Dear Angela...

Leadsome - We don't want a coronation, but we'll have a coronation? Enjoy your stay on the back benches you inadequate cockwomble!

Eagle - You don't have the strength of a blade of grass you wholly inadequate cockwomble, we voted for Jeremy because we'd rather have a left-wing opposition than another bunch of pale-blue Thatcherite 'lites'.

Merkel - Please god save us from ourselves! We are ruled by a squad of squabbling public-school prefects who would ruin the country for a brownie-point!

Dear Prime Minister

Hearing the likes of Chuka Umunna pontificating on the immediate past and possible future of both his country and the political party he professes to love, or watching the implosion of both main parties while the media, Innies and Outies conduct endless inquests to their respective campaigns as the often unnamed 'spokespeople' of both main parties start arguing about who should or should not be leader, who is or isn't fit to be leader: it strikes me that all of you - without exception - have not 'got it' to use the vernacular. Our whole political system is in meltdown and you're all carrying-on as if A) it's normal and B) there's nothing fundamentally wrong with either party?

The people have tried to tell you four times now; in 2010 when they voted for no overall control, in 2015 when they destroyed the Liberal's and decimated Labour, then a few months later when - after joining the Labour Party in large numbers - they voted for (the still preferred) Jeremy Corbyn - against the entire establishment, and then again last Thursday, when they appear to have killed their own country, on the World Stage, with a blunt knife, in an act of poorly informed - but very angry - suicide.

All the main parties are so riven with internal factions they are not fit to govern; none of them. You will never have the best interests of the people at heart while you are all keeping one eye on your own back or back-bench, your own front bench, left wing or right wing, or while you are all jostling in secret cabals, for future positions, or anonymously briefing against your own side in the Media.

The referendum should never have been called, and only was for reasons of internal party manoeuvring. Having been announced it should never have been a 51/49 issue, having instead a higher threshold. As with the Scottish referendum; 16 and 17-year olds should have had a voice on what is their future. Both sides should have used real facts, not wildly dishonest rhetoric which the media should then have questioned more and reported - as fact - less.

I think all parties should be dissolved before the coming General Election, for we will surely have one, if not two, before a year is out. All candidates should stand as independents, on their own merits and efforts, without the backing of party funds or party colours, with  a view to new parties being formed by whoever then gets elected; a right wing conservative party, a left wing socialist party and a liberal-minded, centrist party.

Party Funds could be frozen, and divided up among the new post-election parties, proportional to which surviving current-members end-up where. Clearly: we should also consider, seriously, full Proportional Representation (PR) and compulsory voting. While we're changing things: I suggest the Lord's needs thinning of party-appointees as well, how many of them have you shoved in there? A lot of good they'll do you now; you inadequate cockwomble.

As media failures are a large part of the predicament we now find ourselves in, perhaps the media could be encouraged to push the drive for those party dissolutions, and, in future, undertake not to use anonymous political spokesmen, ever. If you people aren't willing to put your names to quotes, they shouldn't be used, we're not talking 'whistleblowers' here, we're talking back-stabbers, and you have - in a globalising world - just cast our vessel adrift from the European quayside, without taking-on enough fuel.

If the whole establishment doesn't 'get it' soon (and that includes the media), and start to deliver on the promises in a year or two; the cities will burn, and it will be the people who voted leave, who do the bulk of the burning. They think they have been promised a paradise of self-government, full employment, raised wages and lower house prices (with a house for all), affordable living; a green and pleasant land, striding forward on the world stage, union flag held aloft!

Yet listening to most serious, independent commentators, the likelihood is something worse that 'Project Fear' suggested, with a gentle but inexorable slide to a world-status somewhere between Guatamala and Hati. The pound as important to foreign investors as the Peruvian whatever they have in Peru...Peso?...Exactly!

 

 

With the money markets moved to Frankfurt, the banking to Brussels and Paris, imports expensive and exports not wanted. Why would the Philippines, South Africa, or New Zealand buy our widgets, when they can get all the widgets they need closer to home?

Gibraltar, South Georgia and the Falkland's will be lost while we rebuild our few [brand-new] defunct capital ships, which are - in any event - insufficient to protect any fishing grounds we chose to claim, assuming we can buy-back the licences we have sold to Spanish, Norwegian and Danish captains! And where shall we get our boats built? Holland? Japan? Korea? They will all want cash up-front now, and cash will be in short supply.

The grey-haired 'war-generation' and Baby-Boomers' who voted to leave require (whether they like it or not) immigration to remain at current levels to ensure their pension pots are kept topped-up, but their pension pots will need to be raided (as manual workers' already have been) to keep the ship afloat, and there won't be jobs for the immigrants; as there won't any be for the 'locals'.

The reasons for leaving weren't good enough to be worth casting-off, but we did, we cut the ropes and now we're floating free, with Scotland and Ireland eyeing the lifeboats, and no actual plan from the new crew, while both that crew and their oppo's in Labour fall upon the Front Benches with their long-knives out. And you? you're fucking-off after fucking the country...

Dear Prime Minister

You're Fucked!

 

And you've fucked the country....

 

 

...did I say you are an inadequate cockwomble?

Dear General Sir Mike Rose, KCB, CBE, DSO, QGM . . .&Etc...

I listened with incredulity to your comments earlier today. The use of emotive language was appalling, the political stance was shameful from a British Soldier and the premise was false, you were talking-up a fantasy creation of your own fevered mind, clearly a victim of the thundery weather, put yourself under the MO is my advice.

 

'Soldiers dressed in the drab olive of a European army'?

We all have camouflage uniforms, ergo; any European Army (not yet planned) would certainly have camouflage uniforms, you are being disingenuous Sir. And the idea that the current British camouflage isn't drab, is risible in itself, it's an awful semi-desert/semi-tropical/semi-temperate mashed-potato of a scheme matched to brown boots, the days of the striking DPM are long gone. Emotive tosh, Sir: you're talking emotive tosh.

'Queens Birthday Parade'?

If it ever happened you can be sure (and I'm sure - beyond your dishonesty in this - you know) that the French would retain their Saint Cyr cadet uniform for ceremonials, the Danes would keep their Guards, the Germans their chromium-plated helmets and we would maintain a unit of Bearskins and Household Cavalry - emotive rubbish Sir, from your potty-mouth.

There is only the 'idea' of a European Army, a proposal, a not even a 'white paper' we wouldn't have to join a European Army, we already work with all our neighbours through NATO, a closer unification would only make sense as the US withdraws from involvement in NATO and as most serious threats are or become more global; Russia, China, Terrorism, Climate Change . . . are you planning for a swift domestic campaign against Scotland? Wales? Are you wishing to retain the ability to march on Paris?

You whined about European soldiers in British barracks, well - presumably it would be UK units in UK barracks, despite the fact that half the British Army is already/still in Germany anyway! AND: we ARE European whether we are in the EU or out? Do you propose to call Britain part of Asia, Africa . . . America perhaps? The hypocrisy and nonsensical rubbish in you whingeing is staggering.

The British Army - I was in - prided itself on its political neutrality; you Sir are a disgrace to the uniform and as a once acting Lance Corporal, can I just say Sir: with all due respect to your rank, Sir . . . Shut the fuck-up, you disgraceful cockwomble, Sir!

Dear Prime Minister

Who killed Joe Cox, PM? A right-wing, semi-fascist, simplistic, impressionable fool with metal-health issues? No . . . he just wielded the weapons; the 'Establishment' killed her, and particularly the right-wing, small-c conservative, reactionaries, those U-Kippers and Tories in the Shires, you and yours Prime Minister, you and yours.

People are saying they 'didn't know there were people like Joe Cox in parliament', yet why would they when in instances like that of the current referendum, reactionary gits like the over-privileged Rees-Mogg are allowed (and encouraged by the media, by the BBC) to crawl out from under whatever rock they've been hiding under since their last fascist diner-party scandal and rehabilitate themselves by talking about the issue as if they are to be trusted and respected, when they probably should've been sacked and jailed for fraud 7 years ago! How many times has he been interviewed on the BBC in the last six weeks, how many times was Joe Cox?

 

I wrote this on Sunday but choose not to publish it yesterday, as making political points out of such a tragedy is pretty low, but from lunchtime Sunday onward, all sides have been doing just that! Yesterday (Monday) everybody had a point to make with a political angle, so here's mine.

Both sides in the Brexit debate (not a word it deserves; there has been NO debate) have been inexorably escalating the rhetoric and with it the lies, neither side questions the other with rational logic, they just throw more metaphorical rocks at the opposition, people in the street haven't the faintest idea what to vote for or why; people have been interviewed who've changed their minds three times in the last two months and with four days to go are now undecided, the first firm stance they've taken!

Intelligent people know that to stay with the devil you know is infinitely preferable to the alternative, but most people aren't that intelligent . . . 100 years of compulsory 'education', 50 years of tabloid journalism and nearly 40 years of your kind of politics have ensured that! Your 'shouty' rhetoric panders to the ignorant, and the right-wing press reinforce false values and perceptions.

The rot that lead to Joe Cox' death, goes back a long way, but since you came to power in 2010 it has escalated drastically, you yourself - Prime Minister; have made the most hideous comments on migrant 'swarms' and the 'scrounging' unemployed 'something-for-nothings', you have been a cheerleader for intolerance, isolation and the selfish agenda.

Intolerance stalks the land, bottom-line profit-margins have replaced responsible State funding-for-need, the 'other' has become a legitimate target for vitriol, whether our own poor, jobless, elderly or disabled, other countries war-refugees or the victims of despots we call 'friends of Britain' and to whom we supply arms and suppressive 'law-enforcement' equipment.

Selfishness among the 'haves' has increased the anger of the 'have-nots'. You - Prime Minister - have turned a blind-eye to UKIP's nasty form of little-Englander language, aimed squarely at those very angry have-nots, allowed Boris the buffoon to build a power-base, you've given jobs to the back-stabber's IDS and Gove and you've joined the race to the bottom on Brexit rhetoric.

It must be acknowledged that you've been helped by a toothless BBC and a right-wing media happy to go further than you on anti-migration rhetoric, xenophobic comments on our European neighbours, out-and-out lies about our own lower-class citizens and the likely economic results of a Brexit.

It is fair to point out that you (collectively as an establishment) didn't 'do a Trump' and try to immediately make political capital out of the death, but you did spent the next few days hand wringing, pretending that the causal problem lay elsewhere and all standing about together like you are all mates...by Sunday afternoon though: you were all back to slinging Euromud at each other!

The Scottish did have a proper 'debate' some 80% of the population educated themselves as to the issues and likely outcomes for over a year, in the event it was close, but a high turn-out ensured the result was taken as a result.

In this debate, in England particularly and therefore in the national press there are no facts, no measured or nuanced explanations of the true position on Euro-funding, contributions, regulation, democratic procedures,  migration vs. pension provision, fisheries, EU Social Fund input, nothing, just shouty-men, day-in, day-out, shouting about a mythical £350-million!

Whatever the outcome on Thursday, we will be facing a General Election before August has set over the yard-arm (something I predicted in May last year), and you - Prime minister - will be toast, a thought which sustains me through the dark days you have driven-us to, but soured by the fact that whether here or gone, you've got some of Joe Cox's blood on your hands.

Dear Prime Minister

Boris' semi-retarded, rubbish-talk over the weekend? The USA are 50 nations who have agreed to surrender portions of sovereignty to a federal overlord, just like the EU...if Eaton teaches people to the standard of the incumbent Mayor of London, it's no wonder you're such an inadequate cockwomble.

Hillsborough? A state-sponsored, Tory-press enabled, 20-year outrage against the common citizenry...par for the course in your world. No...I want to talk about British Home Stores today.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry at the news regarding BHS this week, Mr. Philip Green (and his Monaco-based wife!) have done very well out of the deal so far haven't they! I seem to remember BHS were struggling back in the mid-1990's, dropping the full title in favour of the abbreviated moniker, a change of direction and revamped stores...and a vast flow of money into Mr. Greens bank accounts!

Of course everything he's done has been totally above board and completely legal, it's just unfortunate that all the pension money had apparently evaporated in the process? None of it has been used to buy that aircraft-carrier yacht of his (number three in Phil's fleet I believe) I'm sure.

Poly Peck, Maxwell, Fayrepak (Christmas hampers), JJB (sports goods), City Link (owner-driver couriers)...Banks! It's a never ending litany of what boils down to theft, even if the law (or HMRC) often decide it err...isn't. Pension schemes should not be usable as capital, ever.

A few years ago a chap (known to you as part of the establishment) would fly into Farnborough Airport from abroad in his own jet, where his chauffeur - waved through the gate - would meet him on the apron or taxiway or whatever they call it. No customs, not for the rich, they don't want to have to walk across tarmac when they can be driven!

He also needed the car next to the plane because while he and his family settled themselves into the comparative luxury of a highly-polished, jet-black, 7-seat, conference-layout, Mercedes V-Class, people-carrier (actually built in a Spanish bus factory, but it looked 'the part'), the driver was required to help the co-pilot and flight-attendant carry a large, leather hold-all to the vehicle, which was so heavy the car lifted half-an-inch at the front when the bag was put in the boot.

I shall call him Farnborough cheese-man, as, were I to name him, he would probably sue me for slander or defamation or whatever? It's another thing you people do, is use the law or the threat of the law to protect yourselves from accountability, and 'The Law' goes along with it, because it's run by people like you.

While you have probably been round his place supping on the illegally imported food, as it was driven straight to the familial residence in Kensington-Chelsea where more staff were waiting at the door ready to carry it in!

It may well be that it wasn't cheese and/or cooked-meats, it was heavy enough to be a body; a couple of thousand rounds of metal-linked machine-gun ammunition; a box of grenades or a few bars of gold? I have no evidence that it was cheese and ham, just the co-pilot and steward's word for it!

When the 'Great and the [not so] Good' swan into St. Tropez, or Southampton with their floating gin-palace, customs don't go over the vessel with more than a cursory check of a few passports, and a "Is your driver here? Oh yes, there he is, nice to see you again Mr. Rich, have a good stay".

You lot all cried Mea culpa over the expenses scandal, well some of you did, the guilty cried something unprintable, yet here you are 5 years later, claiming more than ever...while forcing austerity on the rest of us. You just changed the rules to make it legal to claim what you were caught claiming illegally! By a data leak.

But - as we saw with the Panama papers - things are changing Prime Minister, we the people are waking-up, finding digital voice-recorders that fit in breast pockets, 'smart phones' which record silently, data sticks...it's only a matter of time before a disgruntled chauffeur, personal assistant or 'poor' relative uses such a device to record such an event as Farnborough cheese-man's arrival - and maybe make a few bob selling the data to a Tabloid paper...capitalism in action eh, Prime Minister?

The Mr. Green's, and Whites, and Browns, the Maxwell's and Farnborough cheese-man's of this world, and you Prime Minister, are going to lose that ability to hide, to exploit, to enrich yourselves at our expense, to rob your people, companies or whole countries, to gamble with other people's money and lose it all, yet come out of it smiling at the state of your own bank-balances. You will also, eventually, all, lose the ability to misuse the law to protect yourselves from your own poor behaviour.

You wanted us all to buy PC's, we did. You wanted us to 'go digital' and get the Internet, we did.  Then we had to buy Laptops, Blackberry devices, tablets and then Smartphone's...we did - now we're all wired-up to end your way of doing things! They say revenge is a dish best served cold, well there are a hundred billion cold scraps out there, to be collected-up and served to you, and you've given us the tools to collect them, it's only a matter of time now.

Dear Prime Minister

This is the full panoply of Hart District Council's celebratory efforts for the Queen's 90th Birthday celebrations...

...you may struggle to see them, here let me help you...

...is that better? It's pathetic isn't it? I'm not sure Aldershot bothered at all and I didn't see anything in Farnborough at the weekend.

In the golden, olden days, there would have been bunting strewn across the road like red, white and blue snow, there would have been flags as big as horses from every beribboned lamp post and the - now absent - telegraph poles, shops would have decked themselves out in colour-coordinated decorations and prepared shop window displays that had more to do with royalty, nation and empire than they had to do with the goods the shops actually sold.

It would have been in every town, village and hamlet in the land. We would have had a public holiday, schools would have had a day off, and parishes would have had a day of events with a church service and a hog-roast.

I don't blame the local councils, we all know they've had their budgets cut and cut again by the inadequate cockwombles in Westminster - that's you, as if you didn't know, and under the capitalist system that's been replacing democracy since 1979, they are supposed to expect help from the 'private sector' on these occasions, 'private enterprise' is supposed to step-up to the plate.

The Estate Agents had a go, those are paper discs being shredded in the light-breeze of the last few days, and a couple of reels of transparent plastic mesh (taffeta?), while another shop did have a bucket outside with balloons on sticks to which they had attached a dozen or so cardboard masks of her Majesty and the Duke of Edinburgh! Very fetching.

You see Prime Minister, the private sector is all about the bottom line, and while they might pay for some gardening work in exchange for disfiguring hoardings on roundabouts, they won't shell out for a bunch of decorations with no 'guaranteed return in the investment'.

That's why we used to have a general taxation system in which the rich (who benefit from the efforts of the poor, or the inherited-wealth born of the efforts of slavery, land clearance, enclosures...) paid enough for local authorities to be given enough to do enough in situations like this.

This was at one end of town; it probably represents a week's child-protection budget!
Or a penny on the council-tax?

Compared to the Silver Jubilee celebrations (two years before the rot set-in at Westminster), both the Golden and Diamond jubilee celebrations have been muted, damp squibs.

It is a sign of the end of 'Empire', the end of 'great' Britain; even Margret Thatcher (the architect of all you stand for) started to distance herself from some of her core policies in her final post-retirement speeches. She hated what you were doing with housing.

Yet you keep banging on about privatisation, forcing schools to convert to academies, out-sourcing, making-do and mending with Chinese money and French technical expertise (which half the company's own board thinks they don't have!), breaking-up the Health Service...

...what are you going to do with all the money you're taking out of the economy Prime Minister? Run off to China and build a nice house in the hills a long way from pollution centres and rising oceans? Their leader is becoming more dictatorial every day, kidnapping publishers from Hong Kong, taking overall control of the armed forces...he's not going to tolerate a bunch of Western toffs buying-up land there, he's too busy making sure his mates buy-up London...and Toronto and New York...!

Although, republicans would probably argue that celebrating the birthday of a highly privileged woman who wants for nothing and gets the best of everything is anathema in itself! If she fails to make it to a hundred will the Household Division take the Royal physicians outside and shoot them? But that's another post for another day.

You command a dying world Prime Minister...badly.

Dear Prime Minister

Got your leaflet the other day, in fact we've had several....there's nothing in them! Large print sloganeering and text 'sound bites', vast generalisations, seemingly designed to scare rather than educate. It's almost as if you secretly want to lose? Or - at least - aren't too bothered if we do get out of Europe.

I also listened to that Mr. Grayling supping at the temple of arselikens this weekend, that was amusing; he clearly thinks we are likely to stay in now and is desperate to curry favour with you in the event that he and his mob are left out in the cold, his description of you as the man for the job left me wondering if the child of God had returned, unannounced, and was quietly leading the Tory party!

To paraphrase (the Outie): 'In or Out, my mate Dave, my very best mate Dave that wot I love like a brother and respect like Mother Teresa is the only man to lead any negotiations; evv'errr!'

Well...if we get out, France will shit on us from a great height, they never wanted us to join  in the first place and secondly: Germany won't be minded to stop them. Using Norway's figures as an example we would pay more as 'Outies' to remain within the EU trading frameworks than we pay as 'Innies'.

While if we stay in, you can kiss goodbye to whatever - un-ratified - 'changes' you think you obtained the other day! Writ in stone? They're writ in wet sand, you really are an inadequate cockwomble!

Dear Prime Minister

Bit of a departure from the Euro-vote or your general level of inadequate cockwomblery today Prime Minister, but it contains within it several pointers as to why the 'Establishment' lacks the trust, respect or support of the people (even 'its' people) these days.

Hart District Council Offices - Fleet, Hampshire

I saw these from the local library, parked outside the offices of Hart District Council (Tory) the other day and - being unable to read the writing in front of them - took a shot to enlarge it at home. Imagine my surprise when I read the notice to be 'Police Only'. My surprise being based on two facts I happened to have at my fingertips.

One: That there is a perfectly good (or reasonably saveable...I must confess I don't know the condition of the interior) police station not 300 meters from the location of these vehicles, with parking out the front for a dozen or so vehicles and a vehicle pound attached at the side/back of the building with garaging and outdoor parking for another 20+ vehicles of all sizes, and that two: There is a shortage of parking spaces in the town in question - Fleet in Hampshire.

Indeed, when the council recently 'renovated' the car parks and high street, an exercise which suggests a return to former splendor, they managed to reduce the total  number of spaces available and then increase the number of spaces still available as wholly dedicated to unloading or disabled drivers. The overall change wasn't great, about 14, 18 mabe 20 spaces...something like that, but any reduction would seem to be daft as car-ownership continues to rise, and when also you consider that the reduction in parking spaces was accompanied by an announcement of more ticket-issuing traffic patrols!

Now, Prime Minister...we 'the people' have paid for that police station and the land it sits on, we have paid for the library and council offices, that land and the land the car parks sit on, we - technically - own the spaces down the high-street, yet the people we pay to administer our lives and meet our needs as citizens, whilst keeping us safe, have clearly conspired to punitively tax us, by deceit, through manipulation of the available parking, the regulations around that parking and their enforcement?

Tired old 1970's two-tiered, ramped, concrete lump

If you think I'm being silly, let me take you next door to Rushmoor Borough Council (Tory), where many years ago (mid-1990's), someone thought it would be a good idea to hold a car-boot sale on an underused car-park in the centre of a roundabout in Farnborough town centre on Sunday afternoons. Yes- the very same Farnborough as the one with the invisible, inaccessible high-rise, no-entry, or exit car park.

This proved quite popular; Rushmoor has a lot of poverty among the dormitory'd city-types, due to the old GLC-overspill housing projects, so a little Sunday outing to buy or gossip over other people's stuff - they don't really need - is as close to an outing as you can get with a fiver, on an overcast Sunday.

As a result there was a short period of about 20 minutes just after mid-day when some...how shall I put it...'undisciplined' vehicle-parking would occur the other side of the road in the Council Offices car park. I mean, literally; 20 minutes. Once the eBay bottom-feeders had been and gone, it all calmed-down to the leisurely pace of an odd coming and a steady going.

Enjoy your free parking at our expense! Rushmore BC

Yet instead of turning a blind-eye to what was no real problem at all, the council (whose staff enjoy free parking there, all week), panicked, got over-exited, threw all their toys out of the pram and decided to introduce Sunday parking charges, in all car parks, all day, on a Sunday! As far as I am aware, that car-boot sale and those parking charges are both still extant.

Again, we the people own the land that the offices and car parks are located on, we allow council staff to enjoy free parking as a 'perk' on top of their salaries (everyone else has to pay Monday-Sunday), and again bear in mind that Rushmoor were advertising an evening seminar the other week with wine and canapés (for budding Landlords and people trying to beat the buy-to-let mortgage changes) with...you guessed it...Free Parking!

Left - Of course 'Permit Holders A' work for us, but we have to pay to park on our land!

 

Right - Nanny State, Police State, Fascist State...call it what you will; Orwell would recognise it. They'll be printing the Highway Code on curb-stones next!

I said at the start that there were several pointers to the breakdown in the relationship between citizen and state (or 'authority') in this, and while it does read like one of those 'old git' celebs on BBC2, whinging about nothing, there is substance here as well.

The fact that you can see clearly see the 'one law for them (you) and another law for everyone else (us)' rule in action with both these situations.

The fact that you blame 'Austerity' for needing to cut taxes for the rich (despite the fact that it was rich Bankers who got us in the current mess), yet then accept the raising of those missing tax-pounds by further attacking the poor, even the not so poor, with underhand tactics such as the above are both bloody good reasons for the citizenry ceasing to trust or respect you; you who would rule over us.

Fleet Police Station - day-time only service for years, now shut-up and padlocked

Thirdly, the reason the police feel the need for those parking spaces to be reserved for them at the council offices is because the police station is actually all locked-up and derelict, and despite dedicated parking spaces, often Fleet (a largish dormitory with an existing night-life behavioral problem and a plethora of hot-hatched, wide-boys, with exhausts worth more than the rest of their cars) is without a proper police presence.

Indeed the recent spate of day-time burglaries blamed on career criminals dropping off the M3 or having a day-away round the M25, is probably in no small part due to the fact that the town is all but undefended.

In the 'States this is the sort of stuff that might lead a bunch of 'Rednecks' to arm themselves and take over a hunting-lodge claiming 'federal conspiracy' and muttering about lizard-aliens, over here you just get me verbally pissing in the wind, but I'll keep pissing 'till you get a face full, Prime Minister.

Dear Prime Minister

Last Tuesday, I missed an opportunity to be one step ahead of the National Press when I lazily posted my MHS bits instead of pointing out that while 'A Downing Street spokesman' was saying you and your family weren’t benefiting from any off-shore accounting (present tense), it was almost inevitable that you had, through the death of your father;  as beneficiaries of the will, which would have included funds generated by his dealings with the delightful Mossack Fonseca.

Well, it seems I would have been right...actually I think I hinted at it in  a reply to a comment on another post so I can feel smug enough...but not as smug as you probably feel having - so far - got away with what was a dogs breakfast of a week's press briefings!

The thing is, it's not that you did anything wrong, it's that A) you felt you had to lie, deceive and obfuscate (through anonymous spokesmen to begin with) about something which apparently wasn't wrong, B) that the rules which allow something like this to be 'right' are themselves a stinking pile of protectionist crap for the already rich and privileged and C) that your financial bedfellows for centuries have been crooks, criminals, Mafioso, despots, dictators, arms dealers, drug-runners, money-grubbing ex's hiding their assets from their spouses, the not-so-great-and-good of FIFA and the IOC, the UN, the senior civil service, the banking sector, royalty, celebs...yada, yada, ad infinitum, ad nauseam, &etc...The bent bastards of the Establishment - for wont of a single, all-encompassing title.

To recap: After the present tense statement on Tuesday, we had the [future tense] statement on Thursday morning also from your 'No.10 spokesman', stating that you weren't going to benefit from off-shore accounting going forward either, only for you to admit later the same day that, err...actually you had, of course, benefitted from them in the past...and not simply through the will as I suspected, no, it was all a bit more complicated than that, you'd had actual shares and converted them to actual cash!

But as the weekend has slid by, it's got steadily worse, with larger amounts, you mother and 7-year inheritance-avoidance shenanigans thrown out there with the constant refrains of "I [he/we/they] have done nothing wrong [against the rules]".

The rules - clearly - need to be changed. People 'in the street', people 'down the pub', people like me, think it stinks and we've thought so for decades, even centuries, look at how the Church has ended-up with the prime chunks of every village, every hamlet in the land for their buildings of worship and/or - more tellingly - the lovely [usually famous] architect-designed Tudor'esque and Arts & Craft Rectories and Vicarages!

This is not about some petty envy, Prime Minister, it's about fair-play, a level playing field, accountability, transparency, yeah; even 'Democracy'...and whether you understand it or not, a revolution is already in the air; the Mossack Fonseca leak, is not the first, while you (the Western 'democratic' establishment) have driven Mr. Snowden into exile in Moscow, driven Mr. Asange into exile in an embassies spare room and jailed little what's-her-face, apparently forever, they were the vanguard of a movement that included your own expense scandal.

A scandal for which your reply has been to change 'the rules' so that you can all claim more now than you were six years ago, just...not for moats or duck-houses.

But even that scandal could have been avoided, you may remember that the House of Commons (some time ago) appointed an expenses 'Tzar' Liz Philkin (?) to oversee a cleaning-up, she was so good at her job, you sacked her (disgracefully) and disbanded her office...a few years later and you were all swimming in your own shit live on the telly! The same thing happened in the European Parliament, with not one but TWO whistle-blowers.

So, now it's all done anonymously and very effectively, using modern technology.

How long before someone blows the whistle on Vodafone and their relationships with money, tax, loans-to-self, an office above a chip-shop in Luxembourg, HMRC, the useless OfCom, Newbury Borough Council...and their customers?

How long before someone blows the whistle on the water companies and their meter schemes? Or a council bins contract? PPI's? A4E/PeoplPlus and DWP? Immigration centers, prison-service outsourcing, airline ticketing costs....there will be no secrets while you're all so crooked.

Select Folders - Copy - Paste - Eject Disc - "Media safe to remove", clock-out, go home...it's so easy!

The International media (104 outlets world-wide) and the Consortium of Investigative Journalists have been secretly looking at the Mossack Fonseca stuff for over a year - while the whistle-blower regularly updated the stash! What are they already looking at 'next', Prime Minister? What's the next big scandal waiting in the wings or already in the bag?

When the ICIJ put the 'Panama Papers' online with a search tool, I'll be checking it for the name of a certain Knight of the Realm I believe is paid in the Bahamas', in $US, for work he does on the 'phone in his kitchen in the UK. As a bent Judge - in forcing an out of court settlement ['compromise agreement'] on me, without representation - has stated I can never mention the Knight again, except to a law maker, I'll have to find something I can take to a lawmaker, huh? HMRC know all about it!

Watch your back Prime Minister, and understand, no one in this revolution is saying you can't be a millionaire, no one in this revolution wants anyone to die, but they want everyone to earn what they do honestly and openly. They want African kids to stop dying of hunger; they want an end to war and war-mongering. They want steel-workers to face unemployment with dignity, secure in the knowledge there's enough to go round, a safety-net for all and that it (the hidden trillions) is not all mouldering in the British Virgin Islands.

They want to be ruled administered by honest democrats, not rotten, buggins-turn, one-in-five of the electorate voted-for, arrogant but inadequate, cockwombles.

And - of course - the really annoying thing about the last eight days, is you have almost certainly damaged the 'Stay in Europe' campaign, not a lot, but nevertheless: needlessly so.

Dear Prime Minister

Apropos my previous missive...

 

I knocked these up this morning, perhaps you could pass them on to the relevant authorities for me, or are you too busy re-visiting your fathers financial dealings?

Dear Prime Minister

"If all the rich people in the world divided up their money among themselves there wouldn't be enough to go around" - Christina Stead

What to choose to write to you about today?

The steel crisis? Well...that's just the Tory chickens coming home to roost isn't it? 37 years of running down Britain because you have unbridled prejudice of the working classes, a hatred of anyone having a 'life' other that your own privileged sitting on a pile of slave-wealth, grinning at the plebs - I see that Chancellor of yours was in a hi-viz jacket again yesterday, he's barely out of it these days, is it some kind of grubby fetish? "Oh look, I can impersonate someone with employment"

Donald Trump? He's digging his own grave "...quicker than larger turns to piss"*. Build a wall round them until you need to marry one, or get one to mow the lawn...then punish them if they get unemployed, or ill, or pregnant...no punish the doctor..no punish the Mexicans, the Syrians? Kill 'em all (with legally held firearms) and let God sort it out!

The academy-schools programme? I think even the middle-classes are starting to have doubts about that one, I'll leave it to popular opinion and any forthcoming industrial action for now, we can always come back to it here! But when Radio4's More or Less is ripping all your Education Minister's claims and figures to pieces, I think the ice is getting a bit thin on that one, don't you?

 

 

No prime Minister, I think - as it was All Fools day yesterday - we should look at the news Manchester took over responsibility for its local NHS budgets and facilities yesterday. The April Fools being the people of the UK who don't seem to have understood that the NHS started to become a fragmented, semi-privatised collection of individual 'Health Services' yesterday.

Presumably the bit hived-off yesterday should now be referred to as the MHS...geddit; Manchester? It's not part of the NHS if it's under a new authority is it? That great bugbear of Tory dogma, going back to the fat drunk's hatred of it before it was formed, finally dealt a death-blow.

You've always despised the fact that we chose to reward the citizenry, after two World Wars and all the associated privations, with a humanist safety net. Decided to look after our poor, our weak, our needy, and provide for everyone, no matter their means. It really eats you up.

There are those, on the left and in the liberal centre, who have warned for some time that the agenda is to destroy the jewel in our otherwise rather tawdry and tarnished crown, but sadly not enough of tthe electorate were listening. That one thing we - the British - had that was envied by the rest of the world is to be ground down by your petty, right-wing, hatred of the common people.

There are so many things to write to you about, 40 years of telling us Thacherite-Raganomic, free-market, top-run, bottom-line, trickle-down, capital-lead, private-financed, outsourcing is the way forward, the best way, the only way and yet, we are all worse off than we were in 1979. Well, I say 'all', a few of you at the top have done very well indeed...how many of your party have interests in private health companies? Half? Three-quarters of the back bench?

While the rest of us have more debt than ever - personally and nationally, we can't afford housing; bought or rented, our defence forces couldn't hold-on to a cake without asking America to help, hospital waiting-lists are on the up, prisons are overcrowded, you're giving the entire schools estate to a few of your bent mates (with the NHS to follow), you've flogged everything in the cupboard but not reduced taxation, tripled your earnings while reducing everyone else's, multiplied your expenses ten-fold in thirty years, destroyed work-security AND the safety-nets, our kids leave collage with massive debts, apprenticeships have been reduced to underpaid work-programmes with few guarantees and lower qualifications (when you can get one)...

...I can go on, page after page after page...science, technology, the Police, ports and shipbuilding, mines and mining, power generation, flood-protection and flood-prevention, house-building and empty-homes, railways, local authority parking regimes (another tax), local planners and dying high-streets, courts, tribunals and the judiciary, access to legal aid, the right to even bring cases, civil rights, monetising the unemployed, even democracy is under threat...you really are execrable.

 

* Quote taken from Beasley Street  by John Cooper Clarke

Dear Prime Minister

As people scuttle-across to the Facebook to adopt a Belgian flag for a week or two, I'm glad you've been so quick to condemn the attempts by the execrable Gerard Batten and Mike Hookem and their equally unpalatable boss Mr. Farage to use yesterday's bombings as an excuse for a party-political broadcast on behalf of the ignorant...sorry; UK Independence Party, by suggesting that an out-vote in the Euro-referendum would make us safer than we are!

Together, we stand, divided, we...

But it shouldn't need you to say anything. You have failed to educate the populace to the truth, and have in fact allowed and encouraged the media to push the idea that we are not safe in Europe, will never be safe in Europe, that all migrants are a threat, that immigration is somehow a problem to be stamped out.

You are - with your 'scrounger' speeches and "Something for nothing culture" sound-bites - just as insular, intolerant and reactionary as any member of UKIP, most of whom are ex-Tories! You are part of the problem, rather than the solution.

The facts (the media should be regularly reminding people of) are that we are not even in the Schengen area, that immigration is driving what little growth the country's economy has seen since 2008, that migrants (and Refugees) will pay the future bills of an ageing population, that we do check incoming passports at our existing boarder-controls.

So far all the bombers in France and Belgium have been there legitimately, we have similar 'players' and our security services watch them. No one will 100% protect anyone from terrorism and terrorism has been with us for over a hundred years now. We are doing all we can, and liaison with European law enforcement agencies (however flawed it is now) would be harder were we out of Europe...ergo; for security purposes: we are better-off in.

 

Gratuitous picture of a fat bloke who's clearly eaten all the pies.

One of life's 'takers'...

 

Yours etc...

Dear Prime Minister

Over the last couple of weeks a favourite trope of the media, with regard to garnering opinion on 'Brexit' (I hope the originator of that term is earmarked for firing-squad after the election!*) has been to go North or North East and talk to fishermen from the ports of East Anglia, the Yorks coast, Hull/Humberside and the Tyne.

Some of them are very stupid, one wife stating on a flagship news programme she hoped we could get out [of Europe] but sort of stay in "...if you know what I mean? Can we do that? I don't know", possibly more shocking was that the [BBC] reporter went along with her, "I don't know either...can we, I don't think so?"

We've had one deep-sea trawler man winging about European boats (something they've been doing since before the war), another stating that Brussels' regulations were nothing but a problem. Some blaming the EU for the low fish stocks, others for the low-catch limits as if the two are entirely separate problems.

 

Very Fishy

 

The fact is without Brussels there would be no fish left in the North Sea by now, fishermen fish...that's what they do, and when the catch drops-off they take bigger boats, travel further, stay-out longer and/or use smaller nets. Without our membership of the EEC, Britain's fishermen would have fished the North Sea empty sometime in the early 1980's!

This is not to say that an independent - of Europe - Britain couldn't set its own limits, but it would be harder to police them, and neighbours would have different limits, different rules and different regulations.

For instance: at the moment there is a concern about electric-shock netting of bottom-feeders, with the Belgians earning some opprobrium (thoughts are with them today) for this new practice. The scientists are arguing with the data from the scant studies so far carried out; Outie-helping research stating it's cruel and damaging while the Innie-supporting results suggest it's a more eco-friendly way to fish.

The only way to sort out that conundrum is to allow the EU to do better large-sample research, using all the figures from all the fishing fleets, and then impose whatever conclusion/s it comes to on everyone, it’s the fair way to do it, and by applying it to all the fleets: will have the same long-term effects on Plaice as previous limits/moratoriums have had on the recovery of Cod stocks.

Brussels IS looking into this new fishing technique and while UKIP, the Tabloids and the Outies might pander to the baser beliefs of your average fish-wife...or even your average fish-wife on the telly!...by listening to their arguments and weighing them against the facts it becomes clear - we are better-off in!

Yours etc...

*When left-wing liberalism goes out of the window!

Dear Prime Minister

Well! What to write to you about today...the IDS thing is turning into an Edwardian farce..."A Benefit CUT?!"

The business with Turkey provides column-inches daily, Europe hasn't gone away...indeed - it's getting closer! The recent Budget's coming unravelled like a golf-ball cut in half by a schoolboy's pocket-knife, as is; err...your party!

And it's on that last point I want to ruminate today; did you see all this coming when you surprised yourself last May by so successfully blaming the Labour Party for a global depression which was actually down to rotten bwankers (why are Iceland sending theirs to jail and the US fining theirs while we reward ours?) and blaming the Liberal's for your reactionary and socially destructive, purely political, austerity policies?

I did. I told all the weeping 'lefties' on-line/on the Facebook; all those blubbing on the Labour page, swearing on Chucky-Mark McGowan's page, rending their sack-cloth and ashes on the 38Degrees posts or ululating in Morning on Mr. Corbyn's page that you wouldn't last 18 Months!

I fleshed-out my piece of mumbo-jumbo soothsaying with the details that you would be facing a vote of no confidence within a year and a half, that you would lose that vote, in no small part due to the number of SNP members in the House - a legacy of all the Westminster mob stopping the Scots from doing what they were about to do - democratically - and that a General Election was due long before your term was up.

Nothing that's happened in the last few days (all three of them!) has changed my mind, and the likelihood of a total collapse of your government (and party) is stronger now than ever. The mileage you've had out of the splits in Labour, the howling and braying at PMQ's, the smug self-satisfaction and vacuous claims to a 'mandate' while all along: you're in bed with a nest of vipers.... those 'bastards' on the back-bench huh? But - at least you've got the media on side haven't you? Don't count on it!

IDS was a failure years ago (he was banging on about his Army career again at the weekend...what a fuckwit), he's not right in the head (in my own personal opinion) and should never have been given a front-bench job, so that grenade has left you firmly holding the pin...you've just dropped the pineapple!

Europe should never have been allowed to become the issue it has...two pins, two pineapples! Scotland? I blame Tony 'The Thacherite' Blair for that one, but he handed you the pin! Middle East...another pin...refugees, bankers...but where are the handles? You haven't got a handle on any of 'em, Prime Minister, just a handful of pins.

So - good luck* in PMQ's this Wednesday, should be fun! Good luck* on the Budget debate, should be interesting, good luck with the European Referendum (I do hate being on the same side there!) and good-luck* in the forthcoming General Election...November, do you think? Or earlier?

*Not really; I hope your ever-present, inadequate cockwomblery will see you keel-hauled, naked, on the World's Stage, by the opposition, electorate, media and your own, execrable back-bench!

Yours etc...

Dear Prime Minister

Oh dear! Ivebn Dunkedinshit has resigned. Let the Church-bells be untied and rung-out for a week in celebration. Let bunting be draped across the high-streets of the nation, let a newly-discovered insect be named Duncanis Mortis.

No Loss

 

Falling on his sword (or just being shoved against it?) was long overdue after the fascism he's brought to our benefits system, the waste of Taxpayer's money his various schemes have represented, and his history of lies and falsehoods - not least his military career, university career, his qualifications and the inordinate number of wet-wipes he's charged to the taxpayer...and the underpants!

But he does seem to have cut you and stabbed George on the way 'down and out'? He was (in my own personal opinion - shared with thousands!) a sociopath who should never have been given a ministerial post, but then you're an inadequate cockwomble, so it's no surprise that he was.!

His resignation letter is amusing but clearly political, self-serving, and addressed toward historians not yet born and I assume it has more to do with the EU-referendum than any genuine move by IDS to give a shit about his fellow citizens?

Still, it's nice to see the cracks are starting to show in the Tory party, is this the beginning of the end? A terminal disease the GOP has been snuffling with for 12 years or more? The fact that even while kept stupid enough to buy (and believe) tabloids, the general, background IQ of the populace is rising above the need for intolerant, isolationist parties, of preppy posh boys!

 

Two Lost Futures

 

However it wasn't him I wanted to write to you about today, Prime Minister, but rather the 'deal' done with Turkey. I am a big fan of Europe; I think we've established that, but this is exactly the type of thing that gets the EU a bad name and gives ammunition to the tabloid hacks.

 

Erdoğan is turning into an intolerant, undemocratic fascist, he's made the situation in Syria worse, he's made Europe's relationship with Russia even worse that Putin had already managed to make it, he's declared war on his own people, the media and anyone with a brain...yet we've turned a blind-eye to it all, in order to get a nonsense deal done?

 

To sum the 'deal' up; we send back to Turkey people we don't like the look of, they get put in camps by the Turks, and we then pay for the camps only to then agree to take people...from the camps...a sort of 'two hits and you're in' policy!

Being a liberal I think we should be doing more, so it's not about the migration refugees it's about the fact that as Turkey become ever-more de-stabilised, we seem to have just made it easier for their [Turkish] citizens to get into Europe! That's not a quid-pro-quo moment, that's a WTF moment.

It's madness, it will be seen as madness, and - as we approach your referendum - it doesn't help get the truth about Europe across to the bumblebore thickos down the pub, muttering over their UKIP flyers, the rural hunting-class (with their Police horses...eh? Prime Minister?), braying on your back-bench like demented donkeys, or the inbred Slones screeching "frightfully rum" around Kensington & Chelsea!

Yours etc...

 

 

PS - Re: Erdoğan, Syria, Putin, what's happening in Barzil and several African states...it's time we all started working toward a global agreement that no one should represent their country at the highest level for more than two terms of a maximum of five years...it just turns their minds if they have longer to enjoy the power.

 

Dear Prime Minister

So...yesterday your Chancellor decided to reduce benefits to the disabled by around £1.4 billion quid...while at the same time giving a tax break to the 'squeezed middle' of err...around £1.4 billion quid!

Because let's face it - people with mental or physical problems don't need a helping hand do they?

But Mr. grey, parochial, reactionary, Thatcherite, capitalist, only-earning-forty-three-K-a-year, self-absorbed, self-obsessed, middle-manager needs all the help he can be given - to make sure little Jiranda gets to her dance classes on time with the right kit, or to ensure that his gas-guzzling, planet-destroying 4x4 can be upgraded every 12 months instead of the wholly unacceptable 18 months he's currently working to!

You really are an execrable bunch of semi-fascist cockwombles aren't you? You got only 40% of the vote in last year's General Election, which was about a quarter of the available 'on-paper' voter-base. You have - therefore - no real mandate to do anything more serious than ensure that the Civil Service has an adequate supply of loo-roll and pencils!

The funny thing is, you won't have gained any votes by your extraordinarily unpleasant act of blatantly  unfair redistribution, as the tediously grey 'squeezed-middle' already vote for you, while a lot of the disabled you attacked were Tory voters and will now vote elsewhere.

My mate with Cerebral-Palsy is a Tory voter, he believes Mrs. Thatcher did well by the disabled, and has spent the last four years telling me (arguing with me) that you weren't going to do...what you've just done!

Not only have you finally screwed him blind; for his blind support, but in the last few years you've buggered him about with PIP's, taken his mobility car away and told him to go out to work, with his mobility issues, sight issues and other health issues!

You've closed/privatised/outsourced Remploy and other schemes, reduced training, re-classified disabled people as not disabled, removed Disability Employment Advisors, declared as 'ready for employment' people who've promptly died from their conditions, passed as 'fit for work' people with no legs, no arms or half a lung...and overseen a spike in suicide (and other) deaths among the vulnerable.

Still...you have given hundreds of millions of pounds of Taxpayers money to charities like Enham Trust, Queen Elizabeth Foundation and the Shaw Trust, who have shown themselves inadequate to the tasks allotted them and who regularly fail to deliver on their contractual obligations to the DWP/Taxpayer.

And you've given billions to the likes of A4E/PeoplePlus who are laughing all the way to the bank while delivering absolutely nothing! Sorry...I'll correct myself, they've been found to have figures which 'might' be 4% better than DWP's own...an unscientific amount, un-provable as it's within natural variation!

Like the GOP across the pond, it's as if everything you do now is designed to make you unelectable for a generation...while transferring the nation's wealth to a few at the top?

Yours etc...

Dear Prime Minister

The third main point of the Outies; as I'm sure you're aware - you just appear to have decided not to address it? - is as follows:

“Not 1 job is at risk from Brexit”

This was forcibly stated by Lord Digby Jones, the former Director General of the CBI and ex Minister of State for Trade and Investment.

He observed how Britain will secure a free-trade agreement with the EU immediately following Brexit ensuring no disruption to trade. (Sunday Politics, 31st January 2016)

Now this is an obvious lie, not least because the day after an out vote all the MEP's would be out of a job, all the British EU commissioners and other appointees would be on two-years notice to quit, their support staff - secretariats, researchers, translators &etc, would also be looking at a two-year phase-out, with the first going at the end of the month.

However I know they mean 'other' jobs, rather than the thousands hinted at in the above paragraph, and the truth is that there would be plenty of job losses, BMW/Rolls-Royce as good as told their workforce that last week.

Also quoting an self-declared Outie, himself spouting-off on the 'Telly' with the usual self-publicity of those who believe their own hype is hardly to be regarded as unbiased, evidence-based research, is it?

The second sentence is particularly fine - as an example of propaganda; he observed? Immediately? Ensuring no disruption? What - he went forward to the future did he? The EU have made it increasingly clear there is no such certainty, indeed, some national leaders have hinted that A) They'd make it very hard to negotiate any kind of deal, and B) they'd make sure it hurt!

Image

 

Yet you continue with your vague economic-nightmare scenario 'scare tactic'? Counter this stuff with proper facts; there are lots of middle-aged, lower middle-class, tabloid-reading, more-likely-to-vote  idiots, sat down the pub muttering to each other over their beers, believing this stuff without possessing the intellectual tools to realise it's just reinforcing their prejudices!

The most important decision we will make in the next 30, 40...50 years and the Innies are just not getting the message across? Pull your finger out of that pigs-arse you've probably got it in and get the truth out there, or the Outies will ensure you'll be on the scrap-heap of history before July! The [only] sliver-lining of a successful out vote!

Yours etc...

Dear Prime Minister

Having looked yesterday at the first - rather weak - reason for the Outies to believe we'd be better-off out of Europe, I though we might as well dwell on reason two today, it's another one you and yours aren't countering with the adequacy we the people should expect, but then we've pretty much established you're inadequate, and we're only four posts in!

Here it is…reason two for why we should slink away from Europe and hide under a rock, a BRITISH rock, craft-painted with the union flag by a member of the WI:

EU Membership contributions costs

Britain £14.5 billion a year

Added to this, the cost of EU Regulations hinder 95% of UK businesses – the top

100 EU Regulations cost the UK economy a staggering £33.3 billion a year.

 

Less than 5% of UK businesses trade directly with the

EU, but have to adhere to all EU Directives.

 

As an added incentive following Brexit, Britain would be able to

sign its own trade deals with the rest of the world.

The main point ignores the fact that we got €6.3b back in direct payments, straight away (€3.1b to farmers alone), with many more millions coming after as 'hidden' payments, where would IDS and the likes of the DWP and their private contractors be without the European Social Fund paying for training? All those courses in book-keeping, computing, remedial maths and English, food service, Health and Safety, fire safety, first aid, basic catering and care-work, introductions to marketing, telesales, using a chainsaw, a fork-lift &etc.

€1.1bn in research grants, road building, subsidised youth programmes, cultural efforts, environmental and forestry grants; all paid for by Europe, our money being redistributed to..err…us! Also the Outie website has turned the € sign to a £ sign...increasing the apparent 'bill' substantially! Why haven't the advertising standards watchdogs corrected that? The adjusted figure is less than that which you're stealing from the benefits pot and pensions!

If the austerity-cuts and associated behaviour of your government and the previous coalition are followed to their logical (ideological?) conclusions, we have to assume that if we were out of the EU, you wouldn't use that €14.5b (2013 figures - I believe), to replace the lost support provided by it, you would see the hill-farmers starve, cut the courses, tell business to find the money, give the police, armed-forces and senior civil-servants a modest salary-rise, award yourselves another 10% increase, spending the rest on tax-cuts for high-earners and subsidised fracking!

The first sub-'clause' is probably the funniest, 100% of all regulations hinder me, that's their point! If UK business is avoiding 5% they're doing well! But then they say it's just the cost that hinders? All a bit odd, if you ask me.

As the Outies haven't costed their second claim, we'll ignore it for now, I will return to it when I've dug a little deeper, but…really? A third of a trillion-squid? Per year? Why aren't you countering this crap on the front page of the Times, Prime Minister?

The next bit is a fascinating example of how to use statistics…it is said that approximately 50% of our trade - as a country - is with the EU (the BRICs taking 7%), if that is only being done by 5% of businesses, we need only worry about what those 5% think? If the letter sent to employees by BMW-Rolls Royce this week is anything to go by; staying in the EU is the way to please that 5% and one has to wonder what (the Outies want us to believe) the other 95% are complaining about.

The truth is most of them have no real thoughts on the subject, beyond the vague little-Englander stuff they get from the media - and your own stranger-danger, meddling Brussels, anti-migration, 'scrounger' rhetoric.

Some genuinely don't care - a cake shop in the Midlands supplying a small market town with err…cakes, isn't going to be remotely bothered by the EU, except in so far as EU regulations help ensure that food hygiene and workers rights are kept to moderate levels.

And that's where we get to one of the big truths behind the small-c, parochial, reactionaries who make-up the Outies, they want to be free to throw out food hygiene regulation, they want to remove safety equipment from building sites, they want to spray toxic crap on our fields until there are no birds left, they want to frack (as do you) and…they want to pay their workforce fuck-all for a 50, 60, 70 hour week, until (if the headlines of the last 48 hours are to be believed) they drop-dead at their desk/machine somewhere near their 78th birthday!

The staggering irony there - of course - is that automation is going to render half the population unemployed over the next 25 years and none of you, from any party, are daring to address that elephant in the room?

So to the last sub-clause of the Outies 2nd main point for exiting the EU: that we will return to our 'glorious past' as an independent, trading-nation, busily engaged in commerce with the rest of the world:

• Those 5% of companies that do the 50% of the UK's trade - with Europe - would simply re-locate as much as they could TO Europe!
• The US is doing deals with Europe; it's not going to start faffing around separately dealing with a country in turmoil, its money-markets at rock-bottom while Scotland rightly demands a second referendum in the background?
• Canada and Australasia are lost - as major markets - to the US and Asia-Pacific, respectively.
• China has gone on record as saying "… that Britain is not a major global power..." and that "... the UK is not a big power in the eyes of the Chinese. It is just an old European country apt for travel and study."
• The rest of Asia and India want to sell us stuff, not buy it.
• Brazil's economy is struggling...and in the political sphere it sides with Argentina on other matters...
• South Africa is a mess, nearing bankruptcy, the rest of Africa...?
• Central America, the Middle East?
• That leaves...Russia...and North Korea!

Without Europe, we are nothing, and we only joined when we realised that. The EEC, now the EU and eventually; the 'United States of Europe' are only anthropological steps on the road to a world government, as a single species of dumb monkey slowly comes together; working either to escape to the stars from the mess it will leave behind, or to try and mend the mess it's made, before it goes extinct.

Yours etc...

 

PS - In today's papers I see; you're letting them question your figures! Inadequate cockwombles the lot of you, Innies and Outies...more on that anon...