Westminstenders: May's Deal or No Deal

[RedToothBrush]

Tonight: Votes on Amendments after May's Stitch-Up Promise which might nerf the crucial Cooper-Boles amendment as its now deemed 'unnecessary'. I think voting starts very shortly. (They are just summing up now)

A - Corbyn's Brexit deal
K - SNP's, banning No Deal
C - Cooper-Letwin bill paving amendment (which they hope not to move)
B - Alberto Costa's EU citizens rights
F - Spelman/Dromey's to enshrine PM's Brexit extension promise

Corbyn's amendment. You can ignore. Its going to fail.

The SNPs amendment should in theory pass, but with the vote on the 13th March and the government whip, it might fail today.

Cooper-Letwin (or Cooper-Boles whichever you prefer) needs to pass to ensure May can't worm her way out of the current timetable but it looks unlikely to pass. If it does it would come into effect on the 13th March.

Costa's amendment is interesting as he was forced to resign in order to table it (and protect his parents who are EU citz) even though the government have now backed his amendment. His speech was striking in how he stressed it was about people not party politics.

Looking like Spelman has been withdrawn. So possible there will be no vote on it, as May has promised a vote on extension on the 14th March.

The battle now turns to how long the (almost inevitable) a50 extension will be.

March 12th (or earlier): Second vote on May deal.
Its still unlikely to pass.

Which would lead to Cooper-Boles coming into effect (if it passes) though it now has effectively been accepted by May though she might renege.

We now face a vote rejecting no deal on March 13th. Which should ban no deal.

This makes the all important vote effectively on March 14th which will be about the extension. The detail and amendments on this are important and will affect what happens next.

March 29th is probably no longer important as we won't be leaving then.

If we only are able to get a short extension (which the EU might refuse and insist on a longer one! But I doubt it) then the end of April begining of May is crucial. If we don't pass the legislation to take part in EU elections then May can dictate to the HoC and force her deal through as the only alternative to No Deal.

The EU elections fall on May 23-26.

The new parliament starts on the July 1st. This is now effectively the cliff edge if May has her way.

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

When we used to live in the states - I used to do my groceries mostly at whole foods (as that was the only supermarket nearby in Manhattan - I used to also order from the Ocado equivalent) - they definitely differentiated with regards to meat. My issue was actually additives in food - high fructose corn syrup - can be organic , and that makes it fine to put it in all the yoghurt..🤢.
I do realise only a small part of the population can afford the whole foods equivalents.
But I personally think it's the additives that are added into their foods and GMO that is the biggest issue.

mrslaughlan
Last time I was over there I did my grocery shopping at Whole Foods in Union Square NYC
and the quality was shit
quantities were huge
but all the meat was flabby because of polyphosphates and prophylactic antibiotics and GM
the veg was over irrigated and bland
and I missed lamb (as its only sold in halal shops in the USA)

From our time in the US it was very hard to find lamb (although we were in the depths of beef country). Friends in Maryland could buy lamb at extortionate cost at Wholefoods I seem to remember. Our local curry house did a good goat curry though

Doesn't the scarcity of sheep in America go back to the Dust Bowl?* They chomped every glade of grass out of the place and fell out of favour.

*may be completely wrong.

Continuity
Sheep cannot be intensively reared
(in the way pigs, cows and chickens tolerate)
so the USA does not farm them

all you really need to know about their systems

My cousins get lamb from an Arab shop in Philly market

We didn't used to eat a lot of beef - but I often would buy Irish beef - I think I got that at a local deli? Chicken - always bought "naturally raised (that is abit if a joke), antibiotic free". Never shelled out for organic (as I don't do here) as soy has become a main food source in the poultry industry- most of which is produced in China - and I simply don't believe it's organic.
I do remember because I was so picky about meat it was really expensive.
But it is 10 years - so things have probably changed.

I will say living in the states changed how I shopped and fed my son. I became a real baker - making all his snacks and cooking everything from scratch.

Also bought stuff at the farmers markets - from memory a great one a couple rimes a week in union square and once a week in TriBeCa. It was a real faff sourcing quality food.

From NYC we moved to Dubai - now there was somewhere where the food quality was absolutely atrocious.....chicken was revolting, unless I shelled out a fortune (which I did - but not a single bit was waisted) for chilled organic chicken that was flown in fresh from Germany once a week.....

I actually agree with you mathanxiety- - people here are expecting that the sort of labelling we have at the moment (due, in large part to EU labelling requirements ) will continue, but we might not have that in future especially if the UK rolls over and offers its tummy to be tickled in order to get a trade deal with the US

So we will have to work out provenance via price or descriptors like "grass fed" milk/butter/beef. The comments about lamb (or rather the lack of lamb) in the States would explain the comments I've seen on other forums about the need to "find" grass fed butter - something that here in the UK we don't even think about

That's why I'm saying it's not as simple as "consumers will just choose not to buy x, y or z" that they don't like the idea of/don't think is safe/is unpalatable; they may not have the information available to them with which to make that choice.

so the USA does not farm them

They do but it’s small scale - in Texas (where we were) there’s about 700,000, and over 5 million total in the US. Lamb / mutton just doesn’t seem particularly popular and much is imported. It’s tiny when you compare to the 15 million in the UK (or the 30 million in NZ or 74 million in Australia).

mrslaughan My DH grew up in Kenya, where beef was the same price per pound whatever cut it was, so he ate a lot of fillet. A Kenyan friend came to study in the UK in the late 80s and couldn’t believe that you could buy a whole chicken for a couple of pounds.

Country of origin labelling - US beef, for example, can be labelled as ‘Product of the USA’ if it has been processed in a US meat plant, even though it was born, raised and slaughtered in a different country.

What do they feed their dairy cows if not grass??

Geoffrey Cox has given up in his negotiations with the EU.

Attorney General abandons time-limit and unilateral exit clause for Brexit backstop

Ministers briefed on Geoffrey Cox's approach said that those aims, which represent the central demands of Eurosceptics, are considered too "blunt" and have been rejected by the European Union.
Some Cabinet ministers are already resigned to the Prime Minister losing a second meaningful vote on her deal amid concerns that changes to the backstop secured by Mr Cox will not be sufficient to win round Brexiteers.

www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/03/03/exclusive-attorney-general-abandons-time-limit-unilateral-exit/

Been doing house stuff and visiting family this weekend so just catching up:

The Sunday Times @ thesundaytimes
Millions of British lambs may have to be slaughtered and then buried or burnt, rather than eaten, in the event of a no-deal Brexit, government officials have told farmers

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/no-deal-brexit-threatens-cull-of-10m-lambs-jp7c87qtm?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1551611443
No-deal Brexit threatens cull of 10m lambs

This is because UK lamb may be banned from sale to the EU from March 30 under meat hygiene rules applied to non-EU countries. If exports are allowed to continue, they would face tariffs of 45%.

Nearly half the 20m lambs born annually in Britain are sold to the EU. A no-deal Brexit could leave the UK with 9m unsold lambs, with farmers facing mounting feed and veterinary bills.

sparkly they are fattened up in feed lots or indoors and fed on a grain based diet.

The bribe for towns

Jessica elgot @jessicaelgot
Some perspective on May’s “cash for towns.”
⁦*@Gareth*_snell⁩ tells me - “The West Midlands is getting £212m...that is less than the total amount that Stoke city council alone has had to cut from its budget in the last nine years because of austerity.“

Anyway, this cash for towns fund certainly seems to have united all the Labour MPs that the PM has hoped would vote for her Brexit deal.

They all say it is peanuts.

I can see why there's a rise in veganism.

That bribe is spread over 4 years as well.

The bribe story seems to be the big one for Monday.

But the telegraph is also saying Cox isn't going for the ERG demands and has 'given in' to the EU over a formal get out of the backstop (surprise)

Also see the story about NDAs...

How was Cox ever going to get anything rewritten on the backstop? The WA has already been published in the OJEU.

Guardian leads with the UKIP story mentioned above.

And the Express demands the demands the return of 20000 police that May cut whilst Home Sec.

Alex Wickham@alexwickham
10:30pm: No10 announces new Brexit towns fund

By 10:38pm key Labour MPs respond...

@lisanandy: "the government is not serious... my vote is not for sale"

@RuthSmeeth: "A pathetic sum of money"

@gareth_snell: "This is a huge disappointment"

BTW I'm getting the sense that we will have MV2 and it will fail and the EU might be hesitant on agreeing to an extension at first, in order to force MV3 before March 29th. The idea being that both May and the EU have a mutual interest in this and forcing the WA through in principle before 29th March. There then would be a technical extension granted at the last minute.

I could be wrong but reading between the lines over what's been reported going on domestically and in Brussels that looks like the possible current direction of travel.

Could be wrong but if there is a mutual interest to do so between May and the EU I do think they will both persue that as a plan, at least initially, and see where that seems to head.

^The powers that be might be interested in the UK, but US voters are not
and will not allow it to impact on their lives^

So US voters have the whip hand ? sounds paradise ...

I love lamb too ...

Bloody hell, I should've been Attorney General as it's been obvious to me for some time that Cox was on a futile errand trying to come up with some ingenious way round the backstop. What with that, Raab and his discovery of the Dover-Calais trade route, and Grayling and everything, we really have been blessed with a short-sighted crop of politicians at the worst possible time.