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.

Here's a YouGov trapdoor question, btw

Indeed, prettybird.

I'm somewhat resigned now.

I can't get past the mess we've made, though.

By definition, the majority of the electorate are not qualified, nor have the time, to resolve hugely complicated issues of the magnitude of Brexit. It's not condescending, nor is it patronising, to say this.

Most of us aren't lawyers, or trade experts, or economists, or international relations experts.

We don't have the hours in the day to become so in our free time.

The damage this has done to our political discourse, our political process, our institutions, our economy ...

It's just insane.

And it will be decided by the votes of the uninvolved and under-informed.

Why? Because they/we are the majority. We are all under-informed about this. An infinitesimally small fraction of the population is qualified to make a decision about all this.

What poison this whole 'the will of the people' thing has been.

Absolute poison.

‘Bad Food Britain’ by Joanna Blythman gives some of the reasons why British consumers no longer eat certain foods and cuts of meat.

The supermarkets largely dictate what we will and won’t eat according to what is best for them to stock. Added to that is the decline in cookery lessons.

When shown how to buy and cook a type of food, it becomes very popular: witness many of the trends when a chef like Jamie Oliver decides to use an ingredient.

We used to eat, and enjoy, offal and all kinds of fish that I can now only find in independent shops and farms.

We used to eat, and enjoy, offal and all kinds of fish that I can now only find in independent shops and farms.

It's ironic that the race to homogenise the high street is what is killing it.

Regular readers will know my deep frustration at looking for something "in the shops" only to find that not only does nowhere do it, but that everywhere does exactly the same anyway.

Hello ! Amazon. Hello eBay !

Try and find a decent hand whisk in the shops (for example). You won't. You will find the exact same shitty tat (in a variety of colours). That will last a week. (Been there, done that, kept the receipt and returned it).

Metal chain coat loops ? No mate. (Hello ! Amazon)

Grapefruit knife (in a specialist cookware shop, after Lakelands "Do what mate ?") - "You what ?" (Hello eBay).

And don't get me started on what I can't get at any butchers around here.

If society is a cake mix, we are slowly removing the fruit, nuts and anything which isn't bland and beige. And I use that metaphor quite deliberately.

Here endeth the rant for today

Re leafleting. Only half of "my round" got done last week as I got halfway through, gave up in the rain and then came down with a bad cold (not related!) which kept me in bed for the rest of the week. They were going out later than they should have because of life/school Christmas fairs/work so now I have the next lot to go out and clearly these cannot hang about! I'm aiming to start at the other end this time so at least if I fail again i'll have covered the route. So confirming Cat's point that it is not necessarily a targeting issue (and my round does cover both ends of the spectrum so it could currently look targeted!)

I know my LD candidate has done very little campaigning. He's a teacher so I'm not really surprised.

The last three weekends for us have been stuff that have been booked long term - family or christmas or other interest related. I barely seen DH since Wednesday due to everything we have on.

We've all have norivirus and now have a cold or worst.

My point is that mid December really isn't the time of year that people have time to be going out doing a lot of campaigning.

And thats before we talk about the dark nights and weather!

Agree Red. So I feel that at least I have done some little thing. Our LD candidate is everywhere, but has a mountain to climb - so if a leaflet in the right house helps...

It's ironic that the race to homogenise the high street is what is killing it. You're right. I live for some of the time where the traditional high street still exists. Tiny town with two butchers, fish monger, hardware store (Aladdin's cave) independent clothes shops etc etc. People shop local. However I am guilty of driving to the small Coop because it's got better parking. I'm lazy. There is quite an elderly population here who are disciplined enough to walk around town to go to each little shop for their messages.
Thanks for the interesting sheep discussion last night. I took part in the John McDonnell chat thread and he reassured me that farmers are not the enemy and we are now bessie mates My dad always said that farmers did better under Labour because the pound fell when they were in power.

Has this been posted yet? Johnson was in the NW yesterday and a local journalist actually managed to ask him some questions. The was before he ran away from Westhoughton.

Hannah Miller
@hannahITV

Did an interview with Boris Johnson in Cheadle this morning. The
@seashelltrust previously signed a letter saying children's services are at 'breaking point' - so I asked about that. Not sure we really got anywhere to be honest, but here it is @GranadaReports

twitter.com/hannahITV/status/1203336121368928257?s=20

Another perspective on leafleting and what makes it hard:
Rainy weather, dark evenings, muddy paths.
Letterboxes at ground level. Hello backache!
Barking dogs just inside the letterbox. I need my fingers!
Stiff letterboxes with brushes which hurt your hand.
Big houses with long paths up to the front door - a street of these can take ages to walk.
Blocks of flats which have letterboxes on the inner doors when you can’t access the main door. (‘Tradesmen’s’ buzzers often don’t seem to do anything.)
People who just don’t want your leaflet and get nasty.

Having said all that, I’ve delivered hundreds of leaflets the last few weeks to all manner of dwellings, and hope that people have been glancing at them.

I have a lot of sympathy with postal workers these days...

.

DGRosetti
re Lamb Shanks
Have you actually eaten the ones from Asda ?
Have you seen how teeny and bony they are ?
The ones I buy from my butcher are around £6 each but they are a FULL portion per person
and the cat has fun pretending she made a kill later in the garden

The EU is UK’s largest trading partner accounting for £642 billion of total trade, or just under half of all UK international trade flows
(ONS Balance of Payments, 2019)

It would be impossible for the UK to afford compensating businesses for any significant % of this

Subsidies
International trade law mostly rules out subsidies to support ongoing businesses who could not otherwise survive
The UK would face trade sanctions and punitive tariffs if it did this

e.g. UK lamb subsidies would cause rival lamb producers to impose tariffs on other UK exports

The US is particularly agressive towards other countries subsidies
and forbidding subsidies is listed in the US Trade Dept negotiating aims for any US-UK FTA

What would be OK:
One-off payments to compensate for being being forced to carry out a mass slaughter of stock

Retraining for those who lose their jobs / businesses

• but many farmers want to stay being farmers and for their kids to take over the family farm later

Nigel is getting ready to rip off the poor again
www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2019-50704706

UK exports by value:

55 % to Europe ( includes 47% EU + EFTA & EEA members)
24 % to Asia
15 % to USA & Canada
2 % to Africa
1.5% to Australia & NZ
1% Latin America

http://www.worldstopexports.com/united-kingdoms-top-import-partners/

Interesting day

first time we have ever had a canvasser. Tory. Quite a pleasant cheery chap. Completely unfazed when I said I wasn't backing his guy. But he gave away more than I when he asked if I was voting Labour (didn't tell him who I was voting for). But I was intrigued by his "observation" that ... around here, it seems 80% of people are going to vote conservative ... which is a whopper of Boris proportions and which I really hadn't time to go into.

I only answered the door because an old Uni friend is in town and said they'd drop by this afternoon.

Bit windy, but a beautiful sunny day (for now). What does this tell us ?

It tells us Tories lie - a lot

Lamb Shanks ..Have you actually eaten the ones from Asda ? Have you seen how teeny and bony they are ?

Yes. And while that's as may be, it swerves the question of why I can't buy a couple of raw shanks myself for c.£2.00 and sous-vide them myself.

Also, they're exactly perfect for DW and I. We don't seem to need much to live on, thankfully.

Regarding cuts of meat .... if intolerance is a circular dial then whilst I have little time for vegans on the one end of the scale, I have just as little on the other end for hypocritical carnivores. The old GBS quip about arguing over the price was never so true ....

Retraining for those who lose their jobs / businesses - but many farmers want to stay being farmers and for their kids to take over the family farm later
I've never met an unemployed ex farmer- they have so many transferable skills and so many connections with people in the community who could employ them Most farmers' children I know have university degrees and other qualifications.

Also, lamb is rare to unknown in most of the US. They love their beef.

"The Reform Party" ?

Whatever happened to Charter88 ?

The Electoral Reform Society are campaigning for those exact same things. I don’t agree with a populist replacement for the HofL but we do need to overhaul the Fptp system.

DGRossetti I found a local beef farmer who sells from his farm and will reserve what I ask him - even bones for stock. His workers also shoot rabbits and the odd pheasant on occasion.
Only place I’ve found kidney, would you believe?!!

Can’t help with the whisks - still using the decent ones I bought 20 years ago, though!

DGR, even without much time, I might have had to comment that I was looking forward to seeing the percentage result. What kind of constituency is it?
I’ve been reading loads this morning about worried labour running scared of losing safe seats, mainly on the basis of leaked postal voting figures. But I would have thought postal votes would always favour Conservatives. Already lots of chat about the next LP leader.

A fun bit of anecdata:

Nick Cohen
‏*@NickCohen4*

A northern Labour MP texts me about the Corbyn problem on the doorstep "They hate him. And it doesn't seem to matter if I tell them I hate him more!"

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