Westministenders: Brevid

[RedToothBrush]

The government have FINALLY started to treat no deal brexit and covid as one entity in terms of fucking the economy.

On the one hand you have one camp who think they can sneak No Deal through as a consequence of Covid. On the other you have people who realise that it might be quite a good idea not to doubly screw your entire economy and to continue to be able to import medical supplies freely.

We now no that No Deal Brexit will involve passports to get into Kent and 7 mile queues of trucks because this has passed the lips of Gove. Y'know one of those who has been denying this for the past 4 years and presenting it as 'scaremongering'.

We are now firmly into the end game where businesses have to make plans based on the government plans and technology. Y'know the ones that aren't complete yet despite it only being 2 months to go.

Johnson has today done an interview about covid restrictions in the NE in which he got all the detail wrong. Its almost as if he forgot the lines he was instructed to recite and have no fundamental understanding of what rules he's putting into place to control the lives of the population.

As we lurch into October, there is speculation of full local lockdowns being brought in to try and deal with the spiralling number of cases which have to be the result, in no small part, of a dire lack of local testing facilities in the North of England. Meanwhile we've got The App finally. The one that doesn't work and the police and many health care staff are being advised not to use cos its so bobbins and will lead to them constantly isolating needlessly. Thats just something the rest of us have to contend with.

The feeling is that Cummings is up for No Deal. Johnson has been brainwashed into it, which lets face it, isn't too hard given how hard of thinking he is. However there is a growing sense that Johnson may now bottle it and declare victory in the jaws of defeat. That might be a premature hope.

We await the answer and the all important question of whether Christmas is indeed cancelled - that is for everyone who hasn't already cancelled it due to financial hardship...

@mrslaughan

So what did Gove say this week that pissed the EU off so much, that they decided not to wait to pursue legal remedy now? Because last I heard they were taking the sit and wait philosophy?

I doubt they were reacting to anything. What I suspect happened is very quietly - through usual diplomatic channels - there was a discrete memo to the government noting that if the IMB is left to stand as is, then come 1st October they will act. No drama. Nothing to inflame the masses.

Boris and the boys ignored it (remember when he wouldn't sign the request for an extension) and here we are.

Goves presence or otherwise would have had zero bearing on that course of events which were set in motion pretty much automatically.

Much as if you default on your mortgage and ignore the first warning letter then your lender will proceed down the list of actions you agreed to with it when you signed up.

Do NOT scapegoat immigrants for the gross inequality and lack of social mobility

What choices do we actually have, rather than sitting around wringing hands and deploring the lack of humanity? This level of mass migration cannot carry on. It's not a question of immigrants making the choices for British social structure. It's the fact that they are among the enablers of those choices, which restrict further what are already finitely limited resources. Immigration has been encouraged by the richer groups and it has effects on the poorer ones.

I could just as easily yell do NOT scapegoat the most disadvantaged groups in Britain for the choices of the richer. I disagree with your phrasing “The UK chose”; people from deprived backgrounds HAVE no good choices. This is not a functioning democracy: it’s a class-ridden oligarchy with an occasional crumb thrown out. You’re right there’s a legitimate debate and it won’t help to continually label concerns as ‘right-wing’. I'm sorry if I phrased something in a way that made you jump but that will not help either.

For some reason this tickled my puerile side ..

@mrslaughan

So what did Gove say this week that pissed the EU off so much, that they decided not to wait to pursue legal remedy now? Because last I heard they were taking the sit and wait philosophy?

The EU did give a clear warning that if the bill was not withdrawn by the end of the month they would act. It remains to be seen how this will effect the hopeful noises that were being made about a deal. At least, by me it does, anyway.

affect, not effect.

@Pepperwort

Do NOT scapegoat immigrants for the gross inequality and lack of social mobility

What choices do we actually have, rather than sitting around wringing hands and deploring the lack of humanity? This level of mass migration cannot carry on. It's not a question of immigrants making the choices for British social structure. It's the fact that they are among the enablers of those choices, which restrict further what are already finitely limited resources. Immigration has been encouraged by the richer groups and it has effects on the poorer ones.

I could just as easily yell do NOT scapegoat the most disadvantaged groups in Britain for the choices of the richer. I disagree with your phrasing “The UK chose”; people from deprived backgrounds HAVE no good choices. This is not a functioning democracy: it’s a class-ridden oligarchy with an occasional crumb thrown out. You’re right there’s a legitimate debate and it won’t help to continually label concerns as ‘right-wing’. I'm sorry if I phrased something in a way that made you jump but that will not help either.

... I've always said we can and should discuss immigration

However, it is classic rightwing displacement activity, to fix on a scapegoat that have nothing to do with the fundamental structural problems of the UK

• to divert attention from the deep-seated causes

The choice in the years after 1945 to squander resources - including Marshall AId - to try to retain the empire, instead of rebuilding industry & infrastructure like other European countries

Then the choice to keep slashing the welfare state and run down public services to give tax cuts to the better off

The choice to go for the survival-of-the-fittest Anglo-American economic and soicla model instead of the Social contract that most successful European countries chose

The deference to incompetent posh twits and the chocie to elect them

These and many other bad choices causing current were NOT made by immigrants
They were made by decades of native Brit voters

You may hate / be terrified by immigration, but it has fuck all to do with structural UK problems going back several decades, some of them 150 years

It is high time that GB as a whole took responsibility instead of whining and looking for scapegoats

Maybe No Deal would actually force a reality check,
because sitting and whingeing about immigrants won't get the economy moving again

“Did we see a take-up in warehouse utilization? Yes we did. Did we see significant stocks built in advance of the world sort of falling off the cliff? Yes we did. Did it prove to be necessary? No it didn’t, and I think there’s been a whole load of lessons learned from that experience.”

Of course it proved to be unnecessary because uk gov caved at each pinch point and opted for delay.

Risk today is that the repeated 'unnecessary' stockpiling will mean that less preparations are in place for when we do fall off the cliff.

.

@FrankieStein402

>“Did we see a take-up in warehouse utilization? Yes we did. Did we see significant stocks built in advance of the world sort of falling off the cliff? Yes we did. Did it prove to be necessary? No it didn’t, and I think there’s been a whole load of lessons learned from that experience.”

Of course it proved to be unnecessary because uk gov caved at each pinch point and opted for delay.

Risk today is that the repeated 'unnecessary' stockpiling will mean that less preparations are in place for when we do fall off the cliff.

The boy who cried wolf ...

I wonder what Patel - and Pepperwort - would have done with the Kindertransport ?
These thousands of damn foreign children, fleeing here from mass murder ....

Or does being white make that much difference re being a "threat" ?

You need to tell us more about mass migration pepperwort. If you are talking about illegal immigration, you need to ask why people are fleeing their home countries. Most people would prefer to live in peace where they are, so what motivates them to make dangerous journeys, probably paying for the privilege to people smugglers with no certainty of arriving at their destination? Try learning a lesson from history and ask why Jews started fleeing Nazi Germany.

If it's legal migration - what is a country with an aging population supposed to do? Should everyone work until 80 and then drop dead?

As far as I am aware, the places voting Leave citing immigration were almost all places with very little immigration. Which does suggest that it was a convenient peg to hang grievances on.

@mrslaughan

So what did Gove say this week that pissed the EU off so much, that they decided not to wait to pursue legal remedy now? Because last I heard they were taking the sit and wait philosophy?

I expect he just opened his mouth. Or looked at them in a funny way, which he does a lot.

Tony Benn made a lot of sense and was a competent minister
If he'd been in charge of Brexit, I'd have few worries, tbh

However, back in 1983 when the Labour election manifesto was to leave the then EEC / Common Market

• before we became too entwined -

Mrs Thatcher, the Tory party & press were savaging Foot & Benn for this

Interesting comments on R4 today this morning from Australian wrt their approach to putting migrants onto offshore island - he emphasised that international law meant that it was essential the migrants were not held on Australian territory. Their focus being to destroy the people smugglers business model - because smuggled migrants would never reach Australian territory and never be allowed to settle.

He saw that problem with uk/France is that there are no international waters between us so we can't evade our obligations without breaking international treaties.

Obviously pfeffel/Patel's unconcern about breaking international laws/treaties and the Australian focus on finding ways to avoid their obligations is depressing and they're not going to stop blowing those dog whistles. (cf recent episodes of R4 "more or less" 30th Sept and 16th Sept, explaining that by any measure we were well down the league tables of migrant acceptance)

While we are talking about the kindertransport BigChoc, let us ask ourselves why it took a small number of compassionate and committed individuals to organise it? Why was it not a Government initiative, why weren't the adults offered sanctuary too?

Now that I am a grandmother, I think with horror of how awful it would be to see my small grandchildren plonked onto a train and sent off, and not knowing how they would fare, but knowing that it was probably better than the death which would almost certainly have awaited them.

Compare the treatment of Jews with how Nazi's in the V1 and V2 programmes were offered positions in the US/USSR after the war.

@mrslaughan

So what did Gove say this week that pissed the EU off so much, that they decided not to wait to pursue legal remedy now? Because last I heard they were taking the sit and wait philosophy?

... Gove ^^

@Peregrina

While we are talking about the kindertransport BigChoc, let us ask ourselves why it took a small number of compassionate and committed individuals to organise it? Why was it not a Government initiative, why weren't the adults offered sanctuary too?

Now that I am a grandmother, I think with horror of how awful it would be to see my small grandchildren plonked onto a train and sent off, and not knowing how they would fare, but knowing that it was probably better than the death which would almost certainly have awaited them.

Compare the treatment of Jews with how Nazi's in the V1 and V2 programmes were offered positions in the US/USSR after the war.

... I read reports that Conservative politicians like Chamberlain saif the "pogroms" as they called them against the Jews went too far - so they did know even in the 1930s - but that the Jews "had brought it on themselves"

Basically it is a common theme to demonise refugees you don't want - who don't have a useful skill / too old / too young -
and makle excuses for "useful" ones - like Nazi rocket scientists & other scientists - that you do want

A US manager I had in R&D told me that the great leap the US made in the 30 or so years after 1945 was considerably helped by the thousands of German scientists & technicians that were grabbed for military and space programs, who soon ended up in business R&D

A large part of the problem in the UK is that its economy is skewed to the South East, where the majority of the wealth is now concentrated.

Scotland needs more immigration - in fact, in the White Paper that the Scottish Government produced in advance of the Indyref (strange concept that ), it was explicitly stated that it would be encouraged and why.

Just to illustrate the point: Scotland's population has increased a whole 200,000 in nearly 60 years : 5.4 million estimated in 2017 and 5.2 million in 1961. In fact, the population dropped in the 1970s and only recovered to its 1951 level 50 years later in 2001 (Arguably during the period that the North Sea oil revenues helped fund the development of the South East as a financial services centre ).

So it's not the case that the UK doesn't need or want immigration. England - or the South East - doesn't want it.

A bit like Brexit

England doesn't want it, but I think you will find that it's places like the South West and North, where they have relatively few immigrants which are most anti. Oh and Kent, which is maybe not surprising because it's near France, just in case Raab didn't know.

But I can see that it could be galling for a skilled tradesperson to be beaten to a job of plumber or driver because a Pole can do the job just as well. But the answer to that would be better training schemes - which Johnson blathered on about the other day, but I don't think there was any more money for this.

This is also an area where Labour isn't as good as it thinks it is - there was the very good Tomlinson report in 2004 which Blair dismissed because he wanted to keep the 'gold standard' of A levels.

A US manager I had in R&D told me that the great leap the US made in the 30 or so years after 1945 was considerably helped by the thousands of German scientists & technicians that were grabbed for military and space programs, who soon ended up in business R&D

For those who aren't aware of the scale of the migration -

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip#:~:text=Operation%20Paperclip%20was%20a%20secret,the%20United%20States%2C%20for%20U.S.

Many of the management present in the firing room at "the Cape" during the like of the Apollo 11 launch cut their teeth in Peenemunde, and as you say the more junior engineers migrated to business R&D as Apollo ran down.

@BigChocFrenzy

A US manager I had in R&D told me that the great leap the US made in the 30 or so years after 1945 was considerably helped by the thousands of German scientists & technicians that were grabbed for military and space programs, who soon ended up in business R&D

Did he add in the bit about the US swerving patent and copyright law well into the 20th century ? Sort of Bejing on Hudson ?

foreignpolicy.com/2012/12/06/we-were-pirates-too/

For example ...

FWIW I should add in the defence of the German "imports" to the States that the only reason there was a woman (JoAnn Morgan) at a console in the firing room for the launch of Apollo 11 was because her ex-German
rocket program boss, Carl Sendler, considered her to be the best person in his team for the job...

www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/07/joann-morgan-moon-landing-apollo/594370/?silverid-ref=NTgzMTI1ODYxODM2S0

Still whinging about migrants? Even after they were flown in to pick veg during the pandemic. Even after they worked in care homes and on hospital wards.

Even after the great victory of Brexit people are still going to bang on about migrants. Migrants are not responsible for a decade of austerity nor the great sell off of industry in the 80’s. This country is determined never to learn from its mistakes but it’s a world champ at whinging and blaming everybody else for the shit it is in.

@Peregrina

England doesn't want it, but I think you will find that it's places like the South West and North, where they have relatively few immigrants which are most anti. Oh and Kent, which is maybe not surprising because it's near France, just in case Raab didn't know.

But I can see that it could be galling for a skilled tradesperson to be beaten to a job of plumber or driver because a Pole can do the job just as well. But the answer to that would be better training schemes - which Johnson blathered on about the other day, but I don't think there was any more money for this.

This is also an area where Labour isn't as good as it thinks it is - there was the very good Tomlinson report in 2004 which Blair dismissed because he wanted to keep the 'gold standard' of A levels.

.... It's not just about training: Competition from EE tradespeople reduced the previous gouging and shameless profiteering

Remember the swingeing call-out charges for plumbers, appliance repairs etc back in the 1980s, then 1990s ?

I remember £40, 60, then finally £100 in our area - and that was before the bill for the actual work
Sometimes plumbers etc would come out and say they could do nothing, so that was the callout payment down the drain

That stopped as soon as the Polish plumbers arrived ~ 2004
Rates are now fair, not cheap but not extortionate and it's payment for work done.

However many who specifically wanted the EE workers out do indeed want a return to the captive householders paying through the nose again.