Westminstenders: Local Elections Madness

[RedToothBrush]

This week has gone from banging your head against the wall to wanting to bang your head through it.

Labour have voted to support a 2nd ref as their EU election campaign strategy. Only for Corbyn to ignore it. And a row has broken out.

Change UK seem well on track to make everyone else look professional and to look as 'liberal elite' as humanly possible in a real life reverse paraody of themselves.

The Brexit Party is going from strength to strength with the most wtf candidates imaginable and Farage is happy cos his mate is coming to tea with the Queen.

The Liberal Democrats have decided that anti semitism is OK in an effort to keep Labour seats.

And the Conservatives. Where to start? Probably with the Tory Leadership Election infighting which looks suspiciously as if its now breached national security.

As for Brexit. No one really wants to talk about it. Local elections are next week. May is now apparently supporting the Malthouse Compromise. Be warned, it is difficult to see it as anything but a Trojan Horse for No Deal. Not that everyone has worked this out yet. But until we have the blood bath of the local elections over and done with on Thursday, don't expect much to happen.

Then expect the Tories to lose their minds...

I find that post really depressing.

borntobequiet L. Ron Hubbard famously said if you want to get rich, you start a religion ... and he nabbed Tom Cruise with his own personal brand of batshittery. You really did miss a trick.

{I too have often felt that the trans stuff is being pushed in order to spread disagreement and confusion}
I am certainly confused and have no idea what the heck it is all about. I seem to have missed about 10 years where it has developed. Don't bother explaining, I don't want to know, with all due respect.
To me a human I see on the street or wherever is a person who on at least initial 'interaction' deserves pleasant and polite conversation.
If they turn out to be a complete 'knobhead' of any persuasion, just avoid in the future. Simples!

Taken from the Yahoo news link but talking about Huwei:
Chinese representative:
{He added: “When it comes to the establishment of the new 5G network, the UK is in the position to do the same again by resisting pressure, working to avoid interruptions and making the right decision independently based on its national interests and in line with its need for long-term development.”

Mr Liu urged the UK to resist “protectionism”, and added: “The last thing China expects from a truly open and fair ‘global Britain’ is a playing field that is not level.”}
He speaks with a forked tongue, as China is very protectionist and many rules to prevent competition from outside China.
Wile it would be easy to sound paranoid, you have to be very careful and the 'smiles' can have much deeper undercurrents. Many countries, including the USA owe a LOT of money to China, which is all well and good during the 'happy' phase, but the thumbscrews are on the shelf in the background.

The "self identity" nonsense started way back when, as a way to avoid the situation where one human being makes any sort of judgement over another. After all, who am I to decide that you are black ? Or asian ? Or hispanic ?

Or to put it another way, the only person who can fill in a "ethnicity" form is you. And there's no wrong answers. After all, would you "correct" a form ?

My growing resentment at all this nonsense is how it's starting to impact on the less able ... since the first thing to go when providing gender neutral spaces is disabled provision. We will arrive at the situation where a business employing one person will need to provide 4 separate toilet facilities ....

1tisILeClerc - from what I have gathered from this thread the Chinese position in the security is one part of a jigsaw though, right? So we rely on USA for one section, China for another and presumably others for other parts, which spreads the risk of a whole system going down?

I'm vague on the whole thing, but that post did help clarify why something like this would actually be sensible. Also why I immediately pegged Fox for the breach, him being the polar opposite to sensible. If Grayling had been in the line-up however...

DGR - exactly. IMO the more absurd the less likely anyone is actually really bothered by it. Brexit is a case in point, Muslims having issues with poppies and Easter eggs is another that comes around every year. It's the "if it's too good to be true" adge in reverse "if it sounds to bad to be realistic, it probably is". People who read OK and Cellulite Daily are likely to be drawn in and do theatrical gasps of "Ooooh, they never did!" but on the whole people know it's bullshit.

regarding Huawei, isn't it fascinating how no major news outlet - or political party for that matter - has asked the one question I would have thought the average proud American must be asking, which is

Why the fuck do we Americans have to buy high tech stuff from the Chinese ? Aren't we Americans supposed to be WORLD LEADERS IN EVERYTHING ?

Of course the answer, my revolutionary descendant chums, is that like your former Imperial overlords, your government has spent decades steering all the money from it's citizens into the estates of a privileged few. Neglecting investment in education and manufacturing. With the end result that you now lack any serious industrial capacity in high tech equipment.

However, even if someone does go off script, and starts asking awkward questions, we have plenty of ways of ensuring no one gets to hear, believe or care about it. Statistically we must be due another high school shooting, surely ?

LonelyTiredandLow
The UK has to decide which 'superpower' to 'follow' as it can never be totally independent. All countries use their intelligence services to try and 'hack' into others, it's their job, so you have to decide who to be 'best mates' with. Europe would be most logical as the majority in the UK are from European heritage. The USA a fairly close second perhaps and then China and Russia. There are also other allegiances that people may find worrying. It is all down to who you would trust most (or least) to not abuse your data. In theory the fact that the whereabouts of every mobile phone on the planet has it's location 'marked' within a few metres would allow immense power to solve crime given the will to do it. You then have to wonder if those with this capability are trustworthy, and whether there are ulterior motives.
Maybe DGR has greater insight into capabilities in these respects.

{Cellulite Daily} Ouch!

Maybe DGR has greater insight into capabilities in these respects.

My only insight is to suggest that if you have a problem finding a needle in a haystack, then ordering a gross more haystacks doesn't really improve the situation, does it. Besides, the real bad guys are still busy handwriting notices in Arabic and faxing them to each other. No amount of AI sexiness can deal with that.

There are myriad ways to communicate in plain sight, without GCHQ being able to get in on the action (despite all the cuddly puff pieces about cracking Frank Sidebottoms code). This thread, for example ? Who's to say the appearance of posters DGR, BCF, Woman19 LonelyTiredandLow and 1tisILeClerc in a certain order doesn't mean "we're ready to go for the 1st ...." ??????

< 🐿 secret squirrel sign to DG, as we shape-shifting lizards commence step 43 of abolishing the human race >

Talking about "feet on the ground", a friend sent me these pictures from the EICC of the auditorium filling for the SNP spring conference and while one of the speakers was at the lectern. Apparently there were 2,000 there, which is the capacity of the EICC (conference registration of delegates and visitors was "full" 2 days in advance). Main auditorium holds 1,200 and there was also an "overflow" room (with screens) which was also full.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/29/scottish-independence-nicola-sturgeon-snp-united-kingdom

Nicola Sturgeon is going all out for IndyRef 2.

{shape-shifting lizards}
Sadly my version is to spend too long at the computer (sometimes working) and eating too much, thus my shape is expanding in an unfortunate manner.

And my 'secret squirrels' are far too noisy making baby squirrels to remain secret.

Haven’t been on the threads recently so don’t know if this has already been posted:

mobile.twitter.com/EssexCanning/status/1122191038469292033

Nicola Sturgeon is going all out for IndyRef 2.

Does anyone know how the "Claim of Right" plays out with regard to the Scottish government not needing Westminster "permission" to hold a valid referendum ?

www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2018-07-04a.406.0

That this House endorses the principles of the Claim of Right for Scotland, agreed by the Scottish Constitutional Convention in 1989 and by the Scottish Parliament in 2012, and therefore acknowledges the sovereign right of the Scottish people to determine the form of government best suited to their needs.

DGR - I think the right are just trying to ignore it currently.
It will be interesting to see if anyone on the news pokes a Tory with it though

ItisILeClerc - we would be quite probably the most organised remainers in the country if we could pull that off

Was behind a Volvo on the school run with EU stickers all over the back and David Davis' quote about 'A democracy ceases to be a democracy if the people can't change it's mind'. Made my day (and I took a photo at the red light for posterity).

It's an interesting legal question - and I've seen conflicting legal opinions.

However, I think the Supreme Court (which was only relatively recently set up and which, iirc, over-rides Scots Law, albeit with a couple of Scottish Law lords) has ruled that WM law has supremacy over Scots Law.

But I've seen people who still say that "the people are sovereign" in Scotland. I'm not a lawyer, but I think the Queen, under the Union of Crowns, is sovereign of the Scots with their consent (which is different to the English sovereigns). The Treaty of Union, as far as I know, didn't change that - even though it was signed by a small number of lords, a "parcel of rogues" (according to Burns) for money without the consent of "the people"

I still don't think Nicola would go ahead without the Section 30 notice, whatever the legal debates as to its requirement, as she/Scotland wants international recognition as quickly as possible. Not doing it the "official" way would cause problems with, for example, Spain.

But she could start doing what Ireland did in the run up to Irish independence, which is become as obstructive and annoying in WM as possible. Get the WM SNP MPs to use every parliamentary trick possible. They've already used the Humble Address. They might use that more often. They could also start filibustering and I'm sure there are other ideas.

Brexit has trapped UK in no-man's land, warns top economist

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/apr/29/brexit-has-trapped-uk-in-no-mans-land-warns-top-economist

Sending sterling tumbling on the foreign exchanges over the past month,
observers now fear that Brexit has been transformed from its previous status as a time-limited process into a structural feature of the UK economy
with the prospect of complex and protracted negotiations dragging on growth for years to come.

However, I think the Supreme Court (which was only relatively recently set up and which, iirc, over-rides Scots Law, albeit with a couple of Scottish Law lords) has ruled that WM law has supremacy over Scots Law.

There's a whiff of marking your own homework there ....

Indeed

observers now fear that Brexit has been transformed from its previous status as a time-limited process into a structural feature of the UK economy

All those decisions that were being put off till 30th March, for a start. With the added problem (from various chattering I hear from old colleagues around the UK) that there's now now will - or money - to revisit decisions at the moment. After all, who knows what the next 6 months will bring ?