FlyTheNest

Morning all.

From RoT 's link last night -- https://twitter.com/JohnOBrennan2/statu ... 4645821440

Morning !

A B dePf Johnson certainly has a fair amount to answer for doesn't he?

Brilliant piece from the IT

Historical nonsense underpins UK’s Brexit floundering Christopher Kissane
Last Updated: Monday, September 17, 2018, 01:24

""In June, the UK’s then Brexit secretary, David Davis, said: “Anyone who suggests that the United Kingdom cannot be trusted, and isn’t the proven friend of every single country in Europe, needs to brush up on their history.” Like former UK foreign secretary Boris Johnson in a Burmese temple, one cannot help but think of the words of Rudyard Kipling. “They are whimpering to and fro,” he lamented in his 1891 poem The English Flag, “what should they know of England who only England know?” Very little, it appears, as the pied pipers of Brexit have peddled a past that blinds Britain to reality. Politicians, public, and press need remedial history lessons before it’s too late.

The Brexiteers’ historical narrative begins by mangling the medieval. “The first Eurosceptic,” according to Tory Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg, was the ninth-century Anglo-Saxon King Alfred the Great, who defeated the Norse ‘great heathen army’ in 865. Rees-Mogg likens the European Union to the Vikings, opposing a financial settlement with Brussels by quoting Kipling’s warning: “If once you have paid him the Danegeld, you never get rid of the Dane.”

The absurd anachronisms keep coming: the Guardian offers us Anglo-Danish “King Canute’s lessons for Brexit”, while MEP Daniel Hannan christens the Battle of Hastings “England’s Nakba” (the Arabic term for the Palestinian exodus of 1948), the beginning of centuries of “oppression” (of England, in case you’re confused). -cont ""

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/hist ... eLayout.ot

Where is everybody (apart from myself and frog) today??

Well, I am here but find myself at a loss for anything useful or interesting to impart. No change there then...

There was this from a new report on school funding by the IFS.




That pretty much could be said about any government statistic.

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

That was useful, even if in a small way

Thank you, you're very kind...

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

https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/13309

The Social Metrics Commission’s new proposed poverty measure for the UK

https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/13308

It's difficult to know what to say when the government can still talk about a plan which the EU may not have rejected out of hand but which had clearly and plainly been subject already to death by a thousand cuts ("there is no possibility of agreeing to separate out free movement of goods / that customs proposal may actually be illegal as well as impractical / there is no workable solution proposed to the question to the question of the Irish border") as though it's a valid idea that has a future, and the press report upon it as though it's a valid idea that has a future. I know the commission have said 'we are not dismissing this out of hand, there might be some things to work with here' but that just means 'it's good to see that the UK now accepts at least the principle of regulatory oversight'.

It's very difficult to know what May is doing but from her actions, rather than her reputation, she is at best pretending that a cake and eat it deal is achievable still and is simply stupid or incompetent, or is quietly but actively cultivating no deal.

I back up the recommendation made yesterday for Jay Rayner's longer piecewhich focused on the food industry (he's written more about this recently too), and the quote within the more recent article from somebody meeting May - People claim that she is genuinely quietly dedicated to doing as little damage as possible but the way to do that was to face down her internal nutcases when she came to power - "Right, you've put me in charge, this is what we're doing, like it or lump it". She even had a safer majority at that time. Instead it's very difficult to see how a deal will be done without her either abandoning Conservative unity and jumping to the 'Norway' style ground, or just getting away with kicking the can down the road again and moving ahead on the basis of some form of vague agreed intent.

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You're too busy fighting your irrelevant battles To see what's going on in your own backyard ‘Cause some of us are having a hard, hard time

I think she does care, from the intervew


She just doesn't care enough. Isn't there a saying about breakfast, the hen's involved, the pig's committed. She's involved, with the rest of the 1%, the 99% are commmitted.

She's got everything wrong from the beginning, the very antithesis of a safe pair of hands.

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One world, like it or not - John Martyn

Nothing of interest emerging from the LibDem conference, then?

(this is almost certainly a rhetorical question........but you never know)

I tried listening until someone said something along the lines of
'Margaret Thatcher has things to answer for..'
& I gave up, still have sound on low murmer & it's all sounds very civil, but probably futile.

Good-afternoon, everyone

Tory government's lost majority turned Tory leadership desperate, not contrite; they're uncompromising, secretive and persistently ambiguous. Incoherent political leadership is a calamity.

https://www.politico.eu/article/brexit- ... -november/
"How Brexit deal will be struck
Negotiators now have a shared understanding of the ingredients for a deal."

Suppose under cover of November 5th might be a bit insensitive.
edit: details sound similar to subject of Simon Wren-Lewis blog, from Tuesday (think Gilsey (or goosey according to automatic spellchuckler) linked to it)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-45546785



Legarde treats us to a bland statement of the bleedin' obvious:



And my particular favourite:

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

Damn, so economies of scale don't apply to impediments then?

I'd love to see a Brexiter debate Legarde on the economic implications of Brexit.

Imagine Bernard Jenkin telling Christine Legarde she's "making it up".

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

Actually it seems that Gina Miller effectively dumped them today, which is moderately amusing.

Latest from Chris Grey, if anyone can bear it.
http://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/

Re blind/neverending Brexit

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One world, like it or not - John Martyn

Of course, by the end of 2020 we will be uncomfortably close to a GE even if this parliament goes to its full term. What odds on the can being kicked down the road (even) further?

goodnight, everyone
love,
cJA