Off Topic Politics Thread

Land Transport currently uses Dover. Dover is almost entirely roll on roll off. Nothing to do with government contracts. Grimsby / Immingham have been preparing for ages and have already been taking business away from the South.

I will bet that the focus on Dover is because the focus is always on the South East. And I'm not talking about it creating anything. I put "creating" in brackets in terms of jobs because I know those jobs that are created up North will end up being lost down South however is that not what was supposed to be happening? It is about time the jobs (and thus money) was shared out and moved away from being all based in the South East.

All the talk of spreading things out yet it is all about making Dover and Heathrow bigger. Northern Powerhouse but everything is kept close to London. Talk about HS2 being for the benefit of the North yet the reality is it is purely to ship people into London quicker.

All the talk about environmentally friendly necessities yet the focus is on increasing flights and thus associated traffic around Heathrow and the focus on Dover, which is almost entirely roll on roll off (lorries, cars) instead of trying to reduce vehicle use.

 

Something we agree on. I was only discussing this this weekend. Why not move Government departments out of London? Free up prime buildings for commerce or (God forbid) conversion to human habitation.

In return, Grimsby, Morecambe, Accrington or wherever, gets a bundle of jobs and all of the employees spend their wages in local businesses, multiplying the effect. London doesn't need the stimulus, towns outside the South East do.

Vin

 

And I hope it does too. Whatever the outcome we will get through this, understand your frustration, we all are in one way or another but we must find a way to move on.

 

Vin

 

Some (perhaps many) won't get through this.

Just a warning; this is a debate on the withdrawal agreement. The trade negotiation will take another five years of this.

Vin

 

The last Labour government did exactly that. Which is why my local Tax Office was in Edinburgh, last time I looked.

 

Amendment to unilaterally withdraw from the backstop loses by 24-600, as it should. It wouldn’t have been legal.

 

May loses by 202 - 432.

Biggest loss by a government in Parliament since the 1920s

[EDIT: Not "since the 1920s" but "ever", apparently]

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Vin

 

Main motion loses by 202-432.

That is a staggering defeat for May. She has to go now.

May says the vote tells us nothing about what the House does support.

 

Your first line suggests your missing a lot of whats going on. the contracts are to help the shipping companies that will need to expand to help alleviate the throughput issues in Dover and the Southern ports (not just Dover, land transport uses ferries from many southern ports) creating a need for shipping transport from more northerly ports. As this is a net negative for the country the government needed to cover it or the economy would suffer thus the contracts.


You can say this is helping the north so its fine for you but if the south takes a similiar line of thought in its actions then it just ends up hurting everybody and benefiting noone.


Edit: missed the vote outcome because i was replying to imps. *hangs head in shame*

 

May invites the Opposition to table a No Confidence motion.

Offers cross-party discussions.

 

Can she survive this blow? She looks like she wants this to all end now. She can go live it up with David & Gordon.

 

Corbyn tables No Confidence motion, which will be debated tomorrow.

 

Hanging like a wobbly baby tooth eating an apple.
Matter of time now.

 

At last some stats on here that are actually accurate.

 

You can try and bend things to your narrative all you want. Every other country actually registers people when they come into the country. Not all charge but many in the EU do if it is for longer than X months. Yes it is a charge that we could do without however in any other EU country my wife would have registered when she came and Blair was PM then not a Tory PM. Not overly happy with having to pay but its a one-off and she accepts it.

And the argument, that some remainers use, that people didn't know when it was tweeted at Christmas is ridiculous. It was published in June. Bad timing for a reminder, yes but where was the uproar in June? My wife's Mum in Portugal has been asking my wife if she has done it yet so people in Portugal know but somehow those in Britain didn't?

War on foreigners? More propaganda. Mis-managed policies due to successive government's ineptitude never making sure that people had the right documents. May is useless I will admit but you seem to be implying that we should just let anyone come who wants to come and ne'er mind about registering. We don;t need to know anything, just come.

You continue to try and brand me as alt-right. If it makes you feel better continue but it doesn;t make things true.

I don't support no deal, I never did. That is a confection of remainers trying to brand leavers as always wanting WTO but that is wherre we are now. The political class have engineered the worst deal going allied with the EU instead of trying to negotiate. The only debate in reality in this country is because the house can;t decide which way to ignore the result. They all want to end up ignoring it, just the way and manner they do it is up for debate along with everybody trying to pin the blame on a remain collaboration dressed up as a negotiation as being the fault of the leave camp despite the leave camp being sidelined all the time other than worthless positions they were not allowed to fullfil.

And even now the stitch up deal is presented as evidence by the remain camp of being the best available and proof that promises made could never have been delivered. People might have believed that IF those supposedly trying to make a deal had actually negotiated instead of collaborating. This is the EU's deal. No negotiations. No coming from our red lines towards their red lines. Just May trying to sell an idea of having red lines, then pretending that giving them all up is meeting them half way when what she has done is the same as Cameron. Asked them what their deal is, then pretend to negotiate to that point and present a picture of that being something other than it is. Nobody believes it. It is not something "we now know, that we didn;t before." We knew the EU would do this, they have. We didn't expect our own politicians to play their game though.

So no I (most leavers) did not support "no deal". I don't support it now. I always supported a deal. A real negotiated deal not a fake setup written by Brussels 2 years ago and presented as an actual 2 year negotiation. So whilst I don't support no deal, unless there is a proper deal negotiated before the end date (or extended date) then no deal is better than the deal the EU has offered and in my opinion and of many others better than remaining in this cabal of the EU.

Even today another "respected" remainer has spoken about having to apply to the WTO and that Argentina might cause trouble there which is another lie because we are already members. We do not need to apply.

Yes I deride the forecasts. I make no apologies for that. Amazing how one half of society laps up the forecasts, never brings up how inaccurate they are, blames everything bad on Brexit, anything good on the world cup and summer sun. I suppose that is why Germany is now in a technical recession, because they got knocked out of the world cup. Take the forecasts made for this year. The EU still stands by theirs. The IMF just like to forecast doom for us, boom for the EU and then revise them on the quiet. Germany was supposed to be overtaking us this year. Our "slow" growth was supposed to be a tell tale sign that we were falling behind. What is the truth now? Our "slow" growth is actually looking quite good compared to Germany. Maybe instead of "despite Brexit" they should put "despite Trump and Germany."

A rececssion is coming, nothing to do with the right. China is slowing rapidly. Germany is officially on recession watch with the markets. It is expected to be announced they are in technical recession in the next couple of days. That isn't me or the right wing trying to swing minds. The "Pfft" forecasts that kept ignoring what was happening and even forecasting growth of 0.3% for Germany in November to bounce back from the prior quarter's contraction turned out to be 1.9% drop!! No doubt they will "pfft" again and forecast nice plummy figures for December. They are trying to paint a narrative ignoring the facts. Something they all accuse Brexiteers of doing. They are looking like fools instead of accepting what is happening.

If China continues to slow down and Trump's war on trade continues, then yes there will be a rececssion, there will be no escaping it and it will not be a Brexiteer's excuse to get away with anything. It will most definitely be presented as partly down to Brexit despite the painted doom of slow growth for us actually turning out to be pretty good performance compare to major EU nations.

Forecasters on immingham? The probably don;t know where Immingham is, They only look at Dover. It was the boss of immingham. He wasn't forecasting anything. He was telling the news that they were already taking trade from the South and saw Brexit as an opportunity to increase their volumes. He wasn't predicting percentages. He was detailing actuals of current increases and that he expected it to continue. It is the highest tonnage port in the UK. Scaling up is a smaller task than smaller ports. They could probably take all of Dover's "non" roll on/roll off without even increasing capacity.

He (the good one) is simply telling us what has and is happening. No made up figures for the future. Those "bad ones" are making up numbers for the future using them to paint a picture of UK poor performance compared to EU outpacing us ignoring what IS happening and not even revising the future when the current needs revising. Germany contracted in 1 quarter? Hmmm, they will bounce back in the next quarter no problem. Next quarter comes, disastrous numbers. Will they revise the net quarter? Of course not they will leave it the same and cross their fingers. And you want to paint people like me as being mad for not trusting forecasters? They all have a political agenda. That is exactly why they use the 99:1 ratio to mould public opinion as we can see it works

They say it will turn out bad, there be 99 of them. So it must be true, ne'er mind what the actuals say when they come along contradicting the forecasts. We'll just use the Liverpool example and say "next time, you watch, next time." And repeat forever until one forecast actually turns out the right way. It isn't confirmation bias. If someone announces what has happened I believe it. If they forecast what will happen yet every time it is incorrect then I will doubt their future forecasts.

Are we in recession? despite Brexit? I Brexit to blame for Germany being in recession? Did any forecasts predict that? The EU still preduct the Germans will grow more than us this year!!! They will need Chinese boom time growth in the last quarter to achieve that now. The doom and gloom of Brexit slowing our growth when this year's forecasts were made public. If our growth is held back then what to say about France, Italy, Germany's growth (which should have been making us look silly this year?)

The last paragraph? International law just is? Tell that to Trump, China, All the powerful EU countries that pick and choose which laws they follow. What international law? That is just a phrase bandied around that it turns out everyone cries about when they feel hard done by but does their best to get round and ignore when it suits them.

 

That’s the largest defeat of a government motion on record.

The last time a government was defeated by more than 100 votes was in 1924.

Seriously, what the actual **** has the woman been doing for the last 30 months?

 

Planning her escape!

 

No its not a North South thing. It is about sharing things out instead of hoarding. What we are seeing at the moment is like the Industrial revolution where everything is being drawn into small areas.

Somewhere in the 9th would mean the very time that Mercia (including London) was consumed into Wessex rule. Is that what you mean? All this talk of a united country when the reality is everything is being driven to the South East. Unless the facts have been re-engineered to show that money spent per head in this country is equal? Yet they talk about wanting to "re-vitalise" areas outside of the South East quarter? they could try re-directing some of that spend more equally to benefit everybody instead of speaking about it then ploughing vast amounts into projects like Crossrail and HS2 which are purely to benefit London.

 

That's because the people "steering us towards this change" are not steering. They are in driverless cars on routes programmed by the EU. They are merely acting the part.