So most of us can put our clocks back an hour as usual.
Brexiteers can put them back to 1972.
Conservatives to 1953.
Fetishists to 1941 (do you think they meant Fascists?).
UKIPpers to 1932.
Jacob Rees-Mogg gets a choice between 1802 and 1741.
And Nigel Farage gets to demand that the clocks go back where they came from.
Make your choice, folks!
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It seems this prediction may have been all-too-accurate:
Was in France on the day of the Brexit referendum. I'd given my proxy vote to my lad. I went to bed "safe" in the knowledge that remain had won (d'oh!). Woke up to talking heads on the telly, one of whom was saying "There will be war between the EU and the UK within 10 years."
Sure enough, the UK and France are at loggerheads – over fishing rights, of all things. And it seems the UK is at fault.
Under the Brexit agreement, the EU and UK have agreed they will give fishing licences to boats if they can show they have fished in each others’ waters for years.
But the UK has rejected applications from French fishing businesses, quibbling over the amount of evidence that is needed. It is suggested that only around 40 boats are affected, who had either not taken part in a monitoring survey, or were replacement vessels for firms that had fished in UK waters with their previous boats.
It seems to This Writer that this is a classic case of “computer says no”; because these French applications did not tick all the boxes required by an automated system, they were automatically disqualifed. All that is really needed is for a human being to consider the circumstances. Sadly, it seems the UK government no longer has human beings working for it.
France has threatened to retaliate with sanctions described as “targeted measures”, if the row is not resolved by Tuesday. These may include blocking ports to UK boats, increasing checks on UK goods, boats and trucks, and cutting energy supplies.
(That is possible because a previous UK Conservative government privatised our energy suppliers, passing more than a third of them into the ownership of foreign governments, including that of France. French firm EDF controls 10.3 per cent of UK energy.)
The BBC has aggravated the row by publicising a letter by French Prime Minister Jean Castex, saying that the EU needed to demonstrate that there was “more damage to leaving the EU than remaining there”. Shouldn’t our public service broadcaster be impartial?
Of course the right-wing and racist flag-wavers have taken the opportunity to whip up anti-French feeling, banging the tribalist drum in the hope that nobody will bother to check whether the UK’s Tory government might actually be in the wrong (because it is).
If France does take action unilaterally, the UK may have reason to escalate the matter – on a claim that our friends across the Channel have broken international law.
But…
Remember when the UK’s Tory government was threatening to break international law with its Internal Market Bill, that would have unilaterally rewritten the Northern Ireland Protocol? Boris Johnson would not have the moral high ground here.
not sure a Government which happily broke international law can complain about France breaking international law without looking like total nobheads
Worse than “looking like total nobheads”, though, is the isolation in which the UK is viewed by practically every other nation in the world.
Boris Johnson’s government is not trusted at all and France, together with the EU, would be justified in doubting the sincerity of a national government that reneges on its treaties whenever its ministers find it expedient:
The fishing row with France might be a distraction from all the other negative headlines, but it's also a reminder of Britain's isolation on the world stage because of Brexit. Boris Johnson is viewed with great scepticism across Europe and the latest row will damage him more.
In this context, let’s turn to COP26, the imminent summit on climate change, taking place in Glasgow. Why should any nation stick to an agreement struck by Boris Johnson’s untrustworthy government?
If they don’t, though – or if he fails to achieve one because of his innate untrustworthiness, then the world burns.
Climate change campaigner Greta Thunberg has already condemned world leaders for spouting a load of “blah, blah, blah” and achieving nothing. Johnson may prove her right.
We should all hope that common sense will prevail.
But with Boris Johnson involved, if that does happen it will be the first time.
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Cressida Dick: we are slowly discovering evidence that increasing numbers of her officers have turned to crime during her tenure as Metropolitan Police Commissioner.
You have to sympathise with this tweet, I think:
How many 'bad apples' do there have to be before we start to admit the whole damn barrel is rotten? https://t.co/TgO2sBH9U2
That’s two sex crime accusations against Metropolitan Police officers, just in the last week.
They follow the kidnap, rape, and murder of Sarah Everard by then-serving Met Police officer Wayne Couzens.
And another serving Met officer – David Carrick – appeared in court on a charge of rape on October 4. That case has been adjourned and I see no reports of it since.
So the question is not only valid but urgent: How many bad apples do there have to be before we admit that the whole barrel is rotten?
And, considering that the rot must have been allowed by senior officers…
How long can Cressida Dick – recently rewarded with a two-year extension of her contract – remain Met Police Commissioner while we slowly discover how many of the so-called apples in her team are rotten?
Big fat hypocrite: remember when Boris Johnson took a plane from London to Cornwall for the G7 summit, talking about creating a “greener” world after causing five times as much pollution as if he had just taken the train?
We’re already calling this year’s big climate change summit COPOUT 26 – and with good reason, what with it being hosted by the UK under Boris Johnson.
Nobody expects the worst British leader since King John to negotiate any deal worth having.
So when the BBC asked whether he had what it takes to achieve it, the answers were – well, see for yourself:
'COP26 is a huge test of diplomacy for the UK prime minister, has Boris Johnson got what it takes?'
Johnson's already đ Claimed he's the new Moses đ Said we should feed humans to animals đ Said we could teach cows not to burp to stop greenhouse emissions
Has Boris Johnson got what it takes to get a deal , the ink was barely dry on the last deal he agreed , when he tried to renege on it and still is , who'd trust him , nobody who's actually dealt with him already
— Tim Ireland đâïžđ„đ€ (@bloggerheads) October 29, 2021
A psychiatrist writes: "Has Boris Johnson" progressed from the anal stage? Narcissistic, self-centred and serial weaver of tissues of implausible lies..Hmm..all sadly indicate prognosis negative!
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Keir Starmer and Jeremy Corbyn: One of these has seen his popularity plummet after he attacked the other with false accusations. Can you tell which?
Sewage may be in the UK’s waterways but Keir Starmer is in the sewage, according to his latest poll ratings.
It’s all because he forced Labour into a factional war by barring former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn from the Parliamentary Labour Party – a year ago today (October 29).
… but it seems likely that most people have lost patience altogether and are looking elsewhere for their inspiration:
Itâs been a year to the day that Jeremy Corbyn was suspended from the Labour Party.
I spent months calling for them to return the whip, as did you, but now I would urge Jeremy and other socialists to come together and tell Labour where to shove it.
A year today since Jeremy Corbyn was suspended from the parliamentary Labour Party. To still be a member, but being barred as sitting as one shows how vindictive and venal the leadership now is and the stark contrast to the hope we once had.
Labour under Starmer has become infamous as a prejudiced persecution factory – to the point where it is constantly mocked on the social media for having abandoned all its policies to crusade against its own members:
'Hi! I'm from the Labour Party.' 'Great, tell me about your policies.' 'Well we hate Corbyn.' 'Uhuh. Anything else?' 'We scream "Antisemite!" at anyone who supports him.' 'OK. Anything…?' 'Here's a leaflet about how much we hate Corbyn.' 'Yeah…' 'Want a poster of Starmer?'
It seems, then, that if he is in the sewage, Starmer is in exactly the right place. Why would anybody vote for such a shower of sh*t?
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Big mistake: Johnson said Brexit would release a huge amount of money into the UK economy – instead it has shrunk the economy by four per cent. That’s more than any of the recessions of the 1970s and 80s.
Rishi Sunak’s big lie: in his Budget speech he referred time and time again to the effect of the Covid crisis, and the need to recover from it – and not once to Brexit.
So the Budget “does not draw a line under Covid”; it prepares for “a new economy post-Covid”; it forecasts that the economy with “return to its pre-Covid level” at the turn of the year; it says the Tory government has been “more successful” than feared in preventing the “long-term economic damage of Covid”.
Sunak talked about supporting theatres, orchestra, museums and galleries “to recover from Covid”; he refers to the business rate cut as being among “Covid reliefs”; and he says Covid was “not just a public health challenge and an economic challenge – it was a moral challenge too”.
What about the public health and moral challenges of Brexit, then – now that we know it has caused twice as much harm to the economy as Covid-19?
Brexit worse for the UK economy than Covid pandemic, OBR says | Brexit | The Guardian https://t.co/eYJlhMj4ot
Richard Hughes said the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) had assumed leaving the EU would âreduce our long run GDP by around 4%â, adding in comments to the BBC: âWe think that the effect of the pandemic will reduce that (GDP) output by a further 2%.â
âIn the long term it is the case that Brexit has a bigger impact than the pandemicâ, Hughes told the broadcaster.
And yet it hasn’t been mentioned by the government in its most significant financial statement of the year.
Could it be that someone (Boris Johnson) is a little embarrassed?
He should be:
We have a Govt
That delivered a policy
That will do twice as much damage to our economy than a global pandemic
Only yesterday – the day after the Budget speech – Parliament was hearing about the devastating effect on the economy… of Brexit:
Roger Gale(Tory MP) – Much of this year's harvest has been lost as a result of a lack of labour… there isn't a queue of domestic labour waiting to harvest apples & tomatoes…so what is the department going to do to make sure there's an adequate labour supply for next year? pic.twitter.com/Kv2ap0mAa3
Let’s be honest, minister Victoria Prentis’s reply wasn’t very reassuring, was it? The questioner had already said people aren’t queuing up domestically to harvest fruit and vegetables, and the EU recruitment schemes have all failed. That leaves automation, which will stop people from having jobs in the future.
âThe impact of Brexit & Boris Johnsonâs âoven readyâ deal on the economy will be double that of covid. The difference of course being the pandemic was an entirely unforeseen global catastrophe whereas Brexit is entirely self inflictedâ https://t.co/5SrQCgmMmk
Sunak won’t talk about it because he knows a Tory government caused it.
And it has caused twice as much harm as the pandemic he has blamed for so many of the UK’s current problems.
It seems to This Writer – and doesn’t it seem the same to you? – that nothing he has said will count for anything if he continues to ignore the biggest single threat to our well-being, just because his boss caused it.
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Bury? Burnley? B*gger: let’s pretend this is the moment someone explained to Sunak that he was in Bury, not Burnley, and he was smiling to hide his humiliation.
This man can’t even get his own location right. It does not bode well for his Budget.
Yes, Rishi Sunak took a trip up north to publicise his bright idea to pump investment into small projects there…
This government are trying to buy more favour in the North of England through announcing spot investments into small projects. This isnât levelling up, itâs PR finance designed by manipulative individuals .
I guess the market can’t be all that famous if Sunak can’t even get its name right.
Come to that…
I guess Sunak can’t be all that clever if he can’t even work out where he is.
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Ink today – what tomorrow? This 77-year-old ex-doctor is afraid of what the next member of the public will do to him and/or his colleagues – and papers like the Mail are egging on the attackers.
Yes, it’s annoying when your driving experience is disrupted by people who have superglued themselves to the road to draw attention to life-threatening issues including climate change – but that doesn’t justify assaulting them by throwing ink in their faces.
But here‘s the Daily Heil showing off its worst fascistic tendencies by venerating some music promoter for doing just that.
It seems
Andrew Dutton was filmed calmly walking along the line of the protestors sat in the middle of the road and spraying them with ink as they blocked traffic yesterday.
The 38-year-old from Harlow, Essex, who works with bands and arranges concerts, later told friends he lost his temper after asking the protestors to move from the A40 in North Acton, West London, to allow an emergency vehicle through – only for them to refuse and stay put.
I’m not buying that. Insulate Britain activists have a standing rule to let emergency vehicles through.
As Steve Gower said when This Writer interviewed him,
We’ve had accusations of not letting ambulances through. There’s footage – I’m in one of the clips actually, where we let an ambulance through. That is the policy of Insulate Britain – to let any blue light through our barricade.
The Mail‘s report shows footage of Dutton assaulting the protesters with the ink – with not a single emergency vehicle in sight. So I have a couple of doubts about the claim made about him (it turns out his friends told the right-wing rag about the alleged ambulance, not him).
The piece is highly supportive of the aggressor. Besides the ambulance allegation, it said his friends had hailed him as a “hero” and the protesters – who want better insulation for social housing, to stop people from dying of the cold in their own homes and to help tackle climate change – as an “eco mob”.
The result is that these people are scared. This tweet, and the embedded video, sums up the situation:
Legacy media has spent so long smoothing the path for people to feel comfortable physically attacking the elderly who dare to voice dissent. Happened to Labour canvassers in their 70s during GE19, not an eyelid batted. https://t.co/YQ4muvKc9i
— More Peter Cushin' for the Pushin' (@misslucyp) October 27, 2021
We’ve recently seen footage of a woman who tried to run over Insulate Britain activists in her Range Rover because she wanted to drive her son to school. Commenters have questioned why he couldn’t walk.
The hypocrisy is palpable. Only days ago, politicians were calling for “respect” and for people to stop fuelling the kind of “hatred” that led to the death of Tory MP Sir David Amess.
After Tory MPs were criticised for letting water companies pump raw human waste into our rivers and other waterways, they whinged – falsely – that they were being attacked with hate speech.
But when people are confronted by someone with a cause to promote, suddenly it’s okay to roll a Range Rover over them or spray ink into their eyes?
That is the message the Mail is putting out.
And the Tories must be delighted because once again, they have succeeded in getting people to squabble with others instead of casting a critical eye over the many faults of our (Tory) government.
The protesters involved are afraid – but they aren’t going to stop because they know people have already died because they lived in badly-insulated homes and they know that it will happen to others if they don’t succeed in prodding the government to act.
The – video – evidence shows they are right to be afraid.
What happens if one of them ends up suffering serious injury? What if, next time, it’s – well, I’m not going to put ideas in the heads of the irresponsible.
Will the reporter who penned the Mail piece turn himself in for possibly having incited it?
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Good morning you lovely lot! I see that the government is not particularly happy with the French this morning. They are arguing that they could be about to break international law. In response, the French will probably say âyes, but in a specific and limited wayâ so itâs fine.
— Joe đȘđș #RightToLove #Disabled #FBDR #FBRTL (@BlokeOnWheels) October 28, 2021
There was another one on Facebook about the age difference between Boris Johnson and his wife Carrie: “It might be all sunshine now she’s 33 and he’s 56 but what about in 10 years’ time when she’s 43 and he’s in prison?”
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Don’t sweat it, Sajid: really, this image should show egg on his face but we can’t have everything we want, can we?
The GP strike is off – for the moment.
You’ll remember This Site reporting last week that GPs in England were threatening to strike after Sajid Javid wanted to compel them to hold face-to-face appointments with anybody who wants one – and threatened to publicly humiliate surgeries that didn’t meet targets he would impose.
Well… it seems Javid has discovered that a week in politics really is a long time.
After the threats and counter-threats, appointment figures for September have been published – showing that GPs have already conducted a significantly higher number of face-to-face appointments.
Remember, they started doing this before Javid made his ridiculous threat.
According to The Guardian,
Figures from NHS Digital show that 28.5m appointments were estimated to have taken place in September â about 8% higher than for the same month in 2019, and up around 3m on the figure for August.
Of the appointments made in September, 43.2% took place on the same day they were booked and 61% were in person. This 17.3m total for face-to-face contacts is the highest figure recorded since February 2020 and is up by about 3.5m on the figure for August, when 58% of appointments were face-to-face, the data suggests.
It’s still fewer than the 80 per cent of appointments that were face-to-face before the arrival of the Covid crisis…
But it was enough to cause a shamefaced Department of Health and Social Care to withdraw its threat to publish monthly âleague tableâ data showing what proportion of surgery appointments occur in person or virtually,
according to sources.
Oh, and
An NHS source claimed ânaming and shamingâ GPs carrying out low levels of face-to-face appointments had never been included in the plans, only that âappropriate levels of face-to-face appointments for patients based on local need must be deliveredâ. The NHS source added that âwhile more localised access data will be published, the plan does not include ânaming and shamingââ.
Whatever. It doesn’t matter now that it isn’t going to happen anyway, does it?
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