Westministenders: Teetering on the edge

[RedToothBrush]

12 weeks to go.

There is rising confidence in the Extreme Brexiteer camp as well as open comments about how they can deliberately force through No Deal. Remember No Deal is the default. Every political crisis that takes up time makes no deal more likely and the ERG can just be obstructive to facilitate a political crisis. Parliament DO NOT have the ultimate power to stop Brexit - unless the government effectively allow an option to do so. And there is no sign May will let this ever happen. No Deal takes us back to pre-industrial revolution Britain in many social and economic ways. Which will please Jacob Rees-Mogg no end.

No Deal prep is now costing us a fortune - and is no where near sufficient in its scope. Won't someone think of all the extra that could have been put into the NHS.

Parliament returns next week. I hope you have enjoyed your Christmas break. What will happen in 2019 no one knows; the only certainity is turbulance and lurching from crisis to crisis. If we don't get hit by Brexit, maybe it will be the US shutdown crisis or the collaspe in the Chinese economy that will get us. Economists are nervous and thats generally not a good thing for the average person on the street.

Time to get in the euros, stock up on the tomatoes, invest in books and otherwise batten down the hatches financially whilst we await the coming storm in the hope that the forecasters are as good as Michael Fish in 1987.

Always ask yourself why someone whether rightwing or claiming to be leftwing

• I suspect a couple of supposed Lexiters on MN are actually ERG stooges -

would want disaster, chaos and great hardship for many people.

I mean actively advocate No Deal, not just risk it to get their preferred option.

We had no washing machine
just a small fridge with a freezer shelf
a meter that took 10p coins for the electric and the gas fire
and a dansette next to the Ferguson black and white telly

the most exotic food in the local shop was elbow macaroni in a cardboard packet
no looting - but then I was in Central London at the time

We were poor, but rural
I gather urban / city poor had much worse experiences
however, rural at that time meant v low crime and shops with lots of local produce - we still had plenty of small local shops then

Gotta love Andrew Rawnsley BTW
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/06/to-stop-brexit-labour-supporters-will-have-to-revolt-against-their-leader-corbyn

No comparison really to No Deal - we just had a domestic union dispute;
we hadn't cut ourself off from the continent or from our other trading arrangements

This is indubitably true (although it was pre-EU membership). Power outages were more immediately noticeable than food shortages (allowing for the norm for the times).

Ah, I remember our small fridge with a tiny 2-star icebox that would never freeze anything 😂

We actually had a simple washing machine and a washing line outside
No launderettes for many miles, so even low income people like us had 'em.

btw, adding to the tail end of the golden period:
the NHS was doing well and the benefits regime was not soft, but not yet cruel.

Yes, I read that Andrew Rawnsley piece, Talkin'Peace.

What do you say?

He's a real problem. Those who love him, love him. One third don't believe it, one third will simply shift to Lexit (because it must be true, right?), and one third will try and apply pressure.

And he's unremovable because the believers really, really believe in him.

the NHS was doing well

IME, the NHS has always had substantial regional variations. The waiting list for an 'elective' Xray was up to 2 years (even through to the 90s). The waiting list for some elective surgeries was to the point where they'd write to you at 5 year intervals to check that you'd still need it.

Belated place mark

thecatfromJapan
I really fear for the party because it will lurch to the left just as the country lurches to the middle
www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jan/05/unite-momentum-dominate-labour-selections-candidates-key-marginals
But TBH many of my v v v pro Corbyn friends have gone VERY cool on him because of Brexit.
I think many may not forgive him (and his ilk) EVER

Hasenstein We joined the then Common Market in 1973, then when Labour came in we had a Referendum in 1975 to confirm this - Harold Wilson's govt hd negotiated some concessions

iirc, the 3-day week, caused by the miners' strike, was early 1974 and was the reason Ted Heath called the Feb 1974 election, with the slogan:
"Who rules Britain ?"

Answer from voters: "Not you, mate"

There was an earlier problem after the Yom Kippur War, when OPEC shut off the oil for a while and much of Western Europe went into recession, 1973 iirc.
There were petrol shortages of course, which led to price rises of fuel and of food (transport costs)
but I don't remember power cuts

I think there were some other - much less serious - power cuts from various industrial actions from 1970,
but the 1974 miners' strike and the consequent 3-day week was the main event.

another late placemark

Arran 1950s, 1960s and early 70s ?
My dad was in the RAF, so we moved all around the country every 2 yeas until the late 1960s

My mum had a disability and several other chronic ailments, but I remember she was always treated v promptly then.

However in the 1980s, same village where she has lived for 15 years, I had to pay for a series if ops - eyes, knee, feet - because there were 2-year waiting lists

I remember how her GP kept apologising to me how shocking it was that I was paying and that he'd never seen anything like it in his career before - and he started in oractice there around the time the NHS began.

There were power cuts and coal shortages in the winter of 71-72. We had a young baby, no washing machine and a mangle (which worked brilliantly as long as you watched your fingers). We had a coal fire for heating and a back boiler for hot water and in the coal shortages DH used to go to the local beach to collect sea coal washed up by the tide. There were power cuts and shortages a couple of years later, but I never remember any of it lasting very long.

1970s onwards - we were genuinely shocked when we met people from another area who had no idea what we were talking about when we mentioned waiting years for an elective X-ray or having waiting lists for surgery that ran for >10 years.

My mother was 'recovering' from surgical intervention for her first cancer when she developed severe back pain. We were all terrified that it was secondaries. Her 'preferred status' for an investigative Xray put her at a 6 month wait. Let's just say that her death intervened (and, yes - extensive secondaries).

Arran :(

I paid for major orthopaedic surgery in the mid 1990s following a serious traumatic injury. Couldn't even get onto an NHS waiting list.

BigChoc

Yes, I'm sure you're right about the 3-day week. But the power cuts must have been earlier, as I was at uni between 1970 and 1973. In fact, I was already in Germany in 1974. These were regular power cuts, as we knew to get home in time for the next one (or go to the uni library, where they had an emergency generator and HEATING).

As I said above, there were good reasons why my grasp of dates and timings might have been a bit shaky in those days .

There were power cuts and coal shortages in the winter of 71-72

So I wasn't imagining it! Makes you wonder why we joined the Common Market if things were already going so well

Oh Arran. 💐

Thank you - it's more that I meant that altho' I am a strong supporter of the NHS, I've never thought that it has been equitable and I know how very unequal the experience of it can be. My PiL both had an experience of the NHS that couldn't have been better and my MiL has phenomenal care.

I'm very concerned that a hard Brexit would be used to justify introducing an NHS that used to be experienced by people in particular regions (I have substantial reservations about the recruitment drive for a large army of volunteers for the NHS). Likewise, that it would be used as the justification for removing many of the protections of the Welfare State.

Me too, Arran.

Yup, as I added, I remembered more minor - to us, at least - industrial actions from about 1970 that caused occasional power cuts,
but the actual 3-day week was after we joined the Common Market
Heath losing the GE to Wilson as a result is why we had the first EU Ref

In fact, it's strange that Tories still keep talking about the 1978 / 79 Winter of DIscontent,
when my memory of the 1970s is that the earlier Tory govt 1970-1974 had much more serious disruption !

The whole 70s decade was full of strikes, disruptions and massive inflation, over 25% some years.
The country seemed disfunctional, out of control - hence why MrsT with a clear (rightwing austerity) message was elected

I remember in the 1970s, the then German Chancellor being asked something about how unusual it was for a first world country to experience such problems and saying something absolute swingeing:

"Britain is no longer a first world country"

Phew, imagine if Merkel said anything like that
.... although a few months after a No Deal Brexit, everyone might be saying that

At best, our future after No Deal is to emulate US disfunction:

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-developing-nation-regressing-economy-poverty-donald-trump-mit-economist-peter-temin-a7694726.html

America is regressing to have the economic and political structure of a developing nation, an MIT economist has warned.

Peter Temin says the world's’ largest economy has roads and bridges that look more like those in Thailand and Venezuela than those in parts of Europe.
...
Mr Temin says the fracture of US society is leading the middle class to disappear.
...
The economist describes a two-track economy with on the one hand 20 per cent of the population that is educated and enjoys good jobs and supportive social networks.

On the other hand, the remaining 80 per cent, he said, are part of the US’ low-wage sector, where the world of possibility has shrunk and people are burdened with debts and anxious about job security.