Category Archives: News and Politics

Current affairs, madnesses of government, politics and politicians

Lucy Powell brings Orwell to life

Lucy Powell (who looks rather like a really timid nursery school teacher) is borrowing from the future envisaged in author George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984” # by seeking to control the the right to private on-line fora and to constrain and shape individual opinions and free speech within fora generally. If that seems an extreme interpretation, as with all legislation (including that with perhaps good intent) the key is to look at the structure and framework.

As is too often the case, this framework (like other anti-freedom legislation) has an underlining assumption that the government of the day (or worse, whatever less democratic structure might replace it) is benign and has at its heart a liberal and open notion of society.

This bill has been critiqued by organisations far more qualified to do so than Grumpy, and there is little to add here, but there are some stand out items, which follow a common thread for legislation of this type .

A bill debated for a mere 10 minutes only , but which can see an offender jailed for up to 7 years.
“illegal content” defined not as that which has been found to be illegal in a court of law, but that which a ‘reasonable person’ (who ??) considers involves a breach of the law. This, along with other similar recent and proposed frameworks, delegates the determination and policing of legality to other than a competent agency of the executive.
Transformation of a mere ‘Administrator’ into a ‘publisher’, who is required, under penalty of imprisonment, to determine what is illegal.
Open-ended definitions defined by Regulations, enabling endless scope creep. This is evident in Powell’s pathetic justification for the Bill, as she cites ‘misogyny’ as one target for her strictures; however, misogyny is NOT against the law, but this shows where these regulations are heading – see earlier Grumpy postings on this topic.

This will not prevent such discussion vehicles; the internet is a resilient, many headed, global hydra, and discussions will presumably either move to channels such as Newsgroups / IRC (or some new framework, such as a based on a distributed public blockchain with no ‘owner’ and with immutable posts), or simply be moved to overseas servers outside of the reach of British law, underlining the pointless nature of this Bill.

It’s not only pointless, it’s not good for democracy.

{# “1984” George Orwell Penguin Books 1949 ISBN 978-0-141-18776-1}

May’s desperate volte face

May appeared on the Andrew Marr show on 06.01.19, and said that following the pulling of the vote on her Brexit deal, she had ‘changes’ to announce, which she believed MP’s would accept when it was re-introduced w/c 21/01. The changes included just one item relating to the EU, which was that the EU had agreed further assurances (of which no details were available) on the Backstop.

However, it was clear than she was banking on her undertaking to give ‘a greater role for Parliament in negotiations on the next stage of future UK-EU relations’ as the sweetener to persuade the rebels to vote in favour.

Is this newly inclusive Theresa May the one who in the same interview essentially said it was her deal or no deal? The same Mrs May who at Chequers presented to blind-sided Cabinet members a fait accompli and stated they should agree or resign and walk home? The same Mrs May who side-lined two Brexit secretaries and delegated the most important Executive project for 50 years to an unaccountable civil servant, Olly Robbins?

Is it the same Theresa May who gave undertakings in the Conservative Manifesto and the Lancaster House speech which have not been fulfilled at all by her proposed deal ? And who has abandoned the multiple statements along the way about the freedom under Chequers to do trades round the world unfettered by EU restrictions?

Her seeming way forward is one last desperate attempt to strong-arm the party into voting for her deal on a few meaningless assurances (assuming such are forthcoming) and the threat of ‘My Way’ or the no deal highway?

Whatever happens, she has clearly failed in every goal she has set, has demonstrated duplicity, lack of integrity, and worst of all a total lack of political skill at this level. MP’s should cut her loose now, so she cannot be involved with any subsequent negotiations.

More Brexit paranoia

CNN reports (05.1.019) that those travelling to and from the UK can expect significant disruption post Brexit. Tom Jenkins, chief executive of ETOA, the European Tourism Association, said that “we have to entertain this nightmare”. ETOA also said that there will be significant disruption to aviation, currency, insurance, mobile phone roaming and passport control.

The ETOA blog is full of warnings of extreme Brexit scenarios, without (in Grumpy’s eyes) any real basis. As ever, when doom is foretold by politicians or commercial entities, first look for vested interests and the sound of axes being firmly ground. So the above list warrants examination, and particularly from the angle of tourism.

Travel: as Grumpy pointed out in http://grumpy.eastover.org.uk/eu-might-ground-uk-planes-post-brexit-bring/ 80% of tourists to Tenerife come from the UK; Brits make up a huge proportion of holiday travellers to Spain (especially the Canaries and the Med), France and Italy. The EU accounts for over 50 million UK holidays per annum, and spending of billions of Euros.

Does ETOA seriously think that the southern EU countries will let Brussels decimate their tourist industry, and see Brits find sun in Turkey? In Spain, tourism accounts for some 11% of GDP and the UK is by far the biggest country contributor, with 18.7m visitors in 2017.

Unless the EU has a disposition to political and economic self-harm, it will fix this at the outset, ready for 2019. To do otherwise will hurt them rather than Brits, who will fly to Tunisia, Turkey, Israel etc and be welcomed there. If the EU cause pain to make the Brexit point, they will soon discover a fundamental English trait of ‘bloody mindedness’, when they try to get any repulsed holiday makers back.

ETOA’s ‘Destination Spain’ manager is Marta Garcia Cruz, who, if her boss is right, will be looking for a job soon.

Currency : It’s not clear what the issue is here; the UK (thank goodness) is not a EURO country, and it’s hard to think why the exchange of currency will be affected in any way. As for cards, if Grumpy can use his cards in Beijing, Bangkok and Carcross (Yukon, Alaska) it’s hard to envisage not being able to do so in Munich. Plus, see the travel point above …

Passport control : Grumpy is old enough to have expired passports with Spanish stamps in. Entry wasn’t particularly an issue then, and there is no reason for it to be now. However with not being in Schengen, Grumpy’s experience has been that the average wait for getting into Paris once in the EU was significantly longer than that the queues he experienced on his many trips to Hong Kong. If it gets materially worse, it will be down to Junker’s punishment plan or pathetic organisation.

Aviation : French air traffic controllers spurred on to add a bit of delay to UK planes would do well to remember that flights to the USA pass through an area controlled by the UK. But in general, unless the EU is economically stupid (? maybe so – they can’t ever get their accounts signed off) these issues should be fixed quickly; after all, today, we comply with EU regulations in aviation so it is not about creating a framework, but ensuring continued equivalence. Come on, the EU allows Uzbekistan Airways, Turkmenistan Airlines, and Air Astana (which narrowly missed an EU ban), so surely good old BA must cut it ?

Insurance, roaming, etc. : More Brits visit the USA than Germany, Portugal or Greece. They go there and it’s a different currency, there are no EHIC cards, insurance is expensive, and there are no EU mandated roaming rates. But the hoards travelling to Florida to Disney-something don’t see it as a “nightmare” or stay at home to go to Blackpool. This just highlights the paucity and intellectual bankruptcy of ETOA’s doom spreading.

None of the outlined scenarios (and the other aspects listed in the report) are likely. The simple fact is the ETOA, by setting out a highly unlikely speculative combination of events (without any stated justification) have joined the group of dishonest organisations which for their own vested interests seek to frustrate the democratic will of the British people.

BBC Fake News

On 28/11/18, the BBC stated, from a report by the Bank of England, thus

“A no deal Brexit would send the pound plunging and trigger a worse recession than the financial crisis, the Bank of England has warned.”

(Grumpy;s emphasis) It then went on to say, a few lines later

“This Bank’s scenario is not what it expects to happen, but represents a worst-case scenario, based on a so called “disorderly Brexit”.

A short while later, the page was changed by the BBC to add obvious conditionality to the headline statement, after which it read

“A no-deal Brexit could send the pound plunging and trigger a worse recession than the financial crisis, the Bank of England has warned.”

The BBC is supposed to be the premier, world class, media body in the UK. In this case, it seems to have been nobbled by May’s Brexit fear team; read the first version again – it has no conditionality, and unambiguously their report states that a no deal WOULD result in the outcome stated. This is entirely and wholly at odds with the statement lower down which makes it clear that this outcome, far from being certain, or even likely, is not actually expected at all by the Bank, and is a worst case scenario.

Did someone complain? Or did a more experienced senior editor spot what at best was an inconsistency, or at worst a breach of the BBC’s implicit duty to report news impartially and without political bias?

Slimy remain MP’s

Rory Steward, a vociferous remainer Tory MP, is about as ‘establishment’ as it’s possible to imagine. Eton, Balliol, tutor to Prince William, and a diplomat before becoming a politician. It seems grossly unfair of Grumpy to pick on him to make a general point about May supporters, but it was hard to resist the headgear in the photograph.

Grumpy has always been confused where the representational aspects of an MP’s job specification is concerned. Who do they represent ?

The answer is, of course, whoever it is that suits them to define in some particular circumstance. They have plenty of choices; “I represent my constituents” / “I have to vote with my conscience” / “It’s incumbent on me to follow the policy of my party” / “MP’s should vote in the National Interest”. This is just one of the many aspects of MP’s that give them their slippery, slimy aura.

So it is with the key upcoming Brexit vote on Mrs May’s total capitulation to the EU mandarins. Suddenly MP’s who have in the past declared their immutable attachment for the first three have suddenly had a conversion to consider the populace as a whole.

Regardless of the merits (or otherwise) of the May agreement, the good Rory and other remainer MP’s are now urging their fellows that accepting the plan unconditionally is in the ‘National Interest’. ‘No deal’ is deemed worse than ANY deal. “It’s been agreed” / “It’s too late now to do anything else” seems to be the mantra. Everyone now realises this was a stitch up by Olly Robbins and his cohorts, managed by May to offer a fait accompli to powerless and spineless parliamentarians.

Grumpy’s take, whatever his views on the agreement per se, is that his innate reaction to ‘take it or leave it deals’ is to leave it. Time has proven it’s always the better way.

May will no doubt discover soon whether 318 MP’s share her view on what is in the National Interest.

Boris and May in bed

Boris Johnson (someone Grumpy cannot accept as a serious politician) got considerable flak from ever quarter with his red Boris bus, which suggested that leaving the EU would bring a 350m bonus for the NHS.

A key argument for ‘remainers’ and the second referendum loonies was that this was a deliberate and unsupported lie which swayed public opinion in the June 2016 vote. Journalists like John Lichfield, a Guardian hack and a French resident gone native, pilloried Boz with headlines like “There are lies, damned lies and Boris Johnson’s weasel sums” and “The foreign secretary must find it necessary to distort statistics because the truth does not serve his case” ; and this sets the basic tone for the wrath of the EU-philes.

It was even suggested that he might face a private prosecution by Marcus Ball, who crowdfunded the finance to bring it.

On 25th November, May released a desperate begging letter to the populace which contained the following

“Second, control of our money. Not a reduction in our membership fee, not a bigger budget rebate – but an end to vast annual payments being sent to the EU. That is what this deal delivers. Instead,we will be able to spend taxpayers’ money on our priorities, like the £394 million per week of extra investment we are putting into our NHS”

So May has doubled down on the Boris assertion, which was so comprehensively rubbished by his remainer Cabinet colleagues, most political pundits, and the Europhile press.

Now May has aligned her thoughts with those of Boris and got into bed with him, can we now assume the naysayers will now turn their wrath to her, and join those seeking to reject her ‘deal’ (the misuse of that word grates) – will they volte face and now trumpet the benefits foreseen by Boris ?

Gove states the obvious

On 2/11/18, Micheal Gove appeared on the Andrew Marr show, and offered a deep and incisive analysis for the potential future outcomes of the upcoming Brexit debate.

“If we don’t vote for this deal the alternates are no deal or no Brexit” he opined , before adding a few moments later, “if we don’t vote for this deal there may be a majority in the House of Commons for a second referendum”.

So if Grumpy can interpret this, if May’s deal is voted out, then it might be ‘no deal’ … or again, it might be ‘no Brexit’ … or even it may be a ‘second referendum’. He left out an EEA type scenario, but presumably chose not to mention this outcome in case it was judged as being better than May’s sell out. Maybe not so deep or incisive as simply obvious, having simply enumerated all the alternatives.

Under Cameron, Gove wrote an essay about his reasons to support the Leave Campaign (yes, indeed). His objections were not about any aspect of a ‘deal’ (since there wasn’t one at that time), but on his deep seated, and carefully considered objections to to the European Union as an institution.

Here is a very small sample of his thoughts; / the laws we must all obey and the taxes we must all pay should be decided by people we choose and who we can throw out if we want change / the European Union prevents us being able to change huge swathes of law and stops us being able to choose who makes critical decisions which affect all our lives / the European Union, despite the undoubted idealism of its founders and the good intentions of so many leaders, has proved a failure on so many fronts. The euro has created economic misery for Europe’s poorest people. European Union regulation has entrenched mass unemployment. / The EU is an institution rooted in the past and is proving incapable of reforming to meet the big technological, demographic and economic challenges of our time / As a minister I’ve seen hundreds of new EU rules cross my desk, none of which were requested by the UK Parliament, none of which I or any other British politician could alter in any way and none of which made us freer, richer or fairer./

Grumpy has news for Mr Gove. The May deal does not release us from any of these fundamental, structural, flaws in the EU, but places us in a worse position. Simply look at the last of his beliefs in the foregoing; taking rules without any representation whatsoever is now baked into the future relationship.

Gove’s feeble and intellectually meaningless non-assessment shows him up as an apologist for May, and a desperately insincere turncoat on his own deeply held views on the EU. However, his thinking may be more Machiavellian than flawed, in that he is gambling that, with the Brexiteers probably out of office in most future scenarios, and May heading for the exit, he at least leaves possibility of achieving some role gong forward.

Rue the day.

Threats don’t work

Mrs May has now resorted to threats to ministers, fellow MP’s, business and the populace in general to coerce them into accepting her shabby capitulation to Brussels.

In summary, it distils down to “my way or no way” or “my way, or else…”. By the time these utterances are made, the politician in question (and in such circumstances it is normally just one lonely person exercising their rapidly diminishing formal powers) is desperate, inward-looking, and unable employ the objectivity the situation demands. And so it is with Theresa, and her colleagues must make this situation plain to her by submitting their letters to Graham Brady.

On a wider note, Grumpy is programmed to react to a threats of such a nature from politicians by

dismissing any validity to their argument entirely, since they were unable to persuade by a rational, balanced reasoning without threats
never again to vote for a party which resorts to such bankrupt tactics.

It is hard to envisage that, come the next general election, voters will tick the conservative box, as it still will be a bitter and divided organisation at that time. Two people bear the blame; David Cameron for calling for the referendum in the first place, and Theresa May for failing to have the courage to spell out at the outset the obvious implications of her contradictory red lines, and resorting to sleight of hand, obfuscation and double dealing to hide this, with the result that we now have.