Westminstenders: Game On?

[RedToothBrush]

Johnson has had prorogation approved by the Queen.

There has been widespread outrage and horror both in the UK and in Europe. Johnson has ripped up the principle of Liberal democracy even if constitutionally what he has done is legal. In shredding convention and the 'gentlemans agreement' of understanding we teeter on the edge of democratic collapse.

Talk is tha Dominic Cummings is persuing a game theory principle of deliberately putting us on collision course with the EU. The idea being that they will blink first because the alternative of what will happen is just too awful for them to allow. The idea is to force others to make the moves whilst Johnson appears principled and strong, even without a proper strategy and plan for a deal.

And there is the rub. Despite all the Talk of no deal, at some point a deal MUST be made, regardless of whether its before or after 31st October. There is no sense of what that could be and how it could be done. And then there's the prospect of a US deal which suffers from the same lack of tangibility.

All there is, is how things look for a General Election. Nothing else.

Johnson is pitching for an election with no sense of what's needed for Brexit - including the legislation needed for no deal. Not to forget that Cummings, strategist that he is, apparently isn't here for the long haul, only being contracted until 31st October, when he goes for surgery he postponed to take on this job.

So what's the plan for Johnson Post Cummings? Or is he going to do even more 'winging it'.

Meanwhile there's an awful lot of moderate Tory MPs getting very nervous and already failing to stick to the Cummings script.

Johnson, until there is an election is going to firmly blow hot and cool, trying to play to the hopes and fears of leavers and remainers to keep them hanging on to hope and the notion that x or y will happen, when x and y can't possibly both happen because they are completely opposing strategies. Hope leads us blindly to stumble like fools into his trap and to win his reelection.

Next week looks very bumpy indeed. Chances are this thread won't make it past Saturday...

Local toyota plant closing for a week on 31/10

Oncologists who deal with women with hormonal cancers have highlighted that there is no disputing that the more hormones a woman is exposed to across her lifetime, particularly Oestrogen, the greater the risk of hormonal Cancer.

The research my DB is involved in, suggests it's way more complex than that. He's looking into the genetics of medicine and the growing realisation* that how a disease presents and progresses and responds to treatment is as much to do with the patients genome as it is anything else. Which is why some drugs work for some and not for others.

So basically, if you have (say) breast cancer (like my DM) then it will be your breast cancer and completely different to anyone elses right the way down to your genes. Which might sound like a candidate for "the bleedin' obvious", but it's only lately we've been able to unpack the genes involved and start to map them with a view to personalising treatment.

There's also growing evidence that peoples genetics affect various metabolic processes - including those involved in the uptake of medicines. As DB commented, we might end up with personalised treatments and timetables based on genetics.

All of this requires intense supercomputing to model the drug/gene interactions, which is his "thing".

So basically, two things that were "nonsense" two decades ago - the notion of personalised treatment from the middle ages, and biorhythms - have been shown to have some basis in fact. One for all the anti-wooers to speculate on

(Of course, because DB is in the US, it's the insurers that are keen to get their sticky fingers on that research to effectively price up peoples lives).

Local toyota plant closing for a week on 31/10
Those who compare this fondly to WW2 should note.
Even those Nazis didn't shut down our factories.

Letter from my (Labour) MP, just in

Thank you for contacting me about a No Deal Brexit and the prorogation of Parliament.

As you know, the Prime Minister has announced that Parliament will be prorogued in the second week of September. Given the situation facing our country as we approach the Brexit deadline of 31 October, and the impact it could have on people’s jobs and living standards, I believe it is deeply concerning to suspend Parliament and I am opposed to it.

I have always believed that Parliament must be fully involved in the Brexit process – from triggering Article 50, having a meaningful vote on the final deal and shaping our future relationship with the EU. If Parliament is suspended as we approach 31 October and a potential No Deal exit from the EU, it will not be able to effectively scrutinise the Government’s plans.

Unfortunately, I fear this is the Government’s intention given the length of the prorogation it wants. The prorogation that will occur in early September will last five weeks until a new Queen’s Speech is delivered on 14 October. Prorogation between sessions of Parliament in recent decades has typically lasted less than a week.

I also believe prorogation at this time is an affront to our democratic principles. As the House of Commons Library has said, long prorogations raise fundamental questions about whether the Government of the day still commands the confidence of a majority of MPs and whether it can still legitimately govern.

As we approach 31 October, I want to reiterate my opposition to a No Deal Brexit. Businesses, trade unions and the Government’s own analysis have warned about the disruption No Deal would result in and the damage it would do to our economy. I do not believe there is a mandate for this, and Parliament has expressed its opposition to No Deal on several occasions. I am therefore committed to working across Parliament, to do whatever is necessary to stop it happening.

I have joined Jolyon Maugham QC and 70 other parliamentarians to prevent the Prime Minister from suspending Parliament. Our hearing is on 6 September, just three days before the Government proposes to suspend which you can read more about here

Ultimately though, after three years of division and uncertainty, I believe the only way to resolve the Brexit crisis is to give the people the final say. Therefore, if the Prime Minister has confidence in his plans, I think he should put them to the people in a general election or a public vote.

I'm finding the phrase 'take back control' increasingly sinister.

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/republican-antisemitic-video-jewish-rockland-county-new-york-orthodox-a9084856.html

Swiss govt are recommending after No Deal that the UK apply to EFTA asap

BUT imo, this would be disastrous for EFTA, as Norway has already outlined:

• a disfunctional UK trying to get its own way in EFTA via bullying

• EFTA has to approve any relevant EEA / EU laws unanimously before applying them; otherwise they lose trading benefits
  So all the other EFTA countries would suffer, if the UK vetoed anything

The UK needs a customised 3rd EEA pillar, which is cut & paste of EFTA rules,
but where we are on the "naughty step" and our batshitters can't bugger up anyone else

www.blick.ch/news/ausland/brexit/offizieller-vorschlag-nach-brexit-parmelin-will-briten-efta-beitritt-schmackhaft-machen-id15488590.html

Many moons ago, quite a few people (I know I was one ) noted that the UK was even then an international pariah, and would not be welcomed into any other trading bloc, having wiped it's cock on the EUs curtains.

Recent events will only have hardened that stance (where possible).

Could the UK become the Flying Dutchman of international trade ?

Speaking of which, where are all the "we can trade on WTO terms" fanbois ? I've not read that for a while now.

If it's a new government, it's not bound by the manifesto of the old, and is no longer "obliged" to deliver Brexit then.

Johnson could use that as his 'Get out of jail card', but he won't because he wants the UK to be a vassal state of the US. It's just that he has to keep his trap shut about the NHS because he knows that is the Tories Achilles heel. Once we become a US vassal state it's goodbye NHS.

I wonder if our Leaver friends will still think it's a price worth paying?

What happened with the legislation that made parliament present a report to the Lords every 2 weeks, that was supposed to stop them proroguing?

Johnson could use that as his 'Get out of jail card', but h won't because he wants the UK to be a vassal state of the US.

Oh, I know that. But it's the only weapon we have at the moment. At least it lays the hypocrisy bare. Wiser MNetters than I have noted it on the relationships board (whence my reason for even being here started )

Barclay 🤦🏻‍♀️ following his predecessor Raab as DexEU minister
(who suddenly realised where much of our food comes from)

Barclay seems to have discovered JIT
(but not yet realised this is most manufacturing, not just cars)

Steve Barclay MPP*

@SteveBarclay

The car industry’s ‘just in time’ supply chains rely on fluid cross-Channel trade routes.

>1,100 trucks filled with car parts cross seamlessly from EU into UK each day.

We need to start talks now on how we make sure this flow continues if we leave without a deal. /4

Doing a bit of head shaking here at the paranoia around the HRT research published today. It's from a longstanding collaborative group of researchers (first publication was in 1997) which is, yes, UK led and funded (Cancer Research UK and Medical Research Council UK), but is definitely a global set of researchers. (See the appendix for list of collaborators).

I'm a scientist in biomedical research. Publication timing is something that we have almost no control over. The research that went into this article would have been done over the past 2-5 years, and the article itself would have been written up to a year ago for submission to the journal, having subsequently gone through one or more rounds of peer review and revision.

There is such a thing as coincidence. This is almost certainly one.

We need to start talks now on how we make sure this flow continues if we leave without a deal.

I think we don't need to start anything, as the flow won't be needed after a no-deal. Starting with Toyota. No amount of NDAs can make a company change it's mind about stopping/moving production. Just make sure it's more of a shock when it comes.

It can no longer be "seamless", you utter fool

That would require joining the SM and also a strong Customs Arrangement

< fool is Barclay, of course! >

There is such a thing as coincidence.

"The universe is rarely so lazy"

(I did wonder)

This is almost certainly one.

I agree it probably is, because I used to work for scientific research organisations. But normally there would be an announcement about don't just stop taking whatever you were on, don't panic, see your GP to discuss options. We haven't had that this time, to my knowledge.

Yes, looking at researchers and their citations, I'd take this research very seriously
There has been previous research indicating increased risks of BC and other serious ailments

That's why I chose not to ask the GP for HRT, despite a family history - on both sides - of osteoporosis
Well, I've had v few meno symptoms, I walk a lot and have lifted heavy weights for years.
So I balanced the risks and decided against
Anyway, I'm 63 and 12 years post-meno, so too late now !

I don't know if the research is being publicised more than usual, but imo this is the kind of story newspapers have for many years chosen to scare their women readers with

I'm due my medical review for my HRT...wonder if they stop prescribing it to me...😾

DGR This will be a bit long but comes back to Cummings! Yes I totally agree that risk is a complex interaction between genome, lifestyle and environment. I think few people appreciate that only 5% of Breast Cancer risk is understood, and the vast majority of understood risk is genetic, though you wouldn’t know it from all those “women have only themselves to blame” articles in the Daily Mail. My DD is actually a research scientist specialising in gene editing so I do know about all the research going on 🙄. Even 17 years ago, my treatment was right at the start of being able to distinguish between Tumours that were hormone receptor positive, Her2Neu or triple negative and tailor treatment, I was told that whilst exposure to Oestrogen was clearly a strong factor in my diagnosis it was probably linked to some genetic predisposition to being particularly vulnerable to it. There is no history of Breast Cancer in my family but then I am the first to take the pill, and have fertility treatment (oh the irony in a family genetically predisposed to multiple births). Now I would in all likelihood not be recommended to have chemo, which even then they knew would only increase my chances of survival by 10% (now known to be mainly accounted for by inducing menopause) but treatment would focus on reducing my exposure to hormones. Then my prognosis was a 60% chance of survival, now with all the hormonal treatments plus immunotherapy coming on to the market or in development it would be much better. I have friends with hormonal metastasis (secondary cancer is always terminal) who are able to carry on near normal lives as if with chronic disease by drugs with few side effects that have only been around a couple of years.

So to go back to Cummings, he promises investment in science. However scientists who have met him in Number Ten say his understanding of British Science is extremely blinkered by his obsession with Maths, Computing and Tech, he has specific proposals to boost Maths and Computing but seems blind to the cultural and other drivers of British science especially the cross disciplinary advances in the understanding of the genome and development of tailored treatments which will be devastated by Brexit. Scientific leaders like Sir Paul Nurse at the front of those advances are still crying out in the wilderness. In February he presciently said the risk for Science was “The question is: will the UK government be as open, or will they, as governments have a tendency to do, meddle and support their particular pet initiatives?” www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00694-w

^I don't know if the research is being publicised more than usual, but imo this is the kind of story newspapers have for many years chosen to scare their women readers with*

Yup - and there are incentives for institutes to get media attention for their research (e.g. the UK Research Excellence Framework which determines university research funding), so press releases are often offered to media organizations with the scare angle already in place. The individual researchers probably would not have chosen to publicize in this way, but institutes in my experience often have fewer scruples.

DW has an implant which is renewed roughly 6-monthly. Her consultant has tasked me with being a canary in the coalmine, (so to speak)

Took years to realise she was suffering an early menopause because of a surplus of symptoms from the MS, as well as trying every possible tablet and patch known to science (or so it seemed). Not much we can do for now, of course.

Then her baclofen pump will need refilling around December ...

Apologies of this has already been posted as I'm still trying to catch up on the thread but:

Gordon Brown: EU is ready to offer UK an extension to Brexit deadline

www.politicshome.com/news/uk/political-parties/labour-party/gordon-brown/news/106177/gordon-brown-eu-ready-offer-uk

Has anyone else heard more from other sources? Twitter for example as that seems to have all the latest.