Westminstenders: How many Dead Cats Do You Get In A Thunderstorm?

[RedToothBrush]

It never rains. It only pours.

What I wouldn't give for a bit of old fashioned drizzle right now.

4 years on and we are facing a torment of calamities. Brexit, serious political instability in the USA ahead of an election that Trump will refuse to lose even if he does, trade deals with the rest of the world put on 6 week deadlines, anger within the commonwealth, a sick weak dependent PM on the back foot and ill briefed, rampant growing corruption in the Tory party, woke nut jobs out of touch with reality, councils on the brink of bankruptcy and the whole covid-19 crisis.

listening COVID is a disaster, a 1 in 100 year earthquake

Of course it changes politics and attitudes,
it will permanently accelerate / cause permanent changes to our WOL
e.g. WFH, online shopping / death of many high st shops

It has and continues to affect, the lives of everyone posting

Ignoring this would be ignoring the elephant in the room

Bugger all happening wrt Brexit anyway;
BJ is just playing out the time to No Deal and it's boring to say "No news, no news .."

There is a tiny chance he'll suddenly concede to the EU's main points - and call it a victory,
but if so it'll be November / December

• the EU would privately curse the fuck out of him, but they'd find a way to stop the clock and get any agreed deal signed off I suspect Barnier has a few rough draft deals for various contingencies buried in the Commission safe

Hope this isn’t wishful thinking:

Bank of England chief economist Andy Haldane has said the UK economy is on course for a V-shaped recovery.

Haldane, who also sits on the Bank’s interest rate-setting committee, believes the recovery in the UK and globally had come “sooner and faster” than expected.

www.standard.co.uk/business/economy-bank-of-england-haldane-vshaped-coronavirus-a4484281.html?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1593513726

"It's a reflection of where Brexit sits in the global scale of things."

... and where the Uk does

Brexit has not mentioned here for months, except for an occasional paragraph at the bottom of page 10

Noone cba
Merkel's EU Presidency will concentrate on helping economic recovery in the EU, a huge task with bugger all time for the Brexit minnow

Brexit was almost entirely predicated on an appeal to "the way things were".

C-19 has completely blown that out of the water, whether people have realised yet or not.

We're not going back to 2019, let alone 1972.

I don't think you can separate the two. For sure the government won't when it comes to making excuses as to why there are no unicorns.

(1) The EU were big meanies who refused to know their place
(2) COVID did it, 'onest.

What COVID has done spectacularly well is show how bad this govt is in a crisis. We have seemingly used up all of our PPE, medicine stockpiles and reverted to using the body bags from Op Yellowhammer already and do not appear to be re-stocking these (you can see it as preparing for Wave II or Brexit, but we don't seem to be doing either).

If anything this should be opening eyes of what the govt playlist will be post No Deal. "Nothing to see here", ""Too early to be critical of what our choices were", "We have listened to the experts", "This will be world beating" etc will be trotted out ad nauseam. Keir would do well do jot those down and pick a path.

Most Western countries predict a V-shaped recovery,
because unlike e.g. the 2007 / 2008 financial crisis the cause was not structural

However, GDP in most countries aren't predicted to regain pre-COVID levels by EOY 2021, more like 2022

The Uk has more problems than most,
what with the double world-beater of among the worst for deaths and GDP loss

No Deal Brexit worst case might be the UK clinging to their fingertips on a COVID cliff edge,
then deciding to free one hand to hammer the fingers of the other

(Banging your fingers is rarely disastrous; it is the COVID crisis & wilful stupidity that makes it so)

.

"What COVID has done spectacularly well is show how bad this govt is in a crisis."

Yep
Many Brexiters / Tories didn't believe or care that the govt were blundering into a No Deal mess
but very difficult to close your eyes to the long succession of blunders during the COVID crisis, when COVID news drowns out almost anything else

Listening- I agree about David frost. The clearest symbol also that we are heading towards no deal..... as if we didn't expect that...... though I had hoped that some Tories would see sense.
This government is like a runaway train destroying everything in its path.
There are some very angry and concerned Tory voters out there - but the MP's seem to be not minded to do anything. The only thing that keeps me slightly hopeful is that this will make the Tories unelectable for a very long time - one can but hope.

BigChoc, I’m really interested in that view, as I’ve seen elsewhere commentators pointing out that the impact of Brexit both in the short and long term will remain horrific (and just because someone many times worse has been happening doesn’t make the impact of Brexit less bad) even if it’s “just” a hard Brexit rather than no deal at all, it will be coming as we are trying to get the economy going again and maybe even during a second wave of COVID, and the effect of Brexit will last for decades and hinder recovery from the effects of COVID. Furthermore, since most people want to deal with one thing at a time and the political momentum behind Brexit/risk of backlash from Brexiteers has reduced, doesn’t that remove a lot of impetus from it? It seems to be like saying just because someone has had a hemicorporectomy we shouldn’t worry about removing their hand or try to stop it!

Sabrina - I hope they are right, but most other economists I have seen commenting have said they expect most countries to have a V shape recovery, but not the UK because of other factors brexit/Boris/years of austerity. The thinking is the best we can hope for is "u" shaped.

Boris told us the other day that it wasn't austerity we suffered over the past 10 years. I can't remember what he passed it off as.

I seem to recall that both the OECD and the IMF recently warned that the UK was at risk of not getting a V-shopped recession (unlike the rest of the EU) and instead suffering a double-dip recession, if not a full scale depression - because the UK has the potential to suffer the double whammy of COVID and a No-Deal Brexit

I'm now resigned to a No-Deal Brexit (although no less angry about the stupidity of it ) and have re-started stockpiling The one silver lining of Lockdown is that it has identified which items are most vulnerable to shortages so I've bough 20kg of bread flour - and that I have perfected my sourdough baking, now extended to sourdough croissants and sourdough Scottish morning rolls

New EU website
basically for No Deal or a bare bones one

Most previous notices to stakeholders are being updated as "notices for readiness"
Already look more useful for each stakeholder group than the UK's burned offerings

https://ec.europa.eu/info/european-union-and-united-kingdom-forging-new-partnership/future-partnership/getting-ready-end-transition-period_en

"Even if the European Union and the United Kingdom conclude a highly ambitious partnership covering all areas agreed in the Political Declaration by the end of 2020,

the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the EU acquis, the internal market and the Customs Union, at the end of the transition period
will inevitably create barriers to trade and cross-border exchanges that do not exist today.

There will be broad and far-reaching consequences for public administrations, businesses and citizens as of 1 January 2021,
regardless of the outcome of negotiations.

These changes are unavoidable and stakeholders must make sure they are ready for them.

To assist, the Commission is reviewing – and where necessary updating – the over 100 sector-specific stakeholder preparedness noticess_ it published during the Article 50 negotiations with the United Kingdom.

Those notices that have already been updated as ‘notices for readiness’ can be found underneath."

I thought he said he wouldn't go back to austerity as that would be a mistake? I think I saw that on the Guardian Live Feed yesterday which is hard to link to on here.

I hope the Civil Services are at least taking stock of what needs to be done. They feel like our last line of defence atm, so it will be interesting to see what Frost brings to it and I don't expect to be pleasantly surprised.

Sorry, App adding its own underline again

...homemade Scottish morning rolls

Yes, they're supposed to be irregular. And yes, they're supposed to be well-fired (if anything, not burnt well-fired enough for dh )

(for some reason, MN doesn't want to upload the pictures of the morning rolls )

That’s a beautiful looking loaf prettybird, I’m in awe of your sourdough skills. I gave up on sourdough after a couple of attempts and have now purchased a large volume of yeast

I have finally managed to perfect my krentenbollen, though, so I’m feeling quite pleased with myself. DH was so impressed that he sent a photo to all his local Dutch pals!

I think you might have to change your name to prettyloaves - gorgeous!
I've failed at sourdough. I did think about it and start a starter week ago but forgot about it and ended up scraping whatever was in the jar into the bin (sorry enzymes!)

Snap Queen re yeast!

Teresa May spoke well in Parliament today (can't believe I've just written that!) challenging Frost's appointment despite his lack of experience (and quoted Gove's speech of a few days ago). Seriously weird times.

Also if anyone is interested in my 'decapi-starling' situ; the hoover just sucked away a ring of neck feathers . Carcass is still firmly wedged. Plan B of "let nature take it's course" is currently in action

There are some very angry and concerned Tory voters out there

Fuck them. What about the poor sods who didn't vote Tory because they knew it would lead to this sort of mess ?