David Davis told a committee of MPs on Wednesday that the UK government had produced no economic forecasts on the likely impact of Brexit on various sectors of the economy.

It seemed to stand in marked contrast to many of the things he had said before about analysis being carried out by his Department for Exiting the European Union (DExEU).

See if you can identify where and when Davis has previously talked about the impact studies and analysis being carried out on a sectoral basis.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/dec/07/what-brexit-impact-papers-quiz-on-what-david-davis-said-when

The threadbare state of government preparations for Brexit was exposed on Thursday as civil service reports once heralded for providing “excruciating detail” on the impact of leaving the EU were criticised for containing little more than padding, repetition and plagiarism.

Months of pressure for disclosure of the economic analysis culminated, several hours before the Christmas parliamentary recess, with the publication of most of the 850 pages recently provided to a Commons select committee by the Brexit secretary, David Davis.

Davis had previously claimed there was extensive Whitehall analysis of “about 50 cross-cutting sectors, [for] what is going to happen to them”. But when a Labour-led vote demanded these forecasts be released to MPs, the Brexit secretary said he had been misunderstood and told the committee no impact assessments existed, only analysis of each sector’s current dependency on the EU.

Nevertheless, the limited nature of the unredacted civil service reports that were finally made public on Thursday left many observers shocked. “There is little overarching analysis by the government, ” said Lord Jay, the former head of the Foreign Office who is now acting chair of the Lords Brexit committee. “No conclusions are drawn with regard to the UK’s future relationship with the EU.”

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/dec/21/civil-service-reports-brexit-criticised-padding-plagiarism

Between the opposition, the DUP and rebels from the pro and anti-EU wings of her party, May faces an uphill battle getting her deal through parliament

There are many more MPs who say they will vote down the deal than vote for it.

MPs may support or oppose the bill for a number of reasons: those on the government payroll, including cabinet ministers, must support the bill or resign. Those who have already resigned from government on this issue can be expected to vote against, as can those who have already submitted a letter of no confidence in the prime minister. Those of all parties who are campaigning for a “people’s vote” are also expected to vote against.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/nov/26/how-will-your-mp-vote-on-theresa-mays-brexit-deal

Aki Heikkinen @akihheikkinen

We don't rake our forests here in #Finland.
Contemptor @TheContemptor

Trump: "You gotta take care of the floors. You know the floors of the forest, very important... I was with the President of Finland... he called it a forest nation and they spent a lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing things and they don't have any problem."

Louise Mensch
✔
@LouiseMensch

Yes, you literally do. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5726490/ …

this account's bio says "Mostly Russian RTs" and it got 8,000 likes for something provably false in a second's googling.

YES THEY DO RAKE THE FOREST IN FINLAND.

*Why* doesn't anybody *ever* check https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10138/15177/17-No%203_Lindholm.pdf?sequence=1 …

Philip Alston, the United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, was scathing about the government’s cuts and welfare changes.

What does a 12-day trip around the UK looking into austerity, Universal Credit, child poverty and the impact of Brexit show you? That the “fabric of British society” is falling apart, and ministers are “in a state of denial”, according to Philip Alston, the United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights.

The human rights expert announced his findings at a press conference in London, after travelling all over the country – from assessing rural poverty in Bristol to visiting foodbanks in Newcastle, from speaking to schoolchildren in Scotland, discovering how devolution has to mitigate government policy in Wales, and hearing about hardship in Clacton, Belfast and Newham.

Alston took a dim view of what he saw, accusing the British government of breaking its human rights obligations, and finding austerity has inflicted “great misery” on UK citizens.

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/economy/2018/11/un-inspector-came-investigate-poverty-britain-here-s-what-he-found

Influential Democrats in the group aren’t willing to endorse Marcia Fudge.

Lawmakers in the Congressional Black Caucus back Nancy Pelosi for speaker over one of their own members, Rep. Marcia Fudge — a bad sign for the former CBC chair who’s considering a challenge to the California Democrat.

The CBC has been spoiling to elevate a group member into one of the top two positions in Democratic leadership for years, with current CBC Chairman Cedric Richmond writing as recently as two weeks ago that having a black speaker or majority leader was a top priority.

But in interviews with eight CBC members about Fudge's possible bid for speaker, all but two members said they would back Pelosi over Fudge. Other CBC members on Thursday tweeted or put out statements of support for Pelosi, including Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), the most powerful African-American in the House and a close friend and ally of Fudge.

"She knows that, she knows that, she knows I'm for Pelosi," Clyburn said of Fudge in a brief interview in the Capitol.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/11/15/black-caucus-pelosi-speaker-994469

Donald Trump’s Wax Figure Hair Is Actually Made Out of Yak and Squirrel"

Madame Tussauds in London unveiled President-elect Donald Trump’s wax figure Wednesday, the culmination of five months of work, CNN reports. The museum made four replicas of the figure: the original will remain in London while the rest were shipped to New York, Orlando, and Washington, D.C., and will arrive in time for Trump’s inauguration Friday.

According to Mashable, it took 20 artists and about $185,000 to get the figure done. Chief sculptor David Gardner told CNN he was “lucky enough to get some measurements from a sitting we had in 1997 at the Trump towers,” so building his body out wasn’t an issue. In fact, nailing the essence of Trump for his waxwork was easy “because of his character. It was almost as far as doing a caricature and bringing it back.”

It was Trump’s hair that was more problematic for stylists. For those who don’t know, Donald Trump’s hair has been a lacquered yellow-orange helmet molded to his head for as long as he’s been a public figure. Madame Tussauds was forced to call outside consultants (including a stylist from The Apprentice) to help recreate it.

Oh, and: "His hair is a mixture of human hair and yak hair. We use yak hair with people with white hair because human hair is not readily available," hairstylist Kelly Cox said. Also, his eyebrows are made of squirrel hair.

https://www.cosmopolitan.com/politics/a8614879/donald-trump-madame-tussaud-wax-figure/

Johnson, sacked by The Times in 1988 for fabricating a quote, made his mark in Brussels not through fair and balanced reporting, but through extreme euro-scepticism. He seized every chance to mock or denigrate the EU, filing stories that were undoubtedly colourful but also grotesquely exaggerated or completely untrue.

The Telegraph loved it. So did the Tory Right. Johnson later confessed: 'Everything I wrote from Brussels, I found was sort of chucking these rocks over the garden wall and I listened to this amazing crash from the greenhouse next door over in England as everything I wrote from Brussels was having this amazing, explosive effect on the Tory party, and it really gave me this I suppose rather weird sense of power.'

Johnson’s reports also had an amazing, explosive effect on the rest of Fleet Street. They were much more fun than the usual dry and rather complex Brussels fare. News editors on other papers, particularly but not exclusively the tabloids, started pressing their own correspondents to match them. By the time I arrived in Brussels editors only wanted stories about faceless Brussels eurocrats imposing absurd rules on Britain, or scheming Europeans ganging up on us, or British prime ministers fighting plucky rearguard actions against a hostile continent.

Much of Fleet Street seemed unable to view the EU through any other prism. It was the only narrative it was interested in. Stories that did not bash Brussels, stories that acknowledged the EU’s many achievements, stories that recognised that Britain had many natural allies in Europe and often won important arguments, almost invariably ended up on the spike.

https://www.indy100.com/article/a-journalist-has-shared-a-story-about-boris-johnson-that-completely-undermines-his-authority-on-the-eu--bkoHJPBuVZ

Arlen Parsa voted! @arlenparsa

my favorite way to listen to the president is slowed down to 1/2 speed because it reveals how often times his logic is indistinguishable from that of a drunk person: pic.twitter.com/QiUb4CQdU9

andrew kaczynski ✔
@KFILE

Republican Congressman Jeff Fortenberry's office called the bosses of a University of Nebraska-Lincoln associate professor for liking a photo on Facebook of a picture of Fortenberry that was vandalized w/googly eyes and the caption "Jeff Fartenberry."

https://journalstar.com/news/local/education/fortenberry-complains-about-facebook-reaction-to-vandalized-sign-unl-professor/article_ddfa4b2a-ffcf-594d-9417-502f0f01cb3d.html

andrew kaczynski ✔
@KFILE

Fortenberry's chief of staff emailed the school's dean to speak about it.

https://journalstar.com/news/local/education/fortenberry-complains-about-facebook-reaction-to-vandalized-sign-unl-professor/article_ddfa4b2a-ffcf-594d-9417-502f0f01cb3d.html



andrew kaczynski
✔
@KFILE

To be clear, the professor was not involved in the vandalism of the sign. The congressman and his chief of staff are trying to get him in trouble for liking the photo on Facebook. That's it.

Seth Abramson
@SethAbramson

If we all work REALLY hard over the next few months, we'll be able to find SOME connection between Jacob Wohl, who appears, if the current NBC and Atlantic reporting is accurate, to have been part of a criminal plot to frame Robert Mueller, and Donald Tr—

—oh, we have a picture?




2/ Anyway, as I was saying, I think there has to be SOME conn—

—oh, there's a Bloomberg article in which Trump "heralds" the "support" Jacob Wohl has given him? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-17/meet-trump-s-latest-market-whisperer-19-year-old-jacob-wohl


3/ Yeah, but it's not like Trump RETWE—

—oh.

https://forward.com/fast-forward/376295/donald-trump-retweets-jewish-hedge-fund-wunderkind/


4/ The good news is that Jacob Wohl is unlikely to turn on Trump and tell the FBI everything he knows about the criminal plot to frame Robert Mueller, given that Wohl is a much older guy and—

{puts finger to earpiece}

—he's TWENTY YEARS OLD? And has his whole life ahead of him?


5/ Sorry, I shouldn't make light of how stupid these criminals are.

But if I can quote myself from a 2017 WASHINGTON POST article: "This was very unsophisticated, and the people involved were largely moronic....The people involved were stupid...and that’s how [they] got caught.”


6/ I always laugh when right-wing radio hosts say, "The Left says Trump's a criminal mastermind, then they say he's an idiot! Which is it?" I've *always* been consistent: Trump is an idiot with the instincts of a criminal, and he avoids capture because smart people cover for him.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1057387076218507264.html

Jacob Wohl
✔
@JacobAWohl

The MSM has launched a coordinated smear campaign against me, claiming that I offered money to a woman to make accusations against Mueller? Their claims are BASELESS!

Who is this "woman"?

Max Sparber
@maxsparber

I wouldn't worry. I'm sure interfering with a federal investigation is not a crime.

Max Sparber
@maxsparber

I have just been informed it is a crime.

Max Sparber
@maxsparber

Really? That serious?

Max Sparber
@maxsparber

On my lawyers advice I will not be interacting with you anymore.