Category: Education

Don’s week

Updated on

09/11/2023 by author

Peter Cook

Don Adamson writes on the crazy week that was from his Barnsley Brexit Bunker.

This week’s homework:

One – Discuss the following statement: ‘Have I got news for you’ used to be a satire programme that treated all politicians mercilessly. Is it gradually turning into a Tory propaganda programme?

Two – Discuss the following statement. Bonfire Night has come and gone. I am finally beginning to see Guy Fawkes’ point.

Three – Discuss the following statement. Common sense is a punishment because you must deal with all the people who do not have it.

Read Bully Braverman

This week’s quotes:

Good news from Warsaw

… Poles turned out in record numbers to vote down populist – nationalists Law and Justice (PiS) Party … the result is a relief … PiS has installed handpicked judges … turned state broadcasters into megaphones for PiS propaganda … deployed its people to run state-run industries … building a patronage system …

Windsor Framework still knotty

… nor has the framework removed the biggest concern for business … uncertainty … little divergence has happened in practice; most British firms do not want it … politics still in limbo … missing executive makes it harder to run fraying public services … Keith Starmer says he would like to move closer to the EU … negotiations would be testing … Brexit was always going to be problematic.. For years Northern Ireland has been treated as collateral damage in internecine Tory wars…

Why can’t Britain build the infrastructure it needs?

… painfully slow … in the next seven years Britain will need to build four times more grid infrastructure than it has managed in the last 30 … tangle of agencies … none has a convincing plan …

Welcome to the haunted house of Westminster

… a year since Thick Lizzie left … keep hearing about her … Richy Scumbag … message is that he is weak and she is still running the show … He is just Ken in her Barbie world … rather like Corbyn … Keith Starmer is a Marxist … I have principles but if you dislike them I will change them … Keith Starmer has never given a convincing explanation for why, unlike many colleagues, he served in Corbyn’s shadow cabinet for over three years. The charge of opportunism lingers … Thick Lizzie is unpopular among Tory MPs … Richy Scumbag has criticised her disastrous term in office only in mild terms … the charge of weakness sticks … Thick Lizzie is a reminder of a double Tory failure: acute blunder of the mini budget of September 2022 and the chronic failure to contain the ballooning tax burden …

Join Gina Miller at the Brexit Debate in London

Class distinction

… after Brexit referendumb policies were analysed only as they to appealed to an imagined working class voter… a Leave voting man in his 50s with reactionary views. This voter handed the Tories a fat majority in the 2019 election … skip forward four years and dysphoria is mercifully on the wane … partly due to its own absurdities … Richy Scumbag and his family are too rich to pretend to be anything else … negative ratings rival Johnson’s at his nadir … proverbial Red Wall voter, who delivered Labour heartlands to the Tories in 2019 matters far less … when standards of living are falling, questions of identity fall … never mind how people take their coffee …

The people who ruined Britain

… the death of political shame … Richy Scumbag … a weak man who betrayed his office, party and country … Britain has always been multicultural … Braverman’s rhetoric inflames tensions without resolving them … despicable game … portrayed all Albanians as criminals

Has anything this UK government has done actually improved things in the last 13 years?

Worse even than Johnson or Thick Lizzie … Richy Scumbag ‘s blinkered arrogance has accelerated the decline of the Tory empire … premature success … Napoleonic delusion … March 2022, spring statement was hailed as a dud … emerged that his father in law’s company continued to operate in Russia during the Ukraine conflict … wife benefitted from non Dom status … Scumbag badly mishandled furore … role of PM … utterly unsuited … at least he blocked some of Johnson’s most outrageous recommendations for honours … Scumbag has much to answer for … fixation with ‘small boats,’ Rwanda, Bibby Stockholm barge (infected with Legionella) … badly mishandled public sector strikes … PM and most of his colleagues shamefully absent from Commons … debate .. Privileges committee report on Johnson’s lies to Parliament about Partygate … deplorable speech to Parliament … slowing strategy to achieve net emissions … cancellation Northern Leg HS2 … exasperated investors … who set a premium on consistency … broken Britain over which he presides with a rictus grin … probable that Scumbag will lead Tories to defeat … excuses are being prepared … Scumbag has been Starmer’s greatest ally … a terrible PM … done nothing to restore confidence in party or politics generally … failed his own test … reappointed Braverman … after she broke ministerial code … dithered feebly over Nadhim Zahawi’s tax affairs … allegations against Dominic Raas perfectly clear … Scumbag desperately hung on to Raas looking for a loophole … instead of renewing standards … he encouraged conspiracy theories … stoked the populist fervour … Tory Party shifted towards MAGA UK … exploits Braverman’s spiel … He is worse than Johnson (a lumbering hulk of amorality) or Thick Lizzy (ideologically deranged)… entirely calculated and all the more despicable … delusion that past success denotes future triumph … terrible self deception … soon the magnitude of that failure will become clear …

How they broke Britain

… politicians denied everything … loss betrayal, unbridled arrogance, impunity, warped ideology and political incompetence … deliberately set UK on course of decline … remained in power long after the damage they did became clear … not a single word of contrition … supporters of austerity, Brexit Johnson, Thick Lizzie and other disasters … determined to blame people who had spent years warning and explaining what those consequences would be … lies, prejudice, manipulations … unforgivable … controlled by… media, politics and wealth … sheer abnormality is rarely noted … we rarely notice how ridiculous our country has become … proof is everywhere … government inflicted economic catastrophe … what was once unthinkable is now unremarkable … politicians and cronies remain in office after being found guilty … epic delays … trade unfeasibly complicated … unnecessary damage … meaningless anti-woke rhetoric … bogus culture wars … former head of the British Army said … ‘I’ve been to Rwanda … shadow of genocide lingers … dark history … ‘ … Braverman has yet to provide evidence of her claims … commercial catastrophes, national tragedies … routinely proved spectacularly wrong without suffering censure … experts proved horribly wrong … continue to broadcast with their status undimmed … Think of one shameful episode and a dozen more will spring to mind … secretly funded lobby groups … represent nobody except anonymous tycoons and vested interests … allowed ridiculous things to happen … first population to vote sanctions on itself … Brexit costing the country £100Bn a year … UK is in the most difficult position of major economies … suffered loss of investment of £29Bn … economic catastrophe … Tories bear obvious responsibility .. you would not know this from media coverage … as dangerous as it is daft … delusional denialism … traced back to Brexit … Tories increasingly detached from reality and integrity … lasting damage … inability to disown the deceptions that delivered Brexit … pantomime characters like Grease Bogg … bigots, weirdoes … flourished most in Brexit Britain … everything they touched began to crumble … constantly denying reality, inventing persecution, shifting blame, rewriting history … everyday something new happens to deepen the awfulness, absurdity of what these people have done …

Don Adamson Brexorcist in arms The Brexit Bunker, Barnsley

Join us at Gina Miller 3E launch event online Tues 14 Nov

Posted in Borders, Boris Johnson, Brexit, Brexorcism, Britain, Britastrophe, Democracy, Economics, Education, Gina Miller, Immigration, Politics, Rejoin EU, Sovereignty, Sunak, Tories | Tagged Brexit, Britain, Britastrophe | Leave a reply

Don’s Brexit Bunker

Updated on

05/11/2023 by author

Peter Cook

Don Adamson reports from the Brexit bunker in Barnsley.

This week’s homework:

One – Discuss the following statement: a so called ‘Independent’ firm of lawyers was called in to investigate the allegations that NatWest Bank treated Nigel Garbage badly. Unsurprisingly the so called ‘independent’ law firm found that Nat West’s treatment of Nigel Garbage was not to the required standard. What more proof does anybody need that the legal system in this country has been nobbled by neo Nazis? Perhaps decent people in this country should close their bank accounts and bank with Nat West instead.

Two – Crispin Blunt MP says he is confident that no charges will be brought against him in the matter of sex crime allegations. Is this because a) sex crimes have been punishment free in this country since 2010 b) the legal profession in this country has been nobbled by neo Nazis or c) both?

Rhymes with Crispin Blunt …

Three – Johnson has a new job: his own programme on GB News. No doubt some people will watch it. The Tories have wrecked the economy for the benefit of tax dodgers and other criminals. The newspapers in this country are owned by unscrupulous billionaires who have convinced the suckers that poverty is in their best interests. Keith Starmer’s one and only response is to have us believe that Labour can make Brexit and Tory austerity work. How much are Murdoch and Rothermere paying Starmer to say this?

Four – Some fascinating stuff is coming out of the inquiry in to the Covid pandemic. One Tory MP has been quoted as saying that Johnson was the wrong PM for Covid. In which unlikely parallel dimension would Johnson remotely resemble any kind of right PM?

Five – Discuss the following: In Harold MacMillan we had a Tory Prime Minister who was horrified when John Profumo told lies in Parliament. Why do we now have politicians who would be horrified if anybody spoke the truth in Parliament? When Profumo’s political career ended he redeemed himself by working for Toynbee Hall, a charity that exists to alleviate poverty in the East End of London. What is the possibility of 21^st century politicians making any effort to redeem themselves?

Join us on Tuesday 14 Nov 9 am on ZOOM with Gina Miller

This week’s quotes:

Brexit has made collaborations problematical

… one example is defence … Brexit has seriously damaged that … Big projects were always a motor for positive Anglo-French relations.

Richy Scumbag’s plans to revitalise Euston

… of the thousands of dwellings built in Docklands only a handful were affordable by local residents … Regeneration of Battersea Power Station, Nine Elms and King’s Cross … have been characterised by inordinate delays and skyscrapers of apartments … sold to offshore investors … an odd template for a ‘levelling up’ project …

Read Private Eyelines

Bernie Ecclestone is the only high profile prosecution for hiding assets offshore

… Cameron government made it a criminal offence for tax evasion… not been deployed …

Boris Johnson took an undeclared £800,000

… loan facilitated by Richard Sharp before making Sharpe chairman of the BBC…

… drastically cutting back sports desk … not all cuts … recently advertised for a ‘sports betting correspondent … Never mind boring writing about sports when you can tell readers how to lose money betting on it … Maths clearly not the strong suit … ‘Poll stated PM trusted to protect rights of women … in fact the poll stated the exact opposite … poll also indicated that Mail readers blamed Johnson for the nation’s woes.

Job cuts at the Mail on Sunday

Big Pharma was a big presence at Labour conference , perhaps hoping a change of government may sweeten relationships and deals with NHS … if the NHS does not pay more it will force Pharma to reduce … R& D and manufacturing investment in UK …

Read 12 Angry Tories

Richy Scumbag’s wife, Akshata Murty vouched for her husband’s love for the UK

… without mentioning any such commitment on her own part … may have been down to her tax advisers … acknowledging the UK as her home may jeopardise any future ‘non dom’ claim … she gave up that status in 2022 but there was no promise not to use it again …

Starting on 29 October GB News will give viewers a break

… cranks conspiracists and Tory politicians … John Cleese’s 10 part … Dinosaur hour… I want to discuss ‘Woke issues’ but we could not get people on …

The Barclay Dynasty – a story of secrecy, survival and succession

…like a high end episode of East Enders … one side of the family bugs the conversations of the other … Fred’s wife divorces him … he pleads poverty and refused to hand over the cash ordered by the courts, daring the judge to send him to prison … avowedly impecunious … sunk £7.5 into suing his nephews over the bugging incident … for a measly return of £800,000 settlement … book reads as a history of the dodgier corners of the financial world over the last eight decades … emerged unscathed from the ensuing scandal with debts happily unpaid … Byzantine business structure .. Pay no tax … obsessive persecution of the people of Sark…

Pandemic Deaths

… England and Wales excess mortality of +26% …third highest Western Europe … 12 highest globally … BMA criticised government for … failure to provide an official, strong, independent public health presence … slowness to introduce proper PPE … Eat out to help out …drove up infections by between 8-17% … chopping and changing of ever more complex and confusing restrictions … clear by February 2020 that NHS would be overwhelmed.. Civil Servants and ministers aware of this … rising deaths in care homes … as patients were discharged from hospitals without testing … no testing or PPE for staff … basic infection control was so poor in hospitals and care homes that they had their own epidemics … Staff died alongside patients and still have long Covid …Cabinet turmoil was a key reason for dismal UK response to Covid … breaches of Covid rules by those in power destroyed public trust … government does not have the credibility needed … we look like a terrible, tragic joke ..Carrie Johnson appeared to be the real person in charge … Lee Cain, Johnson’s director of communications until November 2020 said ‘Carrie ‘does not know wtf she is talking about … don’t worry about Demonic Shortcummings Carrie is the real person in charge … Met police issued a further 24 referrals for Partygate fines after illegal party at Tory HQ on 14 December 2020 … bringing total fines to 150 … terrible mistake to open pubs while keeping schools shut … mental illness eating disorders, self harm and suicide all rose ..still high rates of absence from school and attainment gap widening … excess deaths remained high in 2023 … bodes ill for the coming winter … poor public health and long waiting times for treatment … increased alcohol consumption, worsening mental health …

Brexit Too Little, Too Late — I made this in March 2020 – we knew all this at the time.

Good news from Warsaw

… Poles turned out in record numbers to vote down populist- nationalists Law and Justice (PiS) Party … the result is a relief … PiS has installed handpicked judges … turned state broadcasters into megaphones for PiS propaganda … deployed its people to run state-run industries … building a patronage system … Poland won … Democracy won … PiS deployed state media and state owned companies stuffed with cronies to blitz the country with propaganda …

Brexit Referendumb begat four years of uncertainty followed by a trade deal that introduced friction to formerly frictionless borders

…. ruptured global supply chains … decision to leave … EU … presented serious difficulties … Bosses still grumble about uncertainty … the real risk was not that manufacturers would shut up shop but that future investment would go elsewhere … there is more to grumble about … policy stability is essential, yet the government has followed six different industrial strategies in the last decade … making even short term planning arduous …

Read Deceptive Bends

Prisons are overcrowded because Tories demanded longer sentences without building more prisons

… most absurd example of a tactic increasingly deployed by… not willing to increase taxes to cover the cost of services voters demand … results are shortages, queues unpredictable rationing … Richy Scumbag cancelled the Manchester leg of HS2 railway … painted it as redistribution … money saved could be spent elsewhere .. it is fair to assume that few other schemes will materialise … most pernicious in housing … shortages have reached new highs … NHS waiting lists stand at 8m cases in a country of 56m people … Tories are allergic to high taxes but do not have the cojones to support market based solutions … miserable compromise … no way to run a country …

Tory Party Conference

… Northern delegates angry at Richy Scumbag … only Sue Ellen Braverman is less popular … every time she speaks a Tory seat loses 2,000 votes … makes me think of a cross between ‘Carry on up the Khyber’ and the Titanic … all of them know they are doomed … hard-line Tories don’t appeal to anybody any more, even their own children … Nigel Garbage at Disco with Priti Patel … there is a match made in Hades … Labour Party conference … Trying to be more British … Union flags … Tory should have next conference in Torquay at Fawlty Towers because there will be so few of them as MPs …

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

Posted in Borders, Boris Johnson, Brexit, Brexorcism, Britain, Cummings, Democracy, Education, Europe, Farage | Tagged Boris Johnson, Brexit, Britain, Britastrophe, Politics, Rejoin EU, Rishi Sunak | Leave a reply

Economy, Education, Environment

Updated on

29/10/2023 by author

Peter Cook

You are cordially invited to Gina Miller’s True and Fair party launch event on Economy, Education, Environment, Tuesday November 7th at 9.00 am online via ZOOM. This is the 2nd part of the True and Fair party’s policy release in the build up to a general election.

In the 4th industrial age, education is the key to so many things. Our Government has run down education over 13 years of managed decline to the point that our schools are literally crumbling, mentally and physically. They are also in denial of climate change and environmental stewardship, the very antithesis of what the idea of conservatism was supposed to mean. And we hardly need to mention the economy after 13 years of austerity which powered Brexit. This has led to a 4.5% knock in our resilience to face other global shocks such as Russia’s war, COVID and so on. Only Gina Miller’s party has a clear strategy for rejoining the EU.

If you want different rather than a continuation of the same old same old, join Gina Miller’s party today. True and Fair are standing a small number of candidates across England and some more plurality in our politics will enable us to lever significant change in Westmonster. Check out their Chapters for Change policy document on the reforms needed in politics. If you can help the candidates in any way in Derbyshire Dales, East Wiltshire, Epsom, Ewell, Leatherhead, Fareham, Waterlooville, Mid Bedfordshire, Monmouthshire or the Wirral, please get in touch via reboot@brexitrage.com

Conviction candidates rather that Convicted Conservative candidates.

Join us on Wed Nov 1st 8pm on ZOOM to Reboot Britain

Posted in Brexit, Britain, Economics, Education, Environment, Gina Miller, Rejoin EU | Tagged Brexit, Britain, Britastrophe, Economy, Education, Elections, Environment, Rejoin EU | Leave a reply

Not grasping the nettle. Sir Keir Starmer. Image by P Paton.

Faulty Towers

Updated on

10/10/2023 by author

Peter Cook

I’ll keep this simple. Labour insiders tell me that Keir Starmer will ‘get round’ to rejoining the EU in 2032 when nobody’s looking. Here’s why this is a unicorn to placate Labour ideologues and silence debate. It is 2023 now. Cast your mind forward 9 years ….

By 2032, few will remember what Brexit was, let alone care to do anything about it

Even in 2023 Brexit has disappeared from the news cycle and from public discourse. The poor attendance of around 5000 at the Rejoin march is an indicator of ‘Learned Helplessness’ and ‘Brexit fatigue’ amongst the general public, who either believe that Brexit is done or that we can’t do anything about it. Climate denial, bully dogs, ULEZ, mythical meat taxes, Holly Willoughby, potholes, HS2 and a stream of Tory gaslighting has effectively clogged the media channels and occupied the minds of people who are attracted to the next shiny bright object in the news. We fall for it every time.

By 2032, Horizon type deals and other ‘mini pay as EU go’ deals will reduce the pool of people who still think that Brexit is an issue

See our article Pay as EU go for more on Rishi Sunak’s strategy to pick single issues off one at a time and thus dilute the community of people interested in the underlying issue of Brexit.

By 2032, the damage of Brexit will be complete, much of it irreversible, thus little point in rejoining

For example, once the car industry leaves Britain due to rules of origin issues, they will not rush back just because a rejoin strategy is in place. Business relocations are big decisions etc. By 2027 our premier position in financial services will have declined as companies relocate or take key staff out of Brexit Britain. And so on. Like a chemical reaction, some are irreversible. Labour know all of this but fail to act. Even Prof Anand Menon is making excuses for Keir Starmer based on ‘here and now’ research. The word Brexit may have been silenced by all the political parties, media and people not wishing to re-open family wounds but all the products of Brexit are being talked about per our Brexit iceberg. Importantly, Brexit won’t go away if we keep not talking about it. It will remain a festering sore in many families for a generation until ‘gran and grandad Brexit’ have spun off this mortal coil.

By 2032 the EU may well have worked around us

This is not an insignificant point. Although there is value on both sides from rejoining at this time, there will be precious little socio-economic capital in the EU accepting us back in 2032. Just the much larger asset of political capital for the EU … they would be able to day that “the prodigal son returned”. However, the EU may well have speeded up accession of other nations seeking to join and may feel that Brexit Britain are just not worth the trouble. As a business person I fully understand that sometimes people choose the easier paths rather than the more difficult ones.

By 2032, our divergence from EU standards will make it technically more difficult to rejoin

Although this is perhaps the smallest issue, it makes the whole matter less tractable and politicians prefer to do easy things rather than difficult things.

The time is now. Join the True and Fair party

Only the True and Fair party have a clear position on Brexit in England. See Rejoin the EU.

Write to your Labour MP with the above points. The long game began with Jeremy Corbyn. It must end NOW.

From the Vault – Lib Dem conference feat Madeleina Kay and Steve Bray

Posted in Brexit, Brexorcism, Britain, Britastrophe, Education, Europe, Keir Starmer, Labour, Rejoin EU | Tagged Brexit, Britain, Britastrophe, Labour, Rejoin EU | 8 Replies

Rishi 2.0

Updated on

08/10/2023 by author

Peter Cook

The Tufton Street gang have decided to genetically reformat Rishi Sunak to help him win an election. The ‘battleship grey’ Rishi 1.0 was at least built on the solid foundations of Sunak’s dull technocratic self to calm down politics. Rishi 1.0 had to deal with two crises:

Boris Johnson’s negligent killings of old people via his herd immunity fallacy, his “oven ready Brexit” deal which is burnt to a crisp, gross spaffing of our money on failed vanity projects, a tsunami of cronyism, gross lies and excuses and, of course, the Partygate scandals whilst people were forced to let their loved ones die alone, including the Queen.

Liz Truss’ wilful destruction of the economy in one weekend, adding thousands of pounds per year irreversibly to mortgages, billions to our national debt and a total loss of confidence in the UK plc on the world stage.

Cue Rishi 2.0, the radical reinvention from bland to ‘exciting’. Sunak’s ‘mum’ aka Akshata Murty launched Rishi’s reformatting at the Tory party conference, in order to curry favour from Tory faithful. With support from the warmup act Penny Morduant aka Alana Partridge, who managed the dubious accolade of saying “stand up and fight” 12 times in 80 seconds, although nobody was sure why, who with, when, where or with what.

Rishi 2.0 – What’s in store?

‘Radical Rishi 2.0‘ will be tough on society and tough on the causes of society. Fierce with the 99% of wokeists, leftists, left luggage attendents, left handed bankers, left leaning journalists, centrists, greenies, hippies, commies, liberals, snowflakes, members of the London Assembly, forins, doctors, train drivers, nurses, social workers, teachers, farmers, fishermen, firemen, train drivers, trainspotters, comedians, LGBTQIA+, judges et al. In fact everyone that does not sign up to the Tory fascist agenda. Here are some of the policies which Rishi 2.0 will likely hint at in the coming months, slightly exaggerated for fun. Of course he will actually do nothing about any of them:

Running through some of the Rishi 2.0 bullet points above:

On Thursday Sunak aligned himself with Italian fascist Georgia Meloni, to build a desperate consensus around his “Stop the Boats” campaign. However, Brexit Britain will be regarded as international pariahs if we leave the ECHR as a piece of Brexit grandstanding. Twinned with North Korea and Russia.

It sounds frivolous to suggest that model railway company Hornby should run the railways, but clearly a Government that does not know whether the rail link has been built to Manchester airport is not fit to commission rail projects using £ billions of our taxes. The HS2 fiasco has cost £91 billion of taxpayers’ money.

Check out CPC 2023 by clicking on Thomas.

As with Johnson, the devil is in the detail with Sunak. Having announced that HS2 will go to Euston at CPC 2023, the truth is that this will only happen with private investment to build the line from Old Oak Common to Euston. If I were an investor at this point in the cycle I’d not be up for investing in a railway that could be cancelled in a few years’ time after an election.

The distraction of a new British educational qualification almost literally concretes over the problems of crumbling schools. Rishi is trying to gaslight us away from the problems of RAAC by introducing the ABS (Absolute Bullshitter Sunak / Advanced British Standard) qualification to replace A and T Levels. You fool no-one Rishi.

RAAC and Roll — Gillian Keegan – concreting over education problems.

Will Rishi cancel the triple lock for pensioners as the new hard man of the Tory party? Time will tell. So far, it is more of the same with Jeremy Hunt targeting the most vulnerable with his next set of cuts. But the pensioners could well be next as a new cash cow. After all, I guess that Lee Anderson would ask what is the point of them being alive if they won’t vote Conservative? In any case, I guess Anderson believes that pensioners can live on 30p a day.

Levelling up proves to be a project about levelling roads, with 25% of the £36 billion ‘windfall’ from HS2 going to fill potholes. This may help to fill election leaflets in MP constituencies but is hardly a demonstration of Rishi Sunak’s so-called claim of “long term decisions for a brighter future“.

Clearly the Tories love the distraction of XL Bully dogs to stop people thinking of more important matters. Nonetheless I doubt we’ll see The Police employing them to patrol the streets, but anything is possible given recent lies about meat tax and 15 minute cities.

Finally, Robert Jenrick has suggested that we must breed more children to cope with the need for more carers for old people. I imagine that Boris Johnson is ready as CIO (Chief Insemination Officer).

Will Rishi 2.0 succeed?

Highly doubtful – Tufton Street have no idea about personality change, as they are people without personalities. Leopards and spots etc. Rishi Sunak’s speech to CPC 2023 was pretty much his usual “Blue Peter” style of delivery and the excitement of all the promises has been shown to be a pack of lies within a day. CPC 2023 looked like a wake for a dying brand. I guess Tufton Street could tell Sunak to work on his image rather than his content. Perhaps some pink flashes in his hair, flairs to give him more appeal to youth or at least trousers that reach his ankles? Or maybe a beard to make him look a bit more radical / risky?

You can’t take the bore out of bland

You can’t take the Rishi out of the Sunakered

Join the True and Fair party

The room next door ….

Posted in Borders, Boris Johnson, Brexit, Brexorcism, Britain, Britastrophe, Democracy, Education, Elections, Ethics, Europe, Gina Miller, Immigration, Leadership, Liz Truss, Rejoin EU, Sunak | Tagged Brexit, Britain, Britastrophe, Conservatives, Rishi Sunak | Leave a reply

Human rights, human wrongs

Updated on

03/10/2023 by author

Peter Cook

If we want change to happen we cannot expect this to occur by repeating the same binary politics that led to our xenophobic Brexit referendum. As I write this, Suella Braverman has just declared that being a woman or gay is not a good enough reason to seek asylum in Britain. Braverman forgot to say that gay people claiming asylum are doing so because they are threatened with persecution and execution and not because of their sexual preferences. Read our latest article at The Prisma for more on this. Prisma is an Anglo Spanish newspaper, which means out work breaks outside the bubble. Join us tomorrow to discuss the end of Brexit and Braverman’s vile policies against society.

Join us on Wed 4 October 8 pm ZOOM to Reboot Britain

Read Mid Beds by-election

Check our composition out which we recorded in 2018 as a warning about Brexit. Sadly it has come to pass.

Posted in Borders, Brexit, Democracy, Education, Ethics, Gina Miller, Immigration, Rejoin EU, Sovereignty, Sunak | Tagged Brexit, Britain, Ethics | Leave a reply

My Brexit Story

Updated on

20/09/2023 by author

Peter Cook

Brexit has damaged my mental health

By Sam Haung.

I would like to tell a bit about myself at the time when we are in the midst of the cost-of-living crisis, Ukraine-Russia conflict, post-pandemic, and the low-morale amongst humans across all age categories. My name is Sam. I was originally from Taiwan 45 years ago. I have lived in 4 different countries in my life time: Taiwan, US, UK and Denmark. The UK has particularly shaped me for who I am now. I came to the UK because I felt the education system was much better than in my own country.

My mother died some 31 years ago in Taiwan. It was not a good start to my teenage life.

I started my new life in the UK by attending a boarding school in Cambridge back in September 1995. It was not an easy start, as my spoken English contained a heavy North American accent. But, I really made many British friends at school in the first year. I had managed to get the “gist” of the various aspects of “Britishness”: Fish-and-Chips, Snooker, Football, Rugby, Tennis, TV programmes (They Think It Is All Over is one, Absolutely Fabulous etc.), the “posh” accents, jokes etc. I gradually acquired more British friends as the years went on.

After Cambridge, I went to three different British universities to study undergraduate and postgraduate degrees (Staffordshire, Bradford and Leeds). I had also been through a broken engagement, changing jobs, and the acceptance of this country for me being a new British citizen 15 years ago.

I must admit, I did not know very much about the European Union until after I used my UK passport travelling freely in the first 4-6 years. That was why I ended up living in Denmark for 11 months. I met my ex-wife back in 2012 and she was from Denmark. We met online first and then for real at Leeds Train Station. I miss 2012. That year, Britain was hosting the Olympics and Paralympics. Despite the state of the country’s politics was divisive back then (more divisive now!), Britain was still enjoying an important and a respectable status in European and global politics. We had two children together. However, the 2016 Referendum result had changed all that for the worst. On top of that, my two children were diagnosed with slow learning developments in Denmark. I got depressed. I thought I could have a family of my own on both sides of the North Sea. Now, I have to worry about everything. And, I have lost almost everything, including the future with my family, either here in the UK, or in Denmark, or both. I thought that Britain could provide me a stable life. I was wrong.

Now I have to worry about the future of Europe, as well as the tensions between Taiwan and China, as well as worrying about the future of my two children.

To sum up, due to the result of the 2016 EU referendum, Brexit has taken away the opportunity to establish a stable family in both the UK and Denmark as my freedom of movement is under threat and I find that I am a ‘Citizen of Nowhere’ to quote Theresa May.

All my hopes and dreams are gone now. We must rejoin our European neighbours.

Brexit has damaged my mental health. I am still suffering from it.

Sam Haung

Posted in Brexit, Education, Immigration, Mental Health | Tagged Brexit, Britain, Britastrophe, Mentsl Health | Leave a reply

Reformation shuffle

Updated on

12/09/2023 by author

Peter Cook

Do we need to reform the civil service? By Paul Higgins.

We have heard quite often lately that the civil service needs to be reformed. Whilst this is true, the reform needed should go in the opposite direction to the one we so often hear about. Most problems in the civil service come from contagion from politicians, especially ministers and secretaries of state.

If we look at current ministers and compare them with those 30 or 40 years ago, we see that today ministers in any department have little or no expertise or knowledge of their areas. 40 years ago, the Secretary of, say, Defence, used to be a military or an expert with an idea of where he wanted our armed forces to be in 10 years and what steps were needed for that journey to happen. Similarly, the Secretary of Agriculture was a farmer, an academic, a veterinarian or someone with experience or expertise in farming. Because of this expertise they tended to stay longer in the post, which enabled them to build a strong corporate memory to address the various issues affecting the department or the field, to see future problems and to prevent them before they happened.

Things have changed dramatically. Ministers now move fast from one department to another and they rarely have any knowledge of the areas they manage, whether it is farming, defence or international relations. Because of this, politics are now quite shortsighted. Nothing after the next general election matters and public services show a sharp decline in efficiency and quality. This is because the building stones for this quality will deliver tangible results only after some decades after being laid instead of some months. Another factor behind the increasingly poorer quality of public decisions is its politicisation. It is quite common to see a minister arguing with the engineers about whether a road should be built passing through this or that constituency, and, as you can imagine, the arguments rest on how voters in the constituency would react to a new road instead of on how to make the road safe, cheaper, environmentally friendly or how it will improve the capacity and time of journeys.

The civil service is suffering a similar trend. This is very clear when we look at recruitment or promotions where technical expertise has disappeared and instead the so-called behaviours are now the only criteria. These behaviours are valid everywhere, in every post, but leadership, influence or communicating will not make you capable of designing the best road but to argue in a powerpoint that it wasn’t your fault that the road was of a substandard quality. Putting even more effort in promoting these behaviours will improve relations between ministers and civil servants in the short term but will result in even worse and more expensive public services. As problems and tensions accumulate the blame game will intensify and we will see even more and louder calls to reform the civil service and get rid of unelected bureaucrats and experts. Since civil servants are not allowed to respond and publish their side of the story, this trend is quite difficult to reverse.

Finally, it is worth noticing that while most governments in western democracies suffer this problem, it is the UK Government where it is most exacerbated and, hence, more difficult to reverse.

Paul Higgins

Posted in Britain, Culture, Education | Tagged Britain, Politics | Leave a reply

Brighton Rock

Updated on

03/09/2023 by author

Peter Cook

I am speaking at a panel event with the BBC’s Jonty Bloom on September 7th in Brighton from 7 – 9.30 pm with a cast of star people. We will be discussing the impact of Brexit on musicians. Organised by Helen Gibbons, Chair of European Movement Sussex. We will also be making stops with the Bollocks to Brexit Mini Cooper en route at the Millennium Clocktower and Seaford (venue tbc) 2 – 4 pm with our UK Brexorcism Tour. See Facebook for up to date details of the tour schedule.

UNLOCK THE MUAIC — Click to reserve your place.

Unlock the Music

The careers and livelihoods of UK musicians are being damaged by the loss of the right to work across borders in Europe. European Movement Sussex presents Unlock the Music, a panel event focused on the impact of Brexit on the music industry.

Experienced industry professionals and working musicians will each present their evidence and tell of the issues that have damaged the careers and prospects of many of those involved in music in the UK. They will also offer achievable solutions that the UK government should pursue.

Panel members include:

Dave Webster – Head of International at the Musicians’ Union

Will Page – Author, podcaster and former Chief Economist at Spotify

Tom Kiehl – Deputy CEO and Director of Public Affairs at UK Music

Heather Bird – Double bassist and founder of Classical Evolution

Peter Cook – Author of three books on Brexit and six albums of protest songs

Hanna Madalska-Gayer – Head of Policy & Communications, Association of British Orchestras

Jonty Bloom – Freelance journalist ex BBC and New European contributor (Moderator)

Date: Thursday, 7 September. Time: 7pm – 9.30pm

Venue: Brighton Unitarian Church, New Road, Brighton, BN1 1UG.

Tickets from TicketSource.

This is the first of a series of three Rebuild with Europe events addressing Brexit impacts on specific sectors. Future events will focus on agriculture and education.

Read our article on musicians and Brexit at The Federal Trust.

Join us in Swindon Wed 30 August

Posted in Brexit, Britain, Education, Music, Rejoin EU | Tagged Brexit, music, Rejoin EU | 4 Replies

The Don

Updated on

24/08/2023 by author

Peter Cook

Don Adamson writes from his hollow in Barnsley where he contemplates everything from the Disney Longstocking prison ship to Boris Johnson’s sacking from journalism and beyond.

This week’s homework:

One – Some people would say that Chris Mullins was an under rated minister. He felt strongly about efficiency and economy. He would never make a decision until he was satisfied that the proposal was a) effective and b) economical. His staff officers complained that he sometimes took this to the point of diminishing returns. Sooner or later you come to the point where the cheapest thing you can do is sign the cheque and get on with it. Are there any ministers in this government who can be criticised for being over economical and over efficient?

Two – Trump faces 91 indictments. a) Will he score a century? b) Trump calls this a Which Hunt. Is that because he does not know which indictment is which?

Three – I looked in at the Iceland supermarket to buy provisions. The young lady at the checkout said she like my Bulwarks to Brexit cap; for which I thanked her. With the benefit of hindsight perhaps I should have told her that the people in charge of Iceland used to be ardent supporters of Brexit. We hear less of that nowadays. Do I understand that even the people who own Iceland have noticed that Brexit has not turned out to be the earthly paradise we used to hear so much about? Have even the people who own Iceland noticed that Brexit is doing a FUBAR on the British economy?

This week’s quotes:

Rupert Murdoch

… used to grant more audiences to Richy Scumbag than even his arch toady Johnson … passion appears to have cooled…

JCB Chairman Lord Bamford

… said in 2016 that UK was the fifth biggest economy in the world … last year UK dropped to 6^th largest … Bamford in no way apologetic for his position on Brexit but wails ‘Isn’t our country in a mess now?’

Read Changing Minds on Brexit

Immigration no immigration dream of Brexiters lies in tatters

… no public acceptance of this by the government … compared with what we had before Brexit the system is costly, time consuming, badly run, wrapped in miles of red tape and is nothing more than a huge anchor holding the economy back … Brexiters are in full retreat. While publicly lecturing business on the need to conjure up new British employees out of thin air … privately lowering the thresholds under which foreign workers can come to Britain … quite a turnaround … foreign workers can come to Britain at great expense and bother to themselves … makes sectors of the economy look aghast at the government making their lives more difficult … hospitality…. government has come up with what in Blackadder would be described as a ‘cunning plan’ … a pathetic ruse to claim that immigration is not happening when in reality it is … an arrogant, ignorant fantasy … desperation leads the government to propose ridiculous policies like these … Scumbag’s team is torn between populist rhetoric it spews out and reality .. a moribund economy where growth is non existent … a disaster happening before our eyes … latest ruses make it harder for universities to recruit foreign students, even though they are the only thing keeping the further education sector afloat … At least in Italy the far right has woken up to reality … in our surreal politics government promises cuts to immigration knowing full well that it is neither in the national interest or possible…

Number Crunching

7.47M is the number of people on National Health Service waiting lists (up since Richy Scumbag pledged to reduce them). – 8% proportion of NHS budget spent transferring patients to private care … £318M cost of housing 500 refugees in cramped Bibby Stockholm barge for a year … £15.25M Cost of sending 500 refugees on a Disney cruise for a year.

Disney Boat — Live scenes from the Disney Longstocking.

Hack watch

Nick Timothy, Telegraph correspondent … Britain faces multiple, complex crises … everything seems frozen by uncertainty, ignorance and fear. The understanding is not there, the ideas are not there … The challenges we face are truly enormous, yet our politics has never seemed smaller … Capitalism as we know it has failed. Not even the Tories can defend it…

Michael Gove told last month’s conference of Local Government Associations

… financially struggling councils were a handful of cases, the exception … six councils have declared themselves bankrupt since 2020 … several others could join them … Kensington and Chelsea (Conservative) …deficit of £47M by 2027 … Kent County Council (Conservative) … faces a deficit of £86M this year … Hartlepool (Conservative since 2019) …even with a 5% increase in council tax deficits could increase to 8M … Warwickshire (Conservative) … worst cases scenario of £106M deficit by 2028 … Guildford (Lib Dem since May previously Conservative) … £300M debts …

Coutts furore with Nigel Garbage

Coutts indicated the decision was not about politics but corporate image… Mad Nad Dorries is taking a break from her little watched show on Talk TV … less than 3,000 views on YouTube … has not spoke in Commons for a year … her constituency want her to resign for her lack of work … most MPs don’t give a toss about the public …

Join us in Brighton

Horizon Europe

Richy Scumbag’s stance continues to baffle EU officials, UK universities and research community … haggling over pennies … Brexit Britain procrastinates while other countries queue to join, New Zealand is latest non EU country to apply for associate membership … Scumbag is determined to de-Europeanise education and research … Scumbag is committed to government’s own half baked Pioneer scheme …

Immigration legal aid lawyers in South West England have zero capacity to take on asylum seekers housed on Bibby Stockholm

… makes a nonsense of Deputy PM’s claims that the barge will make processing easier … Dowden also complained he did not hear howls of outrage of use of floating accommodation in other countries … Silya Europa in Netherlands has been controversial for the last year…

Lobbying by MPs government promised reform

… not much has changed … income from outside jobs up to £4.75M from £4M … Tory MPs … make multiples of their salaries … standards committee concluded that placing limits on outside work was too difficult … plenty of room at the trough …

Read our Gutterpress pages

Horizon

Britain should rejoin … without further delay … British sciences face major obstacles … British scientists are clamouring to get back into Horizon … Richy Scumbag sees three arguments against … none stand up to scrutiny … Tories trumpeting planned Britain only project Pioneer … cannot match … Horizon … hard-line Gammons argued Britain could keep benefits of membership … difficult to find a better example than Horizon … Researchers and universities say delay over Horizon has cost the country … If Scumbag is serious about supporting British science he should stop dithering and sign up without delay ..

Brexit has failed

… London Stock Exchange looks increasingly moribund … Brexit has not made it easier to manufacture in UK … exporting has become more complicated … Britain is a diminished actor in export markets … failed to bring in investment … shrank by nearly half in 2022 … Britain is going backwards … Britain’s finance sector battered by Tories … workers have fared no better … raw sewage pumped into English waterways … failing health service… Brexit is a catastrophe for the country which those who campaigned for it claimed to love … Nigel Garbage now barely mentions the B-word … Johnson’s weekly Daily Mail column is largely a B-word free zone … no wonder Mail executives are ever more loudly asking each other ‘whose f*****g idea was this?’ … meanwhile true believer Richy Scumbag quietly drops, yet again, plans for new checks on imports from EU of farm produce … Who would have thought it, apart from those people who warned it would happen? … If Brexit was going well we would never hear the end of it…

48 52 Brexit — Brexit has failed. Click to read our article from 2021.

Eurosceptics are Ecosceptics

This time they will wreck the plant … When you have done all you can to wreck the nation what is next? Answer: wreck the planet … two projects are two sides of the same ugly coin … striking membership overlap between the European (not much) Research Group and the Net Zero scrutiny Group … Lord Frost, former chief Brexit negotiator, claimed, extraordinarily that ‘rising global temperatures are likely to be beneficial’ … both ideologies involve a shocking indifference to evidence and data … distaste for ‘experts’ … same paranoid suspicion of ‘global elites and conspiracies’ … Nigel Garbage is the key figure moving further and faster than most Tory MPs are prepared to go … all horribly familiar … classic disruptive playbook, first devised by the tobacco industry and now the basis of most populist politics … put the frighteners on Keith Starmer … you might think that Brexit did more than enough damage …

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Johnson is a person who rarely stays the course

… his Daily Mail gig likely to be no exception … Rothermere, mindful that Keith Starmer has promised to end non dom tax status, is less concerned that the column is desperately boring as its ceaseless digs at Richy Scumbag…

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