Archive of Postings to April 2019 |
Meaningful Vote? |
This morning Grandad received his voting card for the EU elections - an event that is being repeated all over the country. And an unintended, unnecessary step that is part of a voting process estimated to cost around £109 million.
An amount that would be considered far from trivial if the politicians were held personally liable for their decisions. Sadly the turkeys won’t vote for Christmas so we will have to pay it for them. However there are some nagging doubts that things are not as they seem. A feeling that what the public are being told is at odds with the hidden agenda. Without access to the plans of the power brokers and advisors we can only speculate. But ... It is unlikely that Mrs May could get her toxic deal agreed before 22 May 2019 or indeed the end of June. It is equally unlikely that the EU will call a halt to the British messing up their plans by enforcing a no deal exit. So the elections will go ahead and the new MEPs will actually take up their seats - and then Mrs May could simply cancel our request to leave the EU. This action would break her promise to implement Brexit. But with so many of her other promises already broken that would not stop her. In fact what has she now left to loose? Her apparent intention of standing down coupled with having teed-up the defeat of the Conservative party in both local and European elections means that she has already caused enormous damage. In Westminster the Conservatives are already a minority government so the damage can only mount up. An early general election could be forced through and weaken her position further. In fact some of the hidden fixers may have already taken the view that remaining in the EU would win back some votes, silence the opposition, solve the border issue in Ireland (and Gibraltar) and boost the co-operation of the Whitehall civil servants. Plus those new MEPs would actually have some purpose. It would of course be a betrayal of the majority - but then so is the current mess. |
tags: broken promises, illegal delays, weak leadership, sell out |
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May, May, Go Away |
Maybe May will stay ‘til May.
This constant denial of the democratic vote has shown the level of deceit present at the top of British government. And could cause her terrible deal document to be eventually approved - by too many MPs voting for short-term party and personal gains. The deal that Mrs May is trying to force on the nation requires the UK sign a treaty that she claims is good for the UK. Yet it has so many costs, penalties and strings attached as to be an insult even as the surrender demands imposed upon a defeated third-world nation. Just consider this first issue - if we sign this treaty we will be locked into the EU and have to obey all its rules and pay all the bills it sends us for a period of at least 21 months, and probably for 45 months if we have not surrendered further to reach an exit agreement at the 21 month stage. This would mean remaining in the EU for at least 5 years from the decision to leave and probably for 7 years. The EU would be able to legislate and spend against UK interests during this period, whilst we would have no vote or voice in the matter ... Unacceptable! ... more to follow. |
tags: broken promises, illegal delays, weak leadership, drop the dead donkey, leave, no deal |
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ANZAC Day |
Troops from Australia and New Zealand fought along side the British throughout World War One - but they had to endure one of the worst of all the campaigns. To quote the Imperial War Museum -
... Gallipoli has become a defining moment in the history of both Australia and New Zealand, revealing characteristics that both countries have used to define their soldiers: endurance, determination, initiative and 'mateship'. |
tags: Australia, New Zealand, commemoration, remembrance, |
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National Holiday |
The Labour party also promise to make the other three patron saints’ days holidays - as part of their land of milk and money which would blossom if they were in power ... But then everyone believes that politicians never break their promises - don’t they? However back in the present the Labour opposition are instead promoting even closers ties to the EU. More tied than the toxic Dead Donkey deal of Mrs May. So we should sell our freedom to Brussels in exchange for an extra day off ... bargain! |
tags: broken promises, leave now, no deal, slay the dragon |
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Time’s Up |
At the European Central Bank the current president, Mario Draghi, is already preparing for his departure on 31 October 2019 - and it looks like he will make it out before his policy of issuing of trillions of new euros - mainly as cheap loans to EU corporations - comes to a sticky end.
Over in Brussels president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, will also see out the end of his term on 31 October 2019 - and Team Juncker [yes that really is the name they use!] have already tabled their final works. So if the Brexit can is kicked any further down the road a new president would be in charge - interesting... However that other key Brexit figure Donald Franciszek Tusk, president of the European Council, will be around for another month after Juncker; not ending his term until 30 November 2019. And the can will have to be kicked further towards Christmas for both posts to have changed. So that’s four important figures that we expect to leave soon - yet we are totally in the dark about our national politicians. The local government elections are just next week and even though they do not effect Westminster directly the results will send a message to the parties about public sentiment. More importantly the EU elections follow on just three weeks later and the indications are that the public will vent their feelings on our failure to leave on that much-promised March date. The Conservatives are getting very worried. It’s hard to imagine but if these EU elections do go ahead in the UK then the UK government will look even more out of touch and gutless. This potential major embarrassment to the government means that all sorts of cunning plans and under the counter exchanges will be tried to avoid them taking place - or, if they do, to restrict the powers of UK MEPs in Brussels. However given the level of incompetence in Westminster it may be Brussels that acts on this instead. But the big question avoided so far is - when is time up for Mrs May? Stories of her demise have been floated repeatedly without result. Despite all those defeats and numerous resignations our PM blunders on quite unable, it seems, to accept anything other than getting her deal agreed. A deal so toxic for our grandchildren that it must be stopped from ever reaching our statute books. What’s in it for her? We may never know. And at this point a Labi Siffre song from the 1990’s seems appropriate - The higher you build your barriers Something inside so strong
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tags: undemocratic, broken promises, dark forces, leave now, no deal, so strong |
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No More! |
Everyone who voted for change has been comprehensively let-down and so many of those who voted to stay-as-we-were find themselves used and deceived. Few, if any, of those who care for their grandchildren can claim to be happy with today’s dire situation or their future prospects. After all the recent commemorations of our fathers and grandfathers who were lost fighting for our freedoms we now have to endure these shallow, vain, corrupt politicians selling us into political and financial slavery. In practical terms there is nothing we can now do - legally - other than vote differently at each future opportunity. Every other action, short of civil disobedience, we can now be sure will be totally ignored. No marches, petitions, postings, discussions or complaints via any media channel have made - or will make - any difference. So our public contributions are suspended .. we’re off to be candidates in the EU elections - huge salaries and expenses, big pensions and blocked from doing anything important .. |
tags: undemocratic, fake, deceitful, liars, broken promises, civil disobedience, dark forces |
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Meme of the Day |
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tags: ministry of truth, work sets you free, peace for our time, Hitler, Chamberlain, May |
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Shambolic! |
What a bunch of useless no-hopers we have to suffer as being in charge of national decisions at Westminster.
If their latest batch of plans turn into reality then leaving without an EU deal will be banned and Mrs May will be begging Brussels again for yet another delay to the implementation date. For what? To accept any deal - no matter how destructive? How much more absurd can Westminster become? How can a rogue leader be allowed to continue damaging so much? And having caused so many problems for the future then aim to jump ship! How can vested interests be allowed to overrule democracy in such a blatantly obvious way? It takes a lot for the average voter to get motivated by politics but this is too shambolic to go by without serious consequences ... |
tags: leave now, national, embarrassment, humiliation, no control, puppet, no trust |
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Trust Fails |
On 21-Feb-2019 a Grandad contributor posted a question Can Anyone Be Trusted? And now, with the passage of time, that question is gradually being answered.
The next sentence back in February was .. according to His Ollyness The Mekon, not accepting a deal will put back our leaving date - not just by a few days but by an extended period. This part of the question has still ten days to run before there is certainty however we should see some signs soon if this is indeed the hidden agenda. Then there needs to be judgement calls made about who this plan came from, how long has it been in place and who knew in advance? But as things stand our Prime Minister’s official statements are running a very poor second to a civil servant’s bar room briefings when it comes to trust and accuracy. The pessimists can say that this has all been planned by forces determined to stop us leaving. The optimists can say it is simply the result of gross incompetence. Either way the result of the 2016 referendum still needs be implemented. We must leave no later than 12 April 2019 ... |
tags: leave now, national, embarrassment, humiliation, no control, puppet, no trust |
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Business As Usual |
Westminster and Whitehall kick-off another week of work on that critically important task - deckchair rearrangement. A skill that they have struggled with before - but The multi-million pound contract for these classes has been awarded to Harland & Wolff - despite strong competition from the Delorean Consultancy Group and British Leyland. And a spokesman for H&W said our long involvement in deckchair management is unequaled throughout Europe - and indeed the world. Sadly our linked iceberg avoidance system was overlooked by the Treasury; but we will try again. During the week teams of primary school children will also be visiting parliament. Their visits will provide a chance for them to vote on some trivial Government issues including leaving the EU, an early general election and selling Scotland to an Indian business conglomerate ... |
tags: house of fools, pointless, undemocratic, joke |
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Meme of the Day |
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tags: doom, gloom, lies, no deal, Brexit, end, world, useful idiots |
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Celebrating Nothing |
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tags: ministry of truth, work sets you free, peace for our time, Hitler, Chamberlain, May |
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How Much Can YOU Afford? |
Many months ago the EU picked a random amount, about £39,000 million, as the cost of leaving their club. And that remains the massive sum we need to shell out if the UK leaves via Mrs May’s Dead Donkey Deal - even if it takes years more of political argument to be passed by parliament.
And in addition to paying directly we will have the indirect costs of reductions to benefits and services - like pensions, education and the NHS. Services already under pressure due to the increasing population. But why has the amount demanded not been reduced by the payments already made? And why are the nominal liabilities not being reduced as we approach the end of the budget period the EU claim we are liable for? Despite this reducing liability our Brussels masters are demanding not just the huge Dead Donkey ransom payments but also additional payments for not leaving on time! A figure of £10,000 million per year has already been floated. So can you, the tax payer, really afford to pay the enormous leaving fees being demanded? Can the country even afford to keep paying our existing membership fees - when so much of it goes to support other countries and the grandiose EU politburo? Is anyone thinking through what the current political decisions will mean for us and our children? If Brussels and the Quislings in Westminster have their way YOU will have no alternative but to pay .. and pay ...... and pay |
tags: false accounting, national, embarrassment, humiliation, no control, puppet, robot |
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For The Record |
Statements by our Prime Minster, Theresa May, as officially recorded in Hansard - We will be leaving the European Union on 29 March. I believe we shall be leaving on 29 March with a good deal. / I did indeed confirm that our intent and what the Government are working for is to leave the European Union on 29 March / I am happy to repeat what I have said previously - that we will be leaving the European Union on 29 March / We have that date in our legislation: it is 29 March 2019 / We have put it into legislation, and this Government are committed to delivering exiting on 29 March / No, we are leaving the European Union, and we are leaving on 29 March 2019 / We will not be revoking article 50 or asking for the extension of article 50, and we will be leaving the EU on 29 March next year / We will be leaving the EU on 29 March 2019. After that date, we will no longer be a member of the EU / We are leaving the European Union on 29 March 2019. We are negotiating a future relationship with the European Union that will, indeed, deliver on the vote of the British people / I am happy to give that reassurance. We are leaving the European Union on 29 March 2019. / My hon. Friend said, I think, “if” we leave the European Union on 29 March 2019. Let me just confirm that we will be leaving on 29 March 2019 / We will be leaving the European Union on 29 March 2019 / we can and will leave the European Union on 29 March / Then yesterday Hansard records - I regret not being able to deliver Brexit on 29 March. Update 26-Mar-2019 - Mrs May’s regret at the non-delivery of Brexit on the legally agreed date seems somewhat deceitful now that we know it was agreed by her without any reference to her Cabinet or to Westminster MPs. Reports confirm that our Brussels ambassador, Sir Tim Barrow, was instructed by Mrs May to commit the UK to extending the Article 50 period to April 12 without any discussion by or mandate from Parliament. The stitch-up continues ... |
tags: enough already, national, embarrassment, humiliation, no control, puppet, robot |
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Waiting For Anything ... |
Predictions of Mrs May’s demise have been made more than once before. This New Statesman cover dates from July 2017 for example. But this time the odds say that they have more chance of being right.
In reality Mrs May’s authority has been completely destroyed - from both within and without. Our Friends in Europe taking away some remaining shreds at their meeting last week. Yet Mrs May has been appeasing the Brussels crocodile at every turn. Will it really eat her in the end? This week Mrs May apparently promised to somehow bypass the Speaker’s ruling and have another vote on her Dead Donkey Deal. But confusion over its timing - on Tuesday or on Thursday or on Friday evening or not being held at all - shows what a bunch of headless chickens Mrs May, her Cabinet and her political advisors have become. Instead we are, it seems, going to go through another charade of indicative votes. These will be similar to the last lot of indicative votes but have more choices and cause even more unrest. These votes being the parliamentary equivalent of rearranging the deck chairs while the ship is sinking. They give politicians a further chance to talk about what might have been and float more unworkable plans for the future - in some mythical land far from reality. Meanwhile the SS Westminster Titanic sinks ever deeper .. with only the Thames mud preventing a significant loss of life. We all know that we are (were?) supposed to leave the EU on Friday of this week. Despite this the UK parliament requested more time (after 1,000 mainly wasted days) through an extension until 30 June - but our Friends in Europe gave us two weeks - until 12 April - instead. Yet our guaranteed leaving date has been fixed at 29 March 2019 by statute for ages. So how can any extension be possible? How can an EU meeting minute over-rule existing UK law? Some say that 29 March can be simply overruled by a minister’s say-so. Others are equally certain that it would require the equivalent of a treaty change- so needing the approval of both Houses of Parliament plus Royal Assent - and more time But who is right? And what can we do about it all? Our marches, petitions, social media postings, websites, etc carry no weight within the House. So we must simply wait - to leave, to stay, for Christmas, for Godot, for anything ... |
tags: enough already, national, embarrassment, humiliation, no control, puppet, robot |
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And You Thought That Eurovision Was Bad? |
Our PM went to beg for more time from our Brussels masters - as expected. But they did not approve her requested June extension - and instead instructed her on their demands. She has just two extra weeks to force through her bad deal. The public meetings were sweetness and light - but in private Mrs May was clearly out of her depth and sticking to the approach that had failed so often before.
Just how low can our inept administration sink? |
tags: crunch time, leave now, enough already, national, embarrassment, humiliation |
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We Want To Break Free |
Some simple arithmetic for Labour Party MPs - So which is it to be - Deal or No Deal? You know that No Deal got far more support than the alternatives in those recent petitions to the House. Take your lead from your real-world voters. Update: Mrs May is about to announce something? |
tags: crunch time, over the top, leave now, enough already |
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A Thousand Days |
As the Brexit days, weeks, months and years drag by they keep reminding Grandads just how low British politicians - and even the civil servants - have sunk. The 2016 national objective was simple and direct - leave the EU. But deliberate delays, obfuscation, double speak, artificial problems, distortions and straight-out lies have been used to create barriers to it at every step along the way.
Any government that actually wanted to implement what they had promised could have submitted the Article 50 letter just days after the June 2016 vote. And since the EU rules set-out a maximum of two years notice - but no minimum - the UK could have legally left on, say, 31 Dec 2016. However the lack of preparation within Whitehall - through incompetence or design - created another barrier to slow or entirely block progress. How pathetic! This week in the House of Commons some rarely used procedural rules to put a brake on our Prime Minster’s plan to blackmail - or force - MPs into supporting her Dead Donkey Deal. A deal she remains fixated upon while seemingly unaware that the blocking rules are rarely used precisely because no other Prime Minister would have tried to force such a bad bill through Parliament unchanged. However even without the Speaker’s intervention it was unlikely that the bad deal would be accepted - so perhaps the intervention saved the Government from a third vote defeat (deliberately?) Now the Government - and the country - is in the position of having a deal that needs to be changed drastically to get approval in the UK - but the other 27 parties involved already have a deal that they are happy with. And clearly don’t want to change it. So a thousand days on from the people’s vote we expect that our PM’s next move will be to beg for more time from our Brussels masters. More national humiliation! Someone with a better grasp of the situation really has to take control and soon. But the EU are not helping. In fact today’s EU grows increasingly like East Germany was in the 1960s and 70s. A one party state exercising total control over the population. A state where anyone trying to make a break for freedom risked being shot in the back at the border wall. Bring back memories, Angela? |
tags: Not out, scoreboard, remain losers, disenfranchised leavers, vote ignored, anti-democratic |
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No End In Sight |
Despite everything that has happened Mrs May is planning yet another attempt to force her Dead Donkey Deal onto the statute books. A deal that has already been rejected twice. It is so bad that May initially withdrew the bill to avoid the humiliation of a massive defeat. The next time it came up it got the biggest ever rejection of a government bill in modern political history.
But that’s not all. After this next vote Mrs May will head off to EU HQ - it is claimed - to ask for a delay of either a few weeks or a few years! The cynics will think it is more likely that the purpose is to be told what she has to do next ... A delay of a few weeks would be to implement the May-Robbins plan - which involves years of transition and sham independence. The delay of a few years would be to start to draw up a different plan - which takes us back to our 2016 position. Both require even more of our taxes to be thrown into the swamp for years and years. So no Brexit on the promised day and the May-Robbins stuffed Dead Donkey will have a law passed to say that it is still considered alive - indeed that it is immortal ... I Don’t Beleeeive It! |
tags: incompetence, fraud, deceit, lies |
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Please End This Soon! |
As the May-Robbins Withdrawal Agreement gets totally smashed for a second time even the most delusional members of parliament must have finally got the message that it is a dead donkey of a deal. Few Grandads would claim to foresee the future but it did not take Nostradamus to predict - back in October 2018 - that this agreement would be a very bad deal for Britain. Westminster and Whitehall should Drop the Dead Donkey! Similarly many Grandads would simply say it was just common sense to aim for the best outcome as outlined in our posting of two and a half years ago (13-Sep-2016) - Now any Grandads with a strong commercial background would probably conclude that the best strategy would be to go for the simplest terms agreed as quickly as possible. In fact terms that could be as simple as a polite goodbye with no concessions or commitments. This would put the UK in the same situation as non-European countries and non-EU members like Turkey. So trips to the rest of Europe could involve visas (and therefore for EU citizens coming to the UK) - providing the EU is really prepared to commit to the cost of extra policing at its borders that this visa checking would incur. Instead our leaders we have made us suffer all this avoidable angst without coming up with a solution that is any better than that proposed plan of a polite goodbye. But at least we have a date, in law, to leave - the 29th of this month. Westminster politicians will no doubt vote against it. Yet in reality the earlier actions of Mrs May, and those same politicians, have manufactured a situation where there are no viable alternatives. Even the EU is facing up to the UK leaving this month deal-free. With 15th March approaching some classics scholars might be wondering if the advice of the soothsayer in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar to Beware the Ides of March could equally apply to one or more of our current political leaders. After 993 days of political bluster the pent-up anger must be about to boil over and then anything could happen ... |
tags: agreement, prediction, UK, EU, bad deal, leave now |
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10-Mar-2019 |
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Too Many Strings |
As the promised date for leaving the EU gets nearer the pace of change in Whitehall and Westminster gets more and more hectic.
However amongst this unrest we have a Prime Minister who seems determined to force through a terrible deal. And not just to force it through but then to retire to the back benches or out of politics completely. A rather surprising plan considering how much her predecessor, Mr Cameron, was decried for leaving after the 2016 referendum defeat. So why would anybody be trying so hard to tie the country to a bad deal? A deal with so many strings attached that it needs 625 pages of description - yet does not include even a basic trade agreement. After suffering the biggest ever Commons defeat surely any normal person would have accepted that their deal was totally unacceptable. So with the prospect of being unemployed at age 62 what is planned to fill our ex-Prime Minster’s free time? The nice fat civil service pension will make life comfortable - but still some way short of a true millionaire lifestyle. But perhaps that pension would be trivial compared to the money to be made from some well-timed financial investments. So the question becomes who is going to make enough money from a bad Brexit deal to make it worthwhile for a puppet leader to give up their exalted position? The only hope for our grandchildren is that the forced acceptance of this bad deal fails - either through lucky accident or opposition design - and the metaphorical strings are broken beyond repair. |
tags: agreement, surrender, UK, bad deal, leave, no strings, puppet |
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Meme Of The Day |
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tags: jokers, fools, agreement, surrender, UK, confidence trick, useless |
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Meme Of The Day |
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tags: doom, gloom, lies, end, universe, useful idiots |
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FOOTNOTES |
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