Westminstenders: War and Weirdos

[RedToothBrush]

With weirdos set to run No10 and Trump seemingly having started a new war in the Middle East, 2020 already looks set to be a cracking year.

To start off your year, it turns out that chinese curse about interesting times is actually a fallacy...

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_you_live_in_interesting_times

Happy New Year.

May we make 2030...

Johnson's situation in 2019 was vastly different from May's in 2017.

No. He was referring to China overtaking the US as 1st economy. However he was also referring to the US's more isolationist and essentially weaker leadership in the world. That made it sound ambiguous.

Ah, thank you Songsofexperience. I'm glad I can call for help with clarifying these such things here.

Boris started with exactly the same electoral maths as TM.

But by expelling moderates from the previous Tory MPs Johnson lost the slim confidence and supply majority there was before.

From the time of that expulsion of moderates the DUP no longer had any leverage.The 1 billion (?) paid to them became a bad bargain from then on.

It was the electorate here and in NI that triggered a chain of events which led to Stormont returning.

Yes Johnson gets credit for calling and winning the election which had a domino effect in NI. But he wasn't a proactive statesmen bringing the NI politicians together with some magic diplomacy which is how it's being spun on some FB posts I've seen.

Boris started with exactly the same electoral maths as TM.

And a penis, which I suspect was the difference.

Suspect Mrs T would have approached matters more like BJ than TM DGR. I think the difference was that Boris picked a side within his own Party, in the same way that Mrs T faced down the "wets" until they eventually got the better of her.

And a penis, which I suspect was the difference.
And Eton.

Mrs T famously had a Willie...

Back to decimalisation, BJ says the public can "Bung a Bob for Big Ben," so that's five million 5ps from the 17 million.

Should we pop into the other place with a rattling tin?

Has the MSM all swallowed happy pills?

First 8 pages of the DM dedicated to “Megxit”.

FFS.

Mrs T famously had a Willie...

What does that say about the adequacy of old Eeyore?

"I have a friend who has very recently been diagnosed with a horrible illness, she has been told she will need to wait 5 months to see the specialist nurse in our area"

That's disgraceful, mother
and after that she might also have to wait for the actual treatment

After nearly 10 years of Tory govt, they clearly don't give a shit about NHS waiting times

• they all have private insurance

Sad reality is we already have a 2-tier system
I'd recommend anyone who can afford private insurance to get it while still young enough and before they have exclusions, even if this means cutting out holidays abroad, eating out etc

What will the wait be like in another 5 years ?

In the Economist I read that Downing Street had threatened new NI Elections if Stormont was not sitting by the middle of this month.
SF and DUP would have been wiped out in those elections
so they swallowed their pride and got back to work.
I very much doubt that Johnson was involved in the matter at all - detail is beneath him.

I asked a millennial colleague if they knew what a Bob was. They said it was a pound. 😂😂😂
Bob a job certainly didn't get you a quid per jobin my day.

I commented elsewhere on the current Christine Keeler drama in which Peter Rachman hands Mandy Rice-Davies a huge wodge of fives, tens and twenties from that day's rent collections. She then tells the woman in the cafe to 'keep the change' from five pounds, about thirty five pounds in current money.

No Ones. No Ten Bob Notes (sic) in sight.

Now when I worked in Woolies in 1968 in a Saturday job, you had to get another assistant to check that you had given the correct change from £5.00.

Do the new five pences count?

And yes it is eerily quiet on the Brexit front. Calm before the storm.

I have a friend who has very recently been diagnosed with a horrible illness, she has been told she will need to wait 5 months to see the specialist nurse in our area

Same here. I had an issue in August, went to see my GP (September) who referred to a few tests (blood etc...).
I was referred for a 24 hour heart monitoring and was surprised that I was seen within two weeks. I commented on that to my GO who said that heart problem were death with at the same level than cancer - 2 weeks max.
No issues with my heart so I have been referred to a neurologist. Appointment is mid June, 10 months after I first experienced an issue.....

(And 8 months after I was referred by my GP. It’s not seen as an ‘emergency’ - because my GP has no clue what is going on)

Re NHS stuff
A friend has had to have his metal hip removed as it became infected.
For the last three months he has hobbled around on crutches - his leg only attached with muscles - he has no hip joint.
The problem is that the two surgeons who need to work together to mend him are both hit by the pensions debacle
and the operating theatres are short staffed.
His Op is now planned for late February
so 5 months with no hip.
Luckily he is retired so not on sick pay and impacting on an employer.

It was Boris who chose to stand up to the DUP and not allow them to hold him to ransom as TM did

Hardly, Johnson choose political ambition over the UK or his party, so decided way back to engineer a GE, by expelling the remainers, ditching the DUP and force Corbyn into backing a GE - remember the Zombie parliament and chicken Corbyn?

Gambling on that remainers would never back Corbyn and JC wouldn't stand aside!!
Johnson won & tbf it was a brilliant strategy, possibly not his own but he delivered it... aided and abetted by Corbyn & Swinsons arrogance ..... JC will slink off to his retirement, leaving the rest of us out of the EU and at least 5 years of the Tories. ... all this from a PM who is basically pro european!!!

I will always find it very hard to forgive Labour and Corbyn for this, it makes the LD and Uni fees seem like a mere hiccup.

In regard to NI - Once the nurses went on strike, Stormont had to reconvene, the political damage to DUP/SF was far too much, plus Johnson offered even more money.

Smirk your way out of THIS ONE Priti .....
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jan/14/revealed-uk-concealed-failure-to-alert-eu-over-75000-criminal-convictions

Can we crowdfund NOT to have Big Ben deafen us on the 31st ?
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-51107646

And The Saj should be looking nervous - he was Home Secretary in May 2019 when the Guardian article quotes from an ACRO report that There is a nervousness from Home Office around sending the historical notifications out dating back to 2012 due to the reputational impact this could have.

Revealed: UK concealed failure to alert EU over 75,000 criminal convictions

Yet another reason for the EU not to trust the Uk govt:
A massive cockup and then a coverup

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jan/14/revealed-uk-concealed-failure-to-alert-eu-over-75000-criminal-convictions

Officials feared ‘reputational impact’ of error in which details of crimes by foreigners were not passed on
....
Such is the scale of the scandal that the Home Office initially chose to conceal the embarrassing failure from EU partners.

Minutes of an ACRO criminal records meeting last May state:

“There is a nervousness from Home Office around sending the historical notifications out dating back to 2012 due to the reputational impact this could have.”

A minute of a meeting held the following month said:
“There is still uncertainty whether historical DAFs [daily activity file], received from the Home Office, are going to be sent out to counties (sic) as there is a reputational risk to the UK.”

That quote from Sophie in 't Veld smacks of a certain amount of 'good riddance'. I can't think why the EU would ever want the UK back. Perfidious Albion indeed.