Westminstenders: The Mask is Slipping

[RedToothBrush]

This week has seen the department of the Chancellor who launched a 50p piece, the serious contemplation of a tin pot bridge, the rebirth of eugenics as a subject for cabinet, the announcement of the end of the BBC as we know it, the cabinet chanting after the PM in a way Orwell would be proud of, suppression of a report into trade deals which dares to mention the effect of distance and geography, worrying signs of an ever growing rift with Europe over negotiations for a deal, an appointment which starts to make our membership of the ECHR look very dodgy and there have been rather a lot of floods which so far seemed to have escaped the attention of those in London busy in their own swamp.

It's becoming apparent very quickly just how Trump like our new government are and how they want the UK to emulate the very worst aspects of America.

We are falling fast and its not looking like it will be pretty.

All we need is a major global issue to test our national resilience and the incompetence will truly be laid bare for us all to see... But not necessarily speak of. Such us the way it works.

Brexit Britain is not a nice looking prospect.

Also economically inactive but receiving benefits - anyone with young children. Get back to work you lazy women. You need training, despite many of you having degrees and careers, to do all this unskilled work. Like childcare. Oh wait...

That aibu op who wanted people to be forced to be carers was ignorant in the extreme. Ex-offender? Great here's a job caring...

The more I talk to certain people about certain people and they lack any ability to do joined up thinking, the more I despair. I've had a few discussions of late where I've had to politely explain the blindly obvious. Or so I thought it was blindly obvious. Said people were quite taken back and surprised and said they hadn't thought of that before.

Then there's my mate going on about how hysteria of coronavirus has been blown out of all proportion like everything else (we won't need a visa to go on holiday to Europe apparently too you'll all be glad to hear confirmed). She'll be the first to complain when she doesn't get a new iPhone on time. Her dad is infirm and in his eighties. But I suppose he has a nice large property in a nice area. Half a million to share between the three sisters isn't to be sneezed at... Her husband is struggling to work at the moment due to a hand injury too.

It's all so tiring just having an moderately intelligent conversation atm.

Well...let's see...
My back is fucked, eyes fucked, ankle fucked and start of arthritis...I'm sure employers will be frothing at the mouth to employ me!!! :)
Of course people like me wouldn't last long picking veg/fruit 15 hours a day...

Well, what of it?

Decrease the surplus population!!

sorry went a bit dickensian there for a mo

That op was a tory voting leaver according to their past posts...

So hardly surprising they came up wirh that gem of an idea!

Pmk. Bit despairing after today's immigration headline grabber. No surprise that Priti is a bully boss (think it's the Times running a story on this tmrw, just seen Newsnight)

I wonder if this is step 1 in cutting benefits to the longterm sick, disabled and unempoyed

No 10 are into eugenics and ripping up our membership of the ECHR. What do you think?

Of course they are into getting rid of the sick and defective. Of course they don't want too many educated. All a burden or a threat. And they definitely only want the right type of woman to have children. And they want the rich ones to be genetically superior.

Don't be surprised by the rise in promotion of surrogacy too. Why would rich women give birth, when rich designer babies are created in the lab; they need to keep their figures for their husbands too. Plus the side effect of having someone poor carry your child is they have 9 months of contraception where they can't breed themselves. Add in the bonus, that you have the sale or return option if the goods are defective upon delivery. Ideal.

Poor women can be used for sex more if they've been steriled. No nasty paternity court cases to deal with in a few years time. Less risk to your marriage from pregnant lovers turning up. Eh Johnson?

Just don't think about the rampant antibiotic resistant gonorrhoea going about. Isn't syphilis due a come back amongst the aristocracy?

The world view of those inhabiting no 10 and the cabinet isn't exactly progressive. Though every authoritarian likes to dress it up as progressive... Same old shit, different time.

mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN20D2M3?__twitter_impression=true
Exclusive: Google users in UK to lose EU data protection - sources

Google is planning to move its British users' accounts out of the control of European Union privacy regulators, placing them under U.S. jurisdiction instead, sources said.

The shift, prompted by Britain's exit from the EU, will leave the sensitive personal information of tens of millions with less protection and within easier reach of British law enforcement.

And

An employee familiar with the planned move said that British privacy rules, which at least for now track GDPR, would continue to apply to that government's requests for data from Google's U.S. headquarters.

GDPR won't survive under Johnson and Cummings.

It will sold under the idea of law enforcement but the reality is that your data will be sold at your expense.

Yep, I've been disgusted by the support on MN for surrogacy
They were even defending the latest zillionaire sleb who used this

Seems inherently about exploiting poor - especially poor foreign - women, or where are all the rich women queueing up to be surrogates

It is also alarming that babies are being effectively bought by people who avoid the stringent checks that Social Services carry out on adoptive
They could be totally unfit to be parents, or indeed could be cold-blooded predators - there have been several cases of the latter that we know and far more that we don't.

Google likely to be the first of the massive US tech firms to do this.

Yep, RIP GDPR
It was nice knowing you

This is just fine.

I mean, it's not like Apple pay much tax.

And its only Apple who are going to have problems on this scale.

seekingalpha.com/article/4324902
Apple: The Coronavirus Impact

Apple came out to lower Q2 revenue guidance, citing the longer and larger than expected coronavirus impact.
Amid Apple’s first warning in January, analysts have already reduced Q2 revenue estimates by 26%.
Based on the supply chain analysis, Apple stands to lose 40%-50% of the Q2 revenue if the factories cannot return to full capacity by the end of February.
It appears that Apple shares have not priced in the more realistic estimates

Celebrities are 'liberals'. Surrogacy is fine because they have the 'correct' lefty political beliefs. Celebrities are cool. Surrogacy is alllll juuuusttttt fiiiiiinnnnnne.

Don't. Just don't.

It's amazing where Cummings comments on genetic engineering meets the celebrity support for surrogacy though.

I suspect compulsory national service is exactly what the Tories have in mind. It is exactly that sort of departure that would appeal to their core voters and it would neatly express the spirit that animated Brexit (all pulling together in a communal national and very British endeavour, no shirking, no forrin questions asked, all hearkening back to WW2).

National Service is exactly the sort of thing which could backfire on them. They won't be able to put them on zero hours contracts for a starter.

National service, whether military or just public service, only worked before in the UK - and other European countries -
when it was compulsory for ALL those within a particular age group,
i.e. rich & poor treated the same, probably for the only time in their lives

However, it is obvious that certain leading figures in this government are only thinking of ways to control poor people:
force them into specific jobs, prevent them procreating etc

I’ll just give a mention again to the European Social Fund, upskilling people in a FE college near you, which our own Govt doesn’t do, and won’t, I bet, when we’re finally out.
One at least of our managers, directly involved in running this, voted Leave.

when it was compulsory for ALL those within a particular age group, i.e. rich & poor treated the same, probably for the only time in their lives

Those going to University could defer their service, (and eventually get out of it.)

Even those who did go, I doubt if they were treated exactly the same. The Public schoolboys, with their Officer Training Background at school (now renamed as Combined Cadet Forces) would have got the Commissions; the lads from the working class areas might just have managed to get promoted from the ranks.

Remember too that the roll out of Universal Credit means that the undeserving poor working people who are claiming it (UC encompasses not just unemployment benefit but housing benefit and working tax credits too) can be sanctioned if they don't do enough to look for better paid employment

I've lost touch with these threads of late as it's difficult to judge when we're witnessing a war of words and political posturing rather than real positions. I would have thought that the EU will retaliate in kind with immigration hurdles. A requirement to speak the language will see off the vast majority of British hopefuls retirement plans. The omission of a self employed route to the UK if reciprocated would also be uncomfortable for many remote workers enjoying the sun. I know of two people seeking Spanish residency through self employment TEFL/online courses. Brits only seem to care when they get bitten on the bum so perhaps we'll see the start of project reality in the coming negotiations.

can be sanctioned if they don't do enough to look for better paid employment

So somebody working 40 hours a week in a care home can be sanctioned because the pay is poor?
What does sanctioned mean exactly?

The omission of a self employed route to the UK if reciprocated

In France, of the working age Britons that I know personally, hardly any are salaried. Almost all are self employed, some are retired.

Very hard for British people to get salaried work in Europe because most don't have the language skills.

Peregrina iirc Commissions were only those who signed up for a longer stint
National Service really did see rich & poor mingling on equal terms for 2 years which doesn't happen now
That was often reflected in attitudes of those rich people later, when they went into politics etc, just as WW2 service did for a generation of Tories & Labour.

Of course in the US when consciption meant going to the horrific VietNam war, many rich kids either avoided it via claiming exemption for very minor health conditions, like Trump,
or swanned around in the National Guard, like Dubya and others
Many of the elderly sabre-rattlers now in the GOP showed their depth of patriotism avoided military service themselves

The irony of this

www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/russia-visa-travel-advice-euro-2020-moscow-st-petersburg-trans-siberian-railway-a9342681.html
RUSSIA RELAXES VISA RULES FOR EU CITIZENS – BUT NOT FOR UK VISITORS

Language is a significant difficulty, but I don't expect the EU countries would make language skills a specific requirement
Unlike in the UK, most people in wealthy EU countries realise they need more workers and don't want to bugger up their economies for ideology.

There is no real public appetite anywhere afaik for punitve measures on UK expats / immigrants in retaliation for UK govt policy

Many migrant workers here come with no German language skills - English is the 2nd language, if any, for almost everyone - but there doesn't seem the UK mental block / horror about learning and coping with a new foreign language.
In hospitality & retail for example, non-German speakers seem to quickly pick up enough German

I was lucky to find work mostly in Germany in various R&D jobs since the late 1980s

There are salaried jobs for scientists & engineers in some fields, where the working langauage is English, or English is acceptable.
Also in some financial / legal centres like Frankfurt

Particularly since the wealthier EU countries like Germany have been attracting scientists & engineers from India, SKorea, Morocco etc for several decades now
and especially since Brexit have been taking business and institutions from the UK

English is on many govt forms I see and is included on train / tube announcements

Russia !
I'm waiting to see any country which actually gives us better terms - our Brexit dividend - after Brexit
Still waiting ....
Mostly seems the opposite - govt frantically paddling to achieve the status quo, or not too bad a downgrade

BCF - the stringent checks on people wanting to adopt is because children put up for adoption very often have behavioural and developmental problems due to neglect / abuse. Babies born by surrogate are the same as other newborns, even sharing the DNA of one of the parents to bring them up. There is no reason to carry out the same checks and training as for adopted children.

blue Of course parents should be checked before being allowed to buy babies, completely new human beings created just for them.

There is no downside to it for the babies, only protection
The only ones who would lose out are people who are found unfit to be parents

It is wide open to abuse, if people who are unfit due to alcohol, drugs, criminal record, age, serious health risks and od course paedophiles are allowed to order babies without any checks, just like any other commodity.

afaik, there have been checks on adoptive parents going back to the 1950s and 1960s when "illegitimate" babies were usually adopted soon after birth, with no other "problems"
A friend of my mum's adopted such a baby around 1960 and she & her DH had to be vetted first.