Meet the Other Phone. A phone that grows with your child.

Meet the Other Phone.
A phone that grows with your child.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

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:
Thread gallery
22
Peregrina · 26/07/2019 20:46

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.

Pretty much the same for me. I understand what a temperature of 25 or 30 degrees mean - I no longer understand the Fahrenheit ones.
And I agree about height in feet and inches and weight in stones and lbs. The American weights in lbs really bug me - you have to do some arithmetic to work out how much people weigh. So OK 140 lbs is ten stone, so someone of 160 lbs...erm well, 2 stone is 28 lbs, so that person is about 15 stone 7 give or take a lb or two.

QueenOfThorns · 26/07/2019 20:51

I have a very orderly brain and love the way the metric system works. There does still seem to be a lot of conversion required, so I’m not sure I could get by without knowing how many ounces in a pound and pounds in a stone etc. Also 1 lb = 454 g is useful! Not a clue about Fahrenheit at all - I’m in my mid 40s.

Please let’s not start on Oxford commas! I don’t like them, but have to use them in my work if writing in US style (grudgingly). Abbreviations only need a . if there are letters missing at the end, so Esq. does, but not Miss or Mrs; Prof. does, but not Dr.

My new escape plan to keep myself sane is migrating North. Edinburgh and Glasgow look a bit ££££ if we want a house as nice as the one we have now. Does anyone know anything about Paisley? There are lovely houses there, but I’m suspicious as to why they’re so (relatively) cheap...

Peregrina · 26/07/2019 20:52

I don't know Icanreach - I can remember getting bogged down in computations when younger and missing the point of them, whereas calculators took the slog away. You still need to have a good idea of what the answer ought to be, which is what is missing. However, a discussion about maths teaching is not really for this thread.

That prancing idiot Jacob Rees-Mogg apparently doesn't realise that there have been moves towards metric measurements in this country since the middle of the 19th Century. I also wonder how much maths our PPE politicians did. I think you could chose to do very little economics as part of the degree, and you do need to be competent in maths for Economics.

Grinchly · 26/07/2019 20:53

Température - just about used to C but prefer F esp for extremes, oddly
Weights - stones, pounds and ounces . What a bore to convert it all.
Height - feet and inches. See above.
Distance - prefer miles

Argh! BlushBlushBlushBlushBlushBlushBlush

LonelyTiredandLow · 26/07/2019 20:54

Re the 2 page limit no matter the complexity of the subject and insisting on no annexes is really useful for the Minister in avoiding responsibility if the shit hits the fan at a later date. hmm

^"It was the civil servants' fault. They never told me" angry*

Exactly prettybird - Cummings hates them so I imagine most of the cabinet will be parroting the same rules soon enough.

Peregrina · 26/07/2019 20:54

DH has cousins in Paisley. It's always been cold when we have visited. Otherwise, I can't see anything wrong with it.

Peregrina · 26/07/2019 20:57

The discussion about measurements puts me in mind of my DS being asked about the Large Hadron Collider. Is it large hadrons which are being collided or is the collider large? It's the latter in case anyone is going to lose sleep worrying about this.

RHTawneyonabus · 26/07/2019 21:01

‘And will be paying attention to margins and font sizes’

I’ve been getting away with using Ariel 10.5 instead of 11 for YEARS in these sorts of situations. Luckily I don’t work for DFT.

QueenOfThorns · 26/07/2019 21:01

It had never occurred to me to wonder about the Large Hadron Collider, but that’s very interesting, thank you. (Just to be pedantic, if it was the other meaning, wouldn’t it be Large-Hadron Collider?)

tobee · 26/07/2019 21:02

I'm 51. We did metric in maths but there were imperial pages at the end of the text book.

But, hang on! Most of us do both surely? Miles and yards on roads. My dc were weighed in kilos. I weigh myself in stones and pounds. My cooker is Celsius. The weather forecaster on telly uses Celsius. I can do measurements in inches and feet or centimetres and metres!

Mistigri · 26/07/2019 21:04

You can learn to use either imperial or metric for everyday mesurements - I now think in cm for height and kg for weight - but for business purposes and especially science, converting to imperial is just bonkers.

Grinchly · 26/07/2019 21:04

90F and above- Satan's underpants
75 to 90 very very to very very very hot
60 to 75- Foof! Like stepping off the plane!
Up to 60 - normal complaining zone.

100g not worth buying really
200g - slack handful

Need a good joint to feed ten? Erm, point and smile.

Mumsnet chicken 4 to 5 pounds in weight. I would have to check but possibly 1 point Err umm 6 kilos?

tobee · 26/07/2019 21:06

I got a "u" in maths o level and had to retake using a special exam for dim people that no one's ever heard of but, as I say, I can cope 🤷🏻‍♀️ I like differences.

But that's probably because I'm not a 50 old pretentious fart head wishing we were living in halcyon days that never existed.

Mistigri · 26/07/2019 21:08

A kilo is 2.2lb so a mumsnet chicken is about 2kg.

Icantreachthepretzels · 26/07/2019 21:08

Milk and beer in pints.
Fizzy drinks in litres.
We really never did embrace the metric system wholeheartedly.

LonelyTiredandLow · 26/07/2019 21:10

As if on cue ''www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jul/26/dominic-cummings-a-career-psychopath-in-downing-street Guardian story on Cummings and his drive]].

LonelyTiredandLow · 26/07/2019 21:14

Link fail! Cummings in Guardian piece

Peregrina · 26/07/2019 21:14

wouldn’t it be Large-Hadron Collider?

I suppose so.It's usually talked about rather than written down.

DGRossetti · 26/07/2019 21:15

We really never did embrace the metric system wholeheartedly.

Without googling, guess when the UK almost went metric ...

BigChocFrenzy · 26/07/2019 21:18

pretzels imo it's not changing to metric that has worsened arithmetic skills, but:

  • use of calculators from a young age
  • we didn't have them and using log tables required arithmetic.
We had to do much manipulation of numbers, which taught understanding in primary school
  • also seems less emphasis now on rote learning of multiplication

Mum taught me my tables by rote during our daily 2 mile walk to kindergarten - most ordinary folk didn't have cars in 1960

Knowing my tables up to 12 from about age 5 helped me understand how numbers fit together,
then later teaching myself the squares of numbers up to 30, because it was useful

Peregrina · 26/07/2019 21:20

It'sally - don't know who she is - usually is what I meant to type.

Hazardtired · 26/07/2019 21:29

I have to confess I find Cummings interesting. I was wondering if he was neurodiverse (not a euphemism for autistic but the whole range of neuro diversity). It appears from the outside and far away that his approach is different intellectually and I am just intrigued. What's his end goal? Destroy the civil service? What does he want in its place? He clearly hates other groups like the ERG as well why not go after those? Just give me the man for a day I have questions!

Whereas Johnson, Farage, Trump don't spike my interest at all. I don't see high intellect just the usual racism/sexism/narcissism. Yawn. So overplayed.

RHTawneyonabus · 26/07/2019 21:43

So tonight for the first time ever I’ve suggested to DH that we should emigrate and we’ve seriously discussed countries. He’s got a very in demand skill set so I think it would be fairly easy.

I don’t even like going abroad on holiday.

We live in a very well to do area and literally know no one who voted leave. Everything still feels the same locally and I love living here, but it actually feels like my country has been taken over in a right-wing coup and all this will soon change as vulture capitalism eats the country. I don’t want to live in an unequal divided, bitter society.

tobee · 26/07/2019 21:49

Dh and I had this discussion for the first time (casually) the other day. But we have no links abroad sadly.

RedToothBrush · 26/07/2019 21:49

I was regarded as gifted at maths. But I can not do mental maths. As in if someone says out loud to me, what's 3 + 5? (well a bit more complex than than that) I struggle to do it because I don't 'hear' the numbers. If someone reads out a phone number that's the most confusing thing in the world to me. Which as someone who worked for 15 years where part of your job is a telephone receptionist this is something of a challenge. I believe its a form of dyscalculia but I'm extremely high functioning.

Equally I'm terrible at spelling. I met a lot of the descriptions for dyslexia but since I can cope its never been an issue. I'm a lot like DH who was diagnosed as dyslexic aged 18 but is extremely high functioning.

It's hard to explain.

Cummings utterly fascinates me. He's thick as mince on the one hand and obviously startlingly bright on the other too. Curiosity gets the better of me. I can imagine him having come up against few on his level and it developing into deep arrogance and contempt. Combined with a failure to realise his own weaknesses. Put in the right environment he'd be amazing, but the bitter twisted element of his personality combined with his super sharp big isn't a great combo. He needs to spent time with smart pragmatic inventor types to give him some competition and sense of perspective.

I imagine he doesn't see many people as his equal.

He is also an utter douche because he doesn't see his own weaknesses and thinks he's above others.

He's not. He's more average then he realises on some levels.

OP posts:
Swipe left for the next trending thread