WINSTON SMITH GETS TO WORK ON BREXIT BRIEFING PAPERS
Faisal Islam has just pointed out some subtle rewording of Government papers on Brexit. The word “unlikely” in relation to a “no deal” has been quietly removed. Note the before and after examples below regarding medicines. Apparently, all departments have done the same thing.
Although Mrs May says that her deal is the only deal, that she will not allow a second referendum and that she will not contemplate crashing out with no deal (although at one time “no deal was better than a bad deal”)…
And although traditionally, Cabinet responsibility demands loyalty, I see that this morning Rudd was proposing that if there should be no agreement on Mrs May’s deal (pretty much a certainty), a second referendum might have to be called.
And at the same time, Leadsom, the fox hunter, has been suggesting that a “managed” no deal (what’s that?) would be possible.
So, that’ll be May being strong, stable and clear… huh?
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Tris remains indisposed (it’s coming out of his wages) and today’s article appears thanks to Munguin himself!
MUNGUIN'S NEW REPUBLIC 
Take it easy, Tris. Leave Munguin to it. He’s doing a great job as stand-in.
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🙂
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Hope you feel much better soon, Tris. Make sure that Munguin guy pulls his weight and looks after you!! I know it’s ‘unlikely’, but he might get some pointers from TM at WM before he attempts to wash up the china and brexit a’.
Ah’ll away noo afore someone shouts at me.
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LOL. Munguin, most likely!!! 🙂
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sorry you have a lurgy. Having now read the previous thread, how on earth did you get a docs appointment that quickly!
TBH I don’t think anything Westminster will do now can surprise me. I think no deal means riots on the English streets again. Maybe Scotland should take advantage of the chaos and slip away quietly…
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If you phone my surgery at 8 o’clock in the morning, you can get an appointment on the day, PP.
I suspect it could be riots in England either way.
No deal and food shortages… or another referendum and the Daily Mail and Express stirring up hatred about remoaners.
Nip out the back door while they are otherwise engaged?
Sounds like a plan.
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Kinda like the Faeroese did with Denmark when Denmark was occupied by the Nazis in WWII? Yeah… we could sneak out while the English are occupied and cowed by extremist right-wing Brexiteers…
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I think the Icelanders did the same sort of thing, although they were already independent under the Danish Crown (1918), but they declared themselves a republic in 1944.
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Ah yes, another day, another episode in the Westminster and Washington soap opera… maybe we could call it “The West Winging It”.
I read recently that the EU – can’t remember which bit of it – were recommending that countries act generously toward the UK, and allow various activities to continue for a bit after a no-deal Brexit. One of the things I remember was that lorry drivers would be able to continue driving throughout Europe (for nine months, I think it was) even though their permits would be technically invalid. Another was that enough flights should be allowed to ensure “basic connectivity” even though the UK will technically be out of the European free skies arrangement. There was something in there about passporting for the UK’s financial institutions as well.
That still means there will be a time limit, and those acts of generosity – which civil-law States will undoubtedly find legally uncomfortable – will cease at a certain point. Even before then, we can expect that no new permits for lorries / lorry drivers will be recognized, that “basic connectivity” will not include stag nights in Riga or bachelorette parties in Ibiza, and that no new financial institutions or services will be passported.
In other words, the EU is advocating generosity (to avoid chaos), but generosity accompanied by a progressive squeeze and a sunset clause, designed in such a way as to put increasing pressure on the Westminster regime and give it a deadline to start behaving like sane and responsible adults who are truly cognizant of the political, economic, geopolitical, diplomatic, logical and physical limits to the supremacy of Westminster’s sovereignty.
In any case, the current regime evidently believes that supreme sovereignty lies with it rather than with the Westminster Parliament. When you see the Cabinet arrogate to itself the right to legislate – as it has done over legislation surrounding Brexit – that is not just a warning light for democracy, it means we should turn on the sirens warning of imminent attack or natural disaster. The Gina Miller case on parliamentary scrutiny of the article 50 notification was extremely important in that regard, by reasserting the legislature’s powers vis-à-vis the executive. That the legislature passed it on the nod is actually another warning sign: rubber-stamp parliaments serve only to perpetuate an illusion of democracy.
When a government acts to abolish the checks and balances on its freedom of action, when it takes action to free itself from the constraints of international law that are supposed to be binding on it, constraints which it already ignores or actively defies, when it actively defies its own legislature and is held in contempt of it by that legislature, but without any actual effect – then we can most definitely say that that Government is out of control. As a corollary of that statement, governments which are out of control are not legitimate. In Scotland, the Westminster regime is not legitimate because it is not only out of control, we voted massively against it – which we Scots have allowed up to now for the sake of a quiet life, and because it is a waste of breath trying to persuade the Westminster Parliament that its dogma and myths are incorrect, untrue, self-serving, and indefensible.
Whatever quaint notions, such as Her Maj sitting in Parliament, may shakily underpin English constitutional dogma, the current Westminster regime is prone to casually ignoring them anyway. Those quaint notions have never been defensible – at least, not since anyone believed in the divine right of kings – and the ramshackle edifice that is the British constitution has managed to perpetuate them only because of the equally unwritten agreement to ignore the manifest contradictions and sheer idiocies of current arrangements in favour of the time-honoured practice of kludge’n’fudge.
Recently, the Westminster Parliament and the Westminster regime grudgingly affirmed the Scottish Claim of Right, but the Claim of Right has not been directly and adequately tried in court. The omens are not good: the judgment of the Supreme Court on the Continuity Bill reaffirmed the Court’s ruling in Gina Miller’s article 50 notification case that the Sewel Convention was a dead letter, not law. Calling it a “self-denying ordinance” was just a polite way of saying that it is as much use as a chocolate teapot, and Westminster reigns supreme.
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All that EU “generosity” will do is allow Westminster to ignore the problem for however long it lasts.
Never give a narcissist an inch, it won’t help.
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The problems don’t go away, moving them along just gives Tess longer in Downing Street.
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Yes, Illy, the Europeans are operating the assumption that the Tory regime is composed of rational actors. You would think they would have learned by now that it isn’t – far from it.
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I have a feeling that no matter what they do, Ed, it is less kicking the can down the road and more kicking a hand grenade down the road.
I wonder about driving permits for example. What about insurance, which is not really government controlled, but private enterprise.
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Driving permits. We might have to get hold of international driving licences (not difficult); the problem is when you have to acquire a green card (remember those?) to prove that you have special insurance for Abroad (I seem to recall that it was not cheap).
We can say goodbye to our EHIC cards too, as I understand it – so that means we will need to have more expensive travel and medical insurance too. So quite a bit more expensive and rather more complicated to go abroad, if the ports are still open… I mean, do you see the Westminster regime actually ever getting on with anything that actually matters in the real world? The only reality for them is the Tory Party and its internal politics, to the exclusion of all else.
Lying scum.
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Insurance will be a problem:
https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/international/2018/12/20/512602.htm
Still, we’ve got a deal sorted out with Switzerland:
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-12/21/c_137688059.htm
so your numbered bank accounts have all been prioritised and sorted out.
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Munguin will be relieved!!! 🙂
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PS: sent it on to Terry, in case he does’t see it here.
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You might be interested in this too.
http://www.politics.co.uk/blogs/2018/12/20/eu-no-deal-plans-our-childish-outburst-has-put-us-at-their-m?utm_source=Editorial+newsletter&utm_campaign=551415a09e-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_12_21_10_58&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_cb6d3a8c9c-551415a09e-184979577
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Excellent article, Tris! Pity I didn’t read it before I opened my gob in reply to Jake (below).
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Yes, Jake. Unfortunately, I cannot trace the article in which I read that countries had been urged to act generously.
UK insurers would, I am sure, still be able to sell you insurance for your car, if you succeed in taking it Abroad – but you’ll have to carry your Green Card with you to prove to any interested authorities that you have it. You can see why: there is no way anyone is going to allow those mad Brits with their steering wheels on the wrong side to drive around without even third-party insurance!
It will cost you, though. Especially if the pound tanks, which it is certain to do.
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” it is less kicking the can down the road and more kicking a hand grenade down the road.”
I completely agree.
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Tris
Please fill in this ASAP
Click to access uc50-interactive-final-0917.pdf
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I’ve seen them, Niko.
Like the rest of the crap from Amber Rudd’s Department of Wickedness and Purgatory, it’s a nightmare to get right.
And most likely you will be refused, and the appeal will be refused until you take it to tribunal where, most likely, it will be granted… until the next time.
They make you go through it often, even if you are suffering from something incurable.
I’ve got friends with an autistic lad. Fortunately both parents are lawyers because, if he was left to sort it on his own …
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Trispw,
I have never undestood the willingness of the state to persecute the vulnerable, be it asylum seekers, the disabled, the mentally challenged, the poor, or even the sick, just anyone who is not incredibly rich with an iron fist,.
Whilst retaining a velvet glove for the wrong sort of person, the speculator, the off-shore user, the corporatists – where profit is the bottom line and indeed constitutionaly a responsibility – or, any Tory or neo-tory (that would be a surprisingly large percentage of the Labour Party).
This disengagement with the people who actually elect politicians has been an incredibly successful con job. Responsibility to corporate supporters has replaced party membership fee’s, or is that only in America? I forget.
Much as Trump has become, ahem, exposed, in the last couple of weeks for the sham that he always was, perhaps there will be a similar enlightenment in the UK about The Conservative and Unionist Party. Who are, clearly using the words ‘conservative’ and ‘unionist’ in surprising new directions.
These folk are neither Conservative nor Unionist. They are taking us into a dictatorial future where Conservative and Unionist will be indistinguishable from fascism. (“indistinguishable” is not usually in my vocabulary – I had to check the spelling – so how come it is the right word to talk about the Tory belief in their minor fascist moment?)
To say I am unimpressed with Tories, and their chums in the Labour Party, so understates my regrets that we lost the independence referendum by such a narrow margin.
I trust that Nichola has a plan, because, right now, we need, more than ever, to escape from this clusterfuck of ‘Westminster is Best’ , ‘We hate Europeans’, ‘Who the fuck was Albert Einstien’, ‘We fought the War and the War won’ morons. To name but a few sloganeers, who haven’t a clue.
When politics is reduced to slogans, and that is – pretty undoubtedy – what the no campaign did – and does – without sense or nonsense entering into their discussions. It is up to you, dear reader, to try, very hard, to distinguish truth from lies.
I would urge you to try. And this post will be attacked by folk that want you to not try. These folk are the ones that think that mind control is an OK tactic.
Hopefully the folk around here have the Munguin antibodies for that sort of shit. Works for me!
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There’s a lot in that post, Douglas.
Most importantly, I don’t know how any government can treat the poor and the ill and asylum seekers the way that they do.
Given that most of what the DWP does is illegal and rule against by judges, I can only assume that
a) they are chancers
b)they are incompetent
c) the Tories haven’t managed to corrupt the Department of Justice
And of course that the likes of Esther McVey and Amber Rudd don;t give a stuff.
What I will say is that therein lies MY nationalism.
As I think I’ve said before, for me it is nothing to do with “bonnie Scotland” or “wha’s like us”.
It’s about wanting to live in a country where we treat everyone reasonably, as opposed to turning a blind eye to the crimes of the super rich, while strangling the life out of the poor, all the time lecturing everyone else about how democratic and what good Christians we are.
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Niko,
That, my friend, is a state that hates it’s vulnerable. Hell mend the bureaucracy!
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