Westminstenders: Pah International Law. Who needs it?

[RedToothBrush]

I mean its not as if trade deals and human rights are relevant is it?

(sorry eating my dinner so must be brief)

@BigChocFrenzy

" No pensioners around here vote bloody tory."

< clears throat for confession >
I vote for the CDU in Germany, which is moderate right of centre

• but in the UK it would be centrist pro-European,

rather like a sane & very competent, socially conservative British liberal party with a strong social conscience would look like, it it were ever possible

But that's my point BCF... how is this current Tory party retaining voters like you? I think I am even more disgusted with them than I am with the far right Farage lot.

One consequence of the Brexit ref, which I didn't imagine in my worst case scenario,
is that the total fanaticism of its supporters would drive them to support absolutely any action that the government tells them is necessary, even after Brexit has happened,
that it would cause them to cheer on the government in tearing up international law, tearing up rights within the UK, attacking fundamental pillars of the British Constitution

It's like one of those batshit crusades in the Mediaval Times, where the crusaders brought their own countries and peoples into penury and misery

@DGRossetti

Fair enough, justice has been done, as far as it can be in such cases

If any other MNetters know about this, I suspect they'd disagree ... the general view seems to be condemned for life.

... then what additional penalty do you give to rapists, or cold-blooded killers

I think the SNP were both stupid and immoral not to vote against.
And why do they assume that growing support for independence would actually lead to independence?

One consequence of the Brexit ref, which I didn't imagine in my worst case scenario, is that the total fanaticism of its supporters would drive them to support absolutely any action that the government tells them is necessary, even after Brexit has happened

I thought you read my posts ?

You've also missed the sleight of hand here. Brexit now hasn't happened. In fact, Brexit will never happen. There will always be a need for more powers. More this, more that to "get Brexit done".

That may not have been Plan A, but the English electorate have shown themselves to be so thick, it seems Brexiteers can't believe their luck.

On the basis the police have been slowly eviscerated, I can only presume that the oligarchy have plans to ship in private armed police to see off any undesirables too near their gated communities.

Who knows ? Maybe all of this was just so Putin could offload his worst knuckle draggers to protected the UK pampered ?

Squid It isn’t just that the over 65s are not anxious. In my experience in real life and on social media they are really angry. Cummings and his leave crew mined a deep seam of colonial and wartime nostalgia and a propensity to Xenophobia nurtured by a colonial upbringing. They jump to Boris’s blame game because they have already been stirred to hate (and I don’t use the word lightly) the EU which is somehow bound up in a wartime hatred of Germany. They also are seeing their colonial sense of entitlement and exceptionalism thwarted, and really do believe that we will rise from the ashes of the EU to greatness, even if the don’t plan on having to lift a finger to deliver it. I qualify it at 65 as I am younger than that and I think many of the younger boomers were the original children of the European project and feel a very emotional attachment to the EU. Even we were educated in schools where the countries in the atlas were mainly pink and we had teachers who spouted imperialist nonsense. Since 2016 these threads have been full of stories of divided families and in my own I have seen that visceral hatred in a generation that in my family were liberal professionals who spent their lives making a difference to the disadvantaged in immigrant communities (so how dare you call them racist) but now swallow hook line and sinker the Daily Mail scroungers and criminals narrative. And add to that the northern chip on the shoulder and you have the red wall.....

Brexit now hasn't happened. In fact, Brexit will never happen. There will always be a need for more powers. More this, more that to "get Brexit done".

Yup, the Willy needs never-ending and ever-intensifying stroking.

Elements Yes, the government requisitioned the most advanced PCR reading technology from labs. Not just that but it has since struggled with the chemical brew that the machines use which is patented by only a few global suppliers and in high demand. Left with inferior machines the Crick back engineered the brew and came up with new recipes that could be altered according to what was available and them shared their protocol for stepping up testing to other small labs, all in early March when the government was still flailing about. They still haven’t provided any funding to the Crick / North London NHS initiative. Because you know public sector bad, private sector cronies good. So of course Scientists are pissed off, ignored, undervalued, many furloughed when they had skills to help. And Cummings reckons he will facilitate a scientific revolution 🙄

It is being reported locally that as of today you cannot use a PCR code from Aberdeen to get a local test at our deserted drive through (it is opposite a mega Tesco so there for all to see), the way the local community has been accessing the drive through up to now. If you do decide to drive 9 or 10 hours to Aberdeen that test will count as an Aberdeen test not a local one. 🤔

And Cummings reckons he will facilitate a scientific revolution

after the old world has been destroyed. He's been infected with that monomania that if you can't win the game as is, you rip up the rules so that you can win. Quite how he managed to co-opt the entire class that were winning the game since it was invented will remain a mystery. Although it probably has something to do with the infinite capacity for greed of some. I believe it's called supernormal stimuli ?

Just noticed this bit of Handcocks exchange with Ashworth:

Mr Hancock said: "I don't deny that it is an enormous challenge and when you have a free service it's inevitable that demand rises."

(My bold).

So this is the latest excuse for their incompetence at not managing the entirely predictable increase in demand from the centrally funded, crony privately provided testing regime

@prettybird

Just noticed this bit of Handcocks exchange with Ashworth:

Mr Hancock said: "I don't deny that it is an enormous challenge and when you have a free service it's inevitable that demand rises."

(My bold).

So this is the latest excuse for their incompetence at not managing the entirely predictable increase in demand from the centrally funded, crony privately provided testing regime

Just greasing the slipway to remove the "free service" and Get Testing Done then.

Emily
I am incredibly reliably informed that if Cummings ever tried to get into the Crick he'd be stuck inside the door pod for ever.

Even people who never swear have become very potty mouth about how the Crick had to bail out the London hospitals over PCR testing.

As for resignations, I'm only surprised Brandon Lewis hasn't "resigned" for letting the cat out of the bag.

You've also missed the sleight of hand here. Brexit now hasn't happened. In fact, Brexit will never happen. There will always be a need for more powers. More this, more that to "get Brexit done".

This ^
Musing on what if remain had won, or indeed Cameron never called the referendum, would something else have captured their imagination?

@ICouldHaveCheckedFirst

As for resignations, I'm only surprised Brandon Lewis hasn't "resigned" for letting the cat out of the bag.

Well it didn't do any harm did it ?

We're not far off from where the more "hysterical" commentators said we'd be after nuLab started waving "anti terror" laws through with the "if you're not with us you're a terrorist sympathiser" narrative. Who would have thought that in 2020, 42 days - or weeks or months or years - detention without trial would have seemed curiously unambitious ?

As the Manics (correctly) sang back then, "If you tolerate this your children will be next". Well we did. And they are. And in some cases their children too.

It only remains to be seen who will be drowned and who will be saved.

"I have a F2F team meeting booked for tomorrow.
I am suggesting that folks bring polo mallets, fishing rods and shotguns
so that we are definitely Exempt from the Rule of Six"

I don't suppose our toddler group would get away with that...

Sadly not, DGR. Nor did Milliband's magnificence yesterday.

But no one under 75 was alive until after the war, and anyone under 80 is only going to have the scantest of memories. I am 69 and certainly confirm how we were stuffed silly with tales of Empire, but then you'd go home and see the news with another country getting its independence. Like a lot of people, I left the north years ago and have never gone back.

We're not far off from where the more "hysterical" commentators said we'd be after nuLab started waving "anti terror" laws through with the "if you're not with us you're a terrorist sympathiser" narrative. Who would have thought that in 2020, 42 days - or weeks or months or years - detention without trial would have seemed curiously unambitious ?

Shame there wasn't the same outrage when internment without trial and torture were used routinely in NI between 1971 and 1975 www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/internment-explained-when-was-it-introduced-and-why-1.3981598

Have a look at the way nationalists in particular were treated in NI and you will get an idea of how free and easy any british government can be with human rights.

.

I am incredibly reliably informed that if Cummings ever tried to get into the Crick he'd be stuck inside the door pod for ever.

Those door pods at the Crick are genuinely scary

Tom McTague in the Atlantic (hardly a Europhile journalist) has written an eviscerating analysis of yesterday's events. He views Johnson's actions as an attempt to distract from repeated diplomatic failure:

www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/09/britain-brexit-humbling/616343/

"All of this marks a fitting finale to Britain’s catastrophic mismanagement of the Brexit process, which started with the resignation of the prime minister who called the referendum without any plan for what would happen if he lost it (David Cameron); continued with his successor triggering a two-year countdown to Britain’s final withdrawal without any plan for what future relationship she wanted to negotiate (Theresa May); and was followed by her successor signing an international treaty without any guarantee of a future trade deal, only then to rip up this agreement when its consequences began to reveal themselves (Johnson). Regardless of the merits of Brexit, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Britain’s leaders dealt themselves one bad hand after another—and proceeded to play them badly."

@ListeningQuietly

I have a F2F team meeting booked for tomorrow. I am suggesting that folks bring polo mallets, fishing rods and shotguns so that we are definitely Exempt from the Rule of Six

You don’t need to worry too much about polo - season ends in a couple of weeks. Plus it is an organised sport with a lot less physical contact then, say, rugby?

and he sums up this failure well:

"Since the Brexit referendum, the country has somehow contrived to negotiate an economic border within its own territory and the possible loss of all preferential trading rights with its largest market.

For a long time, most observers had taken for granted that Britain would end up paying one of these prices for Brexit

• but not both.