Hard Facts Community

They aren't allowed a land border on the island of Ireland because the good Friday agreement says not to.

Theresa may no 1 - brexit means brexit

Dup are voting against the deal. Isn't that a surprise. For brexit purposes in UK governme t can probably ignore them and still win votes but wasn't part of all this deal or another deal business to get Irish parliament up and running again and without the dup it won't be.

I've never understood that. If the DUP won't attend then why not let the rest carry on. Once they start getting left out of the important decisions maybe they'll think twice about sitting in the corner and sulking.

The real reason why the DUP is refusing to agree to Stormont having a Northern Ireland Government is because the First Minister will be the leader of Sinn Fein and they can't stomach that. I agree with you Eccs - why not simply carry on without them and if some law or other needs to be changed to permit that, then just change it.

The whole good Friday agreement and everything it agreed is so complicated few people outside those who are politically involved in it understand it and I am not sure they do. The one thing everyone too far away to understand it seems to agree on is we can never ever go against the good Friday agreement whatever it agreed. So we couldn't have clean brexit because it broke the good Friday agreement etc and if we couldn't change the agreements for whole of UK brexit seems unlikely it could be done for stormonts difficilties either. Sinn Fein want north Ireland part of Ireland and dup want north Ireland part of Britain and there's.not really compromise there it's even worse than coalition.governments which have their problems but are usually parties with most in common compared to other available parties so trting to run things with completely opposite parties is almost impossible.

Rishi sunak priority 1 is off to a good start, inflation has gone up. For some reason the news people were expecting inflation to have gone down but those of us paying for anything can't help have noticed it actually isn't. Other than rishi saying he wants to halve it there doesn't seem much of a plan to keep it down.

Rishi is plodding on with his idea to make children learn maths until 18 which wasn't in his list of priorities. It's all very well but who is going to do the teaching. I did maths and even 50 years ago I nearly couldn't because only 5 pupils signed up for the a level and the physics teacher covered the subject luckily as it wasn't enough pupils to employ a maths teacher qualified for a level level. Even if teachers can be found most children don't want to learn maths back to junior school it's never going to be a popular policy with the majority people is it and it's nearly the election. Why be picking fights.

P.s. it's rishi number 2 priority - boost economic growth - that he is counting teenage maths lessons against.

Rishi no 1 priority to halve inflation is going well it's still 10%. People will insist on keeping buying food which as we have all noticed has gone up way more than 10%.

His no 5 priority stop migrant boats appears to be a lost cause because a state of emergency over it is being announced which gives them the powers to requision housing despite local protests.

Tips from the BBC
How can I save money on my food shop?

Look at your cupboards so you know what you have already
Head to the reduced section first to see if it has anything you need
Buy things close to their sell-by-date which will be cheaper and use your freezer

However, people like Furby will already have done those things except possibly use her freezer more as hers isn't very big.

I will add one thing though. If you buy boxed frozen stuff like battered fish or burgers you can save space in your freezer by taking them out of the box and repacking them in bags such as sliced bread wrappers. To know what's in the bag you can cut a label from the box and put it in the bag. I remove sausages from the tray and pack them in twos so they'll slot in places too small to put other things.
My shopping day often ends up playing freezer-tetris.

Yes I already do that packing fridge thing too even removed my only shelf to be able to cram more. Very good advice there from Eccles who suggested bread bags as freezer bags in happier times for other long forgotten reasons maybe it was save the evil plastic but works just as well to save money. I hadn't thought to split sausages up from their sausagey friends that's a good idea.

The advice is almost insullting isn't it. Same as with energy use switch the lights off close the curtains etc which my mummy was insisting was done long ago. If you already do that can't switch off twice. Only makes a small difference anyway and although every little helps when people are paying 1000 pounds more in bills a few lights won't save anywhere near enough only solution for most people will be stop using heating if they cant take money from elsewhere.

Dishy Rishi has a brand new priority today - what to do about the report he received this morning about alleged bullying by deputy PM Dominic Raab.

I think Rishi is trying to be like Boris Johnson but without looking like he is like Boris Johnson.

I know the pm is busy but shouldn't take a whole day to read a report and if it does isn't a very good report.

They could get the Ofsted people to teach report writers how to write reports and then there's a one word summary saving days of prime minister's time reading it and thinking own word.

Dominic raab has resigned and will therefore miss the coronation.

So much for the DT headline about Mr Raab fighting tooth and nail for his job.

He's been whinging that the report set the bar for bullying too low. Presumably he did bully staff but not very much?

Rishi no 2 priority to grow economy isn't going well because it shrank in march for q1. I am not sure what actions are being taken to grow the economy but q2 has all the bank holidays and they usually stop growth so doesn't look good for growth. q1 is being blamed on people not buying cars but aren't all the government plans for cycle lanes and clean air designed to stop people driving cars. Although if growth falls now it will be easier for it to grow from a lower base before the election maybe that's his plan.

P.s. q1 did grow 0.1 it was just march letting the side down at -0.3

Theresa May no 1 - Brexit means Brexit isnt going well either. North Ireland is a topic of its own as they are stuck with the Good Friday thing. But Britain should be up to the UK government and after many attempts they were going to stop all the EU laws this year ( 7 years after Brexit) but have now decided to keep most of them after all.

They are arguing that they want more time to view them and address them individually because simply allowing them to elapse might cause important laws to be dropped. The Brexit contingent are angry because they believe they'll be put off and forgotten about and see it as caving in to the EU. Rishi is seen by many as being soft on the EU and that is a weakness that the Commission will exploit.

Rishi has added Ukraine to his priority list so now has

1 halve inflation
2 grow economy
3 reduce debt
4 cut hospital waiting lists
5 stop migrant boats
6 Ukraine

He had already gone the way of Theresa may by adding new priorities before achieving existing priorities.