Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Sheilbh]

So Starmer got his leadership rules through (narrowly). Also decent margin on endorsing the EHRC recommendations against anti-semitism and establishing an independent complaints mechanism. But absolutely love that the motion calling for fewer motions at conference has narrowly passed

Jessica Elgot
@jessicaelgot
Breaking - Keir Starmer's leadership rule changes got 53% of the vote, a narrow win
Other results -

EHRC recommendations endorsed by 73.6%
Independent complaints procedure - 61.5%
Fewer motions at conference - 56.1%

Expecting words from Starmer shortly

[Josquius]

Honest question as a driver - do people have opinions on superiority/standard of petrol at different petrol stations? I'd have guessed it's purely price (unless you're near Tebay in which case, obviously, you should visit the Rivendell of service stations).

It's probably nonsense, but there is one petrol station in my hometown I avoid due to countless rumours of their petrol being dodgy and wrecking cars

Price is mostly it.

Though you do see some places selling separate regular and premium petrol so who knows.

[Tamas]

Honest question as a driver - do people have opinions on superiority/standard of petrol at different petrol stations? I'd have guessed it's purely price (unless you're near Tebay in which case, obviously, you should visit the Rivendell of service stations).

It's probably nonsense, but there is one petrol station in my hometown I avoid due to countless rumours of their petrol being dodgy and wrecking cars

Price is mostly it.

Though you do see some places selling separate regular and premium petrol so who knows.

Regular and premium are an entirely different topic. They ARE different octanes and the premium one usually has engine clearing additives and such.

[Sheilbh]

Incidentally re. why I'm not sure Northern Ireland will vote for unionism any time soon, the Irish government have decided to send a senior minister to the service the President won't attend.

Meanwhile a Sinn Fein TD (member of the Dail) attended a memorial service for the last IRA man killed by the British 25 years ago:

IRA 'were no criminals', former Sinn Féin TD tells commemoration
Last IRA member killed during Troubles 'continues to inspire us', Martin Ferris says
55 minutes ago
Barry Roche Southern Correspondent

Irish republicans who gave their lives for Irish freedom were not criminals and attempts to demonise them as such would be rebutted, former Sinn Féin TD Martin Ferris told a commemoration in west Cork to honour the last Provisional IRA member to die during the Troubles.

Mr Ferris told a commemoration to mark the 25th anniversary of the killing of Diarmuid O'Neill in London by British police that the IRA member was just one of hundreds of Irish republicans who gave their lives since 1969 to build a 32-county democratic socialist republic.

Delivering the oration at Mr O'Neill's graveside in Timoleague at a ceremony attended by close to 100 people, Mr Ferris recalled how London-born Mr O'Neill (27) was "the last IRA volunteer to die on active service against the British and the British presence in Ireland".

"On 23rd of September 1996, Diarmuid O'Neill, Paddy Kelly and Brian McHugh were in a flat in Hammersmith in London and at 4.30am in the morning, British police broke into the flat, arrested two and brutally killed Diarmuid O'Neill – there was no need for it but they killed him.

"And they thought by doing that they would destroy that determination by IRA volunteers to prosecute the struggle against the British presence in our country but your presence here today and your support and solidarity with the O'Neill family gives the lie to that."

'Internationalist'

Mr Ferris, who served time in Portlaoise prison for IRA activity, said Mr O'Neill was an internationalist who opposed oppression wherever it existed.

He "continues to inspire us in the political struggle" and to "take on the oppressors who have demonised and tried to criminalise" those involved.

"We were no criminals. We gave up our liberty and many of us gave up our lives for that struggle, to continue that struggle and to follow the way that was laid before us from 1798, from 1867, from 1916 right through to the present day," he said to loud applause.

Mr Ferris said Mr O'Neill and fellow IRA member Edward O'Brien from Wexford, who was killed when a bomb he was carrying exploded on a bus in London on February 18th, 1996, were among the IRA members who helped bring the British government to the negotiating table.

"They are among hundreds and hundreds of IRA volunteers that have died since 1969. They were the people that brought the British government to the negotiating table and, when the ceasefire came in in 1994, John Major and his government had an opportunity to make peace . . . but John Major chose not to do that."

Mr Ferris said it was only as a result of Mr Major's refusal to avail of that opportunity for peace in 1994 that the IRA ceasefire broke down. It was only after the breakdown of the ceasefire that both Mr O'Neill and Mr O'Brien died and they need not have died, Mr Ferris added.

I think the internationalist element is that his girlfriend was Basque and he had some involvement with ETA. According to the inquest in 2020 (following campaigns by Amnesty among others) he was willing to shoot and kill police and, at the time he was killed, was trying to set off a lorry bomb. It was part of a weapons raid that uncovered 10 tons of home-made bombs, 2 tons of semtex and rifles.

Needless to say unionists (and many from both communities in Northern Ireland) don't really go along with the idea that the IRA were on "active service" or engaged in a righteous struggle.

I think there's still a bit of cordon sanitaire around actually joining a coalition with Sinn Fein, but they are currently leading the polls in the South. But it feels like this sort of attitude is coming back in Ireland. I'm seeing "West Brit" pop up as an insult again a lot more. and it's different than the reconciliation between peoples style approach that was underway with Fianna Fail (pre-crash and pre-Brexit) - I'm not sure quite where this ends up.

[Zanza]

[Josquius]

The IRA are terrorist scum. No matter your politics this should be beyond doubt.

In other scummy news.... Privatised prisons do their stuff.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/sep/25/prison-guards-but-not-mother-get-counselling-after-baby-dies-in-cell

[Sheilbh]

Reuters
@Reuters
Behave normally, UK transport minister tells Britons queuing for fuel

Me to my fellow Brits for the last 5+ years. It's not working

[Tamas]

Hundreds of soldiers could be scrambled to deliver fuel to petrol stations running dry across the country due to panic buying and a shortage of drivers under an emergency plan expected to be considered by Boris Johnson on Monday.

The prime minister will gather senior members of the cabinet to scrutinise "Operation Escalin" after BP admitted that a third of its petrol stations had run out of the main two grades of fuel, while the Petrol Retailers Association (PRA), which represents almost 5,500 independent outlets, said 50% to 90% of its members had reported running out. It predicted that the rest would soon follow.

The developments led to growing fears that the UK could be heading into a second "winter of discontent" and warnings that shelves could be emptier than usual in the run-up to Christmas.


In a bid to prevent the crisis from deepening further, ministers including the business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng, transport secretary Grant Shapps and home secretary Priti Patel gathered for a midday meeting on Sunday to discuss options – including Operation Escalin.

Conceived years ago during the planning for a no-deal Brexit, it would mean hundreds of soldiers being drafted in to drive a reserve fleet of 80 tankers. It is understood that it would take up to three weeks to fully implement, because some of those mobilised may already be on other deployments and others could be reservists. Escalin was touted as an option last week, but government sources downplayed the chance of its activation.

It's the Toilet Roll Crisis all over again. If people had the common sense not to panic-fill tanks they won't be using I am fairly certain this wouldn't be half as bad as it is starting to sound now.

[Sheilbh]

It really is loo roll crisis again - just saw an industry figure saying that currently demand for petrol is 500% of normal

At some point surely people will have enough petrol in buckets and jerry cans and just casually poured around the house and calm down, right?

Edit: Meanwhile the Tories are planning to lower the income threshold for student loan repayments. Which is another exciting experiment in just how much revenue you can extract from the young

[Josquius]

I notice asda has placed a £30 per customer limit on petrol.
They had no signs when I went there so I just filled the tank. The price reader said more towards £40....
But it seems they just charged me £30.
They have really fucked up their implementation of this limit

[Tamas]

I notice asda has placed a £30 per customer limit on petrol.
They had no signs when I went there so I just filled the tank. The price reader said more towards £40....
But it seems they just charged me £30.
They have really fucked up their implementation of this limit

I love this country. 

[Sheilbh]

Amazing if we bring out not only the panic buyers but just the people who just love a bargain - get demand up to 1000% of normal.

Edit: And on the decreasing the threshold for student loan payments - this is from someone I follow on Twitter who is a young-ish person who votes Tory (as I say the centre-right/yuppy/aspirational wing of the Tories are getting quite angry at the minute)

I do occasionally get the sense that the Conservative party thinks the purpose of young people is glorified corvee labour for pensioners.

Mary Curnock Cook
@MaryCurnockCook
No 10 plans to lower salary level at which graduates start repaying loans via @FT
https://on.ft.com/3ufqWzv

Although feudal lords had obligations towards their serfs and indeed a vested interest in their being about to afford to raise the next generation, so the analogy doesn't really hold.

At the minute including student loan repayments (which kick in at about £27k on the new loans - and have monstrous interest policies unlike my generation of student loans) and the new NI payment someone earning over £27k will have a marginal rate of over 42% (about 33% for non-graduates). The proposal is to move the threshold down to £23k:


I don't mind a graduate tax in theory (which is basically what student loans are) but this is just a very unfair way to go about it. Of course, it could all be solved if the young would just start voting Conservative

[Richard Hakluyt]

The only thing keeping the Tories in power is Labour's utter dysfunctionality.

I think they must have pissed off just about everyone apart from the rich in the past few months; but their support seems pretty solid at 40%,

Incidentally for pensioners the two figures are 20% and 40%; lower in practice when so much income comes from behind an ISA wall.

[Josquius]

Why the UK needs to burn in one image. Version 533

[Sheilbh]

I don't know - I'd say 2/3 to 75% seem very sensible.

But there's still partisan effects for Leave/Remain and Labour/Tory - which provides a useful baseline for comparison. There are people on this forum - Age is here - who go on about Labour selling the gold 20+ years ago, similarly I'm not entirely convinced that all of us would be able to resist, when polled on a crisis, explaining why the roots lie in Thatcher's government 30-40 years ago

Saw a journalist saying that they'd been speaking to a government source - not sure if civil servant or political - who basically said the petrol shortage was a catch-22. Because there isn't a shortage if there wasn't panic buying driving up 500%, so they take steps to deal with the crisis and it increases the panic buying, they don't take steps and there is a shortage because of the panic buying

Apparently messaging will shift from Nadine Dorries stood on the hard shoulder shouting "BE NORMAL" to the British public, to the sort of messaging we had in the first lockdown during the loo roll crisis. So they'll move to more of a - don't take more than you need, so everyone has a chance style line.