Wednesday September 8 2021 – from 19.00 – 21.00 – First hour is the seminar plus questions. Second hour is a digest of the issues raised by Professor Grayling and an opportunity for dialogue.
Please attend our induction event on Monday 2nd August at 8 pm on ZOOM. We will be considering scenarios to Rejoin EU.
In case you are not familiar with Scenario Planning, it can be summarised as “a history of the future”. We will consider a long time horizon of at least 10 years and then identify plausible events along that time line. These will be the PESTLE factors: political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental events. From this we construct the most likely scenarios, bearing in mind that our politics are in flux, so disruptions must be examined. I will be leading you through the process. You can read a little on the process at Scenarios although our time horizons will be longer than the example given.
So, please give some thoughts as to the likely events coming up in the next decade.
The event is free but do support us to help cover our costs in increasing our ZOOM contract. We aim to run more events and need £480 to cover a yearly upgrade on ZOOM.
Professor Grayling will speak on what we need to do to rejoin the EU sooner rather than later with some very practical suggestions for all of us to act upon.Anthony Grayling is the author of about 30 books on philosophy, biography, history of ideas, human rights and ethics, including The Refutation of Scepticism (1985), The Future of Moral Values (1997), Wittgenstein (1992), What Is Good? (2000), The Meaning of Things (2001), The Good Book (2011), The God Argument (2013), The Age of Genius: The Seventeenth Century and the Birth of the Modern Mind (2016) and Democracy and its Crises (2017).He has been a stalwart campaigner for our continuing membership of the European Union.
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There is a job going for Director, Brexit opportunities in the Cabinet Office – I was excited by the prospect of finding out what these were after five years of waiting patiently so I have applied. My application is below. I’d urge you to do the same. Here is the specification:
Dear Lord Sir David Frost,
I have been an avid follower of your work ever since The Frost Report and I was excited to see your research post for a Director of the BOU (Brexit Opportunities Unit). You need look no further, as you have found your man. To quote ELO, ‘I’ve been searchin’ for five years on my own account, meticulously comparing what we had in the EU with what we are getting, now that Brexit is out of the oven. I’d like to continue that research in the quest for the economic, social, technological, ethical, environmental and constitutional benefits of Brexit. As far as your job specification goes, I meet and exceed your requirements, in brief:
I am a skilled researcher, covering qualitative and quantitative methods, survey design and communications. With 3.5 degrees covering science, business and HR, I am quite used to dealing with the distortion of data by politicians, so I’d be more than able to extract the Brexit benefits from the background noise, if they exist. Broadly speaking, I am happy to continue with your line of “if the facts don’t fit the story, change the facts or just erase them”.
I am used to dealing with intelligent senior people across industry, politics, media and in public life. I am quite sure I could “level down” to work with imbeciles, sycophants and psychopaths as required by the role. I met the Prime Minister in 2012 shortly after the Olympics when he was dating a young woman so we have actually met.
In terms of change management, I have written 12 books on leadership and one on the question of changing minds on Brexit. Admittedly, the strategies in “Let’s Talk About BREX .. it” are directed towards the removal of illusions and fantasies about Brexit, what I call “Brexorcism”. However, these change management strategies are just as applicable to the erasure of people’s minds who voted to Remain, although it may be a lot quicker to round these people up and send them to a BCC (Brexit Concentration Camp) – in fact, I will make a proposal on this separate matter to Priti Patel shortly. I am prepared to work on this for 50 years as suggested by Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Change minds on Brexit
In terms of commanding confidence, I am a skilled practitioner of speaking truth to power. I see that lying is a precondition for doing the job and I would cope with this by using a placard saying “fake news” whenever I give a public brief to the media for greater clarity. In any case, in the post-Brexit world, the truth is an expensive luxury. I see that you, Johnson, Patel, Hancock, Raab, Duncan Smith, Francois et al. have managed to get by without needing to get dragged down by the truth. Bravo!!
As regards changing laws, I have no respect for the law, having been let down by the Police on several occasions when being attacked by Brexiteers. This means that I regard the law as unimportant in the quest to get Brexit done. Judges and the judiciary are one of the areas we must target to remove the scales of justice from people’s eyes.
I was considered to be too organised to get a job for Dominic Cummings. This demonstrates my ability to stick at something that has been a proven failure over the long term.
Dealing with the Russians at Parliament – Photograph by Bruce Tanner http://www.brucetanner.com
Crucially I have no political experience at all, a massive asset in a political world befuddled by political experts. Who needs experts (Gove, Govia). But I am good at coming up with meaningless phrases to describe the toxic cocktail of Corona crisis + Brexit disaster aka “Britastrophe“.
In the words of The Clash “I hate the army and I hate the R.A.F. I don’t wanna go fighting in the tropical heat. I hate the civil service rules. I won’t open a letter bomb for you.”
Put plainly, if Dido Harding can run the NHS, I can run the fucking Cabinet Office, FFS.
In summary, 27 years diverse experience as a business consultant, author, speaker and academic, working with companies such as Unilever, Pfizer, The UN, Virgin, BP. Find me at Linkedin.
On the suggestion of Julia Smith, may I ask for these other fringe benefits:
Free flags for my home, car etc.
Private health insurance delivered by the NHS
Cocaine discounts
Free use of the Royal Yacht Brexit McBrexitFace at weekends
Exclusive access to PPE contracts for which I am quite unsuitable @ £107 million per item
I require a minimum of two cats in the office at anyone time and a supply of fresh food for the kitties
A job for my son in strategic management
A gravy train and two year’s supply of Bisto
Yours in waiting
Peter
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Ignorance is the new intelligence
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Five years on and Brexit’s still undone. I often get quaint looks when I talk about Brexit in Kent now and some subtle or even less subtle social disapproval. For the record, I’m quite happy to be considered to be “so last year” until I am returned to the soil by my maker, or Brexit is placed in a shallow grave, whichever comes soonest. Brexit is in fact undone now that Johnson has realised he never read the contract. It will never be “done”. I told everyone that we’d be doing Brexit for the next 50 years and it begins to look that way. In five years it becomes apparent that we still don’t know what Brexit means but we are beginning to make some evaluation of what Brexit has brought us.
Economiceffects
£2.3 Trillion was lost in just one month from the city of London. Just for comparison and scale, that’s 58 years’ worth of our contribution of £39 billion to the EU wiped out in just one month. So, we would have to make up our losses due to Brexit until 2079 just from this impact alone. Let that sink in!!
Our Australia trade deal is worth 0.02% of GDP over 15 years. It would take 2000 deals like this to even make up our losses from our arrangements with the EU. At a generous estimate of our rate of deal making, we can expect to make up the losses from Brexit in trade deals by the year 3021. I know that’s bad economics as not all trade deals are worthless and some also take years not months but I think you should get the point.
£37 billion has wasted on test and trace. That’s more than what it takes to land a space mission on Mars at a mere £22.5 billion. Our contribution to the EU is £39 billion per year.
Despite promises made to fishermen on Brexit, the UK fishing industry will have been filleted by the time any new arrangements come into being with £1 Million being bled from the fisherman every DAY. Yet, we plan to spend £200 million on a Royal Yacht that the Royal family do not want or need. Brexit McBrexitFace will no doubt spend its time trawling international waters trying to net trade deals without catching anything more than scurvy.
Brexit shrank UK services exports by more than £110 billion over a four-year period. That’s 3 x our yearly contribution to the EU, much of which we get back.
Farmers have also been sold down the river with the introduction of hormone fed beef and the dumping of poor quality products into UK markets, just so that Liz Truss can claim success.
The building industry is beginning to show cracks with materials shortages and other supply chains being affected.
Food and drink exports from UK have declined by 50% since the beginning of 2021.
Coming soon, having lost EU steel import protections, our steel industry now faces a wave of cheap imports.
Hired goons distract people from Brexit shambles. Help us Re-Boot Britain by clicking the image.
Social / Welfare / Environmental
Brexit has been all consuming on Civil Service bandwidth and this means that there have been numerous areas of neglect. For example: social care, Grenfell, The Northern Ireland protocol and citizenship issues remain undone with massive consequences for lives and livelihoods. 305 000 people are caught in civil service backlogs for settled status and Johnson says he will not budge on the deadline of June 30th with impact on breaking up families and imprisonment at borders. Big issues in 2016 are still issues in 2021 due to the significant entropy of Brexit on progress across the board of Government.
“You can stay but your kids can’t”.
We are yet to see the whole impact of the end of the grace period at the borders but already all major supermarkets have imposed rationing on tinned tomatoes with food shortages predicted in the coming months and the army on standby.
And, of course, far from taking back control of £350 million per week for the NHS, Dido Harding is on the way to privatising your NHS. Was this on the side of a bus?
We did not need to do Brexit to deal with immigration. Our hostile environment has discouraged Europeans to work here. In particular we have seen a sharp decline in fruit pickers, care workers and other professions. The arguments made by Brexiteers to “grow our own” have not gathered any takers …
Instead of planting veg this year I have taken the Brexiteers advice to "grow our own". I have planted 3 doctors, 10 nurses, 5 scientists and 20 farmers in the ground. I now await the results #Brexiteers#BrexitReality#NHS#farming#ScienceResearch
— Re-Boot Britain – Rage Against The Brexit Machine (@BrexitRage) June 21, 2021
Political / Constitutional
The destruction of peace in Northern Ireland has already begun by the reckless abandonment of the Good Friday Agreement. Johnson promised there would be no border down the Irish Sea. He broke that promise, ending 30 years of peace on the island of Ireland. Kate Hoey has been cynically and dangerously stoking the fires of unrest in Northern Ireland, having promoted Brexit.
The destruction of the United Kingdom has begun with Scotland seeking independence, reunification of Ireland and independence movements beginning in Cornwall and the North East. Independence for Scotland and unity for Ireland are of course good things and entirely predictable consequences of Brexit. In extremis, England will be reduced to the People’s Republic of Thurrock by 2040!! Gibraltar has special status as a means of dealing with the fact that the majority of residents work in Spain. In 10-20 years time we can expect Gibraltar to be under Spanish control. The same goes for The Falkland Islands, The Channel Islands and The Isle of Man.
The UK is now a four nation state and a one party state with no effective opposition. It may sound hard to say this but Brexit is as much a product of a passive and fearful opposition than it is the result of a hard core of Brexit ultras and psychopaths.
Britain no longer has a special relationship with the USA as President Biden seeks to re-educate us about the realities of breaking international law. At the same time Biden has forged stronger links with Europe as a natural partner of similar size in terms of trade and other opportunities.
I invite Brexiteers to provide a list of benefits of Brexit – Five years waiting
Ethical / Legal
Protest is now being clamped down on, using COVID as an umbrella to hide under. Boris Johnson is to remove the powers of the Electoral Commission after they asked awkward questions about the redecoration of his flat.
Crony contracting continues as The Good Law Project reveals details of companies offered lucrative contracts based on personal networks rather than competence in the chosen industry. If you are to shrug and say “so what” to this, these contracts were for PPE. This means that people will have died unnecessarily because of faulty selection procedures. You may well say that the pandemic demanded a speedy response. Well the speediest response would have been to select companies with the capacity and competence to make the products rather than novices.
My own MP Mr Rehman Chishti is under investigation for having his hand in the till over property development scandals. You can help by reporting him to the bar council.
— Re-Boot Britain – Rage Against The Brexit Machine (@BrexitRage) June 21, 2021
We have still not found the identity of the Tory rapist. Is this an example for our children to look up to?
It now seems that our children are to sing a Soviet styles song in school to unite the country. I have a better suggestion – see the song below
Ignorance is strength – Post Brexit education syllabus
I could go on but I won’t. All this in just five years … and we’ve only just begun …
A collaborative effort to mark five years of Brexit carnage from Greg, Lisa, Patricia, Irina, Andrew, Adrian, Mike, Helga and the good people at Re-Boot Britain. Join us every Monday to Break Brexit Before Brexit Breaks Britain.
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Paul Bowers, our parliamentary lobbyist has produced an excellent letter to promote All-Party Parliamentary action on the EU which we may customise (attached).
We seek to target wobbling Tories as a first tranche and, of course, opposition parties.
Please go to the Google sheet and populate the sheet with details of relevant MPs and add your name if you plan to write to your MP.
Here is the letter to customise:
[Name] MP
House of Commons
London
SW1A 0AA
Dear [MP]
All-Party Parliamentary Group on European Union
I am writing as a constituent to ask you to consider setting up an All-Party Parliamentary Group on the European Union.
[I am a member of {name of activist group}]. I voted Remain in the 2016 referendum, and I have campaigned on the issue ever since.
[Insert personal connection here – In addition, my husband is Estonian; I have fond memories of studying at the Sorbonne; I once ate a croissant … ]
As you know, leaving the EU has damaged the UK’s fishing communities, threatens our farmers and food security, has cost eye-watering sums for financial services, harmed our creative industries, and forced many exporters either to scale down or to relocate. The Government’s encouragement of relocation is as much an admission of failed policy as are its plans to support retraining for farmers. Brexit has also damaged UK democracy, reduced our standing in the world, stigmatised EU nationals, and divided our country.
I believe that membership of the European Union is a necessity for the UK.
However, the response of the major political parties to the result of the 2019 general election risks creating a vicious circle of despair. Many voters wish to rejoin the EU, but feel that this is not possible because politicians are not showing leadership to that end. They feel politically homeless.
If no voice in Parliament even addresses the damage of our loss of membership, nor points out the opportunities presented by new developments within the EU, such as the growth of the green and digital sectors from the ambitious NextGenerationEU recovery and transformation plan, we will not be in a position to take advantage promptly of any opportunity to promote membership that might arise.
According to the APPG Register of 2 June 2021, there are Groups on individual European countries, on Erasmus and on Reuniting Britain Post-Brexit, but not on the EU itself.
As you may know, Article 11 of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement provides that the European Parliament and the UK Parliament may establish a Parliamentary Partnership Assembly “to exchange views on the partnership.”
In its Resolution 2021/2658(RSP) of 28 April 2021, the European Parliament endorsed this, envisaging an Assembly which would monitor implementation of the TCA, and suggesting that its remit include “the right to submit recommendations for areas where improved cooperation could be beneficial for both parties and to take joint initiatives to promote close relations.”
An APPG could support this work, and undertake a number of other roles:
Raising awareness of the damage caused by Brexit and the broken promises of Brexiteers
Channelling constituents’ views on policies that might reconcile them to EU membership
Creating a basis for lobbying within your own party in an effort to shift the leadership towards Rejoin
Representing the experiences of EU national constituents and their children
Providing scrutiny of the TCA, now that the Government has abolished the Commons Committee on the Future Relationship with the European Union
Commissioning research, providing spokespeople to the media and promoting an informed view of the EU, life outside, and the accession process
Providing a conduit to Parliament, through external membership, for informed activists
Contacting the Conference on the Future of Europe to discuss reforms that might help reconcile UK voters to a future return, and to stay in touch with new developments in the EU
I hope you will consider this suggestion positively, and speak to other Members about the possibility of creating an APPG on the EU. The longer we go on without one, the more glaring the omission, and the harder it will be for politicians to break the silence on this most vital of issues.
Brexit : they think it’s all over. But it’s far from done. As the COVID umbrella lifts, Brexit is beginning to show its ugly heads. And, in the vernacular of Priti Patel, it’s all kickin’ off on Saturday 12th June with the worldwide premiere of Rage Against The Brexit Machine’s new song Alo’ Vera – Football’s Comin’ ‘Ome Euro Mix.
Saturday marks the start of the Euros and an exclusive live performance of the song at Chesham to celebrate Rejoin EU’s campaign in Chesham and Amersham. As with the Eurovision song contest, it rather seems that Global Britain’s attitude to aid and trade will leave us with “nil points” when it comes to re-booting Britain.Having asked for extra time for the transition period to mask Brexit carnage, Johnson is now losing trillions of pounds on “penalties” and he no longer knows where the goal is. But has Britain got the legs? Or will it crash out of the Euros, and of being a serious player on the world economic pitch?
Rage Against The Brexit Machine (RATBM) aims for the Premiere League, lining up for a Number One on Friday June 18th. Alo’ Vera latest release in our Pop versus Populism series, a rousing football-inspired pop pathos marching tune. A match for any match, it’s a tale of what’s finally comin’ ‘ome, and it ain’t Priti Patel’s fruit pickin’ teams, the European Corona care nurses or the easiest deal in history.
“Brexit was a game of two halves … but now the players are off the pitch, we wonder whether we should be supporting another team?”
Peter Cook, Brexorcist in Chief, RATBM.
Alo’ Vera – Football’s Comin’ ‘Ome is the follow up to “The Brexit Party” album” – the party album to end all parties. This includes other Brexit classics, which we will be performing from 11.00 am in Chesham, an unlikely location for a worldwide song release!
• A Chas & Dave Cockney Brexit Knees-Up “Bollocks to Brexit”.
• The punk-metal-trance-funk grind “Nigel Farage’s Garage”.
• The unforgettable Bojo French sex anthem “Take Back Control”, a fusion of “Je T’Aime” and AC/DC.
• A poignant dance floor track called “In Limbo”. An epic project with 20 voices from all over Europe.
• An 18th Century Tory Trance Floor Acid House Groove “Jacob Rees-Moog”.
“Music reaches our heads, hearts and souls in ways that politicians only dream of. The art of protest just found its 21st century voice. Corona Crisis + Brexit Disaster = Britastrophe”.
For an exclusive interview on Rejoining the EU, contact me and we will arrange with the Rejoin party leader / candidate.
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