Westministenders: A Year of Johnson

[RedToothBrush]

So having given the benefit of the doubt...

... whats your reflections?

Good (and yes do have some thoughts on the positive - challenge yourself on this one as its important) and the bad (and yes this is the easy bit but keep it within reason)?

We now know Nixon was a traitor. Plain and simple.

Not "suspect". Know.

returning to the Spanish situation ... I'm sorry to say, but all it has done is reveal the phenomenal level of entitlement a lot of Britons have - and didn't even realise. The reportage is coming from a place where it's every Brits inalienable right to go anywhere they damn well please donchaknow. You'd think it topped "right to a fair trial" as a legacy from Magna Carta.

I'm afraid the new normal simply isn't going to support that sense of entitlement. And that's before you factor in other sociopolitical shifts of the past few years.

Ruth Davidson - the "Nice" Scottish Tory - recently said that she regrets
she regrets “not putting the boot in” to the Scottish Nationalists after her side won the Indy ref

How Tories plan to bring the country together ......

‪I just spotted this anti-Semitism campaign of a 48-hour Twitter boycott:

#NoSafeSpaceForJewHate ‬

Yes, it's a pre-emptive PR exercise, but not just for Europe or to stoke fear. Can you imagine the Daily Mail headlines if they did nothing?

"A meal and a Coronavirus on your hols"
Or
"Covid-19 holiday souvenir".

The line taken will be asking why the Government did nothing after our collective sacrifice during lockdown. It's an effective othering tactic that dates back to the middle ages (French pox, anyone?).

Thanks to the Brexit exceptionalism, getting in front of that narrative, fast, had to happen. If we were still part of the EU, you would have farage on the radio, yelling about our open borders for disease.

Meanwhile it seems we are living though the Anthropause ...

Per source familiar with plans: "the plan is an odd combination of reserving state aid [for control from London] but then agreeing to a free-for-all.

This is getting their excuses in early, so that they can blame someone else. "It wasn't us, it was Scotland, Wales, N Ireland that messed it up." Johnson and Cummings don't do taking responsibility. They won't have the easy excuse of "the EU won't let us", to fall back on after the end of the year.

I think I am right in saying we had a higher rate than Spain when they let in UK tourists, so it does seem a bit rich. I also wonder why they haven't put similar measures on Belgium, for eg? IMO it is all about showing how reliant Spain is on our tourism. EU would be wise to remember many of those holidaying now are unlikely to be back if they loose their jobs in the next wave and post Jan funds will be stretched in most families due to rising food costs amongst others.

Also IME the places where largely British tourists congregate put off travellers from all over the world. If I were Magaluf or Tenerife I would be quietly making plans to capitalise on this. A marketing campaign with film of vomiting Brits shouting and being arrested could show the past being swept away...

@JeSuisPoulet

I think I am right in saying we had a higher rate than Spain when they let in UK tourists, so it does seem a bit rich. I also wonder why they haven't put similar measures on Belgium, for eg? IMO it is all about showing how reliant Spain is on our tourism. EU would be wise to remember many of those holidaying now are unlikely to be back if they loose their jobs in the next wave and post Jan funds will be stretched in most families due to rising food costs amongst others.

Worth bearing in mind that the UK isn't the only country in Europe with a government that sometimes (?) doesn't reflect the people.

The Spanish government may be keen to wave tourists in - because it takes a tiny bit of the load of them. However I don't think the Spanish people are quite so keen. After all, no matter how well your business does, it's rather a downer if it just buys you a better funeral. We are reading all about this in mainly British news sources, don't forget. Which tends to include the Daily Express (for example).

@JeSuisPoulet

Also IME the places where largely British tourists congregate put off travellers from all over the world. If I were Magaluf or Tenerife I would be quietly making plans to capitalise on this. A marketing campaign with film of vomiting Brits shouting and being arrested could show the past being swept away...

Or just a clip from 4 months ago of Brits all over the place with their "I ain't afraid of no Covid" choruses ?

Is anyone else's facebook feed being spammed by tory propaganda dressed up as government information? How much of taxpayer's money is being spent on trying to convince us that our future lies in working with our EU friends as 'sovereign equals'? IE We're so deluded and think we're so special that we believe we're equal to 27 other countries put together.

mashed
I get those adverts
I have a tendency to post the link to the ASA make a complaint page
for some reason my posts do not last long

I'm glad I have no social media except MN a more chilled life

I don't see the appeal of FaceAche,
especially now we know what others can do with its data - a different scale to the usual

I'm considering getting rid of fb tbh

I hate it

I use FB to stay in touch with friends and family around the world
I have several adblockers on
and regularly hide the ones that appear in my feed
I NEVER read the news through it
my politics on there tends to be of the very light hearted kind

Linkedin is work only - and very useful for that

Instagram is so I can see what my nieces and nephews and cousins are up to

Twitter is best avoided

MN is for politics and opinions

I’ve been surprised by the apparent desperation of so many to visit foreign lands so quickly tbh. As DGR says it’ll be the same people complaining that they’re not being looked after if they catch it. Never mind the financial problems. We really are in the realm of risk management now - if you can’t take a potential financial loss or time loss, don’t risk it. Perhaps we’ll at least see a slowdown of all the messages about how risk is good!

Re anti-Asian, meaning oriental I think?, in America particularly. We really need a clear distinction between biology and culture in relations and a full appreciation of the same. It’s similar to the sex is, gender does distinction in women’s rights. Prejudice on the basis of biology in racial matters is beyond stupid, what’s the point. But, we must be free to question cultural attitudes, particularly when different ideas are living next to each other. All too often that is dismissed as racism too. Too often they are conflated. Speaking of China we can question the wet markets, you can even question how strong the laws and boundaries are about eating dogs while others keep them as beloved pets (while recognising sovereignty): but going from there to the hostility I’ve seen on the internet and becoming racially prejudiced is a step too far. Far too far.

The fact is Covid raises it's ugly head without much warning. There is going to be a lot of this happening. It already looks like a second wave is emerging in Europe. The Governments duty is to the whole population of this country. Lockdown was not for no purpose. People going on holiday during a world pandemic are quite aware of the dangers,inconvenience and consequences of doing so. So although I'm not against people going on holiday even though I haven't had a holiday in years, they should not expect the taxpayers to bail them out yet again when they come back from their travels and have to isolate for two weeks with no pay or may losing their jobs. They should have factored that in before they went on holiday. They were aware because the government has said repeatedly that measures will be taken to protect the population from another
Outbreak of Covid with more deaths and more lockdowns. This country just cannot afford repeated lockdowns. So I say to all those on holiday in Spain Balerics and Canary Islands and elsewhere this....' you are aware of Covid and that it is a world pandemic, and the risk of numbers where you go to spike suddenly. You know there is a possibility that you may be told to isolate for 2 weeks when you get back. If you cannot cope financially with having to isolate when you get back to protect people in the UK then don't go on holiday! If you can cope financially with a 2 week isolation then go! Do not expect others to bail you out!

Belated PMK. Am on holiday in rural France with no wifi.
Place is dead (well, apart from the coast, where we went yesterday, but returned today as it was raining). Far fewer tourists than I'd imagine are usually in southern Charente. Nice, though...

This is also a bit belated, but sth XingMing posted yesterday evening has been going through my mind:
the only place success comes before work is in a dictionary.
That may well be true for some, but clearly not for the likes of Trump. And for most, work comes without any success.

Brexit will deliver double shock to UK economy

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jul/28/brexit-will-deliver-double-shock-to-uk-economy-study-finds-coronavirus

A Brexit hit is looming for sectors that have emerged relatively unscathed from the Covid-19 pandemic,
analysis by the London School of Economics suggests.

The LSE report says Brexit will deliver a double shock to the economy
– with business conditions worsening for those sectors that have survived the impact of coronavirus and lockdown measures –
whether Boris Johnson secures a deal with the EU or not.
....
“Our analysis shows that the sectors that will be affected by Brexit and those that are suffering from the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown are generally different from each other,”
.....
Brexit will impose barriers on those trading goods or services with the EU,
whether it is pharmaceutical companies seeking regulatory approval,
banks or services needing to transfer data from servers in the bloc
or car manufacturers or clothes importers being required to fill in customs declarations for the first time in decades.

That LSE report makes for grim reading. It's not as though we have full employment at the moment, either.

Closing furlough 'could lead to 10% unemployment'.

The highest unemployment number on record (as in "people looking for work") was 14% in 1982. I wonder if we will break that, before the end of the year?

That LSE report makes for grim reading

The answer to that, is not to read it then.

Maybe now people can understand the UK approach ?

Pepperwort Absolutely agree. We can and should blame the CCP for failing to regulate its markets. The wet markets are just the start of it. There was the market for human blood that infected poor donors with HIV, the government taxed that activity as an agricultural product. Human trafficking, not just out of China but slave labour, women and children within and into China from the rest of Asia, is another market evil that is tolerated. And who knows about the rumours of organ and hair farming from prisoners and now the Uyghurs in the camps? All this is rooted in culture to some extent but when Deng unleashed the market economy he did so without any of the cultural and societal constraints that had traditionally been the context for those practises. So it is above all political and economic too.

However I can’t agree that race is a biological construct. It is a social construct, the framing of stereotypes of the othered. There are geographical clusters of certain genetic differences but the genetic differences within clusters are much greater than the differences between them so science with our increasing understandings of genetics does not support the traditional concepts of race , and incidentally labels DNA ancestry kits as DNA Astrology. sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/science-genetics-reshaping-race-debate-21st-century/

As you say to assimilate the CCP’s culpability in China into those social constructs which furthermore rarely distinguish between very different national identities such as Taiwanese, Korean etc is entirely racist.

I know gloating isn't a great look. And I apologise if my spelling is all over the place - it's hard to type accurately when you are pissing yourself laughing.

Seems one Yaxley-Lennon, who had to "flee" the UK to hide assets from the courts because of "the hate", has now found himself "stranded" in Spain because of the UK quarantine.

The picture which caused the loss of control ...

(We'll come back to the sheer hypocrisy of a Brexit Bad Boy using FoM later ...)

Sadly I concur with DGR here
most people will pay absolutely no attention to the warnings about Brexit
as they did not pay attention to the warnings about obesity or climate change or pandemics
they waft along day to day getting surprised by everything that happens
and then they see a squirrel

we used to elect leaders who did the thinking and checking and evidence gathering for us
but now we elect squirrel breeders