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Tag Archives: ignorance
Two-party system is not democracy…
…but the British public service broadcaster perpetuates the lie, against the national interest.
The proposed debate between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition about the Brexit Deal is not about a general election to a fixed-term Parliament; it is about the social, cultural, economic and constitutional future of our country for countless generations to come.
Democracy does not serve the national interest without a well-informed public.
Tom Baldwin presents the heart of the matter to the BBC:
The pipe dream that stole 66 million futures
“Brexit is an unachievable pipe-dream that will rob us of our future.”
“Every possible form of Brexit will leave the UK poorer, weaker and more isolated in the world.”
“Rescind Article 50 and concentrate instead on all the important things you highlight in your letter: the NHS, giving children the right start in life, building the homes that people need, tackling burning injustices, and building a forward-looking country that works for everyone.”
“Britain used to have a reputation as an open, friendly, tolerant society. No longer. [Now it is] a narrow-minded, petty regime that is already sending valuable workers fleeing for friendlier climes.”
Edwin Hayward, 25 November, 2018
The New Cosette © MHP 2018
Extracts from Edwin Hayward’s Letter to the Prime Minister 25 November, 2018
At best, the advisory referendum result imposed a duty to try and make Brexit work. …Your Government has spent £4.2 billion on Brexit planning and preparations, money that could have gone to a desperate NHS, to failing schools, to an over-stretched police force.
Instead, you opted to spend it in pursuit of Brexit. Thousands of civil servants have worked on the problem full-time, and an entire new ministry, DExEU, has been devoted to nothing else. (DExEU alone has consumed over £100 million in salaries to date).
Having expended all that money, all that effort, it is now overwhelmingly clear that every possible form of Brexit will leave the UK poorer, weaker and more isolated in the world, at a time when we are beset with dangers on every side. From Russia’s meddling in the democratic process to China flexing its economic muscles, from Donald Trump’s disdain for NATO and the UN to the rise of hard-right governments across the world, this is the worst possible time to retreat behind closed borders. Instead, we should be reaching out to our neighbours – our friends – and clubbing together with them to fend off these and other challenges.
The deal on the table cannot be in the national interest. It locks us into the EU’s structures without giving us any say as to how the EU is run….For so long as the transition period continues, the worst Brexit consequences will be held at bay. But we will be hamstrung in our ability to sign new deals, and we will be forced to stay in lock-step with every rule change introduced by the EU, regardless of whether it advantages or hurts UK interests. We can cut the transition cord, sure, but then we’re immediately back to the no deal scenario which your own Government figures estimate will gouge 8.8% off GDP.
The EU made a strong, generous offer on free movement. You chose to rebuff it, and perpetuate instead a new, more virulent form of the aggressive “hostile environment” you instigated as Home Secretary….
Furthermore, your letter fails to address reciprocity. If we are going to deliberately make life tough for the three million EU citizens who make the UK their home, then the EU27 will logically do the same for the over one million UK citizens who have chosen a life in EU27 countries.
….the full registration process will potentially leave tens of thousands of people at risk of the kind of errors that have so grievously afflicted the Windrush generation.
Britain used to have a reputation as an open, friendly, tolerant society. No longer. That is entirely on you. You chose to rebuff the EU’s overture, and instead pursue a narrow-minded, petty regime that is already sending valuable workers fleeing for friendlier climes.
In your letter, you refer to spending an extra £394 million a week on the NHS after Brexit. But that money has nothing whatsoever to do with Brexit. It is going to come from extra Government borrowing, and from better than expected tax receipts. Indeed, the best estimates to date suggest that the economy is already £500 million a week worse off because of Brexit than if the result of the referendum had been to stay. Conflating the NHS money and Brexit in the same letter must therefore be interpreted as a wilful deceit, an attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of a UK population you see as gullible enough to swallow the lie. We deserve better.
… Jobs are moving, investment is drying up, firms are moving assets to the EU27 or redomiciling. The key passporting system that the financial sector relies on to sell its services across the EU has been abandoned somewhere along the Brexit negotiations in favour of a much weaker equivalence regime.
….The financial services sector employs 3.5% of people, so the job losses may be consequential, but it also contributes a vital 11% of all taxes to Government coffers. The loss of even a slice of that tax revenue will leave a gaping hole come Budget time.
…the narrow majority (of voters – not of the entire UK) that came out in favour of Leave during the referendum no longer exists today.
…..The EU is close as well as rich. Only 0.5% of our trade is done by air, the rest goes by sea, so it is impossible to replace trade with our near neighbours with trade with far-flung nations.
You talk of Brexit being settled. That is the biggest deceit of all. Brexit Day is Day Zero of Brexit. It marks the transition between the phoney war of the exit negotiations and the hot war of trade deals and treaties. We are out of all the EU treaties and agreements on Brexit Day, but the impact of leaving them will be cushioned by the transition mechanism. But just because we don’t experience the result of something doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened.
Through our EU membership, we enjoy free trade deals with countries covering 60% of all our trade. All those trade deals will need to be replaced just to achieve the status quo we currently enjoy, even before we can start to see any benefits from Brexit. Indeed, Jacob Rees-Mogg believes that it may take half a century for the economic benefits of Brexit to present themselves. …We have at least 78 trade deals to replace (the EU signs new ones every few months, so we are chasing a moving target). On average, countries such as the US, India and China take between 3-5 years to agree one new trade deal. We simply do not have the capacity to negotiate dozens effectively in parallel, so we are going to have to pick and choose and prioritise. It is self-evident that this work will not be complete by the end of transition
…. Instead of sticking to a course that will see our economy founder on the Brexit rocks…. rescind Article 50 and concentrate instead on all the important things you highlight in your letter: the NHS, giving children the right start in life, building the homes that people need, tackling burning injustices, and building a forward-looking country that works for everyone.
None of those things are possible if you persist with Brexit.
….instead consider the true best interests of your constituents and of the UK as a whole.
Hold up the prism of merit to Brexit and see it for what it is: an unachievable pipe-dream that will rob us of our future.
Please make the right choice. Campaign with your heart and soul for a better future for our country, not one dictated by a vote that could never be realised in practice.
Most respectfully,
Edwin Hayward
Link to Full text of Edwin Hayward’s Letter to the Prime Minister
Woman lamenting outside a burning city 1550-55
Jan Swart van Groningen
Pen in black, brush in brown, 360 x 283 mm
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
The Fifth Horseman
Madness in Washington, madness in Westminster, are manifestations of the same “damaged and defective” world disorder. In America and Britain, a moral paralysis is afflicting people with the power to effect a cure.
Trump is a deadly distraction for the British, who loudly denounce him while being blind to their own Brexit faults. They don’t want their country to decline from global power to Trump’s patsy, and ultimately Putin’s, but they are not doing anything to stop it.
Republicans should “defend their country rather than the damaged and defective man who is now its president” James Fallows, The Atlantic
Tory Brexiteers are saying,
“The loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs will be worth it to regain our country’s sovereignty”
Anna Soubry, reporting extremists’ conversations in the House of Commons, 16 July, 2018.
A TRUMP CARD(IGAN)
Punch cartoon depicting Lord Cardigan leading the Charge of the Light Brigade at the Battle of Balaclava, 1854.
Yet another over-privileged nut-case with inherited wealth and delusions of sovereignty leads everyone else into disaster.
Brexit is as damaged and defective as Trump. The links between Trump and British right-wing Brexiteers are now in the public domain, yet still the powerful drug Denial sedates the electorate, duped by a coup d’etat into believing that unnecessary self-harm is a democratic imperative.
The extreme right wing of both countries very skillfully manipulated voters into turning the tool of democracy against themselves by deploying “opaque” and “insidious” advertizing techniques. (George Monbiot, The Guardian)
Now the British are spooked by a second Referendum, which would actually be the third, on EU membership.
LINKS TO PETITIONS:
The People’s Vote
Final Say
You hear people say, “You can’t just keep on having votes until you get the result you want. It’s not democratic”.
That’s the very definition of democracy: you carry on voting in peaceful election after election throughout your life in the hope you’ll get the result you want before you die. It keeps us quiet. Our expectation of another chance to vote prevents civil war. Democracy, like State Religion, was adopted because it was convenient, not because it was natural or immutable.
If something is not working, if you see the State is sick, you call for a vote to change it. The British are notoriously bad at complaining. They get bad service and bad government as a result. The Poll Tax that sparked a people’s revolt was only one of the abominations against equality and liberty during the Tories’ eighteen-year reign at the end of the 20th century.
THE TRIUMPH OF POVERTY by Lucas Vorsterman. British Museum. Image: WGA
We’re already in the middle of a bloodless civil war, one with no end in sight, not now the over-privileged, rich, right-wing idealogues dreaming of tax havens and workers without rights have got their populist alliance.
Are you really content to just sit and watch while the world burns?
Sofa by Ekhi-Guinea
Or, like the majority of MPs, do you put your caste before your country, ideology before humanity, self-interest before national interest?
Or do you want to take action against what you know in your heart is wrong?
Excerpts from Anna Soubry’s speech in the House of Commons, advocating the benefits of frictionless trade and deploring the Prime Minister’s decision to accept the extreme right-wing Tory amendments to the customs bill:
“[Parliamentary Tory Brexiteers have said in private conversations] that the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs will be worth it to regain our country’s sovereignty…
Nobody voted to be poorer.
Members on the frontbench and across this place should be shaking their heads with shame – this is the stuff of complete madness…
And the only reason that the government has accepted these amendments is because it is frightened of somewhere in the region of 40 members of parliament – the hard, no deal Brexiteers, who should have been seen off a long time ago and should be seen off.
These are people who do not want a responsible Brexit, they want their version of Brexit – they don’t even represent the people who actually voted Leave. The consequences of this are grave…..”
She’s Conservative, blonde and was born in Lincolnshire. Listen to her low-pitched, emphatic voice, see the wagging finger of reproof, and you might think that She, not the legendary Ayesha of Rider Haggard’s late Victorian tales of misogynist imperialist adventure, but the Tories’ own sacred cow, the first great British champion of the European “single market without barriers – visible or invisible”* had been reborn:
ANNA SOUBRY SPEAKING IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS
The world has turned upside down so many times, none of us know our arses from our elbows. Right-wing Brexiteer Edward Leigh MP, interrupting Anna Soubry’s speech to insult her, as is the arcane custom of our parliamentary representatives, unintentionally paid her the highest compliment:
“You’re no Margaret Thatcher”
That’s the best news in British politics for a generation.
*Margaret Thatcher, speaking at Lancaster House in 1988.
Freedom of Choice and the Democratic Right to Change Our Minds
The choices facing Great Britain are not being accurately presented to the public.
Brexit is not inevitable. It is still legally reversible.
Parliament has not yet decided to withdraw from the EU.
A Vote on the Deal could be given to the People.
“‘The binary choice which faced the electorate in the referendum’ is every bit as important now… And it is a dereliction of your public duty to issue editorial guidance to the contrary”.
From Andrew Adonis on Twitter: “My letter to Lord Hall, BBC director-general, asking him to withdraw BBC’s editorial guidance that it is ‘no longer reporting on the binary choice’ for/against Brexit. Parliament hasn’t yet decided whether we are leaving EU next March & this remains massive issue of public debate.”
Unworthy England’s Lost Prize
“God bless us, every one!” Tiny Tim, in A Christmas Carol, 1843, by Charles Dickens
This fortress built by Nature for herself,
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands;
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England…
Shakespeare, Richard II, c. 1595
NATIONAL TASK
We have to convince all other countries that the Nazi tyranny is going to be finally broken.
The right to guide the course of world history is the noblest prize of victory….The task which lies before us immediately is at once more practical, more simple and more stern.
I hope – indeed, I pray – that we shall not be found unworthy of our victory if after toil and tribulation it is granted to us.
For the rest, we have to gain the victory.
That is our task.
Winston Churchill, ‘The Few’, August 20th, 1940
NATIONALIST REALITY
Reported in
The Northern Echo
Muslim man says he was beaten in Durham for saying ‘Merry Christmas’
The truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it, ignorance may deride it,
malice may distort it, but there it is.
Winston Churchill, May 17th 1916.
Single Trading Nation at Sea
“The tectonic plates of the world economy are shifting. With an independent trade policy, Britain can put itself in a strong position to benefit, opening up access to fast-growing markets across the world.” Liam Fox, in The Financial Times, 11 November, 2017
The imperial British vision of free trading Ships at Spithead 1797
Image source: Wikipedia
“The very day that the U.K. leaves the European Union, it also leaves all the trade agreements that [the EU has] with third countries.”
Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström, in interview with Politico,
12 December, 2017
EU takes over global trade stage: Europe overtakes a Trump-led US as the world’s crucial setter of trade rules and standards.
The international trading system created by the U.S. after the Second World War has a new leader — the European Union. (Politico)
Japan issued a shattering warning to the UK about trading in the aftermath of Brexit, which, along with other good advice has been ignored
or suppressed by the British Government.
In particular, Japan’s Foreign Ministry advised that without EU-like economic and immigration systems in the UK, Japanese businesses would have to relocate.
SCRATCH POST 