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.

Meanwhile, on a more positive note, a £240 billion a month market is leaving London because of brexit.

www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-06/a-240-billion-a-month-market-leaves-london-because-of-brexit

Jo Maugham QC @JolyonMaugham

The Government's last ditch effort to block our attempt to empower Parliament to act in the national interest has failed. Application for permission to appeal refused - and the end of the line for the Government.

That’s the Givernment failing to stop the ECJ hearing on whether A50 can be revoked.

Even basic due diligence should have flagged that up.

This was the 90s. As I said, it was a US company, and they bought over US ways. If you've seen the film (googles) Civil Action [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Civil_Action_(film) ]] it helps a bit.

But as I said, eventually they lost money on the whole deal. Trying to clear a site that size (I could Google Earth it, and work out the area) to a metre depth is not cheap. Neither is pulling a fully equipped drilling crew into a site for a Sunday morning cheap. I saw a guy we knew that worked there, and he had a call in the wee small hours to be there and open up. Apparently some discharge had been found in a watercourse nearby that could only have come from these works. They had to use GPR and drill to work out there was a mysterious unmapped underground river which had picked up ground pollutants.

Seems the original 1890s survey was bodged too. And no one looked too hard when it was switched to some sort of wartime manufacturing (dyes for uniforms ?).

The foam I saw coming out of the drains was actually a suspension of powder in water. The two officers who came and sampled it were mildly surprised that no one in the premises seemed to know that you can't flush that away with a bucket of water. All you do is collapse the foam and leave a patch of powder.

Probably not a good habit to extrapolate from one incident into an entire countries attitude to public safety. But since no once can stop me, I jolly well will.

And yet this is the country that won't let me mail a 10-year light to my DB as a present, because it contains a trace of tritium.

(Had mine 6 years, and it's still going )

{ Michel Barnier has called on pro-EU forces to defend the fragile union from populist forces, because he said there was now “a Farage in every country”.}
It seems that Mr Farage should be proud he is becoming a byword for a destructive influence across Europe.

That’s the Givernment failing to stop the ECJ hearing on whether A50 can be revoked.

They can ignore the ruling, like votes for prisoners.

That’s the Givernment failing to stop the ECJ hearing on whether A50 can be revoked
It's on November 27th? A lot might have happened between now and then......

It seems that Mr Farage should be proud he is becoming a byword for a destructive influence across Europe.

middleeastnewsservice.com/2016/07/18/farage-as-a-verb-new-english-grammar/

You know how I said i had a real letter in an envelope from my MP? There was one line in it that I sort of glossed over yesterday. He wrote 'whilst I do not think the campaigning in 2016 was our finest hour ...' (then he goes on to say how their disastrous election legitimised their mandate.)
At the time I just thought 'yes the remain campaign was shit' - it wasn't until I was in bed that I suddenly wondered what side he had actually campaigned on.

Reader, he was part of the leave campaign. Which I did know - I had just forgotten.

So ... he has admitted (not in so many words - but acknowledgement) in a letter that he knows the campaign he supported was all lies and illegal to boot - but nevertheless we will continue with what he and his cronies broke the law to achieve (and which his own constituents voted against).
This is nothing new for him - he was one of the mps investigated for electoral overspending in 2015. The police said there was no case. But no provable case does not equal not guilty. (He is also one of the landlord mps that voted down the bill demanding that all rented accommodation must be fit for human habitation. Not relevant - but just further proving his bastard credentials.)

I wonder if he isn't sending his missives out on paper - not to look more like he is actually taking the time to deal with complaints - but rather because they are much more likely to get tossed in the bin and lost forever. An electronic message will always leave a trace.

But, unfortunately for Mr. Andrew - I will be keeping it. And when he is denying that he ever knew there was anything dodgy about the leave campaign - I will have it on hand to prove that he is lying. And when he says he supported the people having a final say - I will have it on hand to prove he is lying.
I imagine there will probably be a bit of a paper trail that will reveal exactly what he did and what he knew - but being a non-famous back bencher he is far more likely to be one of the fall guys than Gove or Boris and take the blame for their crimes mistakes too. And every scrap of evidence will help. Obviously I want Boris and Gove to pay for what they did themselves ... but I certainly won't be crying if this guy gets well and truly stitched up.

That’s the Givernment failing to stop the ECJ hearing on whether A50 can be revoked.

They can ignore the ruling, like votes for prisoners.

They can't. Decisions of the ECJ are binding on the UK (for now at least). The votes for prisoners decision was by the ECHR which is not binding on the UK.

They can't. Decisions of the ECJ are binding on the UK (for now at least).

We'll see.

It's hard to imagine the rabble rousing that the JRMs and NFs of this world would whip up out of a situation where the UK is subject to an ECJ ruling on how it conducts Brexit. In fact, if I were Philip May, I'd tell Teresa to stop messing around with her stupid Chequers plan, and the waste of carbon that is the cabinet, and divert here entire focus onto dealing with this.

Imagine how Brexiteers would react to a newspaper headline screaming about the EU declaring "war on the UK", when they've had someone read it to them ?

{ Not relevant - but just further proving his bastard credentials}
Should there be a rating scheme for this?
BB (bit bastard)
LB (Lying)
TB (Total)
UB (utter)
LTTTB (Lying Through Their Teeth)

Raab an dhis non understanding of the flow of goods in his own country makes it to mainstream press.

inews.co.uk/news/brexit/dominic-raab-admits-he-did-not-understand-how-reliant-uk-trade-is-on-dover-calais-crossing/

I wonder if the short distance between Calais and Dover is why they built a tunnel there? I am sure Hull to Rotterdam would have been a better route for that as it would be nearer the 'centre' of the UK (to include Scotland) and the 'centre' of the EU.

This was the 90s. As I said, it was a US company, and they bought over US ways.

I started doing environmental due diligence during the late 1980s. The US was ahead of the UK, with Superfund sites being set up from 1980 onwards. We used a mix of US, Dutch and UK research for assessing clean up levels, and dig out and replace was standard practice until landfill costs escalated. We used to try and persuade masterplanners to switch around the proposed industrial / commercial areas and the residential areas to minimise clean up costs but that rarely worked. We used to dig and dump thousands of cubic metres of soil.

dig out and replace was standard practice until landfill costs escalated.

Partly due to EU environmental taxes ...

Raab an dhis non understanding of the flow of goods in his own country makes it to mainstream press.

Good to see Prof. Brian Cox tearing him a new one on that.

Of course Prof Cox is a respected scientist on the worlds stage. Meaning his twitter feed will be followed by other world-respected scientists. One can only imagine what they are thinking now.

Not that you have to go far to find out what some people thought ...

Partly due to EU environmental taxes ...

Actually not really - landfill tax was first proposed in the UK in the mid 1990s, and predates the EU Landfill directive. It does tie in with things like the Packaging Regs (much fun was had with those) but was more to do with the fact that so much waste was going to landfill and the UK was running out of suitable holes in the ground to fill. Plus a nifty way to raise some revenue for HMG of course.

Meanwhile, in grown-up land ..

www.theregister.co.uk/2018/11/08/dominic_raab_data_protection/

Brexit secretary Dominic Raab has claimed businesses need to do "very little" to ensure data flows after March – despite official advice that they should start drafting new contracts in case of no deal Brexit.

(contd)

It really is worth reading the comments on that article. If I were a Tory politician, I would be shitting my pants. These are the people that the Tories need to put an "X" in a box for them to win. Educated, literate, (relatively) well paid.

Brexit has turned into a clusterfuck of clusterfucks. Like one of those ICMBs which had 24 misslies each carrying 24 warheads.

I also notice the collapse of the Brexiteer "we won" mantra. Haven't see it for a while. Poor snowflakes.

Actually not really - landfill tax was first proposed in the UK in the mid 1990s, and predates the EU Landfill directive.

That's what you get for being a techie, not a lawyer .

Interestingly I worked on a project for a local authority in the late 90s, driven by an EU regulation. It involved creating a system to allow residents to tip for free at their recycling centre whilst charging out of area tippers, and would have been paid for with an EU grant (I also worked on another EU funded project in Stoke ...). However, the genii in our marketing department felt that as it was a world-breaking system, and involved bits they didn't understand, we shouldn't tender for it.

...and over in grown-up lorry-driver land:

The Road Haulage Association is astonished by ex-Brexit secretary David Davis’ claim that there won’t be border delays at Dover–Calais even if there’s a no-deal Brexit.

Commenting on today's BBC Radio 4 Today programme Mr Davis said that claims of “food shortages were nonsense". When asked about delays at the French border he added: “The port authority says that’s not going to happen. There have been a lot of scare stories.”

The RHA says that Mr Davis is showing an extraordinary lack of understanding of the issue.

Commenting, RHA chief executive, Richard Burnett said: "The French authorities have never suggested a border go-slow and assurances to that effect by both President Macron and local authority leaders in Calais to Theresa May miss the key point.

"There will be delays at borders as a result of new customs checks – there are neither the staff nor the systems in place to make it a smooth process.

"Any customs border check will rapidly create very long queues and massive disruption to the supply chain.
"We simply can't see how the customs process will work.

Considering our constant dialogue with government on behalf of the UK haulage industry, we're at a total loss to understand these latest comments."

DGR we had a call off contract with a big firm of city lawyers to do foresighting on forthcoming legislation and how it could be interpreted.

Hence the “fun” with the Packing Regs - some of our products had elements which could be deemed packaging only in a strict legal definition of the term!

FUD

What the heck are the UK government smoking?
Mr Macron and local leaders were saying there wouldn't be SPECIFIC delays caused by the French ON TOP of the very substantial delays that will be caused by the requirement for extensive customs delays.
Mind you, if the fishermen steal any more scallops that might be taken out of Mr Macron's hands. The French have got protesting down to quite a fine art.

Actually not really - landfill tax was first proposed in the UK in the mid 1990s, and predates the EU Landfill directive.

What, you mean that not only was this a UK law, but one we persuaded the rest of the EU to go along with? But the Leavers have been telling us that we aren't allowed to make any laws, never mind ones which the others might thing are a good idea too.