But Farage committed hara-kiri - or at least did the bidding of his financial masters - and it is the Remain vote which is split and Boris set fair to ride triumphant into the sunlit uplands of Brexit.

For all the criticism he has gotten, I still think Corbyn did all he could to keep both Remainers and Leavers within the Labour party tent and his offer to hold a second referendum while remaining personally neutral is statesmanlike and a viable way out of the crisis with no one losing face.

But for whatever reason the British people seem to be buying all the anti-Corbyn bile as if the personality and charisma of the PM mattered all that much in the context of the gravity of the crisis the UK will be facing when Boris crashes out without a comprehensive FTA.

The reduction of politics to a televisual beauty contest and the sheer stupidity of people who are bearing the brunt of Conservative led austerity and privatisation voting for Boris beggars belief.

It will be very hard for me to muster sympathy for the British people if they vote for Boris and when it then all comes crashing down. It's not as if they weren't warned and didn't know that Boris is a lying, cheating bastard whom no one of any integrity would have dealings with.

And still it seems we are in for another few years of pommy moaning about the EU not being fair to them when they discover that nothing outside the EU comes for free.

The only benefit for most of the EU will be that they won't have to listen any more (but also won't have any excuses for not putting their own houses in order).

In Ireland the EU/UK dynamic will have another few years to play out - re-cast as a nationalist/unionist divide - and with an increasingly beleaguered and desperate DUP thrashing about for victims to blame.

But the die has been cast. Unionism's days in Ireland are numbered. It is just a matter of how gracefully the process is managed. Brexit was the last act of "those whom the Gods seek to destroy, they first make mad".

Index of Frank's Diaries

Apart from overstated UK budget rebates, contribution to EU trade balance with either EU or ROW, and overstated economic impact within UK attributable only to BREXIT jingoism, I wonder. I wonder, because GINI is one of those topics that have left the room for the election against HRM BoJo or the elusive 2nd referendum.

Love or detest GINI: GB is not the "engine" of EU prosperity, however you care to measure that. You are familiar with GINI figures, and Eurostat figures by nation-state have been nearly level for some decades. Which might or might not be and endorsement of endemic poverty across Europe, induced by "neoliberal" or "neocon" national parliaments' policies. It is however an indictment of grossly disproportionate income inequality--matching the most grossly overvalued currency on the planet--hoarded in Britain for generations. That is, UK will secede with "wealth" to be squandered by its gov, not EU gov and EU27.
The Scale of Economic Inequality in the UK

The UK has a wealth GINI coefficient of 73.2%.

They plan to renegotiate the coalition agreement with an eye towards exiting the government. It's not fully Corbynesque but a similar direction of travel.

_{Schengen is toast!}

Junior hotel managers may be badly paid, but they think of themselves as having a posh job with prospects. Care assistants may be at the bottom of the status hierarchy,  but they tend to regard themselves as caring people, working for individual clients, often in their homes, and don't really identify themselves as part of a cohesive occupational grouping.

Union membership in these and similar service orientated occupational groups has always been low, but their numbers have grown hugely, with the result that union membership as a proportion of the working population has declined precipitously.

Unions work best where there are large groups of people performing similar work in the same location or company. This sort of factory production environment has been decimated by out-sourcing, automation and de-industrialisation.

In Ireland, and I suspect in the UK, union membership is now largely confined to the public service, and to a few larger companies employing larger numbers. US companies often pay better but do not recognise unions at all.

This has led to a perception that Unions now largely work for better paid workers in more secure employments who have better benefits to begin with - and don't represent the unemployed or more precariously employed majority.

Although the working class rhetoric and accents often remain, the reality is that it is the middle class professions which are often the most militant and well organised and unions are seen by many outside these groups as entrenching the privileges of the few in sheltered employments.

Rapidly changing work environments do not lend themselves to the staples of union organisation:- stable job descriptions, comparative job grading schemes, structured pay and benefit scales, and rigid negotiating categories. Everything is being individualised to prevent worker solidarity creating a threat to management bargaining power.

Individual workers are bought off by management if they are seen as having better than average ability and work ethic. Companies deliberately automate or outsource work which has been a focus of union activity. Militants are ostracised and marginalised.

It's every man for themselves now, and even the women are betraying their sisters... Politics in this environment, becomes less about class solidarity and more about looking after yourself: Precisely the sort of individual "meritocracy" that conservative parties say they promote. Merit being defined as playing the game within the rules set by others and not any objective measure of contribution or effort.

Index of Frank's Diaries

He's one of those disgusting centrists who think there is a meaningful difference between "Muscular Liberalism" and Neu-Colonialism/Neo-Conervatism. Anybody who critiques his idiocies is branded a marxist/leninist/trotskyist.

keep to the Fen Causeway

All the rest of the noise is how to divvy up the crumbs from their table.

keep to the Fen Causeway

Leaked communiqué signals caution over PM's 11-month timeframe for negotiations

Key words: Election News - Tory lies

Global Warming - distance between America and Europe is steadily increasing.

Her comments come as healthcare workers across Northern Ireland take industrial action in a dispute over pay and staffing levels, demanding to be paid the same as their colleagues in the rest of the UK. Trade union Unison accused politicians of not being willing to share power, but being willing to share blame.
[...]
For years healthcare workers across the UK were paid equally. In late 2014, however, this was ended by the then Health Minister, Jim Wells of the DUP, who stated he had to "exercise a degree of restraint" over pay.
[...]
In January 2016, DUP Health Minister Simon Hamilton was involved in a dispute with nurses after he offered them a one-off pay increase of 1%. Nurses argued the increase should be added to salaries, as was the case in the rest of the UK.

[INCONTINENCE ALERT]

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.