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So recently the police arrested a bunch of guys after boxing a car in on the M62, and one fella ended up dead after a copper pumped some rounds through his windshield. He was known to police, and a gun was found in the car. I'm not going to post the news story, but I am going to post this top-quality reddit comment I saw on this story:

You failed as a father.

I know and understand nobody wants to hear the mathematical certainty that half of all parents fall below being average parents, for whatever that means, but raising a drug-dealing, gun-wielding narcissist who disavows his own children on dating sites to get an easy lay and whose bread and butter trade was in intimidation and turf war, means you've fucked up.

Having said that if the police were into the planned assassination business the 3rd leaguers like your son surely wouldn't be on the hit list.

Far more likely that the police knew there was a firearm in the car, knew he had to be taken in, but weren't going to take any unwarranted risks against their own officers if he wasn't 100% compliant.

I can understand their need to mourn, but it shouldn't be their public face. That should be reserved for shame, for raising a wrong'un.

Working paper from Cambridge's CBR.

Abstract:

This working paper uses the new CBR macro-economic model of the UK economy to investigate possible futures following the referendum decision to leave the EU. The paper briefly explains why we felt the necessity to build a new model and describes some of its key features. Since Brexit is a unique event with no precedent it is not possible to do a normal forecast in which a few assumptions are made about a limited range of exogenous variables. The best that can be done is to construct scenarios and two are presented here. The difficult part is to decide what scale of adjustment is needed to reflect the likely realities of Brexit. Analysis by HM Treasury of the potential impact of various outcomes for trade outside the EU is examined and found wanting. Instead the actual experience of UK export performance is examined for a long period including both pre- and post- accession years. This suggests a more limited impact of EU membership. While we include a scenario based on Treasury assumptions, a more realistic, although in our view still pessimistic, scenario assumes half of the trade loss of the Treasury. The results are presented through comparing these scenarios with a pre-referendum forecast. In the milder Brexit scenario there is a 2% loss of GDP by 2025 but little loss of per capita GDP, less unemployment but more inflation. In the more severe, Treasury-based scenario the loss of GDP is nearer 5% (2% for per capita GDP), inflation is higher and the advantage in unemployment less.

Conclusion:

A model based largely on equations reflecting past relationships between macroeconomic variables has little to go on in attempting to project a long-term future outside the EU. Nor is there much on which to base a judgement about how much of investment and consumption might be delayed or cancelled due to inevitable uncertainty about the future. Our two scenarios about possible futures leading up to and following Brexit are based on a series of assumptions not only about what form trade arrangements might take, but importantly, what impact these changes will have on the wider economy. We have rejected the gravity model approach as an inappropriate and blunt instrument for assessing potential trade losses. A timeseries approach is better but still leaves a wide range of possibilities.

The first of our two scenarios examines the Treasury’s assumptions even though we feel that these have little basis in reality. More probable but still pessimistic is our baseline Brexit scenario. In the latter the loss of GDP peaks at less than 3% early in the next decade before beginning to recover. Postponed investment, loss of EU trade and lower migration all play a role, but an accommodating monetary policy and a depreciated currency help to manage the shock, as they should. In per capita terms the loss is never much more than 1% and soon recovers. Even under these somewhat pessimistic assumptions about (temporary) uncertainty and trade losses, the path of GDP is projected to be only a little lower than it might have been in the absence of a Leave vote. Inflation is higher but unemployment lower as migration is restrained.

The economic outlook is grey rather than black, but this would, in our view, have been the case with or without Brexit. The deeper reality is the continuation of slow growth in output and productivity that have marked the UK and other western economies since the banking crisis. Slow growth of bank credit in a context of already high debt levels, and exacerbated by public sector austerity prevent aggregate demand growing at much more than a snail’s pace.

Bloomberg:

House Republicans dropped their bid to weaken the independent Office of Congressional Ethics after President-elect Donald Trump blasted the move as counter to his call to "drain the swamp" of corruption in Washington.

The amendment was stripped from a rules package by voice vote, three lawmakers said, in a last-minute meeting called Tuesday as criticism mounted. The controversy over the office that investigates lawmakers’ alleged misconduct was starting to overshadow the opening of the 115th Congress, normally a day of glad-handing as lawmakers bring family members to the floor to join the festivities.

"We have got just a tremendous number of calls to our office here and district offices concerned about this," said Representative Walter Jones, a North Carolina Republican.

The House GOP voted behind closed doors Monday night to make the independent office “subject to oversight” by the House Ethics Committee and significantly restrict its powers. The three lawmakers who confirmed the amendment was dropped were Mo Brooks of Alabama, Darrell Issa of California and Bill Flores of Texas.

“People could have concerns” after Trump criticized the GOP’s move, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California told reporters before the meeting.

“With all that Congress has to work on, do they really have to make the weakening of the Independent Ethics Watchdog, as unfair as it may be, their number one act and priority,” Trump wrote on Twitter Tuesday morning. “Focus on tax reform, healthcare and so many other things of far greater importance!’ He closed his tweet with “#DTS,” a reference to his campaign promise to “drain the swamp."

The change was to be part of a broader House rules package that the House plans to approve Tuesday as members open the 115th Congress.

The reversal doesn’t mean the effort to change the ethics office is dead. Representative Tom Cole, an Oklahoma Republican, said leadership promised a bipartisan solution by August to resolve some lawmakers’ concerns about the ethics office. "I think people just did not want this story on opening day," he said.

Monday night’s vote on the amendment, proposed by Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, had come amid broader calls from Trump for steps to fight corruption in Washington, including term limits on lawmakers and restrictions on lobbyists.

“Republicans claim they want to ‘drain the swamp,’ but the night before the new Congress gets sworn in, the House GOP has eliminated the only independent ethics oversight of their actions," Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California said in a statement. "Evidently, ethics are the first casualty of the new Republican Congress."

Earlier Tuesday, House Speaker Paul Ryan defended the change in a statement that insisted the ethics office would still “operate independently.”

“The evenly divided House Ethics Committee will now have oversight of the complaints office,” said Ryan of Wisconsin. He said the House panel would exercise that oversight only to "ensure the office is properly following its rules and laws," and said he instructed the House committee not to "interfere with the office’s investigations or prevent it from doing its job."

I'd recommend reading the entire thing.

sort it out, you fucking jew kike

Reuters Commentary:

A heavy cold and a nation shivers. The cold is that attributed, this week, to Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II (her formal titles would take much of the rest of this column). The shivers are those of the political establishment.

Everything of moment in the United Kingdom depends, formally, on the 90-year-old Queen. She legitimizes all laws. She appoints all ministers. Parliamentarians must swear an oath of fealty to her. Ambassadors negotiate in her name, generals fight in it. She is the monarch in more than a dozen former imperial possessions, largely uncontroversially. When, in 1999, on the prompting of a Labour Prime Minister, the Australians tried to usurp her, the move failed, in spite of polls showing only minority support for her. Now, contrary to belief, the polls have risen, to show her popularity at around 60 percent.

Public approval has only grown as she has aged. Shown slowly walking through official ceremonies, even grumpy republicans (of whom I am one, so beware of bias) have to admit to her stoicism and guts. She is by some way the most popular figure in the UK, and the second most popular in the world – after of course, Angelina Jolie (Hollywood royalty still has the edge; it has, after all, a bigger PR budget).

The queen’s formal power is a kind of confidence trick in which almost everyone acquiesces. She does what she is told by the prime minister who comes to her once a week, bows or curtsies, and tells her what the government wants to do - policies on which she can make at most an oblique comment and which she cannot change. A little storm blew up this week as to whether or not she favored Brexit: the BBC political editor said she’d been told she had, but lacking a second source, didn’t broadcast it on her employer’s channels. Denials and no comments have been thick on the ground since; the Queen does not comment, whether she did or not. Brexit steams, or stumbles, ahead.

Her real job is keeping Britain together. Every age group thinks she’s great - the older more than the younger, to be sure - and that the monarchy should carry on into the future - preferably with her at its head. Since that is, however, impossible, the “heavy cold’” has alarmed her country’s real, much less popular, rulers.

Quite soon, a decision must be made - it may have been made already - as to whom the succession will go. It is on paper simple: to her eldest son, Charles, Prince of Wales, 68 last month. But here’s the rub. Though less unpopular than he was during the divorce from Princess Diana in 1996, and after her death in 1997, his approval ratings remain mediocre, and even admirers think he should abjure the throne for his elder son, Prince William.

Charles is a man of opinions - on the environment, on architecture and on government support for his many charities and causes - opinions he presses insistently on governments, as shown by his letters, released under the Freedom of Information Act. If, as king, he continues in this, both he and his institution will suffer for it.

Prince William, 34 last June, has, by contrast, no known opinions on public issues. He has a wife, Catherine, from a non-royal background; they have two young children, a boy, George and a girl, Charlotte. The whole family is photogenic and seem charming, though William is balding early. He trained in the Royal Air Force as a helicopter pilot, and works full time as a pilot for the air ambulance service after his short spell in the RAF. That mix of military service and aiding the sick is a potent one.

From a public relations point of view – one of the most influential in monarchical conclaves – he is a gift, in spite of the blunders said to have come from ignoring his PR team’s advice. His father, though, poses the real challenge.

If Charles succeeds – it’s still more likely than not – then the monarchy ceases to be an unquestionable asset, and becomes a zone of nervous image management. If William succeeds, Charles’ disappointment may burst out in public explosions. Even if not, the burden on William of carrying on a tradition so long occupied by his grandmother would be heavy upon one whose political antennae are untested, in a country whose domestic and international frameworks are shifting and fragile.

So popular has the queen been that even the solidly republican Scottish National Party, which provides Scotland’s regional government and nearly all of its representation at Westminster, cannily shifted towards a royalist position. But neither the son nor the grandson would command the same grip on Scots’ sentiment. That, coupled with Scotland’s vote to remain in the European Union, could convince waverers that the independence the SNP exists to attain was worth the economic risk.

Elizabeth had the power of the powerless – which in her case was world fame. Everyone who was anyone wished to meet her: and in her decades of rule, she met almost every world leader, most of whom she has outlived. To meet her was to touch history, a tourist destination for the global elite.

A dis-united Britain would be a weaker member of the Western alliance. Its weight as a member of the United Nations Security Council would be lessened; it would be out, or on a path out, of the EU and its international reputation as a supporter of liberal politics, trade and economics, would be further damaged.

It would, unwillingly, have dropped the pilot – a pilot who was not supposed to direct the course of the ship of state, but made its progress more stately. A former foreign secretary, Douglas Hurd, coined the phrase in 1993 that the UK “punched above its weight” in the world, especially in military operations. In that boxing metaphor, the queen was an off-the-ring trainer, a symbol of what the military was fighting for, lending a human face and example to the abstraction of the oath of loyalty.

A diminution of Britain on the passing of Queen Elizabeth will be hard to avoid. It’s unlikely to be staunched by whoever is her successor. Only with the transition to a republic, might a new energy be found, a new character be formed. But that is the anti-monarchical propaganda I warned you about. And like all great schemes of change, who knows if it would work?

The Spectator:

After the tumult of 2016, Europe could do with a year of calm. It won’t get one. Elections are to be held in four of the six founder members of the European project, and populist Eurosceptic forces are on the march in each one. There will be at least one regime change: François Hollande has accepted that he is too unpopular to run again as French president, and it will be a surprise if he is the only European leader to go. Others might cling on but find their grip on power weakened by populist success.

The spectre of the financial crash still haunts European politics. Money was printed and banks were saved, but the recovery was marked by a great stagnation in living standards, which has led to alienation, dismay and anger. Donald Trump would not have been able to win the Republican nomination, let alone the presidency, without that rage — and the conditions that created Trump’s victory are, if anything, even stronger in Europe.

European voters who looked to the state for protection after the crash soon discovered the helplessness of governments which had ceded control over vast swathes of economic policy to the EU. The second great shock, the wave of global immigration, is also a thornier subject in the EU because nearly all of its members surrendered control over their borders when they signed the Schengen agreement. Those unhappy at this situation often have only new, populist parties to turn to. So most European elections come down to a battle between insurgents and defenders of the existing order.

Nowhere is this more the case than the Netherlands. The Dutch will vote on 15 March and the election will essentially be Geert Wilders’s Freedom party versus the rest. Wilders, who was convicted of inciting discrimination earlier this month, is expected to top the ballot. His party, which defined itself by antipathy to ‘Islamification’ and a desire to quit the EU, regularly leads in the polls, often by double-digit margins. Normally, the party that comes top on election day in Holland provides the prime minister. But if Wilders triumphs, few other parties would support him and he won’t come to power. For a populist, to come top and then be kept out of office by an establishment stitch-up is almost the perfect result.

Even without winning the premiership, Wilders is already influencing Dutch politics. The House of Representatives recently voted for a partial ban on the burqa; Wilders made his name calling for a ban on the Quran. Wilders’s power also means that no Dutch government is going to be prepared to sign off on the fiscal transfers that would be needed to make the eurozone function properly as a currency union.

It is not the Dutch election that causes the most European concern, however, but the French one. There we have a similar story: Marine Le Pen versus the rest. She will probably make the final round in April and face François Fillon, the 62-year-old former Prime Minister. It won’t be the first time that the Front National has made the run-off, but back in 2002 Jean-Marie Le Pen won only 18 per cent of the vote. His daughter will run her opponent far closer.

Le Pen will distance herself from her old party and her father as much as possible; her campaign branding is all about ‘Marine’ — leaving out her surname and her party identification. Someone who talks to her regularly says that she will seek, like Trump, to run almost as an independent. Her strategy will be to portray Fillon as a Thatcherite hatchet man out to dismember the French social model. This could be a fertile line of attack as she seeks to garner more support from female voters and public-sector employees. She already commands strong support among working-class voters. Like Trump, she will pander to protectionist instincts as well as campaigning on ‘Islamification’ and immigration.

Fillon’s economically right-wing views and Catholic social conservatism will make it hard, perhaps impossible, for the left to vote for him. But the pacte républicain is surely still strong enough to keep the Front National out. And it is worth remembering that Le Pen has long believed that it is the election after next, in 2022, that offers her best chance of victory.

The election most likely to damage the European project is the Italian one — if it happens. Matteo Renzi’s resounding defeat in the recent constitutional reform referendum shows how angry Italians are. By some measures, southern Italy is now poorer than Poland, while manufacturing in northern Italy is struggling to compete because the euro has inflated its costs. Across the country as a whole, economic growth has been flat for 15 years. The IMF predicts that it will take Italy until the mid-2020s to return to its pre-crisis peak — after two lost decades. In these circumstances, one can see why voters there might regard a leap into the unknown as preferable to the status quo.

What makes Italy different from other countries is that there is not just one political party there that opposes the euro. Both main opposition parties are anti-euro, with a third increasingly so. Depending on the electoral system that ends up being used, the leading opposition party, Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement, has either more potential anti-EU support in a run-off round, or potential allies in parliament to help it form a government. Grillo says he won’t do deals with other parties to get into power, which limits Five Star’s prospects. But to have an anti-single-currency government come to power in Italy would be an even bigger shock to the EU than Brexit.

Germany’s elections promise to be far less dramatic. Angela Merkel is well-placed to secure another term as Chancellor, even if Alternative für Deutschland, the most vocal opponents of her handling of the refugee crisis, will probably win seats in the Bundestag for the first time. But AfD hasn’t quite worked out who will challenge Merkel. Most money is on Frauke Petry, a chemist and a mother of four who serves as co-chair of the party. Dubbed ‘Adolfina’ by her foes, her approach is milder than many of her colleagues. Marcus Pretzell, one of AfD’s seven MEPs, referred to those killed in the Islamist attack on the Christmas Market in Berlin as ‘Merkel’s dead’. Even the head of Merkel’s sister party, the CSU leader and Bavarian premier Horst Seehofer, has called for a rethink on her immigration policy because ‘we owe it to the victims.’

Merkel is still by far the most powerful politician in Europe — and her 57 per cent approval rating makes her an overwhelming favourite to win re-election. But those hoping she will secure a Brexit compromise will be as disappointed as David Cameron was by her failure to help him more during the renegotiation. The more she sees ‘populism’ on the rise, the more she’ll feel the need to defend the EU project.

The established order could scrape through this year in Europe. Dutch voters could shy away from Wilders when faced with the reality of voting for him; in France the ceiling on Le Pen’s support could turn out to be nearer 35 per cent than 50. The Italians, past masters at muddling on, might avoid fresh elections. But the populists will almost certainly end the year in a stronger position: that much closer to winning someday. Le Pen, for example, will almost certainly find her party with a sizeable presence in the National Assembly after the parliamentary elections.

The British, it is said, always underestimate the sheer political determination to keep the European project moving forward. But doing so now demands contradictory measures. If the insurgents in the south are to be kept at bay, then the eurozone must become a full transfer union, with proper burden-sharing on refugees. And that would create perfect conditions for insurgents in the north. Until — or unless — European leaders can resolve this conundrum, they will continue to dread elections.

From the Opinion Pages of the NYT, "Sorry, Liberals, Bigotry Didn't Elect Donald Trump":

Donald J. Trump won the white working-class vote over Hillary Clinton by a larger margin than any major-party nominee since World War II. Instead of this considerable achievement inspiring introspection, figures from the heights of journalism, entertainment, literature and the Clinton campaign continue to suggest that Mr. Trump won the presidency by appealing to the bigotry of his supporters. As Bill Clinton recently said, the one thing Mr. Trump knows “is how to get angry white men to vote for him.”

This stereotyping of Trump voters is not only illiberal, it falsely presumes Mr. Trump won because of his worst comments about women and minorities rather than despite them.

In fact, had those people who agreed that Mr. Trump lacked “a sense of decency” voted for Mrs. Clinton, she would have been elected the next president.

Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump equally won over party loyalists. Yet about one in five voters did not have a favorable view of either candidate. These voters overwhelmingly backed Mr. Trump. Exit polls demonstrated that if voters who disapproved of both candidates had divided evenly between them, Mrs. Clinton would have won.

Several weeks before the election, a Quinnipiac University poll found that 51 percent of white working-class voters did not believe that Mr. Trump had a “sense of decency” and ranked Mrs. Clinton slightly higher on that quality.

But they were not voting on decency. Indeed, one-fifth of voters — more than 25 million Americans — said they “somewhat” disapproved of Mr. Trump’s treatment of women. Mr. Trump won three-quarters of these voters, despite their disapprobation.

Bluntly put, much of the white working class decided that Mr. Trump could be a jerk. Absent any other champion, they supported the jerk they thought was more on their side — that is, on the issues that most concerned them.

And anti-immigrant blowback, for instance, was not what unified them. Mr. Trump proposed expelling illegal immigrants yet more of his voters, by a 50 percent to 45 percent margin, said illegal immigrants working here should be offered a chance to apply for legal status rather than be deported.

In the Obama era, we also saw that race was not a critical driver of white swing votes. Barack Obama won more support among white men in 2008, including the working class, than any Democrat since 1980.

Mr. Obama’s support among these whites was at its peak in 2008 after the stock market crash. At the depths of the Great Recession that followed, blue-collar white men experienced the most job losses.

Their support began hemorrhaging after Mr. Obama chose early in his presidency — when congressional Democrats could have overcome Republican obstruction — to fight for health care reform instead of a “new New Deal.”

By 2016, Mr. Trump personified the vote against the status quo, one still not working out for them. A post-campaign study comparing the George W. Bush coalition in 2000 to the Trump coalition in 2016 found that Mr. Trump particularly improved in areas hurt most by competition from Chinese imports, from the bygone brick and tile industry of Mason City, Iowa, to the flagging furniture plants of Hickory, N.C. The study concluded that, had the import competition from China been half as large, Mrs. Clinton would have won key swing states and the presidency with them.

This argument does not ignore bigotry. Racism appeared more concentrated among Trump voters. One poll found that four in 10 Trump supporters said blacks were more “lazy” than whites, compared with one-quarter of Clinton or John Kasich supporters.

But traits are not motives and don’t necessarily decide votes. Consider that four in 10 liberal Democrats, the largest share of any group, said in 2011 that they would hold a Mormon candidate’s faith against him or her. It would be silly to argue that, therefore, liberals voted for Mr. Obama because Mitt Romney was Mormon.

Yet the Trump coalition continues to be branded as white backlash. The stereotyping forgets that many Trump supporters held a progressive outlook. Mr. Trump won nearly one in four voters who wanted the next president to follow more liberal policies.

Democrats need only recall Mr. Clinton to understand how voters can support someone in spite of his faults. Mr. Clinton won re-election in 1996 despite a majority, including about a third of liberal voters, saying he was not honest. His approval rating reached the highest point of his presidency during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. It wasn’t that Democrats and independents endorsed Mr. Clinton’s behavior. They opposed Republicans more.

Two decades later, we are reminded again that a vote for a presidential candidate is not a vote for every aspect of him. We can look for the worst in our opponents, but that doesn’t always explain how they got the best of us.

Daily Wire.

According to a new report by Vocativ, the Islamic State is circulating a list of names and addresses of thousands of churches in Western countries, including the U.S., and urging its jihadist supporters to target them over the holidays.

The list of potential targets was disseminated via the pro-ISIS "Secrets of Jihadis" social media group on Telegram, a group Vocativ explains "provides manuals for the use and preparations of weapons and explosives for aspiring assailants." The message calls on the "sons of Islam" to attack "churches, well-known hotels, crowded coffee shops, streets, markets, and public places." It then provides a list of thousands of church addresses in four Western countries: Canada, France, the Netherlands, and the U.S.

Vocativ provides more details on the jihadists' call to turn Western streets into "rivers of blood":

A user going by the name of “Abu Marya al-Iraqi” posted an Arabic-language message calling “for bloody celebrations in the Christian New Year” and announced the group’s plans to utilize its network of lone wolf attackers to “turn the Christian New Year into a bloody horror movie, that will force [the infidels] to hide inside their burrows during their holidays and regret for the participation of their countries in the war against The Islamic State.”

“The lone wolves will turn the streets into rivers of blood, by ramming, exploding and poisoning,” he wrote. ...

In another group post, a member summoned “the sons of Islam” to target “churches, well-known hotels, crowded coffee shops, streets, markets and public places,” and shared a list of church addresses in the United States, as well as in Canada, France and the Netherlands.

Vocativ notes that the horrific attack in a Christmas market in Berlin this, which ISIS claimed responsibility for, falls right in line with the group's call to target public places in "coalition countries." Authorities have named a suspect for the Berlin market massacre: Anis Amri, a Tunisian, who German authorities failed to deport after denying asylum because of his sketchy past. Making the massacre even more insufferable, Amri was under surveillance for ties to Islamic extremists yet was able to carry out "the deadliest attack on German soil since 1980" in the country's capital city.

Bring it, fascist scum. Let's see if the bleed the same as human beings.

Bloomberg:

U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May is increasingly isolated as her demands to control all areas of policy alienate key colleagues, according to more than a dozen officials who worry tensions will undermine planning for Brexit.

Speaking anonymously because the subject is delicate, many of the government figures said an early period of goodwill toward May had given way to division and resentment, leading to policy mistakes that had to be hastily corrected. Much of that stems from the influence wielded by her joint chiefs-of-staff, Fiona Hill and Nick Timothy, the people said.

“This sounds like echoes of the end of the Thatcher era with ministers feeling it would be wrong to risk her wrath and stifling rational concerns,’’ said Richard Hayton, who teaches politics at the University of Leeds, England. It’s the feeling that the prime minister’s office “is too much in the bunker.”

May’s office said in a statement they didn’t “recognize this version of events,” and said the premier governs in an “inclusive manner.”

May is said to have been centralizing power more than her predecessor David Cameron while grappling with the most difficult task facing a British leader since the end of World War II. Not only must she extricate the country from the European Union, she needs to orchestrate a set of new trade deals at a time of economic danger, and rally the expertise and talent to pull it off.

May has little time to play with. The government must agree on its Brexit strategy within the next 14 weeks given that May has promised to initiate formal negotiations by the end of March.

Political Missteps

In a speech to the country’s top business group last month, May promised the U.K. would have the lowest corporate levies in the Group of 20 biggest industrialized and emerging economies. However, her comment was made without consulting the Treasury, which sets tax policy, even as it effectively committed the government to slashing corporate tax from 20 percent now to below the 15 percent President-elect Donald Trump has proposed.

Another example: Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond was criticized for failing to free up more money for seniors in his budget statement, but it was May’s two top aides who had opposed his proposal to release extra resources, people familiar with the situation said.

Back in October, May’s office had to apologize to Bank of England governor Mark Carney after she publicly criticized monetary policy, saying quantitative easing and low interest rates had “bad side effects.” Again, the Treasury was not consulted before the remarks.

Similar complaints about May’s office intervening were reported by officials across government policy areas, including those working on Brexit plans, health and social affairs.

Tight Ship

Hill and Timothy are said to deny top officials access to May, with even senior ministers and security chiefs finding it difficult to get past them to schedule a meeting with the premier, according to people familiar with the situation. Some are said to be so demoralized that they have given up trying to tell May the truth about what they think of her policies.

The officials fear the breakdown in trust between the premier’s office and other government ministries risks undermining the government’s ability to function when Brexit negotiations begin next year.

Still, however much May’s critics within the government dislike the combative style of her administration, many Conservatives are pleased that the party under her leadership has been 14 points ahead of the Labour opposition in recent polls. The exclusivity of May’s office “either indicates someone who is in trouble or someone who is obviously the only person for the job,’’ said Professor Tim Bale, from Queen Mary University of London. “I suspect it’s the latter.’’

Fear of Defeat

In private, ministers complain that the duo refused to allow even uncontroversial measures to be put to lawmakers because they are so afraid that the government could be defeated in a parliamentary vote. May has a small working majority in the lower house of parliament, which even a minor rebellion would wipe out.

The pair run the premier’s office in 10 Downing Street, holding sway over the operations of the entire government, and also worked with May at the Home Office between 2010 and 2015. They had both left the government by the time of the Brexit referendum in June but returned immediately to front-line politics to run May’s leadership campaign.

They are paid more than any other political advisers in the government, with salaries of 140,000 each per year ($172,000), compared to May’s 149,440 pounds, according to an official pay disclosure.

May’s official spokeswoman, Helen Bower, resigned this month after tensions with Hill, according to people familiar with the situation. In 2014, Hill was forced to step down as May’s aide in the Home Office after a row with the then-education secretary over how to tackle Islamist extremism in schools.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-38415287

Burn in hell.

The hero who shot him:

Washington Examiner:

Boeing will build the new Air Force One for less than $4 billion, the CEO told reporters Wednesday after meeting with President-elect Trump.

Dennis Muilenburg, the Boeing CEO, praised Trump for his "business head" and said the two had a very productive meeting where they discussed how the country could build two new Air Force One planes for less than the $4 billion, which Trump criticized on Twitter this month.

"We're going to get it done for less than that," Muilenburg said. "I was able to give the president-elect my personal commitment on behalf of the Boeing Company. This is a business that's important to us. We work on Air Force One because it's important to our country and we're going to make sure that he gets the best capability and that it's done affordably."

When asked about the timeline, Muilenburg said "that's what we're going to work on together."

"We have an active 747 production line and we're eager to get started on the program. We haven't actually started the build of the airplane yet, but once we finalize the requirements and make sure that it's affordable we'll launch on building the aircraft. We've got a hot production line and we're ready to go."

The meeting comes weeks after Trump tweeted that the costs of the F-35 from Lockheed Martin are "out of control" and threatened to cancel the order with Boeing for the new Air Force One over costs.

Marillyn Hewson, the CEO of Lockheed Martin, met with Trump following the meeting with Muilenburg. She left without stopping to answer questions from reporters.

She later put out a statement saying it was a "productive meeting."

"I appreciated the opportunity to discuss the importance of the F-35 program and the progress we've made in bringing the costs down," she said. "The F-35 is a critical program to our national security, and I conveyed our continued commitment to delivering an affordable aircraft to our U.S. military and our allies."

Trump met with the defense industry during the campaign in June. The hour-long sit down included representatives from the Aerospace Industries Association, as well as Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.

Following the CEO meetings, Trump received a two-part security briefing from a number of defense officials, including Lt. Gen. Chris Bogdan, the program executive officer for the F-35, Vice Adm. James Syring, the director of the Missile Defense Agency, and Adm. Bill Moran, the vice chief of naval operations.

"These are amazing people," Trump told reporters after the briefing.

Trump said the meeting was about "trying to bring costs down ... primarily the F-35, trying to get the costs down. A program that is very, very expensive."

Read in full: David Davis' speech to Conservative conference
Written by: Josh May   Posted On: 2nd October 2016
Read the full text of Brexit Secretary David Davis' speech to the Conservative party conference.

David Davis addresses the 2016 Conservative conference in BirminghamCredit: Ben Birchall/PA Wire
INTRODUCTION

 

Ladies and gentlemen, on the 23rd of June the British people voted for change.

 

And this is going to be the biggest change for a generation: we are going to leave the European Union.

 

It was we, the Conservative Party, who promised the British people a referendum.

 

It was David Cameron, a Conservative Prime Minister, who honoured that promise.

 

And now it will be this government, a Conservative government that will lead the United Kingdom out of the European Union and into a brighter and better future.

 

This must be a team effort. And I am proud to count myself part of Theresa May’s team.

 

I don't know what it is about our great women leaders, but aren’t we lucky that they’re there when we need them?

 

I remember hearing the first one, Margaret Thatcher, talking about the difficulties a woman in politics faces. "To get to the top," she said, "a woman has to be twice as good as a man. Fortunately," she said, "This is not difficult."

 

Back in 1979, her government had to confront some huge challenges.

 

And today, just as then, we are at a turning point in our nation's story.

 

Just as then, people have voted to chart a new course for our country - to transform Britain.

 

And just as then, there is no shortage of doom-mongers, telling Britain that it can’t be done.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, Britain showed them it could be done. We proved them wrong then, and with your help, Britain will prove them wrong again.

 

 

THE TASK AHEAD

 

Our destination is clear.

 

Once again, we are going to be a nation that makes for ourselves all the decisions that matter most.

 

Once again: all decisions about how taxpayers’ money is spent, taken here, in Britain.

 

Once again: our laws, made here, in Britain.

 

And yes, our borders controlled here, by Britain.

 

But, ladies and gentlemen, the task is bigger than this.

 

It isn’t just about the terms on which we will leave the EU. Nor just our future relationship with the EU.

 

This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Britain to forge a new place for itself in the world.

 

And to make our own decisions about the sort of country we want to be.

 

A nation that is a beacon for free trade

 

A force for social justice

 

A defender of freedom.

 

The home of enterprise. Of tolerance. Of fairness. Of decency.

 

A nation where we celebrate the success of those who want to get on, but never forget those who need our help.

 

Above all, a steadfast respect for democracy, and the people's right to decide their own destiny.

 

After all, democracy was what the referendum was all about.

 

The task now is to bring together the 17.4 million people who voted to leave and the 16 million who voted to remain.

 

Now, I was one of the 17.4 million. But of course there are those of you here today will have taken a different view.

 

I am delighted that many who argued for Remain are now focussed on making a success of Brexit.

 

But there are some, on both sides of the argument, who want to keep on fighting the battles of the campaign.

 

I say to them: the campaign has finished. The people have spoken. The decision is made.

 

So whether you were for leave or for remain, help us seize the opportunities that are now before us.

 

As a One Nation government, our job is to make Brexit work for everyone.

 

For every part of our society.

 

For every part of our country.

 

For each of the four nations that make up our great United Kingdom.

 

 

OUR NATIONAL INTEREST

 

While building a national consensus at home, we shall approach the negotiations with our European neighbours in a spirit of goodwill.

 

We need to appreciate and respect what the European Union means to them

 

They view it through the prism of their own history - sadly a history often of invasion and occupation, dictatorship and domination.

 

So it is not surprising that governments elsewhere in Europe see the European Union as a guarantor of the rule of law, of democracy and freedom.

 

We’ve always seen it differently - and to be honest, that has been one of the problems.

 

After all, we were the world's greatest liberal democracy for over a century before we joined.

 

We joined a common market, an economic community.

 

We have never really been comfortable being part of what is in reality a political project.

 

We are now leaving that project.

 

And this gives an opportunity, not just to clear the air, but to create a more comfortable relationship with our European neighbours that works better for all of us.

 

In the negotiations to come, of course, we will act resolutely in our national interest to deliver the right deal for Britain.

 

That does not mean we want the EU to fail.

 

On the contrary, we want it to succeed.

 

A poorer, weaker Europe is not in our interests, any more than it is in Europe’s interests.

 

So we will not turn our backs on Europe.

 

We never have; and we never will.

 

Our history shows that when the democracies of Europe are threatened by common challenges, we stand ready to help shoulder the burden. That has always been true, and it always will be.

 

Whether it is helping to rebuild the Balkans; standing up against a belligerent Russia; helping to tackle the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean – of course we want to play our part.

 

Nor does pulling out of the European Union mean pulling up the drawbridge. That’s also not in our national interest.

 

We will always welcome those with the skills, the drive and the expertise to make our nation better still. If we are to win in the global marketplace, we must win the global battle for talent.

 

Britain has always been one of the most tolerant and welcoming places on the face of the earth. It must and it will remain so.

 

When it comes to the negotiations, we will protect the rights of EU citizens here, so long as Britons in Europe are treated the same way - something I am absolutely sure we will be able to agree.

 

And to those who peddle hate and division towards people who have made Britain their home: let the message go out from this hall, we say you have no place in our society.

 

But the clear message from the referendum is this: we must be able to control immigration.

 

Did you hear Mr Corbyn last week, telling us all there’s no need for any limit on numbers? Have you ever heard a political party quite so out of touch with its own voters?

 

Let us be clear, we will control our own borders and we will bring the numbers down.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, I quite understand that some people are desperate to know exactly how we are going to proceed, who think we should provide a running commentary on every twist and turn of the negotiation ahead.

 

Well, I’ve never met anyone doing a business deal who thinks it’s a smart idea to give away your bottom lines in advance.

 

So I’m not going to apologise for taking exactly the same approach.

 

I’m reminded of the story of Calvin Coolidge, the American President who famously said so little that he was nicknamed ‘Silent Cal’.

 

One night at a formal dinner, a guest tried to lure him into conversation. To no avail.

 

Increasingly desperate, she said: ‘But Mr President, I made a bet that I could get you to say more than three words.’

 

Coolidge replied simply: ‘You lose.’

 

Now I have little in common with Calvin Coolidge, but I hope in the next few months you will forgive me if I am a little more taciturn than my usual self.

 

There is another way that I think that we should be careful with our words.

 

On both sides of the Channel, we must resist the temptation to trade insults to generate cheap headlines.

 

There has been some bluster in the aftermath of the referendum, perhaps inevitably.

 

But these negotiations are too important for that. 

 

Instead, we should all think carefully about where our common interests lie.

 

Britain is one of the strongest defenders of Europe’s freedom and security. So it makes perfect sense for us to have the strongest possible ties after we have left the EU.

 

The same goes for trade.

 

History shows that the easier it is for us to do business together, the better it is for both Britain and Europe.

 

We’re looking at all the options. And we’ll be prepared for any outcome. But it certainly won't be to anyone's benefit to see an increase in barriers to trade, in either direction.

 

So we want to maintain the freest possible trade between us, without betraying the instruction we have received from the British people to take back control of our own affairs.

 

 

SMOOTH BREXIT

 

And it is in all our interests to ensure that, as our country leaves the EU, the process is orderly and smooth.

 

I know some people have suggested we should just ignore the rules, and tear up today the treaties that we’ve entered into.

 

I say, that’s not how Britain behaves.

 

And what kind of message would it send to the rest of the world?

 

If we want to be treated with goodwill, we must act with goodwill.

 

So we will follow the process to leave the EU which is set out in Article 50.

 

The Prime Minister has been clear that she will start the formal negotiations about our exit by the end of March.

 

As we prepare for those negotiations in Europe, we also need to prepare for the impact of Brexit on domestic law.

 

We will consult widely, with Parliament and the devolved administrations, on our plans.

 

But it’s very simple. At the moment we leave, Britain must be back in control. And that means EU law must cease to apply.

 

It was the European Communities Act which placed EU law above UK law.

 

So that is why we are saying today, this Government will repeal that Act.

 

To ensure continuity, we will take a simple approach. EU law will be transposed into domestic law, wherever practical, on the day we leave.

 

It will be for elected politicians here to make the changes to reflect the outcome of our negotiation and our exit.

 

That is what people voted for: power and authority residing once again with the sovereign institutions of our own country.

 

That way, when we leave, we will have provided the maximum possible certainty for British business - and also for British workers.

 

To those who are trying to frighten British workers, saying “When we leave, employment rights will be eroded”, I say firmly and unequivocally “no they won’t’.

 

Britain already goes beyond EU law in many areas - and we give this guarantee: this Conservative government will not roll back those rights in the workplace.

 

 

THE PRIZE

 

Ladies and gentlemen, in today’s fast-moving world, technology respects no boundaries.

 

The rewards for enterprise and innovation are greater than ever.

 

It’s only nations that are outward-looking, enterprising, agile and fleet of foot that will succeed and prosper.

 

And I believe that when we have left the European Union, when we are once again truly in control of our own affairs, we will be even better placed to confront the challenges of the future.

 

We start from a position of strength. Let’s not forget what we have to build on.

 

We’re the fifth largest economy in the world.

 

We’ve got the English language, spoken by one and a half billion people.

 

We’re the home of international standards for everything from medicine to law.

 

A science superpower

 

A world leader in research and the arts.

 

A trailblazer in biotech, in digital, in pharmaceuticals.

 

A byword for excellence in manufacturing

 

A global centre of finance.

 

A permanent member of the UN Security Council.

 

A leading member of Nato, the Commonwealth and the G7.

 

A nation whose brave armed forces, and – yes, Mr Corbyn – our vital nuclear deterrent – make us a truly global player.

 

So I’m confident about our future.

 

I’m confident about our new place in the world.

 

And to anyone who says that the cards are stacked against us, I say “think again”.

 

Many times in the past, our forebears have risen to the challenges before them.

 

Now it’s our turn to show the world we’ve got what it takes.

 

We may be a small island, ladies and gentlemen, but we know that we are a great nation.

 

So as we chart this new course for our country, let’s be confident.

 

Let’s seize the opportunities now before us.

 

And let’s make Britain greater still.