Westministenders: The One Where We Finally Get A Leadership Challenge?

[RedToothBrush]

Tick tick tick.

What do we think?

Yes? No?

Another week of wtf-ing at British politics.

I doubt you will get a reply Lonely. Relatively few (myself included) have any idea of what all those organisations do unless they happen to work for or are affected by one. You also need to consider that MN is a subset, English reading, quite 'anti male' (for the more usual topics), and as a guess over 40 with some time on their hands, followed by Brexit topics so the chances of getting representatives to appear here are getting pretty slim.

Oh Bwa-ha .... sorry, stupid is as stupid does

Talking of stupid...

www.theregister.co.uk/2018/11/21/trump_tweets_lies/

Boffins from the Netherlands and France claim that the word choices and sentence construction in President Donald Trump's tweets can be used more often than not for lie detection.

(contd)

Sounds a little like modern day phrenology (i.e "complete bollocks") but hey - if there's a grant going ...

So, The WA actually has many similarities to Norway - which is in the Single Market - minus FOM and plus "frictionless" trade for food products

I don't get this. Isn't that the exact cherry-picking that the UK has been repeatedly told it can't do? So has the EU capitulated?

And what's happening with NI? Doesn't the backstop mean NI is being treated exactly the same as the rest of the UK? Why then are the DUP throwing their toys out of the pram about it?

{Sounds a little like modern day phrenology (i.e "complete bollocks") but hey - if there's a grant going ...}
You need to 'work' the system!
Newton could have just eaten the apple and had a nap afterwards, where would the world be without gravity?

Does anyone else wish they could stop giving a damn about it? Just for a bit.

JasJas
... Corbyn, i don't know what he stands for or wants, i suspect neither does he.

Would agree but his real views started to emerge at a recent presentation to the CBI (see www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-46265560) in which he states that "Brexit should be a catalyst for economic transformation" which aligns with the widely held suspicion that he views Brexit as a means to shock the UK toward a new more socialist / redistributive economic model. Whether it will work or is affordable outside of the EU is a different matter.

Not clear whether he views the Norway++ model implied by the 6 tests as sufficient catalyst to achieve his aims given that it maintains the status-quo trading conditions with no-say/reduced sovereignty. Alternatively, the tests could have been deliberately devised to be unachievable for any real-world WA forcing him/his party into voting against the gov for any WA making a no-deal scale catalyst more likely. Suspect the latter interpretation is unlikely but worthy of note.

Absolutely.
When it is finally decided I will be cancelling my MN account (well probably) as there is nothing else of practical interest to me.
Without 'news' I am effectively on a different planet.

Plenty of other campaigns here to get your teeth into, 1TisILeClerk. Have you been introduced to the Trans debate on the Feminist boards, yet?

Thank you Tanith
If it's all the same to you I will pass on that.
Anybody I see 'on the street' is a person to be treated in a civil manner. How they dress, act or what they do in the privacy of their own homes is none of my business.

I don't get this. Isn't that the exact cherry-picking that the UK has been repeatedly told it can't do? So has the EU capitulated?

No, the WA isn't like Norway at all, Norway isn't in a CU with the EU for a start. The backstop would keep NI in the CU, and in the SM for some goods (not services), and would keep the rest of the UK in the CU (with some regulatory alignment), but out of the SM.

Quite so, 1itsILClerk! If only it were that simple, though.

At my time of life I am aiming for 'simple'.
Comfy garden seat, glass of red and some nibbles watching the birds and other wildlife doing 'their thing' is a good start.

The Trans debate is not about what people do in their own homes. It has very wide implications.
You could follow the Trump threads? A lot of good stuff in those.
And once Brexit has happened, there will be plenty going on in UK politics, which I'm sure will be debated on MN.

1tisILeClerc

"When it is finally decided I will be cancelling my MN account (well probably) as there is nothing else of practical interest to me."

I think you may be locked in here for a while, as it will be a long time until things are "finally decided". The political declaration on our future relationship is so vague that the transition period could require years of detailed definition, accompanied by much sound and fury.

In fact, it's difficult to envisage the Brexit debate ever being conclusively resolved; the Right-wing Tories have been banging on about Europe for 40-odd years and the debate could well continue for another 40. I certainly won't be around to see a definitive resolution of the matter, but I may as well stick with this thread for the foreseeable future.

I am with you LeClerc. I look out at the world and decide to grow veg.

So, The WA actually has many similarities to Norway - which is in the Single Market - minus FOM and plus "frictionless" trade for food products

No it’s not. It takes us out of the Single Market after transition.

It ropes us to a limited CU backstop arragement if no trade deal is finalised by the end of transition. The EU would have to agree to for us to leave, dependent on the border issue, so we could get stuck in this long term, with very little say in the rules we must adhere to. (And no we can’t just break the rules and bugger off).

If the FTA May is after ever gets negotiated, and there is no guarantee of a Labour government in 2021 or that Labour would substantially change the status quo, it would leave only NI in a CU-SM backstop. It would give tariff-free trade between GB & EU but not customs-free frictionless trade in goods, and we'd lose all our current trade deals.

Not sure about analysing Trump's tweets for lies but both his tweets and his speech (especially compared to, say, 15 years ago) show signs of simplistic language usage suggestive of some form of dementia . I saw the same decline in my mother's accident induced fronto-temporal dementia (in fact, it was the speech therapist who identified that the progress from the head injury had turned into regression ), while my GP friend thinks vascular dementia . Both forms also have a physical symptom of having difficulty with slopes (viz May holding has hand going down a slope ).

The This morning news now clear.

Gibraltar.

Please, please, don't let's add the Rancid Satsuma In Chief to this thread. I can't cope with unexpected sightings, I have to mentally prepare myself to deal with it - and its tweets! 😱

I am in Europe and have responsibilities for a DC in another EU country so FoM is vital for me as an 'emergency' visit is already a 9 hour drive without having to worry about multiple visas/paperwork.

Sorry Gibraltar seems to be the Independent rehashing previous news.

May says the EU draft agreement on post-Brexit relations agreed... "right for the whole of the UK", in a brief statement in Downing Street.
The political declaration - outlining how trade, security and other issues will work - has been "agreed in principle", the European Council says.

This is because the Leave vote was a protest by a huge range of people against modern Britain:

the Left Behind who can't compete in a global market, some wanting to strike at the successful mc, those wanting to end austerity, English / British nationalists, wealthy boomers who want the world of their youth back, the JAMs, ideological hard-left and hard right who wnat to remake the country

I am one of the 'Left Behind', am of no fixed abode, am of the opinion that austerity is badly damaging the economy and will continue to do so, therefore by those measures I should've voted Leave. But, I looked at all the things the EU does, all the regions that get grants for infrastructure projects, FOM for DCs and the freedom to work in any EU country and voted Remain.

My XW, a nurse, voted Remain; her partner, a builder, voted Remain. They both think their respective jobs will be made worse should their foreign colleagues decide to leave.

I do agree BCF, that the Leave vote was a big Fuck You to that smug twat Cameron and Osborne's 'economic' plan, which seemed to me to consist solely of making sure house prices go up ad infinitum, locking many of us out of either buying or renting property.

edition-m.cnn.com/2018/11/22/uk/uk-eu-brexit-future-relationship-gbr-intl/index.html?r=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.co.uk%2F

"This balance must ensure the autonomy of the Union's decision making and be consistent with the Union's principles, in particular with respect to the integrity of the Single Market and the Customs Union and the indivisibility of the four freedoms," it says.
"It must also ensure the sovereignty of the United Kingdom and the protection of its internal market, while respecting the result of the 2016 referendum including with regard to the development of its independent trade policy and the ending of free movement of people between the Union and the United Kingdom."