FlyTheNest

10:22
Back in the committee, Liam Fox is asked about reports that the government will cuts most tariffs to zero in the event of a no-deal Brexit.

Q: If that is the case, why would any country want to roll over their trade deals with the UK, when they could benefit from zero tariffs with the UK anyway in the event of no deal?

Fox says he will not comment on media speculation. (Politics Live, Guardian)

10:52

Back in the international trade committee, Liam Fox says, if there is a no-deal Brexit, the government will publish its plans for tariffs. (Politics Live, Guardian)

The Columnist
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@Sime0nStylites
3h3 hours ago
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If we judged by actions, no one seems to want Brexit to happen anymore.

2 replies 10 retweets 48 likes
Reply 2 Retweet 10 Like 48 Direct message

The Columnist
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@Sime0nStylites
3h3 hours ago
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If they did, then they would be busily negotiating with Labour.

HindleA wrote:(Albert Johannson day)

Momentum: Corbyn-supporting group fined for 'multiple breaches' of electoral law

The bill for running the UK’s cash infrastructure – from ATMs to cash-sorting centres – was about £5bn a year, paid for predominantly by banks (and, ultimately, consumers), said the report. But while the costs were largely fixed, income was declining quickly.

The report added: “Some of these companies may consider exiting the market as its profitability declines – leading to the risk of disorderly collapse … Without an effective wholesale cash infrastructure, ATMs won’t get filled, cash deposits won’t get counted, and we won’t trust the value of money.”

The report’s authors said the UK was “not ready” to go cashless, and that despite the runaway growth of contactless and mobile payments, a “significant number” of people – about 2.2 million – were currently using cash for all their day-to-day transactions.

UK cash system ‘on the verge of collapse’, report finds

citizenJA wrote:Did anything come of the Tory party misuse of funds during GE campaigning investigation?

AnatolyKasparov wrote:

citizenJA wrote:Did anything come of the Tory party misuse of funds during GE campaigning investigation?

I can hazard a guess for that one.......

HindleA wrote:https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/world/20 ... ssion=true

Dr Oliver is best known for affirming that removing the disabling barriers that limit and oppress people with impairments is a social - not an individual - responsibility.
"The problem isn't that I can't get into a lecture theatre, the problem is that the lecture theatre isn't accessible to me.."

citizenJA wrote:Did anything come of the Tory party misuse of funds during GE campaigning investigation?

Marion Little, who was deployed by Conservative Headquarters to the constituency, was found guilty of two counts of encouraging and assisting the submission of false spending returns. But the MP for the seat, Craig Mackinlay, was cleared of all charges.

AnatolyKasparov wrote:Ah that was the 2015 GE, I was thinking of the more recent one.

He [Greg Clark] says he knows the TUC and Labour would like the UK to automatically match new EU rules boosting workers’ rights. But that is not the government’s position, he says. He says the government does not think there would be any point leaving the EU if that were the case. (Politics Live, Guardian - my emphasis)

PorFavor wrote:

He [Greg Clark] says he knows the TUC and Labour would like the UK to automatically match new EU rules boosting workers’ rights. But that is not the government’s position, he says. He says the government does not think there would be any point leaving the EU if that were the case. (Politics Live, Guardian - my emphasis)

1m ago 14:36
Former Met commissioner John Stevens says he does not trust May to deal with knife crime problem (Politics Live, Guardian)

Brett Christophers’ painstaking survey of land privatisation since the Thatcher era will tell you many things you already know. But it will also reveal how all these things you already know are, in fact, underpinned by a single terra incognita – in this case a literal one. For, after painstakingly scrutinising the evidence, and crunching the numbers, Christophers arrives at this extraordinary estimate: since 1979, no less than 10% of the land area of Britain has been sold by the state – in all its various guises and incarnations – to the private sector.

The New Enclosure by Brett Christophers review – the sale of public land in neoliberal Britain
In the last four decades, the state has sold 10% of Britain’s land, and 50% of its public land.
- Will Self - 6 Dec 2018

Christophers estimates total land privatisation sales to exceed the government’s bail out of RBS by a factor of 12.

It’s a rule of contemporary economics that the sort of annual growth rates historically required to make Britain great were in the region of 6-7%; in the past we managed these mostly by ripping off stuff belonging to poorer people in other parts of the world, or by selling them stuff we’d made using equipment they didn’t have. But nowadays such comparative “advantages” no longer obtain, while the stock market has continued to decline, as have the bond yields of chronically indebted western nations. So it seems that in order to maintain the necessary returns on capital, we’ve resorted to a weird form of auto-cannibalisation: forcing our least advantaged to pay rents that, serendipitously, have increased by 6-7% per annum since 1979. Meanwhile, the rentier class keep right on reaping where never they sowed.

NHS cancer centre loses scanning contract to private firm

Doctors express disgust after eminent hospital fails to win tender for PET-CT services

NHS chiefs are pushing through plans to let private companies take over scanning services that are vital in treating cancer patients, having told ministers last week that privatisation was harming patient care.

Despite its international reputation for cancer care, Churchill hospital in Oxford has lost its contract to carry out PET-CT scans to InHealth, a private company, as part of the tendering process, the Guardian can reveal. (Guardian)

Tory councillors in East Staffordshire quit over Islamophobia row (BBC News website)

AnatolyKasparov wrote:To put it in context, this was after the councillor at the eye of the storm "liked" an image of Sadiq Khan being beheaded

PorFavor wrote:

AnatolyKasparov wrote:To put it in context, this was after the councillor at the eye of the storm "liked" an image of Sadiq Khan being beheaded

Yes - but, of course, they're well on top of it, unlike . . .