Westminstenders: Red Squirrels are British. Groundhogs are not.

[RedToothBrush]

Well the good news is we haven't got a GE yet, and it looks unlike one will be called this week. Purely because we haven't got a crisis point looming this week.

May has officially confirmed plan A is plan B. But says she will try and get more on the backstop whilst working with the DUP. Barnier and Ireland have said 'no'

We now prepare for the Meaningful Vote II.

And a week of speculation about amendments.

Here's a quick summary of likely ones:
Guardian Article on possible amendments

I think the Labour one will struggle to gain Tory support. The big thing about it is leans the party line firmly towards a customs union.

The Grieve one is handicapped by talk of a minority of 300 taking control of Parliament. Otherwise it might have support.

The two most interesting are:

The Benn 'Indicative Vote' as its reflective of the Brexit Select Committee recommendations.

The Cooper-Boles Block No Deal amendment which is cross party and seeks to place a final date on May passing her deal by 26th Feb, after which Parliament will take control. This I believe is being supported by Labour as a whole.

Bercow of course gets to say which amendments are debated and voted on but Benn and Cooper-Boles have broad support so are unlikely to be ignored by him. The two together seem to compliment each other.

The rest of this week is likely to be lobbying on this but otherwise fairly calm. Though someone is bound to throw a few curveball in there with leaks.

The only other thing to watch out for is talk of up to 40 ministers quitting if they are not allowed a free vote on some sort of indicative vote motion. This seems to be being lead by Amber Rudd. But I don't expect this to come to a head until the weekend at the earliest.

In other words, we have a couple of days of calm before the storm. Expect it to ramp up again at the weekend in craziness.

They realise it’s going to affect them much more than previous austerity policy did? There’s no amount of policy on JAMs/hard working families that can get them out of this hole.

So, as I said, how much of a shit should I give ? They were more than happy to vote Tory in 2015 and 2017 when they thought that they would be OK, but knowing that others wouldn't.

This seems approrpiate:

Naughty DGR

What ? - if we've learned one thing in the past two years it's that the only thing thicker than a Brexiteers head is their skin. They would be even more offended if I had self-censored for fear of hurting their "feelz" as if they were some kind of snowflake.

(Incidentally, speaking of "snowflake", I re-watched the excellent "Glory" from 1989 a few months ago, and was amused to hear Denzel Washingtons character call another character "snowflake" ... suggesting it was extant in ante-bellum America ?)

I’m not going to look at the other thread

Those No Dealers (if they’re even real people rather than data gatherers) are impervious, as RTB put it so well.I know that, by engaging, hopefully we get through to some lurkers, but I rather doubt there would be a lot of lurkers on that thread anyway.

Best treat most as drive-by empty-slogan-spritzers, and leave it at that.

I'm also a paper book rather than a kindle lover.

My suggestions:

Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck

Dominion CJ Sansom

The Berlin novels and his autobiography Christopher Isherwood

Runners Ann Kelley

Clear Waters Rising Nicholas Crane (a celebration of travelling in europe)

The Ancient history of Britain Neil Oliver. (To remind you that this is a mere dot in the history of mankind)

Forget the “people’s will” – all evidence demonstrates that the “people’s ignorance” is staggering. Around half of adults don’t know who their MP is while just 11 per cent can name one of their MEPs. A survey carried out in the run up to the 2015 general election revealed that 69 per cent of Britons confessed to having “no interest in politics” while a staggering 59 per cent couldn’t even name the then-prime minister,

Suspect there's a huge amount of people who don't see the wrangling about Brexit as any different to the normal running of parliament - and therefore have very little interest - except that some who somehow imbibed the knowledge that leaving the EU was a good thing are extremely reluctant to let that go. Their level of political engagement hasn't changed significantly though and they are pretty much unaware of what any of the options actually mean.

For most life doesn't really change significantly no matter who is PM, and I think they think either leaving the EU or remaining seems to be much the same kind of thing. It's very sad.

So what's changed now?

Tories have lost the reputation of being the party of business. That's what has changed the most, I think.

Have you seen that mumsnet are doing a web chat with Jonathan Portes, Anand Menon and Catherine Barnard?

For most life doesn't really change significantly no matter who is PM*

*Disclaimer - unless of course you're working in health or education or a have low wage or you're a carer or disabled in which case your life will get significantly worse under certain PMs...

I know who my MP, constituency MSP (the FM ), one of my (SNP) list MSPs and one of my three councillors (the SNP one) are, as well as at least 3 of my 6 MEPs are (the lovely Alyn Smyth, Labour's Catherine Stihler and the odious, execrable and many more sweary words David Coburn).

Jack Maidment
@jrmaidment
New: Lib Dems publish Brexit amendment to set up a ‘Business of the House’ Committee of cross-party MPs which would have the power to determine when Brexit stuff (including bills) is debated in the Commons.

.

It's so important to them that THEY WON. Who cares whether it ends well or not.

Much as I love dead tree books, they are vulnerable, heavy and need storage. I've built up an e-Library of about 2,000 books over the years which are sitting on my server with about 200 on my Kindle.

It's an eclectic collection ... but as with music, tags are the key

Keen-eyed readers will spot the books Mumsnet made me buy ....

It's so important to them that THEY WON. Who cares whether it ends well or not.

It's even more important that others lose, though. That's the clear golden thread running through Brexit.

A Westminstenders AIBU: My 8 year old is due to go on a school residential in the first week of April, where he'll be spending 5 nights away from us, over 200 miles away. We'd agreed to it but I'm increasingly worried that this might be a risky thing to do as they set off on the 1st of April. Is it sensible to change course and pull him out or is that too over cautious?

DGRossetti

You have two books on there that are on my Amazon wishlist! I know it would be more convenient on a kindle, especially when the book is a brick and weighs down your bag but for some reason I can't seem to concentrate and take it in from a screen. I can do mumsnet because it's broken into posts but I struggle with pages of text.

prettybird Alyn Smith is lovely, can definitely confirm. He's a very nice bloke.

I can name my mp and at least one MEP, alas a UKIP twat (who came along to a lunch meeting paid for by charities, guzzled the food and wine like it was going out of fashion then derailed things by telling endless, irrelevant anecdotes This isn't outing as it could be any UKIP MEP who behaved in this way).

@PainInTheEar ,I would seek reassurances from the school regarding food supplies and if my child really wanted to go and it was still in the UK, I would let them go. My dd went on one a couple of years ago and she loved it. She was 10 when she went.
I would also ensure I had a full tank of petrol and the exact location of the place. I would also insist the school regularly updates on Twitter (ours did).
To be honest,being away and having outdoorsy fun would be the perfect tonic.
If your child is up for it.

e-books are "OK" .

It's a stark testament to where we are, and where we are going that the amount of work going into improving e-readers, as a %age of work going into shite like "fortnite" is about 0.000000000000000000000001%

For your potboiler airport-lounge stuff - paperbacks - the e-version is as good as a paper version. But when you start getting into the more sumptuous coffee-table tomes ... art, science, history ... then you really lose out. Even reading them on DWs 12-inch iPad pro is a poor experience compared to holding the real thing. And in general, quite aside from the sledgehammer-nut thing going on, tablets are dreadful e-readers.

I'm hoping with LGs roll-up screen tech, someone might develop an e-in colour display that could be used for the art-heavy books

In the NYT piece:
We came to dread conversations with our dearest friends from England, now so obsessed with Brexit that they would forget to mention the weather.
Amusing.

Don't know why I put a "y" into Alyn Smith's surname . Even as I was typing it, I knew that the only "y" was in his first name

misti just read your post about applying for settled status. That’s appalling. I’m so sorry.

I’ve never really understood when people say ‘I’m proud to be (insert nationality)’ or ‘I’m ashamed to be (insert)’. We’re all individuals and should be proud or ashamed of our own standards and behaviour, but this whole Brexit debacle and what it has unleashed has finally driven me towards a feeling of being, if not quite ashamed, then certainly emabarassed to be British.

PainInTheEar
I think you are being over cautious.
The only real 'issues' would be food and at that point there should be no problems as long as the residential have got stocks in.
It may not go to plan, and there may be things that are not initially in mind but if you and youngster treat it as an adventure all is likely to be fine. The teachers and residential will not be 'reckless'.

either the SuffolkGazette has been hacked or pranked, or someone has mischievously registered some interesting domain names for InfoWar

www.suffolkgazette.com/news/british-migrants/

suffolkgazette.com
France on alert for tide of British refugees risking lives to cross Channel
2 minutes

French authorities are increasingly concerned about the thousands of Brits fleeing the UK for the safety of Europe.

The number of refugees trying to escape the madness of British rule has reached epidemic proportions in recent days.

Desperate men, women and children are dicing with death by heading across the English Channel on any floating device they can find.

Often, they make the perilous journey on nothing more than a raft put together from barrels and wood.

They have started arriving on beaches across Northern France, and now the French coastguard has been forced to increase patrols.

The numbers seeking a new life in Europe reached epic levels yesterday.

French humanitarian worker Madame Lorraine Fisher, 34, said: “These poor people are desperate. Their country is unstable, dangerous and there is about to be an economic disaster.”

The madness of UK life became apparent this week when Parliament voted overwhelmingly against the Government’s key Brexit policy. The next day, it confounded logic by voting it had overwhelming confidence in the Government.

Refugee Darren Knight, 27, from Suffolk landed in France last night aboard a raft made from a bathtub.

“I shall be seeking immediate asylum status here in France where it is safe,” he said.

Watching boorish embarrassment that is PMQs, I'm musing to myself whether occasions such as this were more constructive before the HoC was televised

It's just so much macho posturing (and yes, I know the PM is a woman ) and is a waste of parliamentary time (and by extension, our MPs' time)