Westminstenders: Stalemate

[RedToothBrush]

After May's Meaningless Vote defeat and Corbyns Pointless Vote for Your Own Party defeat we are well and truly at Stalemate.

May has invited other parties to come and talk to her to find a compromise. Except she has so many red lines all she is asking is for everyone else to compromise whilst she gets exactly what she wants.

Corbyn made a tactical error in not initially speaking to May, so now she gets to say that its Labour who are being difficult and not wanting to work together in the national interest.

Corbyn has in addition put down the red line of saying he won't talk to May until she agrees to drop no deal. Except since no deal is the default until an alternative solution is agreed! Corbyn is expecting May to say that she would revoke if there was no alternative agreed, whilst is isn't really reasonable from a compromise point of view.

They are as bad as each other. Both too stubborn for the country to move forward. Its long been said that they were alike in this respect, but having it put to the test about which is more stubborn has the potential to destory the country in the process.

In addition to this, Leadsom has removed all other Brexit related HoC business from the schedule until after the 29th January. This is a blantant attempt to try and stop backbenchers having the opportunity to table pesky amendments which the government don't like.

The 29th January is due to be the Meaningless Vote II. Given that May has made it clear that in her head 'compromise' means 'do exactly what I want and capitulate' it looks like the Withdrawal Agreement will be represented to parliament to vote on with little change. Perhaps with a few amendments there designed to attract support, though it remains to be seen where this support will come from given the spectulator level of the rejection the HoC gave it. May's Plan is literally to run the clock down and hold a gun of no deal to the head of remain leaning MPs or to scare Brexiteers by suggesting that she might revoke or there might be an extension.

Its beyond farce.

Of course the role of the Speaker becomes paramount.

Technically speaking no bill can be presented to the HoC twice in the same parliament. Its against the rules. So how is May going to get around this, and will the Speaker indeed allow it?

The Speaker may also try and help backbenchers out by allowing amendments and motions to be tabled outside the normal rules. Normally the government alone control the majority of parliamentary time, with the opposition parties being given so many debates depending on whether they are the official opposition and then according to their size. Backbenchers don't tend to get much parliamentary time. However the Speaker's actions last week showed he was willing to be creative and bend the rules to allow backbenchers more influence and power than under normal circumstances because of the way that the Executive was trying to frustrate the house. So not timetabling any further Brexit Business between now and the 29th January seems a sure fire way to have the Government straight on course for another run in with Bercow.

So what next:

Do not forget that whatever happens May has to agree to it, or we go to no deal. Whether that be a 2nd Ref, Revoking, Staying in the Customs Union, Norway + or Any Other Alternative May has to agree to it on some level.

Backbenchers can table amendments all day long to 'guide' or put pressure on May but they may not be able stop her ultimately. Boles, Grieve, Benn and Cooper seem to be the ones to watch.

So May's stubborness is the biggest barrier and issue there is to preventing No Deal.

Corbyn, whilst he might well be very right to avoid getting sucked into May's trap, isn't helping matters with his own stubborness. His priority is party politics and stopping the Labour Party from splitting. Not solving Brexit.

There is not a shread of pragmatism nor thought for the national interest between them. Party before Country.

So we are to go through all of the last week, possibly with another vote of no confidence thrown in for good measure in another 12 days.

Won't that be fun?

Quite by coincidence I was sorting paperwork this morning and saw that our French car insurance includes a Green Card for driving abroad, automatically. (DH knew but I hadn't noticed before).

Morning Boris.

Boris?

That will because you don't work in insurance then.

Riiiight. I'm only allowed to understand my own business then am I, not the businesses of our major suppliers?

Well clearly you're an insurance professional so please explain what extra expense is taken on by the insurer in providing minimum third-party cover in France under the Green Card scheme, as compared to the statutory minimum cover which is provided under the EU's Insurance Directives.

I know nothing about this at all but surely as a minimum they’ll have the cost of providing the actual cards themselves. Perhaps taking more calls about the green cards. Updating website with information about green cards etc. That’s before you get into the cost of the actual insurance.

I imagine the DUP are getting a lot of stick from constituents who don't want their businesses to go down the pan, whether Unionist or Nationalist. That's the only reason they would blink.

French car insurance includes a Green Card for driving abroad, automatically

All EU-issued motor insurance includes the equivalent of Green Card cover within the EEA. Actual Green Card cover isn't generally included unless you've asked for it because you're visiting somewhere outside the EU but on the GC scheme.

Steven Swinford@steven_swinford
Amid the bitter in-fighting fighting over Brexit, this is a very welcome sight.

Wes Streeting, Iain Duncan Smith and Mike Gapes are getting locked in a prison cell together to raise money for a disabled children's charity.

They'll only get released if enough 'bail' is raised...

This charity has missed the obvious trick to raise far more money...

I'm not an insurance professional. I'm a software professional that has worked in motor insurance aggregation. And you failed to grasp my point about extra expenses. It's nothing to do with risk - that's all priced in and rock solid. It's all about the extra admin needed. Certainly my former employers systems simply don't have the ability to administer the issuing of green cards. I can imagine the kludges involved to do so, and they'll still cost hundreds of thousands of pounds. That's on policies where the profit (if there was any) was being calculated in decimal places.

You might see a penny piece of green card. The insurer sees something that equates to £5 cost on a policy where the profit was £4.

@RedToothBrush

They have! a shame. Alternatively, the organisers should have arranged it so they could only be released with prior agreement by the EU .

And why do the Labour Party allow Diane Abbott in front of a microphone?

Why do the BBC presenters to create a hostile environment for Diane Abbot by making jokes about her with the audience before filming begins? I don't know about you, but I don't think I'd give my best public speaking performances in the face of such sustained harassment.

Don't you have a drawer of magical IT imps you can release at night to make all your complex system changes at no cost DGR? I know this is what people seemed to assume I had when I was an IT PM and web content manager.

Don't you have a drawer of magical IT imps you can release at night to make all your complex system changes at no cost DGR? I know this is what people seemed to assume I had when I was an IT PM and web content manager.

Yes.

In India.

(p.s. my former employer. I took redundancy which chimed with some life events, rather than stay in a shrinking circle ... )

DGR obviously I was looking in the wrong place all those years.

surely as a minimum they’ll have the cost of providing the actual cards themselves. Perhaps taking more calls about the green cards. Updating website with information about green cards etc. That’s before you get into the cost of the actual insurance.

Sending out an extra bit of paper with insurance certificates is hardly an extra expense worth considering.

It'll just go back to how it used to be - UK insurance covers you for the UK and if you want to drive abroad you pay a bit extra. People who never drive abroad will probably pay a bit less. This automatic EU-wide insurance is a relatively new thing anyway.

Many motorists won't ever need a Green Card of course. It's not like anybody's going to be popping over to Calais on a booze cruise any more after all.

Sorry it is a bit late but:
{But flights are going to go up...}
I hope that ALL flights go up personally, for the duration of course.
Wannabee 'widget' maker fancying her chances selling to China and the world post Brexit thinking there will be no problems on another thread.

As is standard, a lot of grunt development was sent abroad. The design architecture and analysis is all done in the UK, but the code-bashing done in India (I helped set it up).

The more complex the requirements, the more likely we'd need to bring senior staff from India into the UK to liaise better (I liked this, could practise some Hindi).

Bearing in mind all insurers systems need to integrate with brokers and agents, having to enable a physical green card facility is going to need quite a bit of testing and interfacing.

That's before any consideration as to whether it will affect the claims process. Because it it does, that's another few thousand man hours on training.

It really is like Boris is in the room, isn't it ?

Sending out an extra bit of paper with insurance certificates is hardly an extra expense worth considering.

Lols. In businesses with tight margins, and/or a lot of competition, EVERYTHING that incurs additional expense is worth considering. It might not be the most important aspect of No Deal Brexit, but it does go to show that there would likely be a knock on effect on pretty much every industry in the country.

In other news, its just started snowing here. I love snow!

UK insurance covers you for the UK and if you want to drive abroad you pay a bit extra.

If it has to cover the entire cost of driving abroad (see upthread) it'll be more than "a bit" (probably £30-40 minimum).

Of course, you might be able to fund it by adding 10p to every policy. But it's hard to see that being possible in England where the childless begrudge child benefit, and the healthy begrudge the ill.

Anyway, enough insurance minutia. If anyone is that interested, they can go and talk to actuaries - who got out of accountancy as they found it too racy

Sending out an extra bit of paper with insurance certificates is hardly an extra expense worth considering.

Of course it is. Plus all the other aspects you ignored in your response.

Charging those who go abroad extra will require setting a new tariff, informing customers, updating website with this information again, more calls and questions about requirements, costs etc.

You might think a few pennies here and there won’t make a difference but pennies here and there add up to pounds, potentially too many pounds for a company to bear.

You might see a penny piece of green card. The insurer sees something that equates to £5 cost on a policy where the profit was £4.

You really think it costs £5 to print an extra piece of paper?

But anyway, so what? The insurer would no longer be offering free EU cover without any extra cost or questions asked. That's a substantial reduction in their risks.

Some policies might offer the extra Green Card cover automatically or included in the cost, others would have it as a chargeable extra, other policies would have no foreign cover available at all.

It can't be more than 10-15 years since this was the normal situation anyway so it's hardly going to create a problem for the insurers - particularly as they've known about it for nearly 3 years.

If your former employer is incapable of issuing Green Cards then they'll have to tell their insured that they can't insure them in the EU - presumably in exactly the same way as they now have to tell them that they can't insure them in Tunisia or Turkey.

Anyone watching Boris? He still seems to think we can renegotiate and take out the backstop.

He's now talking about pay inequality. The man who didn't declare his extra earnings from his newspaper column.

Anyone watching Boris?

I think he's on this thread, talking about insurance ....

I don't like snow. This is why: