Westministenders: Can you tell your Rs from Elbows?

[RedToothBrush]

This week Mark Sedwill has resigned (or was he pushed?) and David Frost (chief brexit lead) was appointed National Security Adviser in a move that enraged Theresa May. The former prime minister felt that his appointment was unprofessional and that was a political appointment not an independent one and that he lacked experience. Of course in terms of national security we still haven't had that report on Russia and I don't believe The Intelligence and Security Committee has yet been named (not sat since Johnson was appointed as PM).

We have passed the deadline for extending transition and we have now apparently said that negotiations on the end of transition will finish at the end of September.

The bill ending Free movement of people has been signed, amongst much fanfare by the Conservatives saying they have delivered on the Referendum promise. However we might have up to 3million Hong Kongers who we are willing to allow into the country which might not go down too well with those who were unhappy with 'unrestricted EU immigration'.

We also have the demonstration of utter incompetence, outsourcing and lack of coordination and communication from central government and local government in the covid-19 crisis. A national scandal that isn't being properly reported by the press and leave you with the very large question of who is this government serving? If its contract with Deloittes over testing didn't require them to report positive tests to Public Health England, what was the point in the testing? How can this be consistent with 'The Government’s new approach to biosecurity will bring together the UK’s world-leading epidemiological expertise and fuse it with the best analytical capability from across Government in an integrated approach.' and will provide real time analysis and assessment of infection outbreaks at a community level, to enable rapid intervention before outbreaks grow.?

The growing feeling that Brexit is being exploited by this government for personal interests and those of big business at the expense of the general public is one which was feared and grows harder to argue against by the day.

Brexit and Nuclear power : both turned out to be more poisonous than their early proponents said

Nuclear power is only a shitshow because the political decision to use Uranium (so we could have really big bombs) trumped what would have been a scientific and environmental consensus to use Thorium.

Thorium nuclear power, naturally, being something the UK was pretty good at, until it was scrapped. Like the space programme.

Oops.

Again.

DGR
A friend of mine is a big fan of Thorium reactors
and he's a pacifist

@ListeningQuietly

DGR A friend of mine is a big fan of Thorium reactors and he's a pacifist

and I am not ?

When it finally dawns on the masses that no amount of subsidy sucking windmills and shiny solar panels are a substitute for a grown up energy policy, we might see some traction. But until then we can get used to dimmer bulbs (sure there's a message there somewhere) more brownouts and living every closer to scheduled power cuts.

(Shouldn't someone have shouted "Hydrogen" by now ?).

This all sounds familiar theconversation.com/from-woolly-hats-to-kinky-knickers-buying-british-may-not-be-the-saving-grace-it-once-was-142001 "Made in Britain movements have attempted to address this fundamental lack of mass-market British products. In 2012, Mary Portas attempted to manufacture a British-made line of affordable underwear, known as Kinky Knickers. But Portas found it nigh-on impossible to source viable British-made materials, and in 2016 the manufacturers entered administration. Similarly, the new blue British passport is made in Poland, and the Mini, the quintessential British car, requires components from France."

The problem with a "buy British" drive, is it's just a clear signal to British industry they can churn out any old crap and sell it. British Leyland being a case in hand.

Returning to themes of racism, I know during the 1970s some people could find it hard to buy a British car (racism in car dealerships being quite a thing of beauty). So immigrants quickly turned to non-English cars - particularly Japanese. It was certainly a nasty racist trope that Indians drove Datsuns.

If people want a glimpse into how Brexit will go, then those that can remember the 1970s need to remember people like our next door neighbour who manfully struggled with his crap Ford every winter (because it was "British") while my Dads car started and ran every single day.

We are a trading nation

David Camerons repeated air hammered point in the talk he gave in 2009 at DS school.

We are a trading nation - Britains wealth was never from it's industry but it's trading. Hence the City.

.

In 2012, Mary Portas attempted to manufacture a British-made line of affordable underwear, known as Kinky Knickers. But Portas found it nigh-on impossible to source viable British-made materials, and in 2016 the manufacturers entered administration.

But we used to. I worked in textile factories as a student in the lat 60s and early 70s and we churned out stuff like that - knickers, vests, y fronts, nighties.

British Leyland being a case in hand.

It's as though those in eastern Germany would want to go back to Trabants.

Textile sweatshops factories in Leicester producing cheap clothes for BooHoo have been directly implicated in their COVID problem

I used to drive British cars.
I also kept the axle stands ready for when they broke down.

Belated birthday wishes JeSuis 💐🍰🍹

Really good podcast about the Russian report

www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2020/jul/01/when-will-boris-johnson-release-the-russia-report-podcast

I used to drive British cars.

The quality of 1970s British cars was on a par with the vehicles the French built under Nazi occupation that broke down after a few hundred miles causing maximum inconvenience.

It really should be apparent to anyone that can think that the moment you create a "Buy British at any cost " culture, then you will end up paying over top dollar for the least quality possible. Unless you want to get into the Alice In Wonderland of price controls. At which point your transformation into a managed economy is complete.

With all of that in mind, anyone who uses price alone in determining purchasing is also deploying some quite low quality thinking.

I remember the days when I had to crank my Morris 1000 to get it started. I loved that little car, but I do not want to go back to having to crank a car to get it started.

DGR
I have to admit I adored the British car I owned for over 20 years
but then it was an MG

and even compared with other cars of the time, my Allegros (yes I had two) were shit

@Peregrina

I remember the days when I had to crank my Morris 1000 to get it started. I loved that little car, but I do not want to go back to having to crank a car to get it started.

That's more because of technology than country of manufacture - although initially starter motors were an expensive addition to the overall cost.

I will never forget my astonishment when our Polish worker (it's a long story involving dodging the Stasi in 1988) showed us that all Lada actually came with a crankhandle and a hold in (or just below) the front bumper for when the battery was flat ... but was very useful for lining up the timing marks.

Iron curtain cars were clearly about 25 years behind western cars. Cable technology was pisspoor, so everything was either rod linkages or hydraulic. Their steel tech was also pisspoor so brake drums were aluminium. No "electronics" to speak of. Also plastic was kept to a minimum. So a lot of metal trim.

Still, the Russians were - and are - capable of putting men into space. Which the UK can't. So it's swings and roundabouts.

Jumping westwards ... one one (of many) visits to hospital with DW, I was intrigued by the quality of the USA-made hospital bed. It was a really nice piece of engineering and construction. Would pretty much last forever.

So why was I seeing it in a hospital in the midlands that was supposed to be "the workshop of the world" ?

Although you really don't want to make things too good. When I first met DW, she used a "Quadra Express" wheelchair that was made in the US. It is a really impressive piece of engineering and manufacture. Too impressive. The company that made them went bust after US insurance companies refused to pay so much for wheelchairs on insurance policies. Not enough people could afford them outright (DW bought hers privately in the early 1990s) so the company folded. As I found out when I tried to locate a bearing set.

Coming to an NHS near you soon.

Yes we had an Allegro, known as the All-aggro. 😀 I loved our Ford Anglia though. It had to have holes drilled through the floor for the first baby car seats (which according to Mumsnet didn't exist in the seventies) 😀

I have to admit I adored the British car I owned for over 20 years but then it was an MG

My Dad adored MGs too. Not because they were any good (because they weren't). But because he found he could buy and sell them effortlessly, which helped towards setting up his own business. He even managed to flog an automatic he acquired.

I know it's not very woke, but it was loads of his male customers buying cars for their wives that made them incredibly saleable.

A weekly ritual was the poring over the Exchange and Mart on Thursday ready to view and buy over the weekend.

My dad loved English cars. He had two Allegros, two Austin Princesses and then three Rover SDis in succession. He knew it was irrational though. He was also a dab hand with a spanner (rather than being one).

It wasn't all dire - Jaguars used to have nice styling. And Land Rovers are in a class of their own. And the engineering at Rolls Royce was rightly legendary. But that just highlights the problem. For some reason the UK was simply incapable of making a decent everyman car.

Anyone else noticing the odd glitches in the Guardian's matrix? I keep seeing the odd pro-Brexit sentences pop in with no challenge and references seem to be diminishing...case in point (much as I agree these people need to be held to account, I am fairly sure we could suggest these people when we had a seat at the table?)

"The move follows the passage of the 2018 Sanctions Act setting up an independent post-Brexit sanctions regime.

Previously the UK was obliged to follow the EU and UN sanctions regimes. A statutory instrument subject to debate by MPs is to set out how the new regime will work." www.theguardian.com/law/2020/jul/06/dominic-raab-to-annouce-uk-sanctions-against-human-rights-abusers

Joe Public is the issue with nuclear power - those irrational fears again.

(I don't believe thorium reactors ever got to production scale and there's no reason why they wouldn't have hit equivalent engineering issues to the agr?) The main failing was the government refusing to close the cycle by not building fast breeders and instead opting for foreign pwr - basically shafting our industry.

We had and still have a decent, viable satellite capability but I don't believe we ever had a credible launcher - blue streak was never going to work and should have been canned sooner.

I assume the brexit fallout will gut our excellent vehicle manufacturing capability - that has grown in spite of governments - that said the government investment in Leyland and the Honda partnership was just coming to fruition when HMG threw it overboard to BAE who savaged it.

Just sad that government never seems to carry the can for driving failures in engineering and science - contrast what the Singapore government did in the same period.

What the Covid-19 crisis taught us about food chain resilience and Brexit

Good wee reminder about the need to stockpile dairy products in the run up to 31 December.

But despite the investments made by us and others in the dairy sector, we still import 35.2% of yoghurt, 39.8% of butter and fully 67.3% of all cheese consumed here.

Replacing these imports with British-sourced products will take further investments of hundreds of millions of pounds over many years.

In most cases, UK alternatives will not be available on 1 January 2021 or on 1 July that year, or anytime soon after.

https://www.politicshome.com/members/article/what-the-covid19-crisis-taught-us-about-food-chain-resilience-and-brexit?utmmedium=email&utmmcampaign=The%20Evening%20Briefing%20%200607&utmcontent=The%20Evening%20Briefing%20%200607+CIDDf49c51581e66619bcaa2a30c5f1f9fe9&utmsource=Email%20newsletters&utmm_term=What%20the%20Covid-19%20crisis%20taught%20us%20about%20food%20chain%20resilience%20and%20Brexit

Can we freeze cheese?? My DD is a veggie and lives on cheese.

Yes, you can freeze cheese.

"Through three cheese trees three free fleas flew.
While these fleas flew, freezy breeze blew.
Freezy breeze made these three trees freeze.
Freezy trees made these trees' cheese freeze.
That's what made these three free fleas sneeze."
.....
From 'Fox in Socks', by Dr Seuss.