Westminstenders: And I neeeedddd moreeeee timeeeeee!

[RedToothBrush]

We need Time!
Its the one thing we don't have.

Todays vote is on extending a50.

To the displeasure of leavers, Bercow has selected amendments:

e) Corbyn Amendment
demands the government should “provide parliamentary time for this house to find a majority for a different approach”.

h) Wollaston Amendment
cross party amendment requesting to extend to allow the ability to legislate for a PV

i) Benn Amendment
cross party backbenchers take over parliamentary time from 20th March to find a majority way forward which gives justification for an extension

j) Bryant Amendment
prevents meaningful vote III

After yesterday's vote, May is left with effectively four options:

1) Pass the WA and go for a short technical extension.
An extension would have numbers in the HoC, but passing the WA is a struggle and it's reliant on the EU granting extension which is probably viable in this circumstances.

2) Be defeated getting the WA through and be forced into asking for a long extension as a result. This would include EP elections.
This option is politically toxic to the tories and its unlikely a long extension would pass the HoC. The EU would still need a justification for a long extension - a PV would be the natural option - but not clear if that could pass the HoC. Ditto passing legislation for EP elections. Whole scenario is unlikely

3) Be forced to revoke
Tory party big red button of self destruct

4) Actively decide to pursue an illegal no deal Brexit
Let's not think of the ramification

Going through this at speed, my initial reactions to this are:

If e) passes it doesn't really make much difference to May's choices here, but Labour might have more say.

If h) passes it might make 2) more likely

If i) passes it might open up alternative options

If j) passes we might have a real issue if its the only amendment that passes - it would leave a straight choice of Revoke or No Deal UNLESS i) passes as well.

But there might be other things that are not hitting me right in the face now.

As it stands, Hard Line Brexiteers were earlier today making noises that they would now support the WA - including whispers that this would include the DUP who would be likely to set off a chain reaction of support.

However which (if any) amendments pass today could well affect whether thats even a possibility.

As a result this vote needs to carry the health warning 'Be Careful what you wish for'. What you would LIKE might be extremely high risk and might jeapordise the main vote and the chances of an extension at all.

So whilst Leavers might be unhappy about the choices, it might well ultimately work best for No Dealers. Or it could be a gift for Remainers. Bercow's selections are not necessarily biased for this reason. He does not know the outcome here. If anything it looks like he's actually trying to put more options on the table for the house, rather than allow May to dictate to the house. Which is exactly what he should be doing. He's given parliament the power.

I suspect we will not fully understand what is going on tonight EVEN MORE than last night. And it will take a short while for everyone to calibrate what the eventual result actually is going to mean.

THIS is the most important vote yet. And it has the potential its going to end up m-e-s-s-y.

Yes. She has a true gift for rhetoric. Powerful, passionate, persuasive and no cliches.

I really don't know how we can move forward as a society, as a human race.

Well if we can't do it, nature most certainly will. Not my preferred choice, but pretty damn effective.

MTGgirl With all due respect your last post is racist nonsense. Unless he is some sort of sleeper agent or playing some sort of clever reverse psychology there is absolutely no evidence that Evgeny Lebedev is an agent of Russia or malevolent media influence, if anything the contrary. Self evidently from their content and differing stances he exerts little editorial control over his media interests which include the Standard and Independent (which he saved from collapse at the eleventh hour), both of which editorially are against Brexit, and far from right wing.

He is slightly bonkers, can be seen walking his wolf in Bushy Park dressed in full English aristocratic shooting gear of plus fours and deer stalker (these days the latter is possibly more weird than walking a wolf given that it is the latest craze to have a dog akin to a Game of Thrones dire wolf). He hosted the post Brexit party where Lily Allen took the photo of Murdoch Fox and Farage were cosying up. Arriviste and social climber may be and not my cup of tea but aside from his Russian KGB father (he grew up in the U.K.) I would need to see some evidence he was a Russian agent and that you are not singling him out just because of the accident of his birth.

I assume you do not live in London? We all commute, I have frequently shared trains tubes and buses, and pavements with MPs, Cabinet Ministers and other influencers. It is quicker than driving. And of course any organisation that needs to mind their media has people scouting the media including the Standard and Indie for relevant clippings that land on everyone’s desk in the morning. Sorry your post reads like conspiracy theory to me .....

We need better journalism. Journalism that doesn't present views as facts or let people's views they interview go unchallenged. If Farage had been put in his place with facts early on and it been very clear he was peddling lies, he couldn't have hoodwinked so many. The trouble with current media is so much happens so fast they don't know which lie to confront. Having a list of them and counter arguments would help.

The idea that silencing people gives them kudos is difficult in these situations; look at Tommy inviting press to certain things and then "doing a Trump" and getting his supporters to attack them. What they need is a way of having him blathering on in the background with a voice-over spelling out that he was using racially ignorant language, threatening behaviour towards minorities and disrupting the peace - along with some hard facts on the topics he covers at any given time.

As we've said here many times, BBC and other mainstream journalists are too scared to be called "in a bubble" (from relatively little reporting just after the vote, where it was used as an accusation on little evidence really - esp considering Russia funded the 3mil non-voters which swung it). Since then real journalism has flat lined as everyone seems too scared to suggest idiotic views are just that.

MTGGirl
Although I didn't set out with this intention, and once the WA is signed and Brexit moves into phase 2 I plan to escape MumsNet and actually do some work I feel that particularly the Westminsterenders threads are a bit like the white mice 'reveal' at the end of Hitchikers guide.
The usual posters are the 'experiment'. People who seem on the whole a bit older than average, read widely and research and put together reasoned 'arguments' rather than quoting from headlines and running away. I waste my time here because I need to know how Brexit will affect me and the computer is in the only warm room in the house. Come the warm weather, I hope the Brexit decision will be taken soon so I can skip merrily in the sunshine outside for the summer.

No words today except peace and love to all those affected by events in NZ

By the way I do agree in general about the need to better regulate the media particularly on the right (or any extreme) and the people who own and edit it. It is just that in using Evgeny Lebedev as the example purely in the basis of his Russian birth I think you are undermining your own argument.

A sad day today, Kiwi friends are in utter shock. Their government has worked hard against racism but that has been directed at the indigenous and islander ethnic groups and the bigger Asian immigrant population. Only 1% of the population are Muslim. This is imported hate ideology.

We need better journalism. Journalism that doesn't present views as facts or let people's views they interview go unchallenged.

The reality is we are going the other way, where any blogger/vlogger/"social media influencer"/mememaster is afforded the same airspace as heavyweight real journalists.

Only a few days ago, I noted someone asking why shouldn't there be scope for law students to prop up the legal system:

Is there therefore not a case for allowing people who are not practising solicitors or barristers but who have a knowledge of the law and/or are articulate and who may have a knowledge of court procedure as well, to represent impecunious clients free of charge in the lower courts.

Add that to "Uber" and "Air BnB" supplanting taxis and hotels (by not having to comply with that tiresome consumer protection) and you realise we are slowly recreating the "wild west" again. Where there's fuck all regulation; and where there is regulation, fuck all enforcement; and where there is regulation and enforcement, fuck all penalty.

I can feel the red mist ... again ....

Absolute awful events in NZ. My thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims.
The media will have a field day going into all the gory details and delvings of this terrible tragedy and in so doing gives the terrorists exactly what they want .......media attention...every newspaper, media outlet all over the world will have headlines for days about this. It should stop right now. Yes a minutes silence condolences and help given to victims but the more publicity it gets the more the terrorists can glory in it. I think apart from voicing our outrage and condolences we unintentionally will fuel the media coverage of a terrorist act by analysis and interest in such an atrocity. So I, for one, will say no more on the matter as I do not want to give terrorists any attention thus not feeding their desires of such attention.

A politician here - not sure if I dare call her British ! - who has really stepped up and noticeably done a good job since the ref
Maybe it's the contrast with the hopelessly confused shower in the HoC, but NS has surprised and impressed me.

Nicola Sturgeon@NicolaSturgeon

Later today, I will visit @GlasgowMosque.
New Zealand may be on the other side of the world but I know that for Muslims here, what has happened will feel very personal and close to home.
As we send our love to #christchurch, we must stand united here.

@Emilyontmoor Thank you! You have my proven my point. Sorry to Lebedev (surely A)he's not reading this B) doesn't care), but that is my point. I, at least, have the decency to say sorry, my mistake (or not) if I'm proven incorrect, but how many times we just read something and take it for granted? How many times do we come across post/articles that say something and never follow up? Even if it proves to be a lie (bus, NHS ring a bell?) What I wrote fitted the context, fitted the point, might as well have been true. For all we know it is true. Or your version is true. This is a harmless example, yet potentially capable of swaying public opinion if, let's say it came a "general knowledge" here on MN and then spread to other sites.
No one has the capacity to be well versed in everything, it's not that time any more. But how do we select what/who we trust in terms of information?

@1tisILeClerc agreed! I just want to know if it's A, B or C. Whatever they may be, knowing for sure is better than this limbo.
And I would need to know as I have proposals out in other EU countries that are on hold because of this shitshow. So it has a direct impact on my life :(

Funnily enough I mentioned "Bowling for Columbine" in conversation a few days ago ... there is a curiosity as to whether such tragedies are a genuinely modern (post industrial ?) phenomenon, or it's merely the advancement of weaponry that enables them. Were people going berserk in antiquity, but prevented from killing too many by the limitation on knife, sword and spear ?

The reason it came up was the section where Moore visits a Canadian town where US-style violence is unheard of, despite being 1m from the border.

Meanwhile, in UK/EU land

www.lawsociety.ie/gazette/Top-Stories/uk-lawyers-take-pot-shot-at-eu-cannabis-regs/

An EU reclassification of cannabinoids as novel foodstuffs is being challenged by English lawyers.

London law firm Mackrell Turner Garrett, together with a leading food and trading standards barrister, has been instructed by the Cannabis Trades Association UK (CTA) to challenge a change in the classification of food products containing cannabidiol (also known as CBD) recently introduced by European regulators.

And those involved in Britain’s booming medicinal cannabis industry fear that CBD products could be removed from shop shelves if the new categorisation is rigorously enforced.

(contd)

David Blevins @ skydavidblevins
BREAK: The DUP say they are “involved in ongoing and significant discussions with the government today.” #Brexit.

Beth Rigby@bethrigby
NEW: Understand DUP and Cox remaining in London all weekend to work on possible agreement. Looking at what additional provisions they could add to domestic law to underline interpretations on backstop (in the Withdrawal Agreement Bill?)

MTGgirl The issue is really one of critical thinking, as well as regulation (something really highlighted by the disgusting journalism we are seeing today, not just the video, they are also publishing this murderers manifesto.) I don’t trust anything I read in the media as “truth”. I always evaluate the sources and go to a variety of sources to arrive at a view. Of course I tend to wallow in places where the viewpoint is one I am comfortable with but I am aware it can be an echo chamber. Red has written at length about how emotion has replaced critical thinking in the public sphere of debate and I agree with that. Perhaps that is why Lebedevs birth led you down a certain chain of reasoning when it would have been easy to google him and research his media interests. It is certainly why the leavers I know do not respond to rational argument, but keep trotting out the same emotional arguments that have long been disproved, in their real life as well as from media sources.....

NEW: Understand DUP and Cox remaining in London all weekend to work on possible agreement. Looking at what additional provisions they could add to domestic law to underline interpretations on backstop (in the Withdrawal Agreement Bill?)

Are we back to a unilateral interpretation which would be laughed out of Fame Academy ?

The issue is really one of critical thinking

Generally discouraged from a very early age in the UK. Doing as others say is baked into our national character from a very early age, reinforced with a prurient interest in the lives of others.

Incidentally if you are looking for a vehicle of misinformation and general trash it is the freebie Metro not the Standard that is chief suspect. Personally I object to all freebie newspapers because if you travel by public transport at night there are entire forests of abandoned freebies littering the place and I object to the ecological damage. one of these days I will load up a lorry and barricade up the gate of his Bushy Park mansion and leave him to cope with his underexercised wolf........

Just taken the 'Are you a climate change dunce' test on the Guardian website. Apparently I am a dunce because I didn't know the middle name of a Swedish scientist 70 years ago.
This despite that I have spent shitloads of money adding insulation, thermal water heating and PV panels.
How to win friends and influence people!

DG I don’t entirely agree with that. Some of our schools do work hard to develop critical thinking in their pupils and even at GCSE level (unlike in the past) critical thinking skills are required particularly for History. However given the nature of the public where and especialky social media and the broadcast and press media it is an uphill battle. The BBC in particular seems to have abandoned any attempt at critical thinking in its coverage in the face of political pressure from the Tories.

*spere not where

Has emotion replaced critical argument?

My overriding sense is that for many on here Leavers "do not respond to rational argument" presumably = "continue to disagree with me, even though I know I'm right"

Assuming we have MV3 next week (and for all the chatter elsewhere about Bercow not allowing that, I really cannot see him taking that course of action) and it fails again, will there be further votes re asking for an extension, or is that all agreed now?

Even though I do actually think it will scrape through on its third attempt.

They teach critical thinking in independent/ posh schools. Critical thinking not needed in new GCSEs as its all bloody learn by rote basically! ( thanks to Gove).

It may well scrape through if DUP gets behind it as others thinking of Ireland will follow suit I.e if DUP are OK with it then we are touch.