Interesting Links for 10-01-2021

[andrewducker]

'Inside job': House Dems ask if Capitol rioters had hidden help

(tags:USA politics conspiracy )

But What If We Didn't (The modern Republican approach - see also Johnson/Cummings)

(tags:republicans politics USA viaDanielDWilliam )

Storming The U.S. Capitol Was About Maintaining White Power In America

(tags:viaDanielDWilliam racism USA politics )

US jobs report shows that men aren't losing jobs any more. Women still are.

(tags:Jobs USA gender )

Coronavirus: Lockdown rules are too lax, government scientific advisors warn

(tags:UK pandemic Doom )

UK rejected offer of visa-free tours by musicians in EU, despite blaming Brussels for permit blow

(tags:UK Europe music OhForFucksSake )

'Exercised' Explains Why It Can Be Hard To Commit To Working Out — And Why We Should

(tags:exercise health )

What's the current state on lorries going to the EU? And what happens next?

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1347885420823130114.html
(tags:trade UK Europe )

Garth Ennis on awful people using the Punisher symbol

(tags:marvel comics police viaBartCalendar )

Why the campaign to 'rejoin' the European Union is misconceived - the campaign must make a positive and sustainable case for membership, regardless of Brexit and the past

(tags:UK Europe )

Comments

[mountainkiss]

On your second item, I keep hearing people say "When the SNP wins its unassailable majority in the May election, UKG will have to accept the mandate for #indyref2"... no. No, they won't.

[andrewducker]

They absolutely won't.

Not sure what happens then, to be honest.

Nothing good, I expect.

[danieldwilliam]

Terrorism happens eventually.

[danieldwilliam]

The mandate is either for an independence referendum or for the SNP to behave very badly in Westminster.

[mountainkiss]

What do you think they can do?

[danieldwilliam]

You can disrupt Parliamentary processes and also cause lots and lots of grief to government MP's and ministers by playing silly buggers.

Things like

I Spy Strangers -which forces a debate on whether the House should sit in private - every day.

Referring every clause of every Bill to whatever the process is that decides if EVEL applies or not.

Fillibustering - everything.

Force a vote on everything you possibly can.

Surprise votes on a Friday evening.

Walk out of the Queen's Speech.

Refer everyone to the standards procedure for everything.

Find every Tory MP with a grievance - support them procedurally to make the grievance stick in the parliamentary process.

Every question to every government minister is "If the UK is a voluntary union what is the democratic process for Scotland to leave?" ask every minister that, every question time.

If you are prepared to dig in for the next four years you can make things very unpleasant for individual MP's and gum up the business of the House. It's unlikely to stop anything but it will grind on, especially if you can promise that it will grind on for forever.

[mountainkiss]

This is fascinating. Thank you.

[danieldwilliam]

How effective it will be as a tactic I don't know. Or how able a determined and norm breaking majority to shut down the disruptive tactics is.

It obviously works better if the government majority is slimmer.

But it can keep the denial of democracy front and center whilst making Tory MP's pay a personal price for it.

[momentsmusicaux]

This is the same as the Tory students at uni calling quorum anytime there was a vote they knew wasn't going to go the way they wanted. It's shitty behaviour even if it's for a worthy cause.

[andrewducker]

When you're denied democracy, anything you can do is going to be protest behaviour.

[momentsmusicaux]

Yeah, that's a valid way of looking at it.

[danieldwilliam]

Let my people go.

[rhythmaning]

Just out of interest, is this the thought your post on Mike Pence originated from?

[andrewducker]

It was what prompted me to finish the draft that's been in my notes for a week!

[danieldwilliam]

Well, yes, but that's rather the point.

Garth Ennis on awful people using the Punisher symbol

[jack]

Maybe they could do a story where The Punisher finds out awful white nationalist people have been using his symbol and does a lot of revenge violence on them and then chooses a different symbol?

Re: Garth Ennis on awful people using the Punisher symbol

[jack]

Alex de Campi did a series of short completely unauthorised comics where Frank Castle and Bucky Barnes commiserate about the horrors of war which covered this more or less: https://alexdecampi.tumblr.com/post/166709394344/hells-kitchen-movie-club-2-silent-running-this

ETA (the hannukah episode is probably the most famous https://twitter.com/alexdecampi/status/1069253436787617793. There's also an original comic inspired by it, http://panelsyndicate.com/comics/badkarma)

Re: Garth Ennis on awful people using the Punisher symbol

[calimac]

No discussion of a skull symbol as a logo is complete without a reference to Mitchell and Webb's "Are we the baddies?"

Hell's Kitchen Movie Club

[dewline]

A thing of joy.

Re: Garth Ennis on awful people using the Punisher symbol

[andrewducker]

Thank you - I'd forgotten how good those were.

Lorry tge Lamb...

[hairyears]

The current state of play is that at least one industry - commercial seafood / fresh shellfish has been dropped by hauliers, who will no longer risk losing a trailer of perishable goods on the dockside in France for a week, because the cargo can't be processed by incompatible customs systems before it's unsaleable.

This is being glossed-over and, if it's ever picked up by the mass media here, Ministers will either make the problem worse by saying something offensive about the French, further eroding the necessary goodwill for customs to work at all; or they'll say something bland about 'teething problems' in the new systems.

Some teeth...

It's not just that the UK's systems aren't 'ready': given the chaotic uncertainty about the underlying processes of inspection, customs clearance, and the final shape of the legislative framework of tariffs, quotas, and the requirements these inspections are intended to check, I can't see how stable software can emerge *at all* in 2021.

And then we must consider the uncomfortable fact that the software development process for large government IT projects frequently results in systems which are entirely unfit for purpose. The outlook is worrying, already, if I hear that the UK is unable to exchange data with the (well-established and fully functional) French customs software: I have a suspicion that systems compatibility and data interchange were not considered in the design brief at all.

In fairness, the counterparty requirements weren't known until very late in the project; but I doubt that there was much communication with the EU's software engineers and systems analysts about it.

So as far as I can see, the problem is only ever going to get worse, and a stable ports and customs system won't settle down for at least a year, if it ever does at all; during that time, the exporters affected by this will lose their market. So the 'queues at Dover' images will be banished - and their absence will be hailed as a victory for Brexit - when the underlying reality is a catastrophic economic loss.

The one bright spot is the the small reduction in through traffic from Irish hauliers using the UK 'land bridge' - that's all going onto the giant 'Steel Bridge' Ro-Ro ferries that bypass Brexitstan on a direct service from Dublin to Rotterdam.

Re: Lorry tge Lamb...

[andrewducker]

Yup! A bunch of that was in this link the day before.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-fish-trade-uk-eu-lorries-exports-b1784312.html

[rhythmaning]

I wonder if there's stuff the Scottish parliament could do, too? I envisage a lot of posturing between Holyrood and Westminster, presuming an SNP victory in May. Particularly legal cases to the Supreme Court.