Westminstenders: It's like a bloody aviary

[RedToothBrush]

From Flamingos to Yellowhammer and Black Swans.

The Tory Remainer is now a Dodo. Instead the party in inhabited by disaster capitalist Vultures. Jeremy Corbyn, meanwhile, has been labelled by the right wing press as a Chicken. The SNP would very much like Boris Johnson to be a Jailbird. The LDs are keen to sing like Canaries about the contents of BlackSwan. The Br

And the Tower of London is starting to get very jumpy about the whereabouts and location of its Ravens.

I would not, however, advise eating urban wild pigeons if things get desperate, from what I know of their health.

That's important about the change on immigration, hester - if other polls have similar findings

What's more important is that it's "allowed" to be reported on ....

Puffin Magpie Kestrel

It's interested to note the shift in opinion going on in the background. I don't think the next general election will be a forgone conclusion for the Tories/BP, especially if the student vote turns out well.

Saw it on Twitter Has I assumed it was a joke !

Has this been posted? Great photo. And I love the way they describe Farage.

As I said on here, years (yes years!) ago, I’m more scared of the people who hate immigrants than I am of the immigrants themselves.

www.theneweuropean.co.uk/top-stories/nigel-farage-photobomb-on-andrew-neil-show-1-6267154

imo, Leave for many now is a matter of pride - not giving in to the mc / Left & centre / EU,
but this is still a powerful political force, being emotional and difficult to defuse

^^ This

Im not sure where the 71% comes from because I havent really seen ANY shift in behaviour in RL yet......

My experience is closer to the one in that article
uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/uk-ranks-as-one-of-the-worst-countries-to-live-in-the-world-080059177.html?ncid=facebook_financefac_rp4pv8laoxs&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9tLmZhY2Vib29rLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAKSL86v0nqaH_pZCaiATxaax0X6bmc86e9jNKTCa9lgBJb3QOgDaxaEt9HVphG7gUdumdU9hId0V55dpEyatSUR9w5bpNSF5t_lK6AW570l98CKLVFRzi49VfiinlRokIwuN2rx97UqRUnuNnXSb4brWgbKJ0ZTl1xIf12Pj4MY5&guccounter=2

UK ranks as one the worst countries to live in the world as an expat

Just watching All Out Politics and they are twittering on about devolving Yorkshire. Wtf?! Give it 100 years and we'll have hard borders between counties if things carry on being so divisive and people are trying to divide further.

especially if the student vote turns out well.

If Labour get to implement anything out of their manifesto I'd love for it to be giving the votes to 16 and up

Blame the immigrants is a narrative which gets applied to situations when it can’t possibly be true.

It is nigh on impossible to get an appointment at our local GP surgery hell if they could have done my smear test down the phone they would have done.

Discussing this with a neighbour “it’s all the immigrants” is the reason she gives.

I point out we live in a 99% British born area that the surgery has one less G.P than it had twenty five years ago, that the population in the area has grown and have got older we basically have no immigrants where we live. We have a G.P. Surgery full of older people who quite rightly need more healthcare.

Sound of penny dropping was almost audible.

I love the scarasm of this from the New European article linked above

Publicity-starved political company boss Nigel Farage got a rare chance to air his views on the BBC yesterday

I point out we live in a 99% British born area that the surgery has one less G.P than it had twenty five years ago, that the population in the area has grown and have got older we basically have no immigrants where we live. We have a G.P. Surgery full of older people who quite rightly need more healthcare.
Similar round here, though we do have a fair few immigrants (we're something like 65% white british and a decent extra chunk of British in the mixed/black/asian/other categories - apologies for my crap terminology here). Thanks to the massive building projects we have more immigrants in the amount of people, though not proportionally more as we also have more British Born people coming in a similar rate to the area's previous figure. We have lost two of our GP surgeries one through retirement of the partners and one through being closed down for being grossly inadequate in the last 4 years with no replacement and no extra in existing surgeries. But that apparently has nothing to do with it.

My surgery would have had to have closed down, if it wasn't propped up by EU Doctors. But we are a Remain area, so I haven't heard any complaints.

PMK. Loving all the birds.

BJ-Cummings going to Brussels to meet with Juncker on Monday.

When can we start repeating the previous PM's whaile mantra, "Nothing's changed, nothing's changed " ?

Been out this morning in 'Remain Greater Manchester' saw a Leave means Leave protest with placards to leave without a deal, and lots of George Cross flags. About 4 or 5 protesters.

They had 'toot to leave with no deal' signs but I didn't hear any takers.

Its surprised me and does make me very nervous.

We've got lots of immigrants here, mainly students and 20 somethings (so probably don't use the GP a lot)
99% of the time you can get a GP appt. on the day.

(I might go buy my midwife and gps surgery some biscuits, and DSs old Spanish key worker, and while I'm at it the Italian lady who runs the welfare advice centre, oh! and biscuits for Caroline Lucas too)

for all! Be the change you wish to see etc.

I saw an interesting point elsewhere that the courts act in Monarch name not the governments or parliaments. So to call their decisions political is to accuse the monarch of the same ....

I think the distinction is in the definition of 'The Crown'.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crown#Distinction_between_the_monarch_and_the_Crown

I'm not sure I entirely follow it myself tbh.

Dan Bloom
@danbloom1
UPDATE:

• Speaker election November 4
• Bercow will quit as MP same day
• It will be up to the Tory whips whether to move the writ immediately in his seat - sparking a by-election - or wait until it's lumped in with a wider general election campaign

www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/who-replace-speaker-john-bercow-19943849?1

How the election works:
MPs will vote for a new Speaker on Monday 4 November - the same sitting day that John Bercow quits as an MP.

Candidates must submit their nomination papers, signed by at least 12 MPs from at three parties, to Commons authorities between 9.30am and 10.30am on the day of the election.

Names of all the approved candidates are then published at 11am before a snap hustings in the Commons chamber at 2.30pm - consisting of a speech from each hopeful.

In the Speaker's chair for the debate will be Ken Clarke, the veteran Tory, because he is 'Father of the House' - the longest continuously-serving MP in the Commons.

MPs will then be given half an hour to vote for their favourite candidate on a ballot paper.

If no single candidate wins more than 50% of the vote, the lowest-ranked candidate (along with anyone who won less than 5%) is eliminated and there is another round of voting.

This continues until one candidate has won more than 50% of the total votes from MPs.

A motion is then put to the Commons proposing the winner as Speaker. It can go to a vote again but by this point, they are likely to win. Traditionally the Speaker is "dragged" to the grand seat, supposedly against their will.

Meanwhile John Bercow will resign as an MP, also on November 4. It will be up to the Tory whips whether to move the writ immediately in his seat - sparking a by-election - or wait until it's lumped in with a wider general election campaign.

Seconding the strange dis-connect in RL with Yellowhammer and what life will be like after 31st October this morning. Listening to a lady talking about doing her placement for diagnostic radiography in 2 months time - we are in Kent - and not having a clue that hospitals may not be functioning normally or any issues with her travel to get there (hospital is in another town). I asked if they had mentioned nuclear medicine as a possible issue in the coming months, she seemed completely baffled and said no - had no clue it could be affected at all. I have to stop myself jabbering like a paranoid idiot about isotopes and traffic backed up at times like this, but it is worrying to me. By the time she graduates I wonder if there will even be an NHS or whether she will be working in the private sector .

I think the distinction is in the definition of 'The Crown'.
[wiki link]
I'm not sure I entirely follow it myself tbh.

I think we are all pushing the limits of knowledge here because we really have gone into uncharted territory. Which should be making a lot of people who are wiser than all of us very, very nervous.

I made a point yesterday that the privy council as "advisors" to the Queen are really just the government in drag, since they are convened under the auspices of JRM with his "Lord President of the Privy Council" hat to talk through. (I have no idea if this is a continuance of a tradition that keeps the PC in check, or has been engineered recently with the same aim).

However, the Supreme Court is not convened, not controlled by government. Their job is to act as the highest court in the land and it is already a long established tradition that the Monarch (and thus the government under the Monarch) cannot break the law just be virtue of being what they are.

All of which is rather esoteric. The practical issues are around what happens if SCOTUK rule the government has acted unlawfully ? Bluntly what remedy is there ...

for every right, there is a remedy; where there is no remedy, there is no right.

Pmk

Ash Sarkar
@AyoCaesar
·
57m
That left tendency which is like “Labour are abandoning their working class heartlands by not being nationalist/racist/transphobic enough” do nothing but betray their own prejudices: as if the working class, who only exist outside London btw, are all knuckle-dragging bigots.
Ash Sarkar
@AyoCaesar
·
54m
It’s beyond insulting, as if only boujee Londoners want to make society a more open and caring place.

Making other people miserable doesn’t put food on the table, it doesn’t bring jobs back, and it’s the working class - in all its diversity! - who know that better than most.