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Brexit

Westminstenders: On An Election Footing

966 replies

RedToothBrush · 25/07/2019 16:22

Boris Johnson has set out his strategy.

He is challenging remain Tories to put their money where their mouth is, or to shut up.

His majority, soon to be just 1, is fragile but he intends to tough it out.

His Cabinet, is to all intents and purposes an ERG take over of the Tory Party, not unlike the Momentum take over of the Labour Party. And Johnson is looking to purge the party of its liberal wing, whilst pretending that he is liberal to make it acceptable to long term loyal Tories who might still waiver and merely vote for the rosette or like the veneer of respectability.

It has been made clear to Tory MPs that they will have to sign up to a No Deal Strategy should a snap election be called - or face the prospect of deselection. Disloyality will not be tolerated as Hunt's Cabinet backers all found out when they were sacked rather than be allowed to resign as Grayling was.

Instead Johnson reaped his revenge bringing back quitters and disgraced MPs as a deliberate 'fuck you' to moderates and remainers.

His message is clear and made all the clearer by the appointment of Dominic Cummings.

Today the Treasurery opened the piggie bank and told all departments to prepare for no deal. That is what is going to happen.

Parliament can not stop no deal. Johnson will drive it through regardless, even if its technically illegal. The default of no deal makes it an impossible juggernaught to stop without triggering a GE before the 31st October.

Technically speaking there are just 3 parliamentary days left this can be done.

And a GE is no guarentee of stopping no deal anyway. Cummings coming on board spells it out. Its a campaign strategy to reinvigourate the Leave Campaign and make all the promises that were made before. Of course there is no way of implimenting any of these before 31st October, so they just sound nice and people will believe them because they want to believe them. They want to trust and have hope for the future.

Yet with no trade deals and third party status, and crippling gridlock at ports and extra red tape for exporters and importers to deal with, it is inevitable that the economy will take a big hit. And Johnson's promises are expensive. His £39 billion he wants to withhold, is peanuts in the scheme of things and given what he is proposing.

The plan might sound nice, but it doesn't actually add up.

If we want a deal we will STILL have to sign up to conditions that Brussels sets out EVEN IF we no deal.

Meanwhile the US is ready and waiting to fleece us, because we aren't prepared to admit this and are too proud to see that this is a better option than have corporate American feast on the bones of the British economy.

Human Rights and Workers Rights are very much in the cross hairs with this. Health and Safety standards that have been set by London and then imposed on the EU will be burnt.

All the while the EU will be blamed for our own folly.

The worst thing is, people will actually buy it too.

Things are going to get a hell of a lot worse in this country, not because we lack optimism and hope, but because our egos are too big and we have been too idealist rather than recognising very real obstacles and finding ways to overcome than rather than just trying to ignore them. We will find out all those Paragraph Cs in good time the hard way because of the lack of attention to detail.

PFI and outsourcing will look like minor hiccups when the shit hits the fan.

I do hope that the puritians of the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats and the Remain Referendum Campaign are happy. This is also their mess. They have spent 3 years naval gazing and still don't understand nor know how to respond. This is where a General Election becomes a very real danger because they are clueless as to how to combat a reunited Leave campaign.

Be careful what you wish for going forward.

OP posts:
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Grinchly · 26/07/2019 20:09

Then the address. God I will re - lurk!

ListeningQuietly · 26/07/2019 20:09

Peregrina
Absolutely
the supporting information for the decision summary can be HUGE
but the decision summary - with appropriate guidance from experts - should be very succinct

Hazardtired · 26/07/2019 20:09

Languages and grammar. You lot don't like me today Grin

tobee · 26/07/2019 20:12

Old people find metric hard. I'm slightly old and use a combination of both. But I accept that it's my problem/quirk. I don't think everyone who uses metric is wrong. It's not hard to cope with converting. And I'm rubbish at maths.

BigChocFrenzy · 26/07/2019 20:13

That JRM thing is so daft I'm (almost) sure it's fake

(atm, this govt is doing so much batshittery that it's difficult to tell !)

Grinchly · 26/07/2019 20:13

Oxford comma has its place. It depends on the context.
Not in Grant Schapps' two page briefings or press statements, but I would use, sparingly, in other contexts.

Peregrina · 26/07/2019 20:13

I can't get with that even in jest. Moving people around to solve problems is a bad idea. A really bad one.

I am glad that you realised it was meant in jest. However, this is what will happen in practice. Younger educated people or just people with some get up and go will look for opportunities elsewhere. Hence the Irish diaspora of the 19th Century which some of our Leaver friends seem blithely unaware of.

BigChocFrenzy · 26/07/2019 20:14

How old is old ?
I'm 63 and we changed from imperial to metric while I was mid primary school

borntobequiet · 26/07/2019 20:15

Many young people find metric difficult as well, at least many that I meet. The consistencies of the system escape them.

BigChocFrenzy · 26/07/2019 20:20

Since 1975, when Gerald Ford signed the Metric Bill, the US has normally used metric in science and engineering

However, both standards are allowed - which is the most dangerous of all options

e.g. back in 1999, NASA lost an unmanned $125 million Mars space orbiter, due to a conversion error metric / US units:

www.simscale.com/blog/2017/12/nasa-mars-climate-orbiter-metric/

Icantreachthepretzels · 26/07/2019 20:21

I think the media like using Fahrenheit in heatwaves because of the magic 100 degrees. Sounds very hot!

I always swap between F and C depending on whether it is hot or cold. 20 degrees, 24 degrees ...means nothing to me - no idea. Wouldn't know what to wear. 70 or 80, I understand - shorts.
But once it starts getting cold ... it's gotta be 0, 1, 2, 3 because that sounds like it's freezing. 50 degrees? I'll probably turn up in a lightweight jacket.

The extremity of the numbers just create a clearer picture of what the weather is doing. Of course the middling temperatures - the sort of 17/62 degrees leaves me equally baffled no matter which scale is used. OK ... but what does that feel like? what should I wear? Is that a nice day? Confused

Grinchly · 26/07/2019 20:22

I am old-ish (1966 and elderly parents.)

My maths is rubbish so I find metric easier when calculating. But my intuition re weights and temperatures is Imperial, and I still order groceries cheese and meat by the quarter/ half pound etc. ( Live in small town with independent shops and farmers' market.)

Never occurred to me that's a political statement now, and has been since 2016, rather than a mark of my own incompetence. 😧

Peregrina · 26/07/2019 20:22

I did once do a PGCE in maths, born, but never went on to teach. A lot of people really don't understand percentages either, or fractions. Yet if you explain to a class of year sevens, here's a bar of chocolate that you want to split between your friends, they have no trouble with the idea. Some of it is notation - 3/8 is 3 pieces out of an 8 piece bar chocolate. Similarly I observed that some children's level of literacy is not good, so they can't read wordy questions with understanding, but the logical, mathematical part of their brain is fine, so once the problem is broken down for them, they can do the maths.

BigChocFrenzy · 26/07/2019 20:25

I'm baffled why, unless they are functionally innumerate

  • multiplying / dividing by 10 is the easiest possible arithmetic

My first 3 years at school, I had to learn:

12 pennies = 1 shilling, 20 shillings = 1 pound
1760 yards = 8 furlongs =1 mile
8 stone = 1 cwt (hundredweight), 20 cwt = 1 tonne
.....

BigChocFrenzy · 26/07/2019 20:28

oh well, I've always loved arithmetic, then later proper maths
and I'm a lifelong bookworm

but I see no point in making life unnecessarily difficult, so Metric all the way for me

BigChocFrenzy · 26/07/2019 20:31

I'm old enough to have used slide rules and log tables at school, as electronic calculators hadn't been invented !
Life is easier now in this respect for kids and for scientists too

BigChocFrenzy · 26/07/2019 20:37

Even Farage isn't dim enough to trust BJ - he is on notice:

The Brexit Party@brexitparty_uk

Boris has 98 days to deliver Brexit.

If he promises and doesn't deliver, then the Brexit Party will

Peregrina · 26/07/2019 20:37

Does Jacob Rees-Mogg realise that American liquid measurements are different? Will we have to adopt their standard?

The man is a total pratt IMO.

boldlygoingsomewhere · 26/07/2019 20:39

I’m a bit of a mix of metric and imperial. Use Celsius for temps - Fahrenheit means nothing to me at all.
Short measurements I can visualise better in metric e.g. 1m is clearer to me than 1 yard.
However, I have a clearer idea of a mile vs a km. Height is feet and inches, weight is stones and pounds but all cooking is done in grams. Confused

ListeningQuietly · 26/07/2019 20:39

I admit that for many, many years I did cold in centigrade and hot in Fahrenheit !
And for translation I just link from 16c = 61f

and another one who had to learn slide rules, then learned to swear on a Casio calculator Grin

I just wish that our elected representatives had the insight of these threads

Peregrina · 26/07/2019 20:39

Boris has 98 days to deliver Brexit.
If he promises and doesn't deliver, then the Brexit Party will^

I am really not sure of that - the Brexit party lacks the election fighting machinery. They did well in the EU elections because of a form of PR.

ListeningQuietly · 26/07/2019 20:41

peregrina
its the quarts of half and half that will stump him Wink

prettybird · 26/07/2019 20:43

ListeningQuietly I was (and still am to a certain extent) the same: cold Celsius; hot Fahrenheit. I swapped over at 18C Wink

Icantreachthepretzels · 26/07/2019 20:43

I think mental arithmetic and general numeracy skills has actually decreased quite significantly since decimalisation - purely because it requires so much less thinking. And the less you think the worse you get.

Also calculators making people lazy.

There is a big push in maths teaching to try and get children to understand not only how to perform a calculation but why the answer is what it is and why you had to perform that function. A lot of people lack that deeper understanding of how numbers relate to each other and the meaning of place value and - because they rely on calculators - they don't retain quick recall of arithmetic. Which means that, when they no longer have to do maths every day in lessons, they quickly forget how to do fractions/ divisions etc - the same way they would forget the words to a song they no longer hear or sing - and because they never actually understood the reasoning behind the steps, and have poor recall, they can't even begin to remember how to do these things and are left functionally innumerate.

Metric makes more sense and is more logical, but imperial keeps minds sharper! no short cuts. I'd object less to going back to old money than I would to having a blue passport forced on me.

Grinchly · 26/07/2019 20:44

bcf Some brains just don't work like that, despite in my case, two highly competent mathematician parents, a high IQ apparently, and an expensive private education.

My mother worked for an accountancy firm and was obsessed with detail, accuracy, and identifying patterns with numbers, registration plates, order and detail, and made detailed lists for every eventuality ( just found an old one which was truly bizarre.)

I tried and failed as a young girl to be like that myself. Words are my thing and I prefer big concepts to detail ( unless it's word related.)

Whereas you seem to be singularly gifted in both departmentsThanksStarCake 😍