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@jorgeliboreiro.bsky.social‬

The extraordinary meeting of EU leaders to discuss Greenland could take physically as soon as Thursday, 22 January, according to EU officials.

It will take place in Brussels after leaders attend the WEF in Davos.

By Thursday the whole meeting could be moot - that leaves 3 days for Trump to open up the gates of the American base there and take over..

Although comedic, it has been pointed out (here?) that Steve Bannon's way of doing things was to just constantly hit the newscycle with the next thing you're going to do and do it.

The EU deciding to have an 'emergency' response on Thursday is, as you say, three days too late.

Remember when Trump was imposing tariffs like crazy last year, changing them by the hour. Eventually. the EU reacted but rowed back after Trump 'cancelled' them. Which of course he didn't. He'd simply rowed back the latest (third?) announcement whilst the EU was still reacting to the first.

The EU needs an answer before lunchtime, which they can't do because they're too bureacratic and slow. They're announcing a meeting to have a meeting next Thursday, meanwhile Trump has already moved on and is planning to move the 11th Airborne to......... (Minnesota or Greenland)?

The EU is so far behind the curve here.

To lose one MP to Reform in January can be considered unfortunate.

To lose two is downright careless.

And the Tories didn't have that many to begin with.

The 2 were Jenrick and Rosindell, if you wanted 2 Alan B'stards for 2026 those would be probably top of the list.

Hardly a shock they are now with Farage in Reform

You know the conservative party as well as anyone - how many scumbags do you have left?

Phrasing it slightly differently, 21 then-current Conservative MPs endorsed Energetic Bob in the leadership election;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endorsements_in_the_2024_Conservative_Party_leadership_election

That list includes Kruger and Rosindell.

Personally, I wouldn't miss any of them, but I'm not sure there's a future for Reform as a purely faith/flag/family National Popular Conservative party.

If they can replace the Tories there is. They seem to be dropping any pretence to more general appeal, instead being the Tories 'done right', and about how bad all legacy parties are (apart from all the ex-Tories), which is a gamble i didn't think they'd make until after the May elections.

Maybe areas being delayed persuaded them it was time to just drop the act now?

Perhaps. Though the other possibility is that events bounced both of them into jumping sooner than the planned. Jenrick by being caught printing a speech out and Rosindell by having his plan reach the ears of a teenage tweeter.

Lads- if your plan is nefarious, keep it in your head until you are ready to enact it.

Gauke’s measured analysis of the situation on ConHome (yes, really) is worth a read:

https://conservativehome.com/2026/01/19/david-gauke-i-got-on-with-robert-jenrick-personally-but-his-departure-gives-the-conservatives-an-opportunity/

Andrew Neil sounds off about British Airways.

"Andrew Neil
@afneil

The new BA tier points structure sets impossible hurdles even for frequent flyers regularly using business or first.
I have always planned my extensive and expensive global travel through London to use BA. These days are over.
I will now use whatever airline is most convenient and competitive. It will make travel planning easier. I can make more use of other airlines whose business and first seats are far superior to BA. Hello Emirates, Qatar, Singapore, Etihad etc.
I have BA gold for life so it no longer matters how much I use BA. I also have Group 0 status which is meant to allow priority boarding. But, like yesterday in Nice they could not even be bothered to call it. Same in London for plane to NYC. BA can’t even organise an orderly queue at the gate these days , something you’d think would come naturally to a British airline given the Brit propensity to queue.
BA now run by numpties who put no value on long-standing, big-spending loyal customers, of which I’ve been one for 55 years!!
They can’t even get the little things right. I flew London-NYC yesterday in First. WiFi meant to be free and I needed it for work. But free wifi didn’t work. So I had to pay for it. The lovely crew embarrassed by the poor service.
I remember when my friend John King was the boss how proud the crews were to work for BA. Long gone. Crews are ashamed. No idea who runs BA these days. But he/she clearly useless. They’ve inherited the dead hand and cheapskate service of Willie Walsh, whose inability to determine what quality service meant began the long-running decline. He really was useless.
Crew moral is very low as a result. Passengers see it. Good crew people, badly led. They lost any pride on working for what was once ‘the world’s favourite airline’ — then a matter of pride for staff and country and passengers. Now BA is just another middling airline over charging over the odds for a level of service barely above the cheaper budget airlines. A business model with suicide written all over it."

https://x.com/afneil/status/2012373091171655726

And how was staff morale broken? Relentlessly cutting pay, something the likes of Andrew Neil would have said was inevitable and desirable and who would have opposed the cabin crew strikes that tried to stop it.

Let’s not over-read this. It seems pretty obvious from Neil’s rant that he’s just got the hump from not being allowed to board the plane as a celebrity, in advance of all us the unwashed.

The thing is that most other airlines treat their VIP customers as VIPs, boarding the plane ahead of the unwashed is exactly one of the reasons you build up status with an airline.

If you’re flying Emirates First Class, you won’t see any passengers who aren’t also flying First Class or have Platinum status, from when their car drops you at the set down point on the road outside the airport until you’re on the plane. Totally segregated through the whole process.

You write like that’s a good thing, rather than a scene from the Hunger Games

Its quite funny really. Those who spend so much time railing that the elite ignore the common man very much want to be treated as elite so that they can ignore the common man.