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Do or Die

Here is a roundup of Brexit news in case you are bored with COVID apathy. Remember COVID is a crisis. Brexit a disaster in slow motion. Brexit will make the bigger impact on our country in the long run. The toxic combination of Corona + Brexit = a Britastrophe. We must pull back from a Do or Die Brexit. Your ditch awaits Mr Johnson.

Down on the farm

I watched with dismay, as Parliament voted to lower our food standards. This opens the door to hormone fed beef, chlorinated chicken and a host of other dodgy practices. In case you think this doesn’t matter, US cases of food poisoning are some 10 times higher than our country.

I have mixed feelings about the farmers. I helped Liz Webster, PPC for Swindon, gain the only TV coverage for the Lib Dems in the entire South West in 2017. Liz organised the farmers marches. I attended the last event to be told that they did not wish to mention Brexit, as the issue was toxic. Instead they protest to save themselves. Parochial self-interest is a hardy perennial problem of Remain. There is a hierarchy of problems here with Brexit at the apex. In other words, stopping Brexit leads to solutions to other issues such as food standards, EU citizens rights and so on. But people would rather form into silos (sic), allowing our Government to operate “divide and rule” politics. Oh well, the farmers have been composted and we all lose.

Die Another Day

We’ve had “Do or Die” and “Die in a Ditch” from Boris Johnson, so we may as well have “Die Another Day” or “Live and Let Die”. Brexit negotiations remain deadlocked. Johnson is trapped by the ERG on one side, funded by Russia and wanting No Deal, which nobody voted for. He is also confounded by the EU, who must satisfy the four freedoms and protect their enterprise. It is always unwise to capitulate to bullies. The EU cannot give Britain a better deal for less money, as it will threaten the cohesion of the other 27 member states. I covered this point in the post Brexit Choices.

Why then are the negotiations deadlocked? Quite simply the “mechanics” of Brexit remain unresolvable. By moving one part of the puzzle to resolve one issue, the other parts become entangled. It’s what we call a “Wicked Problem” in consulting circles. Wicked problem do not lend themselves to simple solutions as Boris Johnson would like to believe. As reported last year, changing the leader or applying more “bluster” does not alter the underlying problems that exist with Brexit.

The Golf Club analogy

BOJONA-20

The latest instalment of industrial scale lies and gaslighting comes from yesterday’s COVID announcements. With £40 Billion worth of tax rises now inevitable, let’s examine some COVID facts that Boris Johnson must have missed whilst chasing a violinist …

Scientists advised the Government to install circuit breakers to stop Corona contagion on September 21, 2020. Ignored.

Professor Chris Witty told the Government that that the latest COVID rules will not be enough to contain the virus. Ignored.

Keir Starmer has just asked the Prime Minister to follow the science and install a 2-3 week circuit breaker across the UK. I predict he will either be ignored or blamed for the deaths already baked in by Johnson’s lack of action from mid-September, when he was talking about “Getting Christmas Done”. This is a repeat performance from February, when Johnson was more concerned with bonging bells, shaking hands and minting 50 pence coins than running the country.

Too Little, Too Late, pre-occupied with Brexit
670 NHS deaths during the first wave due to inaction. 30 000 unnecessary deaths overall

Test and Trace is still not working, despite Matt Hancock promising to get it up and running many months ago. Without measurement, there can be no management of COVID and the idea of “Controlling the Virus” is at best fanciful, at worst dangerous.

Bojona-20 - Putting the K in ILL
Still pursuing Cummings eugenics aka herd immunity model

In case you think that the idea of unnecessary deaths are a feature of Brexit, please read what Wendy Novak has to say on the matter at Brexit : A matter of life or death.

Meanwhile £3 BILLION of your taxes has mysteriously disappeared on Government COVID contracts handed out to friends and cronies.

Hard facts on COVID + Brexit = Britastrophe

And Johnson now does not want to appear in front of the public, having hired Allegra Stratton to handle “comms” so he can move on to pursue more important matters.

The lesson for us all is neatly summed up by James O’Brien:

Britastrophe

Happy now?

Do or Die Brexit in a ditch Johnson?

What are you waiting for?

Take Action

Report MP’s for breaking international law.

Write to your MP and ask them to make Better Brexit Choices for a Better Britain, by opposing reckless behaviour by the Cabinet.

Snitch on MPs for breaking international law.

Do or Die Brexit

Populism will eat itself

More like this at Private Eyelines
The Son

Remember, the withdrawal agreement was a 2019 ELECTION PROMISE. It’s not even a year on and Johnson has broken his marriage vows, his election promises and caused at least 30 000 unnecessary deaths. Are you still happy about this?

Write to your MP and demand that Boris admits that he lied to win the election. Ask them to oppose Johnson’s reckless Brexit.

We are the dead : Bowie, Britain and Brexit

I have come to the conclusion that David Bowie caused Brexit. Somewhat outlandish you might say? Read on.

The thought first occurred to me when someone found out that Johnson and Cummings have a tombola machine full of David Bowie’s lyrics. They use this as a slogan generator during late night cocaine corona infested music sessions with David Bowie on the player in No 10 at volume 10.

The Brexit Tombola Machine

The latest Johnson COVID slogan comes from “Moonage Daydream” and illustrates the shameful practice of misappropriation of Bowie’s lyrics in a limited and specific way:

Moonage Daydream

It’s quite clear that Cummings got hands, face and space from this. Others have verified this point from Cummings reading of the song and books on superforecasting such as 1984 …

Then, from Ashes to Ashes, we find the phrase that won Johnson a landslide victory in the general election 2019 …

My mother said, get Brexit done
You’d better not mess with Major Dom

Lashes to Lashes – Priti Patel

The Thin White Duke even advised Johnson from his grave on the matter of singing English patriotic songs at the last night of the Proms giving us a foretaste of the Brexiteer riots to come:

“Rule Britannia is out of bounds” – Life on Mars

Sailors fighting in the dance hall
Oh man, look at those cavemen go
It’s the freakiest show
Take a look at the lawman
Beating up the wrong guy

I have it on good authority that the latest “Build, Build, Build” catchphrase came straight from Cummings mouth on the road to Barnard Castle to check his eyesight, on hearing “All the Madmen”, a song depicting “a world so bereft of reason that the last sane men are the ones in the asylums”. The dystopian vision fits the narrative of the Brexit condition under Boris Johnson. Build, Build, Build is clearly a cheap derivation of the confusing Bowie lyric “Zane, Zane, Zane” from “The Man Who Sold The World”. Somewhat strangely I have been performing this song at street events for the last four years since Brexit. Sorry David.

Ouvrez le chien

Cummings and Johnson have been playing Diamond Dogs on continuous loop since 2019 with their crack cocaine inspired Brexit. This album most perfectly describes the dystopian future or self harm, fear, loathing and blame that Brexit offers us if we chose this pathway.

Will you see that I’m scared and I’m lonely?
So I’ll break up my room, and yawn and I
Run to the centre of things
Where the knowing one says

I guess we could cruise down one more time
With you by my side, it should be fine
We’ll buy some drugs and watch a band
Then jump in the river holding hands

I’d like to have your predictions as to where Cummings and Johnson will go next for a catchy slogan …

As long as there’s the Sun

Where are we now?

Check out Space Oddity performed at Parliament

From “Let’s Talk About BREX..it – a comprehensive guide to Brexorcism”

Dressing down for COVID

Britain has abandoned a £75 million plan to make vital items of reusable protective clothing to guard against a second wave of Covid-19. The plan had been drawn up in negotiations between the Cabinet Office  – responsible for key government policies – and industry after criticism in March that the government had failed to build up stocks of PPE. Shortages of gowns and related items in hospitals and care homes were widely blamed for the rapid early spread of the virus, leading to a high death rate of more than 41,000 (in all probablility more than double that due to changing the metrics and slippery accounting). which made the UK fifth-worst in the world,

As well as meeting NHS needs, the plan had two ambitious and beneficial goals:

  • To support the UK textile industry. Most protective garments are imported from low-cost nations. The millions of protective gowns for our health workers would have come from UK factories.
  • To reduce waste. Protective gowns are mostly discarded after one use, adding to the UK’s waste mountain. The gowns to be produced with new technology could be reused up to 100 times each.

In addition, a centralised UK programme would have ensured compliance with rigid quality standards which  cheap overseas suppliers have too often failed to meet. Orders for foreign gowns have proved to be sub-standard and unusable, causing unanticipated shortages. But 3 months of talks between industry and the Cabinet Office have ground to a halt after officials failed to agree the details of the scheme. The discussions ended after officials realised that, following protracted delays , many health trusts had placed their own local orders for gowns, reducing the need for the project. The Government has not announced the ending of the talks.

The cancellation of the project has been heavily criticised by industry.  Adam Mansell, chief executive of the UK Fashion & Textile Association, representing manufacturers, designers and suppliers, said:

“There had been a fantastic opportunity for the government to tap into Britain’s technical expertise on textiles to set up a sustainable supply of reusable gowns made in the UK. The way the government has handled this project has been poor and says little for its commitment to help UK manufacturing.” 

Yvette Ashby, chief executive of the Professional Clothing Industry Association Worldwide, added:

“The people working on this [in the Cabinet Office] appear to have little understanding of how the textile industry works. Their approach has sometimes appeared chaotic.”

Japanese textile maker Toray – which would have made most of the material for the project in a plant in Mansfield – said the Cabinet Office had been “slow and indecisive”. Had the government committed to the project, Toray said it would have been ready to increase investment in its UK plant. 

David Stevens, chief executive of the Textiles Services Association, representing laundries which would have recycled the gowns (by washing each one 40-100 times) said the plan would have made “a lot of sense from both an environmental and economic perspective”. 

Heathcoat Fabrics, with a big factory in Devon, said the failure of the talks was “a huge opportunity missed to not only eliminate any future supply issues but to also help the domestic textile industry at a time when jobs and unemployment are going to be a key issue”. 

Officials may have had problems with the  proposal to spread manufacturing  around the country,  preferring it to be concentrated in a few places. If so, this seems to be more a case of “Dressing Down” rather than “levelling up” poorer regions by Johnson’s Government, (where many of the UK textiles businesses are distributed).  But the main factor was that while the talks were dragging on – with no sign that officials were close to a decision – many of the over 200 individual health trusts around the UK opted not to wait for the outcome, but instead placed their own orders, to avoid being caught out again by a second wave of the pandemic. Cabinet Office officials failed to foresee this result of their dithering. This has enabled the major suppliers of gowns from overseas to continue to dominate a market which British industry could have reclaimed as its own,  The Cabinet Office under Dominic Cummings has failed to provide a sustainable and reliable supply of PPE  equipment, of sufficiently high standards to meet NHS needs and providing badly needed employment to our textile industry.

The responsibility for this debacle rests squarely on Cummings and his rabble of advisors imported into Number 10.

They are not competent to handle commercial affairs and should be debarred from any future involvement in COVID procurement activity.

Write to your MP with this article via WRITE TO THEM.

The Drugs Don’t Work

In this post, Wendy Nowak outlines the real issues facing those of you on medication if we allow Brexit to happen.

The Facts of Life … and Death

Believe it or not many of you will be affected by medicine shortages if Brexit happens come 31st December 2020.  Here I explain why I’ve been extremely worried for the past two years.

As soon as I heard rumours about shortages of medicines, alarm bells started ringing in my head. They are ringing even louder these days. I’m Type 2 diabetic and am prescribed insulin to control it, which is sometimes the case with Type 2s. Without insulin the complications of uncontrolled diabetes are dire

  • Blindness
  • Kidney failure
  • Cardio vascular disease
  • Amputation

By the way, Type 1 diabetics are totally dependent on insulin for survival. Only about 0.5% of the insulin used in the UK is manufactured here.  It is also animal insulin which not many diabetics can take. The rest comes mainly from Denmark or Germany, from the big manufacturers Novo Nordisk and Sanofi Deutschland.  The other issue with insulin is that, being temperature sensitive, it is not easy to stockpile. Before the last Brexit deadline the government promised they would buy loads of extra fridges and engage a wonderful ferry company to ship over our meds.  Remember Seabourne?  They didn’t actually have any ferries.  Another government scam, which made me fear for my life even more.

Editor’s note: This has been the case for many years. In my early years I worked at Wellcome who used to make much of the supply of beef insulin. I worked on the breakthrough treatment of human insulin with Novo Nordisk. A proud moment in my life, only to be thrown away by a government that only understands money rather than quality of life and lies systematically to make us forget the meaning of life.

A group small group of us, one of whom is a retired medic, got together online to organise demos and die-ins, along with FB posts and tweets, to raise awareness of this issue.  Considering the fact that this is a life or death issue the response from the British media and public has been appalling, which also worries me.  Despite numerous requests, the British media have more or less ignored us, up until fairly recently anyway.  Comments from the public ranged from brexiteers who basically don’t care if they or their relatives die as long as they get their blue passport (which isn’t actually blue!) to those who don’t quite understand the extent of the chaos we are facing.  That could be down to lack of coverage in the media.  There was also disbelief when faced with the hard facts which we laid before them, ie. The repeated warnings to the government from the medics and the pharma industry about shortages.

Are you prepared to see loved ones die for a blue passport?

Why we should all be worried?

Three quarters of our med supplies come from Europe. That figure is quoted in the government Yellowhammer report.  It’s not just about me and it’s not just about diabetes. It affects thousands of patients, including those suffering from cancer, those on dialysis, asthma, epilepsy, glaucoma, rheumatoid arthritis, many immune deficiencies and many more.  Anybody could be diagnosed with any of these conditions at any time.

The UK is pulling out of EURATOM, which guarantees our supply and ensures the safety of nuclear materials.  The radioisotopes necessary for cancer treatment and diagnostic scans are at risk.  They are also imported from Europe, are extremely time sensitive and cannot be stockpiled. Cancer patients are already being told that they will not be prioritised for treatment because they are over a certain age.  Are you OK with that?

Who cares about Brexit?

Uncool for Cats

Many veterinary medicines are also imported. These face the same issues as our own.  Brexit has also caused a shortage of EU vets (as indeed it has among our NHS staff) who have had enough of the hostile environment which now exists in the UK. Not only are our pets at risk, but these vets also monitor our farm animals and help to uphold our food standards.  Once again the warning went out a couple of years ago when we staged the Wooferendum marches.  Once again, not enough people listened.

Join us at Cats Against Brexit Mayhem

COVID + BREXIT = BRITASTROPHE

We had a stockpile of medicines (well, at least of those which can be stockpiled) as a no-deal contingency.  The pandemic has eroded these away, which leaves us in a dire situation in the event of no-deal.  This is before any second COVID wave hits us.

What am doing about this?

I have a bit of a dilemma. As a diabetic I have to ensure I don’t catch the virus, but if I sit back and do nothing I face severe illness or death from med shortages.  My risk assessment is that I can take precautions against COVID, such as wearing a mask, social distancing, hand-washing, but there’s nothing I can do if my meds run out. I go out protesting, socially distanced of course!  As I’ve been told many times ‘the government doesn’t care about you’. To everyone who thinks it’s okay to say that and then do nothing I say, ‘get out there’.  We the oppressed people of the UK need to show the government that WE care and we are willing to do hammer home that message. We are not willing to endure medicine, and indeed food shortages (I and many others need a healthy diet), enabled by their deception and corruption.

What can you do about this?

Write to your MP using this as a basis for your arguments. Ask for Brexit to be suspended.

Get out on the streets as Wendy suggests. It’s not too late to stop Brexit. Join us at Rage Against Brexit.

Indecent Proposals

The theme for our weekly roundup is “indecent proposals”. No, not the movie, but the continuing stream of outrageous law breaking, morally reprehensible behaviours of our ruling elite, moral hazard and cronyism.

How much are you worth?

We begin with a question. What would you be prepared to do in order to earn £175 000 for two days work per week? Seriously? Ask Boris Johnson.

Judgement day

Brexit has spawned a culture of mistrust amidst politicians and a response to “Take Back Control” through an assault on all the checks and balances that exist to prevent politicians acting as dictators. Last year we had the pro-rogation of Parliament when Boris Johnson could not get his own way re Brexit. This year there are moves afoot to suppress the power of judges. These are the behaviours of a banana republic.

Backbones needed

How happy are you to know that we have left the EU only to find that our Government is now controlled by agents of Vladimir Putin? This has been brilliantly articulated by Garry Lawrence who has sent 34 Tory MP’s a white feather in the post as an award for cowardice.


Hunt the rapist

The Tory party still refuse to take action on the rapist MP in their midst. In all other walks of life they would have been suspended. Whilst we understand that the law must also be allowed to take its course, in the specific example of public figures, the problem of not taking action is two-fold:

  • Everyone will be under suspicion in the interim.
  • The longer this goes on, the more damage to the reputation of the Tory party.
  • Then, of course, there is the poor victim to consider. That does not seem to be on the list of concerns for Boris Johnson

Austerity II

“Dishy Rishi” Sunak may soon no longer be the Tory poster boy, after it was revealed that he plans to raise taxes to pay for the Corona + Brexit Britastrophe.

Burying bad news

Our correspondent in Winchester was gobsmacked when she found out that the investigation into Cambridge Analytica has been called off by the ICO. This is the latest in a series of failures to respect democracy, the very thing that Leave voters say they voted for.

Shooting Stars

In our continuing culture wars, we were astonished to learn that a key advisor appointed by Dominic Cummings suggested that Police use live rounds on Black Lives Matter protestors.

Brexit Trust Pilot

Trust Pilot

Yesterday Boris Johnson withdrew the withdrawal agreement. Let’s remember that he won an election primarily on the idea of getting Brexit done. He also then persuaded his party to vote for the Withdrawal Agreement. Today Theresa May has just cut Boris Johnson into tiny pieces over the WA.

It occurred to me that, although, I don’t want Brexit, Theresa May’s Withdrawal Agreement could be considered to be the high water mark of Brexit deals. All subsequent deals have been a considerable watering down of Theresa May’s achievement. No wonder she is angry about the wilful destruction of one nation Conservatism by Dominic Cummings.

Take the example of a plumber or builder. There are only two circumstances when you would have to not pay your dues or not deliver your work to the required standard. The first would be if you were fixing to die the following day. The second would be if you were planning to retire and live on a remote desert island so that nobody could call you to account. In the case of the UK, we are not fixing to die or live in splendid isolation (or are we?). We need the trust of other nations in order to secure future trading relationships.

In the modern world we have systems such as Trust Pilot to rate businesses for delivery and trustworthiness. If the UK plc were a plumber or builder, its Trust Pilot score would now be at minus 3000. Any future post-Brexit trading partners will doubtless include North Korea, Syria and Venezuela to name a few.

Write to your MP to say that you agree with Theresa. Point out that the party voted for the WA and that it was a pivotal election pledge.

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Dead Cats and Real News

Our Government have resorted to putting lots of dead cats in the way of the real news about Brexit, COVID and so on. So this week, we have resorted to providing a whole front page dedicated to dead cats and the other to news.

The Daily Maul – To read more like this click on the image
Soaraway Sun – Click for more

If you MP voted for the Enabling Act and is a barrister, report them to the bar via Report your MP

If your MP voted for the Enabling Act, write to them via Write to Them. Explain the consequences of breaking international law.

Support our work by clicking the flag

Snitch on your Tory MP

Today Boris Johnson begins the next stage of his march towards the 4th Reich, by installing what I’m calling “People Versus People”. In other words, asking people to snitch on their neighbours for breaking lockdown rules in a move taken straight from the Stasi playbook. Of course it matters to limit the spread of COVID, but there are better ways to do this and this move is yet another piece of classic deflection and gaslighting by Johnson’s Junta.

So, instead of snitching on your neighbour, snitch on your Tory MP. It’s the noble and morally right thing to do. The UK Internal Markets Bill is the modern day equivalent of The 1933 Enabling Act in Nazi Germany. We must stop the sleepwalk into a dictatorship. If your MP voted for the UK Internal Markets Bill, here’s what you can do for your country and your community:

Check to see if your MP is a barrister or solicitor via They Work for You.

If they are, report them to the SRA and the bar standards board.

The forms are fairly easy to use. I recommend just using their name and MP as the title. Use their local MP office as their address which you can easily find via their personal website. Use the letter below as the basis of your complaint. Emphasise the legal consequences of their decision to back the bill. Ask for their removal as a barrister or solicitor.

If they are not a barrister or solicitor, simply write directly to your MP via write to them using your own version of the letter below. Please also ask others to do the same using a different version of the letter. Template letters are often rejected so please use this letter as a basis for your own.

There is a list of Solicitors and Barrister MP’s below. Don’t just limit yourself to these people. Go forth and snitch!

LETTER TO SRA or Bar Standards Board

Dear xxx,

I write to you to ask that you withdraw [MP name] from the register for voting for the UK Internal Markets Bill, currently passing through Parliament. The bill breaks international and domestic law and represents a new low point in our reputation as a great nation.

You will be aware that great figures such as Theresa May, Lord Howard, Sajid Javid, Lord Lamont, former Attorney General Geoffrey Cox QC have raised serious objections to the bill as well as six former Prime Ministers on all sides of our politics from Sir John Major to David Cameron. It has also gained international condemnation from world leaders across the globe, for its similarity with the 1933 Enabling Act.

I request that you remove [MPs name] from the register as a member of your profession for breaking the law. This move threatens the credibility of the justice system and therefore your institution and the UK’s reputation as a standard bearer.

Yours sincerely

etc. etc.

LETTER TO MP’s

Dear xxx,

I write to you, to ask you to vote against the UK Internal Markets Bill, currently passing through Parliament. The bill breaks international and domestic law and represents a new low point in our reputation as a great nation. Of course, your own reputation as an MP and that of your party goes hand in hand with this.

You will be aware that great figures such as Theresa May, Lord Howard, Sajid Javid, Lord Lamont, former Attorney General Geoffrey Cox QC have raised serious objections to the bill as well as six former Prime Ministers on all sides of our politics from Sir John Major to David Cameron. It has also gained international condemnation from world leaders across the globe, for its similarity with the 1933 Enabling Act.

I ask you to restore trust and decency in politics and pull back from the brink of this Cummings inspired initiative. Dominic’s end game is the destruction of democratic politics in the UK. Is that what you really want on your Wikipedia page as a legacy?

Yours sincerely

etc. etc.

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The Stasi

Solicitors

Steve Barclay
Siobhan Baillie
Jake Berry
James Brokenshire
Fiona Bruce
William Cash
Simon Clarke
Alberto Costa
James Daly
Jonathan Djanogly
Natalie Elphicke
Kevin Foster
Peter Gibson
Helen Grant
Robert Jenrick
Gareth Johnson
David Jones
Greg Knight
John Lamont (Scotland)
Brandon Lewis
Alan Mak
Anne Marie Morris
David Mundell (Scotland)
Will Quince
Dominic Raab
Tom Randall
Shailesh Vara

Barristers

Victoria Atkins
Suella Braverman
Robert Buckland
Alex Chalk
Robert Courts
Sarah Dines
Michael Ellis
Natalie Elphicke
Laura Farris
Lucy Frazer
Jerome Mayhew
Huw Merriman
Guy Opperman
Victoria Prentis
Edward Timpson
Michael Tomlinson
Theresa Villiers
Gavin Robinson (Northern Ireland) 

Some exceptions

If he is a barrister in Northern Ireland, go to Northern Ireland

If s/he is a solicitor or barrister in Scotland, go to Scotland

Reboot Britain

From Adrian Ekins-Daukes – Leader of Reboot Britain

We should not underestimate Johnson’s regime’s staying power. It has shown the determination to ignore demonstrations in London of over one million people, and  large demonstrations in other cities, at a time when  they had no parliamentary  majority and had to face a general election. Now, with a majority of over 80, they will not yield to the sort of soft pressure exercised by central movements in Millbank such as March for Change and The European Movement. I fear they may well try to tough it out even in the circumstances which you predict, using fake news and propaganda. In that case, the only thing which will shake them is loss of electoral seats. But the general election is still nearly 4 years away and by that time the electorate may have been conditioned to live with the status quo. It even remains in doubt that another election will happen now that The Kremlin is involved in day to day government of this green and pleasant land.

Adrian Ekins-Daukes Rebooting Brexit Britain

However, next year there are the County Council elections as well as Borough and District elections postponed from this year. Some will no doubt say “Oh, but those are about local affairs and shouldn’t be mixed up with national arguments ”. This is of course rubbish, as any political commentator will tell you. Number 10 and party HQs are sensitive to the results even if they pretend otherwise. These give us an opportunity, and we have time to plan, organise and soften up the targets.”

Join us at Reboot Britain – click the image

There would be no need for us to put up candidates. Instead, we, as “REBOOT BRITAIN“, would be an unregulated campaigning organisation, inviting voters to vote for anyone (or no one) provided they did not vote Conservative. We would produce literature, using all the strongest arguments we can muster (and we already have a legion in our records). As I read the Electorate Commission’s rules – and I have done so several times – we would not have to register with them if we did not intend to spend over £20,000 in the pre-election period and could do what we like provided we didn’t break the ordinary laws of the land. Preparatory work is needed, but I would volunteer to be chief donkey. Peter Cook has offered to help with strategy and communications to help us punch above our weight. There are rewards too. We are dealing here directly with electors of all persuasions, including those averse to using social media. We don’t have to rely or newspapers who all too often, in my experience, refuse to publish those letters which really nail the opposing arguments.  Instead, we would go direct to the public via blogs and other direct means. Astonishingly Peter gained supporters by specifically asking people NOT to vote for him in the 2019 General Election. Finally, our campaign will offer real, measurable results within a year. This will provide our supporters with a real incentive to leaven the status quo by choosing differently from the herd.

Will you join us? Will you help Reboot Britain?

Editor’s footnote – Adrian’s efforts in 2019 helped to cause a 6% drop in a Brexiteer MP’s share of the vote and a fall in his majority. This even caused the BBC to comment!

And finally, a word from Julie Ward from the European Parliament:

Thanks to Julie Ward MEP

In case your eyesight is compromised through driving, this is the text of Julie’s letter:

Dear Sir,

Barnard Castle continues to be the focus of enormous attention since Dominic Cummings made his illegal trip to the town on Easter Sunday, an action which undermined the government legislation that Cummings himself helped to shape, thereby contributing to the general public’s disregard of government guidelines and undoubtedly increasing the number of coronavirus infections and deaths from Covid19.

Last Sunday the town saw a visit from musician, author and entrepreneur Peter Cook, of the Academy of Rock. Peter, who normally lives in Kent, is currently touring the UK in his iconic yellow Mini-Cooper which bears slogans warning the general public about the disastrous impact of multiple crises. His trip to Barnard Castle included a spontaneous concert for passers-by accompanied by campaigners from NE4EU who also gave a rendition of the Lambton Worm. Other people joining Peter in the town were members of Leeds for Europe and pro-EU groups from Herefordshire and the Midlands. As well as entertaining and educating passers-by, the group also posed for photos outside Spec Savers wearing Dominic Cummings masks and witty T-shirts bearing the imprint “HM Govt Approved Eye Test”. Passing traffic tooted in support and lots of people went off wearing stickers bearing the slogan – “Corona Crisis + Brexit Disaster = Britastrophe”.

I know how much our communities enjoy live music – from teen fans to ageing rockers, music is an important part of our lives. Like all those working in the industry Peter Cook understands well the disastrous consequences of Brexit on the arts and entertainment industry which will make tours much less viable resulting in fewer opportunities for fans to see their favourite bands, and ultimately fewer bands making less music, and also less money for the treasury.

It is no surprise that the Musicians Union supported the UK remaining in the EU. The loss of Freedom of Movement is a tragedy for all of us but is of particular concern for touring artists and for young people, many of whom were denied a say about their future. 

Now, as the government threatens to drive us off a cliff with a ‘No Deal Brexit’ at the end of the year in the midst of an almost certain second wave of coronavirus infections, please make YOUR voice heard by writing to your MP and insisting on a detailed response to your concerns, not cut and paste Cummings-speak. You can also support Peter Cook’s campaign to ‘Reboot Britain’ here – www.brexitrage.com

Yours sincerely

Julie Ward 

Formerly Vice Chair of the European Parliament’s Culture & Education Committee