For the Brits: When will BREXIT referendum happen ?

[flabbybody]

right now the same old shit as before seems very comforting

[Stavros]

Curbing executive pay, tackling poverty? DO NOT hold your breath!
Where have we heard all this bollox before? Cameron.....and executive pay as gone through the roof, poverty is out of control with 25% of children in this country living in or bordering on poverty! The wealthy will no doubt dispute this figure?
More austerity looming, especially for the North and public money been thrown at consultants acting for private companies, etc & millions more spent on public enquiries about shit no ones concerned about!
Basically.....the same old shit as before!

Peejaye you are right to be, shall I say, sceptical? Theresa May is not in fact free to write her own agenda because she was elected on the 2015 Tory Manifesto, which is at least a guide to policy, but also has been lumbered with Brexit preparations. I suspect that when she returns from the Palace on Wednesday evening to draft the agenda for her first Cabinet meeting, Brexit will be Item No 1. What she has said in policy terms can thus be considered aspirational, I seem to recall David Cameron making a lot of socially agreeable promises when he became leader of the Party, 'hugging a hoody' (poverty), 'hugging a husky' (climate change), hugging his wife (no comment), but not realising any of these policies because he was forced into a coalition. It is too early to tell. One can only hope that Mrs May establishes a sense of order and direction in government policy, though we need to know if there will be talks before the invocation of Article 50, a Parliamentary vote on it, or if the Royal Prerogative will be used. And I think we need to know this by Friday.

[peejaye]

Thanks Stavros. My opinion is things can't be any worse but don't get me started on the last woman PM we had!
I am worried though!

[Stavros]

Thanks Stavros. My opinion is things can't be any worse but don't get me started on the last woman PM we had!
I am worried though!

It is more likely to get worse before it gets better. Academics in Universities working mostly in medicine, science and engineering have already been told they cannot apply for new research funding on joint projects in the EU under the Horizon 2020 programme until the status of the UK has been resolved, one example of how uncertainty affects real people and real jobs.
However, the pound has moved up slightly against the dollar, and Theresa May has the advantage of being the winner in this current moment in the Tory Party, but is on notice from the militant Brexiteers who will want one of their own to have a prominent job in the new Cabinet.

There is another way of looking at this, and that is to compare the Conservatives to the Republican Party in the USA, not least because Andrea Leadsom received funding from the NeoCon American Legislative Exchange Council [ALEC] to attend one of its conferences. ALEC is part-funded by the Koch Brothers and denies climate change, is linked to TEA Party issues on tax, gun ownership and so on, and we know Leadsom is a 'born again Christian' -but has conceded defeat to Mrs May.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/...dsom-tea-party

It was Theresa May who pointed out to the Tory Party conference in 2002 that people thought of it as 'the Nasty Party', and it must be said that on social issues such as same-sex partnerships and marriage Theresa May, the daughter of a Church of England vicar, has been as liberal as Cameron, and that where the US Republican Party has become increasingly opposed to social issues that Americans approve of or are relaxed about, the Tories have travelled in the opposite direction, even if those Tory ladies in the Shires are closer to Leadsom than they are to May. The speech I cited from yesterday also implies she is a 'One Nation' Tory rather than a tax-obsessed, market-driven 'God and Country' nutter, so the comparison with the Republicans doesn't go far these days. Theresa May is no Thatcher.

May does have weaknesses, such as a lack of knowledge of Foreign Policy although like every Prime Minister since Anthony Eden she is pro-Israeli, but did not visit Israel for the first time until 2014, whereas Gordon Brown (whose father was also cloth) was taken to Israel on a regular basis by his father when young. Although May was in favour of repealing the Human Rights Act (199-eightand it is n the 2015 Manifesto, I think she has put this aside for time being, whereas the Investigatory Powers Bill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investigatory_Powers_Bill that will enable the govt to access internet browsing habits and emails is still going through Parliament subject to whatever amendments the opposition can get out of it. A lot depends on how much time is taken up through Brexit, the current assumption being that May will be seeking informal talks with the EU between now and October and that Article 50 might not be invoked until next year at the earliest, I think that is what I heard on BBC-2s Newsnight last night. But as usual these days, all of these are subject to change.

May's stance on Israel is reviewed here, though be warned the link keeps re-refreshing and is a real nuisance.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/theresa...6-connections/

[peejaye]

Well; Good riddance to bad rubbish!
In the 1980's we had Thatcher-ism, now I suspect we will get May-hem!
Camerons legacy is the 1,109,309 of his own citizens registered with food banks and taking us out of the EU!
Most complementary remark I heard today about him was a "modern" leader?

[peejaye]

So Boris Johnson(Bo Jo) and David Davies are going to lead negotiations on our exit from Europe?
This may surprise some people; but I think they may do a pretty good job. Davies is one of the most intelligent Tories out there and Boris is very popular overseas, people like him and he makes them laugh. They don't know him like we do maybe?
A mixed new cabinet, not yet complete, shame about Hammond as Chancellor, a nasty character "up to his eyebrows" in "dirty money". The most important post behind PM so expect few changes for the "less well off".

[peejaye]

An alternative view can be found here; Some of you won't like it!

http://johnpilger.com/articles/why-t...d-no-to-europe

[Stavros]

An alternative view can be found here; Some of you won't like it!
http://johnpilger.com/articles/why-t...d-no-to-europe

Where does one begin with the rubbish that Pilger writes? Two examples:

The reason millions of refugees have fled the Middle East - first Iraq, now Syria - are the invasions and imperial mayhem of Britain, the United States, France, the European Union and Nato. Before that, there was the wilful destruction of Yugoslavia.
-As if the extinction of civil society over 40 years of brutal and corrupt military dictatorship were not enough, and poor governance of no relevance. As if Tito had not clearly failed to build an integrated federal state of Yugoslavia so that when he died it collapsed and revived a murderous Serbian nationalism that adopted mass murder as a route to the creation of a long-established 'Greater Serbia' -promoted by Pilger's old flame Milosovic.

In the week of the referendum vote, no British politician and, to my knowledge, no journalist referred to Vladimir Putin's speech in St. Petersburg commemorating the seventy-fifth anniversary of Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June, 1941. The Soviet victory - at a cost of 27 million Soviet lives and the majority of all German forces - won the Second World War.

-So the role of the British, the Americans, the French, the Dutch, the Polish, and others from the Normandy Landings and the invasion of Southern Italy in the defeat of Nazi Germany was just an unnecessary sideshow?

[rodinuk]

...
Camerons legacy is the 1,109,309 of his own citizens registered with food banks and taking us out of the EU!
...

So much for same-sex marriage then....

[flabbybody]

What did the Soviets do with American and British POW's at the end of WW 2?
https://stevehollier.wordpress.com/2...ver-to-return/