Westminsterenders: Talent or Colour

[FishesaPlenty]

RTB and BCF are presumably busy with more important things. I'm clearly not qualified to start a Westminsterenders thread - but somebody has to take control and collect the waifs and strays.

The party of no talent want to introduce no colour into our lives.

6 days to the election.

Johnson is still a liar.

Corbyn is still apparently loved by Labour members and hated by everyone else.

Swinson is still a charming PTA chair.

Hateisnotgood
So you are advocating a socialist interventionist agricultural policy similar to the pre reform CAP
that will encourage farmers to produce regardless of demand
because the government will buy the excess out of taxpayer funds
R-I-G-H-T

Let's not forget the milk lakes and cheese mountains that the EU created that got so much criticism at the time.
(Actually I remember getting free butter and cheese as a dc from this)

especially as the narrative is that people voted for Brexit because the were fed up with austerity & they believed the bus.

I voted to leave for exactly this reason. My family were furious with me - husband, sister, dad etc ... that made me feel even more stubborn and dig my heels in. Before and then after I had voted I blinded myself to all reasonable conversation about why we should remain.

Honestly, it was this thread that made me change my mind. So my point is - most Leavers have not had an opportunity to see reason. Now Boris is PM it's even worse because they see him as something adorable ... I do understand why we're in this predicament.

BUT I think many many people want to remain and enough will have changed their minds ... so I am still hopeful.

Thanks, Dusty. That's really interesting & honestly helps me understand people a bit better. 💐

Yes cat I am. At least until the demand/supply level is reached. There are other offsets involved - economic and environmental costs of freezing and transportation in the import/export market; the environmental benefits of light upland grazing, the social benefits of preserving our minority traditional rural cultures

And, as Derxha pointed out, she's on the development front line - the only thing stopping the 'urban creep' into our food-producing countryside, is her and her sheep, and those others like her.

Sorry - not cat but my last post to LQ

Tim Shipman
@ShippersUnbound
·
2h
HOLD YOUR HORSES KLAXON
Datapraxis boss Paul Hilder says: "We have never seen as many undecided voters this late in the campaign. As many as 80-90 constituencies are still up for grabs. A much larger Conservative landslide is still possible - but so is a hung Parliament."

Tim Shipman
@ShippersUnbound
·
2h
EXC: Datapraxis MRP model gives Tories a majority of 38

Con 344 (+27)
Lab 221 (-41)
LD 14 (+2)
SNP 47 (+12)
PC 4 (-)
Green 1 (-)

This is based on a staggering 500,000 YouGov interviews but the model is from Datapraxis. Their last MRP, two weeks ago gave a majority of 48

Couple of links from me:

Extracts from the brexit diplomat’s resignation letter in here:
"I have been increasingly dismayed by the way in which our political leaders have tried to deliver Brexit, with reluctance to address honestly, even with our own citizens, the challenges and trade-offs which Brexit involves; the use of misleading or disingenuous arguments about the implications of the various options before us; and some behaviour towards our institutions, which, were it happening in another country, we would almost certainly as diplomats have received instructions to register our concern," she wrote in her letter, dated December 3.

"It makes our job to promote democracy and the rule of law that much harder, if we are not seen to be upholding these core values at home."
edition.cnn.com/2019/12/06/uk/top-british-diplomat-quits-brexit-intl/index.html

This one is interesting to see how the hatred of the EU has been stoked for decades: ethicaljournalismnetwork.org/resources/publications/ethics-in-the-news/media-lies-and-brexit

From a tweet this morning. This is Britain in a nutshell. From the post debate YouGov polling:

More trustworthy:
BJ 38%
JC 48%

In touch with ordinary people:
BJ 29%
JC 57%

More prime ministerial:
BJ 54%
JC 30%

This country deserves a Tory majority.

I wish as much energy was being put into Bedford and Lincoln where those LDs need to nose hold and vote Labour. There seems to be less focus on that kind of marginal. The perfectly decent Lab guy could be unseated in Bedford by a young man who looks like (and behaves like) Tory Boy from the 1980s. The perfectly decent Lab MP in Lincoln could be unseated by a hard right Brexiteer and racist. In Lincoln, the student vote could be crucial but I don't get the impressions it is being courted.

So you are advocating a socialist interventionist agricultural policy similar to the pre reform CAP
that will encourage farmers to produce regardless of demand

It's nuts. Of course people on here want farmers not to go bust or commit suicide, and are in favour of some government support. But realistically the government is not going to freeze 100,000 tonnes of lamb indefinitely. In a real hard Brexit quite a lot of that is going to get destroyed.

You could volunteer for a phone bank to phone people in those (Bedford, Lincoln) areas, Piggy.

Depends on how close you are to London, though, because at this stage it would probably have to be through one of the Referendum campaigns (eg. People's Vote).

I don't have time cat (genuinely) and also don't live in either constituency (not sure if that matters). I am just very bothered that the Lab party in both places don't seem to be very vocal compared to the LDs in more 'grand ' areas. It feels a bit like the nose holding is going more one way than the other.

I think Bedford might suffer form being one of these classic 'anyone but Corbyn' areas.

It is often said to be a Leave constituency but, actually, it completely reflected the national picture at nearly 50:50. Boris J came a while back but it has been so so quiet. Not sure why no one (press included) seems interested in such a bellwether marginal.

Piggy if those are marginal Labour seats I imagine that Momentum will be bussing activists in. I hold no candle for Momentum (quite the opposite) but they appear well organised and resourced. If you have the time to canvas or help get the vote out that's where I would start.

Hatred of the EU has been stoked for decades:

And no one has done more to stoke that hatred, throwing bricks at the greenhouse to hear the shattering sound, than the Daily Telegraph's former Brussels Correspondent, "as everything I wrote from Brussels was having this amazing, explosive effect on the Tory party, and it really gave me this I suppose rather weird sense of power."

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Johnson#The_Times_and_The_Daily_Telegraph:_1987%E2%80%931994

BJ on Sophie Ridge this morning funny how he has time to be interviewed by her but not Andrew Neil :

No checks - Boris Johnson says government papers are wrong

The PM says the document which says there will be checks for goods across the NI border is wrong.

Asked "will there be checks?" he says "no".

He added: "The deal we’ve done with the EU is a brilliant deal and it allows us to do all the things that Brexit was about so it’s about taking back control of our borders, money, laws – but unlike the previous arrangements it allows the whole of the UK to come out of the EU including Northern Ireland and the only checks that there would be, would be if something was coming from GB via Northern Ireland and was going on to the Republic, then there might be checks at the border into Northern Ireland in order to...."

He confirms there won't be checks "both ways".

Asked: "You’re saying this is wrong, the government’s own impact assessment is wrong, your Brexit Secretary is wrong, all these people are wrong and you are right?"

He replied, "Yes."

He may genuinely believe this - because he doesn't read his briefings, has no attention to detail - and doesn't actually give a fuck about NI anyway as they don't vote Conservative anyway

The Observer has a big tactical voting guide in today's edition, apparently. For 50 seats.

The reason we export so much of our lamb is that British consumers will only eat a few kinds of cuts, so the rest has to be exported

Similarly for fish - mostly exported because British consumers don't like most of what is caught in British waters

As for giving it to foodbanks !!
It would be ridiculous & cruel to try to force foodbank users to eat strange cuts they don't want & have never cooked - and many of them won't have facilities to cook meals like that anyway

If derxa as a sheep farmer thinks she wouldn't lose money because of Brexit, then I'd have expected she'd be a lot less gloomy in her posts about how she sees the future for her industry

There are so many industries that will be hammered by Brexit, that trying to compensate them all would make the costs of both Labour & Tory manifestos look like peanuts

The Brexiters own economist Prof Minford has stated that Brexit - of the kind the Tories intend - will probably destroy British farming and mass manufacturing - which together employ about 8% of the workforce
.... but he claims the benefit of turning even more into a services economy with US type rules of workers rights etc will all be worth it to the economy

Yesterday I got a people's vote leaflet.

I was talking to my friend who lives 25metre from my house. Turns out she hasn't had a single LD leaflet. Not one. Just several Labour ones. No Conservative. I've had a couple of both.

You don't suppose it could be something to do with the fact I live in a big house and she lives in a council estate do you?

This bitterly pisses me off. She has said her vote was up for grabs but every party isn't interested in her so she won't vote. The fact that we are into this situation where parties only chase 'the right demographic' produced by an algorithm is utterly depressing.

We are being ruled by this idea that the programme is king and the human element of need, want and engagement is now irrelevant.

Parties only want to pitch to their own likeness and the people of least resistance because its easy.

For another example look at how Boris Johnson cancelled a trip to Bolton (yesterday or it might have been Friday) because there were protests about it and he didn't want a hard time or the optics of being challenged.

No one wants to do the difficult bit of politics of engaging with people with different problems or different views.

All it smacks of is the degree to which debate is dead within British politics.

It's just people talking at others or over them rather than talking with them. And tbh the most rewarding political discussions I've had in the last 5 years have ironically turned out to be the ones I thought would simply go south.

Anyway my prediction for Thursday is Tory Majority of 20 - 30 at this stage. Might be wildly off but that's where I'm going to put my stake in.

The crazy thing about turning the UK into even more of a "services economy" is that most FTAs don't. include. services.

Not sure that's entirely tue, Red.

It's hard getting leaflets out. My constituency can't afford postage, so we rely on volunteers to go around posting them through letterboxes.

Volunteers are only human: they have jobs and families and limited hours in the day. We take 'rounds' of letters/leaflets based on where we live.

It can take 2 days to deliver to just 2 roads - only because you are trying to squeeze in deliveries between all the other things you do as a human.

And, yes, some areas get delivered to less because there's no-one there to deliver them.

And then, as you know, a lot of those involved in political organisations as volunteers are older. Stairs present a real challenge (I'm disabled myself).

It's a right pain.

So it's not necessarily algorithms going on there.

Since lamb has been mentioned, can anyone explain where I can buy the uncooked shanks of lamb that go into the ADSA two-shanks for £5 pre-cooked frozen meal ?

That would be £2.50 per shank, cooked and with ASDAs and their suppliers profit margins taken care of (so I'm guessing no more that £2.00 each ?)

Google is (predictably) useless ...

Hi all .. am a full time teacher (not allowed to moan, see current accidental teacher bashing thread in Active!) in the midst of all the craziness that is the end of Autumn term in Christmas and mock season so canvassing etc just not doable. Plus, teachers are bit frowned upon if they do politics (unless they're Tories; then they get wheeled out for public display, given jobs in quangos and flown into far flung seats to stand for parliament)...

From todays Times

Consider the fate of an aspiring politician who made a speech incorporating the following inconvenient truths. You, the voters, simultaneously demand a low level of tax and a high level of public services. You don’t want personally to look after your elderly relatives, as people do in Spain and Italy, but you’ll be damned if you’re going to pass up inheriting the parental home in order to fund state provision. (Theresa May proposed this very policy, the so-called dementia tax, at the last election and lost her majority as a result.)

Moving on, large numbers of poorer people don’t want to do low-paid jobs in health and social care, hospitality or agriculture but don’t much like immigrants coming here to do those jobs instead. Large numbers of richer people want the state to subsidise their children’s higher education and their commute to work by rail. And also, of course, pay them pensions for 20 years or more after they retire. Pensions that a lot of them don’t really need.

We’re living longer but many of us don’t want to work longer. We want to feel safe and secure but don’t want to pay for more police officers. We want to rule the waves but don’t want to pay more for the armed services. We hate every new bypass except for the one which benefits our village. We want more houses, wind farms, prisons and railways — only not where we live. We want unlimited free healthcare while greedily eating and drinking quantities of food and booze that will make us ill. And so on.