FlyTheNest

Morning all.

Morning all.

Not hard to work out really.



And Boris would make a good PM?


2 years ago today I said this on FB...




Yep. Although at the time I did wonder whether it was deliberate because May knew that he'd self-destruct at some point.

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FTN's supplier of tedious, pedantic education policy waffle; and Pedant-in-Chief generally.

Completely surreal !

How wrong many / most of us were on the ABdPJ self-destruction ...

"I'm a very stable genius ." (Again, yesterday.)

https://twitter.com/business/status/1017357859640651781

Off for croissants and nyt ...

From the G liveblog:



So Putin wants the EU weakened and we have Donald Trump being investigated for collusion with Russia and Nigel Farage is said to be a "person of interest" in that case. Now Farage and Trump are working in cahoots to attack May's Brexit plan which aims to keep the UK in a close relationship with the EU and the BBC are inviting Farage on politics shows and thus giving him a platform & a legitimacy he clearly doesn't deserve. The fines for misuse of public funds from the EU and the findings of the Electoral Commission related to leave.eu alone should be enough to have left Farage a disgraced public figure. How can the BBC ignore all these things? Why are they still giving Farage a platform?

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“Find a nice, self sufficient hilltop, and fortify it.” - The Kraken Wakes

nhs-operation-waiting-lists-reach-10-year-high-at-43m-patients

Matt Hancock, who replaced Jeremy Hunt this week, has received £32,000 since 2010 from the chair of the IEA’s board, Neil Record who has also donated to the government.

The IEA has been a regular critic of the NHS, calling it one of the most “overrated, inefficient systems in the world” and championing an insurance based model instead.


https://www.independent.co.uk/news/heal ... 43826.html

health/nhs-think-tank-matt-hancock-institute-economic-affairs-iea-health-secretary-

''Mostly'' excellent piece by Nick Cohen in the NYRB --

The false prospectus of the brexiteers --

""' The head of Vote Leave, one of the two umbrella groups leading the 2016 campaign, explained in June 2015 that constructing workable proposals for Britain’s future was “an almost insuperable task… There is much to be gained by swerving the whole issue.” Instead of honestly confronting Britain’s place in the world, the campaign offered brazen lies: Brexit would deliver £350 million ($462 million) a week to our health service; Turkey was about to join the EU and flood Britain with millions of Muslim migrants.

...

Neither Humphrys nor any one of the scores of celebrity presenters the BBC hires has asked hard questions about the “false prospectus”—to use a favorite BBC phrase after the Iraq War—the Leave campaigns presented to the British people.

“The referendum is over,” declared another Today presenter, Nick Robinson. “The day we broadcasters have to ‘broadly balance’ the views of the two sides is at an end. Why? Because there are no longer two sides.” Real journalists should be able to see that everything is wrong with his statement. If Brexit were over, Britain would not be in a rolling crisis with no end in sight. As pertinently, journalists should never assume a subject has become off-limits, because that is what the enemies of free expression demand. ""

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/07/1 ... on-brexit/

Sadly , the bbc has been following the vast majority of politicians who purport to 'respect' the result of the referendum , which we must not forget, most of them also voted for .

Just playing ...

LONDON (The Borowitz Report)—Queen Elizabeth II has cancelled a scheduled Friday meeting with Donald J. Trump after complaining of a “flare-up of bone spurs,” Buckingham Palace has confirmed.

The announcement took many royal watchers by surprise, because in her sixty-six-year reign the Queen had never before complained of bone spurs.

But, according to the Queen’s spokesman, Peter Rhys-Willington, Elizabeth had intentionally kept her chronic bone-spur condition a closely guarded secret until now. “Her Majesty is a very brave woman, and has not wanted to unnecessarily worry her subjects,” Rhys-Willington said. “And so, for decades, she has suffered in silence.”

The Queen referred to her bone spurs obliquely in an official statement issued on Thursday. “We are sorry to have to cancel the engagement, but we feared that meeting Donald Trump would be most painful,” the Queen’s statement read.

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FTN's supplier of tedious, pedantic education policy waffle; and Pedant-in-Chief generally.

Was Alan Duncan really claiming this visit to be a complete success already?

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FTN's supplier of tedious, pedantic education policy waffle; and Pedant-in-Chief generally.

Trump visit going swimmingly part XXXVI

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FTN's supplier of tedious, pedantic education policy waffle; and Pedant-in-Chief generally.

More than that, fantastic !

""I don’t think that’s the case. And I think the mood last night at the Blenheim dinner was just so fantastically positive, and it did indeed focus a lot on trade. We actually have more UK investment going into the US than all of Germany and France put together, a considerable multiple of the amount put in by the Chinese, and once we have our agreement with the EU in place, I’m confident that there will be the latitude and the ability to do a significant trade deal with the United States.""

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/bl ... 453414aa36

I wonder what that UK investment consists of ? I'd prefer it to be invested at home, and witness some slowing down in the velocity of capital movements ...

Short-memory time, some more light relief —

“” But Trump is also guided by the person who says what he wants to hear. Let’s just look at the example of his new best mate, Boris Johnson. In the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, the former Mayor said Trump’s remarks about the state of London showed “stupefying ignorance” that proved he was “clearly out of his mind” and was “frankly unfit to hold the office of president of the United States”.

“I would invite him to come and see the whole of London and take him around the city – except I wouldn’t want to expose any Londoners to any unnecessary risk of meeting Donald Trump,” he added. “”

https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/fo ... -may-stand

If anything, Trump supporters in this country are even weirder and more impervious to reason than their US counterparts.

https://nursingnotes.co.uk/nursing-degr ... k.facebook


Nursing degree applications fall by a further 12%
The fall in mature student numbers has been even more extreme, with a 16 percent drop and an unprecedented total decline of 40 percent since June 2016.

https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/d ... lack-hole/

DWP silence over ‘thousands of ESA claims lost in IT black hole’

Seen a lot of comments about this - letters going (probably to parents) about SATs results.

https://twitter.com/cyclingkev/status/1 ... 3037105152

Worth remembering that SATs were devised originally as accountability measures for schools. They have no impact on where children are going to secondary schools since that's already decided.

And, contra one primary "Quirky teacher", they don't actually tell you anything about what the child out to be working on to get up to "the required standard"

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FTN's supplier of tedious, pedantic education policy waffle; and Pedant-in-Chief generally.

I see Digby Jones tweet from a year ago has been hauled out and rightly jeered out...

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FTN's supplier of tedious, pedantic education policy waffle; and Pedant-in-Chief generally.

Digby Jones is thicker than mince.

From Ed Miliband -



I saw him (EM) being interviewed, earlier, on Sky TV news. Kay Burley still referring to him as David Miliband.

Kay "entire eastern seaboard" Burley is, if anything, even thicker than Digby Jones.

Is her voice naturally that annoyingly squeaky or do you think she cultivates it?

So we are now informed by nice Mr Donald that the "special relationship" has never been stronger

Donald Trump now saying that all the nice things he said about Theresa May were omitted from the "Sun" interview. He then witters on about "Fake News".

Oh dear...




Maybe someone told him that it hadn't been that smart a move when a guest in a foreign country...

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FTN's supplier of tedious, pedantic education policy waffle; and Pedant-in-Chief generally.

Oh his "handlers" have had a word with him all right.......

https://twitter.com/davidallengreen/sta ... 9881265154




David Allen Green picking up the point that many of the things in the Brexit white paper that both Tories and Labour are objecting to are aims to be negotiated for 2020, not points that are to be settled in the withdrawal agreement by October.

If the only things settled irrevocably by the withdrawal agreement are the divorce bill, protecting EU and British citizen rights and no hard border in Ireland, isn't it possible it would meet labour's "6 tests"?

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“Find a nice, self sufficient hilltop, and fortify it.” - The Kraken Wakes

Germany and Angela Merkel have now become his target.

Highest level of "special".

(cJA edit)
Miliband is good person, trustworthy.

Good-afternoon, everyone

Please ration your exposure to Trump
Protect yourselves, everyone

a particularly toxic carcinogen

Labour would vote Aye on the October agreement satisfying those tests, you mean?

Trump now rewriting the Nato meeting.

In 2014 it was agreed that the Nato nations would work towards 2% of GDP contributions over the following 10 years. Trump has just announced at the press conference a 4 year old resolution that is ongoing as we speak as something that has just happened within the last 24 hrs because of him.

The worry is that it's hard to see where the calculated liar ends and the narcissistic fantasist begins.

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“Find a nice, self sufficient hilltop, and fortify it.” - The Kraken Wakes

Bad news, this
Businesses unwilling to pay workers properly are failures

I mean they probably could as far as the "6 tests" go. Except Labour currently seems to be building a narrative of voting against the withdrawal agreement which will raise expectations among their followers and make it difficult for them to do so. I'm just wondering why, as without a proper "meaningful vote" amendment there is a small but very real risk that voting against could do the country a lot more harm than voting for if it gives a Tory government the opportunity to take us out with no deal and blame Labour for it. Common sense suggests May wouldn't do anything so drastic, but common sense suggested having safeguards for the referendum vote, it suggested having a proper plan before triggering article 50 etc etc. As such I'm a little uncomfortable trusting the fate of the nation to Tory common sense! I fear this isn't going to end well.

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“Find a nice, self sufficient hilltop, and fortify it.” - The Kraken Wakes

(cJA edit)
Yes, I agree.

He's not going to make sense
Crace's article about Trump published last night explains Trump perfectly

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... in-england

Not so simple.Waking nights is fundamentally different to sleeping in.We weren't a bad employer,a comfy bed,TV,takeaway etc once interrupted and a 'phone call for ambulance because of fall in ten years.In reverse,I did it for years,24 hour shifts were the norm.Question is how do you differentiate.I would like to see the reaction if I took my sleeping bag to work on the basis of only being disturbed when necessary.

At the Chequers press conference, Donald Trump railed against the EU's trade restrictions on the US. He made particular reference to agriculure\food.Robert Peston questioned how Theresa May's "Brexit" plans would allow the UK to apply looser restrictions than the EU does.

Either my attention wandered, or the question was ignored. Can anyone here help me out, please?

(cJA emphasis)
Brilliant, sincerely
Thank you for shifting ideas around showing me something I didn't see at first

It's wrong, this judgement
poorly paid people providing their labour on call not compensated for that work

Trump's lunatic responses allows others only a little less bizarre than Trump getting taken more seriously
we typically try making sense of things regardless of its having any sense at all

Whether "sleeping in/over" should attract the minimum wage is clearly something that needs discussion, but the real immediate issue is that people were being advised it wasn't covered by the minimum wage by government bodies only for that to be contradicted by a court ruling and now people who paid (and accepted) below minimum wage on the understanding that was correct are being directed to pay the difference with immediate effect and that just doesn't seem right, as if they'd been told the correct information at the time they could well have made very different decisions. And a court ruling is now going to have an impact on such arrangements going forward that really needs to be addressed politically and not just left to legal judgement. Another example of a government failing to get to grips with....well....just about anything, really. Like everything else it's been left to drift.

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“Find a nice, self sufficient hilltop, and fortify it.” - The Kraken Wakes

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“Find a nice, self sufficient hilltop, and fortify it.” - The Kraken Wakes

I think that's 4.45pm GMT.

I expect it'll be something really dull in the end, but Twitter is buzzing about a possible new indictment.

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“Find a nice, self sufficient hilltop, and fortify it.” - The Kraken Wakes

Oh my...

not dull at all !

Upset the Sun - so they've released the tape :

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/6766531/t ... -deal-off/

https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... ssion=true



Just as Trump's about to have another meeting with Putin. Nice and aekward!

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“Find a nice, self sufficient hilltop, and fortify it.” - The Kraken Wakes