British Politics

[Dazey]

 

 

[DieselDaisy]

Poor Gav making a complete dog's dinner of education. Not sure why Raab is so high? Amanda Milling - no me neither?

 

[DieselDaisy]

On 12/25/2020 at 6:28 PM, Padme said:

Is the agreement between Norway and the EU similar to the one the UK made?

Further on this,

Norway's Centre Party: 'The British have a better deal than the EEA''.

 https://www.thelocal.no/20201229/norways-centre-party-the-british-have-a-better-deal-than-the-eea

 

 

[SoulMonster]

11 minutes ago, DieselDaisy said:

Further on this,

Norway's Centre Party: 'The British have a better deal than the EEA''.

 https://www.thelocal.no/20201229/norways-centre-party-the-british-have-a-better-deal-than-the-eea

Par for the course, Senterpartiet has been running on a platform to have Norway cancel the EEC agreement since when it was established.

[spunko12345]

The BBC news is a fucking joke. Giving some idiot woman a platform to say "we should just shield every one over 60 and let everyone else just get in with it". Then when the wet lettuce of a presenter stuttered, "how would we do that?" She replied "There's something bigger going on here". Unchallenged by the drippy presenter and this was a former tory Pensions Secretary whose now in the House of Lords. 

[DieselDaisy]

I was reading about Norway's economic model whereby they (the government) were doing what the Chinese do now basically which is acquiring commodities and assets, becoming majority shareholders in Norway's biggest companies such as Statkraft - Norway's market is very concentrated compared with the Anglosphere's. I think the government owns circa 37% of the Oslo market! This is not inherent to the Nordic model but seems to be uniquely Norwegian: public ownership in the free market (i.e., the company is still floating on the exchange and can be purchased by private investors), not nationalisation as with Britain, 1945-1979, all Corbynist beardo weirdos with arm patches and gravy stains on their ties.

3 minutes ago, spunko12345 said:

The BBC news is a fucking joke. Giving some idiot woman a platform to say "we should just shield every one over 60 and let everyone else just get in with it". Then when the wet lettuce of a presenter stuttered, "how would we do that?" She replied "There's something bigger going on here". Unchallenged by the drippy presenter and this was a former tory Pensions Secretary whose now in the House of Lords. 

They found time between remoaning and wokeing? Ditched the licence fee in spring. Door slammed on their minions. Letters in bin. 

[DieselDaisy]

If the ERG is backing the deal, Britain has received a good deal, vis-à-vis the EU. The ERG make Nige Farage look like Chuka Umunna.

PS

Edited December 29, 2020 by DieselDaisy

[Graeme]

Found this quite a good, and level-headed read https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/29/the-guardian-view-on-the-future-of-the-union-britain-faces-breakup?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other&fbclid=IwAR0QwBENzw738nsYMpY1glzW_7-827bOrzTYJq2154hZiZ_OOJEW1Z0xXFY.

The Guardian's editorial stance has traditionally been anti-independence, but they seem to have mournfully come round to the idea that since we're pulling in a different direction with regard to most areas of governance, it's really only fair to let us go.

The Guardian view on the future of the union: Britain faces breakup

The combination of Boris Johnson, Covid and Brexit is creating a constitutional crash that is waiting to happen in 2021

The Covid year has intensified potentially terminal strains within the UK’s four-nation union. When Boris Johnson began to grapple with the seriousness of the outbreak, the impact on the union was probably low on his list of concerns. But, as 2021 beckons, Mr Johnson’s approach to Covid has become a catalyst of the possible breakup of the United Kingdom. Covid’s most lasting political legacy in these islands may be that, in its aftermath, the UK will no longer exist.

When the pandemic began, Mr Johnson seemed to assume that he was acting for the whole of the UK. He gradually discovered that, as far as Covid was concerned, this was untrue. In practice, he was the prime minister only of England. Health policy had been devolved since 1919 in Scotland, and has been under the control of devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland since Tony Blair’s era. And since all three devolved nations and most English cities were led by non-Conservative politicians with their own views of how to deal with Covid in their areas, and with no love for Mr Johnson’s politics in most cases, coronavirus decision-making has struggled to reach a consensus, to the general detriment.

 

Mr Johnson bears heavy responsibility for this. But a second reason was that Scotland’s nationalist government, which wants to break up the UK, brilliantly seized an opportunity to emphasise its control of Covid policy. The Scottish National party first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, began regular Covid briefings on 20 March. She has since done more than 150 of them. Her briefings have mostly been models of factual accuracy, sensible advice and caution. The contrast with Mr Johnson’s intermittent and sometimes hyperbolic and error-strewn briefings has been in every way to Ms Sturgeon’s political advantage. Last month, an Ipsos Mori poll found that Ms Sturgeon had a net approval rating of plus 61 among Scots for her handling of the pandemic, while Mr Johnson had a net rating of minus 43. There has been majority support in Scotland for breaking away from the UK in 17 successive opinion polls.

Distinctive paths

The combination of Ms Sturgeon’s high profile and the realities of health policy devolution has had consequences in Wales and Northern Ireland, and even at English local level too. Mark Drakeford has not attempted to emulate his Scottish counterpart’s daily control of the media message. But the Welsh first minister has also followed his own distinctive path, taking some radically different and more cautious decisions, and acquiring in the course of the pandemic a higher public profile, in and outside Wales, than his predecessors. Northern Ireland’s power-sharing means its first minister, Arlene Foster of the Democratic Unionist party, has to share a platform with her opponent, Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill, and is therefore unable to achieve a similar ascendancy. Nevertheless, Northern Ireland, like Wales and Scotland, has at times very publicly diverged from English measures. Mr Johnson’s lazy libertarianism and shameful lateness to act have few echoes outside England.

Covid could now be the straw that breaks the union’s back, especially in Scotland. But Covid policy is not the main reason why the future of the union is now so uncertain. Many other factors lie behind this crisis. The most important is simply the sustained ascendancy of the SNP in Scotland. If the party wins a fourth successive Holyrood victory in May and claims a mandate for a new independence referendum, it would send the union’s stress level into the critical zone. If Scotland eventually broke away, there would be major consequences in Northern Ireland, and for the relationship between Wales and England.

Brexit has played a pivotal role in creating this volatile mix. The vote in 2016 to leave the European Union was an English and Welsh vote. Neither Scotland nor Northern Ireland voted to leave. Scotland, in particular, voted decisively to remain. Yet after 2016, neither Theresa May nor Mr Johnson paid enough attention to easing the pain for Scotland. UK brinkmanship in this year’s trade talks with the EU has made an already large gap between the UK and Scotland even wider. The EU27’s unity during the talks contrasted with the UK4’s internal disunity. Brexit’s impact in Northern Ireland has also been profound, resulting in a deepened close economic relationship with the Irish Republic, and thus the EU single market, while Ms Foster and Ms O’Neill pull in opposing directions over the link with Britain.

Centralist unionism

When Mr Johnson became prime minister in 2019, he gave himself the title of “minister for the union”. There has been zero evidence in his handling of Brexit that he takes this to mean the adoption of a more emollient approach. Instead, Mr Johnson’s unionism has proved more centralist and less pragmatic than the unionism of his two Tory predecessors, David Cameron and Mrs May. To Mr Johnson, the Brexit slogan of “take back control” translates into a project that aims to rebuild a Westminster-centred UK sovereignty, not, as Keir Starmer advocated last week, a policy of pushing more powers out and down from Westminster to the UK nations or to English regions and cities.

Mr Johnson’s approach is creating a crash waiting to happen. He made his real views startlingly clear when he told a private meeting of the “blue wall” Conservative MPs in November that devolution had been “a disaster north of the border” and that the 1997 devolution settlement was Tony Blair’s “biggest mistake”. Coming six months before such important Holyrood elections, this was an incendiary thing to say, as well as a self-inflicted wound for the Tories and a Christmas gift to the SNP. Mr Johnson’s comments about a devolution disaster cannot be laughed away as an idiosyncratic Johnsonian accident. The comments expressed what he really thinks.

The early months of 2021 will continue to be dominated by Covid. But the imminent existential crisis for the union should not be overlooked. Mr Johnson appears confident that he can successfully refuse to authorise a second referendum in the face of a demand for one from Ms Sturgeon. But there may not be as much appetite for undemocratic obduracy as he supposes.

If Mr Johnson was a different kind of politician, he would listen to what Mr Starmer said last week about renewing the union, or what Gordon Brown has been saying about rebuilding consent through citizens’ assemblies with a wide remit to reimagine Britain’s constitutional arrangements. A lot of politicians from all parties, including the Conservatives, are open to this. The big question is whether the voters of Scotland are open to it too. But there is little time left. The chance of reform may have sailed with Brexit. The task of offering Scots an alternative union that they can believe in next May is already down to the wire.

[DieselDaisy]

As Neil Oliver has reiterated multiple times: ''we (Scotland) have not had a 'good covid' (juxtaposed with England). Utter nonsense held by certain circles, not just in Scotland but by English Guardianists. 

PS

 

 

There is no one I have agreed with more during the pandemic than Neil Oliver. Nobody. Brilliant man. 

Edited December 29, 2020 by DieselDaisy

[Dazey]

41 minutes ago, DieselDaisy said:

Ditched the licence fee in spring. Door slammed on their minions. Letters in bin. 

Stopped paying it when I got rid of Sky 5 years ago. Since then I've just made sure that I don't have a telly that's visible through an accessible window.  

Have you actually had anybody come to check on you? I've never had any visits in all that time. Just make a declaration online and they seem to have fucked off.

Edited December 29, 2020 by Dazey

[DieselDaisy]

4 minutes ago, Dazey said:

Stopped paying it when I got rid of Sky 5 years ago. Since then I've just made sure that I don't have a telly that's visible through an accessible window.  

I have tucked mine a bit closer into the alcove so it cannot be seen.

Edit,

Yes. Some young guy. I just said, ''I don't watch television'' and he said, ''okay, I'll cross you off the list then''. Apparently the BBC have been inundated with cancellations due to their escalation of wokery since the Floyd thing and charging the pensioners, and are struggling to cope. They parcel collection out to private companies so there is a variety on how it is conducted. 

Edited December 30, 2020 by DieselDaisy

[DieselDaisy]

It was a combination of multiple reasons that had been escalating for years why I cancelled and become a fully-fledged BBC hater: inflated salaries of luvvies like Lineker; decline in programming quality; adoption of woke, remoanism and Londoncentric metro elite politics/ideologies; charging pensioners; (me) watching less-and-less irrespective; but the final straw was this,

I cancelled that very day. 

[Dazey]

To think you could have had your Brexit nearly 30 years ago if Rory Bremner hadn't fucked you over @DieselDaisy.  

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/dec/30/rory-bremner-prank-conservative-tory-party-revolt-john-major

[DieselDaisy]

[DieselDaisy]

19 hours ago, Dazey said:

To think you could have had your Brexit nearly 30 years ago if Rory Bremner hadn't fucked you over @DieselDaisy.  

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/dec/30/rory-bremner-prank-conservative-tory-party-revolt-john-major

Would you, a remoaner, have supported being pegged to the ERM, the Bank of England losing £3.14 billion (and Soros short selling) on Black Wednesday, or joining the disastrous Euro during the Blair era?

[DieselDaisy]

So - correct me if I'm wrong -  I have approximately under 1 hour 30 minutes until we enter a Mad Maxean stroke Romero-esque dystopia; food and pharmaceutical shortages; lorries clogging up byways; businesses collapsing like dominoes; rampaging racist hordes (and ehh, the Tory party) implementing their nefarious racist designs; a pariah state bereft of any sort of trade relations or foreign affairs?

Should I prepare myself? 

We will see if these predictions of Dazey, Soul (et al) were correct in just over an hour's time. Or will the results be more prosaic and ''business as usual'' (as I predicted).

Counting...

[DieselDaisy]

One wild night.

I was going to order a Chinese but forgot and fell asleep so will probably have cheese toasties (thank you George) for my New Years/Brexit combo celebratory tea. Probably not drink either, although there is beer in the fridge if I desire.

One wild night. 

[SoulMonster]

14 minutes ago, DieselDaisy said:

So - correct me if I'm wrong -  I have approximately under 1 hour 30 minutes until we enter a Mad Maxean stroke Romero-esque dystopia; food and pharmaceutical shortages; lorries clogging up byways; businesses collapsing like dominoes; rampaging racist hordes (and ehh, the Tory party) implementing their nefarious racist designs; a pariah state bereft of any sort of trade relations or foreign affairs?

Should I prepare myself? 

We will see if these predictions of Dazey, Soul (et al) were correct in just over an hour's time. Or will the results be more prosaic and ''business as usual'' (as I predicted).

Counting...

I have never made any such predictions, you confused man. 

[DieselDaisy]

Nope.

Few fireworks let off, one hour in advance of midnight, but I haven't had a zombie hammering at the door, or seen a marauding biker gang yet.

PS

I'm disappointed,

Where are the zombies and biker gangs?

Edited January 1, 2021 by DieselDaisy

[Dazey]

You did this @DieselDaisy. I hope you're happy!  

[DieselDaisy]

1 hour ago, Dazey said:

You did this @DieselDaisy. I hope you're happy!  

There are some brilliant one-liners in that. 

 

[DieselDaisy]

I have weird humour. Whenever I hear the customary Orwellian propaganda on the radio or television, ''hands, face, space'', I always add onto that list, ''cock''. 

[DieselDaisy]

Theresa May's premiership is looking more interesting,

 

Edited January 4, 2021 by DieselDaisy

[DieselDaisy]

Margaret Ferrier arrested apparently - you heard it here first. 

[DieselDaisy]