Brexit Arms - Out with the old and in with the new

[time4chocolate]

It’s time again for another Brexit Arms thread to see us into Christmas and beyond.

Well what a week it’s been!!

Boris has now completed his first week and he’s been busy. New conservatives have been sworn in, the Queens Speech yesterday shows promise (aware that the proof of the (Xmas) pudding is in the eating) and Boris’ Deal is going to be voted on today with the results being around 3pm I believe.

Meanwhile, on the other side all four wheels have definitely fallen off the red bus and were very nearly joined by a garden gate and a car door. Oh dear!!

Anyway, I have added a few more Christmas decs to the pub and popped the fairy back on the tree (it took a nasty tumble)

We are now good to go.
Cheers all 🍷🍷

Ps. If anyone wants to volunteer for outside catering that would be👍🏻

What frustrates me Yolo is those that have the opportunity and don't want to find out how to grasp it, or label it under 'all too difficult'. It isn't hard to find out things these days. For those who genuinely can't, then there does need to be support in place, but for those who can't be arsed and don't want to try then, meh.

Mum is 79 and is starting to seem old now, although I've been away for much of the past 13 years, one of my brother or I had to come back, and as dh wanted to retire, it was me. Db will stay abroad as long as the RN has a job for him abroad, and then we'll see. He says he doesn't want to come back, but sil has her parents here, and there are the 'boys' (22 and 24) as well. I have a feeling they would go to the Antipodes if possible, so am trying to push Mum in the direction of sorting out LPAs, so everything is in place if needed. Db won't be bothered that his desire to stay abroad ('we have a right to live our lives') will impact on dh and I as regards to Mum; he will want to be involved in any decisions, whilst not dealing with the daily reality of an ageing parent. He doesn't have to change her bed when he goes to see her!

I know it will get worse; I looked after fil for a while before he went into care, and as I said, have worked with psycho geriatrics and as a care assistant, so been there, done that, and watched the pils sort the care etc for dh's Gran, so am aware that a world of pain/form filling/hospital appointments/ wrestling with bureaucracy awaits, all whilst trying to get ds into work, and job hunt for me. Yay! The joys of being in your 50s!

It's hard, Scary, when you have to be the responsible adult for the generation up as well as the generation down. It's easy to forget you have a life too. I send you my best wishes.

scary not politics, but my mum is 81. I’m 43. Dad’s dead.

I’ve had quite a few people comment “you seem too young to have to deal with this” but actually a) I don’t think so and b) I’m not sure why anyone thinks being older might make it better?

The biggest shock for me was having parents when I hit 40. They’ve both nearly died so many times, I didn’t imagine they’d still be around when I hit 40. Sorry, that was more for the Elderly Parent board.

My Dad died when I was 35 Autumn, but Mum (they were divorced when I was 24) is still trucking. She will be 80 next year. I've been back in UK since mid October, and we've had to change light bulbs, the bed, sort some other things out, make sure we know where she is and what she is up to; take her to hospital for an appointment. We've been lucky til now that any scares have been whilst she was staying with us in Belgium, where the health care is proactive and excellent, but she is at the point now she needs steroid injections. She's had two cataracts done this year, which meant that I had to come back for the first one, and db couldn't come back for the second one. As I was about to move back to UK, I couldn't come back either, about which I was made to feel guilty. I managed to see her when we brought stuff back to put into store, and bought her fish and chips, so checked on her briefly then. Db had forgotten that she was having it done....

Morning, all,

A calm day today before all the the excitement of NYE when we welcome in 2020. The Brexit Arms is a peaceful place for regulars right now but all are welcome and the complimentary breakfast tray is on the bar. It's simple fare this morning but please help yourselves.

Kettle's on ☕️☕️☕️

about which I was made to feel guilty

That's a daughter thing, Scary, or a woman thing, well, in my experience anyway. Long ago, I had to do a residential course called "Understanding and Working with Girls and Young Women in Custody", a snappy title. The section on health was written by a seasoned health care professional and began by asking a series of questions...Who looks after the children's health? She does. Who looks after his health? She does. Who looks after the elderly parents' health? She does. And who looks after her health? She has to, but only if there's any time left over after tending to everybody else's health needs. I'd like to think things had changed since then but I'm not optimistic. Your Dad was a remarkable man, btw.

Autumn, don't be sorry. It's not easy to navigate your way through supporting one parent when you've lost the other parent. There's no rule book for grief. And anyway, this is a pub. We can talk about anything we like.

Hola all!

Haven't been on social media over last few days - much sleeping has been going on as I've hit a wall of tiredness (am due a b12 jab this week so that might be a part of it 🙄)

Been catching up on thread - much interesting discussion!

On the social justice thing....
I get where Songs is coming from re social justice, but am more aligned with other posters I think

The term itself has been warped & the good intent behind it has been mangled as well (by the Social Justice 'Warriors')

SJWs are not (in my experience) really that troubled by social justice (as described by Songs), but rather are more interested in furthering their own ends - this can even just be as daft as self-enhancement (sort of 'hey! I care! - look at me caring - aren't I wonderful!')
This leaves the people who are actually really truly concerned with social justice lumped in with a group of self-promoters and they invariably get drowned out by the shouty, extremist SJWs (see the no-debate brigade, TRAs, pulling down statues, finding offence in everything etc etc)

It's a shame, but that's the reality of where we are now and then the inevitable pushback happens, which then gets hijacked by extremes again (this time the other end of the spectrum) for their own selfish/nefarious ends

And so the shit goes on....

I'm 100% in favour of equality of opportunity, but again, it's a fine balance - how to give people a hand up without making them a 'token' (I was very often the only female in my previous job & it was horrid having to listen to & work within the 'token' environment - hearing people say you 'only got promoted because you're a woman' etc when actually, I had deserved & earned everything I achieved on my own merit)

I think the luck thing as well can be overstated
I always say how 'lucky' I've been that certain things have happened in certain ways - but mostly it's my own way of coping with shit. That is, I am very, very good at spinning something to myself in such a way as to convince myself that it's what I wanted all along

It all depends on how you measure success as well I think
A quote that Yolo posted way back about the basic, simple things that we all want - that's success for me
Hate also posted about her son finding his own place in the world - that's success in my view as well

....sorry for the verbal diarrhoea....!!!!

autumn

It's a shame, but that's the reality of where we are now and then the inevitable pushback happens, which then gets hijacked by extremes again (this time the other end of the spectrum) for their own selfish/nefarious ends

Exactly why I'd love to see the notion of social justice reclaimed by moderates who understand altruism.

hearing people say you 'only got promoted because you're a woman' etc when actually, I had deserved & earned everything I achieved on my own merit

Totally. That's horrible but then it doesn't say anything about your merit at all, just that some losers are bigoted or jealous or both.
I think this ties back to the idea of deserving v undeserving. A PP mentioned her outrage seeing some people scrounge or game the system when her own son works very hard. It's unfair and infuriating but it wouldn't be the majority. Similarly, promoting women & minorities may lead to a "token" mentality in which true competence gets dismissed by jealous a**holes, BUT if this means competent people who would not have been promoted otherwise do get their rightful promotion i can live with some undeserving "tokens" benefiting too. If 98% of people on benefits are genuinely in need of help and get it, I can tolerate 2% being unethical fraudsters. I think fairness isn't always absolute iyswim.

And can I have a very large very strong coffee please LL?

That's horrible but then it doesn't say anything about your merit at all, just that some losers are bigoted or jealous or both.

Agree, Songs, and you can add "or second-rate or undeserving but entitled" to that list. Like Dusty, I worked in testosterone-dominated fields. Not always but too often, they'd be too busy waving their macho credentials to actually do the job while I was quietly getting on with producing tangible results.

Attending training courses, especially lengthy residential ones, was always the same. Just by being in the same room as my fellow attendees, I'd singlehandedly change the profile by decreasing the average age while increasing the average hairs-per-head count. Cue much patronisation. Still used to wipe the floor with them though .

Singing What my Dad achieved was remarkable, but his upbringing meant he had no idea how to be a parent, and my dh has spent the last 30+ years undoing the damage.

Songs The problem with altruism is that either you get dumped on for being too nice, or people try to take advantage, or shout that you are not doing enough. I think Bill Gates has got it right, and Prince Charles with The Princes Trust.

Ah, sorry, Scary. I understand exactly what you mean.

Among many things giving me hope for the future is this...

The Times reports that during Dominic Cummings' discussion with civil servants, they pointed out that his plans to divert capital to the regions would mean less money for London, to which he replied, "You finally grasp the strategy".

Apologies to Londoners. The city has specific problems that need addressing. However, rUK has suffered from Westminster's myopia for years. Decent mobile phone signal cover, broadband speeds, public transport (rather than a weekday-only daytime-only once-every-two-hours village bus) and the list goes on - we only know these things exist because we see them on television.

I don't want London and the South East to fall behind. I just want the rest of the country to have the opportunity and the investment to catch up.

Diverting money away from London isn't the solution, increasing tax and investing it into the North would have been preferable in my view.
I still want London to be a thriving modern capital and for that I'd be ok with paying more. Tories don't want to increase tax so they will just move the problem from North to South. Is DC keen to 'punish' the awful metropolitan elite who dislike him so intensely? There's a whiff of spite about it...

London has a real crime problem. DH almost got killed a couple of days ago in what could have been an awful incident. I hope more money is invested in policing- the lack of it makes me very very angry - so when I hear of less money for London I think it's populist bullshit. Streets down there aren't paved in gold.

Again, increase tax , don't just move money around.

Songs since London pays disproportionate amounts of tax increasing tax and redirecting spending amount to the same thing from its pov.

The point I was making is that for years, the rest of the UK has been an afterthought. One small example.

Does anyone remember the fuel blockades in 2000? I do. I was tasked at the time with the logistics of keeping a 24/7/365 service running (on top of my day-to-day job). This meant not only securing access to petrol and diesel for service vehicles but also setting up temporary accommodation for staff who couldn't source enough fuel for their own vehicles just so they could attend for duty. (Public transport locally was a joke and simply wasn't an option). It included making sure that delivery vehicles could access a secure gated area with double deliveries such as food and equipment because suppliers too were having to ration fuel use.

There were a couple of times when I genuinely thought we would not be able to provide a safe service - and believe me, we tried everything: encouraging staff to swap shifts, car share, even do double shifts, whatever it took. It was very much a team effort.

However, every single flipping day, I had to report our operational status to a senior rank numpty in London who thought the fuel crisis was a huge joke because the Tube was running normally, bus services were extensive and running normally and why couldn't our staff just use public transport? You know, like Londoners do. Oh, and why did we have to provide staff with meals when they just had to nip to the shops (shops? What shops? None near us) and grab a sandwich? Like Londoners do.

He was very senior to me but I ended up getting really stroppy with him because he just couldn't understand life North of Watford.

It's that kind of myopia I was referring to.

As I said before, I don't want London and the SE to fall behind. I'd just like the rest of the country to catch up a bit. It's been an afterthought for far too long.

Songs, sorry to hear about your husband. Hope he's OK. There's a school of thought that the Met - and other police services - need to spend less time on non-crimes such as misgendering and more time on, well, fighting crime. Here in Wiltshire, the police once decided to do a Twitter poll asking the public to decide which of three named villages they should send their single officer to patrol today as they didn't have enough resources to cover all three. I think Great Bedwyn won but the people in the other two villages were none too happy about it. Neither were any of the other council tax payers in Wiltshire. High ranking numpties, to be fair, are not solely a London phenomenon.

The problem, with funneling investment to London continuously, whilst ignoring other areas, is, that in the context of equality of opportunity you create a lack of motivation and an educational cliff edge. Why would a young person, in a poor, northern ex mining town (for example), be motivated to pursue certain higher educational opportunities if it meant that in order to pursue the careers that arise from taking those qualifications, they would have to either move to London satellite towns and leave their home areas and family to pursue them, or most likely not be able to afford to move to London at all, due to the extortionate cost of doing so. Where is the motivating factor? It’s no wonder kids get sucked down the plughole of life and get stuck in the deprivation cycle. In order to break the Cycle and create a fair game for everyone, you need to invest in other areas, bring the opportunity to other areas, make it worthwhile to study, let kids see that they can ‘have it all’ outside London, in, or at least near their own home towns. In 15 years, those kids grow up, with good jobs and start spending their money locally, helping to create thriving economies, cultures and Job markets in those areas, setting up businesses and creating wealth and more opportunities for future learners and so on. Why would this be a bad thing? If the UK was a cake, why should it be fair that everyone else has to share one slice, while London/SE gets the rest? Surely, socialists, along with the rest of us should want this equality of distribution?

Yes, London has huge deprivation, but so do other places. It’s not the only kid in town and it’s high time that others saw a fairer distribution of investment.

Sorry. Massive paragraph/text wall fail there...

Wrt the much maligned #Dmitri - I think he's got a pretty good grasp on all that's dysfunctional & rotten within the social structures & levers of power

I don't buy into the left's pronouncements that he's a far right populist etc - tbh, I think he'd have been perfectly comfortable working with either the political left or right to drive the changes that are long overdue
(I think he holds all politicians in equal contempt in all honesty)

It just happened that in the likes of BJ & Gove he found people who were prepared to listen & buy into his analyses
The left haven't been remotely interested in anything other than virtue signalling & sticking plasters for a long time now
(By 'the left' I mean the people with power on the political left such as MPs, high profile people etc, not ordinary everyday voters)

There has been a massive realignment of politics over the last decade, and if those of the left continue to hector & berate with the nonsense that the current Tory govt & Brexit are 'far right' or 'hard right' then they'll continue in their decline imo

BJs Tories are very much not at the extreme right (contrary to twitter wisdom), and neither is Brexit for that matter

Thank you, Epic. You expressed it far more eloquently than I did.

In a town close to where I used to live in the North, there was just one big employer: the prison. If you didn't work there, then your employment options were limited to farming and the retail or craftsman trades catering for...the people who work in the prison.

The prison itself is remote and falling to bits. It's been under threat of closure for years.

Improve the infrastructure, improve educational facilities locally, improve business support and then sit back and watch start-up businesses start up.

tbh, I think he'd have been perfectly comfortable working with either the political left or right to drive the changes that are long overdue...It just happened that in the likes of BJ & Gove he found people who were prepared to listen & buy into his analyses

I get that sense from reading his blog, Dusty.

It's telling that in comparative terms, he's paid much less than other advisors at No. 10. If money was his only motivator, the Labour Party could have offered £20k more and gained a highly effective strategist. However, I get the feeling he would work for peanuts if the work was in line with his principles and he was given the latitude to make the difference that he feels is well overdue.

First Michael Gove, and later Boris, have given him that latitude.

Agree with all of that Dusty and Epic. Welcome back both