Westminstenders: Just another DEADline

[RedToothBrush]

Today is the last scheduled day for talks with the EU.

We have til 30th June to ask for a transition extension. We won't.

That leaves us starring down the barrel of a no deal exit, when we still could be in a covid-19 crisis and the US may be in turmoil given recent events and the coming election...

It's not a pretty picture.

I find Louise's position very odd - so if a standard comes from the EU it must automatically be bad and should be abandoned? That's a very dogmatic position for a normally fairly pragmatic Brexiter to take.

If we lose food standards and origin labelling, our household will go almost fully vegetarian and buy what meat we do only from local farm shops. But we're lucky that we can afford to do that.

Today's milk round of interviews (heavily restricted, no Today prog, no C4, No GMTV) has not gone well:

bit.ly/30nXevt

Helen Whately, another one not fit to look after the school hamster at half-term.

I don’t want standards lowered (provided they are British standards not hangover ones from EU membership)

Why would food standards that we have no control over ( US ones ) be better or more preferable, than ones we have actually been instrumental in developing ( EU ones) ? It just seems nonsensical to dismiss out of hand, standards we developed simply because we were members of the EU when we did so ?

We visited Bristol last year and did the bus tour. The guide was VERY clear about the link to the slave trade with the statue; it was a contentious issue for the town already. Tourists would probably have been far more enlightened about the links than much of the UK population.

DGR I hear the pork has ractopamine in (banned in any sane country), so I suspect something equally vicious to be lurking in the lamb.

Fully expected Louise to respond that all the lovely farmland could at least now be used as housing! It's clear our famers cannot compete (hence NFU suddenly waking up to the smell of US bacon) and "choice", despite what Louise suggests, is more about dropping standards and forcing the poor to eat the poisonous dregs.

Woo-hoo!

We've hit 50,000

Look out Trumpy, we're coming up on the rails.

I don’t want standards lowered (provided they are British standards not hangover ones from EU membership)

Does anybody else remember the outrage in the tabloids, must have been 20+ years ago, when the EU MADE us take mane and anus (amongst other things) out of our sausages? I think I'm happy to go with EU standards personally.

Didn't the EU also force us to clean up our beaches? I guess out of the EU we can bring back sewage on our beaches.

So Brexiteers do have a point that the EU have in the past made us do things we don't want to do.
I think they're also after our dirty air and trying to make us act on that. What is it...? 50,000 people killed a year from poor air quality, something like that?

Come January we'll be able to tell them to fuck off with there clean air and beaches. Food standards seem to be on the edge of the bin immediately, I expect environmental standards to go the same way.

Thought this might be a good place to share this:
Petition
Introduce Mandatory Ethnicity Pay Gap Reporting
Much like the existing mandatory requirement for employers with 250 or more employees must publish their gender pay gap. We call upon the government to introduce the ethnicity pay gap reporting. To shine a light on race / ethnicity based inequality in the workplace so that they can be addressed. petition.parliament.uk/petitions/300105?fbclid=IwAR09Y0Nue1I3cWJhHsQ0ji0Fq7Uybz5arKhLoC799vJeDQ12nIXwkJV-mhA

Je Suis - NFU have been very active on this from even before the referendum.... they tried to educate the farmers what leaving the EU would mean for them..... they just wouldn't listen. I have always wondered what kind of micro targeted campaign they were exposed to, that would persuade them that brexit was so advantageous for them, over the same and rational argument from NFU ...... which was essentially this would happen.

The farmers were told the EU subsidies would be replaced IIRC. Farmers were told that things they wanted to do were impossible under EU rules so scrap them all! Not, why do we want to do it and let's make change from within. Farage in his tweedy arrogance marching about with his pint seemed to strike a chord. I never forget the milk farmer I met whose wife was tearing her hair out at his stubborn Leave stance; she knew they couldn't survive without EU support and didn't trust Tories one bit! Farmers were warned indeed.

Does no one remember the BSE crisis? This had been bubbling under for some while but then came a tipping point, and sales of UK beef collapsed because of the links with C-JD.

Do we really want a race to the bottom, now that the EU isn't able to dictate, and we 'can make our own laws' i.e. accept US ones with no say?

Hands up who thinks that the Houses of Parliament will have cheap meat in their restaurants, or those Gentleman's Clubs that Tory MPs belong to. Who thinks they will serve the good quality, 'grass fed' and 'organic' meat?

Hands up who thinks that the Houses of Parliament will have cheap meat in their restaurants, or those Gentleman's Clubs that Tory MPs belong to. Who thinks they will serve the good quality, 'grass fed' and 'organic' meat?

Of course it will be the feckless poor peoples fault that they get increasingly obese and most certainly not the poor quality food they have access too

Proper stirred people up here haven’t I!
Simply, I want the standards that apply in Britain to be our standards.
I favour the retention of “Country of Origin” labelling, I think it ought to be stricter than it currently is.

“Why would food standards that we have no control over ( US ones ) be better or more preferable, than ones we have actually been instrumental in developing ( EU ones)”

They aren’t, that’s why I want standards for British farmers to be set here.

I am splitting up defining the standards that apply to farming (should be set by the national govt) and moving away from restrictive practices in markets to prevent import of goods from other places where those standards don’t apply. What food people buy should be up to, well, people.

I most certainly do not want more farmland being used for housing.

Simply, I want the standards that apply in Britain to be our standards.

Regardless of whether they are high or low then, your main priority is that they be British. So low British standards=good. High foreign standards=bad.

If that's not what you meant, you'll have to take a ferrert (from the queue) and roll it back. Because that's what you just said. You even started with the word "simply" to ensure we didn't conflate what you meant with concepts from outside your own words.

Louise as you so clearly said:
As is also frequently pointed out to me, I don’t get to decide, my ability to influence is virtually nil.

What you want and think is desirable doesn't look likely to be what you get, unless of course the Lords (unelected) bale out the elected MPs who are quite happy to ignore manifesto pledges when it suits.

You didn't actually specify British standards as opposed to any other standards, you specifically compared them to EU standards. As far as I am aware, there would have been nothing to stop us having higher standards than the rest of the EU if we had remained in. There was something stopping us from having lower standards, hence the desperate determination of Johnson and Co to leave, and hence the desperation to cut a deal with the US, asap, in case Trumpy doesn't get voted back in again.

We know also that it will be one set of standards for them, which the Cumming's debacle has shown in spades, and one for the plebs.

Going off the subject of food, I am really glad that the statue of Colston has got chucked in the river. It's initiated a national debate in the way that the statue didn't. No person was hurt, and for the frothers going on about vandalism - they didn't say that when the East Germans started hacking the Berlin Wall away.

My main priority is that they are set in Britain, yes. No ferret required.

Louise so you would be happy with lower food standards as long as they were set in Britain then?

Your priority is that they are set in Britain, regardless of whether they are good or bad? OK.

It looks as though you will be disappointed. We will have USA standards for food, Chinese ones for goods, which in both cases are often not as good as standards we have fought for over the years and the UK will have no say in the matter. There will be little or nothing you can do to prevent that. But if you are happy with that, because you hated the EU so much, then fine, that is your opinion, which you are perfectly entitled to hold.

Louise so you would be happy with lower food standards as long as they were set in Britain then?

Asked and answered.

But a good reason why any "respect" for Brexiteers needs to be tempered with a degree of something else. Not quite sure what the word is for now ....

Yes Pointy I would.
I don’t want lowered food standards but that’s not the question you asked me.

I don’t want lowered food standards but

would accept them if they are British, and - by the same token - would reject higher standards if they aren't British.

So what do you say to people like myself that would rather have higher standards, no matter where they are devised, than lower "British" standards ?

I think we should probably leave Louise alone, but one final comment - if the Government dishes up lower standards, which are not British, will you be prepared to admit to disappointment with their vision of Brexit?

As CrunchyCarrot did - who had good reasons for voting Leave thinking it would be more money for the NHS and has now realised that she was conned and regrets her vote.

I sort of understand where Louise is coming from.
My personal wish to remain in the EU has little to do with Finance or Food standards.
I feel that we are in a good place being an influential member of a union able to stand up to the American, Russian and Asian blocs.
That is worth the inevitable disadvantages.

Oh - and of course the Culture, at which (compared to the others) the EU is pre-eminent.

DGR I could say lots of things but they boil down to 2

• advocate for the standards you want and win an election in the U.K.
• move yourself somewhere where the standards you wish to live under do apply.

“I think we should probably leave Louise alone, but one final comment - if the Government dishes up lower standards, which are not British, will you be prepared to admit to disappointment with their vision of Brexit?”

Carry on, I don’t mind a bit. Yes, in that situation I probably would admit disappointment with what the Govt had dished up. Absolutely not the same as thinking Brexit shouldn’t have happened though.

Absolutely not the same as thinking Brexit shouldn’t have happened though.

This gets close to the arguments that ardent Communists used to use, when it was pointed out that the USSR wasn't the workers' paradise. "Oh, it wasn't implemented properly."