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Post by mrsonde on Apr 5, 2019 7:07:24 GMT 1
Boles went before he was unceremoniously pushed, it's quite clear to me - with one last backstabbing flourish of betrayal as he did so. The ghastly, ghastly Grieve looks as if he's been Tango-ed in the street. But then, to be fair, he usually does. Piles, probably, from a lifetime of sitting on his well-cossetted arse, at the public's considerable expense.
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Post by alancalverd on Apr 5, 2019 8:10:45 GMT 1
Thank goodness for the Civil Service! Saved the day again, like at Dunkirk - (though, sadly, we're talking about work that a six-year old could do in an afternoon.) Thank goodness there are still nearly four million of them, selflessly beavering away for our good, else nothing would ever get done. Oddly enough, yes. The politicians having licked the Fuhrer's arse, run down the military budget, and brought home an amazing piece of paper, somebody had to buy barrage balloons, organise rationing, negotiate 24/7 working in shipyards and strategic factories, recruit the Land Army, design, buy and distribute gas masks, organise evacuations, secure trade deals (an awful lot of oil and petrol was consumed, and it all had to come from somewhere else), build barracks and runways, organise fire and rescue services, build bomb shelters, buy weapons and uniforms....lots of work for the parasites you despise. I think they did it rather well, and still found time to develop new weapons and vehicles.
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Post by mrsonde on Apr 5, 2019 8:11:25 GMT 1
Which reminds me - it is my firm belief that MPs like Grieve who have financial interests in firms that generate their income through the UK belonging to the EU should not be allowed to vote on any issue involving Brexit, be allowed to lobby about it, or even be allowed to make a speech in the Commons about the matter. Grieve for example is heavily invested in Barclays, whose CEO Jes Stanley claimed in the summer (about the same time Grieve started to engineer this whole "meaningful vote" insurrection) that "Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds are all 'paying a steep price for Brexit', with share prices failing to reflect the firms’ value." A quick trawl reveals that any such list would very probably include a great many of these Remoaner troublemakers. Spellman owns a large processed food company, which not only benefits from the CAP but would also have to compete with non-EU suppliers if they lost their 13% plus external tariff. Soubry is married to a director of one of Britain's largest agricultural landowners, producing most of Britain's potatoes, whose CAP subsidy must run into many millions of pounds every year. Hammond has a multi-million pound property portfolio, including several houses in London (most of the cabinet are in such a woeful predicament, actually, as do other busybodies sticking their noses in like William Hague, Nick Clegg, Oliver Letwin, etc.etc.) - the fact that he has loudly predicted a fall in house prices should we leave with No Deal should automatically rule him out of having anything to do with Brexit on the grounds of potential conflict of interests. As for May - you try finding out where her and her decidedly dodgy husband have their money! It's all in a "blind trust", and even now she refuses to release her tax records. What we do know is her husband's firm was listed in the Panama Papers, and his job is basically helping people - drug dealers, corrupt dictators, and other assorted criminals, mainly - squirrel their money away in tax havens. Now, should the wife of such a person - her principal advisor, by all accounts - be allowed to try to force through a major political treaty whose principal purpose appears - is, in effect, at any rate - to be to keep the UK financial sector insulated from any EU regulation?
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Post by mrsonde on Apr 5, 2019 8:19:33 GMT 1
Thank goodness for the Civil Service! Saved the day again, like at Dunkirk - (though, sadly, we're talking about work that a six-year old could do in an afternoon.) Thank goodness there are still nearly four million of them, selflessly beavering away for our good, else nothing would ever get done. Oddly enough, yes. The politicians having licked the Fuhrer's arse, run down the military budget, and brought home an amazing piece of paper, somebody had to buy barrage balloons, organise rationing, negotiate 24/7 working in shipyards and strategic factories, recruit the Land Army, design, buy and distribute gas masks, organise evacuations, secure trade deals (an awful lot of oil and petrol was consumed, and it all had to come from somewhere else), build barracks and runways, organise fire and rescue services, build bomb shelters, buy weapons and uniforms....lots of work for the parasites you despise. I think they did it rather well, and still found time to develop new weapons and vehicles. Nooooooo...I'm afraid you've got your history upside down. As in the First World War, Churchill found on taking the premiership that the first thing he had to do to save the country was give the Civil Service a thorough shake-up because they were doing such a lousy job at organising anything. In WWI he sacked 80% of them, and got things moving. In 1940 he transferred most responsibilities for war preparations to the military and, on the domestic front, brought in movers and shakers - what would today be called "tsars" - like Max Beaverbrook and Lord Cherwell to go right over their heads.
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Post by alancalverd on Apr 8, 2019 8:54:22 GMT 1
Grieve for example is heavily invested in Barclays, whose CEO Jes Stanley claimed in the summer (about the same time Grieve started to engineer this whole "meaningful vote" insurrection) that "Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds are all 'paying a steep price for Brexit', with share prices failing to reflect the firms’ value." Which is of course nonsense. The share price represents what potential purchasers think the future share price might be, so it is in the interest of those who might receive shares as salary or bonus, to drive down the price in the short term and be given heaps of shares as an encouragement to improve the "value" of the company. Long term, banks are a very safe bet, especially if the taxpayer will rescue any failure. I recently heard of a bookmaker getting a stooge to put several thousand quid, early, on a complete no-hoper at 50:1. His rationale was that the resulting sudden phenomenal drop in its odds would encourage thousands of punters to back the nag in his shops. If it lost, which it usually did, he would make "a bleedin fortune", and if all the other horses fell over, he'd get his money back 50:1 anyway and only have to pay 5:1 to the mugs.
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Post by mrsonde on Apr 9, 2019 8:46:29 GMT 1
Grieve for example is heavily invested in Barclays, whose CEO Jes Stanley claimed in the summer (about the same time Grieve started to engineer this whole "meaningful vote" insurrection) that "Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds are all 'paying a steep price for Brexit', with share prices failing to reflect the firms’ value." Which is of course nonsense. Largely, yes - except for the shareholder, like Grieve, whose asset values are of course directly affected. (There's also a more indirect loss produced by reduced profitability, especially for a business like a bank - reflected in the dividend, eventually.) These days a more reliable method is for the firm to buy back the stock themselves. Pushes the price up (after the fact), reduces dividend payouts, increases market value of the corporation: gives the execs a juicy great bonus. It's where most of the QE of the UK and US has gone - ie into fat cats pockets, for doing sweet f.a. Long term, they're going the way of the dinosaurs - and so are most of Big Finance firms in the City. Since three months ago you - you or I - can now buy or sell any shares via an intermediary bitcoin market: no commission charged, just a tiny handling charge taken out of any profit. It's the final toll of the bell - it's just most of them haven't quite realised it yet. Negative interest rates look alarmingly like the Grim Reaper to the few of them that have any savvy, but they're still trusting that they're the only game in town, like coach and horses drivers circa 1900 - too late. Ten years from now they'll all have gone under, and any taxpayer bailout won't work in the next bank credit crash - the liabilities are much larger now, and no one will believe it a second time around. Ultimately, the soundness of a currency - since Nixon destroyed Bretton Woods anyway - is a confidence game, and, like Venezuela, they've exhausted it. Goldman Sachs, was it?
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Post by mrsonde on Apr 9, 2019 9:38:50 GMT 1
Watching Hilary Benn's interview on Sky's Boulton show just now, what a shame that his dad isn't still around to set him straight on a few things. Not that I ever had much time for Tony, but at least he had principles, and two of his most cherished was an unshakeable belief in national sovereignty and a foundational faith in democracy. He would tell his wayward son that these are and always will be far more important and valuable than any potential loss of economic performance, especially when the way you're measuring that "economy" is so obviously weighted in favour of the interests of big business and capital.
As for his repetitive assertions that leaving with No Deal would be "irresponsible", because of the loss of jobs and economic performance, he would I'm fairly certain respond that the irresponsibility lies entirely with those who have designed the choice before us as being between May's deal (with or without any Labour addendum) or all the "catastrophe" that the Establishment keeps predicting would immediately follow a "crash out". The prospect before us should have been, and could still be, a Free Trade Agreement - and it's people like you, my son, who have done everything they can to prevent that happening, and everything they can to fool the public that this is not perfectly possible, even now. No jobs lost, no queues at Dover, no shortage of medicines or food or car parts. Just more trade - as much as we have with the EU now, and all the extra with the rest of the world.
"Oh, Dad, you don't understand..."
"What don't I understand?"
"Errrr....well, there's the problem with the Irish border, you see..."
"There is no problem if we have a Free Trade deal. No need for a border."
"Ahh, perhaps not, but then there's the problem of the integrity of the internal market..."
"Ye Gods, I spawned a halfwit."
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Post by mrsonde on Apr 9, 2019 9:59:41 GMT 1
I'm sure he'd also point out at this juncture that all this guff from the EU and the Remain side and those who support May's deal that the "Irish backstop" is necessary because of the International Treaty obligations of the Good Friday agreement is quite outrageous deceit. In actual fact, the legal obligations of Good Friday are absolutely emphatically clear: any change in legal status of Northern Ireland vis-a-vis the rest of the UK must only be made with the fully given democratic consent of the people of Northern Ireland, by full Referendum. Theresa May can't do it, nor the EU, and nor can the UK parliament. May's treaty would directly contravene an existing International Treaty, and even the attempt to pass it in Parliament is against the law.
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Post by alancalverd on Apr 9, 2019 23:44:14 GMT 1
"I say, Mary, this Sonde fellow seems to be writing in praise of Tony Benn"
"Wasn't he that nice chap we met at the Ruskin dinner?"
"No. I mean yes, Benn, of course. Charming, committed and very clever. Smoked a pipe and actually knew the words to the Red Flag."
"So Sonde has turned socialist. Oh dear. Where will it all end, Giles?"
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Post by alancalverd on Apr 9, 2019 23:53:08 GMT 1
Seriously, though, the GFA has FA to do with trade. It's the means by which President Blair handed executive power and loads of taxpayers' money to a bunch of murderers and knuckledraggers, who haven't even met since January 2017. It is functionally meaningless, just the name of an official bribe.
Crossborder trade has never been a problem. There are already different curencies and rates of duty on all sorts of goods and services, just as between Dover and Calais. Since the Republic is not a member of Schengen, the CTA can remain as it has done since 1926. The only times the border has been actually closed have been when the EU decided to arbitrarily ban the movement of cattle between the UK and Eire, as if airborne viruses respected lines on a map and there was no real common market.
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Post by mrsonde on Apr 10, 2019 6:28:04 GMT 1
"I say, Mary, this Sonde fellow seems to be writing in praise of Tony Benn" "Wasn't he that nice chap we met at the Ruskin dinner?" "No. I mean yes, Benn, of course. Charming, committed and very clever. Smoked a pipe and actually knew the words to the Red Flag." "So Sonde has turned socialist. Oh dear. Where will it all end, Giles?" And Hitler was a vegetarian, liked dogs, and admired the British, all of which I happen to agree with rather warmly. Doesn't mean I would want him in charge of anything more important than emptying the latrines. Actually, I always quite liked Benn. He was something of a nut, but a sympathetic one. His fundamental values were admirable, to my mind (strikingly similar to Enoch Powell's, funnily enough, which is how they ended up on the same side, saying exactly the same things, on this issue) - more so, and more deeply held, with greater understanding, than most of his creepy on-the-make fellow "socialists" like Wilson, Callaghan, Jenkins. His fatal flaw was his "commitment" to the misconceived ideology he believed embodied them - his political philosophy was fundamentally mistaken. Formed in his youth, when it at least seemed plausible, its appalling drawbacks and consequences still unforeseen except by those of penetrating genius like Hayek or Popper, he lacked the humility, intelligence and personal courage required to undergo the necessary deep rethink in his better informed maturity.
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Post by mrsonde on Apr 10, 2019 6:39:47 GMT 1
Seriously, though, the GFA has FA to do with trade. Well, I'd agree its much-exaggerated mention of the border is rather vague and aspirational - unlike its definitive specification of the rights of the N.Irish to self-determination. I can't agree with that, apart from the "murderers and knuckledraggers" part. Personally, I was much more aligned with Thatcher's approach and attitude to them - shoot the bastards. But then the agreement once they were thus defeated - and they were, thanks to her approach and attitude - would have been functionally pretty much identical. Foot and Mouth, was it? I think you must have wrote "abitrarily" when you meant to write "necessarily" - a slight brain tic, but I'm sure there's no need to worry, unduly, much. (I do like to channel Jean, occasionally.)
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Post by alancalverd on Apr 10, 2019 8:35:09 GMT 1
No, Mary, arbitrarily. You see the political border in some places actually runs through a field, so the poor cows had no idea whether they were on British or Irish soil, and the virus didn't care anyway because it is carried on the wind, which mostly blows from the Republic to the northeast. But the EU is more concerned about ensuring that trade between member states does not benefit the UK than anything else, so being honest about the incidence of disease just leads to greater losses for the UK. Politically expedient, scientific nonsense.
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Post by mrsonde on Apr 11, 2019 9:53:27 GMT 1
I can't remember what the Irish, Northern or Republic, did with their animals - I'd guess they were allowed to live, as long as the disease was contained on the mainland. But I do know that none were allowed to move, anywhere, in Britain - and I'm sure that applied to Ulster or Eire too. The virus could be airborne - but nowhere near as efficiently as by direct contact, of course. I don't think it was scientific nonsense to immediately and as tightly as possible restrict movement of sheep and cows - it was a very nasty business, speaking as someone who lived in Ceredigion at the time (I can still smell it now) and I don't know what the alternative could have been. Here's Christopher Meyer explaining the policy to Charlie Rose at the time: charlierose.com/videos/7034Are you suggesting there was another solution, which was scientifically feasible but not employed? Because of the expense? I don't see the EU as invidiously biased as you - there are plenty enough structurally deplorable reasons for wanting to be out without getting paranoid about it! But as an aside, yet one more reason to leave is that until we do there's no chance in hell that we could ever enact a ban on the atrocious practice of exporting live animals to Europe, in the most deplorable conditions - Brussels wouldn't let us, as they and British MPs have made crystal clear to the campaign (which I wholeheartedly support) fighting to get it outlawed. And this is just one small feature of the way we're forced to adopt policies about welfare in farming that would simply not be acceptable to continue if we were a sovereign nation. One matter I have direct experience of: the way the French farm their pigs is quite unspeakable, for example. If it were widely known in this country there'd be an outcry to ban any pork from France - and I don't know but I wouldn't be surprised in the least if such methods were common throughout Europe.
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Post by alancalverd on Apr 12, 2019 14:00:04 GMT 1
The ban on movement of cattle applied to the United Kingdom only and entirely. Eire is not part of the UK.
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