Westminstenders: "I don't give a flying flamingo"

[RedToothBrush]

Amid scenes parliament was shut down.

In an unprecedented comment the Speaker, stated it was not an ordinary prorogation and it was blatantly an attempt to stop the executive being held to account.

And now it seems a Scottish Court agree with him:
"Lord Brodie cont: "the principal reasons for the prorogation were to prevent or impede parliament holding the executive to account and legislating with regard to Brexit, and to allow the executive to pursue a policy of a no deal Brexit without further parliamentary interference"

Thus parliament must reopen. Unless the decision is overturned in a higher court.

This is constitutionally a big deal. The Queen is highly unlikely to attend a reopening, especially in this manner, due to how political it now is.

General Election campaigning has already began with parties trying to take full advantage of the fact that there are currently no rules over spending.

Dominic Cummings actively and openly campaigning for the Conservatives whilst paid as a civil servant by the tax payer is a huge breech of the Civil service code but MPs are struggling to pin the government down on this as its being obstructive.

Cummings is keen to use data to target and personalise people based on their usage of the .gov portal for Brexit. This is OK as its in the national interest apparently. Its also incredibly sinister and concerning about how this could be used against the population.

Anyway if you thought parliament closing would result in a lull in events you were very much mistaken!!

What next?

Remind me again, why is it in the EU's interests to do that?

Why so snippy with me? There's no need to be so arsey with me for simply having an alternate opinion to you, which I - and others - are entitled to, even if you don't agree with it.

I think it could be renegotiated with a more reasonable negotiator because that's how negotiations work in real life. If you gets new negotiator / negotiating team, it can smooth previously-troubled waters. I've experienced this in real life, believe it or not.

However, I will take this WA too so, again, I'm not sure why the chippiness. I'm not holding out for something better when we're at the brink of disaster.

Hoooo, I agree.

Wasted the time with everyone in the HoC - including Remainers - refusing to compromise

Exclude the Remainers. May, with the DUP had a majority. If all the Tories had backed her, plus the Labour rebels of Hoey, Field, and a couple of others I always forget it, would have gone through by a handful of votes. So step forward Johnson, Rees-Mogg and take the blame.

Are the government aware that Ireland is in the process of expanding it's ports so that nothing has to come through Britain. If there is even a sniff that supplies won't get to Ireland Britain will be bypassed.

Forgive me if I'm wrong. But the WA is purely that a Withdrawla Agreement.

And gives us a transition period and during that time we can agree a future trade relationship?

So can't we just suck it up in the short term, even tell the EU its shit. We know its shit, you know its shit. We will agree it to move it forward but there are areas of it that we will try and improve in the trade discussions.

We voted to Leave, people seem to still want to Leave so surely we need to accept that to do that we are going to have to accept something far inferior to what we've got?

If the WA can start to mend this country and if we can go back to being a democracy then leaving the EU with a withdrawal agreement seems a small price to pay.

I voted to remain but I don't want to remain in eU if there is so much anger and resentment in the country.

No Deal is even worst.

You would think, wouldn't you? @Random18

My own view is that - shit as it is - the WA means that once the next few years pass the younger generation will ask to rejoin/revoke

I would absolutely live you to be right hooo but after this sorry mess I think hell will freeze over before we're allowed back in.

People who want to hold Ireland to ransom are shameful twats.

*love

People who want to hold Ireland to ransom are shameful twats.

People who want no deal are shameful twats.
No ifs not buts (to quote BJ)

If you read any of the analysis of Sir Ivan Rogers, his take is that the WA would be the worst of all stitch ups for the UK. We have a 2 year breather but in that 2 years, the EU would hold all the cards and would pick us off sector by sector in negotiations because, frankly, we get a bloody good deal and we wouldn't want to give it up. We would end up with a TA that looks a lot like what we have now and with all the same strings attached. Crashing out would bring us to the table on our knees only to end up in the same place we will have to be eventually.
blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/09/ivan-rogers-the-realities-of-a-no-deal-brexit/

I wonder how son it will be before people up in court start accusing the judge of being biased, and how that will help their case. Or indeed the criminal justice system.

Meantime, I'm still standing by my sense that the fad of Brexit is over. It's still be a thing - after all you can still get fidget spinners and Rubik cubes. But trying to lure a new generation in will be met with the same "You what Grandad ?" as if you tried to take a fidget spinner into a secondary school today.

Following that line of thought, maybe Labours "strategy" (which I suspect is less by design and more by incompetence) may actually hint at a way forward ?

Or to put it another way: A tory party campaigning solely on Brexit, against a Labour party campaigning on other issues might actually be backing a loser.

There may be some lessons from Scotland here ? I'm pretty certain that the interest in independence was not maintained at fever pitch between 1997 and 2014 ?

I don’t see it as giving in just averting an immediate disaster for people who are a lot less able to cope.

The WA only covers about 10% of what is needed to sever ties with EU rest needs to be decided in the future. But it mitigates the worst and gives time measured rather than snap fire fighting decisions to be made.

Doesn’t mean I am not resentful though.

Rubik's cubes are having a moment amongst a certain subset. What goes around...

belated PMKing

Have loom bands gone out of fashion?

song

We can but ask....

Nigel Evans quoting Steve Barclay, the Brexit Secretary, Mother

Now of course, one or other of them could be lying or being deliberately misleading/misquoted but somehow I don't think so

Theo Usherwood @theousherwood
Tory MP Nigel Evans tells @LBC Yellowhammer is "worst case scenario on steroids".

"I spoke to (Brexit Secretary) Steve Barclay and he said to me... 'two-thirds of the medicines Ireland gets come through UK. If there are shortages in the UK, there'll be shortages in Ireland'."

Don't get me wrong, I would be absolutely delighted if remain and revoke became a plausible option.

However, I would take the withdrawal agreement - not least to avoid a crash out.

I would hope it would also take some heat out of the situation. For those who don't pay too much attention the the details, brexit will have happened - the 'do or die' rhetoric is lost. There is of course a risk of the can just being kicked down the road...but I would take a risk of no deal in two years time, possibly with a GE or PV (assuming the transition agreement allows for rapid rejoin - I believe it does) in between, other a certain no deal in six weeks or four months time.

I'm sure I saw an article saying that France want to insist on a longer two year extension - any credence to that? I thought I'd bookmarked it to read later, but now can't find it.

Incidentally, has anyone commented on the trolling of someone, somewhere in deciding to christen the operation "Yellowhammer" ?

From wiki

^The song of the cock yellowhammer is a series of short notes, gradually increasing in volume and followed by one or two more protracted notes. It is often represented as "A little bit of bread and no cheese"

But typical of the Brexiters, there is the assumption that Ireland hasn't already been doing a massive amount of work to mitigate against the "danger" () of having the UK as a land bridge.

There are the new giant ROROs for example (part funded by the EU ) which, iirc, were initially intended for the Holyhead route but will now be used from Southern Ireland direct to France.

The Yellowhammer song is how I explained it to my dd this morning when she asked why Yellowhammer.