Westministenders: Crisis, which crisis ?

[BigChocFrenzy]

Main crises facing the government:

. Negotiating a Brexit deal with the EU
. Coronoavirus
. Floods
. Allegations of some ministers - and Cummings - bullying civil servants
. More trouble threatened from Turkey / Syria

Unfortunately with all these parallel crises, we have a workshy lying arse as PM
and the worst collection yet of incompetents in Cabinet
who seem to have decided on a strategy of bullying their civil servants to avoid hearing any facts that don't fit with current Tory party ideology

Brutal and sobering

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/05/coronavirus-epidemic-decade-austerity-public-services?CMP=ShareiOSAppp_Other

HenHarrier that is very interesting !

“They do not wish formally to commit to continuing to apply the ECHR"

That's grim
So like Russia, formally a signatory, but ignoring the requirements

Is that because we need to be a signatory to either the ECHR or the UN Declaration of Human Rights (I have a vague recollection that the former is an acceptable substitute to the latter) in order to be a member of the UN?

But as has just been pointed out, you can be a signatory but if you refuse to apply it and don't recognise the court that applies it, it's toothless

imo, it is because the EU insists on EHRC for any member country
and all EU citizens and residents are entitled to their full rights under the conventiom.

Hence for future security / police cooperation, the UK must agree to apply the EHRC to ensure the rights of EU citizens or residents involved,
such as their right to privacy, data security / sharing, fair trial, humane conditions of prisoners etc

Just bought Toynbees book!

Russia has been very quiet about Covid 19

I see the silly Torygraph are running the tunnel from Scotland to Ireland story on their front pages.

To go under Beaufort's Dyke it would have to be the 2nd deepest (and the longest at that depth) tunnel in the world

When they say “tunnel” what they actually mean is precast tunnel sections dropped into a trench, rather than a bored tunnel.

Last time they put a trench near Beaufort’s Dyke and supposedly outwith the disposal area, it didn’t go too well.

I can pretty much guarantee that a good percentage of the munitions won’t have been disposed of in the designated area. Out of sight, out of mind.

Supermarkets say Handcock 'has totally made up' claims he is working with supermarkets.

twitter.com/BBCSimonJack/status/1235841346541211649

@pretty - come on - we just all have to believe......then we'll be able to move mountains.....

It's all just such a crock......we're lead by a bunch of liars

Crucial in a public health crisis for the govt not to deliberately mislead the public
(human error can happen, but should correct with apologies asap)

Simon Jackk@BBCSimonJack* (BBC business editor)

Supermarket exec tells me Matt Hancock has “totally made up what he said about working with supermarkets.

"We haven’t heard anything from govt directly.”

Adds - teams are having to work “round the clock” to keep shelves stocked.

Tinned goods,pasta sales “through the roof”

Supermarket said no question of shortages of food (unlike sanitising products where there are shortages)
but there was a logistical challenge physically restocking the shelves

Simon Jackk@BBCSimonJack (BBC business editor)

The power of Twitter -
New from supermarket source

“Defra now in contact and trying to make it look like they are very actively engaged with industry and CEOs!!”

• Exclamation marks theirs not mine.

oops crosspost

Matt Hancock has form for merely saying what hes told to say.

This is the man who said he would never work in a Johnson government. Before supporting his leadership bid and getting the job of health secretary.

Some thoughts from another forums I'm on ...

There's some interesting debate going on about how much change this whole thing could actually have on businesses and people in the future. If these conditions are on us for a while (reduced travel, events getting cancelled etc), and nothing really changes, then should we go back to those ways? If you're a business and when everyone is working from your productivity goes through the roof....then you must question the value of your expensive offices. If you're a company who just cancelled their flagship event, and sales stay the same, or even go up, then you must question the value of your event. Also, as mentioned above, reduced flying, less bullshit meetings face-to-face just to "shake someones hand and look them in the eye". I've taken meetings in Dubai where I have paid £3k for a ticket, take the Emirates overnight which lands around 7am, freshen up, breakfast, two hour meeting, then fly back that night. We just don't need to do that shit, and this may make people really realise that.

Back to Brexit. Quite worrying that some people are thinking of trying to fly below the radar - that's very unlikely to end well.

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/06/british-residents-in-spain-confused-and-alarmed-about-post-brexit-future

“Many Britons living in Spain have quite complex lives,” she said. “Some have relatives with serious medical conditions in the UK, and are worried about whether they will be able to come and live with them if necessary in the future.

“Others may spend only part of the year in Spain, and are really concerned about the implications of that – which are indeed quite considerable. Some have children who would like to study outside Spain, but aren’t sure whether they’ll be allowed to.”

For years, the British and Spanish authorities have treated the British community in Spain as “long-term tourists”, O’Reilly said, adding “Neither the UK government, nor the Spanish government, nor the EU are taking proper responsibility for these people. They suffer from a triple absence.”

Many Britons in Spain were not officially registered as Spanish residents, O’Reilly said, partly because different Spanish local authorities have interpreted free movement policies differently. The situation is exacerbated because Spain does not allow dual nationality for Britons.

“Lots of people have just buried their heads in the sand,” O’Reilly said. “It’s not hard to pass under the radar, halfway up a mountain in Spain. There are people here really living on the breadline: pretty much undocumented migrants.

“People are afraid to register because they’re worried they will be told they aren’t legal, that they won’t meet future income requirements, that they will be told to go back to a country they maybe left decades ago and where they have nothing.”

Some had concluded there was no option but to return to Britain, O’Reilly said, citing an 85-year-old woman who left after 35 years “because she felt she was just too old to wait around to see how Brexit would turn out”, and a man with a chronic illness who also felt he could not postpone the decision.

Well at least they may get to vote in elections now.

https://www.theleader.info/2020/02/24/british-expats-to-get-vote-for-life/
If of course Mr Johnson holds to his promise

Cameron also promised this .....

Well at least they may get to vote in elections now.

If they are registered with the Spanish authorities that is.

Also, the optics of a bunch of older white Brits turning up in the UK and leapfrogging Priti's requirements is a great way to sell Brexit to the foreign workers we apparently need.

Environment secretary votes against his own proposals to protect post-Brexit food standards

Environment secretary George Eustice has voted against his own proposals to protect food standards in the House of Commons.

When Eustice was on the backbenches back in 2019 he tabled an amendment to the Agriculture Bill to try to protect the UK's high animal welfare and food hygiene standards by banning

the sale of lower standard foods such as chlorine-washed chicken and hormone-injected beef.

But now as an environment secretary he failed to back the exact same amendment when it was tabled by the Labour Party in the House of Commons.

The Tory MP was joined by farming minister Victoria Prentis in voting against the proposals, with the government insisting its bill will retain EU legislation for existing protections on food safety, animal welfare and environmental standards.

Nonetheless Eustice's vote against looks like a u-turn, and comes weeks after he was forced to defend Priti Patel's immigration on Question Time, despite previously claiming that the Home Office needed to "get real".

Labour said that the Tories are now "tying themselves in knots to get a damaging trade deal with Donald Trump".

"This government is in chaos," said Luke Pollard MP, Labour's shadow environment secretary.

"Labour used the exact same text put forward by the Secretary of State when he was a backbencher, that would have protected our food standards. Now he and the Tories have voted it down.

"The Conservatives are tying themselves in knots to get a damaging trade deal with Donald Trump, whatever the cost.

"If this amendment was good enough for the environment secretary when he wrote it, why does he now oppose it?"

In an interview last month Eustice refused to rule out chlorinated chicken and hormone-injected beef appearing on shelves in the UK after a Trump trade deal.

Good point ...

I had an email from LeClerc earlier.
He's been working in various places in Europe and had to persuade the customs bods on the Andorra border that he was OK without a Carnet for his tools ....
and so it begins

DGRosetti totally agree with that post you pasted from another forum.

My best friend travels constantly for work and a lot of it is “the clients pay so much, they expect a face to face meeting”.

I hope this will change a lot of things, not least the lack of hand washing some people seem to do!