Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Agelastus]

Edit: Wait, what - apparently the campaign on the UK left for £15 minimum wage was more or less totally inspired by the campaign in the US Yet again just cutting and pasting politics from the US is maybe not the best approach....

Well, just changing the currency sign is certainly easier and catchier than actually converting the rate.

"Fight for £10.95" doesn't sound like much of a rallying cry, after all.

[Barrister]

Edit: Wait, what - apparently the campaign on the UK left for £15 minimum wage was more or less totally inspired by the campaign in the US Yet again just cutting and pasting politics from the US is maybe not the best approach....

Well, just changing the currency sign is certainly easier and catchier than actually converting the rate.

"Fight for £10.95" doesn't sound like much of a rallying cry, after all.

Yeah a £15 minimum wage converts to $26 CDN.  That's like... extraordinarily high.  Ours is $15 and that was raised quite a bit in the last couple of years.

[Sheilbh]

Re. the Labour left mainly caring about taking control of the Labour party. From tonight's Tribune rally - I don't think there's a single line about the government. It also increasingly looks like the shadow cabinet row and resignation was all deliberate set-up to undermine the leadership (Starmer appointed a Jewish MP who repeatedly confronted Corbyn over anti-semitism as McDonald's replacement)

Lewis Goodall
@lewis_goodall
Tribune rally opened by @zarahsultana: "Want to open this rally with solidarity  for our comrade Andy McDonald." (Cue enormous applause). Says the current Labour leadership is "shameful." Attacks the "Blairites."
Sultana attacks the "Blairite clique" which she says is dominating the leadership, "gathering in drinks receptions with Peter Mandelson" [boos] "reliving the 1980s and 1990s."
More cheers when Sultana says "it's an absolute disgrace that the leadership have let a scum newspaper have a stand at conference this year."
Sultana: "no matter how much gerrymandering, no matter how much anti-democratic fixing they [the Blairite clique] try and do- we are not going anywhere."
.@ronanburtenshaw editor of Tribune: "They want people to go home and believe that politics is to be done only by a bunch of corporate shills in Westminster. We say- never."
Burtenshaw: "This whole Starmer project isn't about making the Labour Party more electable. It's about making the party safe for the powerful."

Asks crowd if they've read Starmer's leaflet. Laughter. "It's a waste of time!", someone shouts,
Burtenshaw: "Those policies we stood on in 2017 and those policies we stood on in 2019- we're going to keep standing for them."
Next up Rebecca Long Bailey

Huge cheers, chants of "Rebecca Long Bailey, four day week, no surrender"
RLB: "Amidst [the pandemic], we should have been attacking the government, not supporting them with some misguided notion of national unity...but no, sadly over the last few days we've been a party which has been more concerned with gerrymandering its own election policies."
RLB: "something which has disappointed me this week, as democratic socialists- the clue is on the back of our membership cards. we've got to commit to public ownership of rail, broadband, energy companies...privatisation has failed, utterly."
RLB: "I haven't spoken to Andy McDonald yet but if it's true that we were saying we shouldn't advocate a statutory sick pay at the rate of the living wage- then what is the point of the Labour Party?"
Dave Ward, Gen Sec CWU: "Keir's got a chance to set out his vision on Wednesday- it's not going to cut through."
Ward gets huge applause for saying CWU is going to take money away "from the Westminster elite" and give it to the "real people" in Labour arguing for collectivism

Says they'll be paying its affiliation fees but "targeting the rest of the money to where it's better spent"
Ward gets huge applause for saying CWU is going to take money away "from the Westminster elite" and give it to the "real people" in Labour arguing for collectivism

Says they'll be paying its affiliation fees but "targeting the rest of the money to where it's better spent"
Enter the left's man of the hour. @AndyMcDonaldMP greeted with chants of "Andy! Andy! Andy!"
McDonald: Comrades, it's been the honour of my life to serve in the Shadow Cabinet...I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart comrades, for the support you've shown me tonight."
John McDonnell: "I saw someone on the way up, I asked them what they thought of conference: what a shitshow, they said. It's falling apart."
McDonnell recalls the period where much of the Shadow Cabinet and shadow ministers resigned from Corbyn's shadow team: "good riddance", McDonnell says

Shouts of "scabs!" from the floor
McDonnell: "a lot of people said that, you know, you've become an elder statesman. After this last week- sod that for a laugh. I'm so angry."
McDonnell: "What kind of leader, in their first real in person conference, wants to debate the means by which you pick his successor?"
McDonnell on the Starmer pamphlet: "We were promised 14000 words. There's 11500- so clearly that 2500 was where the politics was."
Jeremy Corbyn takes to the stage

"I want to say a thank you to so many people who have been so supportive of me."

Mentions an FT editorial which cited both he and Bernie Sanders as principally responsible for changing the conversation on austerity.
Corbyn: "Conference ought to be the place you debate policy...so what do we discuss? The rule change for a leadership elex which isn't in the offing anyway...all the rule changes being put forward empowers the PLP...being an MP cannot and must not give you control over the party"
Corbyn now effectively presenting the alternative leader's speech, the sixth Corbyn conference speech which never was.

Still ongoing - but the left is clearly in it's happy place. Miles from power and attacking the leadership

[crazy canuck]

If my twitter feed is to be believed, some mileage might be made talking about petrol shortages - pun intended.

[Sheilbh]

If my twitter feed is to be believed, some mileage might be made talking about petrol shortages - pun intended.

On that. Here's the latest in the world's stupidest crisis:

Petrol station chaos worsened by motorists filling up with wrong fuel

More than five times as many people as usual in the UK put diesel in their petrol engine or vice versa

Edit: I feel like there's a genuine chance we will have a shortage of cars next as people have to rush to replace the ones they broke in the fuel panic

[Duque de Bragança]

If my twitter feed is to be believed, some mileage might be made talking about petrol shortages - pun intended.

On that. Here's the latest in the world's stupidest crisis:

Petrol station chaos worsened by motorists filling up with wrong fuel

More than five times as many people as usual in the UK put diesel in their petrol engine or vice versa

Edit: I feel like there's a genuine chance we will have a shortage of cars next as people have to rush to replace the ones they broke in the fuel panic

[Josquius]

There's a film that has never been made. A realistic apocalyptic disaster movie.
No big asteroid and flashy special effects.
Just a stray tweet or two having people acting like absolute idiots and forgetting how to human with stuff like that.

[Zanza]

Edit: I feel like there's a genuine chance we will have a shortage of cars next as people have to rush to replace the ones they broke in the fuel panic

There is a global semiconductor shortage and most car companies have reduced output. Millions of cars are not being built this year. So there likely already is a shortage of cars in the UK. It is just not that noticeable, mainly the disappearance of all discounts.

[Zanza]

From the new National Space Strategy (which is supposedly overall sensible):

[Tamas]

Edit: I feel like there's a genuine chance we will have a shortage of cars next as people have to rush to replace the ones they broke in the fuel panic

There is a global semiconductor shortage and most car companies have reduced output. Millions of cars are not being built this year. So there likely already is a shortage of cars in the UK. It is just not that noticeable, mainly the disappearance of all discounts.

Even before this, used car prices jumped ridiculously during the pandemic, which I expect will be made even worse by the new car shortage.

[crazy canuck]

I thought the semi conductor shortage did start before the pandemic?

[Zanza]

I thought the semi conductor shortage did start before the pandemic?

Not in the automotive industry. They reduced forecasts too much in 2020 after Corona hit and then the semiconductor makers shifted capacity away and cannot ramp up easily again. Especially as the type of semiconductors automotive needs are "old" technology, which is not what consumer electronics need - which is a much bigger market than cars.

[Josquius]

From the new National Space Strategy (which is supposedly overall sensible):

The worrying thing is with everyone taking up the term galactic now for just about barely getting into space what the hell will it be when there are tourist trips to the moon? Interdimensional?

[crazy canuck]

I thought the semi conductor shortage did start before the pandemic?

Not in the automotive industry. They reduced forecasts too much in 2020 after Corona hit and then the semiconductor makers shifted capacity away and cannot ramp up easily again. Especially as the type of semiconductors automotive needs are "old" technology, which is not what consumer electronics need - which is a much bigger market than cars.

Thanks for the clarification. 

[Sheilbh]

Yeah a £15 minimum wage converts to $26 CDN.  That's like... extraordinarily high.  Ours is $15 and that was raised quite a bit in the last couple of years.

The minimum wage has increased in the last few years:


But the median hourly wage in the UK is about £13.50. I'm keen for increasing the minimum wage  but though £15 is a nice round number (and aligns with AOC's campaign) I'm not convinced that's a plausible rise/level