BREXIT AFTER TORY LANDSLIDE

BRITISH ELECTION 2019

Johnson wins large Tory majority. 

My fear is that Machiavellian Dominic Cummings will run the government. He, with other anarchists and opportunists in the Tory Party seem to be intent on wrecking the EU. They are probably paid or zealous-unpaid agents of Putin (Russia wants to divide & rule Europe) and of Trump. (The USA wants to impose their model of world-trade. The EU is the strongest check on US trade-power). 

My deeper fear is that this surprising right-wing revolution is, as in the USA, a fascist revival that is promoting sinister sociopathic people into power. I guess that Cummings, a man outside the Party system, is one such. Serial-liar Johnson, who famously said "Fuck business", simply wants no legal or any checks on his naughty-boy behaviour - a characteristic that his old school masters have recently published. So, sweeping aside the governing UK institutions will be his knee-jerk reaction. Lying to the Queen; shutting Parliament; hobbling the Judges; Decimating the BBC; and selling the NHS, are just for starters. Comparisons with Hitler's crazed but effective tactics in the 1930's are unavoidable - and terrifying. 

BREXIT. As this blog has warned for years, any Brexit will bankrupt the UK and break-up the United Kingdom. We are now a lone, wounded, tired, rich, old island nation. A perfect victim for a merciless mugging. Our past Empire ensures there is much simmering hostility; even from our closest friends, once our Dominions - Australia, New Zealand, N. America, India, Canada, swathes of Africa, and patches of Asia. etc. "Dominions" says it all. No significant trade bloc will finalise trade deals on our 70,000 trade items and The City's services - until they know and understand our future trade-deals with Europe. BMW, Oxford, a German manufacturer, has today, 17th Dec, closed for Christmas and sent the workers home on reduced pay. What terms will BMW want from Britain to make their electric-vehicles here? What will our billionaires and millionaires, such as Rees-Mogg MP, demand to keep their capital here and pay UK taxes? The flights out might be full already. Doom, doom, doom. 

At least Ex-Labour Leader, sly Jeremy Corbyn, has won what he has wanted for 30 years. To quit what he sees as the capitalist conspiracy that governs Europe. He can retire to tend his vegetable allotment with an easy mind.

Here is a non-paranoid, balanced analysis by one of the UK's staunchest and most admirable and worthy citizens: 

17th December 2019.  GINA MILLER Writes:  Thursday’s election result was a seismic shock to our politics, and to the future political complexion of large parts of our United Kingdom. There has been and will no doubt continue to be, much analysis of the effects of tactical voting on the outcome of the General Election. It is self-evident that many of the pollsters fairly accurately predicted the overall vote percentages. But they were less consistently good at predicting individual seat results, or the Conservatives’ overall majority. My own view is that the election result was primarily attributable to tactical voting by significant numbers of voters in key swing seats. But we should be honest and admit that many, including ourselves, underestimated the "anti-Corbyn effect" and the tactical voting this predicated, particularly along that “red wall” of Labour-held seats running from North Wales, through the Midlands and up to the north-east of England. In other constituencies, for example Canterbury, one can see that tactical voting ensured strongly principled Labour candidates hoovered up most of the Remain alliance vote. Elsewhere, and particularly in the South-East, we witnessed individual hard-line Brexiteers – for example, Dominic Raab, Iain Duncan Smith and Theresa Villiers – limping home with vastly reduced majorities as a result of tactical voting. As Peter Kellner wrote in The Guardian, “The big lesson is that tactical voting needs not just a common enemy, but a broadly common vision, shared by the Labour and Lib Dem leaders. This was the case with Tony Blair and Paddy Ashdown in 1997; it was not with Corbyn and Swinson last week.” I agree. My own experience, and that of my colleagues at Remain United, bear eloquent testimony to this. I can assure supporters that my team and I could not have worked harder during the Short Campaign.  But deep-seated fears about the patriotism, economic security, national safety and competency of a Corbyn-led government, and a dislike of both Jo Swinson and her election campaign, were twin headwinds that were too strong for any campaigning organisation to be able to overcome. So what do I take away from this sobering, general election result? In the absence of a robust, effective – and, for the time being, credible – parliamentary opposition, we should encourage Mr Johnson to use both his heart and his head to manage the competing and conflicting hopes and aspirations of different groups of voters in a thoughtful and pragmatic way. This also means harnessing the personal credibility and franchises of his cohort of newly-elected MPs in northern seats, in order that our great country can move forward together, harmoniously and purposefully. Only time will tell how successfully the Prime Minister navigates the challenging journey that lies ahead. It is not in the interest of any of us that he should fail, as we all yearn to see the Government bring a deeply divided country back together again; deal with the undeniable, and stark, inequalities between a rich south and much poorer, post-industrial north of England; and, somehow, keep the Union together when the results of the General Election in Scotland and Northern Ireland could conspire to make that much harder to achieve. If Mr Johnson uses his enormous parliamentary majority to start a spirited and purposeful programme to reverse the effects of austerity that has divided communities and devasted so many families’ lives, he will deserve all our support. There is absolutely no doubt that the new majority Conservative Government under Mr Johnson will pass the Withdrawal Agreement Bill before Christmas, but there is a long way to go to negotiate, much less still complete, the future relationship and trade agreement with the EU, against a backdrop of EU-inspired skirmishes on fisheries and financial services, and an uncertain global macro-economic landscape. We must now, all of us, face up to reality. For some of us, that will inevitably be tinged with resignation and regret. But we need to have a laser-like focus on the detail of what is being agreed in our name and make sure that it does not roll back on the rights, equality and enhanced democracy and transparency it has taken decades to achieve. A revolution is coming: the balance between the rights and prerogatives of the Executive versus the freedom of the individual is now a crucible of change, under a newly invigorated government with a large parliamentary majority. The courts, litigants and media outlets, alike, could all be early casualties of the Executive seeking to assert itself. We have already learnt that government advisers are urging on major machinery of government changes across Whitehall; these include change in MoD procurement processes, and a completely new department for borders and immigration. It is also likely to mean a greater role for the private sector in the procurement of public services; a re-balancing of spending to the North and towards infrastructure capital spending; and, by no means least, further centralising of power and patronage in the hands of the Prime Minister and his future Cabinet. These are times of enormous change, and my perception is that this profusion of changes is going to come with startling speed and impact. With the principal opposition parties in disarray, we must stay vigilant to ensure our progressive politics and the open, tolerance that makes Britain a beacon of democracy the world over, are not placed at risk.  We must all stand ready to speak out if ever this newly-elected majority government threatens to abuse the trust that voters have given it or uses its parliamentary strength to railroad legislation through Parliament that poses a threat to our communities and way of life. I, for one, will not stop using the campaigning voice I have developed over the last 30 years. I will continue to speak out against injustice, inequality and the abuse of power, whenever I see it. But if great opportunities lie ahead, just as much as threats, I will also be open to opportunities for reform and change that materially improve the quality of life for our families, our communities and our country, as we usher in a new decade with new challenges. They must not be discussed through a narrow ideological lens. To those of you who supported me and Remain United – through donations, sharing our recommendations and materials and, most of all, in sending your kind messages – we are hugely humbled by your belief in our work. We are sorry that, together, we were unable to achieve a different result on your behalf. We all played a part, and that’s what democracy is all about. Thank you for your incredible support, and my best wishes to you all.

KILLER PARKING MACHINES - OXFORD

BEND & KNEEL BEFORE ME
YOU PITIFUL CITIZEN!

10 Dec 2019

Dear Oxford Councillors,

After the election on Thursday (we are voting Lib-Dem or tactically to oust Boris-the-Incontinent-Fascist) – please forward this to the officers in charge of the Waitrose  Supermarket Car Park in Headington – and please get the aggressive ******** Parking Ticket Machines changed. Or better still, abolished.

Last Sunday was my 77^th Birthday – lunch for all the family. I drove to Waitrose early to buy heavy-weight supplies that I could not carry by hand. The car-park was almost empty. There was a Merry-Christmas warden gluing parking-offence fines on cars. I tackled one of the £2 machines. I had no coins so used a card. To enter the car registration I had to bend almost double and tap it in on a tiny keypad. This did not improve my lower-back ache. Pressing the GREEN button, no ticket emerged. 

Following the on-screen instructions I tried to insert my card into 2 or 3 likely looking slots – but failed. Still bent double I restarted the process. After some minutes I found the card slot – near the ground - and inserted the card. Nothing happened. Minutes later the screen announced “follow the instructions on the screen” – after a few more minutes I realised “they” meant the card-screen hidden about 9 inches above the concrete. 

I knelt down on the concrete to read it. I followed those instructions, tapping things into an even smaller, worn keypad. No ticket was issued. I had by now been bending double or crouching for five-minutes. I went through the routine again – getting cross. It reportedly took £2, then rejected my card as invalid (it is a perfectly good card) but gripped it in the slot. After pressing all buttons everywhere I managed to release the card. 

I un-cricked my back and knees and went to the warden – and explained. He said that the machine would not have charged £2 – and I should try again. In his view the machine was perfection itself. I pressed my point of view more firmly and asked him to pass it on to the machine managers. The warden eventually yielded and said he gets hundreds of such complaints and he has complained to “the office” many times; without result.

By this time another baffled would-be car-parker, probably in her sixties, with spectacles (an added hazard as glasses slip off when kneeling in cowed supplication to read the lower screen) was queuing to complain to the warden. I yielded my position. I went to the other set of machines near the Waitrose door. And went through the same routines. I was advised by a 40 something man, another hopeful, initially optimistic, parker, who I imagined was an Oxford professor of mathematics. Between us – we forced a ticket out of the machine. I took mine to put in the car and get bags etc. Coming back the Professor of Mathematics was still crouching and praying before the machine failing to get a ticket. I selfishly did not volunteer to crouch alongside him. My knees and back were still hurting. This process had taken 20 minutes.

Who – just who – which ******* idiot designed the crazy machine? Why, please tell me why is it ******** necessary to have such complexity for a £2 charge? Is it a con? Are the officials taking backhanders from the machine makers? Do the parking gangsters fix the machines to frustrate users to the point of not buying a ticket – and incurring a £60 fine? Why not have a simple Contactless pad at the entrance? Why not simply give someone the job of selling £2 tickets off a roll? Why do “they” need the registration numbers?  It must cost a great deal to install such demented technology, maintain it, and have wardens to police it. Why don’t Waitrose buy the car-park and free it for customers? Why don’t The City provide free parking? Will “they” pay my medical expenses as my back and knees collapse and my funeral expenses as my non-parking-ticket rage triggers a terminal stroke? Will I ever do a Big-Shop there again?

The equally baffling ticket machines in central Oxford, at night shine a blinding light straight into one’s eyes, obscuring the instructions. Why?

Please fix this bureaucratic, aggressive war-on-cars and in-town-businesses madness.

Noel HODSON - Author