Welcome to British Isles Friday! British Isles Friday is a weekly event for sharing all things British and Irish - reviews, photos, opinions, trip reports, guides, links, resources, personal stories, interviews, and research posts. Join us each Friday to link your British and Irish themed content and to see what others have to share. The link list is at the bottom of this post. Pour a cup of tea or lift a pint and join our link party!
Last week, I reviewed the mini-series on Amazon Prime, Good Omens, based on the book by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. Tina reviewed The Egg, an episode of Nature by David Attenborough. Jean chose two British books (so far) for summer reading: Four Birds of Noah's Ark: A Prayer Book From the Time of Shakespeare, by Thomas Dekker and The Adventures of Roderick Random by Tobias Smollett.
My last Brexit post was in April. That was before the Prime Minister resigned, so there must be some catching up to do. Except that, although her resignation was effective June 7, she's still in office and will be until a successor is appointed. Doesn't anyone want the job?
Let's check!
According to this article in The Telegraph, the Conservative Party membership, 160,000 people, will vote on the new Prime minister. They need to get their votes in by July 21.
The two current contenders, Boris Johnson (formerly Mayor of London and current MP) and Jeremy Hunt (Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs), debated on Tuesday night. This video from BBC News shows the highlights, although I'm not sure that I learned much about the two candidates - it's amusing, though.
As mentioned in the debate, the new deadline for coming up with a Brexit deal is October 31. Has there been any progress made?
The BBC article that I used for my main source in April has been updated with a new flow chart that shows how Brexit will happen. It appears that nothing much happens until a new Prime Minister is selected.
Boris Johnson appears to be willing to go with a no-deal Brexit. The bookies give the odds to Johnson to win so that may be the path where the UK is headed. But the Parliament has voted against that option in the past and there are possibly a couple of ways that they could stop it.
YouTube recently introduced me to TLDR News. They specialize in news videos made with charts and cartoons. TLDR News has a playlist of (as of this writing) seven videos about the election and Brexit, including the positions of both of the Prime Minister candidates. After watching these, the positions are somewhat more clear and the problems and hurdles are very clear, indeed.
About Joy Weese Moll
a librarian writing about books
