By Don Adamson, Brexorcist, 1st class honours, reporting on the week that was from his grim Northern Powerhouse Brexit Bunker in Barnsley.

This week’s homework

One – Harold Wilson got into trouble when he awarded MBEs all round to the Beatles. At the time the Beatles were the most successful popular music band in the world and bringing in vast amounts of export earnings to this country. That was not the point. You cannot have a Labour PM awarding decorations to scruffy characters from the rough end of Liverpool.  Johnson awarded controversial decorations (up to and including peerages) to some very nasty people who, by rights, ought to be in the Nonce wing of some very nasty prison. That is perfectly in order and the newspapers do not mind a bit. Why the different treatment? 

Two – Discuss the following statement: Nigel Garbage (of all people) has stated that Brexit has failed. Express, Mail and Telegraph newspapers (notorious Brexit cheerleaders of the worst description) are saying (grudgingly) that Brexit has not turned out to be the earthly paradise they promised. Tories got us into this mess by making extravagant promises. Keith Starmer has promised to get us out of this mess by repeating the same extravagant and now discredited promises. Einstein defined insanity as repeating a mistake in the expectation of a different result. What would Einstein have said about Brexit? 

Three – Discuss the following statement. We now know the truth behind scandal concerning Nigel Garbage and the NatWest Bank. Garbage stirred up trouble so that his nasty friends could speculate on shares in the NatWest Bank. There are two kinds of Gammon. On the one hand you have blithering idiots who are stupid enough to believe what they read in trashy newspapers. On the other hand you have some very clever and calculating people who get rich by dubious means. If they would put as much effort and ingenuity into doing something useful we would all benefit. Instead they got us into this Brexit mess. 

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Four – Discuss the following statement. The Economist of 29 July has an interesting article about US universities and sometime controversial entry criteria for students. The article must be read carefully because it contains a lot of facts, figures and sometimes complex reasoning. The last two sentences summarise the situation – “These universities are channelling comparatively under qualified legacies, athletes and private school graduates into positions of unusual influence. A greater emphasis on academic merit would yield not only a fairer society but also a brighter elite.” Meanwhile in Britain we have brain-dead Cabinet Ministers who attended Oxbridge universities. They would be unemployable if they had attended less prestigious institutes of learning (if that is the right word). 

Five – When the Tories were making extravagant promises about Brexit they had a lot to say about ‘Singapore on Thames.’ To anybody with more than three brain cells this was conclusive proof that Brexit was only ever for the benefit of tax dodgers and dubious financiers (and not many of either). Singapore used to have a commendable reputation for efficiency and clean government. Singapore is nowadays developing a reputation for mismanagement and corruption. Which ‘Singapore on Thames’ do the Tories have in mind for Booming Brexit Britain: a) the Singapore with a commendable reputation for efficiency and clean government or b) the Singapore that is groaning under the weight of incompetence and corruption? 

Brexit was not for voters. It was for Jacob Rees-Mogg et al.

This week’s quotes: 

Schools and education

Each chart looks the same … gradual improvement from the early 1990s until 2010. Then things become worse … rule that runs for everything from rough sleeping to real wages to hospital waiting lists … housing policy chaotic … From 2010 to 2016 Tories  offered a small state country within the EU. After 2016 Tories offered a flabby big state vision outside the EU … political chaos … a bureaucratic mess … one in ten children attends a school that is falling down … Teachers did not sign up to be auxiliary social workers … often must be due to government failure … experienced teachers leave profession … for more than two years the government has failed to  negotiate Britain’s re-entry to Horizon, a European research collaboration programme it left because of Brexit … many scientists say it is essential to Rejoin … my worry is we are going back to the 1990s  where you got a system that was running into the sand …

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Sunak ‘rip-off degree war’ deserves a diploma for missing the point … the whole higher education system is a mess …we are staring down the barrel of a mid century skills crisis … unless British universities produce tens of thousands of engineers the green transition is stuffed … unless universities produce tens of thousands  more doctors and nurses  the NHS workforce plan cannot be delivered … incentives for Britain’s most talented graduates seem misaligned … how much greater would our problems look if somebody actually calibrated them against the problems we face … tens of thousands of teachers leaving the profession exhausted …  we need a more skilled and educated workforce …  any politician who refuses to answer is in the business of fantasy economics …

Tory hate mob licking its lips as … Richy Scumbag’s reign falls apart 

… the electorate in very large numbers has had enough of this government … the whiff of a dying administration … the only thing growing in the economy is the scale of the debt … a corrupt incompetent government deserves to be sacked but one presiding over a bombed-out economy will be … The Right of the Tory Party is preparing for that. Thick Lizzie … who has no sense of shame has gathered an unsavoury collection of free trade extremists and wealthy US climate change deniers to build on her policies that failed so spectacularly just months ago … Sue Ellen Braverman and Lee Anderson … gathering New Conservatives to espouse ideals that are to the right of the right … constituency organisers have welcomed former UKIP members and ushered out the moderates … the appalling misjudgement of Brexit. The problem for Starmer is that these problems would take years to settle even against the backdrop of a strong economy. The risk is that after one term of Labour the country feels no better off, and potentially worse, it will turn to the pedlars of false hopes and real hatred. That is the game plan of the New Conservatives…. 

Labour are a Brexit party

Rothermere 

Dominic Williams, chief revenue officer … was asked if he could see the irony of a news business that pushed Brexit so far being damaged by it … … insiders say Williams is the consummate office politician … would not have dreamed of speaking out unless he felt Rothermere had come round to that way of thinking … dismayed to see how much the company has suffered from Brexit… Daily Mail editor in Chief has not been seen in the office for a while … Brextremist Bible now seems willing to think the unthinkable: what will happen if Brexit fails? … Tories will be blamed if it flops… 

James Cleverly, Foreign Secretary 

is doing as much globetrotting as possible in the Tories remaining months in office … took 91 officials with him, set the taxpayer back £700,500 … unwilling to slum it on commercial flights … £178,761 for a 3 day visit to Washington … trip to Belfast cost £4,142 for an RAF aircraft … 

Lib Dem omerta on Brexit 

Our membership and polling were at their highest when we were most outspoken against Brexit…. 

Tory MP second jobs 

average wage of  £233 per hour … Nadine Dorries job at GB News … rumoured six figure salary … £20,500 advance for Johnson hagiography … nobody can remember when she last appeared in Parliament …

Funding the National Health Service 

… Labour, with their child benefit caps and promise to continue with Tory tax and spending plans … show no sign of recognising … that Tory plans are not producing growth now and are not likely to produce growth in the future … 

Dignified exit of the week 

… ever expanding list of Tory MPs announcing they will not stand at the next election … Ben Wallace  … may yet go down as the first instance of a ship running out of rats before it even starts to sink … Wallace denies rumours of affair with Thick Lizzie …. Wallace might be applying for appointment to a juicy quango under Starmer… 

Queues at Ports 

… This is the curse of Brexit die hards: they cannot believe that EU does not realise that we are special … that the queues are caused by Brexit … what Brexiters voted for … checks that Faragists wanted to impose on visitors to Britain. Ironic that Faragists get annoyed when they are imposed on us … emergency planning for queues at Dover has now entered the English language … Operation Brock … miles of the M20 turned in a huge car park … Dover is also the port through which 35% of UK trade passes through … UK government allocated £45 from the levelling up fund to fix the problem … that could have been spent on actually  helping rundown parts of the country … will be spent on the chaos Brexit is causing at Dover ….

Easter was a disaster … coaches turned around and abandoned foreign trips after 24 hours queuing … Eurotunnel Terminal was built on the assumption that UK would be in the EU … Last summer queues of 18 hours … Eurostar stations were build on the assumption that UK would be in EU … some Eurostar trains travel with empty seats that could have been sold … because company could not get passengers on board in time … Easyjet has cancelled hundreds of trips … travel sector is facing significant disruption … It might help if the government had spent the last seven years preparing for what the industry saw coming … Brexiters dismissed all the predictions of chaos as a Remoaner lie … government has built its strategy on the same crazy belief … 

Don Adamson Pip Pip             Medway Delta (Retired)                       Brexorcist and Saboteur First Class