Westministenders: Where's my milk and cheese?

[RedToothBrush]

The 'smooth' exit from transition now leads to a million and one little things that you can't get hold of or took completely for granted.

Why is sainsbury in NI selling spa milk? Why can't you get hold of your favourite food stuff?

Its a slow strangulation of the country.

In which you get to learn all about the merits of the EU and what a donkey Johnson really is.

I don't for a minute mean that no Quaker was ever imprisoned, not at all, but breaking the law in protest (e.g. taking down a statue or invading a military base) doesn't necessarily get you a punitive sentence even though the law might suggest it would. And of course you risk imprisonment by taking the action (of conscience).
Also fair point that 'sectarian' might be wrong word, I will try to get hold of an early edition of the book you have mentioned. I just enjoy not opening papers to find out that x number of people out shopping have been blown up. Or people been shot through their living room window while watching TV with their child. (This was 'loyalists' I was about the same age as the child when I heard it on the news)
I agree with @DGRossetti that, on the whole, we the English don't learn. E.g. Boris sneering at Varadkar when he locked the Republic down before we did anything, trying to undermine the GFA. Thinking Europeans are thick? devious? incomprehensible? gullible? That people learn English to talk to us, not each other/ Americans / Australians. It is all so far from how I perceive things. It makes me sad.

[quote mrslaughan]Tbh - this actually upset me the most.... I think because they disbanding of a select commis the sort of thing we have come to expect..... but this has such huge ramifications for the environment abs planet and further generations....plus I keep bees , and just live them

twitter.com/peterstefanovi2/status/1347844717845868546?s=21[/quote]
many thanks @RedToothBrush for these threads & to all other contributors, i’ve been following you all for many years, i’m not as intelligent or articulate as you all so prefer to lurk. after reading @mrslaughans link which made me very sad thinking about the bees i thought i’d add this link which my husband sent me, i found it interesting, its an alternative point of view, wondered what you might think about it?

twitter.com/tom_clarke/status/1337737078789038082?s=21

apparently france has already been using the pesticide, our alternatives are to use eu which may use it or us sugar (even dodgier)

ps we are remainers, have an allotment, don’t use pesticides of any kind, make our own composts & grow lots of extra flowers for the bees :)

I once saw a woman tied to a lamppost being tarred and feathered surrounded by a baying mob.
This was Armagh, 1977.
It was brutal, animalistic and horrible to see.
People get very "academic" about Northern Ireland. We need to be very careful not to slip backwards to those times.

@KonTikki

I once saw a woman tied to a lamppost being tarred and feathered surrounded by a baying mob. This was Armagh, 1977. It was brutal, animalistic and horrible to see. People get very "academic" about Northern Ireland. We need to be very careful not to slip backwards to those times.

My family live very close to that area - we have neighbours whose 18year old son was shot though window of the farmhouse as he was Protestant, there is a memorial near the family home where an army vehicle was blown off the road, neighbours were shot by the army - I grew up with the troubles, I don’t want that again and Nationalism fills me horror.

I've started reading Heather Cox Richardson writing about the goings on in DC
I think she is their equivalent of our Brexit Blog

On all these things
weekly analysis will turn out to be more accurate
than moment by moment knee jerk

The USA is coming to a head rather quickly
the UK will take longer
but it will

💐

pmk

I found this on the French using neocotinoids too. www.fwi.co.uk/arable/france-to-lift-neonics-ban-to-save-beet-industry
It seems climate change and mild winters are providing us with booming aphid numbers, and they’re just not controllable. Let’s hope the cold snap we’re enjoying at the moment helps, and it will be kept under review.

There’s also this for good background: yorkshirebylines.co.uk/bees-and-neonicotinoids-rapid-action-on-the-environment/

It seems that exhaustive monoculture is also a major factor. The more we damage the environment, the more imbalanced it becomes, the more we have to damage. We do need that agricultural overhaul. And at the bottom of it all, is overpopulation.

"If someone is trying to blow seven bells out of you - over a period of many years - then you think you'd do a little to educate yourself ? I know I did.

Nope, we just sat back, let the government spoon feed us the "nasty people" line, and let the bombs bang forever. Bearing in mind the UK knew damn well in 1969 that it could not win any sustained engagement with the IRA. And the IRA knew they could not win against the British army."

Whatever bombing campaign was underway on the mainland is nothing to what the people of Belfast had to put up with. Not just the bomb attacks: the bomb scares that regularly paralysed the city centre.
Do you think they failed to educate themselves, too?

I don't accept that people here didn't know who the IRA were and what they were trying to achieve. Ordinary people, both here and in NI and the Republic, were well aware and I remember sympathies from many that the North should be united with the South.
However, most people were also sick to the back teeth of the terrorists, Republican and Loyalist, quite a few of whom were not the idealists of old and richly deserved your epithet. The hapless pair who blew themselves up in Shankill, for instance - an example of Republican sectarianism.

No easy answers on environment , we are past that era. I suppose I could add, if France can overturn the ban it in the EU, so could we. And thanks to @stuckinreverse, I’m always showing up my lack of articulacy on here!

www.rte.ie/news/2021/0109/1188685-northern-ireland-britian-supply-chain-brexit/

The supply chain between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK is a "boat breakdown" away from collapse as a result of the post-Brexit regulatory border, the UK's Road Haulage Association has warned the British government.

www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1381840/Brexit-trade-deal-news-joe-biden-us-boris-johnson-nicola-sturgeon-latest

Britons furious amid claims Biden may SNUB Boris for Sturgeon – ‘Keep your nose out’

BRITONS have reacted with fury amid claims President-elect, Joe Biden may snub Boris Johnson to support Nicola Sturgeon's Scottish independence bid.

I find the Express hyperbole rather sweet in a soap opera way; that bit about everyone "reacting with fury". I doubt it caused a raised eyebrow in Westminster.

Biden's got a mountain of work to do, before he even thinks outside America's borders. Covid-19, #BLM, the Trumpian coup...it's going to be a busy 100 first days. Foreign policy towards small allies will be waaaay down the list.

I certainly don't think that we in Great Britain had anything like a full understanding of what was going on in N Ireland. We got a very one sided picture of 'IRA terrorists'.

Yesterday, Mr Gove said that difficulties in moving goods between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom will get worse before they get better.
Absolutely pathetic Gove. It's your job to govern, for the whole of the United Kingdom.

I don't normally click on Express links and it wasn't worth the bother this time, but it is rather enjoyable to see the chickens that Johnson, Rees-Mogg and Gove hatched are now coming home to roost.

The Express was so happy to have got Brexit done; the euphoria seems to have worn off rather quickly.

What a surprise, they were lying about the EU being at fault for not allowing the 90 day visa exemption for artists and musicians. They had, predictably, refused to reciprocate.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/uk-visa-free-work-musicians-eu-brexit-b1784600.html

I do think that Brexit will now be a very slow
death by 1000 cuts
in that the goods will still arrive
but they will be more limited and more expensive

the jobs will be lost
but they will drive a stagnation in house prices that will suit a lot of people

it will only be when the next world crisis happens
and the UK is highlighted as a bit player
that politicians will truly wake up

I have to admit I become more disappointed by Starmer
as each day passes

his obsession with the red wall which just shows that he does not understand either demography or chromosomes
means that he has alienated more than he has pandered

The UK desperately needs a new Political party

• that is internationalist
• that understands chromosome biology
• that really wants to deal with climate change

and I have no idea where it will come from

I'm baffled by the Express headline.
If Britons have reacted with fury, does that mean Scots are no longer British?

Has Scottish independence already happened? Somebody should tell Sturgeon.

That Express article appears to have been written by someone “on glue” in MN parlance. But I suppose they all do.
I love their economics and finance expert, Ronald MacDonald.

his obsession with the red wall

Exactly the mistake that Corbyn made. He refused to appear at the People's vote marches, despite there being strong support from Labour members, because he was worried about the Red Wall vote. A fat lot of good it did him, because he lost many of them anyway.

I am not surprised that the musician business has Priti Patel's hands on it.

The UK desperately needs a new Political party

I see the only way with a FTPT system would be for all the Opposition parties to get together for one election with the express intention of destroying Johnson's Tories. Otherwise, they get nowhere.

Today was the first shopping outing since before Christmas. The fruit and veg was all looking a bit sad. BBD within a day. Bugs on the broccoli. Freezer goods picked over. Especially the frozen veg. I wondered if the veg had been held up a few days enroute or whether the retailer was getting rid of older stock.

Twitter had a purge of lots of accounts yesterday, it seems. And these people are confused.

Same happening in the US, Swedish.
People losing thousands of followers.
(But a suggestion that some of the purged accounts may be bots.)
So why are Twitter doing this now? Seems they could have done it all along...

mobile.twitter.com/Slade/status/1347914937918775299

I don’t do Twitter because I value my sanity but I’d imagine wholesale disappearances would be bots. You’d have to be a bot to follow Hoey.

Exactly the mistake that Corbyn made. He refused to appear at the People's vote marches, despite there being strong support from Labour members, because he was worried about the Red Wall vote. A fat lot of good it did him, because he lost many of them anyway.

Remainers lost the argument. No individual was going to turn the tide against Brexit. Labour lost in 2019 because they were divided, Johnson promised a weary public to essentially make Brexit go away. Of course Corbyn wasn't helped by non Tories not voting Labour because they wanted somebody like Starmer in (another inspired, tactical masterstroke ). Centrists continually make the wrong call. New political party? Tried that with Change UK.

"Communist broadband" would be quite useful now though. I remember some centrists scoffing at that.

Meanwhile...the SNP is demanding compensation for the trashing of key industries, including seafood.

www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/jan/10/snp-demand-billions-in-brexit-compensation-for-scotland

Quick pic of Provence as you may not imagine it...