UK Politics & Brexit Discussion

[Guest]

So the negotiations start today. I don't really get it. Where are we at with the EU? Are we still paying money in? Had anything changed at the minute?

[RandoEFC+]

I read last week that the cost of Brexit has almost overtaken the total cost of our membership of the EU since 1973. Also amusing that after one of the selling points of Brexit was some sort of anti-establishment "we hate red tape" sabre-rattling argument. Now it's emerged that we'll need to employ thousands of people costing £1.5bn for *checks notes*... the extra paperwork generated by Brexit. 

But yeah, iconic blue passports for the win!

[Stan]

20 minutes ago, RandoEFC said:

I read last week that the cost of Brexit has almost overtaken the total cost of our membership of the EU since 1973. Also amusing that after one of the selling points of Brexit was some sort of anti-establishment "we hate red tape" sabre-rattling argument. Now it's emerged that we'll need to employ thousands of people costing £1.5bn for *checks notes*... the extra paperwork generated by Brexit. 

But yeah, iconic blue passports for the win!

Not to mention that our own government is stopping their own Health Minister (Matt Hancock) from going to Europe to co-ordinate, with the rest of the continent, how best to combat and manage the COVID-19 outbreak. 

Our own government's stupidity really does know no bounds. All because they want nothing to do with the EU, despite public health at risk. And further to that point, Hancock's department wanted to retain the EWRS (early warning & retention system) as part of the (new) deal between UK and EU.

Guess what Boris and his chums said. 'NOPE'.  All after advisers warned that exiting EWRS would put public health at risk. Government doesn't give a shit about any of us.  

[Inverted]

8 hours ago, RandoEFC said:

I read last week that the cost of Brexit has almost overtaken the total cost of our membership of the EU since 1973. Also amusing that after one of the selling points of Brexit was some sort of anti-establishment "we hate red tape" sabre-rattling argument. Now it's emerged that we'll need to employ thousands of people costing £1.5bn for *checks notes*... the extra paperwork generated by Brexit. 

But yeah, iconic blue passports for the win!

The real gut puncher for me is that in hindsight we could have voted Yes, and even by the pessimistic forecasts we would be not have been any worse off than this whole debacle has made us. 

And at least we would be going forward with a government that has at least a passing interest in advancing the interests of the population. 

[6666]

On 02/03/2020 at 14:11, RandoEFC said:

I read last week that the cost of Brexit has almost overtaken the total cost of our membership of the EU since 1973. Also amusing that after one of the selling points of Brexit was some sort of anti-establishment "we hate red tape" sabre-rattling argument. Now it's emerged that we'll need to employ thousands of people costing £1.5bn for *checks notes*... the extra paperwork generated by Brexit. 

But yeah, iconic blue passports for the win!

Yeah but our flag is our flag and should not be seen as submissive to any other flag or on the same level of any other flag. Fuck the EU flag. 

You'll never successfully combat this winning argument (however dumb it might be).

[Stan]

 

[Danny]

On 02/03/2020 at 14:11, RandoEFC said:

I read last week that the cost of Brexit has almost overtaken the total cost of our membership of the EU since 1973. Also amusing that after one of the selling points of Brexit was some sort of anti-establishment "we hate red tape" sabre-rattling argument. Now it's emerged that we'll need to employ thousands of people costing £1.5bn for *checks notes*... the extra paperwork generated by Brexit. 

But yeah, iconic blue passports for the win!

It was never a logical argument to leave the EU, it will take close to a decade of legal work alone to amend and create new laws that we're saying goodbye to and as you say "we want less redtape!"

 

 

[Stan]

Matt Hancock needs to have a word with himself and assess his own tone. 

Absolute nothing wrong with what Khan said or how she says it. He's just shat himself by being presented with some facts. 

 

 

[Honey Honey]

Just looks like two standard Westminster politicians stuck in their teens.

[Dr. Gonzo]

12 hours ago, Stan said:

Matt Hancock needs to have a word with himself and assess his own tone. 

Absolute nothing wrong with what Khan said or how she says it. He's just shat himself by being presented with some facts. 

 

 

Matt Hancock is the type of politician you get after one party’s had power for a decade yet used scapegoats so they’ve never faced accountability 

[Honey Honey]

Don't think there's much difference between Hancock and every government I've known at every stage in their power cycle after about 3 months of being elected.

Khan didn't do very well there. Poor gotcha questions and the line saying there has been no testing strategy played right into his hands. If Hancock is to be held to account it needs to be a lot better than that.

[Stan]

9 minutes ago, Harvsky said:

Don't think there's much difference between Hancock and every government I've known at every stage in their power cycle after about 3 months of being elected.

Khan didn't do very well there. Poor gotcha questions and the line saying there has been no testing strategy played right into his hands. If Hancock is to be held to account it needs to be a lot better than that.

Really? 

He could have responded better even if it was a question that played right in to his hands (I don't think it was anyway). He was very rude and dismissive and went beyond a line, for me. 

[Honey Honey]

41 minutes ago, Stan said:

Really? 

He could have responded better even if it was a question that played right in to his hands (I don't think it was anyway). He was very rude and dismissive and went beyond a line, for me. 

Saying there's no testing strategy gave him something to talk about. If you are going to hold someone to account you can't give them cheap easy wins by getting your own argument wrongly worded like that. 

I can see what Hancock meant by tone and he hit back. That's why I said in my original post that I see two teenagers. It looked like the exchange of teenagers masquerading as adults.

Hancock has spent the last 6 weeks facing loaded questions from journalists that no one would answer directly. It's no good politicians doing the same gotcha nonsense.

[Stan]

13 minutes ago, Harvsky said:

Saying there's no testing strategy gave him something to talk about. If you are going to hold someone to account you can't give them cheap easy wins by getting your own argument wrongly worded like that. 

I can see what Hancock meant by tone and he hit back. That's why I said in my original post that I see two teenagers. It looked like the exchange of teenagers masquerading as adults.

Hancock has spent the last 6 weeks facing loaded questions from journalists that no one would answer directly. It's no good politicians doing the same gotcha nonsense.

Gonna have to disagree on this one. Cheap shot, easy answer or whatever, I just don't think there was any need to mention the tone (because there was nothing wrong with it in the context). Keir Starmer managed it perfectly well the other when responding to Raab the other day, even though Raab's 'tone' (and facts) were off the mark.  

I don't see 2 teenagers at all. I see one person laying it down thick about her own experience on the front-lines, and almost expressing a need for some empathy from her opposition about the desperate situation the public and key-worker staff are in. I think the strategy should well be brought in to question anyway, regardless. The numbers speak for themselves. The fiddling of figures the other day to make it look like they reached a target they never met (yes it's great there's an upward trajectory of tests and that so many tests in the tens of thousands are being done. But set yourself a target and miss it and that in itself is an easy chance for scrutiny to be brought about - there's no 2 ways about that if you miss your targets which were overly ambitious to start with in my opinion).

On the other hand, in response to her, I see a man who's probably under an immense amount of stress given his position and (not sure if I mentioned on here, mind) for someone who's probably done a lot of good work in dealing with this pandemic, it unravelled a bit with his retort to her. I see someone who, as you say, has faced a lot of questions (utterly stupid and misguided ones at that at times) and perhaps could be getting fed up. I don't even think he's responded as a teenager would. I think he's tried to deflect in some ways at some very real points she made, by telling her to 'amend' her tone and almost like a 'get back in your box and don't question our authority' kind of way. 

It was disappointing to see such a kind of response. If it was such an easy thing to answer back to (the testing strategy), come back with some facts to put someone in their place. Let the numbers or strategy do the talking. No need to make it personal (to an extent).  

[RandoEFC+]

I defended Hancock on testing and was pleased when he got to 100,000. To be honest on the day, I'd rather he fluffed the numbers a bit to hit 100k on the day he said just because I couldn't be arsed with the media and Labour twitter activists getting all antsy about him missing his deadline.

Sadly, I was wrong in thinking that they'd keep working to get to 100,000 tests a day legitimately a couple of days after they fudged the numbers. They haven't, which pretty much confirms that fudging the numbers was done in the interest of Matt Hancock's vanity project of hitting 100,000 tests by the end of April. 

It's absolutely typical of this government to set themselves an arbitrary, seemingly unachievable goal, fail to achieve the goal, tell us that they actually did achieve the goal, and expect everyone to just go back about their business as the number of tests sinks back to 70k-80k for the following days. The testing capacity is one small part of the mass testing and tracing programme that's required to get us out of this mess. Again, this lot have focused disproportionately on achieving a good headline rather than putting the infrastructure in place to build the system we need for the benefit of public health as quickly and efficiently as they can. In football terms, they've spent a month of their pre-season doing shooting practice so that they've got a great capacity to put the ball in the net but the lack of fitness work, tactics and match practice means that they won't get the full benefit out of it.

He deserves to be challenged on it and yes, her wording was a bit point-scorey but the man is supposed to be the face of the NHS in this crisis and to speak like that to an actual front line GP in the House of Commons is rude and a massive own goal politically.

[Stan]

1 hour ago, RandoEFC said:

I defended Hancock on testing and was pleased when he got to 100,000. To be honest on the day, I'd rather he fluffed the numbers a bit to hit 100k on the day he said just because I couldn't be arsed with the media and Labour twitter activists getting all antsy about him missing his deadline.

 

(I did read the rest of your post and agree with it, just selecting the bit I want to discuss).

When did they get to 100k tests? Capacity was there but they fudged the numbers to get include tests they'd sent out just to 'reach' their target...

You mention 'labour Twitter activists getting antsy' but isn't this name-calling what you alluded to in your post in the COVID19 thread?! 

I get you're probably generalising but it's fair game to be called out on missing the deadline. Don't think it matters if it screams 'labour activist'. It's actually one thing I'd rather the media did focus on as opposed to anything else!

[Danny]

What was wrong with how she presented the question? People’s lives are at risk, she and her colleagues literally work to save them and have to go through the pains of what that brings to medical staff. To question her tone as if the government haven’t already shown their ineptitude throughout this pandemic already is a shit stance.

[RandoEFC+]

1 minute ago, Stan said:

(I did read the rest of your post and agree with it, just selecting the bit I want to discuss).

When did they get to 100k tests? Capacity was there but they fudged the numbers to get include tests they'd sent out just to 'reach' their target...

You mention 'labour Twitter activists getting antsy' but isn't this name-calling what you alluded to in your post in the COVID19 thread?! 

I get you're probably generalising but it's fair game to be called out on missing the deadline. Don't think it matters if it screams 'labour activist'. It's actually one thing I'd rather the media did focus on as opposed to anything else!

I'm not calling you a Labour activist for pointing this out, that's exactly what I have a problem with people doing, but in this scenario my Twitter feed was already flooded with literal Labour activists, members and MPs tweeting about him fudging the numbers (which he did), so in this case I'm not generalising. It would have been even worse if he hadn't 'found a way' to make it look like 100k tests which is what I'm saying.

When did they get to 100k tests? Well if they've always counted home tests being sent out in their daily tally, then they did it on Thursday. What's concerning about this is that if they've been counting those tests every day then the daily testing numbers are even lower on the days either side of Hancock's deadline day than they look, but you have to hope that those tests are getting carried out and returned (and not counted twice when they are returned).

The whole 100k thing is a red herring, dead cat, distraction, call it what you want. It's an arbitrary number and the end of April was an arbitrary date. It doesn't actually matter whether or not they met it even if they should be challenged on the fact that they appear to have fudged the numbers because they couldn't bring themselves to say "well we only got to 85,000 tests but we've still made excellent progress towards building an effective test and trace system and we'll be carrying out 100,000 tests a day on a sustainable basis within the next couple of weeks" because, well, this is the Brexit government whose support base (and most vocal opposition over the past few years) doesn't understand shades of grey, only black and white, and because they believe (perhaps with good reason) that the media would slate them less for fudging the numbers on one day than missing their arbitrary target. The fact that it's received so much focus over the past week and a half is symptomatic of just how broken politics and the discourse around it has become in the UK.

[Stan]

2 minutes ago, RandoEFC said:

I'm not calling you a Labour activist for pointing this out, that's exactly what I have a problem with people doing, but in this scenario my Twitter feed was already flooded with literal Labour activists, members and MPs tweeting about him fudging the numbers (which he did), so in this case I'm not generalising. It would have been even worse if he hadn't 'found a way' to make it look like 100k tests which is what I'm saying.

When did they get to 100k tests? Well if they've always counted home tests being sent out in their daily tally, then they did it on Thursday. What's concerning about this is that if they've been counting those tests every day then the daily testing numbers are even lower on the days either side of Hancock's deadline day than they look, but you have to hope that those tests are getting carried out and returned (and not counted twice when they are returned).

The whole 100k thing is a red herring, dead cat, distraction, call it what you want. It's an arbitrary number and the end of April was an arbitrary date. It doesn't actually matter whether or not they met it even if they should be challenged on the fact that they appear to have fudged the numbers because they couldn't bring themselves to say "well we only got to 85,000 tests but we've still made excellent progress towards building an effective test and trace system and we'll be carrying out 100,000 tests a day on a sustainable basis within the next couple of weeks" because, well, this is the Brexit government whose support base (and most vocal opposition over the past few years) doesn't understand shades of grey, only black and white, and because they believe (perhaps with good reason) that the media would slate them less for fudging the numbers on one day than missing their arbitrary target. The fact that it's received so much focus over the past week and a half is symptomatic of just how broken politics and the discourse around it has become in the UK.

Nah I know you weren't calling me one mate, just didn't think it was right that any criticism of it means you'd be a Labour activist. 

Anyway, that's besides the main point.

As far as I'm aware, the home tests being sent out in their daily tally up to end of April were not included. So it's quite blatantly been added to push them over the 100k number.

I think I mentioned here or COVID19 thread - I'd actually have more respect for them or just politicians in general if they were honest. Like you say, if they said they'd hit 85k by end of April (which is great!) and were on course to hit 100k with the general trend of numbers going upward I really wouldn't have minded, personally. Given they stated, almost arrogantly, they'd hit 100k I don't see how it can be treated as arbitrary. The day it was announced they'd opted for 100k by end of April they hadn't even reached other targets before that. It seemed to be like a macho statement in comparison to seeing how other countries in Europe were perhaps testing in good numbers. Like a British stiff upper lip attitude of 'anything you can do, we can do better'. While that may be true in certain things it was the wrong tactic to employ just to go for 'we're better than you'. Now we just look embarrassing for 1) missing the target and 2) carrying out some 'creative accounting' to make the numbers work.

I understand that's not how the media would have treated it but sadly the media run the narratives these days and has been the case for years. Look at yesterday's news - UK has the highest reported death toll in Europe now (absolutely huge news in the grand scheme of things) and some newspapers decide to go with the Ferguson breaking lockdown story (still very big, but not in comparison to the death tolls). Totally missing the big picture. I also saw on Telegraph (?) front page that they went for the Ferguson story and in a tiny little box at the bottom there's a small snippet from Vallance saying they may have been slow in their testing strategy...

[RandoEFC+]

The 100k was only relevant because Hancock said it. A general increase in testing is relevant in the actual matter of getting this crisis sorted. Ironically, they achieved the actual relevant achievement but like I said, politics is so broken in this country that instead they had to obfuscate about hitting the meaningless 100k target instead.

[Honey Honey]

3 hours ago, Stan said:

Gonna have to disagree on this one. Cheap shot, easy answer or whatever, I just don't think there was any need to mention the tone (because there was nothing wrong with it in the context). Keir Starmer managed it perfectly well the other when responding to Raab the other day, even though Raab's 'tone' (and facts) were off the mark.  

I don't see 2 teenagers at all. I see one person laying it down thick about her own experience on the front-lines, and almost expressing a need for some empathy from her opposition about the desperate situation the public and key-worker staff are in. I think the strategy should well be brought in to question anyway, regardless. The numbers speak for themselves. The fiddling of figures the other day to make it look like they reached a target they never met (yes it's great there's an upward trajectory of tests and that so many tests in the tens of thousands are being done. But set yourself a target and miss it and that in itself is an easy chance for scrutiny to be brought about - there's no 2 ways about that if you miss your targets which were overly ambitious to start with in my opinion).

On the other hand, in response to her, I see a man who's probably under an immense amount of stress given his position and (not sure if I mentioned on here, mind) for someone who's probably done a lot of good work in dealing with this pandemic, it unravelled a bit with his retort to her. I see someone who, as you say, has faced a lot of questions (utterly stupid and misguided ones at that at times) and perhaps could be getting fed up. I don't even think he's responded as a teenager would. I think he's tried to deflect in some ways at some very real points she made, by telling her to 'amend' her tone and almost like a 'get back in your box and don't question our authority' kind of way. 

It was disappointing to see such a kind of response. If it was such an easy thing to answer back to (the testing strategy), come back with some facts to put someone in their place. Let the numbers or strategy do the talking. No need to make it personal (to an extent).  

An adult would be the bigger person and not mention the tone. Still, it's not as big a deal as being made out, just looks like we are returning to our ordinary day to day Westminster.

There's plenty to push the government on but it needs to be good quality. I suppose it's good for social media shares among the converted. 

[Stan]

2 hours ago, RandoEFC said:

The 100k was only relevant because Hancock said it. A general increase in testing is relevant in the actual matter of getting this crisis sorted. Ironically, they achieved the actual relevant achievement but like I said, politics is so broken in this country that instead they had to obfuscate about hitting the meaningless 100k target instead.

It was a government target published. Whoever said it doesn't matter. It's still relevant .  

[RandoEFC+]

Just now, Stan said:

It was a government target published. Whoever said it doesn't matter. It's still relevant .  

So taking the fudging of the numbers out of it, would it have been a failure if they'd done 99,000 tests on that day? They just stuck a nice round number on it. It might be relevant to point scoring in that the government set themselves a target they couldn't achieve they must be incompetent, if that's the route you want to go down but what's relevant to them actually making progress towards the end of this crisis is them demonstrating they can vastly increase testing without putting an arbitrary number on how much and they did achieve that. My point is that it will go unrecognised because this is the UK and a hot take or a quick headline reigns supreme over a patient and sensible analysis.

[Inverted]

Health minister, Nadine Dorries, has retweeted a right-wing extremist account's doctored video of Keir Starmer, allegedly defending Asian grooming gangs. 

Nice to see our far-right government can still make time to spread fake news in amongst their herculean efforts to manage the crisis. 

Edited May 14, 2020 by Inverted

[Stan]

24 minutes ago, Inverted said:

Health minister, Nadine Dorries, has retweeted a right-wing extremist account's doctored video of Keir Starmer, allegedly defending Asian grooming gangs. 

Nice to see our far-right government can still make time to spread fake news in amongst their herculean efforts to manage the crisis. 

Just seen this too.