PEACE IN OUR TIME - APPEASING TRUMP'S MOB - by Mel Cooper

 

Trump Mob Storms Capitol Hill - Jan 2021

Independent Appeasers

By Mel Cooper

 

This morning when I opened up my news feed there was a headline that caught my eye immediately. It was: Impeaching Trump Again is Unnecessary and Risks Further Dividing the US. This was the editorial in the UK Independent newspaper. My first reaction? Annoyance. Further reactions? Absolute fury and concern.

 

So, I thought, here we are back in 1938 again and the thinking press of the UK is advocating Appeasement; as PM Stanley Baldwin offered to Hitler – celebrating “Peace In Our Time”. What this editorial headline says to me immediately, before even having to read the crawling editorial itself, is that people are more worried about the Storm Troopers and what they might say and do than they are about the truth. Also, that the primacy of Justice is downgraded to make room for crawling cowardice and self-serving short-term thinking.

 

Donald Trump is a criminal. It is not as if his criminality and betrayal of his country are hidden away or in any way ambiguous. Like a Mafia don, he tried to make the Secretary of State of Georgia an offer he could not refuse - if he only found an extra 12,000 or so votes somehow in the State of Georgia for Donald. He should be impeached for that alone. And be fair to the Secretary of State. He politely and diplomatically decided not to publish the recording of the phone call unless and until the Donald attacked him; which, true to form, the President of the United States did, thus compounding his crime of trying to vote-fix by lying further when confronted with his own dangerous mendacity.

 

Meantime, the Donald, Humpty Trumpty, was tweeting to his followers to come to Washington on 6 January, come by the millions, march on the Capitol and Stop the Steal! (Interesting how Donald goes for 3 word slogans? Pity! Catchy! Distilled lies!) He was actually asking his followers to interfere with the due process of the election, which had already been declared in dozens and dozens of court cases to be totally legal and correct.

 

“Stop the Steal.”

Then we get Trump, his son Trump Jnr, Giuliani, etc, addressing the crowd (not millions but 50,000 or so.  Who counted?) and telling them not to be cowards. Today is the day that we start fighting. Today we take back control. Today we kick ass. Today you have to be a hero, or you will be a zero. Today we take back the election that was stolen from us. (Wonder where they got that slogan. Brexit perhaps: Take Back Control)

 

If after all that we are supposed to look the other way, then we are in serious trouble. No, it will NOT further divide a divided nation. The Storm Troopers aren’t going to listen anyway. We should stop even trying to convert them. And people with half a brain and some eyesight and hearing are fully aware of what has been going on with the Donald all of his life - more ramped-up since he started running for president. Piers Morgan is saddened by how much the Donald has changed since he first was an admiring friend. I have news for Piers Morgan. Donald Trump has not changed. He was always like this. It was always an act and he always created the scripts that he needed and then worked from them. And our very own Boris Johnson revered him as a hero and a role model, so think about that too.  (Not to mention the ass-licking, brown-nosing, creepy snake known as Nigel Farage, the would-be German citizen.)

 

But to suggest that we should not impeach this criminal, this proto-Fascist because it will upset his followers and they might then do bad things, is more or less in the same moral and intellectual camp as giving Hitler the Sudetenland, or insisting that even if Dreyfus is innocent, he should stay on Devil’s Island because it is more patriotic to uphold the good name of the army of France.

 

Once every two or three generations a test comes along. And The Independent has just sat the exam and has given very much the wrong answer. Indeed, it has got a D minus. It has not failed completely. At least it recognizes in its answer that wrongs have been done and the President of the United States is criminal. The whole world has now seen his criminality in action in no uncertain terms. And they are right to think that Trump’s Storm Troopers are dangerous.

 

All those years he has not so much been lying as feeding his followers propaganda. Yes, folks, he has been following the Goebbels Play Book, the Mussolini Martini mixer, that poisons the mind, appeals to paranoia, provokes racism, and finds Another upon whom to blame all your woes in this world that will then be fixed by your new Gawd, Hilter, Mussolini or Franco or … Donald Trump. Our hero, our Gawd. It’s also called Brainwashing; and the followers’ brains are totally cleansed of any aspect of inhibition against violence, tolerance of any other viewpoint, tolerance of anyone who is not White and created in their image.

 

As I have said before, MAGA really means MAWA: Make America White Again. And they carry guns!

 

But they are a minority. However large the minority, it is still a minority. And among them are many people who would waver, who would be able to wake up from the hypnotism that has been perpetrated upon them; and who will not wake up unless they see people try to do WHAT IS RIGHT! It will be tough; it may take time for the message to sink in. But if Nancy Pelosi and the other Democrats and sane Republicans (the ten who voted for impeachment) don’t invoke the law and do what they can to bring Donald Trump and enablers and his cohorts of cultists to justice, if they are not seen to try to apply justice, then that will be the ultimate betrayal and also the ultimate stupidity. Because as with any form of appeasement, that will just make the enemy stronger. They will see that they can get away with it and they will then start trying to get away with even more.

 

It may indeed provoke riots and violence if you impeach Trump. But that is the reaction of a cult at bay, being defanged. Not to impeach Trump, not to sue him in all the courts of the land for his various nefarious deeds over the year, is what will empower the Storm Troopers. Anything to do with Trump is always going to be a Lose-Lose situation. The brave thing is to choose the terms of the loss and be ready to confront it. Not to impeach Trump is a reneging of duty. As our friend Noel Hodson said, that is like saying you must not prosecute Jack the Ripper because people will think you are infringing his human rights and his fellow serial killers might get angry and riot.

 

So, I have only one thing to say to the Independent: you should be ashamed of yourselves.

 

 

BREXIT: BASED ON A FALSE PREMISE by Mel Cooper

 

WHY DO SERIAL LIAR BORIS & THE TORIES WANT TO
ISOLATE & BANKRUPT BRITAIN? 

BREXIT: BASED ON A FALSE PREMISE

 By Mel Cooper  - 10 December 2020. 

 Recently, Tim Stanley, an historian and journalist, who is a leader writer for the DAILY TELEGRAPH in London, UK, was talking about the wonders of Brexit on SKY News and how we would now get our sovereignty back at last. As a result, he stated, we would no longer be having laws imposed upon us by the EU.

 LAWS IMPOSED UPON US BY THE EU?!? I cried out, choking. I felt like screaming. “Listen, mate, we NEVER had one law imposed upon us.” Why, when people make these inane and illogical assertions does no one ever challenge them. For instance, can Tim Stanley name for me one law that was IMPOSED upon us? Can anyone?

 It cannot be done because we did not ever give up our sovereignty — we pooled it. Think about the difference. Surely it is not too subtle for you. Pooling Sovereignties! Which is, of course, the point of the EU. It is as much a collection of pooled sovereignties as the UK is a collection of four pooled sovereignties, so it is fairly rich that an intelligent, well-educated journalist and historian does not seem to see the parallels or get the drift.

 The UK had (and theoretically still has) the power to VETO all new EU policies and laws. Every EU law, every single one, was discussed, debated, and, guess what, sometimes we decided to compromise for good and sufficient reasons. Votes were taken in the EU parliament, just as they are in Westminster. Often we proposed the laws in the first place and even drafted them for the EU. We were as much part of the process, the third loudest voice, for 45 years as people in parliament who oppose a law, and then it gets passed by a majority, and then, hey presto, they do NOT consider that the law has been IMPOSED upon them! If so, then Brexit was imposed upon nearly 50% of this country and the people who voted against it should be allowed to exit the Brexit. 

How about we form a country within a country consisting of all the cities that voted not to leave the EU? Shall I start making the list?

 It is this kind of thinking and language as used by Tim Stanley on that program on SKY that is going to ruin this country completely in the end. It is this kind of illogical and lazy thinking that is a real danger for us all. Because of the insistence of Brexiteers that we somehow have given up our sovereignty by joining the EU, and because no one is questioning this nonsense properly, Brexit is based upon a total misinterpretation of and even a downright lie about how the system works. To take one example: we are about, for instance, to lose the whole freedom of movement for pets within the EU. That was a British initiative. That was something proposed by and fought for and then passed for the British! And the EU itself will continue to benefit from this idea for people travelling within its territories; but not the UK. It will not be so easy to take your mongrel or moggie to the South of France with you when you rent a summer cottage there. Indeed, it will not be so easy for you to travel within the EU any more either. Or for our kids to get educated at EU universities. And that is just a very tiny start to the changes we are about to have to live with. But hey, folks, that is what you voted for.

 What Brexit means to me, finally, is an act of betrayal. And do not kid yourself. It is not only that we are betraying the vision of a Europe united and at peace. Tim Stanley says that we should be relaxed because once we get our laws back inside our own country and are in total control of them, hey presto, no one wants to change any of the EU initiatives on better working hours, paternity and maternity leave, protection of workers’ rights, etc, etc. Really? Then why are we leaving the EU? Well, apart from demonizing the judiciary and trying to break international law in his internal market bill, PM Boris Johnson’s covert intelligence bill permits undercover agents to break the law. His use of statutory instruments allows him to evade parliamentary scrutiny. Boris Johnson wants to be the one to appoint judges, just like his idol Donald Trump; he is also setting up a review of the Human Rights Act. We are still waiting for Johnson to publish important things like vital independent reports, the Covid procurement contracts and the Brexit impact studies. Or have you not noticed any of these worrying examples, Tim Stanley? Boris and his cabinet are also fairly cavalier about appearing before various parliamentary scrutiny committees. However, maybe this has nothing to do with anything sinister. Maybe they are just all lazy.

 Brexit is not about the people or even about sovereignty. It is about authoritarian rule, unfettered government economic ambitions and isolating the UK from EU initiatives about offshore tax havens so that the UK can become the best, go-to place to launder international money.  Try reading a book called Britannia Unchained published in 2012 by Kwasi Kwarteng, Priti Patel, Dominic Raab, Christ Skidmore and Liz Truss. Perhaps you should have read it before the 2016 Referendum? Are you actually aware of it? So here is a question: is Tim Brexit Stanley simply not aware of any of these activities; is he implicated in this effort of a Boris Takeover; or is he simply too naïve to notice? Personally I do not have a lot of hope in any of the members of the cabinet keeping the faith and not messing around with EU laws that protect workers and citizens’ rights.

I will tell you why. Firstly, because people like Jacob Rees Mogg have an already-declared agenda and are hoping precisely to erode the rights that they feel make them marginally less rich. And notably, we are all leaving the EU but Jacob has moved some of his headquarters to Singapore and Dublin; and Dublin is, emphatically, in the EU. Any thoughts about why? Are no alarm bells ringing?

For me the Brexit Project is about one simple thing: elitist authoritarian control by very far right Tories. And it was sold to voters for one simple reason. Take Back Control is a great slogan for people who feel deprived and challenged in various ways, who feel that they have been excluded. It was based on tweaking people’s feelings of xenophobia. And it feeds in to a strange Superiority Complex that still plagues the English and unthinking nationalists and would-be imperialists of all countries.

 I was very angry at Tim Stanley when I heard him spout the idea that, despite our powerful VETO, we have been having laws imposed upon us by the EU, but I am also very, very saddened that he cannot see how false that idea is. England has indeed been a great country in many ways over the centuries and produced some wonderful writers and scientists and actors and explorers and so forth. But it is now all in jeopardy. As is the whole EU project. And we were the ones to be in the vanguard of de-stabilising it. For centuries Europe has kept descending into wars because of countries that were looking out only for their own narrow and short-term interests and seeing themselves entirely as uncompromisingly at odds with all the other countries around them. So they formed alliances and reformed alliances and fought war after war after war. Whatever the flaws of the EU, the whole project was able for 45 years to avoid that mentality. And look what has happened since we, the UK, voted for Brexit? Right-Wing resurrections in Poland and Hungary and the Czech Republic; France and Marine Le Pen and the damned fisheries. It is all starting up again. And Britain is already slipping from 5th richest to 6th richest to 7th richest. And look at how badly our government, so in love with the authoritarian and centralized approach, has handled the whole pandemic?

 And so here we are, ready to leave the EU on 31 December 2020 as it turns into 2021. Even if we get a deal, it cannot be as good as the EU deal we have that we voted to abandon. Does that not say something important?

 And I suspect strongly that in the future, when the history of this low decade (dominated by Conservatism in this country and Donald Trump’s style of Republicanism in the USA) is written, that Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees Mogg, Dominic Cumming, Michael Gove, Priti Patel and the whole self-serving lot of them will be perceived as traitors to their country that they truly are, people who put their own narrow, blinkered interests before their country’s good; and people who betrayed the rest of Europe to boot - just as Putin and Trump want. They are Quislings, the lot of them, and they do not give any kind of damn for the less privileged citizens of their country.

 But I fear there is no point trying to debate with them or convince the average voter of any of this. You see, Brexit is based on that stupid, proud Superiority Complex of theirs and for the Ruling Elite of our country it is based on their Daily Telegraph approach to their own wealth. They do not give a damn about educating the country. And they do not, I think, speak sincerely or truthfully if it is going to go against their private wishes and secretive agendas. I am sure they are intelligent enough, some of them anyway, to work out the logic behind a false statement like “taking back our sovereignty”. They know perfectly well that every idea they sold you to get Brexit was ultimately based on the false premise that we had given up our sovereignty, not that we had pooled it, which is the truth of the matter. I am certain that they can figure out the difference between giving up sovereignty and pooling it for the common good of all concerned. So if we allow them that much intelligence, they are people totally and completely without integrity or any sense of idealism; and they are liars.

 Thus, my question is: does Tim Stanley believe what he says, has he fallen for it; or is he one of the liars too? And if they or he cannot see it, then they truly are too stupid and incompetent to be believed in any way. Mind you, there is nothing to say that these two things are mutually exclusive — the mind can hold two things at the same time. They can believe in the totally illogical and false while at the same time knowing that they are conning us.

 And so there seems to be nothing we can do, fellow citizens. If we scream, yell, or articulate any protests, all that happens is that the people who can see it agree, but the Make Britain Great Again-ers call what we are saying Project Fear to deflect from the fact that it is actually Project Due Diligence. And they will never change their minds any more than people who wanted to see Dreyfus go to Devil’s Island could be convinced, even after all the evidence that he was innocent was before them; or people who thought six months of Hitler in power would lead to cleaning up the country as he promised and then he could be got rid of. But do not kid yourself. Once people like Boris Johnson and his cohorts get the power, it is very hard to get rid of them. And once they start progressing towards their true, hidden goals that dare not be articulated properly, they go forward step by step eroding all that Britain has stood for democratically and intellectually for a good four hundred years. And so, as in so many things, we are following the USA and just lagging behind it. Think of our Conservative Party as becoming more and more like the Republicans or the Tea Party, in the USA. And think of Boris as being Donald Trump Light. And that is what this country voted for.

 So please tell me at last: what law was imposed on us? Give me one example in the last 45 years of a law that was imposed by the EU against our will, against our sovereignty? One example of a law made by the EU that we did not participate in considering, debating, formulating, voting on, passing and even writing up for the parliament of the EU to ratify? We had a VETO on every decision that impacted on Britain.

 Oh, and then there is the other important thing you might want to think about: that there was no real Opposition at the time of the Referendum. Because life-long-Leaver Jeremy Corbyn and his intellectually limp gang had control of the supposedly opposing party and undermined the campaign to maintain our membership in the EU. I blame Corbyn, his cohorts and that ineffably old fashioned dinosaur Len McCluskey (Labour’s flip side of the Dominic Cummings coin) as much as I blame Boris Johnson and his people.

 But right now I think I am going to go out and sing Christmas carols in the street and cheer myself up by hibernating, probably for up to a decade. When I re-emerge, we will see who was right about Brexit and immigration – me or Priti Patel.

********

11 DEC 2020 Letter to The Guardian:

The Guardian headline  “Johnson tells ministers to prepare for no-deal Brexit” 11 Dec 20, and your several commentaries forecasting 2% fall in GDP, “But we plucky Brits will get through it” are ridiculously optimistic. Prepare how? Prepare for what? They must be penned by people who have never built a business, marketed exports or financed a payroll. All respected global agencies from the Bank of England to Bloomberg have consistently warned of 8% drop in GDP and 15% - 20% fall in Sterling – for any Brexit. That translates to 5 to 7 million UK job losses or equivalent reduction of wages. 

Any Brexit, spurning our share of “The largest and richest market – ever” will bankrupt Britain. It is what Rees Mogg and chums in their tax-havens are betting on; they will blame the calamity on Covid-19 but Covid will have a V shaped recovery. Cafes, Pubs, Hairdressers, Nail bars, Theatres, Vacations etc. and other pleasures will quickly switch back on, accelerated by the Internet-Revolution. 

Basic, essential, serious agriculture, engineering and City of London services, our exports, sabotaged and fragmented by Brexit, will be swallowed whole by competing nations. Our only hope is to stop and abandon this idiotic, moronic, suicidal Brexit. – Noel Hodson, Oxford.

 Noel Hodson - Director

Tax Reconciliations, 16 Brookside, Oxford, OX3 7PJ UK,

From Tax-Havens to Safe Havens

Tel +44 1865 (0)760994 Mobile 07713 681216 

Noel Hodson Blog

BLACK LIVES MATTER - LESS THAN $20

“Most of the times when patrons give us a counterfeit bill they don’t even know its fake so when the police are called there is no crime being committed, they just want to know where it came from and that’s usually what takes place"

 By Mel Cooper - 26 June 2020

BLACK LIVES REALLY DO MATTER!

The slogan, BLACK LIVES MATTER, has led to some people saying there should be a footnote acknowledging that ALL LIVES MATTER. I can see why; but you could also interpret the ALL LIVES approach as taking away the energy and importance from a movement that has been deflected and ignored for far too long, diluting the impact of the BLACK LIVES MATTER campaign.

What is going on around the world on this issue seems to me, after all, to be about focus, not exclusion. If something matters it doesn't imply that nothing else matters. You have to put it in context or ALL LIVES MATTER will appear to be dismissive. And after hundreds of years of treating black people first as chattels and then as inferior human beings to be exploited, it is time we all face up to how insidious racism can be, even infecting all kinds of people who cannot see how they are being racist.

And, unlike Dominic Raab, I would be happy to “take a knee” – even though I am too damned old and arthritic. I guess someone would just have to help me up afterwards! Or I could lean on my cane? And, unlike Priti Patel, I think that the hostial environment and its impact not just on Windrush people but also so many EU citizens, is a shameful and despicable approach to the immigration issue and distressingly ignorant about what immigration and freedom of movement has done for this country since WWII.

To rephrase something I read reacently: Anti-black racism is hardwired into America's DNA, and it touches Black lives every single day—from cop killings to predatory lending by banks, to poorly-funded schools. To say ‘Black lives matter’ acknowledges that history in many ways we never did—and does not to suggest that anyone else matters any less.

Meantime, several other matters matter:

MAKE AMERICAN SANE AGAIN

MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN is Trumpian code. The true underlying message is: MAKE AMERICA WHITE AGAIN. 

That is what those crowds of white supremacists are responding to. Sadly, it is also what is behind the Hostile Environment approach in the UK: clearly that is saying: MAKE THE UK WHITER AGAIN.

And the people who feel threatened, scared, the people who are bullies and cowards, will follow the Coward in Chief, Humpty Trumpty, or the Excluder in Chief, Priti Patel, unquestioningly. Trump may not get the great fall that he should. Which will mean, after four more years of his Presidency, the definitive end of the American ideal. Trump is corrupting and picking away at the Constitution daily. Trump has also already done things to the courts of the USA that it will take years to undo.

People are notionally swearing allegiance to the Constitution when they swear allegiance to their flag in the USA, not to some trumped up bully-boy autocratic demagogue. And we in the UK swear allegiance of the Queen, not to the Prime Minister who constantly complains these days about being challenged to explain himself by the Loyal Opposition. The whole point for the Founding Fathers in the USA was that they did not want someone to become another kind of king. And so they set up various systems for removing anyone causing peril to the Constitution. But the entire Republican Party seems to be determined to swear allegiance to King Donald Trump and be his courtiers and reap their rewards. They, like Senator McCarthy of old, have no shame.

STARVING CHILDREN AND STUDENT NURSES

The treatment of first the starving children of this country (the UK), the need to make that U-turn about actually making sure they do not starve this summer; then the dismissal of the needs and the contributions during the Covid Crisis of the student nurses: all this simply proves that the Conservative government and probably, by now, rather like the Republicans in the States, the majority of supporters of this Conservative excuse for a government, are deaf. They are not listening. They are still primarily focused on the narrow interests of the rich people of the UK who do not give a damn.

These are the same kinds of people that Jonathan Swift was thinking of when he wrote A Modest Proposal. What has changed? Yes, some progress may have been made — we did abolish the slave trade, though we had to pay off the slave owners and that debt was only cleared around 2015 — but clearly not nearly enough is different.

If you are worried about finding food for the starving children of the UK or the cost of subsidizing medical training for nurses and doctors, is it not time to bring back the offshore money of UK citizens (never mind whether they are residents or not?) so that it can be properly taxed?

Is it not time to join forces with the rest of the European economies to get the major global companies to pay proper taxes? 

But, oh no, we Brits cannot do that because we have left the EU and we must not do anything with them because it is essential that we are independent and ready to make the best and fastest deals ever made in the history of mankind for trade with all the rest of the world who are all queuing up and gagging for trade deals with us as their top priority. If you believe what the Government tells you …

So, just as after WWII and the Marshall Planning, we are not in any way a part of the European deal. Which means we don’t have to contribute anything, we have not obligations to anyone but ourselves, we are not members of that community and we have no moral obligations whatsoever to the rest of Europe — just as we didn’t under the Conservatives government of 1938. And we all know what a great idea that was!

STATUES ARE REPLACEABLE, PEOPLE AREN'T

Finally, stop going on about the damned statues. Statues are replaceable, people are not. And that one of Edward Colson in Bristol. Who got hurt? There was no riot. It was actually a rather positive event, as far as I could see, with people finally doing something important that should have been done years ago. But of course Priti Patel and the government of Boris Johnson can only see vandalism. To them it is another Boston Tea Party. It is like that guy in the Doctor Strangelove film who was unwilling to break into a Coca Cola machine to retrieve 25 cents that could be used to make a phone call that might save the world. Why? Because it was private property and you cannot mess with private property!

If I were a black person, probably in the UK because descended from slaves who had worked the plantations of the Caribbean once upon a time, I too would find it pretty painful to walk past that statue in Bristol and also Colson Hall every day. So the guy gave a lot of money to the city of Bristol? Good for him. Do not deny that. But do not deny, also, that the money came from owning human beings as livestock and that the livestock human beings were worked harder than any horse or dog, refused any kind of education or chance to widen their understanding of the world, and often treated with contempt and sadism, except maybe for a couple of privileged house slaves —who were cossetted sort of like the Kapos in the Nazi concentration camps, keeping things in order for those in power. It was illegal in many states to teach slaves to read. Think about it.

And while we are on the subject, apply some of the thinking about these things to the anti-Semitic racism of the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn. Not to mention the anti-Muslim problems of the Conservative party. Muslims and Jews are telling you something. Are you listening? Racism is not just the nasty, overt stuff that everyone decent can abhor. It is also a lot of insidious acceptance of attitudes that perpetuate the system and without even knowing it or noticing a lot of us probably are colluding much of the time. That is how the accepted and “acceptable” attitude towards Jews in Europe from about 1880 grew into death camps. That is how policemen in the United States feel they can murder black men in their custody and not be held to account.

JUSTICE

Rebecca Long-Bailey seems to have discovered the World Jewish Conspiracy. Or had she been informed about it already by Jeremy Corbyn, that great political theorist of international repute? How interesting: the police forces of the USA have been sending their recruits to Tel Aviv to learn about choke holds in all their variety. I see. And there is no instiutional anti-Semtism in the Labour Party to deal with. Of course … Well, it would seem that Keir Starmer, unlike his predecessor and also unlike Boris Johnson, can actually be trusted to do what he says he will do and act decisively. He has fired Ms Long-Bailey from the front bench. He seems to know anti-Semitism when he sees it. Meantime, however, the Department of Justice in the USA is effectively introducing the Divine Right of Presidents into the mix.

Ah, what a lovely world we do live in. 

I propose, therefore, that instead of Fred and Ginger movies the BBC iPlayer should have a season of classic Frank Capra films. He deals with the impact on life of the wicked and the greedy, but they are always secondary characters motivating the actions of the good people, and the good people always win in the end. And sometimes the bad people even reform! Barbara Stanwyck, Gary Cooper, James Stewart, Jean Arthur – those characters you played, where are they now?

BORIS'S GANGSTER GOVERNMENT

"YA DONNA SHOW ME NO RESPECT!"

True Boris. Because you lead a bunch of idiots, bankrupting the UK. You have been and still are too lazy and too stupid to analyse the economic consequences of your ill-conceived Brexit. When can we re-join the EU, the largest and richest market in the world? 

Are you, Boris, hiding away because it is slowly dawning on your limited, slug-like brain and incontinent nervous system that it is all a ghastly mistake? If you refuse to be cross-examined by ITV and the BBC on your crazy policies, then We the People might refuse to pay you any taxes. Bang go your huge salaries, cars and expenses. 

Do your bloody job for the nation Mr Johnson! And get your bloody hair cut like a serious grown-up.

Saturday, 11 March 2017

YOUR DUAL UK & EU ASSOCIATE CITIZENSHIP

1h  28th Feb 2020

"Figures from a House of Commons library document puts the UK's net contribution to the EU and EC budget between 1973 and 2018 at around £163 billion ...

Brexit is estimated by Bloomberg to cost £200 billion by the end of the year."

Brexit set to cost more than UK’s net contribution to EU over 47 years

The cost of Brexit has already been predicted to hit £200 billion this year - totalling more than the UK has paid into the EU over 47 years.

theneweuropean.co.uk

Around the world, many politicians are adopting Mafia management strategies to escape legitimate curbs and public accountability. The same tactics set out in Mein Kampf, by the arch-fascist, Hitler, as he lied and bullied his way to power; rudely and violently disposing of all and any opposition and establishing concentration death camps for any who defied him. 

The new would-be fascists can be readily identified by their vicious attacks on "The Deep State". They undermine the media and, as their power increases, they shred the powers of the judiciary, and of the diplomatic and civil services that are the professional continuity managers of nations. These highly intelligent, usually mature, well balanced, non-partisan state-servants maintain stability through decades of political changes and turbulence. They are the reliable societal scaffolding of our civilisations. All crazed would-be dictators need the civil-services to implement policies; but they fear and resent their intelligence, influence and criticisms. 

In the UK, the greatest barrier to fascism is the British Broadcasting Corporation, the BBC. It is attacked decade after decade by politicians who desperately want to escape scrutiny and be free to unleash their social experiments and impose their over-inflated egos on the populace. Boris Johnson has forbidden Ministers from being interviewed on the BBC and other media. He fears that shining light on his activities might turn him into a pile of dust.  

Last night, on the Eve of Saint Valentine's Day, our unelected, immature Prime Minister and his creepy Familiar, Cummings, reshuffled the Top Cabinet posts, and appointed a bunch of third-rate, supine Ministers. It is dubbed This Revenge Reshuffle. All political appointees have to pledge obedience and unswerving craven loyalty to Cummings and Johnson. How very Al Capone. Ya gotta show me more respect - or else.

This gang are, of course, the dolts and criminals who believed the delusional, obsessed Farage and brought us BREXIT, sacrificing half, yes 50%, yes, fifty-percent, of all our exports. As Michael Bloomberg said "The supidest economic decision any nation has ever made." They promised us the easiest, quickest, best'est, biggest new trade-deals ever; taking us onto the "sunlit post-Brexit-uplands". Where are these new trade deals? Our economy is doomed. Gangsters do not create wealth; they gorge on the carcasses of the businesses they have destroyed. As Boris Johnson said last year "Fuck Business." 

In the USA, Trump is attempting to impose the same type of dictatorial control over America's "Deep State" and impose total compliance, through fear, over all elected politicians. Debate is OUT, cringing subservience is IN. And to hell with the Constitution. 

The earliest (Britain) and the largest (USA) Western democracies have become Gangster Nations, governed by bullying, fear and lies. The World slavishly follows their example. Fascism resurrects - and plague threatens. 

Welcome to 2020.  

Footnote: Hitler caused the deaths of 60 million people, bankrupted Germany - then committed suicide. Not very clever. Not a great advertisement for totalitarian regimes. 

2020 - GET BREXIT DONE!

Update 26 March 2020 - by Mel Cooper:

Sienna Rodgers is Editor of Labour List 

26 Mar 20 

Dear Sienna Rodgers, 

Could you please discuss the following with Jeremy Corbyn on my behalf:

Since you say he is completely committed to the  "strength of a society that cares for each other” then why has Jeremy Corbyn been a Eurosceptic for so long and why did he do such a lousy job defending a Europe that works together and cares for each other? Are the nations of Europe not potentially a kind of society that cares for each other and works together for the common good? Or does he not think that the UK is actually a part of Europe? I admit the running of the EU has flaws. But when he said on national television that he supposed he would have to admit that he was 7 out of 10 for staying in the EU if someone pushed him to a wall and held a gun to his head, I believe that he not only lost the Referendum but that he was lying and really meant 3 out of 10. Frankly, the answer should have been 10 out of 10 for staying in and then 10 our of 10 for improving it. As with everything else, the man was prevaricating. He was also, it seems to me, lying. He basically wanted us out of Europe.

Also: If he is so keen to see Israel obey international laws, especially over their decidedly stupid and provocative building settlements in the so-called Occupied Territories, will he sit down with his “friends” in Hamas and Hezbollah and suggest that they might want to think about obeying the international laws of 1948 that established the state of Israel? or that the leaders who are crying death to Jews as their basic position might consider using some of the oil wealth of the Arab nations to do something positive for the living conditions of their “subjects”? Maybe the descendants of the 800,000 Jews who were kicked out of Arab nations in 1948 and taken in by Israel should now also, for the sake of parity and fairness, be given a Right of Return?

Frankly, I left the Labour party precisely because of the directions in which Jeremy Corbyn and his Acolytes have been taking it. I am disgusted by the narrowness , shallowness and ultimately racist attitudes in the party now (including that one race is always right and another is always wrong — you guess which ones I mean — and even the use of the term “race” and an implication of separate “races" when Jews and Arabs are actually all of the same race and Semites together).

And I am incensed also that the Labour Party is still, in the days of the coronavirus, not pointing out that after all this is over Europe is going to have the same kind of problems and challenges rebuilding as it did after World War II in terms of economic and social issues. Not only do we need to be thinking about how much better off we will be as part of the unified Europe trying to overcome the devastation of this virus, but also, frankly, what we can do to help. One thing missing from the entire debate about the EU has been the moral issue. It is not about what the EU does or does not do for us, but about what we should be doing for the EU, for all of Europe united. Instead we are permitting our feeble, intellectually challenged and totally lightweight government to make us a second rate nation and remove us from a forum where we have been leaders with influence well beyond our actual powers and position in the world. We could still return to a position of being leaders and influencers, but, of course, that would not in any way fit in with the adolescent and uncritical Marxism of Momentum or Jeremy Corbyn .

And by the way, he lost two elections in a row and cannot take credit for anything the government is doing now because that is all down to the coronavirus. If the Labour Party had any brains it would get rid of Corbyn and his people completely (I hate to think of him in his preferred role as Shadow Foreign Minister) and maybe get someone like Gordon Brown to become a top advisor. Otherwise, I think that the Labour Party is doomed.

23 January 2020.

Mel asks:- Can you explain to me again the advantages of leaving the EU?

Two septuagenarian experts, Brian and Noel, rise to the challenge. 

Noel writes: Brian puts it far more elegantly than I. But we agree in principle. 

Bumbling Boris and Cummings the Clown, with his baggy old trousers drooping off his bottom, must now globally renegotiate trade deals on the 70,000 items we buy and sell. They must win better terms than we have today with the EU.  They must make up the last 3 years of huge Brexit costs. So, I guess that England is doomed, doomed, doomed. AND - Where are the City’s Passporting Rights? Is The City of London also doomed? - Noel

******** 

Brian writes:

Dear Mel,

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to list the advantages arising from the UK leaving the EU.  Here are my thoughts, in no particular order:

• Foreigners really will “begin at Calais”.

• We will be able to make “wonderful” trade deals, which will inevitably be inferior - certainly in terms of the quality of what we import - than those we already have.  This is inevitable because of the greater size and therefore bargaining power of the world’s larger, and therefore more significant, trading nations.

• We will be able to re-establish new Governmental departments, at enormous cost, to negotiate and then monitor our new “wonderful” trade deals, establish our own food and other standards.  These, and many other new costs, will swamp any savings we make from leaving the EU.

• It will be necessary for the UK to agree new trading and other arrangements with the EU, by far our largest current trading partner.  But, it will be equally necessary for the EU to ensure that post-Brexit Britain gets worse terms than it currently enjoys; anything else would result in the unravelling of the whole of the EU as its other members would be encouraged to leave so as to improve their own status vis-a-vis the EU.

• If we want the best trading terms that the EU is likely to offer us, they will have to be on something other than an arms-length basis (i.e., along the Canadian, Swiss or Norwegian lines) and this arrangement will involve the UK in paying towards the EU’s ongoing costs, somewhat as we do now.  On the other hand, to avoid such costs, it will without doubt result in poorer trading terms with the EU, our most important, closest, and probably most empathetic neighbour (compare and contrast the USA, China and Russia in terms of empathy).

• We will lose perhaps a very sizeable proportion of the most profitable “industries” we have: the financial, automobile and aerospace industries.

• Brexit will result, almost inevitably, in the UK losing both Scotland and Northern Ireland, and, who knows, perhaps also Wales.  Oxford is sure to follow if they leave.  Using my constant desire to turn every thought into an anagram, the United Kingdom will become the Untied Kingdom.

• The English language will no doubt over time cease to be the de-facto lingua franca of the EU.   One could expect the French to push for English to be replaced by their own lingua franca, and the Brits will be forced to learn languages - a great imposition.

• When outside the warm embrace of the EU, the UK (in its then diminished, solitary, situation) will have to find new ways to impress other large nations to treat us as being significant on the World’s political stage.  Without Scotland and Northern Ireland, we will be a nation of about 60 million people, and have the clout of countries of like size, say Tanzania.

• And this one’s for the historians.  In the whole history of Europe, England (or the UK) has never found itself in the opposite camp to a united France and Germany.   But note: for this to be true, the pedant would set aside the 16 years between the Treaty of Rome and the UK’s triumphal entry into the then European Communities.  Ignoring the pedant, as we should, I don’t know what this might entail, but it’s food for thought.

I find that a heavy heart is not conducive to creativity, and these are the only things I could come up with at short notice.  I’m sure if I left this to stew a little longer, I could imagine other, greater, benefits to come from the UK leaving the EU.

Best regards,

Brian

********

Noel responds to Mel. 

Of course. The advantage of pissing off 50% of our export customers is to crash sterling and make £46M or more, far more, for Rees-Mogg and his pals – offshore, tax free.

Sterling has gone from $1.51 to $1.30 dollars (-13.2%). 

This coming year, 2020, of non-deals and hopeless confusion will knock another 15% to 20% off sterling. Let’s sell the BBC and the NHS to the USA! Whoopee!

Jan 23 - 20 - 1 Pound sterling equals

1.31 United States Dollar

23 Jan, 10:56 UTC · $1.51  ‎30 Jan 2015

“UK trade deficit. A deficit of £139 billion on trade in goods” losing up to, say, 20% on sterling (with which we buy our imports) is $27.8bn (annually) which at the average wage of £25,000 is 1.1 million jobs – accumulating year after year. So, after 5 years of sterling at 20% down it is equivalent to 5.5 million lost jobs. BUT, a fantabulous, generous trade deal with Trump will make our exports soar, wipe out the deficit, put it all to rights and make us rich – rich – rich. Brilliant Brexit Bullshit!

Noel Hodson - Director

Tax Reconciliations, Oxford UK,

From Tax-Havens to Safe Havens

On 23 Jan 2020, Melvin Cooper wrote:

INDEPENDENT Newspaper reports car industry job losses.

Can you explain to me again the advantages of leaving the EU? Mel

Cummings the Clown and Bumbling Boris said: Who needs experts? Nobody wants experts? Nobody reads long expert analysis. We do it all from sound-bites, by instinct. When we are seriously ill, we don't consult trained medics - we rely on shamans, prayers and lots of positive continual shagging. "GET BREXIT DONE and gambol into the Sunlit Uplands. Hurrah!" 

NOTE - Should you, contrary to Tory  promises, lose your job, assets or sanity in 2020 - these two representatives of the gang who brought us Brexit can be found at Number 10, Downing Street. They will personally compensate you, in full, for any financial losses. 

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.