Westminstenders: Prepare for what we said would never happen

[RedToothBrush]

I think that there may be a run on tinned tomatoes and pasta coming. Pizza will no longer have mozzarella in 2021.

On the plus side turnips are in season.

@borntobequiet

Keeping gyms open at least keeps hordes of steroid -fuelled body builders off the streets, where they might cause trouble. Disclaimer: I have friends who fall into this category and they are lovely people. But unhappy when deprived of gym sessions.

Without doing a stroke of research I'd assumed that a lot of Tory MPs ran gyms.

Sorry, what are we losing that's irreplaceable? Not sure if you're referring to losing our ability to be critical friends of each other within a union or the loss of the union itself there?

If you are referring to the loss of the union as an entity, yes I would share sadness felt over its loss but ultimately national self determination means more for me.

@borntobequiet

Keeping gyms open at least keeps hordes of steroid -fuelled body builders off the streets, where they might cause trouble. Disclaimer: I have friends who fall into this category and they are lovely people. But unhappy when deprived of gym sessions.

Tee hee. My gym friends are ladies of a certain age and they are really scary when deprived of their classes and swimming

If you are referring to the loss of the union as an entity, yes I would share sadness felt over its loss but ultimately national self determination means more for me.

I was referring to the Union. Although you make an excellent point about self determination that appears to have escaped the current Westminster government. And as long as it does, it also weakens the arguments for Brexit - which now translates into "support for Boris". Brexit".

@LouiseCollins28

Sorry, what are we losing that's irreplaceable? Not sure if you're referring to losing our ability to be critical friends of each other within a union or the loss of the union itself there?

If you are referring to the loss of the union as an entity, yes I would share sadness felt over its loss but ultimately national self determination means more for me.

I vote for Northumbia and Mercia for self determination.

I hereby declare myself a Citizen of Wessex

@DGRossetti - Thanks to the likes of Farage and chums, and being made painfully aware of how poor my knowledge of Wales, Ireland and Scotland is, I try to be sensitive not to say "British" as a lazy way of saying "English". Maybe 40 years ago I wouldn't have been aware, but that's progress for you.

Except those of us in Ireland get a bit irked when we see Ireland lumped in with British countries in that way. Although I know you know the difference between Ireland and NI.

Except those of us in Ireland get a bit irked when we see Ireland lumped in with British countries in that way. Although I know you know the difference between Ireland and NI.

I can only apologise, and hope that most sensible people can tell the difference between good faith and deliberate provocation.

Bearing in mind I am of a generation that has seen seismic shifts in so much that was learned at school when Peking was the capital of China, and Bonn the capital of West Germany. So surely we can be forgiven the odd misspeak ?

Part of the problem in England is the weird and accepted trope that education finishes the second you leave school. As we can seen from the herculean efforts of some Brexiteers to avoid cluttering up their tiny minds with new facts. Much more economical to stick to the old ones.

Partly apropos this question of self-determination I was musing on which countries have been established with unchanged borders the longest. It turns out not to be an easy question - in part because of how you define what a country's territory is.
The potential candidate is Portugal, largely unchanged since 1297, but this is if you don't count Macau going to China, or Olivença going to Spain.

Which puts the time that Scotland has been united with the rest of the UK into context.

@ListeningQuietly citizens of Wessex united! ... No hanging Judge Jeffries to quell the uprising this time.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Jeffreys,_1st_Baron_Jeffreys

Being one of the older members of MN and having been to a couple of religious schools, and therefore being taught a lot of scripture and learning about the Israelites, it was only when I was in my mid teens that I found out that Israel was only established in the late 1940s.

@DGRossetti - I can only apologise, and hope that most sensible people can tell the difference between good faith and deliberate provocation.

Of course. Your posting history makes it very clear there was no ill-intent. My statement that I know you know the difference was meant to convey that.

@Peregrina

Being one of the older members of MN and having been to a couple of religious schools, and therefore being taught a lot of scripture and learning about the Israelites, it was only when I was in my mid teens that I found out that Israel was only established in the late 1940s.

1949 ? From memory.

One of DFs friends did his national service in "Palestine". Got shot at and bombed by "Ben Gurions mob" as he put it. Then he'd add so when I was demobbed and watching telly and who's PM of Israel ? Only him !!! Funny old world innit ?

(just checked and it's 1948 ...)

DGR you sound exhausted and fed up.

Perhaps, foreign mischief and mischief-makers notwithstanding [Putin], in 100 or 200 years time people might look back and see this as the demolition merely of Westminster hegemony in these islands, and an unleashing of dragons - the Celtic, and even perhaps a rebirth for those of the other north Europe peoples here. Maybe it’s just a shift towards, indeed, Mercia and Northumbria and a new union.

DGR you sound exhausted and fed up.

I'm starting to envy the dead.

It’s not going to be an easy time.

I’m proud to be a lot Irish, a bit Scottish, a smidgen Welsh and Mercian by birth.
I live in the quietude of the rural South West Midlands, a region generally unsung for its beauty (except by AE Housman when not in Shropshire mode) but lovely nonetheless.

I am another Wessex resident. Happy to devolve.

Very non westminstenders hugs to DGR
The days are getting shorter
the weather is pants
the threat of random lockdowns gets more surreal by the day
BUT
we both have a new Private Eye to read
and
if you all want a real laugh ....
www.theguardian.com/film/2020/oct/21/rudy-giuliani-faces-questions-after-compromising-scene-in-new-borat-film

www.smbc-comics.com/comic/in-charge

I’ll send my dragons to look for Excalibur, about time it showed up.

on the ft article earlier today:

Peter Foster @pmdfoster
NEW: If you had asked me, before it happened, whether a Global pandemic would bring the UK together, or divide us, I would have said "unite us".

But that isn't what happened.

I cannot think of a story in my 25 years as a journalist that has so foregrounded the realities of devolution - not least because #COVID19 as a health crisis meant that Scottish, Welsh and NI govts did have a lot of control. /2

So when it came to decisions on quarantine from abroad, test and trace and locking/unlocking, time and again Westminster was confronted by the limits of its power/3

^Sure, it did not help that one part of the country is run by a party whose raison d'etre is to secede from the Union, but it is too crude to accuse Nicola Sturgeon of playing politics with a crisis - even if the polls show her demeanour played better than that of Boris Johnson
/4^

But what crisis did, undeniably, was give the leaders of the devolved governments a platform, on an almost daily basis, that I can't remember the like of. If I had time I'd count how many times Ms Sturgeon was on the BBC News at 10 in 2020 compared with other years in office/5

A platform has - as we've seen this week - been given to regional politicians like Andy Burnham but without the policy independence to match. As he tells us, the UK 'unlocked' in July without his advice/consultation, when the stock of the virus in the north remained high/6

So when London had come well through its peak southern business interests were clamouring to unlock. And they seem to have won the day at the expense - we now see - of the north, where the Reproduction (R) number was not nearly so depressed. /7

All this has proved a stormy curtain-raiser for what is coming in 2021 - #Brexit (for real) and the Holyrood elections that may well give Ms Sturgeon the platform to demand another independence referendum. When #COVID19 subsides, the Union will be the issue/8

And Brexit is material, because all those power that are being repatriated from Brussels need to be dished out - and this government has chosen to do it in a way that is pretty much as abrasive as possible, hence the hullabaloo round the UK Internal Market bill /9

All the furore round the law-breaking clauses on #Brexit have obscured the bitterness that the UK govt's approach has taken - if you have time read this report from the Centre On Constitutional Change - I will thread it another day. /10

Centre on Constitutional Change @CCC_Research
Our new report with the Wales Governance Centre and The UK in a Changing Europe' thinktank asks 10 questions about #InternalMarketBill to explore its impact for the future of devolution and intergovernmental relation in #UK

www.centreonconstitutionalchange.ac.uk/publications/uk-internal-market-devolution-and-union
UK Internal Market, Devolution and the Union

But it gets to the nub of why #Brexit will see an English government (re)asserting itself - on food standards, on discretionary spending, on state aid - over the devolved governments at a moment of constitutional volatility that has been highlighted by #COVID19 /11

I note in the FT article how Gove stressed the government's commitment to constitutional reform. And we know he's not exactly a fan of devolution. I hope people are paying attention...

I note in the FT article how Gove stressed the government's commitment to constitutional reform. And we know he's not exactly a fan of devolution. I hope people are paying attention...

Yes we are

Tentacles slapping Gove might have a Scottish accent but he is not welcome up here

Saw a great comment under a Martin Kettle article on the Guardian this evening about Johnson. Here's the article

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/oct/21/boris-johnson-compromise-prime-minister-manchester-brexit

and the comment...

"I think a large part of the problem is that people with Johnson's background of privilege are simply unable to imagine what it is like to live without a permanent cushion of readily available money. They cannot understand the concept of working for a finite sum of money, which lasts you a month or a week, and once it's gone, it's gone."

I think that's a really insightful comment about his background. The idea of this permanently available cushion which is a product of circumstances not effort, is a powerful one I felt.

It might be criticized from the POV that loads of people work damn hard to afford themselves any such "cushion" and of course loads of people work equally hard without being able to afford such a comfort but the commenters point about failure to understand "once its gone its gone" is powerful IMO.

So Robert Jenrick is now claiming that the footage of Andy Burnham finding out about the £22 million is staged as they'd had a phone conversation early and he'd told Burnham then. Which one is lying?

It's not so much "insightful" as "stating the fucking obvious"

This Cabinet of over privileged oaf, buffoons and narcissists doesn't have a fucking clue what it is like to live from pay cheque to pay cheque They think it is a sign of weakness, worse, fecklessness , that people on NMW have not managed to put aside funds for a rainy day. The Net Minimum Wage that isn't even a Living Wage