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Category: Boris Johnson

Alien

Don’t Pannick

Don Adamson writes from the leafy dales of Yorkshire … well actually Barnsley but never mind.

This week’s homework:

1. Q Why does Lord David Pannick KC wear silly spectacles? A Because it requires very bad eyesight to view Johnson as innocent … Q Is Johnson innocent? A Don’t be silly …  2. Cocaine makes a person manipulative and vindictive. Most of the politicians who inflicted Brexit on us are manipulative and vindictive. Are they all on cocaine or are some of them naturally like that?   3. In the dim and distant past comedians (if that is the right word) like Boardman, Davidson and Manning used to tell crass and offensive jokes about ethnic minorities. Such jokes are seldom heard on TV and radio these days. All over the world people telling anti Brexit jokes that depict the British as being rather dim. Are these anti-Brexit jokes as crass and offensive as the ethnic minority jokes used to be? 

This week’s quotes:

“USA generated more electricity from renewable energy than coal for the first time last year … ideological fanaticism, economic restlessness and a predilection for alternative facts … Brexit’s poisonous aftermath  … a recipe for gridlock and fragility … good government rather than slogans is the way … Britain’s nutty megaprojects … we never learn from past mistakes and let politics trump prudence … haste, hubris, political deadlines and ignoring the experts all played their part … another crackdown on anti-social behaviour … serious crimes like rape go unpunished, critics ask why the government is launching a push against anti social behaviour … People of Somalia have emitted roughly as much carbon dioxide since 1960 as Americans have done in the past two and half days … well connected people and ‘ruling elites’ play by different rules … Rich Chinese favour Singapore as a destination for their wealth … its political stability is a bonus for those wary of the roller coasters of American and British politics … (COMMENT: Interesting contrast to that Singapore on Thames that Gammons say so much about) … the reckless mendacity of Johnson and the self harming intransigence of the Democratic Unionist Party have done more for the prospects of a united Ireland than IRA Bombing ever did … The vindictive ecstasy of Braverman’s theatre of cruelty … Tory Refugee policy … they lie, we know they lie, they know we know … they persist in lying to rub our noses into the realisation that evidence no longer matters … cruel people get off on cruelty … when confronted with a video of migrants fleeing though Kigali during a massacre, Braverman remained deadpan and trotted out her lines …

Vote for the Tories on May 6th if you support killing children fleeing from terror …

Tories play to an audience that takes vicarious pleasure from seeing ministers dead bat all facts and evidence  … the dead end that Tories have created for themselves … having achieved hard Brexit they can no longer blame Brussels for everything … presides over economic  stagflation and a debt to GDP ratio of 100% … after the disaster of the Thick Lizzie experiment … there is no way out … all it has left are enemies … the horrible truth is that cocktail of joyous anger can work for a while … but it cannot lead to Conservatism in the future … it is obvious to most people that we are heading for climate chaos … Scumbag’s government cannot beat doctors, teachers, nurses because the economics are flowing the other way … it fails to revive the Tories in the polls … will leave its stain …  the wonderful Mandela quote: ‘Everything is impossible  until you make it happen … Richy Scumbag is conscious how toxic the word ‘Conservative’ has become … May, Thick Lizzie, Johnson, Dominic Raas, Amok Sharma, Said Avid, Tom Tugendhat and a large number of other Tories have dropped ‘Conservative’ from their Social Media bios … UK has handed over £175 million to the French to put a halt to small boats crossing the Channel … rumour that Paul Dacre’s name had disappeared from Johnson’s long delayed resignation honours list … connected to phone hacking and intrusion case that Prince Harry, Elton John and others are bringing against Rothermere newspapers … Richy Scumbag appears reconciled to losing 1,000 seats in next month’s local elections … Johnson is grimly reconciled to the fact that he is a busted flush … Tories face problems finding candidates for local and general elections … The Tories’ future is Rejoin … the Tories exist only to win elections – they will soon twig  that one path to doing that involves dumping Brexit … Tories have no permanent friends only permanent interests. That interest is to get into power and stay there … Tories will lose the next election … their one and only priority will be getting back into power … if the Tories find that backing Brexit is the road to political oblivion they will drop it  like a hot potato … newly elected leader will denounce the ‘impossible dreams of Brexit’ … ‘rigid dogma’ … ‘misplaced irrelevance to real needs’ … current leadership will not do that yet … their attacks on ‘wokeism’ and ‘lefty lawyers’ are pathetic attempts to snatch victory from the jaws of victory … the reality is becoming all too clear: one day, sooner than you think, the Tories will come out in favour of rejoining the EU. They will have to if they want to win further elections…  Latest survey of issues that matters to voters has immigration fifth on the list behind the economy, cost of living, National Health Service  … and a lack of faith in politicians…

Reboot Britain
Have I got Fake Brexit News for EU

Mail, Sun, Express and Telegraph see it as a badge of honour that efforts to curb immigration ‘human rights to the limit’ … fact checking ministerial pronouncements is not a priority for the Mail … we are not the automatic country of choice for refugees … there is no evidence to support ministerial assertions … GB New … retoxifying public discourse … Mail’s ‘infamous’ flirtation with Fascism in the 1930s … we need young people to work and pay taxes yet we are busting a gut to exclude healthy young people who are willing to do both … Tories are tilting the electoral odds in their favour by making it difficult for groups likely to vote against them …  unfolding economic crisis and string of bad news stories led to soul search and Bregret … UK falls significantly behind other European countries in adoption of new technology … antiquated British production lines … Britain is on course for a £62B investment gap … per capita income in the EU grew by 8.5% from 2016 to 2022 … Britain saw 3.8% growth … we are on track to fall behind. Consequent effect on British living standards could be grave … erosion of infrastructural base … We face a post Brexit world without the tools to make it alone … we need high quality education … for competitiveness UK slid 7 places … the sunlit uplands are a long way off … country is barely limping … Brexit has been a disaster for the economy … we sink into obscurity with only memories of a golden past … Brexit cost me £290 per month … I cannot identify a Brexit dividend … biggest con trick since the Trojan Horse but with far more negative consequences … witless denials of Brexit impacts … the majority in favour of Rejoin can only increase … let Johnson rot … proven liar and disgrace … Brexit relegated English football … When England left the EU rules on transfers changed … when talented Irish player Kevin Zefi signed for Inter Milan the headline ran ‘Grazie alla Brexit … we are disadvantaged … it is just another bureaucratic nightmare created by Brexit and the diminution of one of the few industries where we still lead the world … Britain’s tax system is flawed … infested with complications … incentives chicanery …beneficial for the rich … bad for the public purse … property taxes poorly designed … encourages tweaking and gimmicks rather than coherent strategy … the losses from eliminating exemptions would be concentrated on just a handful of groups, benefits of simplification and efficiency would be diffuse …British voters have developed a taste for technocracy after years of chaos … 61% of Brits said ‘having experts not government make decisions would be good … Brexit was one system of Tory estrangement from modern British capitalism … Richy Scumbag is styled as a ‘fixer’ … shows an appetite for gimmicks … in many areas Scumbag offers no fixes at all because they are politically ‘off limits’ … fixing an imbalance between anticipated revenues and outlays can be solved in two ways: raising taxes or reducing benefits … there is a magical third solution of increasing immigration to make the ratio between retirees and workers more manageable … why do billionaires get a free ride? …  Truss was wrong … IMF is predicting that UK will shrink by 0.3% -the worst performing economy in the developed world … Truss was always going to spook the markets … We have a country in stagnation … a workforce permanently reduced by Covid … our trade and potential are being hammered by Brexit … the only realistic chance is to grow the economy … we need politicians prepared to defeat Alice in Wonderland arguments …  Brexit has brought chaos to the education sector … If you cannot get students to come to the home of English to study English then something has gone very wrong … Brexit shambles … Bad decision in 2016 with disastrous consequences … Kafkaesque … devastating effect … put red tape and confusion into a system that had worked well for years … education contributed over £1b every year and supported 17,200 jobs … Brexit killed this … many previous customers taking their business to other destinations … The best place to learn English is now Ireland … hardly surprising … plagued with problems … worst is yet to come … research done by UK universities is most at risk … decline was driven by Brexit … Johnson and Princess Nut Nuts have given occasional glimpses into their Gatsbyesque lifestyle … Lady Carole Bamford, wife of JCB heir, provides luxurious free accommodation … visited the Heathrow VIP suite an astonishing 20 times  since he left office … £40,000 worth of free hospitality … Richy Scumbag disclosed that Murdoch was the only individual who wined and dined him … it is not the electorate but the likes of Murdoch who decide what happens … Times has a new columnist from the Telegraph … puerile tosh, dull, appallingly badly written … I know they publish rubbish but this is a work of art even for them … forlorn hope of Paul Dacre acquiring an honour … blame Brexit for wrecking the UK … if we are looking for an elite to blame we need look no further than the privileged gang that brought us Brexit … almost entirely the work of opportunistic privately educated boys from Oxford … working class Brits and pensioners worst hit … pitiful record … shameful … repulsive … bigotry … deeply unpatriotic … new elite leading the country to perdition … Brexit is going badly; by June 2041 we will be hard pressed to find anybody who admitted voting for it … history will not be kind … Ireland is looking confident, vibrant, energetic and at ease with itself, membership of the EU is a large part of that … It is easier for the Brextremists to indulge in anti Irish tropes than to confront reality … there has been little coherence in anything that has followed Brexit … a government that is trying to run one of the world’s largest economies with fag end idea formulated in the 1970s … It is obvious that the UK has run out of ideas … Brexit is stupid …inexplicable decisions, bloody mindedness and entirely foreseeable problems … self sabotaging … Kafkaesque … significantly higher costs … incredibly frustrating process … so much wasted time … tortuous red tape … extra cost … blizzard of paperwork … no short term wins … self defeating isolation … “

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

Plan B for Brexit

From Don Adamson

This week’s homework: Starmer tells us that everything will be just too tickety boo for words so long as we all pretend that he can make Brexit work. The Brexit earthly paradise that Starmer promises but cannot deliver will be a Labour Party earthly paradise so of course it will be a vast improvement on the earthly paradise that Tories promise but cannot deliver. Does Starmer have Plan B for what happens when he finds that he cannot make Brexit work?

This week’s quote: “Slashing spending is not a plausible option … radical rethinking is required … tumultuous decade has weakened the British Civil Service… fiasco … calamity can strike … civil service is institutionally weakened and vulnerable … highest staff turnover in a decade … evaluated and shown to be unsuccessful … government works best when those involved  trust each other … years of political crisis have driven them apart … years of chaos … much too pliant in the face of Johnson’s lawbreaking … a recipe for blunders … if ministers want a more professional civil service they must professionalise themselves first … civil service needs more independence from ministers … needs a new legal duty to uphold propriety and inform parliament about breaches of laws and ministerial codes … Rwanda scheme would not be a deterrent … external scrutiny would force up quality … and have side effect of revealing when ministers ignore sound advice … it is a terrible waste … End of the Johnson clown show? … the mood was less jolly … an entire appendix of awkwardness … he looks done for … his chances of hitting the heights again look slim … austerity has damaged front line policing with the especially dire effect on the way sexual offences are dealt with … a woman raped and left in a coma would be likely to be dealt with by a single trainee detective… Richy Scumbag is not as dishonest as Johnson … nor as economically illiterate as Thick Lizzie … such a low bar as to be meaningless … Johnson beat all his predecessors combined in the lying stakes…

Surround Parliament

Surround Parliament

Join Extinction Rebellion to surround Parliament from Saturday 21 April. Whilst I’m sure some will wish to go at le weekend, the imperative is to keep this protest alive into the following week when MPs return to Parliament. For this reason, it is imperative that people stage their efforts to run into Monday 23rd April and beyond. Parliament must be brought to a standstill. I’m not even sure that it will make any difference to our lives on a day to day basis. They are only interested in themselves. Brexit makes climate change more pronounced with moral hazard, a bonfire on environmental laws and Tory greenwashing.

Surround Parliament
Surround Parliament

Broken Britain

Don Adamson reviews the week – there’s not enough time to get it all done within a short article !!

This week’s homework: Discuss the following statement. We used to have a system in this country. When the Tories ran out of steam Labour would take over for a while. When Labour ran out of steam the Tories would take over. It did not make for great government but it did provide for failure. That system does not work anymore. Tories have proved themselves unfit to govern and show no indication of having learned the error of their ways. Labour has been AWOL since 2010 and shows no indication of wanting to form a government. The only answer they have for inexcusable standard of government that we have is that Labour makes vague and unconvincing promises ‘to make Brexit work.’ To quote Shakespeare: A plague on both their houses. We have local government elections coming up. Vote for anybody, repeat anybody, who wants to Rejoin the EU.

Help us remove Boris Johnson from his seat – click the image

This week’s quotes: “Thick Lizzie and Toilet Kwarteng broke the economy … this budget is returning to Trussonomics… huge benefits for the rich … higher taxes and worse public services for the rest of us … good ideas that clash with Brexit ideology … useless ideas, waste of time and money but the Brexiters like it … incomes fall by further 6% … biggest drop in living standards since records began .. worst record for any major economy … rocked by post Brexit disruption …  Global Britain is a lie … £29B in lost investment … future growth is unlikely to take off … lower growth because of Brexit, higher taxes because of Brexit and worse public services because of Brexit … throwing billions at the wealthiest … Brexit has made everything worse … As always in Tory Britain, there is one rule for them and another for the rest of us …  Tory MPs breathless excitement at the news that Richy Scumbag was not as totally useless as Johnson and Thick Lizzie … Daily (Once was a real newspaper) Telegraph …. in other news you are unlikely to hear … Rwanda has so far picked up £140M for the deportation scheme at the time that the number of asylum seekers sent there was zero … What Sue Ellen Braverman calls invasion has been a continuous process throughout history … there is no precise distinction between British and non British life forms … never mind the facts … atavistic fear of invasion … hard to say which is more dismaying … politicians compete as to who can be the nastiest … to the most desperate people on earth … Braverman’s nasty public image … Rwanda policy is doomed … as is Richy Scumbag’s pledge to stop boats crossing … UK is abdicating an essential responsibility under international law … Rwanda’s problematical track record on human rights … British government’s message is baffling … even more nonsensical … the site Braverman visited is nothing to do with the UK … smoke and mirrors with nothing behind them … sadistic bait … UK receives small number of asylum seekers than even most European countries … British government policy serves to enrich and empower people smugglers … do we compromise with reality or continue the current deadly charade … toxicity of the asylum debate … ridiculous backlog of claims … realism needs to enter the debate …  so long as there is profit people smugglers will enable that behaviour …  ridiculous … government is  taking the public for fools … promising something it cannot deliver … decent economic growth has escaped the Tory government for all 13 years of its tenure … Braverman’s Rwanda policy is the worst of all the options … no PM has abused powers in such a manner in the last 50 years …

Johnson’s hypocrisy … taxpayer footing the bills … Johnson has made £3.5M and counting … Murdoch talks of being Scottish … he is whatever is expedient for tax purposes … little fraternisation between Daily Mail top brass and Richy Scumbag … Richy Scumbag is in no hurry to sign off the peerage for Dacre … he could do without yet another sleaze scandal … Braverman is awful … scandals … idiotic remarks … fault is not with her but with those who over promoted her … not up to the job … Scumbag is scared of the not sensible wing of his party … Tories have run out of ideas … out of control … desperation leads to bad choices …  Braverman gets a free ride for a calculated lie … Tories abandoned the British manufacturing industry in 1979 …

Trump’s dwindling but increasingly unhinged fan base … Brexit is most  embarrassing unforced error since Villa keeper let a throw in into his net … Inflation in Britain rose to 10.4% in February … machinery and structure of British government need reform …

Dump Trump

Johnson’s blustering testimony to Parliament reminded us what we had not been missing … less experienced officials acre in more senior posts …  ministers have eroded the tradition that officials provide candid advice … the planning system makes quagmires look slick … taxation will reach a lost war high this year … not producing better results … bleak picture … 

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

Learn how to get rid of these shysters – click the link on this picture

Don’s rant

By Don Adamson, Brexorcist and Saboteur First Class

This week’s homework: 1. is there any truth in the rumour that Elon Musk is funding the Labour Party? 2. Whenever the Tories FUBAR (Foul Up Beyond All Repair) the standard excuse they trot out is ‘we got the big calls right.’ What exactly is a ‘Big Call’ in this context and how horribly disastrous must things become before these Tories admit they got it wrong? 

This week’s quotes: “ Brexit has been painful … it will get worse when full import controls are imposed next year … a lack of genuine respect for the complexity all this involves … the more the Tories try to imitate Thatcher the less she is remembered … miserable times … an asylum processing process that has been allowed to collapse … most shocking claim, that Braverman has now repudiated …  an activist blob left wing lawyers, civil servants … blocked us … it is baseless …  classic language of dehumanisation …  what the Nazis did to the German Civil Service … main reasons for dismissal without pension … unbecoming conduct (could involve buying goods in Jewish shops ) … failing to protest against insults to National Socialism … aimed at those who refused to go along with the politicisation of public administration … biggest and most racialised infraction of human rights in Britain since the 1930s … power to deport without regard to British law … puts Braverman way outside the Tory mainstream … pitch for the Tory leadership, becoming the Enoch Powell of our time … repudiation of human rights … raising anger at facts that are not true, grievances that are manufactured … new asylum law will not work … repressive forces do not want fairness or progress … they claim that their populism is motivated  by a belief in free speech…. BBC sees nothing wrong in having a chairman who made huge donations to the Tory Party … helped Johnson secure an £800,000 loan … is there anything this government can do competently? … synthetic rage … Braverman has admitted that her policy contravenes the law … not dissimilar to the language used by 1930s Nazis … language similarities between Der Sturmer and Volkischer Beobachter in 1930s Germany and the Mail, Express in recent decades … Richy Scumbag is not as incontinentally dishonest as Johsnon or as utterly useless as Thick Lizzie … such a low bar … hrdly worthy of comparison  … Brexit is undermining the judiciary … making it hard for the young and poor to vote … easier for the Tories to break election law … reward their friends … TV and radio pander to rather than challenge their vile agenda … Johnson asked for show of hands on who thought Brexit was a good idea. Two hands were raised. One was his own … Johnson sees rules as for others to follow … trimmed down his list of honours from three figures to two … Richy Scumbag should cross them all out … failure to do so will leave him as tainted as Johnson … Murdoch may have a soft spot for Johnson but he recognises that Johnson will never again be PM, unlike Rothermere lackeys … Britain’s manufacturers have turned their backs on the government … attacks on the government open and strongly worded … political mismanagement of the economy cannot continue … no government strategy at all … the idea that ideology can trump common sense is grim news to the industry … EU businesses are not interested … the government has given up pretending to care … German Nationalists … the parallels between the language adopted by the New Tory Party and the Nazis are obvious … poisonous cocktail of ideologically driven nationalism and gradual erosion of our rights  … the difference between right and ‘the Right’ has never been clearer … Tory Party is being relentlessly dragged to the extreme right …  moderate Tories have gone, never to return … any pretence at decency from Richy Scumbag is gone … what were May, Johnson and Thick Lizzie doing apart from dreaming up slogans to distract our attention from the disastrous effects of Brexit … the government ordering the BBC to purge itself of dissenting voices was not the best way to refute the suggestion that it is fascist … 1823 Foundation of the Anti Slavery Society which led to abolition of slavery in the British Empire. 2023 Removal by Sue Ellen Braverman of legal protection from modern slavery in the UK … putting major bankers into the hands of a bank with the world’s worst reputation for money laundering is not without risk … recent events have not dulled the taste of MPs for largess from Russian Mafia … cosy relationship between Clipper Logistics and the Tory Party continues … no bid contract to distribute PPE for the NHS receiving at least £112M…   “Arise Sir Wife Beater … Stanley Johnson’s former wife said ‘He was always hitting me …. Boris saw it … many times over many years … ‘ s well as the broken nose that landed her in hospital Wall suffered a nervous breakdown … just the sort of thing that deserves an order of chivalry … HM Revenue and Customs ‘too slow to tackle fraud and error … recovery of the billions paid out …. woeful … many in Whitehall refused to follow their own restrictions, lied about them and covered them up … Downing St broke the lockdown rules, taken the public for fools and lied … News UK received emails from management accusing them of misdemeanours … ‘f***ing outrageous’ … Fox News commentators helped to propagate the most damaging conspiracy theory in post war democracy … damning evidence from Murdoch and other Fox executives predicted to result in $1.6B …Former Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi has become toxic in his own constituency … Tories considering deselecting him … local businesses shunning him … GB News … bonkers rightwing ideologues … Jacob Rees Mogg … half witted persona … observers call him a ‘complete c**t’ … Nigel Garbage makes  happier viewing for Remainers than Leavers … seriously off his muttons … he considers Moggy to be dangerously leftie … GB News ratings are bad but Murdoch’s TalkTV are worse … criticising the Far Right from the perspective of the Really Far Right … GB News lot £30M in first year …  GB News output increasing Batsh*t  crazy… £29B has been lost through Brexit … not convinced the UK Infrastructure Bank has a strategic view … limited delivery … A right wing coalition that would undermine the rule of law and undermine … and weaken democracy … country is in turmoil … fiery rhetoric from right wingers … bad solutions to real problems … woeful remedy … far right fringe has grown, fuelled by demagogic politics … inequality … a country that is betraying its liberal roots … this government relies on extremists … reckless words have consequences …, Jeremy Hunt’s budget is better at diagnosis than treatment … the bar for a successful budget was dramatically lowered last year … underlying problems persist … a bizarrely blunt way to do it … a bad decision that will raise carbon emissions … a dreadful fudge … Britain desperately needs a stable tax regime … a hostage to fortune … by 2024 real living standards will have fallen by the greatest amount over a two year period since records began .. Dismal record on productivity … not yet tackled Britain’s biggest headaches … populist politics another stumbling block … fixation with cultural controversy is another distraction from real needs … nor did the budget provide much for Britain’s struggling public services, particularly the health care system … Britain takes a fresh look at foreign and defence policies … a Europe shaped hole … Johnson’s tilt to the Indo Pacific region was a boosterish folly, not least after Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine … the risk of escalation is greater than at any time in decades … the biggest question is if Britain has the resources to realise the vision … the government has left this tricky dilemma to successors …  Tories should forget about the small boats and stop the dodgy car washes and sweet shops … car washes … archetypal example of black market economy … Tories have made it easy to run law breaking industries … law breaking is endemic … Ministers know all this … these businesses are profitable because they do not adhere to the law … illegal conditions … withheld wages … fire doors being locked shut … enforcement of basic rights is weak … clear and obvious scams in London … skipped business rates to the tune of £9m … weak and slack enforcement allows scammers to thrive … plenty that the government could do to crack down … no guarantee … resources to crack down on black market … a government serious about dealing with the root causes of illegal immigration, not just looking tough, has plenty of options available …”

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

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Failing fast

By Don Adamson, Brexorcist and Saboteur First Class

This week’s homework: 1. Governments sometimes have to make tough decisions about controversial questions. There is a right way and a wrong way to do that. This government always chooses a wrong and stupid way to make tough decisions.

This week’s homework: 2. Brexit has failed and has been seen to fail. Every day produces more evidence that Brexit can only be a fiasco. Tories respond by sulking and blaming everybody but themselves. Labour Party responds by insisting that everything will be hunky dory so long as we pretend that Brexit is working (despite all the evidence to the contrary).There is no question of either Labour or Tories shifting their backsides and doing something to reverse the biggest act of stupidity any British government has perpetrated for many years. Which party is showing the greatest degree of hypocrisy and moral cowardice: Labour or Tories? 

This week’s quotes: “English Chamber orchestra had to cancel a US tour … visa problems … King’s Singers … concert Pensacola College cancelled … one of the singers is gay … (COMMENTS:  This does not sit well with Johnson forever talking about ‘new opportunities outside Europe’) … earthquakes in Turkey … Erdogan stripped the ‘experts’ out of state institutions … including the disaster response agency (COMMENT: 21st century Tories have interesting things to say about experts. Perhaps it is just as well that UK is not in an earthquake prone area)… Britain’s creeping corruption … best assessment is Transparency International’s  index … Britain is sliding to its worst ever score … Richy Scumbag is another in a growing list of Tory Prime Minister’s undone by Brexit … British companies do not train their staff … a lack of skills is making almost a quarter of all vacancies hard to fill … Covid 19 and Brexit have made that worse … government has completely ignored this puzzle … at a Facebook content moderation centre in Kenya run by Sama, an outsourcing firm … workers told Time magazine they were mistreated by both companies … accusing them of union busting, forced labour and human trafficking … Royal Mail is failing its duty to deliver letters on Saturday … Food chain may collapse when Brexit checks come in later this year  … underlying problems caused by Brexit … to understand the problem you have to understand that this is a sector significantly disrupted by Brexit … UK market is not attractive … Brexit is adding to the chaos … despite what the ‘nothing to do with Brexit’ Brigade might believe … food logistics industry is less resilient .. a warning of what lies ahead …  problems like this will be worse in future … sub standard meat is entering the country … could lead to African Swine Fever or another highly contagious and devastating disease … huge problem … small sign of what lies ahead … you ain’t seen nothing yet … government has had seven years to come up with a solution … and has failed … if ‘take back control was the lie that unleashed Brexit might ‘let them eat turnip be Brexit’s epitath? … We are on our fifth Brexit PM … ‘nothing to do with Brexit’ supply chains … Thick Lizzie believes it but her judgement is catastrophic …  the environment secretary could not have looked more bored, disengaged, could not give a toss about farmer’s problems … Johnson said ‘F*** business’ … Coffey said F*** Farmers’ … the never ending civil war in the Tory Party … dire figures about NHS …  Lasers are precise, powerful and efficient … when James Cleverly said ‘we remain laser focussed on finding a solution … the reaction in Brussels was bemusement mixed with scepticism … the closer Richy Scumbag gets to a deal the  more the lunatic fringes of his party seem determined to stop him … there is no way to divide and conquer the EU … they have stuck together for years … the involvement of Johnson is seen as hugely damaging in Brussels … last year alone  Therese Coffey chomped her way through £4,442 of hospitality … Johnson’s memoirs will cause a massive problem for booksellers and librarians … should they be classified as fiction or fantasy … Brexit ideas … hopelessly flawed, poorly conceived or just plain suicidally stupid …. Britain stock market has languished. Gilts may be next … disastrous budget by Toilet Kwarteng … long running exodus from London … shrivel compared to the rest of the world … Big firms are ditching their British listings … Britain’s stock market … on a downward path … make matters worse … buyers of sovereign debt departing … British assets no longer seem like a must have for global investors … totemic blow to the City of London … Richy Scumbag’s deal softens the Irish Sea border but not as much as he claims … London does not seem to grasp … Johnson still dreams of returning to Westminster … idiotic rows … Johnson’s deal was disastrous … the case for long term despair is compelling … public services are exhausted … day long waits in A & E … some crimes have, in effect, been legalised … slow growth, rubbish public services and falling incomes will probably doom the Tories at the next election … After 7 years of Brexit EU has emerged as the clear winner … Tories heading for a thumping defeat at the polls … thanks to Brexit … Vote Leave claimed to have all the cards … nobody ever worked out what the British really wanted … fuzzy notions … not even the maddest populist on the continent thinks leaving the EU is a good idea … dire governance … a bad official always says yes to the ruler …  goes along with him even when he is wrong … Journalists will soon be replaced by artificial intelligence. The Turing Test of the near future may be a machine’s ability to convince a Daily Mail reader that the latest polemic by a flesh and blood employee and not by a machine designed to generate rabid headlines to stir up xenophobes … If the Tories are crushed they will be replaced by something even worse … Richy Scumbag’s sudden conversion to competence … if we are lucky that may go down as the first moves in a Tory campaign to avoid electoral oblivion … whenever I enter a TV studio for a political … there is nearly always somebody from the far right. Their shtick is always to avoid logic and evidence … Caution prevents Labour from telling the truth about Brexit … there is no shortage of Leave voters who now think Brexit was a mistake … A majority of Labour voters backed Remain and a sizeable share of Brexiters now think Brexit was a mistake … (Johnson) Lying Putrescence …Brexit continues to wreck the lives of Britain’s small farmers … Liz Webster (a small farmer) always knew Brexit would be a disaster … she underestimated how quickly that disaster would overtake the industry … It is actually worse than we predicted … everyone is suffering … some of the countries from which we import agricultural goods have much lower standards … prospect is terrifying for the food industry … always contradictions in Brexit promises … to hide that reality … Farmers thought they would get more money while the government planned to shrink the industry … industry is bracing itself for the pain to come … Government refuses to demand that imports comply with UK food standards … this could hardly have come at a worse time … farmers were promised the world and have been sadly disappointed … the agricultural industry is a sacrificial lamb for Brexit … Richy Scumbag has all but given up pretending to be a presence on the world stage; still less believing ‘Global Britain’ was anything more than an empty slogan … he is reluctant to go anywhere … partly because he is worried about what plots against him might be hatched in his absence and an awareness of what other world leaders think about him and Brexit … Johnson Fanzine the Daily Mail was having problems finding Tory MPs to say on the record that he could come back as PM. The style of the paper is to quote unidentified ‘friends.’… Johnson’s ‘friends’ would have more authority if they talked like real people … ‘Partygate is a political show trial with an outrageous level of bias that would make Stalin blush’ … absurd tabloidese … Mandrake challenges the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday to quote real people willing to talk on the record … long suffering readers of the Times and Sunday Times reacted with dismay to the papers’ ‘exclusive’ serialisation of Paris Hilton’s memoirs …’ has the times become The Sun?’ … ‘I thought my subscription was to the Times and not some grubby tabloid’ … Rebekah Brooks, CEO of News UK, forced the book on the editors of both titles … (Conspiracy theories) we have seen a combination of people who have deliberately manipulated the situation and misrepresented the facts … conspiracy theories are impossible to knock down. Any presentation of the facts is dismissed as part of the plot … Conspiracy theorists hold 16 random beliefs and eight contradict the other eight … the only thing that holds them together is resentment and distrust … symptoms of Brexgret … many layers of denial, bluster and jingoistic claptrap … spiteful, empty pride … you let a bunch of hucksters, gangsters and race baiting demagogues hoodwink you into destroying your livelihood and your grandchildren’s future … justify the unjustifiable and repeatedly deny the evidence … Britain has endured a decade of early deaths … pandemic is not the only reason … something went wrong in the early 20102 (COMMENT: About the time we started getting corrupt and incompetent Tory governments) … between 2012 and 2022 approximately 700,000 Brits died sooner than they might have … death rates for  30 to 49 year old steadily increased in Britain since 2012 in sharp contrast to with neighbouring countries … life expectancy has fallen for the poorest and increased for the wealthy … Britain has done worst out of its European peers … hospital wait lists of record lengths … crisis in primary care … poorer Brits are more likely to be diagnosed with cancer at a later stage … it will be tricky to find enough radiologists and GPs to make a difference … life expectancy worst affected in places with the largest decline in housing services and social care spending … cannot obscure the fact that something has gone badly wrong in the last decade …no European country has stalled as much as Britain … funding cuts are likely to have worsened health outcomes … 40% of the burden on the NHS may be preventable … services have been pruned in the last decade … 10m years of life have been in lost in Britain over the last decade  compared with what might have been expected in 2011. The grim total keeps ticking up …  Russia’s war on the Ukraine has vindicated Macron’s call for a stronger EU … A new plan to stop migrants in boats is unlikely to work … impractical, morally and legally dubious … a myriad practical flaws … echo an earlier failure to tackle the problem … lawyers say plan has made no actual difference … though it may temporarily please the right of the Tory party … the plan is the wrong way round … new law will not stop the boats … Tory intellectuals (sic) declared that culture had vanquished economics … ‘It is not the economy, stupid’ ran one headline … What is going on out there is brutal … miserable politics … economic competence is decisive in general elections … Tory right wingers who call themselves Thatcherites have treated distribution networks much as a toddler with a hammer treats a wristwatch. 

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

Check our post on Political Censorship out here

Brexit Strangulation

By Adrian Ekins-Daukes, angry ex Tory Councillor from Tunbridge Wells.

During the run-up to the referendum, the extremist group of ‘Economists for Brexit’ predicted leaving EU would create a 4% boom for the British economy. This has not materialised. But also, Brexit guru Professor Patrick Minford admitted that it would “effectively eliminate” British manufacturing industry. That prophecy is proving spot on.

Officially, manufacturing accounts for only 10% of the economy, but in fact it is much more important. It produces 45% of all UK exports and pays for 65% of private R&D. It employs the services of many other industries, from catering to software design and logistics. Manufacturing workers are well paid, with wages 15% above the national average,  which is reflected in the tax take. In fact manufacturing probably accounts for 20% of the economy, and is vital to our trade balance, science base and general prosperity.

Much of our manufacturing industry is owned by foreign firms. who decided to base themselves in the UK largely because it offered access to the EU’s single market which enables products to be sold freely across the continent, . But Brexit has put an end to UK access to the single market, creating trade barriers, extra costs and delivery delays. Government figures show that red tape at the border with the EU costs £7bn per year.  

As a result, many foreign firms which had established their HQs in London have moved to the continent, taking the trade, money and jobs with them. Those who remain are investing less. The level of investment by such firms used to be above the average of their UK counterparts.  Now it has fallen to about half. Brexit is also proving to be a disincentive for new foreign investment.  Before, the UK attracted more foreign investment than any other EU member state but now it  has been overtaken by Germany and  others are catching up . In particular,  Germany has replaced UK as  the favourite destination of Japanese firms whose investment is rising in many EU countries but falling in the UK

Strangulation by Brexit – what a way to go !!

BREXIT KILLS OUR MOTOR INDUSTRY

The decline of our motor industry since Brexit is grim.  The number of new cars made in the UK has sunk to its lowest level for 66 years,  with production having fallen every year since  2016 . Our car plants are being overlooked when manufacturers consider where to build new models. Elon Musk bypassed Britain and built his Gigafactory in Berlin instead. The new electric models of Jaguar, Lotus and BMW’s mini are all going to be built abroad . Once sale of new petrol and diesel cars becomes illegal in the UK by 2030. There are fears within the industry that its decline may be terminal.

One major cause of the industry’s decline since Brexit is the decision by our Brexit negotiators to withdraw from the single market.  An essential feature of vehicle manufacturing in the EU is the absence of any checks or delays at its internal frontiers, enabling vehicle components to be shipped throughout Europe without hindrance. The supply chains are now so extensive that, it is said, “it takes a continent to make a car “ But the barriers erected by our Brexit negotiators abolished seamless access for our our car manufacturers , subjecting their products to checks and delays, and hence causing them to be excluded us from the system. 

BREXIT DOUBLES RED TAPE

Our negotiators have inflicted similar damage on our important  chemical industry.That is because they refused to permit the industry to remain in the EU’s ‘REACH’ system, an organisation which had registered, tested, approved and regulated virtually  every chemical in use, and which it had cost  our industry billions to join. Instead, our Brexiteer government decided to create its own. This duplication  means further huge costs for  companies having to register with and access  two different systems, possibly comply with two differing sets  of legislation, and even perhaps repeating some tests as well,  The chemical industry is a clear victim of the doubling of unnecessary red tape which Brexit causes.

Brexit is also damaging  exports of many other industrial products for which CE marking is obligatory before they can be put on the EU market. These include machinery, construction materials, electric and gas appliances, cosmetics and toys, to name but a few. The CE mark is proof that a  product conforms with  specified EU safety, health and environmental standards. Once it has been applied, normally by the manufacturer himself (who is responsible for drawing up documents proving compliance), the product is then accepted across the EU  without the need for further delays or inspections. We could have had an agreement guaranteeing equivalence between  our own standards and those of the EU,  thus enabling UK/EU  trade to continue to flow as freely as before.  Johnson actually reached an agreement with the EU to this effect in early 2019. However, following his triumph in the general election of that year, he chose to renege on it in order to appease the  extremist bigots amongst  his backbenchers, preferring instead to diverge from EU standards and create a UK version of the CE mark. He thus increased bureaucracy  and inflicted new  heavy costs on industry to no one’s advantage . Far from freeing us from EU red tape,  as Brexiteers claim, they have  doubled it for any company that manufactures for both the UK and  EU markets.

There are other essential sectors of our economy which are being as seriously damaged by Brexit as manufacturing. Michael Gove claimed recently that “on balance, Brexit has been a significant success for the country.” This opinion might be shared by the super-rich cliques who sustain the Government and some City fat cats but opinion polls show that even 2016 Leave voters,  let alone the rest of us, see it as a bare faced lie.

The Solution ? First …. 

GET THE BREXITEERS OUT !

RATTUS BREXITUS

Turd Reich

By Don Adamson, Brexorcist and Saboteur First Class

This week’s quotes: “A mess of Johnson’s making … Johnson is wading in making things worse …  outrageous even by Johnson’s standards … a new low for an ex PM who has long since left the moral gutter behind … I hope Richy Scumbag goes down to a crushing defeat but I also hope he fixes the NI Protocol problem … oven ready meal that turned out to be half baked … it is hardly in China’s interests to see a strong Russia … The more Russia weakens the more vulnerable Siberia looks. Chinese encroachment is a future headache waiting to happen … Gove is now being ‘honest’ about the failure of Brexit … if he were really honest he would apologise and shut up… Johnson crashes his way through democracy like a poltergeist who has not noticed his own demise.

Nigel Garbage hosts a TV show on a channel nobody watches … (Richy Scumbag) it is almost charming how the son of Punjabi immigrants still thinks he can become the darling of bigots … Johnson is buying a house … we wait to hear with whose money … the plan seems to be that whatever is left of the Tory Party after the next election will flock to his bloodstained banner …

Turd Reich

George Takei finds British politics illogical …  Brexit was a disastrous mistake … every bit as bad as those who opposed it predicted … and getting worse … Nigel Garbage … a deluded and dangerous man … politicians lack imagination and have had very privileged lives … cannot understand what other people’s lives are like … Trump is a good example … worst President we ever had …  Takei feels despair at the lies told by politicians … He has raged magnificently against Brexit … Only Boris Johnson could make Thick Lizzie look competent … Thick Lizzie’s brief, miserable innings … 

The UK has a long term productivity problem. Since 2008 it has been running at less than a quarter of its usual rate. … the government has no idea how to improve things … the government seems to be deliberately making things worse instead of better … what the economy needs is a well functioning government, massive levels of investment, better training and far better management … investment has flat lined since Brexit … the government has slashed so many jobs that the accountancy profession complains the HM Revenue and Customs is so inefficient and understaffed that it is stifling the creating of companies;, jobs and wealth … we have had a tax dodging chancellor, a PM whose wife was a non-dom, billions of Covid loans that mysteriously disappeared, billions wasted on crony contracts for PPE … we have had Boris Johnson who could out bunga Sylvio Berlusconi … and we have had Thick Lizzie who makes corruption and incompetence look like a model of fiscal responsibility … the collapse of inward investment is extremely damaging, Britain is seen as too risky to invest in … stupidity over the Northern Ireland protocol … wasted resources, an economy that overheats easily …

UK is losing the race to be a leader in new technology .. Failing to ride the hi-tech wave of growth potential… If things were not bad enough for UK musicians in the EU they get worse by the minute in the USA … “

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

Check our post on Political Censorship out here

EU-Turn Sunak

Don Adamson’s latest update from Barnsley in Yorkshire.

This week’s quotes: “ 18 Dec 2021 Frost resigned as chief negotiator citing concerns about ‘direction of travel’ ,,, Frost is a political appointee with no proven expertise “ (COMMENT: that is why the Foreign Office made him an Ambassador) … “ (Frost) tends to bugger things up, resign before the job is finished then write astonishingly brass necked columns from the sidelines … efforts to force copies of the biography of Daily Mail founder Lord Northcliffe on hacks at the paper even as they whimper and beg for mercy … Westminster reporters must undertake not to ‘put the reputation of Parliament at risk’ (COMMENT: Tory and Labour parties have already got that covered) … Efforts to clean GB News have been supplanted by an almighty meltdown … presenters must sign new contracts that make them personally responsible for fines resulting from breaches of the broadcasting code …  increasingly unhinged Neil Oliver … huge headache for Frangopoulos, the channel’s owner … whacky views … fears at TalkTV that the only possible way is down for Nadine Dorries …

BBC is in serious trouble for reporting excesses by an authoritarian government with dubious ideas on justice and efficiency. Before you get excited I should mention that the government concerned is the government of India. There is no question of the BBC reporting excesses by Richy Scumbag’s corrupt and incompetent government. Rupert Murdoch would not allow that to happen … Russia trying to overthrow the pro-EU government of Moldova … Moldova applied to join the EU … (COMMENT: Not so long ago we heard a lot of Jackanory from Gammons and Flagshaggers to the effect that the EU was on the brink of disintegration. The EU would collapse when Britain left. Yeah, right! Ukraine has also applied to join the EU and Johnson, of all people, supports the idea) …

83% rise in pubs and bars applying for insolvency … the image of Britain as a land of phlegmatic common sense has taken a beating in the last ten years … the country that voted to leave the EU without any coherent plan … simplistic answers to complex questions … Brexiters can still cause enormous damage … Richy Scumbag is surrounded by colleagues who cause him harm … waits in accident and emergency departments are gruelling … British economy will be living with the effects of the pandemic for years unlike the rest of G7 countries … damage unevenly distributed … Britain’s dismal growth over the past three years … laggard status … spending more but getting less for their money … unusually steep fall in British national income compared with peers … spending more than ever on health care but getting less for the money …  crabs poisoned by chemicals … following decades of industrial activity on the Tees … recklessly expanding the Freeport … like Long Island Sound where the lobster industry has never recovered … urgency is lacking …

France has a fatal fascination with Russia .. Marine Le Pen’s campaigns have been financed by Russia … Mr Pompeo remained obsequious – ‘He is like a heat seeking missile for Trump’s a***e … Britain’s especially limp PM Richy Scumbag … So far as I am concerned Johnson can F*** off …  Johnson is dreaming of a Churchillian return to 10 Downing St … Dominic Beales (Labour’s challenger to Johnson in his own constituency) … ‘we’re hitting the doorsteps’ … ‘I voted for Johnson last time; never again! … the government is hopeless … Johnson’s support seems remarkably soft …  his chances of beating Jonson … a startling 92% … If Uxbridge voted today it would damningly vote against the Tories … would be a seismic event in British politics …  visited Ukraine more often than his constituency … was it the visit of a genuinely concerned MP or just another photo op? … Johnson will do what is in Johnson’s interests …  he does not give a damn about Oxbridge … A charlatan’s new low …

Richy Scumbag is cursed to try to pass policies while Johnson torpedoes them …  Johnson screwed over the DUP …  a mess that needs to be fixed … “

Brexit is not a complete disaster, it is an incomplete disaster

From Don Adamson in Yorkshire. Brexorcist First Class, campaigner, writer and impressario:

This week’s quotes: “ Brexit re-enactment society: historical re-enactments are popular in Britain … fans of the genre should go the House of Lords … scrutinising the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) bill … lawmakers know the bill is dangerous, wasteful and one of the silliest pieces of legislation ever to come before Parliament … Parliament is again galloping towards an avoidable blunder … it is like lighting a fire in a library and handing the librarians a photocopier and a marker pen to save what they can … ministers do not know how many laws are in scope … hands the executive broad powers to make laws with no idea as to how the power might be used …

Treasury fears it could lose billions in tax challenges … an almighty time sink … for the vanity of those for whom the battle to leave the EU was the highlight of their careers … parliament is imprisoned by the shrill politics of Brexit … some of the most damaging features of the Brexit process … a sane country would never allow itself to be put in this vice … familiar mix of terror and irresponsibility … blithe optimism smothers debate …

Labour is wary of opposing Brexit … terrible mistake …  a clear majority of Brits believe that to Leave the EU was a mistake … Brexit causes politicians to lose their judgement …  The Old Bailey focuses mainly on murder, rape and terrorism cases … the majority of terrorism cases involved people on the far right of British politics. A minority involves Islamic terrorist cases …

Thick Lizzie addressed a reception at the Japanese Embassy … the feet shuffling mood hovered between embarrassment and cringe coated pain … Thick Lizzie assumes publishers would flock to offer her big bucks for her memoirs … interest varied between minimal and zero … must be hurtful … Johnson is clocking up millions for his memoirs and after dinner speeches … while persuading Richy Scumbag to fund lawyers to help Johnson pretend that he did not lie to Parliament over Partygate …

Brexit is choking the arts and the government is doing nothing about it … touring orchestras and music sales – British culture and arts are a huge success story … Brexit means struggling with tough opposition from abroad … rivals get better tax breaks … children’s TV is suffering … movies of all kinds, music, live theatre, dance, audio books and video games … the world loves British cultural exports but Brexit makes it far harder to sell them … games firms give £7B a year to the economy … music exports are worth £3.5B … creative industries contribute £116B to the economy … yet is one of the worst hit by Brexit … government is totally indifferent … British government promised to make up any shortfall but has not done so … huge problem for the industry … harder and more expensive … a ruinously expensive waste of time … hurt an industry where Britain has huge advantages … You have to be something of a strange breed to want to be an MP in the first place …

Daily Telegraph runs pieces overtly critical of Brexit and Johnson …  Johnson can only count on Daily Mail and Sunday Mail for blind loyalty … Michael Gove admitted ‘I ask myself if Brexit was the right thing to do ‘ … Gove’s loyalty lasts only so long as it suits his interests … wants to distance himself from the Brexit recriminations after the next election … frankly hilarious death spiral the governments poll numbers have been taking for months …

Thick Lizzie continues to peddle her ‘it was all the fault of communist currency traders’ … ‘le grande illusion’ encapsulates Brexit … Johnson’s audacity … ‘that is what Louis XVI did and he got the guillotine …  Redevelopment at Teesside Freeport is Europe’s largest and most risky Brownfield project… highly toxic land and riverbed is churned up at breakneck speed …

Environment Secretary Therese Coffey has little interest in protecting the environment … toxic waste is taken from remediated areas and piles driven into contaminated land … ‘business partners’ make tens of millions … Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy … it was in the days of Nigel Lawson and Peter Walker that this vital industry last enjoyed civil servants with genuine energy expertise … the timing of these disruptions could not be worse … a new defence export advocate to promote arms sales … given the job to a Tory peer … under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office  … there are more health professionals of Ghanaian origin working for the NHS than in Ghana … Brexit is not a complete disaster, it is an incomplete disaster … Brexit does not need fixing stormed Lord Frost to the Daily Mail …

Brexit is not a complete disaster, it is an incomplete disaster