This week's quotes - Reboot Britain

Don Adamson writes from his Barnsley Brexit Bunker.

This week’s homework:

One – Compare the two words Media and Mediocrity. Is there a similarity of meaning? Do the words come from the same root?

Two – Discuss the following statement: ‘I just cannot bring myself to say anything nice about my father. He brought nothing but anguish to our lives.’ That is what producer Charles Finch said about his father; the actor Peter Finch. What would you expect Boris Johnson’s sons and daughters to say about their father?

Three – ‘An over-fat flatulent windbag, a master of inconsequence now masquerading as a guru, passing off his vast limitations as pious virtues’ That is what Richard Harris said about Michael Caine. Do you think that Harris let Caine off lightly?

Four – Discuss the following statement. Wallace is reputedly one of the more competent Cabinet Ministers in this government. He was even considered for the job of NATO Secretary General. Last week he made a gratuitously offensive remark about valiant Ukrainians heroically resisting the Russian military monster: ‘We are not part of Amazon.’ As a consequence Wallace has asked to be moved out of the defence job in the next Cabinet Reshuffle. Tories know a lot less about history in general and WW2 in particular. FD Roosevelt blenched when he saw the list of military equipment that Churchill demanded of the USA. These Tories imagine themselves to be bargain basement Churchills. Did they ever imagine themselves as bargain basement FD Roosevelts? If Wallace is one of the more competent Tory ministers what does this say about the dimwits in the Cabinet?

Five – Johnson refuses to hand over his mobile phone to the authorities investigating his misconduct as PM. We are given to understand that the mobile contains evidence of Tory incompetence and corruption. There is already an abundance of open source material to prove that and it seems unlikely that there might be any more hidden evidence on that subject. Rumours are circulating that the mobile has evidence that we know about but may not be able to prove; for instance: a) that the whole point of Brexit is to wreck the NHS and sell it cheap to asset strippers or b) that the whole point of Brexit is to decriminalise sex offences (especially child molesting). What other explanations might there be?

Six – Johnson is living rent free in a house provided by the Bamford Group (robber baron capitalists of the worst description and unrepentant Gammons). Johnson likes to be photographed by Murdoch and Rothermere lackeys when he goes jogging in the vicinity of the house. People in the neighbourhood show their displeasure by flying the Euro Flag. Why do these flags never find their way into trashy Murdoch and Rothermere tabloids?

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This week’s quotes:

Children are shrinking poorest fifth of households now need to spend half their disposable income to eat healthy diets

… years of poor diet lead to obesity and affect children’s heights … British 5 year olds among the shortest in Europe … average height started falling in 2014 … deprivation clearly goes hand in hand with stunting … average boy in the most deprived area of Britain is now 1.3cm shorter than in the least deprived area…

Bregret : Rising disillusion with Brexit

… polls find that sizeable majorities of Brits now regret the decision to leave the EU … margin as wide as 60-40 … steady shift … demography … older people mostly backed leave while younger folk preferred Remain … passage of time tilts against Brexit … Those who did not vote in 2016 now break strongly against leaving the EU … 20% of those who backed Leave in 2016 now say they would support Remain instead … Why? … disappointment with the outcome … high cost of living … falling real wages, struggling public services … high immigration … leaving the EU has clearly made problems worse … Britain was one of the last G7 countries to recover to pre pandemic levels of output … inflation and interest rates are higher than in most European countries; net migration is running at highest level ever … promises made by Vote Leave have proved illusory … broadest promise that there would be no downside to Brexit but only upside looks empty … Nigel Garbage admits that Brexit has failed … Jacob Grease Bogg, Tory Brexiter, is laughed at for citing benefits of Brexit … rising disillusion … Johnson’s notably thin Trade and Cooperating Agreement …. Delusion is believing something despite evidence to the contrary … Brexiters adhere to their beliefs despite compelling evidence that their predictions about Brexit were wrong…

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Discrediting the falsehoods of Brexit and Rejoining the EU are the way forward

… numerous motivations for Brexit, some were, at best, incoherent and at worst outright lies … only a third of those eligible voted for Brexit … Few people would disagree with the statement that the country is in a mess … David Davis accused of abusing parliamentary privilege and being ‘a political has been who botched Brexit … ‘

Johnson destroyed almost all he touched

… promises of a better tomorrow based on Brexit has left everybody who voted for it with less not more … Johnson is now universally viewed as a liar makes Brexit’s failure more palatable to Brexiters. It was his fault, Nigel Garbage’s fault, Grease Bogg’s fault, and the media’s fault, not theirs… Johnson’s Daily Mail column is not only ruinously expensive but increasingly embarrassing … Rothermere, Mail owner, is not happy … paying over £1M for the appallingly bad column .. Provided a more than adequate supply of clownish incompetence…. 4^thMail column took aim at the ‘odious, transparently wrong and unnecessary Ultra Low Emission Zone’ imposed on London by, er, Mayor Boris Johnson … what do readers make of ‘erudite’ jottings … Masil has taken the unusual step of moderating online comments, a step usually reserved for contentious or legally risky pieces … one positive post was published immediately … swiftly down voted by readers … 10 worst rated comments praised Johnson’s column … previously loyal Mail readers told Mail they had decided to stop buying while Johnson was on the payroll …

National Rejoin March 23 September looks to be the mother of all marches

… 20 times more popular than last year … coaches booked from around the country … Peter Corr, founder, says ‘almost all coming will be coming as Brexit has hit them the hardest … UK inflation caused by Brexit … can only be fixed by Rejoin … everything bad happening in the country is made worse by Brexit’ … clear warning to Keith Starmer…

Lie of the Week Nigel Garbage

… ‘establishment is trying force me out of the country by closing my bank accounts’ … Coutts exclusive bank used by the Royal Family … Garbage admits he does not meet the financial threshold for a Coutts account (£3M in savings or £1M in investments) … Garbage is being very, very dishonest …

Torygraph speculation about the value of Torygraph titles has fluctuated wildly since the titles were seized by Lloyd’s Bank after a £1B loan to the owners turned bad

… initial estimates of between £400M and £600M for the titles may be absurdly optimistic given the extent to which the Barclay family have appeared to leverage up the business … I have hear the jaw droppingly low figure of £68M mentioned …Lloyds taking control of the company was extreme and unprecedented and shows they have no confidence in the Barclays … Barclays massively overpaid when they acquired the titles of £665M in 2004 … motives of the Eurosceptic twins had been … ideological … Lloyds Bank face a new headache … Fraser Nelson Spectator editor, threatens to quit and take his core team to set up a rival right wing weekly … Murdoch … interested in Spectator if decoupled from Torygraph titles … Rothermere only interested in Torygraph’s paying subscribers as his own operation has been struggling for some time to get a figure anywhere near that … Rothermere rumoured to shutting down Mail on Sunday … profitable and once respected newspaper … mired in family scandal and extremism … Torygraph has been snatched from the Barclay family by Lloyds Bank … Torygraph played a part in diminishing the public’s respect for politicians … reputation tarnished by extremist output … despite all the evidence to the contrary Torygraph refuses to admit that Brexit has failed … outlandish views … Ofcom just ensure that whoever buys the paper also meets the definition of ‘fit and proper’ that is required of media owners (COMMENT: Yeah, Right) Tory billionaire keen to enhance their influence over the government might not clear that hurdle …

Immigration

Braverman’s Rwanda plan is on hold but the cruel and crazy stance remains … cost of sending each migrant to Rwanda … £169,000 … £63,000 more than keeping them in the UK … Government is so committed to the scheme that it is not open to rational argument … polls show that immigration is nowhere near the obsession with voters than it is with the Tories … questionable on many grounds … inhumane … government struggling to justify an untenable argument… government policy has a lot of holes … Rwanda government said it would only take 2000 asylum seekers initially. Last year 46,000 people crossed the channel in small boats … Illegal Migration Bill has so many defects it seems largely unworkable … most likely outcome is a perma-backlog of undecided asylum claims … government must hope that tough talk will go down well with voters … by the time the election comes and policy has still not worked it will have upset all voters…

University Admissions practices

A vast hereditary mediocracy…

National Health Service

Only the rich paying more taxes can save the NHS … NHS is in crisis …7.4 million people waiting for treatment up from 7.2 million a month ago, with more than 371,000 people waiting more than a year for routine treatment … short of 154,000 doctors, nurses, midwives and technical staff … that number will more than double in a decade … only the USA among developed countries has a higher rate of avoidable deaths than ours … all universal healthcare systems are feeling the pinch but the NHS more than most … 18^th out of 19 countries for MRI and CT scanners per million of population … second worst for avoidable deaths … puts politicians in charge who know nothing about healthcare and dislike funding it … most chronic diseases have mushroomed, from diabetes to depression to dementia … chewed up money the NHS does not have … crumbling estate and 150,000 vacancies … 25^th in the league table for doctors per 1,000 population and 18^th for nurses … Staff are expensive but so is waste … GPs and hospital doctors taking early retirement has risen by 9.3% year on year since 2008 … three years after the start of Covid the department has spent £14.9B overpaying and over ordering PPE, medicines and vaccines … excessive profits on PPE so vast it is not hard to see how £14.9B made opportunistic scamsters very rich indeed … The only good Tory is a suppository …