Westministenders: Another Thread, another Shit Show. Its Trump Week

[RedToothBrush]

That is all.

I agree Iambuffy - although I do see parallels with my mum (who was a lovely person ) in his dementia like traits - essentially he is a horrible person (with, is it six bankruptcies behind him?) who might now also have dementia

Came across this that I'd posted 3 years ago on Facebook. Somehow I don't think he does see the inconsistency - although there again, he's flip flopped on so many things, so who knows

Boris Johnson says ceding sovereignty for economic gain is morally wrong. Presumably that means he now backs Scottish independence 😉 #EUref

Gove is now busily changing his tune and 'is not wedded' to the 31st October leaving date.

The more delays we have the better - eventually people might say lets call this whole Brexit thing off and start working together to make Europe stronger.

Gove can be as un-wedded to the 31st Oct as he likes but we won't be getting an extension unless he calls a PV, him or anyone else. I personally think Gove is trying to get votes from centre round tories who haven't been paying attention. As Rory said (paraphrasing); anyone telling you they will renegotiate hasn't heard what the EU have said repeatedly and just want to No Deal us.

Yes, I rarely agree with much Little Owen Jones has to say these days, but on that I do. I mean, what the actual fuck?

www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/who-veronika-really-write-book-2846030

Interesting story about engaging with a suspected source of fake news. I have to take my hat, coat, and surgical support(s) off to Bristol Live. They should be immediately promoted to run the BBC News teams, who can be redeployed to primary schools to teach kids how to spell. This is how you do journalism.

Coupla memes ..

New Model political armies ?

Scary insight into how Farage copied Italy's 5-star model for the referendum and then for his new party
How he manipulates opinion

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/may/21/brexit-party-nigel-farage-italy-digital-populists-five-star-movement

“If I was starting Ukip today.... < 2015 >,
would I spend 20 years speaking to people in village halls or would I base it on the Grillo model?
I know exactly what I would do.”
< and he's now done it >
.....
“The Brexit party is the virtual carbon copy of the Five Star Movement,”

Arron Banks, Farage’s long-time supporter and collaborator, told me.
“What the Five Star did, and what the Brexit party is doing, is having a tightly controlled central structure, almost a dictatorship at the centre,”
......
Casaleggio Associates not only managed Grillo’s blog;
today it also runs Five Star’s digital operations and controls the valuable data being generated on Five Star’s online platform by the party’s snowballing membership.

According to two recent investigations by the Italian data protection authority, the Five Star digital platform was breachingg* European data protection laws
by tracking Five Star members in individually identifiable ways.

Casaleggio was far ahead of other political parties in using this data to help shape Five Star’s messaging, which he fed back to supporters through Grillo’s blog, and increasingly through social media.

The very tools that were supposedly giving members control over the movement were allowing Casaleggio to exert control over them.
With a thoughtfully crafted blogpost, he could intervene in the movement’s internal debates, bolstering certain positions and dampening others down.
< e.g. making an originally lefwing movement vote to ally with UKIP >

"This is a long-time project of social engineering, using the web,”
.....
Casaleggio had begun to experiment with manipulating online consensus back in the 1990s,
as the CEO of an Italian tech company that sold business tools for managing employees
....
donations to the Brexit party go to a private company.
Online donations to the party, which are collected via PayPal, are impossible to scrutinise.
Political parties can only accept donations over £500 if they’re from the UK, and must report both the sources of the funding and how it’s spent.

With the Brexit party, it’s not clear who’s giving how much money or where it’s going.

< imo, part of the way to stop Farage is to make him obey the existing rules on donation and also on data protection re members' data >

Without being too 'conspiratorial theorist' about this and based on snippets that have been mentioned on Westminsterenders months ago, there is more worrying 'stuff' than just the fuckwit MPs that the UK has at the moment. There is a bigger picture, and Brexit is just a sideshow.

Of course all this online malarkey can only go so far. You need two things to keep the masses down. And they need to be balanced. No amount of circuses will make up for a lack of bread.

but you can blame bogyemen / scapegoats for lack of bread for a very long time,
if you can manipulate opinion and information skillfully enough

But the beauty of Farage's position is that he personally takes no responsibility for the lack of bread. Of course, if he had done it all his way, there would not even be a lack of bread .

Which is why when they suspend him/fine him or don't let him take his post as MEP they are doing him an almighty favour.

I think TM was wise allowing Brexiteers to do the donkey work (Fox, Boris etc) but I do think some modicum of input has to come from Farrige - a key decision of some sort (especially if we crash out regardless) that puts the big choice back onto him. It's the only way to show him for what he is.

but you can blame bogyemen / scapegoats for lack of bread for a very long time

I beg to differ. When people are hungry they are even less inclined to use their critical faculties than before. We really are a few days away from anarchy. We always have been. Medieval siege warfare wasn't developed by getting your best debating team around the city to use rhetoric and logic to persuade the citizens to let them in. Mores the pity.

imo, part of the way to stop Farage is to make him obey the existing rules on donation and also on data protection re members' data

But who is willing and able to make him abide by the rules. I don't think he cares one jot, the Tories are looking at this thinking about how they could emulate him (not fight him) and we have such a weak opposition...

"When people are hungry they are even less inclined to use their critical faculties than before"

Precisely
that's when scapegoating & bogeymen are most effective, when people have switched off their critical faculties - those who ever had them switched on

Desperate / angry people are much more likely to react emotionally

I don't expect mass hunger even after the worst case No Deal Brexit; it'll just be lower standards of living and public services, an angry national humiliation
Like a scaled-down Versaille humiliation - scapegoats worked really well there

The few hundred extra who die from hunger / NHS cutbacks etc will be from the most vulnerable / poorest / on benefits, who the public don't seem to give a shit about now, when they are already dying, albeit in much smaller numbers

After No Deal, most Leavers won't analyse what went wrong and accept they - and their Glorious Leader - made a mistake
They'll double down on blaming the EU

We would need to keep informing the younger generation and boosting the Rejoiners

NEWSFLASH: Fordd* has confirmed that it plans to close the Bridgend engine plant by late 2020, as feared.

www.theguardian.com/business/live/2019/jun/06/car-industry-ford-bridgend-fiat-renault-trade-trump-xi-ecb-draghi-business-live?page=with:block-5cf8fa768f088cce49a858bb#block-5cf8fa768f088cce49a858bb

But of course it is nothing whatsoever in the slightest nada to do with Brexit

Unite general secretary Len McCluskey:

“Ford broke promise after promise to the UK. First, it was that it would build 500,000 engines at Bridgend. That fell to a quarter of a million, then fell again and again to now just 80,000.

The company has deliberately run down its UK operations so that now not a single Ford vehicle - car or van - is made in the UK.

McCluskey is referring to the fact that parts made at Dagenham and Bridgend are shipped to the EU where Ford vehicles are assembled

(a process that could be hampered by a disruptive Brexit)

< Unite vows to fight closures - hopefully not in a way that also closes UK plants making components, or they'll go too ! >

This is the Len McCluskey who thinks that Labour could and would negotiate a Brexit with terms that are at least as good as the ones we currently have as EU members

Before the Leavers jump in, I think we can all agree that there is overcapacity in car and vehicle manufacturing in Europe. So with Brexit the UK has volunteered to be the ones to take the hit. Then Leavers wonder why we think a significant majority of them are quite stupid.

Just popping in to say that Ford are closing their Bordeaux plant in August;

"Ford's rejection of deal for Blanquefort was 'betrayal': French minister"

uk.reuters.com/article/us-ford-france-closure/ford-set-to-end-production-at-blanquefort-in-france-jobs-at-risk-idUKKBN1OC1S8

And cutting more than 5,000 jobs in Germany;

uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ford-germany-layoffs/ford-to-cut-more-than-5000-jobs-in-germany-others-in-uk-idUKKCN1QW25P

Before the Leavers jump in
Cross-post.