Zompist Bboard Again

KathTheDragon wrote: ↑Wed Apr 03, 2019 11:29 am Rest in peace United Kingdom, 1707-2019?

Oh, let's not get carried away.

It'll take at least until 2020 until the Scots can organise independence.

Salmoneus wrote: ↑Wed Apr 03, 2019 3:57 pm

KathTheDragon wrote: ↑Wed Apr 03, 2019 11:29 am Rest in peace United Kingdom, 1707-2019?

Oh, let's not get carried away.

It'll take at least until 2020 until the Scots can organise independence.

Or they could follow the precedent of Brexit and declare independence before having the institutional capability to implement it... that is how we do things now.

chris_notts wrote: ↑Wed Apr 03, 2019 5:15 pmOr they could follow the precedent of Brexit and declare independence before having the institutional capability to implement it... that is how we do things now.

My impression is that Nicola Sturgeon is about the one UK party leader who knows what she's doing. I expect that if Brexit happens, and then independence is polling at around 55%, she'll jump on it and have an actual plan.

Richard W wrote: ↑Tue Apr 02, 2019 4:27 pm A sane strategy for passing the withdrawal agreement is now available. Step one is to make revocation the default outcome.

The Brexit Delay Bill is something of a damp squib. The default outcome is that the EU says there's no good reason to extend Article 50 and then hard Brexit occurs.

The BBC have had to extend their graph for ministerial resignations, as the old one didn't have room for the new magnitudes now being explored (we lost another couple yesterday).
And the ERG have called the PM a "Marxist collaborator".



In total, 36 government members have resigned in the last 12 months. However, this total includes PPSes, who aren't ministers, and aren't included in many official counts. Officially, May has had 32 ministers resign over the course of her premiership - 24 of them in the last year.

To put that 32 into context - in the period 1979-2016, there were 109 resignations. In the years 2016-2018 alone, there have been 32.

This is literally becoming a logistical problem for her - there aren't enough MPs left to be ministers. Once you count out the people too young and stupid, the people who have already resigned in disgrace or in an attack on the PM, the people too old and senile, and the people who were never in government because they're opposed to the PM or just can't be trusted, there's not a lot of Tory MPs left eligible. I saw one analysis a few months ago pointing out that there were a dozen PPS positions vacant, but only four eligible MPs to fill them, and that wasn't even considering issues of reputation and ideology. So lots of government positions are now vacant, while others are handled part-time. For instance, she's just announced a new Wales minister (about five different Wales ministers have resigned in the last two years) - the new Wales minister is ALSO the Assistant Whip, AND is also temporarily acting as a cabinet office minister to cover for a colleague who's off on maternity leave.

[A PPS, to remind people, is basically a ministerial intern. They shadow and assist a minister - PPS positions are traditionally only given to MPs who have never been ministers, as a training-wheels job. They have no authority so they're not ministers, but they're on the government payroll so by convention can't oppose the government on a substantive issue without resigning.]


To be fair, Corbyn once lost 47 shadow government members in just 2 days, so...



In other, totally reassuring news, it's come out that back in December the government had to spend £40,000 providing counselling to civil servants who had been traumatised by drawing up analyses of likely outcomes in the case of No Deal...

Salmoneus wrote: ↑Thu Apr 04, 2019 5:08 pm In other, totally reassuring news, it's come out that back in December the government had to spend £40,000 providing counselling to civil servants who had been traumatised by drawing up analyses of likely outcomes in the case of No Deal...

What, are they projecting that No Deal will be like Mad Max playing out in Real Life?

My guess is more like the economic situation of the first years after World War 2 (which, for the information of American readers, pretty much sucked pretty much anywhere in Europe, even in Britain).

So May has officially asked for a extension until June 30.

Raphael wrote: ↑Fri Apr 05, 2019 9:26 am So May has officially asked for a extension until June 30.

... which would mean that the UK will take part in the upcoming European Parliament elections, which may take up the character of an informal second Brexit referendum. I expect the Brexiteers to boycott that election because according to them, it is meaningless. Most likely, this will end both May's and Corbyn's careers.

I predict a resounding "fuck off May"

WeepingElf wrote: ↑Fri Apr 05, 2019 9:30 am

Raphael wrote: ↑Fri Apr 05, 2019 9:26 am So May has officially asked for a extension until June 30.

... which would mean that the UK will take part in the upcoming European Parliament elections, which may take up the character of an informal second Brexit referendum. I expect the Brexiteers to boycott that election because according to them, it is meaningless. Most likely, this will end both May's and Corbyn's careers.

May has already announced that she'll resign once this whole thing is over, but Corbyn? The Labour base loves him. And if the Brexiteers would actually boycott new EU elections - which I doubt; they love using those to show of - both Labour and the Tories would stand to gain from UKIP collapsing.

WeepingElf wrote: ↑Fri Apr 05, 2019 9:30 am I expect the Brexiteers to boycott that election because according to them, it is meaningless.

No, Nigel Farage will be standing as a member of the Brexit Party. (He has already put this forward as a good reason to refuse any extension.) UKIP will also be standing.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Thu Apr 04, 2019 7:51 pm What, are they projecting that No Deal will be like Mad Max playing out in Real Life?

On Day 1, it will be illegal to import potatoes into the Republic from Northern Ireland. Apparently, most chips in fast food outlets in the RoI are supplied with chips prepared in Northern Ireland. Now imagine a chip manufacturer inviting the Provisional IRA to ride shotgun on their deliveries so that the Irish Customs don't deprive the Irish of their potatoes.

Ireland imports potatoes?! o_o

The first passports without "European Union" on them have been issued. In a shocking betrayal, they are not blue.

Halian wrote: ↑Fri Apr 05, 2019 11:51 pm Ireland imports potatoes?! o_o

Of course. Potatoes are traditionally very popular in Ireland.

Under a system of international trade, countries produce not what they want most, but what they are, relatively, best at producing. Ireland is perhaps the world's most ideal land for pasture, and therefore it exports meat and dairy products. But because the land is best used for pasture, it can't be used for cropland. Therefore, potatoes and cereals and the like have to be imported. I suspect also that much of the land used to grow potatoes in Ireland is used to produce the large variety of local specialty potatoes*, at a higher price. The potatos used for fish-and-chips will be a) specialised chipping potatoes, and b) as cheap as possible. So they'll be imported from abroad.


Fun fact: the top Irish exports (other than tax evasion) are...
- medications
- heterocyclic compounds with nitrogen hetero-atoms only
- blood
- mixtures of odiferous substances and mixtures
- orthopedic appliances
- aircraft, spacecraft and launch vehicles
- sulfonamides
- nucleic acids and their salts
- transmission apparatus
- medical instruments
- automatic data processing machines
- beef
- malt extract


*my (Irish) grandparents used to have an annual potato calendar, with a different type of Irish potato for each month, and the calendar wasn't just the same every year...

So let me get this straight, there are not enough Tories in Britain?
What world is this?

Moose-tache wrote: ↑Sat Apr 06, 2019 3:16 pm So let me get this straight, there are not enough Tories in Britain?
What world is this?

Not so much in Britain as in the House of Commons.

Reality.

From the Great Reform Act in 1832, when vote tallies became meaningful, to Universal (Male) Suffrage in 1918 (and women's suffrage in 1928, restoring the equality in voting removed by the Great Reform Act), only three times were the Tories able to command a majority of voters in an election: Peel in 1841, and Salisbury in 1886 and 1900 - none of these passed 52%.

Since universal and women's suffrage, the Tories have won the support of the majority of the voters exactly once - Baldwin in 1931, when Labour had led the country into the great depression and Labour had split in two and the Liberals had split in three.

May's 2017 result, 42% of the electorate, was actually the biggest Tory share of the vote since 1979. [that's not a great triumph for May, but rather a reflection of the collapse of the Lib Dems]


While historically vote distributions were sympathetic toward the two major parties, fundamentally any politician who struggles to ever gain the approval of more than 40% of the population (i.e. almost all UK governments) is in danger of coalition and weak minority governments. It seems that distributions have now stopped being favourable, and hung parliaments and unworkable majorities may be a frequent feature in the next decade or two.


For context here: Donald Trump has an approval rating of around 42%, historically (though not uniquely) low for a US President. Someone like Biden, by comparison, has 53% approval, including 60% among under-35s and 73% among African-Americans.


Theresa May, meanwhile, has an approval rating of 27%. This is actually remarkably high - she's the third most popular politician in the UK, after Boris (31%) and Jezza (29%). [Sadiq, Ed Balls, Farage, John Major, David Blunkett, Paddy Ashdown and Ruth Davidson fill out the top ten - notably, Balls, Major, Blunkett and Ashdown are all retired from politics. The only other politicians to reach the heady heights of a 20% approval rating are Sturgeon, Brown (retired), David Miliband (retired) and William Hague (mostly retired)]

Leading Tory leadership candidates are much less well liked. Michael Gove, for instance, has an approval rating of 12%, compared to a disapproval rating of 51%. Only 20% of the country have even heard of David Liddington, the deputy PM (only 5% like him).

Salmoneus wrote: ↑Sat Apr 06, 2019 5:13 pm [Sadiq, Ed Balls, Farage, John Major, David Blunkett, Paddy Ashdown and Ruth Davidson fill out the top ten - notably, Balls, Major, Blunkett and Ashdown are all retired from politics.

How much of Ed Balls' approval comes from people who like him because he has a funny name? (Don't get me wrong; the man seems to have some serious merits. He was apparently one of the people who kept the UK from joining the Euro, which, given how the Euro worked out for much of the periphery of the Eurozone, might well be something to be thankful for.)