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Brexit

Westminstenders: The Final Week

963 replies

RedToothBrush · 25/01/2020 20:41

Our final week in the EU...

OP posts:
Thread gallery
51
Jason118 · 28/01/2020 07:38

If Johnson listens to the experts on we would all benefit I suspect

PawFives · 28/01/2020 08:24

Belated PMK. Thanks @RedToothBrush & the regular contributors. It’s all a bit weird at the moment, after all the drama of recent years, it seems very quiet about ‘leaving’ on Friday.

ElenadeClermont · 28/01/2020 08:45

Waves @ AuldAlliance. DS is learning Ode to Joy (in England).

Our church put up a link to some prayers for this week and they made me cry. I am not even religious.
Saturday 1 February 2020
God of all nations and no nation,
as we begin to renegotiate treaties and agreements,
and reapportion funds both foreign and domestic,
help us reintroduce ourselves to our neighbours,
near and far – so we can truly meet the people we often talk about.

May the fences we put up and the fences we mend be good for leaning up against,
so we can chat and hear the news and share our separate stories.
And as the talk gets louder with added voices and concern,
May we hear the good news you proclaim of a nation for us all.
Amen.

Sunday 2 February
Jesus of Nazareth,
and Britain; and Ireland; and Europe;
and this small plot; this blessed plot;
this new era we are in:
bless us as we sort out where we are,
and who we are, and how we fit together.

After years of argument and anger,
cobbled coalitions and strange bedfellows,
we have separated ourselves in ways that feel more permanent.

Yet the distance between Westminster and Brussels remains 200 miles,
a train to London leaves Union street at Glasgow Central Station,
the flight from Belfast arrives at Heathrow in just over an hour,
and no one slows down between County Down and County Louth.

Our families and friendships stretch across borders and seas.
And we remain citizens of a boundless realm
where peacemakers are blessed,
the merciful are shown mercy,
and the divine response to human division is unconditional love.

Thank God.
Amen.
www.corrymeela.org/news/175/prayers-for-the-week-of?fbclid=IwAR33oDeWLqZ_W2rgMfCu1iK4_-ID5xBuypl3MMCnaKM2sigp0t8mSwxJicQ

DGRossetti · 28/01/2020 08:49

Local radio appears to have just learned we are leaving on Friday so this week they are "answering" peoples questions every morning.

pinboard · 28/01/2020 09:02

I'm sorry if I am a bit late with this comment and if it is a bit off topic but did the UK really send no one of appropriate significance to the Holocaust commemoration (if that is the right word) this week?

AuldAlliance · 28/01/2020 09:04

ElenadeClermont
I am v definitely not religious, but some of the prayers on there are rather good. (Certainly miles ahead of what used to be posted in front of my local church. As a teenager, I used to snigger through December at the huge poster saying, "Advent - Jesus Comes.")

God who unites those who would divide themselves from each other,
the difference between a 51 to 49 result
and that of 49 to 51
may be a single vote.
Yet to be in the minority – whether large or small
can feel like being written off completely.

Remind us that we are not so far apart,
that our differences, while often significant,
need not close us off from one another,
and that our points of disagreement
are not the only points of contact we can share.

I had a wander round the website. 'René Girard Week', anyone?

pinboard · 28/01/2020 09:36

GeistohneGrenzen

Yes.

I thought I'd read somewhere during one of my midnight insomnia sessions that the UK had not sent anyone significant from RF or Govt.
I am happy that that is incorrect.

I am clearly a (self-diagnosed) idiot - pls ignore me.
I shall Google first next time (shuffles off to make some tea)

pinboard · 28/01/2020 09:41

I now remember reading the articles/pics about PC at Yad Vashem too.

Sips tea and peruses other open thread:
'To ask you to share your unexpected menopause symptoms' Blush

GeistohneGrenzen · 28/01/2020 09:59

pinboard can't ignore a person who reminds me I haven't yet poured my second cup of tea Grin

re your other open thread - I don't remember really ever having had any, but maybe that fact was one of them?

Off to pour second Brew Cheers!

DGRossetti · 28/01/2020 10:09

returning to Huawei ... another reason for US antipathy may be the fact they haven't been able to compromise the code in them. If GCHQ are quietly giving a thumbs up, it might suggest so.

Of course there's also the ongoing fight against reality that the US and UK appear to be having regarding encryption as a whole. Magical Thinking doesn't even begin to cover it.

TheElementsSong · 28/01/2020 11:10

In keeping with my new Brexitannian accept and pull together brainwashing, I shall fondly accept that “17 Million F* Offs” genuinely represents every proud and patriotic Brexit core value that TruBrits wish to trumpet to the world.

DGRossetti · 28/01/2020 11:17

The theme of God gathering His Own continues with Nicholas Parsons (who made a cracking documentary on Marie Antoinettes watch)

Sad
Peregrina · 28/01/2020 11:18

Just compare the two though - Remainers have music written by a great Composer. Leavers can only rustle up a Dutchman(?) whose song is vulgar. It's unfortunate but it does play to a stereotype.

Mistigri · 28/01/2020 12:07

Speaks for itself.

Key factors: numbers in private rented accommodation; proportion drawing a pension vs in work; BAME population.

Education is kind of a red herring, because older folk are almost automatically less educated. Of my kids' grandparents, only one has any formal post-18 education and only two have post-15 education. They are not an atypical group of pensioners - one ex-teacher (with a degree), one ex-banker, one ex-IT manager, one ex-SAHM who did a bit of restaurant and shop work.

Westminstenders: The Final Week
Mistigri · 28/01/2020 12:07

Remainers have music written by a great Composer. Leavers can only rustle up a Dutchman(?) whose song is vulgar.

The culture wars writ large.

BigChocFrenzy · 28/01/2020 12:12

That's an interesting chart, Misti including about private / social renters

DGRossetti · 28/01/2020 12:19

Education is kind of a red herring, because older folk are almost automatically less educated.

It certainly becomes a red herring when you meet graduates who subscribe wholesale to every conspiracy theory going.

Mistigri · 28/01/2020 12:19

Yes I thought so BCF. I think private renting and workers vs pensioners are the key factors here.

People in private rented accommodation being among the biggest group of losers since 2010 and pensioners the biggest winners.

BigChocFrenzy · 28/01/2020 12:19

Highways England's smart motorways policy killed drivers, says ex-minister

It takes so long to recognise disastrous decisions by govt / Parliament - either party - and then often v difficult to reverse them

In the meantime, recovery operators sometimes put their own lives at risk to try to save occupants

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jan/27/highways-englands-smart-motorways-policy-killed-drivers-exminister

The report, by the all-party parliamentary group on roadside rescue and recovery, described

the recordings of 999 calls of motorists who had broken down in live lanes and were trapped in fast-moving traffic were “harrowing”

and underscored that “many motorists don’t know what to do in such situations”.
.....
It said the admission by Highways England chief executive Jim O’Sullivan that
radar technology could have saved lives was “a gross public policy failure and a damning indictment of the agency’s on-the-hoof approach”.
....
The report said that some recovery operators, “knowing that many such stranded motorists have been killed or seriously injured … choose to put their vehicle between the stranded motorist and the oncoming traffic.
This impulse is understandable … however, it is completely unacceptable for them to be put in this position.”

DGRossetti · 28/01/2020 12:21

Going back in time, wasn't the smart motorways initiative supposed to be coupled to another idea ? Which then mysteriously never happened ???

LouiseCollins28 · 28/01/2020 12:31

The "smart motorways" with no hard shoulder thing is so obviously dangerous that it defies belief that it was signed off by a minister.

www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jan/26/uks-smart-motorways-to-be-reviewed-after-increase-in-near-misses

This jumped out at me "You spend an average of more than half an hour sitting there in a broken-down vehicle praying,” said the AA.

Wait, what?! Is this right, if you break down in a "live" lane and traffic is belting towards you, the advice is to still stay in your vehicle? Surely not.

Peregrina · 28/01/2020 12:32

I read that the Smart Motorways were tried out on the M42, where the refuges were 50 metres apart, whereas on the M25 they are 200 m apart. Those may not be the exact figures, but show that the conditions for the test area where it was deemed to work, were not replicated when they were rolled out elsewhere.

Peregrina · 28/01/2020 12:35

I see the distances were given in that report. I wonder who the Minister involved was. Could it have been Failing Grayling by any chance?