Westminstenders: Stuck in the Middle With TIGGERS

[RedToothBrush]

Well I don't know how we got here tonight.
We've got the feeling that something ain't right.
We're so scared as we leave the EU
And we're wondering how we'll get out of this stew

Antisemites to the left of me!
Dog Whistles to the right!
Here I am stuck in the middle whilst we leave the EU.

'Cause I'm stuck in the middle whilst we leave the EU.
And I'm wondering what it is we should do.
It's so hard to keep this smile from my face.
Losing control and running all over the place.

Clowns to the left of me!
Jokers to the right!
Here I am stuck in the middle whilst we leave the EU.

When you started off with rights
And you're starting to wonder if thats for life.
And all the politicians come crawling
Slap you on the back and say
Please . . .
Please . . .
Vote Leave and back EU Withdrawal

But we see it makes no sense at all.

Best to keep your money offshore
Than to visit the bookstore

Deniers to the left of me!
Islamaphobes to the right!
Here I am stuck in the middle with you.

Its finally happened. FINALLY.

MPs have seen that their leaders have lost the plot and are hell bent on destruction and politicial ideology ahead of practicality and will justify the unjustifable in the face of democracy and they have jumped ship.

Enter stage left and stage right: The TIGGERS - members of The Independent Group.

Will there be more. Hard to say no. It seems almost certain there will be more.

Will it make a difference? Difficult to call, but these MPs would be driven out sooner or later. Such is our accelerating politicial polarisation and narrowing of views. This is their last stand. They have nothing left to lose on a personal level.

Whether you agree with the TIGGERS or still look to the other parties for policy, I do think that the emergence of the TIGGERS marks a feeling of optimism and much needed hope for many many Remainers / Moderates, even if it ultimately does fizzle out.

A reflection from 2017: People voted for Corbyn because they were looking for Hope. When he's failed to deliver that, its led to disillusionment and he can not pull the same trick again at a future GE. This makes that doubly so. People are STILL very much looking for that hope. If Brexit does go tits up in a big fashion, then what happens? To what direction do people look? I'm sure there will be the bitterest of recriminations, but... hope is a big deal. We need something...

Tick tick tick. 37 days til Brexit.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/eu_referendum_2016_/3492426-Westministenders-Abbreviation

As an immunocompromised person who has never had measles, I would say the "personal choice " argument is a load of bollocks.

Exactly - tiny % of risk to the child, mild through to severe, and nothing to do with autism at all. Yes big pharma has issues and there is no such thing as gold standard research in an echo chamber with publishing for "headlines", but suggesting the NHS shells out money every year to provide free vaccinations because they want to endanger your kids is frankly mental.

Compare that to the risk giving kids bars of chocolate daily has on obesity and mood and you can see how generally people are all messed up with what they "think" is best. Brexit is a good case in point.

Actually before Brexit (BB?) I was all for free choice (liberal nature) and thought people usually did do what was best for their circumstances. I've seen a rabidly different side to people in the last few years and am now slightly more in favour of a top down approach (health especially). I really hope this isn't exactly what Brexit was engineered to do; turn liberals into right winger protectionists.

In his room?

Research?

Yeah, right.

We all know what that means!

Pentangles on the floor, goats blood and gimp masks.

Fuckers.

and am now slightly more in favour of a top down approach (health especially)

God no.

I like the concept of consent in medicine thank you.

And I do see worlds of difference between vaccinations and screening within that.

I believe in evidence based medicine and unfortunately top down medicine can be politicised too often - particularly with reference to women's health.

I think being able to ask questions and scrutinise should apply to everything. Otherwise you lose rights over your own body.

Nick Dearden @ nickdearden75
Confirmation from the trade minister in summing up today's debate: Parliament will not have a meaningful vote on any future post #Brexit trade deal. There will not be a written mandate. There not be a meaningful consultation based on objectives and impact assessments.

Wtaf.

If sensibles leave government guess what that will mean...

Yes - a world of difference. I do think though, that when you have a Public Health crisis, like flu epidemic or measels outbreaks there should be a consensus for enforcement of vaccinations. I also think that there should be mandatory health checks at each stage of life baby, infant, child, teen, midlife etc. If we could get men to go to the doctor just once ever 10 years we would save lives and enable better health whilst arguably lowering the suicide rate.

I see where you are going with the women's health, aka Trump and that's exactly why I am only a "little" more in favour of top down than I used to be as it is all too easily manipulated if the extremists get into power.

The issue with individual decision making (and I am all for it personally) is that the individual has to have access to the right information in a form they can understand. This is where we see the failure with both brexit and vaccination.

The information people are being given is no longer reliable and because the reality is often more complex and nuanced than the hyperbolic fearmongering or unicorns and fairy land people are not able to fully understand it. We have a huge generation of people who grew up and were educates before the internet and simple don't have the ability to process and sift the huge amounts of information they now have access to and make appropriate risk assessments.

Plus you have issues of bias and false balance in media that skews the view of the debate (climate change being the obvious example of this but brexit also suffered from this a lot).

If we want people to be the ones making choices than we need to get better and managing information and teaching them to navigate the new world of the internet.

Bigly at Uni my lecturers used to get annoyed when I said largely informed consent is about knowing whether you were "informed" or not which went back to education. They wanted to say that everyone should have free choice. I wanted to say this means some is free-er/more astute than others. We didn't agree, needless to say.

When the first " Survivor " show aired here in the U.S. that first group had it pretty rough. After a few days they were all basically dying of thirst but managed to find a pond. They were warned not drink from a pond because the water could make them very ill.

One of the contestant's was a retired Navy Seal by the name of Rudy Boesch. Everyone else refused to drink this water except for Rudy who causally bent down and scooped out handfuls to drink.

It seemed either very foolish or very brave to me for him to do this.

I researched survival methods and found this very credible guy whose whole life work was surviving out in the woods, he ran survival workshops and was a chief advisor on survival methodology to basically all branches of the U.S. military.

According to him, if you get lost out in the woods ideally you can manage to find a clear stream or river to drink from. The clearer the water, the more the sun can kill bacteria, viruses, etc through the water getting hit by ultraviolet radiation.

Still, cloudy water from a pod is more problematic but if it has been two or three days since you had anything to drink, then you should go ahead and drink. It will according to him take about three days for any ill effects to show up and hopefully by that time you will have been found and they can treat you at a hospital for any bad effects from the water you drank.

That explained to me why Rudy went ahead and drank that questionable water, it may well make you very ill in a few days time but it beats dying of thirst within a few hours.

Cities will usually issue boil water alerts if water becomes questionable. I don't think they will run out of water but it will probably get tiresome if this goes on and on for the foreseeable future.

i'm no expert but it seems the chemicals in question have more to with wastewater treatment than simply pumping water out of the ground, there may well though be legalities involved that may prohibit the distribution of water that doesn't meet a certain standard.

Otherwise you lose rights over your own body.

In an excellent "Law and Order" (US version) McCoy argued we already have no say over our own bodies. Try and put heroin in yours, for example and see what happens ...

Confirmation from the trade minister in summing up today's debate: Parliament will not have a meaningful vote on any future post #Brexit trade deal.

So less oversight than when we were in the UK, then ?

There was the MMR 'debate' 20 years ago with a lot of conflicting info being bandied about. Very difficult to get decent info and I am not sure it is 'resolved' even now although Dr Wakefield? was put on the naughty step for (probably) overstating the position. With further incursions by big US pharma it could well be repeated.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47319533

The UK won't be able to roll over an EU trade deal with Japan in time for Brexit, Trade Secretary Liam Fox has said.

It is getting hard for them to keep up positive PR now.

RTB and others on the vaccine issue - from my point of view of old fashioned liberal.

Here in France some vaccines are obligatory - if you want your child to attend state-funded crèche, nursery and school. You're not obliged to have your kids vaccinated but that choice has consequences, ie the state will limit the extent to which your unvaccinated kids can mix with others. At present only DTP is obligatory (the BCG used to be but is no longer) but there has been some talk of adding the MMR. I would be in favour because while I believe that people have a choice not to vaccinate, I don't believe that right extends to choosing to put other people's children at risk.

(In practice anti-vax parents can usually find some oddball GP who'll agree that there is a contraindication, so some degree of parental choice remains).

Andrew Wakefield based his ideas on a study of 12 children, selected, already with bowel conditions. There were other studies of 2 million children that showed no evidence of the link he claimed to have found. So there's no 'probably overstating the position' about it. He did and continues to do untold harm to children's health.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/21/liam-fox-post-brexit-trade-plan-go-unscrutinised

Quite. I can imagine some really dodgy deals going through on arms, food standards, health and goodness knows what else.

Bigly at Uni my lecturers used to get annoyed when I said largely informed consent is about knowing whether you were "informed" or not which went back to education. They wanted to say that everyone should have free choice. I wanted to say this means some is free-er/more astute than others. We didn't agree, needless to say.

I absolutely agree with you in this and have had similar discussions. In medicine we push people to make increasingly complex choices about their or their loved ones health in highly stressful situations. We do this saying have then given informed consent, but a lot of the time I would argue they are not informed at all. Having some random doctor come and talk medical jargon at you for 5 minutes while you are off your face on morphine and crazy with pain does not make someone informed. Therefore can their consent really be deemed valid?

Did people make an informed decision about brexit? Sure some did. Those with the mental capacity, education to understand the complexity of the issues involved, time to research and read, physical access to information, ability and contextual knowledge to assess reliability of sources, etc...

This is why I gained myself a bit of a reputation at work for shouting endlessly about accessibility. If we can't access, assess and understand the relevant information we can't make choices.

Now in my own personal magical fairyland utopia we would have a system where people make free and informed choices and MPs are avatars of the people enacting their choices. This is my dream of a beautiful new politics. But that requires not just a complete change in the political system but also the education system and the way in which we share and manage the flow of information to people.

It's a nice dream though and I enjoy it.

I hope someone is keeping a close eye on Liam's bank accounts. Tho I'm sure he is savvy on off shores

Just putting that out there

Many moons ago, probably during the time leclerk is referring too my mother was advised by her gp not to let me have the new combined mmr vaccine given some family medical history and my own adhd. Three years later when my sister was due to have it the gp gave assurances it was safe. The difference there was my mother wasn't advised to not vaccinate me, I was given the individual shots rather than the combined.

PMK finally caught up

Havent seen it mentioned anywhere yet but do we know what 'funny tinge' their rosettes are going to be?

Butterymuffin
The reason I said probably is that having a DC due for vaccination when it all 'blew up' and almost daily reports going one way or the other was very stressful. The degree of 'dodginess' didn't come out for quite a while and was after the time when vaccination was needed. We went for all 3 but taken separately at considerable expense.

@1tisILeClerc - he wasn't put on the naughty step for no good reason. He completely doctored his evidence to reach the conclusion he wanted - and his study is constantly quoted.

I am in too minds about vaccination - but like with brexit it drives me crazy when people use biased and simply untrue information to support an argument against vaccination.