Westminstenders: Going, going, cummings

[RedToothBrush]

As expected he's fucking off and leaving everyone else to pick up the pieces in January. But it does look like he was eventually shown the door and left with a cardboard box. As he should have been months ago.

This has nothing whatsoever to do with Johnson needing an image change, like the shape shifting creep he is, to one that fits more with the incoming Biden Administration. In other words hes got some serious sucking up to do...

... Meanwhile in Brexit land we are going into yet another final week of talks.

Many expect Cummings departure to signal 'the cave in'. The Eu say we havent moved enough and the uk say the EU wants us to do all the moving... Except the EU have done lots of moving. Barnier is still looking for a groundsman to level his field to play. We have yet to work out we aren't Canada and distance is important to trade.

Of course if we don't get a deal, that Pfizer vaccine in Germany that we want, might be hit with delays and extra costs we just can't afford.

FatCat mine too. No real loss - the blood thicker than water bollocks has long missed it's target with me.

Festival of Brexit - maybe use the money to remove the need for food banks?

Rifts caused by Brexit

@DGRossetti

Rifts caused by Brexit

Ohhh... first full and official target to deflect responsibility... It is those damn Scots that are to blame for a no deal. A devolved government that has no official power in the negotiating process...

Yes, I'll buy that. Anyone else?

@ListeningQuietly

Dear magic Grandpa just fuck off and take your acolytes with you you are damaging the life chances of the people you purport to support www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-55057680 ANYTHING that pushes Government incompetence of the front pages has no place in the Opposition party

Yep.

@DGRossetti

Rifts caused by Brexit

Very simple solution. Call an indy ref and, borrowing from your national anthem, get rid of the perfidious scots.

Britain’s ‘Festival of Brexit’ is set to get £29million in this Wednesday’s spending review.

Remember last summer/autumn when they had that ridiculous £100million "Get Ready for Brexit" advertising campaign for non-Brexit-Day #3 (or whatever), the precursor to this autumn's "Ready/Steady/Fart" I remember thinking the following:

If, at any time from 2016 onwards, the government had simply offered every UK citizen £1million to forget about this patently stupid fantasy, how many of the supposedly utterly dedicated Patriotic ToryBrexitannianNationalPlaguist BeLeavers would really have said that they'd rather have Brexit instead? For less than the cost of one pointless empty sloganeering advertising campaign, let alone the monstrous overall cost of Brexit, the whole fucking nightmare could have evaporated.

When I heard that Gove was speaking out against people who were sneaking around behind the governments back with foreign powers, I did think that Priti Patel was being discussed.

If, at any time from 2016 onwards, the government had simply offered every UK citizen £1million to forget about this patently stupid fantasy, how many of the supposedly utterly dedicated Patriotic ToryBrexitannianNationalPlaguist BeLeavers would really have said that they'd rather have Brexit instead? For less than the cost of one pointless empty sloganeering advertising campaign, let alone the monstrous overall cost of Brexit, the whole fucking nightmare could have evaporated.
The only problem with this is one of maths. £1,000,000 x 60,000,000 is a bigger number than even Brexit will cost. Unless my maths is out (a distinct possibility)

The problem was, the "wisdom" in 2016 was that 2020 would be just like 2016, only with a different date in the top right of the page. A curiously myopic thinking that pretty much characterises "dim".

You see it sometimes on threads here, where discussion about the future reveals that it can't possibly be like because "that doesn't suit me".

Well, now we know. 2020 isn't 2016 plus 4. It's now starting to resolve into a completely different world. With the seismic shift of Covid and a volte-face from the US leadership taking us to 2024.

Flogging the dead horse of Brexit into 2021 makes no sense in todays world.

HS2 is another poster child for an idea whose time died in the 2010s.

@DGRossetti

When I heard that Gove was speaking out against people who were sneaking around behind the governments back with foreign powers, I did think that Priti Patel was being discussed.

@Jason118

If, at any time from 2016 onwards, the government had simply offered every UK citizen £1million to forget about this patently stupid fantasy, how many of the supposedly utterly dedicated Patriotic ToryBrexitannianNationalPlaguist BeLeavers would really have said that they'd rather have Brexit instead? For less than the cost of one pointless empty sloganeering advertising campaign, let alone the monstrous overall cost of Brexit, the whole fucking nightmare could have evaporated. The only problem with this is one of maths. £1,000,000 x 60,000,000 is a bigger number than even Brexit will cost. Unless my maths is out (a distinct possibility)

Haha, I totally got lost with that

Last year I was thinking about offering everybody a free lottery ticket to forget about Brexit and got that utterly mixed up a year on!

DGR my DH describes HS2 as HS 💩
It's going to be quite close to us if it gets this far north but I don't know if anyone will need it now - y'know, zoom and all that...🤦🏻‍♀️

@pussycatinboots

DGR my DH describes HS2 as HS 💩 It's going to be quite close to us if it gets this far north but I don't know if anyone will need it now - y'know, zoom and all that...🤦🏻‍♀️

When is it supposed to be finished ? 2030 ? 2035 ? By which time the 1990s problems it was supposed to address will have had kids of their own having kids and looking for primary schools.

Tatania writes
"The problem is Brexit is not a humane ideology of itself."

Wow, leaving membership organisation for European countries is "inhumane?!" It is a very, very short step from there to decry people voting for it as inhuman. I'd suggest you essentially have done that, certainly what it felt like to me.

@LouiseCollins28

Tatania writes "The problem is Brexit is not a humane ideology of itself."

Wow, leaving membership organisation for European countries is "inhumane?!" It is a very, very short step from there to decry people voting for it as inhuman. I'd suggest you essentially have done that, certainly what it felt like to me.

Putting all that to one side, what are your views on the cost so far of Brexit of £100 billion plus, and the BoE determination that the damage Brexit is doing to the UK exceeds Covid ?

Still happy ?

Brexit certainly brought out some ugly things, even if you didn't see (or notice them) yourself, Louise. In the weeks after the referendum, I heard totally random people saying things I didn't usually hear bog standard British people saying in public:

• the man on the commuter train loudly referring to the Muslim population of a local market town as "towel-heads" to his companion and then looking around with a big smirk

• Another man waiting for a taxi at an empty taxi rank, also on the phone to someone, complaining that all the taxi drivers were Muslim (using a racial slur associated with Pakistanis)

• I travelled on a work trip with a Polish colleague (very, very qualified in her field) and had a taxi driver in the NE tell her she'd "have to be heading off soon." He didn't mean her return trip to the station.

That was just in the first few weeks. 20 years in the UK, and I'd only seen one comparable incident and that was from someone who may have been off his medication. These were people who were all definitely sober, and clearly wanted to say it all out loud.

Brexit was based on lies.

Half the country are angry because they knew from the outset that they had been lied to.

The other half are angry because they are realising they were lied to.

But the fuckwits elected in December 2019 plough on.

In 2 words: still happy

In more than 2 words. It is entirely plausible that the long term effects of not having a deal with the EU will be more damaging than COVID. A "no deal" Brexit period of unspecified length is easy to identify as a more damaging threat than a COVID threat which, hopefully, should be well on the way to being nullified within the next 6 months.

Banks prize stability, because thats the best way for them to keep making money so they, and their head personnel will argue strongly against any sources of instability, which "No Deal" Brexit undoubtedly would be a major one.

Where's that £100bn plus cost figure from?

@LouiseCollins28

Tatania writes "The problem is Brexit is not a humane ideology of itself."

Wow, leaving membership organisation for European countries is "inhumane?!" It is a very, very short step from there to decry people voting for it as inhuman. I'd suggest you essentially have done that, certainly what it felt like to me.

It depends how you go about it. The Leave campaign explicitly sowed division and mistrust of EU citizens indeed all immigrants to effect its aim; it featured ads recalling anti-Semitic slogans that incited racial hatred; it fuelled a flurry of intolerance, racist and xenophobic incidents; intentionally smeared cosmopolitan peoples as ‘citizens of nowhere’ and it lied to it’s citizens: all of this is inhuman and downright unethical.

The Brexit ideology, like many a populist ideology before it, divides between them and us. It intentionally scapegoats groups to unify its supporters against a common enemy - immigrant minorities on the one hand and the elite on the other.

The current division in this country is purely the result of Brexit ideology.

If you feel offended by this, consider how it may have felt to be an immigrant in this country since the vote. During which many immigrants have left the country having been made to feel intentionally unwelcome.

Louise
ukandeu.ac.uk/the-uk-economy-brexit-vs-covid-19/

Which bits of being outside the EU are you most looking forward to ?

Brexit certainly brought out some ugly things, even if you didn't see (or notice them) yourself, Louise

Or chose to ignore them.

Where's that £100bn plus cost figure from?

Oh no, fool me once etc . Where would it have to be from for you to believe it ?

Brexit is like flared trousers now the UK has gone punk.

I throw in May’s speech with the Leave campaign because as she couldn’t beat it she joined and became its circus master.

We are where we are because of her rigid narrow mean vision of hard Brexit.