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...

So to go back to Cummings, he promises investment in science.

Oh, I quite believe him. Ship in the scientists you need, make sure that they can't get anywhere near citizenship, and let them go when they've done their jobs. Which is of course, to make money for people like JRM and Boris and Cummings. (Which is of course what anyones job is: to make money for the shareholders/owner ..).

The last thing they want is an educated home grown population that might have some critical faculties. I imagine even as I type, they are wiping their brow saying "Phew, we only just made it. Another couple of years, and people wouldn't be so stupid ..."

When DS was 14, he attended an open evening at school where all the local universities tried to enthuse the kids towards choices for universities. None of them mentioned STEM. Political science, business studies, media studies (the cheaper courses) yes. Not that DS was that way minded. Now he's earning a good wage, and a friend who did go to university is a bartender near where he works. A bartender with a £20,000+ debt.

bercows As discussed upthread, this is of no importance, other than maybe the EU wanting to make it clear the Uk govt is choosing No Deal

It's just a suggestion that the EU might offer an extension, without the UK asking
However, BJ is most unlikely to accept

@Emilyontmoor That was an excellent summary around the interactions of genetics and environment in cancer. Everyone's cancer is unique, and right now the best we can do is look for genetic "markers" that we know from previous patients lead to differing outcomes under specific therapies. You must be very proud of your daughter and her work - gene editing screens are a powerful new tool.

I'm on the data science side of biomedical research, and I agree with Emily again that Cummings and his ilk are completely missing a trick. A huge part of the UK's global advantage in science is in genomics and medical research. Data science is increasingly important for both of these fields, but, and I can't stress this enough, it can't come at the expense of basic biological research. It's the same for every field of scientific endeavour. We all need maths and computing to do the best possible science, but focusing blindly on it while ignoring the rest won't get you anywhere.

"Ship in the scientists you need"

Maybe from Syria, if that's the conditions he's offering
Any scientist who isn't desperate would choose elsewhere to work

.... and some UK scientists (like me) made that decision after the ref to join the brain drain

British science may suffer the effects of Brexit for decades

Cummings makes the typical kind of errors of a very impatient person who is Too Clever & Important to listen to old-fashioned experts about what is needed

DGR
Oh, I quite believe him. Ship in the scientists you need, make sure that they can't get anywhere near citizenship, and let them go when they've done their jobs.

Unfortunately for him, it doesn't work like that. Scientists past PhD completion tend to have families and spouses with their own careers. It's been bloody hard to recruit the last 3 years at the postdoc level. Granted, my field has a permanent shortage of qualified people, but number of applicants has dropped off a cliff - basically we get no one from the EU anymore, and that used to be about half the applications. The UK's reputation as a destination for good science is already tarnished because it's seen as so unwelcoming and uncertain as a long term prospect.

Thanks.

europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/health/prescription-medicine-abroad/prescriptions/index_en.htm

Hazard this says that UK prescriptions are accepted in the eu, although of course that may change after Brexit.
Two online pharmacies were posted recently, one I think in the Netherlands and one in Germany.
There are quite a few UK pharmacies that will dispense meds with a prescription and send them by post so maybe you can find one in the eu that will do so. Perhaps those living in eu countries may be able to help.
I really, really hope so for you and your DH’s sake.

Stewart Lee has let himself go ...

DGR I am surprised that your son was not encouraged into STEM subjects. It is certainly not the case in this area - suburbs of London. At least three local schools are STEM specialists and when we set up a free school because the Local Authority was setting up anything (either exclusive faith or academy sponsors with idiosyncratic approaches to education) but inclusive comprehensives based on traditional pedagogy a STEM specialism was definitely high on the list of parents priorities. Perhaps it is because this is an ethnically diverse area, or at least some schools serving more affluent parts of it are ethnically diverse, the schools serving disadvantaged parts of the borough are less so.

I actually worry it has gone too far, even in the three years between my DDs the number of pupils taking STEM subjects increased quite dramatically partly I suspect in response to the Coalition narrative that studying STEM would improve job prospects. In some cases these pupils had more potential if they continued with arts subjects, or a mixture, and I do think an arts education also has a role in developing critical thinking skills. We need a mix in society not to develop a diversity of thinking skills but to enrich culture. There was a sense with the parents of my DDs peers that I should be very proud of my scientist DD, puzzlement that I was encouraging the other one in her choice of English......

I served him a portion of chips once.

Bercows : Justanotherposter00 posted a link to that news, which was in the Herald. I then clicked through to it and warned others not to bother wasting one of their free reads as it was Bloody Brown making commitments again that he has no authority to deliver like he did in the Indyref

...and breeeaaathe

DGR I am surprised that your son was not encouraged into STEM subjects.

So was I.

The aspirational paradigm of a university education (according to a spokesperson from Birmingham university) was to do a course in Politics and Economics, get a job with a bank, and two years later be pulling in $40,000 in New York as a policy advisor. That was the example the spokesperson gave to the whole school (it was an evening do). There were STEM specialists around. But the takeaway message was you go to University to become like David Cameron (who had trod those boards a few months previously, as it happens).

If you want STEM to really take of in England, then you need to accord it - and the people who work in it - with much more respect than we have ever done.

Once again, "England", "England" and "England" again. I am well aware that Scotland is far more aligned with Europe in it's treatment of engineers and scientists.

And I might add it turns out that job prospects for those who answered the call to study STEM were not improved. Indeed almost from the day of the referendum entry level jobs in Science dried up and my Scientist DD and her peers faced a very tough challenge to realise their ambitions to become Scientists. She is glad she stuck it out but there were times she felt she was going to have to give up and go and work for the big 4 or elsewhere in the service sector like most of her peers, irrespective of what subject they studied 🤔

I don’t know if my experiences about HRT will help anyone but I’ll post anyway.
My most difficult problem was hot flushes, so bad that I had sores on my neck. It was very embarrassing when my face went bright red, I was dripping and students asked if I was OK. The heavy periods and other nasty stuff were bad but not so public.
My GP was very helpful and I tried every sort of HRT, pills and patches. All gave me intense rage and the worst, permant PMT you can imagine x 100.
Strange as I’d never had PMT before.
I then spent too much money on natural remedies which did absolutely nothing.
GP then told me she’d been reading that Prozac could be prescribed, off label, for menopause symptoms. She assured me she didn’t think I was depressed but it was worth a try.
Amazingly it helped. No more hot flushes, lots of other symptoms disappeared.
I didn’t become dependent on it and stopped when there was no further need.
Obviously it may not work for everyone but thought it couldn’t do any harm to post

@britainelects
The government stopping Parliament from meeting between mid-September and mid-October is...

Acceptable: 31%
Not acceptable: 53%

As one who went to a girl's grammar school which taught Biology to O level as a compulsory subject and Physics with Chemistry as an optional second O level i.e. just one subject, I welcome the fact that there is much more emphasis on STEM subjects than we had. I do rather suspect my school was pretty typical too. The popular A levels were English and Scripture! But you didn't need to pass, it was possible to go into teaching then, which is what most of us were pushed into, with 5 O levels.

Sorry, this is a digression, but we do need a mix of both, and however much Johnson or whoever prattle about encouraging the best talent, they won't because people know that they are not welcome in certain parts of the country and know that the people running the country haven't a clue about scientific research.

Now funnily enough, Maggie Thatcher did better there. Sir John Houghton was the Chief of the Met Office and praised her for her encouragement in helping him set up the Hadley Centre for Climate Research. I couldn't in a million years see BlowJob doing something similar.

Cross posted but yes many of DDs’ peers answered the call to big money in the banks, hence the course that hefts the most applicants in the whole country is Economics at LSE.... With a father working in banking and a mother on the sidelines they are totally immune to that call. “No amount of money would persuade me it is a good life choice”

Birmingham are very savvy in their marketing, perhaps the university that has best employed it to attract students. I am sure their pitch was rooted in their understanding of customer needs plus their brand is strongest on the science and engineering side where they attract good candidates so perhaps they don’t feel as great a need to push it...

And I might add it turns out that job prospects for those who answered the call to study STEM were not improved.

DS is no fool, and swerved university and gave himself a rather unofficial gap -18 months. After which he sailed into a job in a casino (which he's already moved on from once). He's earning more than I did when I started work - with a degree - and owes fuck all to anyone. Meanwhile (as I said) a friend he was at school with who went to University (and lived at home, and still does - DS has a house-share) is a bartender with a degree and at least £20K debt.

I would have done anything had DS wanted to go to Uni, but his conclusion was "it's all a con and waste of time". I still get something in my eye when I think of the chances I had (free education) and that I marched and sat in (yes, a lawbreaker too) to no avail.

The great thing about "the leisure" industry is that it's global, and a lot of casino operators are too. With resorts and cruise liners to their names. The world is DS oyster, and who knows ? One day he may fly that way.

I've been reading more from that unherd site linked earlier. Some fascinating stuff, eg.

The sophistication effect, in which the most knowledgeable and politically engaged people, “because they possess greater ammunition with which to counterargue incongruent facts, figures, and arguments, will be more susceptible to motivated bias than will unsophisticates”.

Let’s go over that again: the better-informed and cleverer you are, the more vulnerable you are to certain biases, such as motivated scepticism, because you are more able to destroy the arguments that you don’t like, but still feel no particular desire to examine the ones that you do.

Any thoughts on Daniel Hannan comparing the treatment of his constituent with Windrush?
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-immigration-eu-citizens-windrush-daniel-hannan-tory-mep-a9083951.html

BlowJob tells school children that the extra money for education isn't going to come from cuts elsewhere. So where is it going to come from?

He wouldn't lie to children, would he?

Now funnily enough, Maggie Thatcher did better there.

She was a chemist (like Angela Merkel ?).

And much as there is to dislike about her, she listened to - or at least understood - facts. The UKs breathtakingly frank and early campaigns against AIDS (which she disliked intensely, but realised were valid) probably saved countless lives. She was far more pragmatic than dogmatic.

Was Hannan's constituent that lady who has lived, worked and paid taxes here 55 years since age of 2, and been refused settled status, I wonder, lonely? Sounded very like a Windrush case, as her parents, I think, were from the wave of Italians who helped re build this country post war.

Sorry, that was to listening.