Westministenders: The Beginning of Negotiations

[RedToothBrush]

Transition has a few hours left.

Then negotiations start and trade stops.

Far from being over, there are huge numbers of issues that lay unresolved.

And businesses both now in the UK and EU will cease to trade with each other just because the red tape is such a pain.

So whilst people will celebrate and think things are 'done' that just shows how much people are paying attention.

It will be interesting to see people gradually realising what has been lost...

Passports - I've always entered the UK on my UK one since I got it, regardless of which one I travelled on
because UK customs are so bloody rude to foreigners

Surely the passport you fly with doesn't have to be the same as the one you cross the border with (apart from USA and, I suspect, Russia)

Individual schools and a couple of councils are starting to take matters in their own hands again. This is what they ended up doing back in March due to abysmal central leadership. It’s so easy to just extend the break right now - a lot easier, imo, than ping-ponging kids back in and out over the next month.

@bellinisurge

Surely the passport you fly with doesn't have to be the same as the one you cross the border with (apart from USA and, I suspect, Russia)

If you are a US citizen then that's the passport you enter (and leave) the US on.

@mathanxiety

I have just read the Conservative Woman screed - it's a parody, right?? And the rest of the articles from that page too?

Links in the page:
The chin-wag, with James Delingpole and Laura Perrins
Get honest, get fired … or even worse
Give this woke nonsense the red card
And they call this freedom
Today’s talking point
Why do we need so many more houses? Immigration
The not-so exceptional year of Covid
Daily News Digest
Surrender of the conservatives
New Year book review: When childhood was an adventure

Take a look at this - it will make your eyeballs peel:
www.conservativewoman.co.uk/and-they-call-this-freedom/
The comments section... [holy crap]

Is it just me, or do most of the comments on the conservativeWOMAN site appear to be from.... men? Alan Bishop, JabbaPapa, Andy, Albert Mesrine, Nicholas=VictoryofthePeople, vicblain, Merlot_Man, Ivor Cummins, Derek Reynolds, Ivor MacAdam, Mr Cheerful, CitymanMichael, Kennie, Bryan Harris, Avondan, simonstephenson

Is it just me, or do most of the comments on the conservativeWOMAN site appear to be from.... men?

Well the women are in the kitchen and bringing up baby, so it's the menz that have to do the important work.

To correlation between Leave and people who think women being able to own property was a misstep is more than chance would suggest.

MayYouLive It’s so easy to just extend the break right now - a lot easier, imo, than ping-ponging kids back in and out over the next month.

Complete agree. And here’s an interesting discussion from Jo Maugham about whether the government would be able to force schools back.

Schools 'reopening' - or not - could be quite a big moment for the country. We may be about to test the limits of what a widely distrusted and incompetent Government can achieve by command.

mobile.twitter.com/JolyonMaugham/status/1345729431604764672

@MayYouLiveInInterestingTimes

Individual schools and a couple of councils are starting to take matters in their own hands again. This is what they ended up doing back in March due to abysmal central leadership. It’s so easy to just extend the break right now - a lot easier, imo, than ping-ponging kids back in and out over the next month.

Not only that, you grandparents are a childcare option for families who have stayed home over christmas. After a week at school, then that possibility may be removed if there are concerns that the children may have been exposed...

It mays it harder for many families.

The NHS Flu system vaccinates 15m people every winter.

There is no justification for setting up a separate COVID system.

Flu on Saturday, COVID on the other days of the week

• HCP
• elderly
• emergency workers
• teachers and TAs
• younger medically vulnerable

just get on with it.

My husband and I have been more cautious than most during this pandemic- so it's hardly surprising we are having discussions about sending DD back to school. But what surprised me is a text from a friend who has been far more gung Ho than me, asking what we're doing. Very similar situation to us - oldest child not back at school because at high school. Younger child in primary school and meant to head back.

Red - very good point about GP being childcare , but if kids have headed back and potentially been exposed- shutting the door on that option.

I have never been a Johnson fan, but even I didn't think he would guck up this badly.

I had thought the opposite of Jo Maughan this morning - I wondered if Johnson would prefer local councils and schools to make the decision for him..... but as usual Maughan makes an interesting point.

Well, one of the primaries in our town has taken the decision to close except for families where both parents are key workers, or where there are other circumstances, e.g. single parent key worker family.

I hope lots of schools follow suit, this government needs a slap round the chops.

Oh yes - you didn't agree that the LIbDems might be reduced to only two seats - bad luck.

Are you able to read? I said I questioned the seats he thought the LibDems might win, and would be extremely surprised if my seat was lost to Labour. With a very very fair wind, Labour might manage in Wantage.

Primaries are shut tomorrow in my town about three quarters of them. Some are using a PD day to put more measures in place but some have decided to shut to do the same. They may decide not to open at all which is quite funny as the promenade skateparks and playparks have been full of kids not social distancing all over the holidays. They damned if they close schools damned if they don't. The kids are safer at school it's when they are not at school they are not by allowing kids to go to parks etc when they should actually be shut. Parents frightened to send kids to school but hey let's go to park beach and shopping what divs! It's the teachers that don't feel safe but I daresay everyone working in ICU doesn't feel safe either or those working in carehomes it supermarkets. At end of day Government has lost control of the virus a long time ago and chaos ensues. All people's efforts wasted with useless tiers and in and out of lockdowns and always several steps behind the virus from day one. There's a lot of blood on the tories hands!

There's a lot of blood on the tories hands!

And people will still vote Tory thought.

Frankie Boyle made a fair point in his 2020 review that there's no need to try and influence peoples minds with microchips in vaccines. They'd still blindly vote Tory without ....

Has this NYTimes piece about how Britain has lost itself, been posted?

Although I would amend the heading to ask if England has lost itself, while Scotland, NI and Wales have been told to Go F**k themselves, as Johnson would so elegantly put it.

It’s a lower risk taking kids to parks outside and having them run around in the open air near 2 other kids for half an hour than it is to send them inside into one small enclosed room with kids from 30 different households for 7 hours, in the same building as up to 200 other kids. They need the exercise. Parks are the one thing I would keep open.

@Peregrina

Has this NYTimes piece about how Britain has lost itself, been posted?

Although I would amend the heading to ask if England has lost itself, while Scotland, NI and Wales have been told to Go F**k themselves, as Johnson would so elegantly put it.

And political rot has set in. Led by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the government plays fast and loose with parliamentary procedure and international treaties. When Moody’s downgraded Britain’s credit rating in October, it cited the “diminished” quality of British executive and legislative institutions. Ethical standards have taken a tumble, too, with the government turning a blind eye to workplace harassment of civil servants and cronyism creeping into the award of public contracts through the pandemic.

Shit government is actually costing us real money.

But Corbyn ....

Peregrina
That Peter Gumble article is sad, but I recognise every word.

Sos
The data on transmission and track and trace is pretty clear now

• the risk outdoors is very, very small

even indoors it can be significantly reduced by having windows open and allowing 2 sqm of floor per person

• which cannot happen in schools

(It did happen at my gym which is why I'm still sad that gyms and other forms of exercise are closed)

even indoors it can be significantly reduced by having windows open and allowing 2 sqm of floor per person
- which cannot happen in schools

Windows open and wearing masks can be done in schools. Wearing masks reduces the distance required.

Secondary schools in Ireland have windows open and compulsory mask wearing. In ds' school, they are allowed wear hoodies and coats on top of their uniforms. There hasn't been any major levels of transmission in secondary schools. I don't understand why they don't do the same for primary from 1st or 2nd class (age about 6-8) up.

Ochon
Oh indeed, masks should be standard.
I remember from another thread somebody saying that Spanish school kids wear them from age 6.

I live in a poor white area - the numbers wearing lanyards and no mask is scary
but that comes down to SHIT messaging from the top.

But we are where we are.
Get the vaccination system under the control of the flu teams
Get track and trace under the control of the Public Health teams
Let each LEA decide the policy for the schools in its patch
Localism ....

Masks are obligatory in schools in France from primary (usually 6yr-olds) up.

@ListeningQuietly - I remember from another thread somebody saying that Spanish school kids wear them from age 6.

My niece, who lives in Spain, recently sent some photos of her son on his way to play school. He was wearing a mask. He's just barely 3.

It's the teachers that don't feel safe but I daresay everyone working in ICU doesn't feel safe either or those working in carehomes it supermarkets.

That's very unfair. Those other 3 professions wear PPE, two of whom also follow infection control measures as standard. In my local supermarket they sit behind perspex wearing a mask in a large well ventilated space.

It's really not comparable at all and it's very lazy thinking.

DD has now made it back to her country. It was not a pleasant experience. She couldn't check in on line but had to go to a staffed desk.The person on the desk hadn't got a clue what a residence card from her country looked like, and had to phone someone up, which then enabled them to over-ride the computer system to let her board. On the other side, her passport was stamped. I am not sure whether it should have been or not. We think probably not. I don't think the UK is the only country which doesn't know the rules. A mess basically and one which in more than four years ought easily to have been sorted out. It was all very stressful..

One little moment of schadenfreude came for me when driving between Oxford and High Wycombe: there is a field which always displays UKIP/Brexit billboards. On today's billboard the words Sell Out had been pasted across. Well, if you trusted Johnson to keep his word, then you deserve what you get, since your vote has made my DCs lives more difficult.

But to cheer myself up I see that Yorkshire bylines have published The Davis Downside Dossier.

A luta continua.

Not that I am cheered by the Downsides, I am cheered that someone has prepared a list of the promises which the Brexiters have failed to keep.