In case of doubt, here are some real headlines from the Daily Mail for comparison purposes:
And, just in case you were sleeping, Brexit Reich negotiator David Frost has conceded that Britain will not be able to brand car parts made in other countries as being British to evade taxation and tariffs. It’s kind of obvious really. Just why have we been told lies for so long?
Write to your MP. Demand a suspension of Brexit in the wake of Corona.
If you like this article, please support us with a regular donation via GoFundMe or Patreon. Give us a tip viaPaypal.We need support to continue doing this. It takes considerable time. Thank you in advance.
In this update we look at the latest facts about the economics of Brexit. The popular view is that COVID is the great destroyer of the economy. Think again and read on. The report by LSE shows that Brexit offers a much greater and more sustained shock to our economy than COVID. It also compares No Deal and what might be expected as a Brexit deal and finds no great differences in terms of the long term damage.
In the wake of the 2019 General Election result, there appears to have been a great deal of conciliation and accommodation by Remainers, in terms of the acceptance of some form of Brexit and accepting the illusion that an 80 seat majority is invincible. Yet, as the figures demonstrate, all forms of Brexit are toxic, in terms of their long term and sustainable damage to the United Kingdom. If you feel worn down by 4 years of Brexit boredom, I, above many understand this, having fought full time for several years on this topic. It does not alter the hard fact that Brexit is a shitstorm that we may still avoid, if political will is there or can be created.
The difference between a Brexit Deal and No Deal is really the difference between a slow painful death and a sudden death.
Read up on why Rejoining may be a unicorn in the long term at Fool Britannia.
Write to your MP using these facts to help you compose your letter.
Boiling Frog Blues
If you still feel that Corona is more significant than Brexit you may well be experiencing what psychologists call recency bias. This is the reason why we think that air disasters are a regular occurrence after a significant airplane crash occurs.
Speaking analytically, Corona is merely a crisis, whereas Brexit is a disaster in slow motion. We tend to confuse the two because what is called the boiled frog syndrome. The LSE report shows clearly that Brexit offers a much greater existential risk to Britain. The question remains:
How quickly and how badly to you want to die?
Brexona – Combined effect
An accountant will teach you about the concept of avoidable costs. We must endure Corona as a natural phenomenon. We don’t have to add Brexit to Corona. Combination of 11% GDP loss from Corona and a 5-8% loss from Brexit will be catastrophic. In case of doubt it only took a 3.5% GDP loss to create the 2008 Crash.
“Corona Crisis + Brexit Disaster = Britastrophe”
Ground Control to Boris J
Brexit has already cost us more than The International Space Station (ISS). Brexit is set to cost £200 BILLION by the end of 2020. An ISS costs a mere £115 billion. In case the figures are causing you to be “lost in space”, that means £3030 from EVERY PERSON’S TAXES to be taken from you at some point in the future. And you get a blue passport and a hard border in Kent. Is it worth it?
Write to your MP. Ask them to pull back from the brink of a Britastrophe before it’s too late.
BoJona-20 – The toxic viral strain of Boris Johnson’s bumbling bluster combined with the twin perils of Corona Crisis + Brexit Disaster aka a Britastrophe
I listened to Boris Johnson’s speech at the Tory Party Conference last week, which I dubbed BoJona-20. I noticed that BoJona-20 was virtually “content free”. The “beauty” of not including content in your talks (sic) is that there is little to take issue with, as long as you don’t get found out! 🙁 It rather seems that people listen for the jokes and are happy to accept empty promises, even though they have been fooled before. More fool them.
No 10 uses a Tombola machine to generate “BoJona-20”. They fill the machine with Post-It notes to generate random catchphrases. This is how David Bowie generated lyrics using his “cut up technique” in the 1970’s. Of course Bowie was not making decisions to determine whether people lived or died in The Laughing Gnome, so the context is different.
Having swallowed 30 minutes of garbage from BoJona-20, I was compelled to write a song to re-assemble Johnson’s garbage as a Lo-Fi groove called BOJONA-20 – an homage to garbage. Download copies of the song on Bandcamp – all proceeds go towards our continued activism to suspend Brexit.
BoJona-20 is possibly the most toxic virus on the planet. Johnson’s lies destroy trust and belief. The continuing act of lying means that nobody trusts anything that politicians say or do any more. This takes us to a new low point in politics. Just today Johnson has changed a firm deadline (again) for Brexit talks to end, so that he can bully the EU into giving more concessions. It never pays to reward bullies.
“It is the third unilateral deadline that Johnson has imposed without agreement.” Michel Barnier
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My friend and collaborator Rachel Ashley wrote a rant about the industrial scale lies from Boris Johnson. Edited slightly here for those that remain unaware of the facts:
Think this is bad? Wait until January. Still, it’s what the shitters wanted and they definitely knew what they were voting for. The reality of internal borders in Kent, 72 mile lorry queues, increased shipping costs, hassle at borders leading to rotting food and deaths from critical medicine shortages, satellite systems, radioactive isotopes, internal borders, cancellation of your bank account if you live in Europe, flight delays or possibly no flights at all between UK and Europe, portaloos in all areas where there are borders. Oh, and food shortages, possibly issues with clean water, power, problems if you deliver services and goodbye NHS. You fucking idiots. Own your Brexshit. But hey, you get your blue passport back.
Find our previous album “Britastrophe” at Bandcamp. Here’s the original song and our Indian Raga special.
Following the announcement by Boris Johnson that he is going to build 50 000 more toilets in Kent to help lorry drivers stranded in villages and towns after Brexit, we invite you to join us at Lenham village on Saturday 17 October from 11.00 – 13.00 to celebrate Kent : Operation Pisspot. See Portaloo for the invite to the event. Here are some of the greatest pictures and artists’ impressions of this magnificent development.
Lenham remodelled – Join us on Saturday
Operation Moonshit
Meanwhile, Operation COVID piss up in a brewery continues, with Johnson repeating the mistake of too little too late from February. The phrase prevention is better than a cure springs to mind. He was advised to have a circuit breaker on September 21. Here we are nearly a month later and he continues to try to entertain us rather than make the difficult decisions. A late circuit breaker is probably inevitable. By then we may have “baked in” more than 30 000 unnecessary deaths.
A Britastrophe
Just going for a “Nigel” – Breaking Wind
Nigel will be opening The Three Bellends at some point
“Relieve your bowels at Johnson’s Jobbie Junction … just off the M20”
In Lenham, the first portaloo is installed
Meanwhile our “Chief Negotiator” Sir David Frost reports that the EU still fails to understand that it is the UK that wish to leave the EU and that they, the EU, must destroy their enterprise so that England can rule the waves. How silly of them to forget that we voted for Brexit. Johnson is now on his 4th missed deadline that HE set, but of course this is someone else’s fault as well … Please tweet David Frost to correct his delusions.
Another piece of very dirty linen has emerged from Dominic Cummings’ laundry basket. Almost 20 years ago, he had a cottage built on land adjacent to his father’s farm house, without planning permission. Consequently, he never paid council tax on it either. The Valuation Office estimates that the outstanding tax on it amounts to between £30,000 and £50,000.
Breaking the law
There is apparently a statute of limitations on planning permission which allows unauthorised building to remain untouched after a certain period. Durham Council cannot therefore have the cottage demolished. However, there is no such loophole for arrears of council tax. Nonetheless, Cummings has somehow managed to arrange that he should be let off.
This is nothing short of scandalous. Any ordinary citizen who fails to pay Council tax, particularly on a property whose existence he had deliberately hidden from the authorities, would surely be required to pay not just the full amount of tax but interest and perhaps penalties on top. Failure or refusal to pay would normally result in a jail sentence. Yet Cummings, who likes to describe this cottage as a ‘pile of cement blocks’, gets off scot-free.
Cummings’ pile of cement blocks …
Regulation 47 of the Local Government Finance Act 1992 states people can be given prison sentences for not paying council tax if they have done so due to “culpable neglect”. This regulation is strictly applied. Nearly 700 people were imprisoned between 2010 and 2016 for not being able to pay their council tax, with a further 7,000 handed suspended orders threatening imprisonment. An extreme case was that of Melanie Woolcock of Porthcawl who was jailed for a £4742 Council tax debt she could not pay . She was a single mother and was caring for an elderly neighbour when she lost her job and fell behind in her council tax payments. Woodcock spent 40 days in prison before being released in view of her poverty. Comparing her degree of ‘culpable neglect’ with that of Dominic Cummings can only arouse a feeling of sickening disgust at the immunity he receives and the Government which grants it to him.
This new demonstration of his immunity from the law follows on from his notorious visit to Durham in complete disregard of COVID regulations and his trip to Barnard Castle, claiming that he was having his eyes tested. The fact that he thinks this ridiculous excuse should suffice for the authorities, the press and the British public shows the total contempt in which he holds us all. Now he is evading tax at a time when the rest of us will shortly face major tax increases. By shielding him from any penalties, Johnson, Gove and the law officers who disgrace their profession make themselves accessories to his deceptions and his illegalities.
With the wonderful people of North East for Europe – Getting our eyesight checked
There are other areas where Cummings activities raise very serious legal doubts. These will be dealt with in a coming issue where we ‘wash’ more of Cummings’ laundry.
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Dominic Cummings, Chief Adviser to the Prime Minister and would be dictator, has gone. He leaves behind an unparalleled legacy of chaos and destruction.
All power is centralised at No 10, with key functions such as appointments, vetting and control of data the exclusive preserve of the Chief Adviser.
His nominees occupy key posts for which they are totally unqualified.
Ministers opposing him have been sacked and most of the rest have proved second rate or worse.
The functions of the cabinet have been usurped by a crowd of unelected advisors who, according to the last Cabinet Secretary, meet and take decisions with no ministers present.
Parliament has been sidelined and MPs contemptuously disregarded.
To cap it all, there are clauses in the Internal Market Bill, now before Parliament, permitting the government to legislate by executive order over a broad field.
This bill is currently blocked by the House of Lords, and is also in breach of international law. But even if the latter aspect is eventually removed under pressure from the United States and EU, the danger of increased government by decree will remain.
This is the state of democratic government in the UK as 2020 comes to a close.
Many years ago, Lord Hailsham warned that Britain was an ‘elected dictatorship.’ Now we can see what sort of dictatorship it can become in the wrong hands.
Whilst we are here, please continue to share the Priti Woman Bully Back Better video which had over 1000 views yesterday. Share with your MP.
Article image by Cold War Steve https://coldwarsteve.com
Cummings has gone – But it’s business as usualas we remain dogged by dogma.
The departure of Chief Adviser Dominic Cummings aroused some hope of a new beginning:
Dogma would be replaced by realism.
Honesty would replace corruption and cronyism.
Respect for the rule of law and our constitutional conventions would be restored.
This has already proved to be naive. The Culture Secretary is pursuing plans to abolish the BBC and replace it with American-style radio and TV. Hancock has given an influential post in the health department to a lobbyist, a former girlfriend from university. The Government still ignores appeals from business to postpone Brexit at least until the pandemic has abated and normal conditions restored – an attitude described by one commentator as about as sensible as a man with a broken leg trying to take part in a marathon.
Get Ready for 30 miles traffic jams, portaloos and dogging stations
Above all, there is no sign in the EU negotiations of the government compromising on its demand to be able to bribe foreign investors on terms which are denied to EU members themselves. As Johnson and Frost well know, this is incompatible with any level playing field and strikes at the heart of the EU’s single market. Their refusal to compromise on this key issue makes it plain that ‘No Deal’ has been their aim alI along. If that occurs, the resultant expense, disruption and impoverishment will be 100% their responsibility, and theirs alone. Paradoxically, it may perhaps also hasten their downfall and open the way for more reasonable successors to negotiate a closer relationship with the EU or even rejoin earlier than might otherwise have been the case. They may in fact come to be dogged by dogma.
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On this day when the Government says that we need to extend Brexit negotiations and that Brexit is all Cummings’ fault anyway. It also emerges that a US trade deal is years away. Here, we offer a news roundup via the medium of the satirical “Kent Massager”, as Brexshit hits the fan.
In case of doubt …
FACT : The Daily Express DID report on FURY re our Kent Toilet of Britain project. In fact it was not mass fury. FICTION : The Express managed to find just ONE person, in Yorkshire, who objected to the signs in Kent.
Don’t read the Daily Express, click to read the “Excess”
FACT : Trials at the border show that if it takes 70 seconds to check a lorry, a five mile queue ensues. We can expect significant and continuing gridlock in Kent and maybe even into Sussex, Surrey and London if Brexit happens.
FACT : There has been a prediction of an increase in dogging in Kent after Brexit. We are not sure why it matters but there you go. I prefer Labradors to Terriers myself. How about you?
FICTION : Priti Patel has NOT unblocked a toilet. FACT : She has blocked the futures of EU Citizens living in UK and UK Citizens living in Europe. Our video Priti Woman has been banned for under 18’s after complaints by the Conservative party. We don’t know why. Here it is for your pleasure.
It’s Sunday. Normally a time for a visit to church and some light chatter in England’s green and pleasant land. No talk of sex, death and politics. But this is Brexit Britain, so I’ll break that rule with a Sunday Roasting of our Government.
This is the official message being given out by Government agencies to businesses who want to trade with Europe. Businesses are being told to open offices in Europe if they want to continue in business. Remember when Johnson said “Fuck Business”? It was one of his rare moments of telling the truth.
Oh wait a minute, did we not get a Brexit deal for frictionless trade?
How are small businesses going to maintain two headquarters just to avoid non-tariff barriers and other delays?
Who is paying for this?
Thom Yorke of Radiohead sums up the Brexit carnage nicely:
Move to EU to avoid Brexit costs, Uk firms told by government. Makes sense … can we go too? https://t.co/Agu9tapF8x
Boris Johnson is NOT taking the doctor’s advice by extending the time between COVID vaccinations. I have the burden of having worked on life saving medicines. We don’t recommend treatment regimes just for a laugh. The impact of Johnson’s careless approach is that vulnerable people who have had one dose of the COVID vaccine are becoming infected. Here is a story from one of my friends who prefers to remain anon, as her mum’s story is too painful to face in public. Her mum went for her first COVID injection in December but then had to attend hospital for a minor issue, returning with COVID:
“The following is what everyone who thinks the vaccine means life can return to normal needs to understand: My mum was admitted to hospital two weeks ago with a severe respiratory infection and related heart and blood sugar problems as she is also diabetic. She has now contracted COVID in hospital, but she doesn’t seem to have any additional symptoms as a result. So it would seem that having had the vaccination has protected her against developing COVID symptoms, but not against catching it, or being able to transmit it. Most importantly, because she is now COVID positive she has had to be transferred from the elderly acute ward to a COVID ward, even though she doesn’t actually have COVID symptoms. She is now surrounded by severely ill people who are gasping for breath and she is being cared for by medical staff in full PPE, so she can’t see their faces. She is utterly traumatised and nobody can visit her, which is also traumatising her husband. I can cope with losing my mother to old age and ill health, it’s the normal cycle of life. But this is no way to go. The vaccination has protected her against developing COVID symptoms, but not against this awful situation”.
Others ignore the idea that once you have had COVID, you will be invincible. Think again. A good friend of mine has COVID for the second time. It is a new infection and not a repeat event. Her illness is just as bad if not worse than the first time some 9 months ago. To those that think that immunisation will make them invincible, think again.
Coming soon – a new 3 track album to reach heads and hearts
In the ultimate mark of shame, Grant Shapps is insisting that DVLA workers in Swansea who are infected with COVID keep going to work. I once worked for a few weeks at DVLA. I opted out from the lucrative contract, as I could not face the ‘behavioural waste’ that went on, due to incompetent management. I have never really believed in what is called ‘sick buildings’, but now Grant Shapps appears to be making DVLA into a ‘death camp’.
500+ cases in one govt building
Workers with symptoms ordered to come into work
Dept refused vulnerable peoples’ requests to isolate
Told to disable test and trace notifications
This is unbelievably bad
500+ cases in one govt building
Workers with symptoms ordered to come into work
Dept refused vulnerable peoples' requests to isolate
Brexit continues to surprise with shipping costs rising more than SIX times in some cases. Firms have the choice to either fold their businesses, pay 600% more in transport costs or relocate to Europe.
NONE of these are the sunny uplands promised by Gove, Johnson et al.
ALL of them are entirely of our OWN government’s making.
Please support our work to Re-Boot Britain – Remove the Conservatives, Renew democracy and Reform our politics
Johnson was sacked twice for lying in his earlier careers as a journalist. He continued the habit in the referendum and as PM, hence his title Lord of the Lies. Two major lies during the referendum merit particular mention:
The ‘battle bus’ lie
Johnson and his team toured England in a bus carrying the message that we paid £350 million per week to the EU, which would be available to improve the NHS after Brexit. This sum amounts to £17.6 billion annually. The true figure was £8.5 billion. This figure was publicly available in the House of Commons library and elsewhere, but Johnson persisted in using his false version, double the true amount …
The Turkey lie
Just before the referendum, Vote Leave began to warn about the supposed dangers of Turkey joining the EU, arousing fears that Turkey, with a population of 76 million was about to join EU. They claimed this would give its citizens the right to live and work in the UK under freedom of movement, resulting in lowering of wages, more crime and the overwhelming of the NHS. The UK would be powerless to prevent this. This was completely untrue since Turkish joining could be vetoed by Britain or any other member state. Johnson has tried to distance himself from this major feature of ‘Leave’ although as a leading figure on its campaign committee he was well aware of it. However, a week before the referendum Johnson wrote in a joint letter with Gove”the only way to avoid having common borders with Turkey is to Vote Leave”.
Lying to the Queen
In September 2019, the Queen, on Johnson’s advice, prorogued Parliament for five weeks, enabling him to prevent parliamentary scrutiny of the government’s decisions on Brexit. Johnson and his Government defended the prorogation of Parliament as a routine political process. On 24 September, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the prorogation had been unlawful and Parliament later deleted it from the record. Johnson had given the Queen false advice, causing her to act illegally.
Lying to The Queen
Lying to the World
Opening his career as PM on the international stage at the G7 summit in Biarritz, France, Johnson told the world at large: “We asked the people to vote on whether to stay in or leave the EU,they voted overwhelmingly, they voted very substantially to leave by a big majority.”
The actual figures were: Leave 51.9%, Remain 48.1% a wafer thin majority. This was far from being a majority of the electorate. A minority of UK registered voters had voted for leave – just 37%. 17.04 million Leave voters are not a majority in a country with 46.5 million registered voters, or a country with a population of 65,000,000.
Lying to Parliament
Up to Johnson’s premiership, it was considered dishonourable to lie to Parliament. For ministers, resignation could be required (QV Profumo), and a formal apology to the House at least has been customary. With Johnson, lying to the House has become habitual, and without apology or correction, as the following examples from the May/June Parliamentary session prove:
“Yes, of course it’s true that it would be great to have an app, but no country currently has a functioning track and trace app.” (Reply to Starmer in Parliament. June, 23 2020). At the time, track and trace apps were being used in France, Germany, Australia, Poland, Latvia, Denmark, Japan and Italy. (Full Facts website, June 23, 2020).
“He (Starmer) is completely wrong in what he says about poverty. Absolutely, poverty and relative poverty have both declined under this government and there are hundreds of thousands – I think 400,000 – fewer families living in poverty now than there were in 2010”. (June 17 2020. Response to Starmer in Parliament.) Starmer had quoted from the government’s Social Mobility Commission’s report, that there were now 600,000 more children living in relative poverty. That report was based on the widely accepted definition of poverty generally used in government reports. No 10 could not provide a source for Johnson’s figure. Nor could the BBC’s Reality Check Team find any evidence for it.On July 30 the Office for Statistics regulation agreed with the chair of the End Child Poverty Coalition that Johnson statement was incorrect.
“Of the tests carried out at the 199 testing centres, as well as at the mobile centres, they’re all done within 24 hours”. (June 3, in reply to a question from Jeremy Hunt, chairman of the House of Commons health committee) Johnson’s reply was contradicted by the NHS’s official statistics for the week to June 3. These show that the proportion of people in England receiving their tests within 24 hours was 19% at regional test sites, 5% at mobile test units and 6% at satellite test centres.
Starmer asked whether it was right that care workers from abroad working on the NHS frontline should have to pay a surcharge to use the NHS themselves, Johnson replied: “Those contributions help us to raise about £900 m. It is very difficult to find alternative sources.” (May 21 2020) Johnson’s figure of £900 million is the cumulative total of all such payments from all immigrants, whatever their job, over the past four years. It is estimated that to exempt the care workers in question would cost government about £76m, at the new higher rates to be applied from October.
“97% of the primary schools which have submitted data are now seeing kids come back to school.” (Reply to Starmer in Parliament. June 10, 2020). The true figure from the Department of Education for that day was 69%. In other words, 31% of primary schools had not reopened – 10 times the 3% indicated by Johnson. When Full Facts asked No10 for the source of the 97% figure, no reply was given.
Lord of the Lies
Other Major Lies
“The money going into the NHS is the biggest increase in living memory, a £34 billion increase.” (November 29, 2019, in response to a caller on LBC during the election campaign and on other occasions). Johnson’s figure for the NHS budget for the next 5 years is the ‘cash’ increase, which allows for inflation to prevent NHS from shrinking. The real increase, taking account of inflation, is £20.5 billion, just over half Johnson’s figure. This is far from ‘the biggest increase in living memory.’ There were bigger increases in both cash and real terms during the last Labour government. Indeed, Johnson’s planned increase of 3.2% per year in real terms is below the 3.6% average for the NHS’s 70 year history, as well as barely half of the 6% achieved by Labour. (Source Institute of Fiscal Studies).
The economy of our country under this Conservative government has grown by 73%.” (January 31 2020) Assuming Johnson refers to the period since 2010, the true figure is around 20% (up to the pandemic). 73% is the figure for the whole period since 1990, 13 years of which were under the Labour government.
For more than 24 hours, ministers had been sent to radio and TV studios to defend the government’s decision to reject a proposal by Manchester United football star, Marcus Rashford, to continue free school meals through the summer holidays. On June 16, Johnson stated; “I talked to Marcus Rashford earlier today to congratulate him on his campaign, which to be honest I only became aware of very recently – well, today.” (June 16 2020) Are we really supposed to believe that while this issue was dominating the news and politicians and journalists were talking of little else, Johnson was oblivious to the storm that was raging around him?
When challenged by 4 London MPs about the proposed shake-up of Transport for London and the responsibilities of Sadiq Khan, the London mayor,Johnson alleged Khan had bankrupted the city, he was personally responsible for damage to Hammersmith bridge and Londoners deserved everything that was coming down the road to make their lives more miserable for having backed him. According to TfL’s accounts, since Khan took over from Johnson in 2016 he has reduced the deficit of £1.5b by 71%, to £0.5b and increased cash reserves by 16%. TfL being in trouble is entirely down to the pandemic. Johnson was violently jealous of Khan’s popularity with Londoners which exceeds his own, and Khan’s more successful record. Asking for the country’s trust during a national crisis when you can’t even tell the truth about an audited balance sheet is an uphill struggle.
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