Politics Thread (encompassing Brexit) - 21 June 2017 onwards

[Guest Kopfkino]

14 minutes ago, breadandcheese said:

So would European airlines not be allowed to fly to and from the UK if we unilaterally allowed them? If we said to Lufthansa, continue flights to London, we have no problem, will Germany then stop them landing back in Frankfurt?

 

 

 

Well no, the CAA has assumed they will be recognised in UK law so could fly into the UK and being as they are German-registered aircraft, operated by a German airline, presumably by German staff they would again be able to land back in Frankfurt. 

 

Edit: I see, the Irish article speaks as if EU flights won't be able to land here which would be incorrect if the CAA's assumptions are correct. Although, they may not be and they may not be allowed to land here.

Edited 31 July 2018 by Kopfkino

[Alf Bentley]

1 hour ago, MattP said:

Newsnight had someone on last night claiming Brexit could be the end of sandwiches. 

 

That's funny, because I watched that programme. The bloke from the British Sandwich Association made it clear that he was NOT saying it "could be the end of sandwiches".

 

He clearly stated that he was talking about problems getting imported fresh ingredients such as salad items, due to congestion and delays at ports etc.

He specifically mentioned tomatoes, lettuce and avocados (so again, no problem for you with your pure-meat diet).

 

He also mentioned that it would take quite some time before domestic producers could increase volumes - and some items couldn't be grown here in sufficient volumes (or at all).

He added that there was also likely to be a labour supply issue as sandwich makers already had a lot of vacancies, a problem likely to increase if the outflow of EU migrant workers continues.

 

Here's the discussion: http://newsvideo.su/video/9127600

[DJ Barry Hammond]

1 hour ago, MattP said:

Newsnight had someone on last night claiming Brexit could be the end of sandwiches. 

 

If nothing else, the days of the £3 meal deal are numbered.

 

(but that is also an economics issue)

[Webbo]

1 hour ago, DJ Barry Hammond said:

 

Because it takes organisations ages to put different plans in place and naturally they need to know what the new positions are before to do that.

 

There may also be structural issues, such as lack of border enforcement officials to carry out required checks.

I bet you it doesn't happen.

[DJ Barry Hammond]

29 minutes ago, Webbo said:

I bet you it doesn't happen.

 

There will be chaos somewhere - this is the UK Government who likes to hand out contracts to the likes of G4S, Carilllion, etc, etc

[Buce]

1 minute ago, DJ Barry Hammond said:

 

There will be chaos somewhere - this is the UK Government who likes to hand out contracts to the likes of G4S, Carilllion, etc, etc

 

Of course there won't be - what do the experts know?

 

Far better to listen to under-informed and uneducated Brexiteers fiddling as Rome burns.

[Heathrow fox]

10 hours ago, Foxin_mad said:

He has voted against the EU all his life, his probably a more ardent leaver than Farage.

 

Much of his policy would struggle to be implemented under EU state aid laws anyway.

 

If he is as principled as people claim he is he should really make a stand and go. He probably wont because he is a power hungry loon. 

 

Personally I hope the cretin does go, a more centre ground pro-remain Labour party with a decent leader would be extremely electable for me personally. 

Yes someone like Milliband brown or even Blair.Heres me thinking that the reason  Corbyn did so well in the last election was because he is actually proper Labour.

[DJ Barry Hammond]

18 minutes ago, Buce said:

 

Of course there won't be - what do the experts know?

 

Far better to listen to under-informed and uneducated Brexiteers fiddling as Rome burns.

It won’t be Rome burning scenario... but will be sufficient chaos to prompt widespread press coverage that makes it seem that way and give us Brits an opportunity to practice that thing we love to do - complaining.

 

There will also be the constant reverse of Anti EU, bendy banana type stories for years to come - this <insert issue here> wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for Brexit.

 

In some respects, being on the wrong side of this vote could be seen as unforeseen blessing in terms of scapegoating.

[Guest MattP]

27 minutes ago, Heathrow fox said:

Yes someone like Milliband brown or even Blair.Heres me thinking that the reason  Corbyn did so well in the last election was because he is actually proper Labour.

I dunno. The collapse of UKIP was just as big a reason for them doing well, I mean the Tories got their highest vote share since the days of Thatcher as well.

 

Despite the result and good opinion polling Labour still far outscores Corbyn - every poll of "best PM" I've seen still has him below 30% and behind May.

 

I think Labour with a decent moderate leader (still prevaricating on Brexit) would be pretty clear by now. Maybe even 10-15 points in front.

Edited 31 July 2018 by MattP

[Guest MattP]

28 minutes ago, Buce said:

Of course there won't be - what do the experts know?

 

Far better to listen to under-informed and uneducated Brexiteers fiddling as Rome burns.

It will help us believe those people if they hadn't cocked up in their post referendum predictions. Why should we take what they say as gospel when they already got the first set of predictions wrong? 

 

You are usually one of the first to be cynical of any information released by the Tories yet on this you demand they are treated as experts and we have to believe it all.

Edited 31 July 2018 by MattP

[DJ Barry Hammond]

 

Careful @MattP - the clear repost is that “Brexit hasn’t happened yet”. The fact there’s a US President intent of inflicting a trade war and other international policies is unlikely to make the mounting difficulties already being faced by those at the sharp end any easier either.

[Buce]

Just now, MattP said:

It will help us believe those people if they hadn't cocked up in their post referendum predictions. Why should we take what they say as gospel when they already got the first set of predictions wrong? 

 

You are usually one of the first to be cynical of any information released by the Tories yet on this you demand they are treated as experts and we have to believe it all.

 

 

But it's not just the Tories saying it, is it?

 

 

[Guest MattP]

1 minute ago, DJ Barry Hammond said:

Careful @MattP - the clear repost is that “Brexit hasn’t happened yet”. The fact there’s a US President intent of inflicting a trade war and other international policies is unlikely to make the mounting difficulties already being faced by those at the sharp end any easier either.

I'm talking about the immediate post vote predictions, not the post Brexit predictions. 

 

The 300,000 job losses, the emergency budget, the loss of investment. All complete garbage that they thought we would never find out about as we were threatened into voting remain.

[DJ Barry Hammond]

3 minutes ago, MattP said:

I'm talking about the immediate post vote predictions, not the post Brexit predictions. 

 

The 300,000 job losses, the emergency budget, the loss of investment. All complete garbage that they thought we would never find out about as we were threatened into voting remain.

 

The timing of these thing will get lost in the wash of history.

 

True, pretty much every doomsday prediction under the Sun has been made, but in turn that means criticism of any downturn would be nailed loudly to the mast by all those that cry remain.

Edited 31 July 2018 by DJ Barry Hammond

[Buce]

Fears cash-strapped council may cut services for vulnerable children

Northamptonshire county council scrambles to save £70m amid warnings even core services are at risk

 

The funding crisis facing local authorities has deepened after a Tory-run council warned services for vulnerable children and adults can no longer be protected as it prepared drastic measures to survive ongoing financial difficulties described as “without parallel in modern times”.

Northamptonshire county council – already technically insolvent – has called an extraordinary meeting for Wednesday to seek support for cutbacks which will reduce statutory services to the bare legal minimum and see non-core services shrunk or closed.

Hundreds of jobs are likely to be at risk as the council scrambles to find up to £70m of savings over the next few months to balance its books. The council has already drained its reserves, and has warned that further savings will be difficult.

 

Northamptonshire’s Tory leader, councillor Matthew Golby, has warned that in future services will be restricted to a “core offer”. He describes this as “the best service offer we are likely to be able to afford. It aims to fulfil our [legal] duties and offers support to those most in need only.”

In a discussion paper published ahead of the meeting, Golby says that although the council will strive to deliver its core services the council will need to encourage big society-style “behaviour change” in local communities “to create resilience in places where the council can no longer step in”.

Prof Tony Travers of the London School of Economics, an expert in local government, said the scale and nature of Northamptonshire’s crisis was unprecedented: “This is as near as possible to being without parallel in modern times.”

He said the danger for Northamptonshire was that in order to make the scale of cuts necessary to meet its legal obligations to balance its budget it would simultaneously breach its legal obligations to provide statutory levels of core services, such as those for children at risk and for elderly and disabled adults.

The council is already facing a legal challenge over its plans to close or sell-off 21 of the county’s 36 libraries on the basis that in doing so it is in breach of its statutory obligations. More legal challenges can be expected as it moves more services to “bare minimum” levels.

 

The plight of Northamptonshire will heighten pressure on the government to ease the impact of austerity on local authorities, who have had £16bn of central funding cut since 2010. Other councils are believed to be at risk of becoming similarly insolvent as they struggle with increasing demand for services and shrinking budgets.

The National Audit Office has warned that up to 15 English councils could go bust in the next few years as costs race ahead of resources, especially in children’s services, which have experienced a surge in at-risk youngsters being taken into care, and in services for vulnerable older adults.

 

The Tory head of the Local Government Association, Lord Porter, recently warned that cuts meant “councils will no longer be able to support our residents as they expect, including our most vulnerable”. Local services such as libraries, Sure Start centres, parks and bus services have been lost as town halls retrench.

Tory-run Somerset county council warned in May that it is at risk of following Northamptonshire into bankruptcy after large overspends on child protection services put its financial stability at risk.

Last week Northamptonshire council issued an unprecedented second section 114 notice setting out the scale of the continuing crisis. Its finance director, Mark McLoughlin, issued the first notice in February – an effective statement of insolvency – after warning it could not balance its books. It has a net budget of £441m.

In a terse and scathing four-page letter to councillors, McLoughlin warned that years of mismanagement had left the council financially compromised and in serious danger of failing to meet its obligations both to balance its budget this year and to set a legal budget for 2019-20, when a further £54m of savings are due.

He said councillors could not avoid tough decisions to balance the books, noting that these “will have to go beyond cuts to staff pay and staff numbers to include all services, including those to, and in respect of, vulnerable children, young people and adults”.

McLoughlin criticised a series of “inappropriate” decisions made by the council leadership over the past four years to balance the books, including the abuse of reserves and capital receipts, accounting ruses and “knowingly adopting unachievable savings”.

He said the council leaders had assumed they could put off difficult cuts decision because they believed the government would change the national funding formula for councils to benefit counties like Northamptonshire. He warned that it was clear that “no immediate remedy” was available to the council.

This week it emerged that the council’s former chief executive had been told of impending financial crisis by its then director of finance back in 2015. The warnings about the “corrosion of our financial management arrangements” were effectively ignored.

 

Labour county councillor Danielle Stone described Northamptonshire’s plight as “unbelievable” and the result of “years of mismanagement on a massive scale”. She said she expected swingeing staff cuts and a fire-sale of council buildings to try and meet the shortfall.

Northamptonshire in recent years aspired to be a poster-child for a distinctively Conservative approach to local government, priding itself on having one of the lowest levels of council tax, then freezing council tax and adopting a radical plan to outsource services, which sunk without trace.

However, the government was forced to send in commissioners to Northamptonshire in May to oversee the management of the council. This followed a devastating inspector’s report in March, which identified widespread management failures and lax financial controls at the council.

Although the inspector, Max Caller, blamed the council’s position on mismanagement rather than underfunding, the continuing crisis in Northamptonshire – all of whose seven MPs are Tory – will set alarm bells ringing in Whitehall, and drive up pressure on ministers to intervene.

[Heathrow fox]

22 minutes ago, MattP said:

I dunno. The collapse of UKIP was just as big a reason for them doing well, I mean the Tories got their highest vote share since the days of Thatcher as well.

 

Despite the result and good opinion polling Labour still far outscores Corbyn - every poll of "best PM" I've seen still has him below 30% and behind May.

 

I think Labour with a decent moderate leader (still prevaricating on Brexit) would be pretty clear by now. Maybe even 10-15 points in front.

 

Considering he was completely written off and had even more enemy’s in his own party than the opposition he did brilliantly.

 

He got criticised for staying quite during the referendum,the fact was that the media simply didn’t care about what he thought.He was irrelevant.I only saw him once during the whole campaign 

 

ITN gave him 10 minutes where he argued for change within the EU and urged people to vote remain.Said through gritted teeth of course,he was hanging by his finger nails at the time.

 

Come the election where the media had to give him a fair crack off the whip,people got to see that weirdy beardy talked a lot of sense,He actually looked and sounded like an ordinary bloke.Not another fake with white teeth in a suit.

 

The Tory’s did get a large share of the vote also.Maybe because of their Brexit means Brexit manifesto.The one thing they shared with Labour.

[Heathrow fox]

The irony is the media had used him a bit more it could have made that small difference.If he really went big on Brexit now and said what he really felt he would storm it.

[Buce]

Theresa May must push for even softer Brexit, says thinktank

Prime minister urged to offer more concessions to EU to minimise economic damage

 

Theresa May will be forced to offer further politically difficult concessions to the EU to minimise damage to the economy caused by Brexit, said one of the UK’s leading economic thinktanks.

The National Institute for Economic and Social Research (NIESR) said Britain was gripped by an epidemic of uncertainty about the terms of its EU departure, and warned that the government would have to pay a bigger financial contribution or accept higher migration to get the deal it wanted.

May has already lost two cabinet ministers – David Davis and Boris Johnson – after announcing plans for Brexit that involved prioritising trade in goods over services, while aiming to limit free movement of people.

 

But in its latest quarterly health check on the economy, the NIESR said May’s version of a soft Brexit was still not soft enough. The government was aiming for market access similar to that enjoyed by Switzerland but with a much tougher migration system. “In our view, the government will have to make significant concessions to the EU,” it said.

The thinktank said, that following the pick-up in activity after the sluggish start to the year, the economy was on course to grow by 1.4% in 2018 and by 1.75% each year thereafter.

It added, however, that even these modest growth rates relied on the UK continuing to have close to full access to the EU market for its goods and services.

The more limited proposals for market access in the recently published white paper would lead to a loss of output amounting to £500 per person over time, compared to a soft Brexit.

“The loss would be around £800 under a ‘no deal’ Brexit. These estimates do not include the likely impact on productivity which could, on some estimates, double the size of the losses,” said the thinktank.

Jagjit Chadha, director of the NIESR, said: “In the UK, uncertainty about exit from the EU seems to be limiting the development of policies to promote more inclusive growth.” Brexit, he added, was a demanding agenda that was causing political stasis. “Things are not happening that should be happening.”

Chadha said pre-Brexit Britain was “gripped by an unusual amount of uncertainty, you might call it an epidemic of uncertainty – we haven’t worked out how to do it”.

The NIESR said the Bank of England would need to take account of the uncertainty when setting interest rates. While supporting a quarter-point increase in official borrowing costs this week, the Bank should make it clear that it was prepared to reverse the decision, the institute added.

“The UK is just eight months away from the March 2019 EU exit date and the range of outcomes remains as wide as ever. We are by no means sure that there will be a deal by then, and even if there is a deal it is not clear how policymakers, businesses and households will respond to the new arrangement. And, all along, the chance of a second referendum is rising.”

[Guest Foxin_mad]

Oh deary deary  me......this man is an absolute cretin

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-45027582

 

Ans people think he is fit to run a country. People call Brexit voters 'thick' then consider voting for this imbecile - completely unfathomable. 

[Guest MattP]

18 minutes ago, Foxin_mad said:

Oh deary deary  me......this man is an absolute cretin

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-45027582

 

Ans people think he is fit to run a country. People call Brexit voters 'thick' then consider voting for this imbecile - completely unfathomable. 

On holocaust remembrance day as well.

 

I honestly thought he was just a bit naive, never thought he was an antisemite, thought he was prepared to tolerate it to justify hard critique of Israel but wasn't himself. 

 

Pretty sure now I was wrong.

 

Even John "lynch the bitch" McDonnell thinks he's gone too far this last few days.

Edited 1 August 2018 by MattP

[leicsmac]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/07/31/betrayal-british-soldier-interrogated-police-bloody-sunday-attempted/

 

"Betrayal" is a bit strong IMO - someone has to answer for the death of unarmed civilians (as stated in the Savile report).

[Guest MattP]

4 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/07/31/betrayal-british-soldier-interrogated-police-bloody-sunday-attempted/

 

"Betrayal" is a bit strong IMO - someone has to answer for the death of unarmed civilians (as stated in the Savile report).

All sides should or no one should.

 

That's the betrayal.

[leicsmac]

4 minutes ago, MattP said:

All sides should or no one should.

 

That's the betrayal.

Were any British soldiers even injured and as such any of the protestors liable for anything more than (perhaps) disturbing the peace?

[Guest MattP]

19 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

Were any British soldiers even injured and as such any of the protestors liable for anything more than (perhaps) disturbing the peace?

I'm talking about the letters sent from previous governments effectively telling Republican murderers they were now not being saught after.

 

Let's not call them "protestors" either, some of the people in that crowd were armed terrorists. 

 

Not that we can ever equate deaths caused in a public order situation to the deliberate targeting of innocents anyway. 

[leicsmac]

1 minute ago, MattP said:

I'm talking about the letters sent from previous governments effectively telling Republican murderers they were now not being saught after.

 

Let's not call them "protestors" either, some of the people in that crowd were armed terrorists. 

 

Not that we can ever equate deaths caused in a public order situation to the deliberate targeting of innocents anyway. 

And yet, none of these "armed terrorists" died or were even injured that day - and I sincerely hope that deaths in a "public order" situation aren't just to be swept under the carpet without accountability because they weren't targetted deliberately.

 

FWIW allowing some of those who participated in the Republican side of the Troubles to not be sought after as part of the GFA is an injustice in my mind too, but two wrongs don't really make a right.