TubbersUK

TubbersUK's Journal

December 4, 2016

Netanyahu says will discuss with Trump 'bad' Iran nuclear deal

Source: Reuters

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday he will discuss with Donald Trump the West's "bad" nuclear deal with Iran after the U.S. president-elect enters the White House.

During the U.S. election campaign, Trump, a Republican, called last year's nuclear pact a "disaster" and "the worst deal ever negotiated". But the businessman-turned-politician has also said it would be hard to overturn an agreement enshrined in a United Nations resolution.

snip

Netanyahu telephoned Trump after his election victory in November and said the president-elect had invited him to meet in the United States "at the first opportunity". The two talked in New York in September, when Netanyahu also saw then-Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

"He (Trump) has a clear vision of America's role in dominance in the world. I don't think he's going to put the world aside, I don't see that at all. In fact, I think the contrary is true," Netanyahu said on Sunday.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-usa-idUSKBN13T0TQ

December 3, 2016

Trump-Taiwan call: China lodges protest

Source: BBC

China's foreign ministry says it has lodged a complaint with the US after President-elect Donald Trump spoke to Taiwan's leader in a phone call.

snip

China said it had lodged a "solemn representation" with Washington.
According to the state news agency Xinhua, China urged the US "to cautiously, properly handle Taiwan issue to avoid unnecessary disturbance to Sino-US relations".
Earlier, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi dismissed the call as a "petty trick" by Taiwan, Chinese state media said.

Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-38194371

July 23, 2016

Britain cannot stay in single market after Brexit 'if we're out, we're out', warns Leave campaign

A Conservative MP who campaigned for the Leave camp before the EU referendum has dismissed the concept of Britain remaining in the single market as a “misnomer” despite Boris Johnson saying he is confident a deal can be struck.

Speaking in New York for a meeting of the United Nations Security Council, the new Foreign Secretary was quoted as saying he had “absolutely no doubt that a balance can be struck” between access to the tariff-free market and the four freedoms that underpin the EU project.

However, Bill Cash, Conservative MP for Stone, told The Independent that Britain cannot remain inside the market, stating “If you’re out, you’re out,” and comparing the UK’s relationship to the EU with that of Japan and the US.

“You cannot remain… the 1972 Act has to be repealed as the only constitutional political act, which follows from the vote to leave the European Union,” he said. “There is no other way open to anyone. If you’re out, you’re out… therefore you can’t engage in an integrated process. You are thereby outside like America is, like Japan is – it’s no big deal, it’s perfectly simple,” he said.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-eu-referendum-single-market-bill-cash-boris-johnson-free-movement-a7152666.html

Tensions among the Brexiteers

July 23, 2016

UK officials seek draft agreements with EU before triggering article 50

UK officials have been trying to reach an outline agreement with European leaders on the sequence of Brexit talks, including a discussion about whether the terms of Britain leaving the EU can be negotiated at the same time as talks about the future trade relationship.

Theresa May and her Brexit departments in Whitehall do not want to concede any ground on triggering article 50, the clause that starts the two-year negotiating process, until this can be clarified. The sequence question is an essential in the opening phase in the tactical battle, with the UK being in a weaker position if the negotiations are rigidly organised.

There is a danger that the UK would leave the EU only to find itself in a legal limbo in which the status of critical trade, security and environmental laws have not been clarified. That applies not just to access to the EU single market, but a variety of other critical functions, ranging from the European arrest warrant to data sharing and climate change laws.

Under the article 50 procedure, member states must first negotiate the terms of their departure before negotiating a future deal with the EU.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/22/brexit-talks-uk-limbo-sequence-negotiations-eu

This, the sequencing agreement, is one to watch IMO.

July 22, 2016

Brexit shock pushes UK services and manufacturing into contraction says new survey

The Brexit shock has given the economy "a good kicking" according to a special set of surveys of businesses taken in the wake of the European Union referendum vote, which suggest the UK economy is now contracting at its steepest pace since the last recession in early 2009.

The “dramatic deterioration” will significantly increase the odds of a major monetary stimulus from the Bank of England next month to support the economy.

Markit/CIPS surveys of firms' purchasing managers conducted in recent days suggests activity in both the UK’s services and manufacturing sectors have slipped into contraction in the wake of the 23 June vote.

Howard Archer of IHS Global Insight described it as "a truly horrible survey" which suggests the Brexit vote is giving the economy "a good kicking".

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/brexit-shock-pushes-uk-services-and-manufacturing-into-contraction-says-new-survey-a7149901.html

Britain's economy shrinking at fastest rate since 2009, says survey

The UK economy shrank at its fastest rate since the peak of the financial crisis seven years ago, after the vote to leave the European Union, according to a survey of business activity.

In the first survey of business confidence since the referendum on 23 June, the services sector was particularly hard hit, showing its biggest drop on record.

With manufacturing dropping to its lowest level since February 2013, the survey suggests UK GDP could shrink by 0.4% in the third quarter, according to Markit, which compiles the data in its purchasing managers’ index (PMI).

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/22/britains-economy-shrinking-at-fastest-rate-since-2009-says-survey

July 2, 2016

In Brexit Britain the elites will run amok

In Brexit Britain the elites will run amok

A week on from the referendum that was going to take back democracy from the elites, and we still don’t know exactly who will be taking back democracy for us. But it will be one representative of the elites or another. At the moment, it looks like Michael Gove or Theresa May will be their political face. Unless someone else in the Tory party offers them a better deal between now and September.

The elites have already been reassured that there will be public money to squander on disentangling Britain from international consensus and getting the elites the trade deals that they want.

Conservative promises to step away from the deficit obsession are about this, not ending austerity.

Instead, we will be continuing as we have been for decades, pandering to the elites we’re supposed to be escaping. The elites decide how much they are prepared to contribute in tax towards the social and physical infrastructure they operate in. They’d rather do it privately, bleeding interest for their chiselling loans out of the public sector. They will always have free movement for themselves, and the threat that they will make use of it. It’s so easy for them to get their way.

They will always manage to bring in cheap staff from abroad, when and if they want it, safe in the knowledge that it’s the cheap staff, not them, who will bear the brunt of the anger of the people they refuse to employ because they want fair wages and decent conditions. People will learn the hard way how much Nigel Farage cares about their lives, how much Rupert Murdoch frets about their poor pay.

These men want ordinary people to be angry, because angry people make errors of judgment, blaming each other instead of the elites that plunder ideas about equality, fairness, freedom and democracy for their own ends. Britain. You voted for this. Now, once again, get ready to be told that There Is No Alternative.........................................

No one can predict what sort of outcome might emerge from his capricious gamble, and it doesn’t look like we’ll even get to vote again until all of that is done and dusted. Europe doesn’t crush our democracy. It protects what’s left of it. Now that protection is gone and our limited, gestural, dysfunctional democracy is all we have.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/01/brexit-britain-elites-run-amok

June 30, 2016

Michael Gove announces surprise bid for Tory leadership - Brexit live

Michael Gove announces surprise bid for Tory leadership - Brexit live

Last I heard he was offering Boris his support in exchange for the right job.

Rats in a sack.

This is Gove's statement:

The British people voted for change last Thursday. They sent us a clear instruction that they want Britain to leave the European Union and end the supremacy of EU law. They told us to restore democratic control of immigration policy and to spend their money on national priorities such as health, education and science instead of giving it to Brussels. They rejected politics as usual and government as usual. They want and need a new approach to running this country.

There are huge challenges ahead for this country but also huge opportunities. We can make this country stronger and fairer. We have a unique chance to heal divisions, give everyone a stake in the future and set an example as the most creative, innovative and progressive country in the world.

If we are to make the most of the opportunities ahead we need a bold break with the past.

I have repeatedly said that I do not want to be Prime Minister. That has always been my view. But events since last Thursday have weighed heavily with me.

I respect and admire all the candidates running for the leadership. In particular, I wanted to help build a team behind Boris Johnson so that a politician who argued for leaving the European Union could lead us to a better future.

But I have come, reluctantly, to the conclusion that Boris cannot provide the leadership or build the team for the task ahead.

I have, therefore, decided to put my name forward for the leadership. I want there to be an open and positive debate about the path the country will now take. Whatever the verdict of that debate I will respect it. In the next few days I will lay out my plan for the United Kingdom which I hope can provide unity and change.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2016/jun/30/brexit-live-theresa-may-and-boris-johnson-set-to-announce-leadership-bids

June 29, 2016

Michael Gove's wife exposes doubts about Boris Johnson with email blunder

Michael Gove’s wife has accidentally emailed a member of the public with worries about Boris Johnson’s popularity with the Tory membership and with media bosses Rupert Murdoch and Paul Dacre.

The email from Sarah Vine, a Daily Mail columnist, also contained advice to Gove not to guarantee his support for Johnson’s leadership bid without a specific job offer.

Vine gave an account of Gove’s referendum night in her Daily Mail column.............“By now his phone was buzzing and beeping like a demented frog. ‘You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off,’ I said … In other words, you’ve really torn it now.”

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/29/michael-goves-wife-doubts-boris-johnson-email-sarah-vine-dacre-murdoch

February 22, 2016

How a Ferocious Backlash to LGBT Equality Is in Full Force While Leaders Have No Strategy

In Georgia and Mississippi, new "religious liberties" bills that would allow government workers, taxpayer-funded groups and businesses whose owners or operators oppose gay marriage to discriminate againt gays, have advanced. Legislators in over twenty other states are pursuing similar actions. And in Texas, a new Kim Davis is on the horizon, as Molly Criner, the clerk of rural Irion County, says she may not give out marriage licenses to gay couples (no couples have apparently yet come to get one). She testified last week before a Texas legislative committee. "This is going to be something that violates my oath," she claimed.

A backlash against LGBT equality is in full swing, eight months after marriage equality came to the entire nation, and it's not just happening in very conservative places. In Houston, a city which had a lesbian mayor and prided itself on inclusiveness, a ballot measure rescinded the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance with an overwhelming majority last November, as opponents targeted transgender people with a campaign of hate and "bathroom panic" via television ads.

LGBT leaders not only didn't have a plan then, they've still not figured out how to deal with bathroom panic and the right's age-old tactic of exploiting people's fears about their children with regard to the presence of gay or transgender people.

An important article seeking to raise a red flag - there's much more at the link.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michelangelo-signorile/post_10997_b_9281044.html

February 21, 2016

SEIU fliers paint Clinton as $15 minimum wage supporter in Nevada

LAS VEGAS — Ahead of Nevada's Democratic caucuses, the Service Employees International Union is distributing literature to members touting Hillary Clinton's support for a $15 hourly wage for workers. But Clinton, who won SEIU's endorsement in November, has not actually endorsed a federal $15 minimum wage. Clinton has said since the beginning of her campaign that she backs a federal minimum wage of $12 an hour.
“Hillary Clinton supports our fight for $15 and a union,” read the SEIU fliers, which were distributed in English and Spanish. The literature also featured quotes from Clinton supporting New York’s proposal to raise wages for fast-food workers to $15 an hour.

<snip>

The fliers were sent out as a tool to provide members information about where Clinton stands on SEIU’s agenda, according to an email obtained by POLITICO.
SEIU’s Nevada state director, Brian Shepherd, told POLITICO the fliers were not misleading about Clinton’s position.
“Hillary Clinton was the first candidate who came and met with workers and said she supported our movement,” Shepherd said. “The fight for $15 is about creating a movement of people to talk about the inequality in America. That’s been the focus of the fight for $15.”
Shepherd said the union has been stumping for Clinton in working-class neighborhoods and has knocked on 36,000 doors and distributed 10,000 pledge cards on her behalf.

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