The Westminster Arms

[DustyDiamond]

Shiny new thread 😍😍

The Westminster Arms:
A non-partisan politics pub-thread for varied political chit-chat & other such stuff

Cheers all 🍷

I think many of us simply watch parliament TV now for our political news, rather than switching on MSM to get selective quotation plus interpretative froth.

Yes!

I was gobsmacked at how many people were actually talking about watching BBC Parliament last year during all the shenanigans

I'd never bothered watching it before, but was getting infuriated with the incessant spin in reporting (from all sides) & just wanted to get the facts straight from source

Bloody googling Hansard & reading it as well 😱😱

Never, ever thought I'd be like that 😂

The MSM are trying to catch up with the democratisation of information flow; their status as guardian of knowledge and interpretation is crumbling. And I know there's all sorts of nonsense circulating on the internet as well, but I'd rather have free speech so nonsense can be challenged, rather than some sort of paternalistic view that Real Journalists are more objective and trustworthy than anyone else.

So much agree with this!

(You're still shit at tea making though 🙄🙄)

Proper lol dusty.

Cheddar or gruyère? If you say gruyère then I'm afraid we're done here.

We're so deprived howabout and I still call them emotes, there's no hope for me.

I have definitely given up being fed bias from the MSM and now watch BBC Parliament quite a lot - get it from the horse's mouth so to speak.

I'm very boring & not a 🧀 buff

I like mozzarella & cheddar on toasties & in sandwiches etc

I view most cheeses with suspicion

I lost trust in MSM during Red Ed's campaign because I happened to have the time and resources to do my own research and could see all the distortion. Tbh before that I had been too busy to bother much with it anyway.

Another one completely agreeing with you Ommward. If you insist on putting milk in then any order you like is fine with me, but I see no purpose for Gruyere in anything.

Dan Hodges giving a bit of perspective this morning:

"Sir Keir has today written to the Cabinet Secretary expressing his outrage at No.10 refusing to brief journalists from specific newspapers. Good for him. Except this is the same Sir Keir who kicked-off his leadership campaign saying he wouldn't speak to the Sun".

Dan is good value on twitter.

The spat over Boris doing direct-to-internet-and-provide-msm-with-footage statements is weird too. What's the advantage of umpteen press agencies sending teams with expensive kit to capture almost identical footage of exactly the same statement? Is it because if he does it live, they might catch a slip of the tongue, or he might have the opportunity for a retake if he does it with his own press team recording it, and that's potentially unfair? Or he's released the whole thing so it's old news by the six o clock news?

Howabout I've searched for ways to include iphone emojis on the site. I can't find anything that's not convoluted, involving downloading them as images. I don't use MN on my phone other than to read. It's all too small and limiting for me and I like to scroll backwards and forwards before posting.

Does anyone know an easier way to include emojis on a MacBook? I know they are superfluous to requirements, but sometimes they just hit the spot.

This brand of conservatism has to be close enough to what traditional conservative voters recognise and value (and that's valid, I hope we will agree), while also appealing to enough traditional labour voters outside the big metropolitan areas

That's my take, ommmward. I've said for some time that Boris is a One Nation Tory, on the left of the party, as opposed to the Thatcherites such as Liz Truss and Priti Patel who are on the right of the party.

Boris's pitch to the nation was entirely consistent with his own values (for example, he is pro-immigration and favours an amnesty for illegal migrants who have been in the UK a long time and are of good character). However - and this, I think, was key to his success - he is as far to the left as Conservative voters will tolerate and as far to the right as traditional Labour voters will tolerate. It's a very specific position and it is the one, I believe, that was preciously occupied by the 1997 edition of Tony Blair.

With regard to ClassicDom, he is a disruptor. That's a useful tool to have in any team if you can harness it.

With regard to his plans to reform the Civil Service, he seems to have found a willing ally in Sir Mark Sedwill.

My own view is that the reason he is being given latitude to nettle and shake up the Civil Service is simply in order to put it on its mettle. He won’t achieve the fundamental changes he seeks but he might well force it to think twice about some of its standard practices. Transfers and promotions that might have been nodded through will now have to be justified; expansion in staff numbers will have to be argued for on a case-by-case basis in a way that the private sector would easily recognise. That’s no bad thing. This is taxpayers’ money we are talking about and all such expenditure should be justified.

Of course, it could also all be a huge bluff. The true nature of reform might be much milder than his blog sets out. In that case, the Civil Service will absorb it quickly and without fuss (although not without slipping in a few cunning twists of its own) in the hope that by doing so, it has seen off the bigger threat. It’s something the Civil Service has done many times before when faced with that sort of thing.

I'd be interested to read Arse's view in response to your post and whether it differs in any meaningful way.

ClassicDom as disruptor - yes. That's better than the "chaotic neutral" label I've been mentally giving him.

Oh, and yes to the PP with the Kier/Keir misspelling. The webchat was cringy with so many misspellings of his name. I didn't like his minimum use of paragraphs either, and was expecting an MN pedant to come along and point it out .

I was tempted hospitality grin.

Ah Dusty, we were clearly separated at birth when it comes to cheese. Most of it just smells like feet to me, but when melted on a sandwich or a pizza it becomes tolerable.
My cheese-loving friends are horrified.
(I don't mind a bit of garlic Bousin too, on a cracker, mind)

You are all such lightweights.

I have just one word to say in the Great Cheese Debate.

Roquefort.

Anything else is for wimps.

I can spell Boursin, I just cant fecking type!

Parmesan here for me, with a very chunky red wine and crusty bread. I could live on that. Pity all 3 have to be eked out.

Please don't put roquefort in any of the Arms' breakfasts Lily.

Morning all. Sorry I'm late.....residents committee meeting on the M6 again😱😱😱
Lovely breakfast yet again. Thanks Singing. And a large mug of coffee. Just what's needed.
The press pack definitely needs slimming down. I listen to radio 4 and their news reporters are often different to those on radio 2 and again to those on television. All reporting the same thing. All being paid by the licence tax.
I fully agree that a government, recently elected with a large majority, can invite who it likes.
Why invite the DM when it is only going to distort what you say anyway.
Guido has it right. Live stream from the briefing. Do we still need newspaper journalists?

I am trying to follow the Labour leadership fiasco but it seems to me that they are all looking inward. They need to remember that their membership will be voting and they are not all in momentum.
I don't see anything that will cause Boris any trouble, and that's a pity. We need an effective opposition.

Very interesting about the EU budget and the fact that they can impose an increase.
Who is "they"?
I still don't get the bit about September's Guardian crossword. Please can someone enlighten me.

Omm, I do grow runner beans and other beans, but outside.

ommward

have to deal with that in chunks and probably won't be as clear as i'd like since trying to work at the same time..

many of those dropping labour for Brexit Party and getting conservative instead, but they will have known that was the risk in fptp and will have calculated that they were willing to let the conservative candidate slip through rather than vote labour)

I don't think most voters do calculate in that way actually. People are encouraged to vote and told their vote is essential, they expect it to count. Still, yes, if Brexit was what they wanted then I assume they were happy to settle for the tories, despite everything, to get the job 'done'.

Even though the job is not done, and nobody is sure what it being 'done' will yet look like.

It's closer to being done than it would have been under labour (we'd be faffing around renegotiating the WA and then having a referendum on it and then whatever fall out after that...) or Lib Dems (nuff said). The only way to have it more done at this point would have been to have Brexit Party in power with the clean break no deal happening last week, and I assume that would be less palatable than what we have!!

I don't really see what faster or clearer progress the government could have made since mid December - what would your best case scenario have been from the vantage point of 13 December? What have they left undone that they ought to have done (in Brexit actions)? And what (Brexit related) have they done that they ought not to have done? So far, for me, from the pov of sovereignty and independence and openness to the EU just as one foreign jurisdiction among many, they seem to be playing a blinder.

Arse normally I would absolutely agree about many voters not normally calculating, but this last GE was all about tactical voting. The heartlands with a BP candidate split the vote between Cons and BP, allowing LP to sneak in. I think Cons would have claimed even more seats had it not been for Nigel Farage.

we'd be faffing around renegotiating the WA and then having a referendum on it and then whatever fall out after that...

it's not 'faffing around' to try to take into account the diametrically opposed wishes of the people

Sajid Javid said the Treasury would not lend support to manufacturers that favour EU rules as the sector had had three years to prepare for Britain’s transition. How can you prepare when you don’t know what you are preparing for. (I’m hopefully he will loose his job in any reshuffle).

Businesses are going to suffer with preparation if the Government can’t or won’t say what is being planned. As a no deal is back on the table, supply chain businesses and those using a JIT approach are going to struggle significantly.

Do you think the current conservative government is a genuine threat to democracy

I certainly do. Pp bash on about Bercow but never mention the unlawful (and massive break with convention) of proroguing parliament, then the horrendous bullying and braying session that took place after it was reconvened. 'Boris' really showed his true and ugly face there and his cohorts showed their total lack of principle or decorum

The outright lying during the GE campaign was another assault on democracy. Now we have threats to the BBC - not 'reform', threats - and to the press. it's a process of chipping away and breaking down, backed up by willing tory voters