Westministenders: No Australia Don't Have A Deal

[RedToothBrush]

Since Friday, far from letting things calm down, Johnson has doubled down stating that if we can't have a Canada Deal (which the EU says wouldn't be equal because we are much closer than Canada geographically) we will go for an Australia Deal.

This is the latest rehash of a managed no deal package up as something else which the EU have already repeatedly said no to.

So we are on track for no deal.

At the same time Johnson has got very excited about American food and how its great. Almost as if he wants no deal wit the EU to force a shitty bad deal with the us through.

Johnson and his chronies have also been trying to undermine journalistic transparency by blocking access to the lobby to some media outlets in a move that makes us look like a tinpot dictatorship. Fortunately there was a mass walk out of journalists but it remains to be seen how long that can be maintained.

Far from being a clean slate to move forward from its already proving that nothing has changed and old divisions are as deep as ever, if not worse...

The Chinese will build our railway on the cheap?

Will they import the labour or have Brits work to Chinese terms and conditions?

We know what they do when there's a village in the way. Love to see the looks on the faces of the Chipping Norton Set when they get bulldozed by the Chinese Vogons.

And who can forget when a Chinese TGV crashed, and they decided to bury the train and carry on regardless.

Oh fuck. If / when things get any worse I may have to join the SNP and start going on independence rallies. Really don't want to.

Timely tweet

John redwood @johnredwood
Glad to read the new Treasury team wants to speed growth and prosperity. Tax cuts for all are needed. Get VAT off things we don‘t want taxed. Cut Stamp duties on homes and VED on cars. Reduce business rates. Add Enterprise zones to Freeports. We need a boost as the world slows.

Now for anyone who can do maths, what does this actually mean?

Now for anyone who can do maths, what does this actually mean?

The rich get richer and the poor get fucked over by the Tories. Again.

I don't know how near HS2 goes to Chipping Norton. I does go near South Oxfordshire, where the Tories lost control over the District Council last year, after holding the seat since it was invented.

As for Deadwood Redwood, perhaps he doesn't realise that VAT is an EU tax?Why doesn't he asked for it to be scrapped altogether and Purchase Tax brought back?
However, it's such a useful tax because it's hidden - not like having a big chunk of wage packet taken in Income Tax.

Pippa Crerar@pippacrerar
No 10 wants to increase spending on NHS, social care, transport infrastructure.

They also want to cut taxes & pay down debt. But they can’t do both.

This is what new No 10/11 economic unit is really about. There’s a masssive battle ahead over direction of Tory party.

Eyes on this.

Especially at the same time as Brexit.

Especially as a hard Brexit with more trade barriers.

It's not tenable.

In response to pippa Crerar@pippacrerar

Peter Foster@pmdfoster
This. Austerity drive spatial inequalities. They’d have sacked Javid soon enough when came clear that even with £20bn pa capital investment the day2day spending cap was standstill money. Not good enough.

Johnson living in a world detached from reality.

I really don't think we needed Pippa Crerar to tell us that - I am pretty sure that this is what we predicted. The 'Red Wall' new Tory voters aren't going to be enamoured of more tax cuts for the wealthy, already getting silly annual salaries that would take the ordinary person decades to earn. They are motivated by more public transport and a genuine commitment to end austerity.

It will be galling to see the Tories steal Labour's clothes on this one, but ultimately to me, what would matter was that the money got spent properly.

If Johnson helps to destroy the Tory party, it would be a fitting end for them, and serve those who voted for him right.

It's that old Reagan Thing: Cut Taxes, Increase Spending and Balance The Budget. Only now add And Keep To Fiscal Rules.

It would be nice to have an opposition to call out this shit.

Peter Foster@pmdfoster
Because London and Seast recovered faster from 2007 crash than rest of U.K., it worsened the “north/south divide” (spatial inequalities) that @BorisJohnson wants to level up. Prob is that even with 20bn a year in capital spending (infrastructure etc) the day to day limits 1/

Mean that if you take the backlog/cuts from austerity, add in future demand of the Parliament (demographics etc) and healing local govt cuts - THEN the new unforeseen costs (say of promises to lock up all the terrorists etc) the danger /2

Is that even if Tories make good on promise for biggest increase in day-to-day spending for 15 years, per manifesto, the “left behind” still feel, well, “left behind” when the polls open in 2024 /3

If Javid has stayed, he’d have come under huge pressure to breach pledged spending limits - ie they’d have probably sacked him in 2022 anyway! This cd hasten the shift to higher spending. But as Pippa says, some point you have to address the revenue raising side. /5

And that - see paroxysm over mansion tax - touches on a big ideological fissure in the party. Add in hard #brexit and, say, global economic hit from Coronavirus...and things cd get quite tasty mid Parliament.

Ah the coronavirus issue... Even if we don't get a pandemic, coronavirus is now the unforeseen issue that threatens to throw a spanner in the works of everything...

As SuperMac said, Events dear boy, Events.

I really don't think we needed Pippa Crerar to tell us that - I am pretty sure that this is what we predicted

No we didn't but nice to see it phrased so susinctly and plainly. The right wing Tory paradox.

Looks like the Corona virus could lead to a global economic downturn,
as Chinese trade - and probably goods production - is being hammered:

Container shipping ex-China grinding to a halt – carriers 'can’t carry on much longer

https://theloadstar.com/container-shipping-ex-china-grinding-to-a-halt-carriers-cant-carry-on-much-longer/

The coronavirus outbreak in China continues to severely disrupt supply chains, the few export sailings this week not cancelled by carriers departed barely 10% full.

...., some provinces and cities in China have extended movement restrictions until 1 March.

“The network has almost ground to a halt,”
one carrier source told The Loadstar this week.
"We sailed a 23,000 teu ship this week from China to North Europe with less than 2,000 teu
– we can’t carry on much longer like this.

“It’s no good discounting rates if the cargo is not there, so we might have to ask for a premium for customers that do manage to get their containers on the quayside,”

A UK forwarder told The Loadstar this week one carrier told them that it might anchor its biggest ships and deploy smaller vessels on a very limited service until demand picked up.

“Rates have become somewhat irrelevant, for now,” said the forwarder,
“they did start to discount a bit at the start of the crisis, but that has stopped and, in fact,
for any containers we manage to get to the port, we are struggling to get confirmation of when they will get shipped,”

I saw a not dissimilar article last week about imports to China. Apparently all the cold storage at ports in China was full as there was no one to offload it. So exporters particularly pork exporters in South America was scrabbling around to find an alternative buyer.

I don't think it's dawned on people the implications of this.

Infections in Japan are starting to look troubling too. If coronavirus were to take hold outside China, Toyko would be an ideal candidate.

I'm really not optimistic about the chances of the Olympics going ahead this year.

I hope I'm wrong.

Re the Chinese building HS2
I presume they would do it in the same way they build infrastructure projects everywhere else in the world .....

Bloody big fences around the construction site,
ALL Chinese workers inside living in portacabins never allowed out through the gates.
ALL construction materials brought in from China.
NO local labour
NO local materials
NO boost to the local economy during construction
NO oversight by local watchdogs

Xi's plan has been clear for years
The UK post Brexit is a small weak nation that will be pushed around by China the same way it pushes other small countries around

I'd let the Chinese build the bridge from Scotland to Ireland, but I doubt they'd be stupid enough to try.

I read the Chinese HS2 offer as a piece of pure brilliance. It now means team Boris have to come up with a load of reasons why it can't happen very quickly. However, they can't say:

1. we don't believe you (since the world has seen a 1,000 bed hospital built in 10 days)

2. we don't trust you (Hinckley C ?)

so they will have to come up with another excuse. Meanwhile, behind closed doors (or maybe not) China is going to say "This HS2 ? You are serious aren't you ?"

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/dominic-cummings-misfits-weirdos-boris-johnson-womens-sport-paralympics-a9337226.html
Dominic Cummings' call for 'weirdos' leads to hiring of adviser who compared women's sport to the Paralympics
Andrew Sabisky also said richer people are more intelligent and backed prescribing mind-enhancing drug – even at cost of 'a dead kid once a year

This guy sounds.... Er....

schoolsweek.co.uk/andrew-sabisky-political-forecaster/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
Same guy.

This is Cummings on the same subject
amp.theguardian.com/politics/2013/oct/11/genetics-teaching-gove-adviser?__twitter_impression=true

We await the return of Toby Young with baited breathe.

his father is the finance director of Unite the union
education was a mixture of Home Education and private school
so when his theories meet the real world he will crumble
but in the mean time he'll do damage
great

The cultural bias in intelligence testing is first year A Level essay material. To quote Steven Jay Gould:

"...the abstraction of intelligence as a single entity, its location within the brain, its quantification as one number for each individual, and the use of these numbers to rank people in a single series of worthiness, invariably to find that oppressed and disadvantaged groups—races, classes, or sexes—are innately inferior and deserve their status."

I think this is my fav bit of the schoolsweek article about him.

Under the title
Andrew Sabisky, political forecaster

Started in the US by IARPA, who complete research for the CIA, the first forecasting projects asked university-based experts to run tournaments in which they bet on political outcomes. “Will Britain vote to leave the EU?” would be a classic example. Forecasters say how certain they are the event will happen, and they accumulate a score based on how well they predict the outcome – known as a Brier score.

Sabisky explains that a score of 0 equals perfect foresight – “god level” whereas a “random dart-throwing chimp” would get around 0.5. The worst possible score is 2 – “maximum failure”.

His highest score is 0.22, “which is pretty good”, but he is at 0.3 after failing to predict Brexit. He is working hard to get back towards the 0.2. In the US, top scorers are starting to make money from their predictive powers, working as consultants and intelligence officers.

ROFLMAO.

Failed to predict Brexshit.

RTB
Yup, I did think it rather cool that a predictor who failed to predict Brexit is now working for Cummings

Mockers
The trouble with the whole concept of eugenics and intelligence testing is that it has an incredibly blinkered view of the economy.
There are many many jobs that do not require intellect
and therefore unless we want people with degrees emptying our bins and cutting up chickens in meat packing warehouses,
both ends of the normal distribution can make economic contributions.

Its like the whole fallacy of points based immigration
who will pick the cabbages ?

It is also worth remembering that the whole concept of g remains an unsubstantiated hypothesis, propogated by the fraudulent data of Cyril Burt and his unfeasibly large number of identical twins separated at birth, all discovered anonymously by his equally anonymous and elusive research assistant, as fictional as they were all along.