Westminstenders: Constitutional History

[RedToothBrush]

The Supreme Court case continues
(ruling possible Friday but likely Monday)

The new NI proposal is bollocks and Johnson didn't get why until it was discussed in Europe.

There was a press conference in Luxembourg which looks good for Johnson.

Johnsons approval ratings are up.

And we are making no obvious progress to anything but no deal...

Flouncy
Even for the free food

I have seen that kind of thing before, DGR. Similar leaflets were around in the 80s. The Fundamentalist Christian Right believes that the EU is the rise of the anti-Christ - when they're not claiming Islam is the religion of Satan, anyway 🙄

The Fundamentalist Christian Right believes that the EU is the rise of the anti-Christ

Shame they can't believe in clothing the naked, feeding the hungry and helping the weak first though. Because those are the battles that Christ - the redeemer - wanted fought.

I guess I'd better apologise in advance if anyones offended ...

Abso - fucking - lutely DG

The Conservative Evangelicals are the fastest growing congregations within and outside the CofE and they are extreme right wing fundamentalists. Homophobic, misogynist, ableist by virtue of their belief that Adam and Eve are the only model for human relations and women should submit, and in some cases racist. Strong links including funding to the American evangelicals. American funding pays the people who harass people in the vicinity of abortion clinics with horrific photos and incorrect information. A few London boroughs have introduced exclusion zones around the clinics but they just picket the nearest station instead.

There are a number of independent congregations around here, we had a parliamentary candidate with this batshit views and 300 people voted for him. The Headmaster of a boys’ school, Fulham Boys School, which was set up partly with Boris’s help and gets good press in the Conservative press, is an evangelical preacher. I think they mistake it for traditional robust public school Anglicanism but it isn’t. The school openly hosted the Director of the American Organisation for Manhood and Womanhood. They tried to make a bid to open another free school in West London but I think they have now focused on other bids elsewhere. They are very sneaky about proselytising their true agenda.

Never mind the EU the real threat is secular feminism cbmw.org/about/mission-vision/

So I jump in without having read anything all afternoon, but I’ve been to the Get ready event organised by the government. It was decently organised, but fairly superficial information, mostly they were pointing at the gov.uk website and various institutions.
I met one guy (Aussie) that was prepared in something similar to my industry, and very kindly dedicated some time to answer my questions, at least try. It is going to be messy, though, and I am pretty sure that the people that will make more money out of the first couple of years will be lawyers and accountants.
I sneaked for 5’ in the session dedicated to “food, fish, chemicals” and I heard a couple of absurdities enough to make everybody’s eyebrows to raise.
From what I gathered, if a U.K. producer of food will want to sell to the Eu he’s going to require amongst other things to relabel everything (from day 1, possibly 1.11) removing any mention of EU, and will have to use either “made in the United Kingdom” or “made in gb”. “Made in the U.K.” is illegal :-O the northern Irish are clearly not feeling the love....
Importing organic stuff from the EU is going to be the same, but exporting organic stuff (food, products) will not, and a U.K. producer will need to wait for the EU to accept an equivalency between accreditations (which, without wanting to be cheeky, they have no interest in offering) in order to sell as “organic”. He can sell without declaring it organic, but why bother I wonder?
The bit on the fishery lost me completely. I might have gathered that the navy might be needed to patrol against eu boats fishing in our waters, but they’re neither available nor keen. I’ll need to read that section online pretending to be a fisherman :-)
The section that was better presented and clear was about settlement scheme. It was repeated over and over that they’re on a mission to give everybody a status, and that of the 1.1m applications processed so far only one was actually rejected. The ones that were in the press were resolved by looking for information “manually” and not just DWP and HMRV records.
Who gets pre-settled status gets 5 full years of leave to remain and as soon as he matures the 5 years of residence can apply for settled, and the limits on how much time he can spend abroad to get the years counted are better than for other types of immigrants (so they said).

• [ ] For those who arrive after oct31 and until Jan2021, once he settled program will close, they’ll open another scheme for EU nationals that will allow them 36months of residence, before the new visa system will be implemented

I am a Christian, though not fundamentalist. You are not offending me, DGR: I agree with you and so do the ordinary Christians who run the food and clothing bank, breakfast and dinner clubs for my area.

The good news to me as an employer is that it’s not going to be my legal duty to check if my employees have settled status or ask for anything more than what I ask now. In fact, it was repeated 3 times: you can’t discriminate.
In reality though for professions that require chartership (lawyers, accountants, architects, engineers etc etc) selling your services to EU clients even if you do it from the Uk, or hiring from the EU will become more complex, amongst other things because the system of mutual recognition of some charted ships will cease. And the EU actually only prescribed the very minimum but individual countries have their own add-ons, so a British architect that wants to work in Italy has no guarantee anymore that he can follow a “EU route to mutual recognition”. It’s going to be back to paperwork and certificates and official translation of your degrees and exams? As an employer, the difficult bit is that I should be able to tell if I hire a danish gaduate or I send a Scottish bloke to Germany that they are actually qualified, but of course who keeps up with all this???

Tanith I know some very caring evangelical christians too but it does seem to also attract some whose brand of christianity I find hard to reconcile with the liberal inclusive christianity I was bought up with (and in a small village with 5 churches that was a mixture of traditional and non conformist).

It was a bit of a shock to hear over and over: “we ARE leaving on the 31.10, deal or no deal. Change is coming”
When. I told to the Aussie: I can prepare for change, but so far you’ve only described me things that are making my job worse. Where’s the change to compensate for this?
He looked at me with understanding and a bit of pity and shrugged....

Cherin
Too many people forget that before the UK joined the EEC, most of Europe was still a goods based economy
nowadays the vast bulk of the money (and tax revenue) is in services
and the rules are ten years behind the reality

I agree, Emily. Just adding my further thoughts to prevent the thread remaining at 666 posts

Wasn't the justification of some Brexiters about why the EU was evil that it was some sort of Roman Catholic conspiracy?

I hadn't imagined it ....

www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2012/01/is-the-european-union-a-catholic-plot

For the avoidance of doubt, I think such conspiracy theorists are lunatics

Cherin - would you recommend going to one of those events? There are none in my neck of the woods at all yet so I’m waiting to see if they put one on or make an effort to travel

@cherin I'm going to one in a few weeks, any tips?

Mah, don’t expect any detailed information, and go with a cool head (one of the guys attending with me was very very angry and he did a couple of outburst against the people presenting, who tbh didn’t sound like leaverZealots, more like civil servants of various ages trying to help...) the problem is they can’t help with future policies (because they’re not defined) so they can just point you to the immediate differences, deal or no deal, and any further planning is impossible

But they do have “market stalls” where you can go and ask direct questions and they will point you to the bits of websites more relevant to you.
The GDPR and flow of info is a bit scary. I haven’t got a full idea of what it means for my company. If I put personal information on a server shared between me and my colleagues in a EU office am I going i contravene something? Are data for our payrolls shared? I bet they are, but also with the States...mah

When I get a copy of the slides I’ll try to share them here. I’m sure they’re public, already.

@cherin thank you