The UK is Out - New PM - and whither now for Article 50

AdMeus_CaputFilius

TMC,

I can understand why people are uneasy with them, but those ones are tiddler's compared to some that I have woken up with on my travels - not to mention scorpions, giant stag beetles, an Armadillo, couple of snakes (one being a Fur-De-Lance which was a bit twitchy as they give a nasty bite and are venomous) amongst other things - even had a couple of howler monkey sticking their heads in the tent.

Aslef - ;hmm Potato's?

ASLEFshrugged

You say potato and I say....

I once stayed in a cottage next to a river with ducks on it. My mate Geoff was always the last one up and we were always late going places. We fed the ducks and they'd come right up to the cottage.

One morning he was still asleep so we laid a trail of bread from the river into the cottage and into his room. When the ducks were all inside we shut the door.

When ducks are alarmed they quack a lot

And poo.

A lot.

Geoff got up early the rest of our holiday

ASLEFshrugged

Labour hold Stoke Central suggesting that a vote for Leave doesn't translate into a vote for UKIP, also that Paul Nuttall's tweed cap and jacket look might work if you're inspecting your 3000 acre estate in a Range Rover (with a couple of Labradors in the back) but not on a bloke from Bootle stomping the streets of Stoke.

Tories win Copeland. Labour's majority had been steadily falling from 29% in 1997 to 6.5% at the last General Election, changing the boundary to include four rural wards in 2010 certainly boosted the Tory vote but also the nuclear industry is changing the people, by which I mean an increase in middle income owner occupiers (74%, national average 63.5%) rather than Tory voting mutants.

Yeoldhammer

Labour turned in to a joke. Corbyn offered something different but he isn't credible opposition. He can't play the political game. If he doesn't go Labour are done for not sure why Labour members want this guy as leader, he simply isn't a winner. You need to be in power to make change and that won't happen with Corbyn.

TheMadcapLaughs

From what I can gather the nuclear power issue was the major factor in Copeland. The Tories being openly supportive of the nuclear industry and Corbyn being a beardy hippie transgender marxist luddite CND hipster didn`t help the Labour cause. I do wish the Tories would stop banging on about being the "true party of working people" as I find that claim right up there with anything Trump has said and done and is the fakiest of fake news. I don`t like Paul Nuttall.

TheMadcapLaughs

Admeus. I don`t think I could travel to a place where there is a likelihood of meeting anything with more than four legs that you can actually hear running across the floor. The biggest spider I have seen in real life (apart from huge hairy things at zoos) was one in our apartment in Turkey. We had to call a maintenance man to come and get it, who funnily enough when he saw it called a "more senior" maintenance man to come and get it. None of us slept very well that night.

ASLEFshrugged

Yeoldhammer said:

Labour turned in to a joke. Corbyn offered something different but he isn't credible opposition. He can't play the political game. If he doesn't go Labour are done for not sure why Labour members want this guy as leader, he simply isn't a winner. You need to be in power to make change and that won't happen with Corbyn.

The thing the Labour members liked about Corbyn is that he wasn't any of the other candidates who stood for the leadership, a bunch of Blairite clones still spouting the same Tory-lite stuff that worked in 1997 but failed in 2010 and 2015 (one mention of the word "aspirational" is enough to qualify).

Under Blair (although started by Kinnock) power was concentrated by the leadership and the PLP with the wider membership generally ignored. Corbyn wants to spread the decision making or as some describe it "democratising" the party. Unlike Blair who would have parachuted his preferred candidates into by elections Corbyn has allowed the local constituency parties to select their candidates, At Copeland Corby gave his backing to Rachel Holliday but instead the local party chose Gillian Troughton.

Vorselaarhammer

In her victory speech, Mrs Harrison said: "It's been very clear talking to people throughout this campaign that [Labour leader] Jeremy Corbyn doesn't represent them.

ASLEFshrugged

And how many of the 11601 people who voted Labour did she speak to?

A pretty pointless statement, she'll go far in politics....

IronHerb

He's pretty much a Michael Foot clone, principled but not seen as a leader.

ASLEFshrugged

Foot wasn't as bad as the media like to remember him, Labour were well ahead in the polls until the "moderates" split to form the SDP and it was neck and neck right up until the Falklands. If it hadn't been for a bread shortage in Buenos Aires Thatcher could have been a one term Prime Minister.

This was when polls were reliable, apart from a couple of percentage points here and there they were pretty much spot on for the 1983 election result.

Yeoldhammer

ASLEF i do like Corbyn he is different and as you say trying to appeal to people on a more local framework. But he is losing the fight against the Tories, we had austerity for 5 years and Miliband couldn't even muster a challenge against the Tories in the last election. I don't think Corbyn will fair much better and i think potentially worse than Miliband and this when the Tories are dismantling the NHS and juggling a Brexit. Im sorry if Labour cannot win an election off the back of those two issues alone then they will rapidly descend to obscurity with the Lib Dems.

ASLEFshrugged

The Lib Dems have been far worse than this, from 1951 until 1964 they had only o 6 seats (back when they were just the Liberals).

In the five by-elections the Lib Dems have contested since the Referendum they have increased their share of the vote in all of them, even the ones that voted Leave, they'll be looking to seats they lost to the Tories or came second in 2010 and 2015 that voted Remain like Eastbourne, Eastleigh, Bath, Cheltenham, Kingston and Twickenham for gains in 2020.

Up until now the focus for Labour has not been losing seats to UKIP, I suspect after Stoke Central their going to switch focus. At least I don't see Corbyn listening to the twonks who told him to eat a bacon sandwich or that the Ed Stone was a good idea.

Thanks to our FPTP voting system even if Labour only got the 26.7% they're averaging at the moment they'd still get 196 seats. Obscurity isn't that easy.

chicagohammer

I recall when Michael Foote was leader and could not imagine him greeting the President of the United States at the White House, I just could envision it happening without squirming.

Now I positively squirm at the thought of the President of the United States turning up at 10 Downing Street.

Funny old world

claretandbluesky

How on earth are the Tories seemingly succeeding in re-inventing themselves into the party of the people after tearing out the heart of Communities under Thatcher and never replacing them, and much more recently under years of austerity under Cameron and Osbourne.

Are people so consumed with the narrative that the EU caused all the problems and not tory party policy? or is Corbyn viewed as such a lame duck that they are unbackable?

In my view despite a far from perfect EU and a genuine problem with immigration the Tory party are massively more to blame for the inequality and issues faced by working people, yet they have not only succeeded in passing blame but are being carried aloft on the shoulders of their new supporters as the saviours, perplexing to say the least.

billybondsbeard

I have come to think that Jeremy is a man born in the wrong time. He is the antithesis of a 'character', at a time when our electorate treat mainstream politics like an episode of 'the X factor'. I have met him at a Labour event with John Mc., and he is one of the nicest, most passionate caring blokes you could hope to meet. He is convinced that if he sticks to his guns that people will come around to his way of thinking, but for me, that is the problem with him. He is a political theorist with radical heart, and a child of the 70's. He is a deal maker and a pragmatist, but he has no answer to the ridicule of the media, when they compare him to a scruffy geography teacher, whist Theresa May gets away with wearing designer leather trousers. To the right wing media and commentators, he has become irrelevant, which is worse than being ridiculed IMO.

Labour should get behind the 'Remain' faction of voters, and look to ally themselves strategically with the Lib Dems and the Greens to fight Tory austerity. I think that the old Left/ Right, and class divisions are becoming more and more irrelevant. Its not where you come from, its where you're going that counts.

claretandbluesky

I hear what you are saying BBB as I have always felt Corbyn a really nice guy but the job needs so much more, I know loads of really nice guys but I wouldn't recommend them to run the country.

I think he had found his role as a voice to ensure Labour policy was always internally questioned, he is not the one to be the leader of the party. There was something sad about a man who had voted against his party over 400 times or whatever the figure was calling a 3 line whip now he is in charge, and then speaking of sacking people afterwards for voting against it. It was the moment he became so aware of his position he asked people to not do what he has done through conscience all his political life.

The greatest thing you have mentioned BBB is that he has become irrelevant, the Tories don't even fear him, they feel like they have no opposition at present and act accordingly.

Vorselaarhammer

Foot / Kinneck / Corbyn - Not PM electable = Labour Leader..

Blair was a Tory with a velvet glove.

Unions / Socialism is not relevant in enough of the country to be an electable platform.

Tory are working class for the working class that see it as their responsibility and have the ability to pull themselves up.

This is how my Dad and his friends saw it anyway.

billybondsbeard

Cand B
I dont think he is irrelevant, he was a breath of fresh air to the party after Blair/Brown and has brought a lot of members back, but he has been targeted by our media to such an extent that their readerships are guided by their opinion makers. These are the people that a party has to reach to get a majority in the FPTP system. They only have to alienate a certain amount of the populace to maintain the status quo. They loved Tony Blair, because they saw him as 'one of us' who was also 'one of them'.
The trouble with our current system, and with Brexit, is that so many people now feel disenfranchised.
I worry about an untrammelled right wing agenda, and I'm also worried about civil unrest once we are truly out of Europe, and the solids hit the air conditioning for the so called 'working class' who may have voted for UKIP, but have no parliamentary MP's, and nowhere else to go.

To get back to Jezza, I wouldnt want the party to totally toss him aside, but a post of Life Chairman , or something like that, and to pass the baton onto somebody like Kier Starmer, who has some gravitas, and who the media would have a job at labelling a 'loony leftie'.

MrsGrey

billybondsbeard said:

The trouble with our current system, and with Brexit, is that so many people now feel disenfranchised.

But, sadly, the solutions they are voting for are not going to deliver any change in that regard.

claretandbluesky

There will certainly be civil unrest BillyB as once their Brexit has been delivered but the NHS and education system have been run down behind the shadow of the brexit headlines, and the post brexit coffers allow them to show no money to plough in, the working class may feel like they have been had over again. It will be very much harder for anyone coming in to even attempt to turn it around from the position we are left in.

With regard Jezza I think he is politically irrelevant as he does not appear able to impact anything at present, he is not impacting Brexit, not holding the tories to account on anything really. Labour need a centre leaning leader who can gain the trust of the floating voters who decide elections in my view, who? your guess is as good as mine.

MrsGrey

Speaking to CPAC, Farage declares, 'Our real friends in the world speak English.'

;doh ;angry

He is just vile.

upos

Speaking to CPAC, Farage declares, 'Our real friends in the world speak English.'

Mainly because we cannot speak anything else!

;wink

MrsGrey

Despite their poor reputation, English people are actually quite good at speaking foreign languages.



After all, it's just speaking English, but slower and really loud, right?

thornburyiron

Simple solution. English is the international language of the air so just make it international language on the ground.

Dodger58

I assume Mrs Grey that you and Mr Grey both speak Greek as you have been there a while? I don't so can always claim "it's all Greek to me" if I don't understand - works in Newcastle too.

It is actually quite difficult for the English abroad as so many automatically speak English to us, m making it difficult to practice our linguistic skills. Personally I got to the stage of actually thinking in French (very scary), although less fluent now as I visit French speaking countries so rarely now.

I travel internationally a great deal on business and always ensure I at least know how to say 'please' and 'thank you' in the local tongue ...

grey_til_I_dye

thorn

Which English?

Dodger

Not very well, tbh, (though we do try) mainly for the reasons you suggest.

Like most Greek islands, the main economy is tourism, so a lot of people speak some English, and since we don't work here there is no pressing need to speak it.

I do speak Italian, having learned it at university.

MrsGrey

Dodger58 said:

I assume Mrs Grey that you and Mr Grey both speak Greek as you have been there a while?
It is actually quite difficult for the English abroad as so many automatically speak English to us, m making it difficult to practice our linguistic skills.

Very little, Dodger, in my case. I'd say I was beyond beginner stage but not yet at independent stage. Mostly all my own fault tbh, but the latter point you make is one of the things that makes it difficult to improve. ;ok

Vorselaarhammer

I was reading the other day that Garage has a German wife.

Christmas with the family in law must be interesting.

Dodger58

Greys thanks for the responses. I fully understand the difficulty but would also make the effort if I was living in a non-English speaking country.

I had the opportunity to move with a company to Germanys many years ago, but decided against it:
- neither my wife nor I spoke German and with a bit ex-pat community would probably have been sucked into a situation that your social life was also mainly with work colleagues - not something that would have worked well for my wife.
- I love my cricket and Rugby, not much of that in Germany.

I ended up with a job in South Wales instead!