How is the Tory government doing?

This new 50p Brexit coin says on it " Peace and prosperity and friendship with all nations ". Just after Britain has told europe where to go, which will cause economic ruin.

sunlight wrote:Just after Britain has told europe where to go, which will cause economic ruin.

Boring.

Natasha Whittam wrote:

sunlight wrote:Just after Britain has told europe where to go, which will cause economic ruin.

Boring.

Today I received a quarterly gas bill and had my doom head on, so my appologies for overly forewarning the tribulation of the impact of the market of Flanders when we leave. I am not merchant class whom are the most aggrieved. I sorted my mood with a block of Galaxy.

sunlight wrote:This new 50p Brexit coin says on it " Peace and prosperity and friendship with all nations "

...reflecting the true spirit of many of those who voted to leave the community I'll be stockpiling them - currently you only need two of them to buy a 4 pack of Twirls at Asda and with food prices already rising faster than inflation I'm hoping these commemorative coins will keep pace.

That said, the Royal Mint have seen the funny side of it and are allowing people to mint their own.

sunlight wrote:This new 50p Brexit coin says on it " Peace and prosperity and friendship with all nations ".

Apparently they were going to mint a Brexit coin three years ago, but the people tasked to design it couldn't agree on the wording, the value or what they were going to do with the border.....


...I'll get me coat.

We could possibly blame JK Rowling for it. Or Piers Morgan.

This Huawei thing is interesting.
Boris has OK'd their participation in the UK 5G network based on reassurances from GCHQ that they pose no threat. However our main intelligence sharing partners - France, Germany, Spain and notably the USofA are all scared shitless of Huawei and have claimed that Huawei share intelligence with the Chinese Government - and therefore would not want integrated info systems with the UK.

So with existing intelligence sharing arrangements with our European partners already being under threat because of Brexit why would Boris potentially jeopardise relationships with the USA, especially given that not only security but any trade deal we might get would be heavily dependent on information exchange?

Trump has already expressed his disappointment and has dispatched Mike Pompeo to fly to the UK to put Boris in his place so Huawei might get cut out yet, but then he would piss off the Chinese.

Currently we have a trade surplus with the USA (exporting more to them than we import) - something that Trump wants to address going forward, but we have a trade deficit with China so in theory it would be better to get in bed with the Americans as it stands.

Seems to me that Boris is playing a very risky game by getting involved in spats between the big 3 trading blocs (USA, China and the EU) at a time when he has bet the house on getting deals with all of them. If he thinks we can play them off against each other there's a very real chance they'll all take the EU approach i.e. well f*** off then.

Boris announces the high profile HS2 project will go ahead which will benefit regular commuters to and from London. Unsurprisingly, a benefit for the few at the expense of directing vast amounts of public money away from the needs of the many.
A "good news day" from a Tory PR perspective, which has also made it a very good day to slip in the bad news which is that proposed Tory expenditure which will be outlined in the budget and is expected to be designed to shore up the Northern vote is based on the Chancellor's projected economic growth rate of 2.8% - and today it came out that the economy had actually flatlined with ZERO growth at the end of 2019 i.e. on the verge of recession.
Obviously this will be written off as a "blip" and even if it turns out to be that, we're still a mile away from 2.8%.

HS2 is a massive waste of money, what is the point? Billions and billions to make the train to London slightly faster 

The money for HS2 could be used in much better ways like improving the shambles that is Northern rail now and also for the so called Northern powerhouse they like to talk about but actually do nothing.

Norpig wrote:HS2 is a massive waste of money, what is the point? Billions and billions to make the train to London slightly faster 

The money for HS2 could be used in much better ways like improving the shambles that is Northern rail now and also for the so called Northern powerhouse they like to talk about but actually do nothing.

Totally agree Norpig.

This is a classic illustration of the sunk cost fallacy. The money is gone, wasting more money on it makes no sense.

Yes, and I wonder how much tickets will cost when it finally gets rolling and at what cost to wildlife. The costs involved in clearing housing and land for the rail line have been massively undercooked and caused great distress to some of the folk who've had their homes forcibly taken from them.

OFCOM to get oversight of social media platforms is a potentially a great policy providing they get the power to sanction/punish offenders. I hope this happens and that our Government takes the risk of pissing off the Americans to protect innocent people and kids in particular.
We'll see.

No surprise:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-51482220

xmiles wrote:No surprise:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-51482220

How do you spend £7.5k + per person on a 2 week holiday?
That's a lot of coke Boris.

I'm sure this had nothing to the guy getting appointed when Boris was London boss.

Javed resigns. Something brewing.

boltonbonce wrote:Javed resigns. Something brewing.

He was ordered to sack his advisory team so he jumped. New cabinet looks interesting.
Was just watching Politics today and they had economist Paul Klugman on whilst they were debating "is low economic growth the new norm". He made some interesting points, the main one being that public debt isn't an issue as in the UK debt interest rates are lower than inflation and therefore austerity was a complete waste of time.
Basically he's saying that it's a good thing to borrow to invest and that the UK wasted years of low growth when we could have been investing in services and infrastructure.
Also said that most major economies are stable but in the event of a crash, there's nothing left to buffer the impact - the biggest of which is climate change denial coming back to bite us in the bum. Apparently 60% of Republican Senators are climate denyers and America is making zero preparations.
He was scathing about Trump's short-termism saying that he's doing nothing to future-proof the states by simply focusing on political wins, cutting taxes and backing polluting industries.

A bit late, but finally Corbyn scores a blinder past the helpless keeper whose heinous errors have led his team to an embarrassing defeat:-

JC at PMQs today, addressing Boris directly:-
"If there was a case of a young white boy with blonde hair who later dabbled in class A drugs and conspired with a friend to beat up a journalist, would he deport that boy?"


The look on Johnson's guilty face is priceless!

Bojo kept Grove in the Cabinet to stick his tongue out at the working class.

boltonbonce wrote:Javed resigns. Something brewing.

He was replaced by someone more competent.

Hipster_Nebula wrote:

boltonbonce wrote:Javed resigns. Something brewing.

He was replaced by someone more competent.

Boris offered him the job, so he considered him up to scratch.