FlyTheNest

Morning all.

From RoT 's link last night -- " onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

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" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

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.

Karen Wespieser
‏@KarenWespieser
2h
2 hours ago


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"School funding is at a record high" is accurate but hopelessly misleading says David Laws

That pretty much could be said about any government statistic.

That was useful, even if in a small way

Thank you, you're very kind...

https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/13309" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

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

https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/13308" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

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 -

Angus Davison of fruit company Haygrove summed up the views of many people across the food industry when he said of the prime minister, “She’s not interested in us and not listening to us. She’s an intelligent person, so I presume she doesn’t care and is prepared to sacrifice the industry.”

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.

I think she does care, from the intervew

She said that businesses would leave the country under the plans favoured by Tories pushing for a hard Brexit. She said:

The plans that I’ve seen at the moment are ones that don’t deliver on the Northern Ireland border, don’t deliver on a seemless border with the rest of the European Union. If you are one of those small businesses, over 100,000 small businesses in the UK that only trades with the European Union, your business will change. You will have extra burdens. I don’t want those businesses to have those extra burdens. I don’t want manufacturers to feel that they’ve got to operate under all sets of different rules because that complicates life for them. And that potentially means business leaving this country.

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.

Nothing of interest emerging from the LibDem conference, then?

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

AnatolyKasparov wrote: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/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
"How Brexit deal will be struck
Negotiators now have a shared understanding of the ingredients for a deal."

LONDON — Get ready for the Brexit Big Bang.
After more than a year of excruciating negotiations, and despite continuing fierce differences, the U.K. and the EU have reached a shared understanding of how they can clinch a deal.
It will be hard, fast and with a bang, at a yet-to-be-arranged special summit in Brussels in November, according to senior government officials and diplomats in Brussels, the U.K. and other EU capitals.

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" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

No-deal Brexit would hit UK economy, says IMF

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

"Any deal will not be as good as the smooth process under which goods, services, people and capital move around between the EU and the UK without impediments and obstacles."

And my particular favourite:

"The larger the impediments to trade in the new relationship, the costlier it will be," Ms Lagarde said. "This should be fairly obvious, but it seems that sometimes it is not."

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".

tinybgoat wrote:

AnatolyKasparov wrote: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.

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/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Re blind/neverending Brexit

it would prolong and exacerbate the very high levels of business uncertainty that have already been caused. There would not be even a rough sense of where terms of trade were heading, and everything would depend on yet another round of political infighting. Just as the Tory Party have failed so far to be able to agree on what they want future terms to be, there is absolutely no reason to expect that once we pass March 2019 they will miraculously come to a resolution. Inevitably, there will be just more trips around the loop of different Brexit models.

Which means that almost immediately a new no deal scenario will loom, this time for December 2020.

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