes he is being bugged.
The MP recently heard 'ambient noise changes' as he finished a call with a journalist - prompting him to believe it was electronic surveillance.

Rigging the vote: how the American right is on the way to permanent minority rule

I wonder if the Tories will use any post-Brexit emergency legislation to copy these techniques

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/04/america-minority-rule-voter-suppression-gerrymandering-supreme-court

The American right is in the midst of a formidable project:
installing permanent minority rule, guaranteeing control of the government even as the number of actual human beings who support their political program dwindles.

Have you seen that?!?
Reports of a 'secret' Brexit customs deal are speculation, says Theresa May's spokesman
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-latest-customs-deal-hard-border-ireland-backstop-avoid-speculation-may-eu-a8616521.html

It’s been reported in several platforms too.
On the ground that there is no smoke wo fire, what’s going on there??

We've seen so often how newspapers keep reporting the same rumour if one prints something.
Unless a deal is officially announced, I won't get my hopes up

The Customs Union was one of the EU 's early menu options.
It can only be a breakthrough if May and / or EU have conceded significantly

For the CU: ECJ yes / no , the UK can / can't make its own trade deals
NI backstop: dropped by the RoI / or activated when the UK leaves the CU for e.g. Canada++

NI border: It has defined the whole negotiations

Interesting that the RoI and the EU were caught by surprise in 2016 because they - like nearly everyone else - had assumed Brexit would be EEA / EFTA

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/nov/04/a-mess-irish-border-issue-continues-to-hamper-brexit-progress

But it was only in October, at that [2016] Conservative party conference, when Theresa May, under the advice of her then joint chiefs of staff Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill, told the faithful that she was taking the UK out of the single market, customs union and the jurisdiction of the European court of justice,
that senior EU officials realised they had “a border problem”.

Oh I’m not getting my hopes up.
But seeing my discussion yesterday with the IL, I have been wondering the effect such a news/rumour would have on them (probably the sign that democracy is dead...)

_ KKK garb on Northern Irish streets_

Dreadful, right outside an Islamic Centre too (terrible anywhere, though)

math, somerville Has this happened before ?
atm, it seems to be organised in at least one Loyalist area by Britain First, using a core of Loyalist paamilitaries

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/nov/04/northen-ireland-halloween-hate-crime

Britain First, whose leaders were jailed in England earlier this year for religiously aggravated harassment of Muslims, has chosen Newtownards, a loyalist bastion 10 miles east of Belfast on the tip of Strangford Lough, as its bridgehead.
...
The group of at least eight men who marched through the town in KKK regalia last weekend and brandished crosses outside an Islamic prayer centre caused an outcry
...
Numbers of racially motivated crimes in Northern Ireland now exceed those connected to traditional sectarian bigotry,
police figures show.
Between July 2016 and June 2017 there were 1,062 racist incidents reported versus 938 incidents involving traditional religious sectarianism.

Oh my Lord that's so weird. Earlier today we were posting about the shift in politics to the hard right and I listed a few ways in which we echo the US.

I was going to say "it'll be the KKK next" but didn't say it because I thought it was too glib.

Britian First in NI clearly aren't the brightest examples of the master race,
e.g. in 2015, to launch their movement in NI:

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/09/03/britain-first-mistake-newtownars-town-hall-for-mosquenn_8082404.html

The group uploaded a picture of leader Paul Golding and other "local activists" outside the "new big mosque" on their Facebook page,
only to be told the building was in fact the Newtownards Town Hall.

Ooh, I missed this gem during the budget speech ! 😂

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/liz-truss-sits-sajid-javid-kneeukk_5bd738d4e4b0a8f17efa9a50

Ben Glaze@benglaze
Full on farce as Liz Truss then accidentally tries to sit on Sajid Javid’s knee.
It’s already the Carry On Budget
4:31 PM · Oct 29, 2018 · Twitter for iPhone

Theresa May's chances of striking Irish border deal '50-50', say EU officials

Oh well, not such a surprise.
I wonder if the UK govt told the EU about their latest deal ?
Maybe the UK govt leaked to the Sunday Times to try to "bounce" the EU into a deal ?

https://www.theguardian.dealcom/politics/2018/nov/04/theresa-mays-chances-of-striking-irish-border-deal-50-50-say-eu-officials

EU and British red lines remain incompatible as negotiations enter final stage

BigChoc it's not being reported in britain, but I understand things in NI are not good. At all. That peace survives in any form in these times is a miracle and testament to those who keep the peace.

To answer the KKK question - no, they just wore sashes and bowler hats before...

But they have form:
www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/nazi-and-confederate-flags-at-belfast-bonfire-site-condemned-by-robinson-and-mcguinness-31360843.html
To be fair, the flags were condemned across all sections of political life in NI and they were taken down. But obviously there are people with these flags tucked away somewhere in their homes.

Actually, it's easy to see how the KKK and the Loyalists might find common ground, since both espouse rabid anti-Catholicism.

www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2001/american-white-supremacist-groups-have-history-international-conflict
An article from 2001 by the Southern Poverty Law Center on the rise and revamping of the extreme Right, under the tutelage of one Mark Cotterill.
Cotterill, now 40, would seem to cut a frightening figure himself. Seasoned in the bitter sectarian conflict of Northern Ireland and the early days of the British neo-Nazi Skinhead movement, he has sought out revolutionary racists at every turn...

...Mark Cotterill grew up in a world of ethnic turmoil. A Protestant reportedly born in Northern Ireland in 1961, Cotterill later moved to England, where he distributed illegal literature for the paramilitary Ulster Defence Association.

From 1978 to 1992, as the South West England organizer for the neo-Nazi National Front, he was very close to Britain's racist Skinhead movement during a period of sustained international growth and wild street violence.

Cotterill's first attempt at "entryism" came in 1992 when he joined Britain's Conservative party, comparable in views and stature to the U.S. Republican Party. Even with the Tories, Cotterill continued for months to campaign for the National Front.

A Loyalist magazine he edited during this period ran a cartoon advocating "ethnic cleansing" of Catholics in Northern Ireland. The next year, Cotterill was photographed laughing with neo-Nazi Combat 18 leader and convicted murderer Charlie Sargent.

www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/loyalist-pastor-alan-campbell-condemned-for-racist-and-sectarian-views-dies-at-67-35827750.html
There is a good deal of this kind of BS swirling around in fundamentalist circles in NI and also in the US - the notion of being a chosen people, etc., giving rise to a fortress mentality.

www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/jan/10/northernireland.race
If the KKK ever wanted to formally organise in NI, they would be very successful.
This article is from 2004>
[NI] holds the UK's record for the highest rate of racist attacks: spitting and stoning in the street, human excrement on doorsteps, swastikas on walls, pipe bombs, arson, the ransacking of houses with baseball bats and crow bars, and white supremacist leaflets nailed to front doors.

Over 200 incidents were reported to police in the past nine months, although many victims don't bother complaining any more.

But in the past weeks, fear has deepened. Protestant working-class neighbourhoods are showing a pattern of orchestrated house attacks aimed at "ethnically cleansing" minority groups.

It is happening in streets run by loyalist paramilitaries, where every Chinese takeaway owner already pays protection money and racists have plentiful access to guns. The spectre of Catholics being systematically burnt out of similar areas during the Troubles hangs in the air.

So-called peace walls between Protestant and Catholic communities are graffitied with swastikas and signs that read "keep the streets white".