the brilliantly leaping gazelle

 Diane Abbott is certainly a great many things to a great many people but to me, she is the first politician in this election campaign to have called upon the services of the irony police. 

To deny a claim of racism made against her, many of her supporters have claimed that her suspension from the Labour Party and its subsequent treatment of her by them, was itself motivated by racism with the wholly predictable result that the original offence has been largely forgotten. 

The issue that now preoccupies the media and has engulfed The Labour Party is the both disingenuous and dangerous falsehood that she is the victim.

Lest we forget, the original charge of racism against her and which led to her suspension from the Labour Party was a letter she sent to the Observer newspaper in April 2023. For reasons unknown, she made the incredibly offensive claim that ‘It is true that many types of white people with points of difference, such as redheads, can experience this prejudice. But they are not all their lives subject to racism. In pre-civil rights America, Irish people, Jewish people and Travellers were not required to sit at the back of the bus.’.

I’m not even going to bother to explain why I think what she wrote is so offensive because I trust that anyone reading this post knows why. But the notion of her being a victim of racism, that her suspension from the Labour Party is itself essentially motivated by racism, being both disingenuous and dangerous I will explain.

The former Labour leader, Corblimey had the Labour whip withdrawn in 2020, after he said anti-Semitism within Labour during his leadership had been ‘dramatically overstated for political reasons’, following a damning report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission. 

That’s why its disingenuous. Corblimey’s entire leadership was, it seemed to me, forever being assailed not just by accusations of anti-Semitism within the party but accusations about the way those accusations were dealt with. 

Its dangerous because by suggesting that racism is a contributory, if not the primary reason that has motivated her treatment, then it not only calls into question the motives of those who are only too eager to find examples of racism everywhere, but it additionally creates a culture whereby that thinking takes root, allowing other racist incidents to be all too easily dismissed.

On a more obvious note, there was a headline in The Observer on Sunday ‘ Starmer on Abbott: ‘I’ve actually got more respect for Diane than she probably realises’, which to me seems like a back-handed compliment, if the starting point was way less than zero anyway.

Is it just me or does the conviction yesterday of Donald Trump remind anyone else of the show trials in the Russia of the 1930’s under Stalin? Where the charges, such as they were, were incidental. The main purpose of his trial, as I understand it, was to put Trump on trial for something, find him guilty and thus scupper his chances of being elected as President in November.

The more that I learn about the whole sordid affer, the more sordid it becomes. Yes paying a porn star to keep quiet about an alleged affair is sordid, but much more sordid is a prosecutor using frankly inconsequential misdemeanour and somehow turning into a serious felony to bolster his own electoral prospects.

Donald Trump isn’t by any stretch of the imagination a proponent of any kind of politics I’d defend, he is a rabble rouser who exploits peoples fears for his own ends. But isn’t that what politicians do, what they’ve always done and what this trial is about? 

I imagine that a fair amount of Trump opponents may have at best a few of the talking points that the media has relentlessly repeated over the last eight years to affirm why they revile him so but doesn’t this echo the constant lambasting that Boris’s Johnson has been subjected to?

Like I wrote, sordid and like it as not, this kind of of lawfare – the weaponisation of the law to achieve political ends – is already here and only going to get worse.

They were at it again yesterday in The Guardian, once more promulgating the totally disingenuous and blatantly self-serving idea that what is needed to combat the threats posed to humanity is to do everything except having less humanity. 

They published an article by David King, chair of the global Climate Crisis Advisory Group, entitled, ‘Humanity’s survival is still within our grasp – just. But only if we take these radical steps’. However, having read the article, he should be chair of the global society of ostrich impersonators, so deep is his head in the sand. Possibly that’s because he knew that the article was intended for The Guardian, which as I’ve pointed out on this blog before, has its entire business model predicated upon telling its readers what they want to hear in order that they keep funding it. 

Which they do, giving so much money in fact, that over half of its income comes through its readers. This means that instead of having one cigar chomping, pin stripe suit wearing and stinking rich old white man as proprietor, one who influences its editorial content to better advance his business interests, they have thousands of proprietors, many drinking fair trade coffee with soya milk, wearing ethically sourced clothing and who possibly identify as non-binary. All of whom are eager to read about how they can still have children and care about climate change.

Hence we have this this choice selection of pandering nonsense ‘But we have agency to change this, and a thriving future is still on the table. To grasp it, we must embark on a radical journey encompassing an essential “4R planet” pathway. This means: reducing emissions; removing the excess greenhouse gases (GHGs) already in the atmosphere; repairing ecosystems; and strengthening local and global resilience against inevitable climate impacts.’

All of which would no doubt help alleviate the situation, but the single most effective solution, the one would that would unquestioningly reduce global consumption and the energy needed to produce the things consumed, halt the expansion of cities by reducing overcrowding and therefore protect natural habitats more would be a curb on population. I have no idea how that might be achieved, only an awareness that whilst such an idea might be unpalatable to some, it doesn’t make it any less necessary.

The scale of the necessity of doing so is only matched by the political avoidance of even discussing it. Indeed, as the United Nations observed recently ‘The world’s population is more than three times larger than it was in the mid-twentieth century. The global human population reached 8.0 billion in mid-November 2022 from an estimated 2.5 billion people in 1950, adding 1 billion people since 2010 and 2 billion since 1998. The world’s population is expected to increase by nearly 2 billion persons in the next 30 years, from the current 8 billion to 9.7 billion in 2050 and could peak at nearly 10.4 billion in the mid-2080s.’

So whilst David King may worry that ‘the world is emitting over 50bn tonnes of GHGs annually into the atmosphere, expressed as CO2 equivalent. Since we are unlikely to achieve a removal rate exceeding 10bn tonnes per annum, there can be no way forward without reducing emissions to a very small figure.’, the most obvious way forward would be to reduce the numbers of humans producing those emissions in the first place, which to me is far more practical than changing the things consumed if there are increasing amounts of consumers to consume them. Or am I missing something?

And in an election campaign, when the electorate are hopefully more engaged with politics than at any other time, politicians should have the moral courage and integrity to be honest. They’re forever banging on about ‘needing to make difficult choices’, but to me there are two choices, one astoundingly simple and the other almost impossibly difficult. Is the current amount of people alive today sustainable and if we don’t want that number to increase, how do we achieve it?

So yes, ‘a seismic cultural shift is imperative to steer humanity away from self-destruction towards a just and sustainable future. We must realign our political will, economic priorities and societal values to recognise that ecological wellbeing is matched to human wellbeing.’ But if that ‘seismic cultural shift’  doesn’t involve addressing the most blindingly obvious causative factor of increased greenhouse gases, continued use of fossil fuels and and the increase of extreme weather events – an increasing population – then any changes are about much use as re-arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.

Deckchairs ethically sourced and made from sustainable materials by workers in the global south, if one is a Guardian reader of course  

One of the many reasons why the electorate holds politicians in such contempt is because they make wildly preposterous claims which they expect to be taken seriously. This wholly rational way of thinking has been borne out time and time again, but reaches a cyclical peak every general election campaign.

Nothing epitomises this truism more than taxes, specifically any claim a politician makes that they won’t raise taxes. Both the main parties will make this pledge that even as they make them they must know to be if not untrue, then highly improbable. Because in making such a pledge they deny reality by ignoring the challenges that the double-whammy of an increasing and ageing population population presents.

Yesterday it was Rachel Reeves Labours Shadow Chancellor turn. Speaking on BBC1’s ‘Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg’ she said that Labour supported lower taxes, but she would not put forward “unfunded proposals”. Pressed repeatedly on her tax plans, she said: “What I want and Keir [Starmer] wants is taxes on working people to be lower and we certainly won’t be increasing income tax or national insurance if we win at the election.

The bad news for her is that her notion of ‘want’ and ‘support’ is as effective as a child making a wish as they blow out the candles on their birthday cake. The demographics bear this out.

According to the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR), whereas today 18% of the population is over the age of 65, by 2065 they predict it will be 26%. The OBR also has a lot of forecasts, analysis and projections that I’m sure are as fascinating as they are terrifying but what I takeaway from it is this; 26% of people in 2065 will be costing the state much more than they contribute. The older people get, the more they’ll be prone to age related illness, meaning more pressure on the NHS and because of the increasing onerous obligations that statutory social care places on councils, a state of affairs that’s clearly financially unsustainable.

And with 15% of the population predicted to be under 16 by 2065, that means that 41% of them will be paying no tax. Even if the OBR forecasts are wrong – and that hasn’t happened before, has it? – we still face the same problem albeit it being a tiny bit less of a problem. How on earth does Ms Reeves – or MisLeading as she is now – imagine this ever worsening problem is to be resolved?

She dare not because it is another truism of politics that the older someone is, the more likely to vote they are. No politician wants to risk the kind of political shitshow that engulfed Theresa May when she inexplicably chose to announce her plans to reform adult social care in the middle of her 2017 election campaign. But several large hats off to her for even attempting to be honest with the electorate about the sums of money involved. Adult social care alone cost £26.9 billion in 2021/22, up 3.8% from 2020/21 and the more older people there are and the more they keep living longer, that cost is only going to increase.

And then there’s pensions.

According to the OBR, pensions will account for 42% of the welfare budget this year, that’s £124 billion, the largest single expenditure and it follows that the more pensioners there are, and the longer that they live, the greater tax burden they’ll place on the decreasing amount of people paying that tax.

When the current crop of pensioners – those over 80 I’m talking about here – were adults of working age and paid tax, successive governments had a realistic expectation that their time as a pensioner might last for maybe 15 years or so. Wasn’t that the deal with state pensions? That their tax paid for the pensions of the old, and when they were old the tax paid by others paid for theirs. However, the Office for National Statistics estimates that by 2045 there will be 3.1 million of them or 4.3% of the population. So to my way of thinking, anyone over the age of 85 who is claiming a state pension is guilty of benefit fraud. It may well be through no fault of their own, but they’re still claiming a benefit to which they’re not entitled.

Not that I care too much about it as I’ll most likely be dead by 2065, at least I hope so if the meat runs out before then. But that doesn’t excuse the blatant sophistry of MisLeading, because whilst she may well rule out raising taxes, she doesn’t rule out introducing new ones, does she?

Did Londoners see the ULEZ scheme coming?

As we enter into the last days of the phoney election campaign, the one where politicians do the the equivalent of warm-up exercises before a big race. Finalising their election stagey, adding last minute changes to their manifestos, not just checking everyone’s fully aware of what messages they want to constantly repeated for weeks- ‘strong and stable’ is a classic from 2017 – but also the attack lines, the pithy quips and barbs that they’ll use against their opponents, that sort of thing.

They’ll also be gearing up to unleash their advertising campaigns, ones for not only the various ways the electorate consume their media but within that, the specially targeted online adverts to reach certain interest groups. Think of hundreds of different leaflets, all differently worded and tailored to press individual buttons but with the same basic message, Vote for us. Don’t vote for them. 

So with all that in mind and with all that lies in front of us – lie being the operative word – lets have a closer look at some of the charlatans and frauds who are stepping down as MP’s at this election, because its much better for your CV to jump rather be pushed.

Some names you’ll be familiar with – Michael Gove, Theresa May, Caroline Lucas and Harriet Harman – and others you’ll think ‘How are they still there?’ – Matt Hancock  and Kwasi Karting – but most have carefully managed to stay out of the spotlight hoping that their assorted nefarious doings fade into obscurity like them.

The following MP’s took the whole concept of cash for questions to a whole new level, so much so that there was almost a sense of grudging admiration for the way that they’d escaped detection for so long. The whole shabby episode was only revealed when one of them, Charles Tye, drunkenly mistook a journalist for a lobbyist at the Conservative Party Conference in 2017 and said enough to launch a 18 monthinvestigation.

According to the UK Parliament website, ‘Select committees run inquiries on specific topics. The outcomes of these inquiries are public and many require a response from the government. Select committees also carry out their work through correspondence, by engaging with the public through events and surveys, holding round-table discussions and undertaking visits.’ 

Thomas Close was appointed to the Committee on Selection (CoS) in 2005, eventually becoming its deputy chair in 2012. The purpose of the CoS is to nominate candidates to sit on other select committees. Sounds dull, doesn’t it, but Close saw an opportunity and approached two lobbying firms with defence, financial, technological and clients. He undertook to influence the committee into nominating MP’s favourable to their clients interests to sit on relevant committees.

Eventually Soham Toney, and Dan Heaton joined him on the CoS, Brent Eleigh sat on the Committee on Arms Export Controls and later served as chair on the Defence Committee for four years, Morfa Dinkile sat on the Finance Committee for eight years, and upon his becoming a Lord was replaced by Hesketh Bank. Thorpe Merieux  sat on the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee for eleven years.

According to Wikipedia,’ the scale of the corruption was so difficult to believe that it was suspected on all sides of House to be a smear campaign orchestrated by News International, publisher of The Sun, The  News of the World, The Times and Sunday Times to divert attention away from the Leveson Inquiry into press standards’. In addition to luxurious all expenses paid five star holidays and ‘fact-finding trips overseas, it was rumoured that Close had trousered nearly £650,000, Brent Eleigh £375,000 and the rest between £100,000 – £200,000.

He also acted as a political influencer, helping to arrange meetings, having questions raised in the house after tipping off journalists about a possible story in his client interests. On one memorable occasion doing a ‘filibuster’ of six hours straight – talking a bill out of allotted parliamentary time before a final vote to pass it into law can take place – regarding tighter restrictions on ‘pay day’ loan companies.  

Charles Tye was censured but not expelled because the House of Commons Standards Committee decided that as he had only been approached, had not breached parliamentary rules. Tye has announced his intention to set up a charity to help recovering addicts when he leaves parliament in June.  

If, as widely predicted, Labour do indeed win the election, wouldn’t it be an incredibly satisfying turn of events if a vocal minority Conservative voters constantly banged on about how utterly unfair they thought the outcome was and sought to overturn it? 

Possibly by launching court cases based on nothing more than sour grapes which might end up involving the Supreme Court, calling for judicial reviews of the process and attempts cancel the result. Not to thwart the democratic will of the majority you understand, but to do something incredibly complicated that only the grown ups might be able to understand.

Which would necessarily suggesting that the credulous fools who’d voted for Labour not only had been lied to, but that Labour had knowingly lied to them. That Labour voters didn’t really know what they were voting for – was it Eurovision? – effectively implying that Conservative voters were intimately aquatinted with every detail of their manifesto.

Because it is a truism of political election campaigning, that political manifesto’s are sacred texts, and all of their promises are always enacted if elected and reused again and again if not, to signify exactly how committed to them they are. No political campaign in the history of ever, has been accused of falsehoods, misleading claims and downright lies. 

There’d also be the unspoken assumption that there was something inherent in their character that had caused them to vote Labour. Either a moral defect or an irrational fear, possibly both, that rendered them susceptible to manipulation via well funded and highly targeted social media adverts.

But of course this won’t happen and the reason it won’t happen is losers consent, the ludicrous premise that the losing side in an election gracefully accepts defeat and moves on. You know, the way democracy is supposed to work, you win some you lose some.

I just want to point out again that I voted to Remain in the European referendum, but was appalled by the way that certain sections of the media, especially BBC TV, BBC Radio 4 and The Guardian constantly promoted the fatuous idea that some elaborate political chicanery had taken place. And even more appalled that there was an audience all too willing to believe such complete and uttter bollocks and that they alone were part of the chosen few who could see it.

It is said that every cloud has a silver lining and until yesterday evening, I never believed it true. First off, the cloud.

For reasons wholly to do with selective virtue signalling and wanting to be well thought of by the digital mob, Ken Loach and Mike Leigh resigned as patrons of the Phoenix cinema in London in protest over the venue hosting an Israeli state-sponsored film festival yesterday

As The Guardian reported 

The cinema – one of the UK’s oldest – is holding a private screening of Supernova: The Music Festival Massacre, as part of the international Seret film festival on Thursday night. The documentary tells the story of the attack by Hamas on the Nova music festival on 7 October through survivor testimony.

That would be the attack by Hamas in which 364 civilians were killed.

As I have observed before on this blog, Hamas knew well what sort of response this would provoke, but decided to do it anyway. So to my mind, any Palestinian deaths resulting from the subsequent Israeli military action is totally their fault. I don’t understand why people are so unwilling to accept this.

Leaving that aside – for now at least – and back to Ken Loach. I’d always admired him and his work. His was the kind of film-making which, whilst not always an easy watch, was imbued with a sympathy for the ordinary person and which was never patronising or condescending, but critiqued the forces, political with both a large and a small p, that confounded them.

His 1969 documentary about the charity ‘Save the Children’ despite being partly funded by them, was banned from ever being broadcast by them, it being so critical. In 1980, his documentary ’A Question of Leadership, about the steel workers strike of 1980 and the Thatcherism that had caused it, was considered so inflammatory it was withdrawn and when it was finally shown, was savagely edited and a ‘balancing’ programme shown afterwards.

So him telling the Guardian: “‘My resignation as a patron of the Phoenix shows what I think of their decision. It is simply unacceptable.” is so disappointing, not least because it is the sort of treatment he has faced.

Now the silver lining.

There were two protests outside the Phoenix last night. One was by the usual pro-Palestinian rabble rousers parading their selective virtue, and wonderfully, a counter protest by a pro-Israeli crowd shouted them down so much they gave up and went home.

Oddly enough ‘The Guardian’ wasn’t able to find enough digital space to run this story today, but thankfully, The Jewish Chronicle did. It was able, however to rehash yesterdays story today.

As with previous UK general elections, I’ll be attempting to write a daily post, concerning both the various shenanigans of all involved in the campaign and also some of the wider, more tangential issues that I consider to have some bearing upon it.

I will attempt to be scrupulously fair and impartial when commenting on such matters, by which I mean I’ll be by turns scathing, cynical and deeply suspicious of not only politicians actions during the campaign, but also the way in which the media choose to report them.

It will be many things, but it won’t be boring. Unfortunately for you, it will offer a glimpse into the way my mind works but as as it is a mind that is brain damaged, think of this as you doing your good deed for the day, akin to indulging the whims of a small child.

All aboard the unicorns then!

There was a story in Saturdays ‘Guardian’ which if it appeared anywhere else, ’The Guardian’ would lambast and rip to shreds.  Unfortunately it didn’t appear anywhere else, which means its my lucky day and it falls to me to do the honours.

The story concerned, drum roll please, Brexit.

If there’s one topic above all else that makes me despair about ‘The Guardians’ fall from that it was in my former years – even-handed and honest – to what is now – partisan and hypocritical – its Brexit. Or more specifically, the way that it frames every story it runs about Brexit in a way that reinforces its readers pre-existing narrative, that of Brexit being an avoidable disaster if only it was left to the grow-ups to decide and not the children. You know, because being children they were more susceptible to believing lies, more easily scared and unable to understand complex issues.

With a headline like,’’Three and a bit years after Brexit, are border checks finally here?”,one might be forgiven for imagining it was going to be a a examination of what the checks were before and after Brexit. The implications of the differences and difficulties that those changes might represent and the noticeable effect of said changes upon consumers. 

Possibly throw in a bit about how the changes were negotiated, how they sit within the broader global regulatory framework and the likely impact on UK exports. That sort of thing. Boring yes, but more importantly, informative, 

“‘When Michael Gove announced the first delay to post-Brexit checks on plant and animal products coming into the UK from the EU, he was keen to make one thing clear.

“Although we recognise that many in the border industry and many businesses have been investing time and energy to be ready on time, and indeed we in government were confident of being ready on time,” the then minister for the Cabinet Office said, “we have listened to businesses who have made a strong case that they need more time to prepare.”

Hold on, isn’t government listening to and refining their plans so as to arrive at the best possible solution a good thing? To delay implementation until such time that as situation arose?

That was in March 2021. Three years and four delays later, Tuesday will finally see those checks brought in. Or will it? 

Taking the time to ensure those checks are as good as they possibly can be and having the sense to delay implementation until they are, isn’t that too a good thing too, something to be lauded, not sneered at? Or would it suit ‘The Guardian’ if the government just blindly pressed ahead with implantation, ignored calls from business to make changes and allowed the consequences of doing so make life worse, much more difficult and cripplingly expensive and for citizens already suffering from the cost of living crisis?

‘(The Guardian) understands the inspection process will begin with more “intelligence-led” checks, focusing first on the highest risk products in all categories. This would see consignments chosen for inspection based on factors such as the country of origin and the company delivering them, and any additional intelligence on certain products coming through the border. The enforcement levels will also be adjusted based on compliance of goods and disruption levels.

Is it just me that thinks this a both prudent and common sense approach to take, to try ‘intelligence led ‘ checks first, to avoid long delays at ports of entry into the UK and ease the bored on border staff. Wouldn’t ‘The Guardian’ be criticising the government for not doing precisely that if it wasn’t doing that, using strategic planning and technology better maximise the efficient use of manpower? 

The first phase, which began at the end of January this year, required importers of most meat, dairy and plant to secure health certificates for products before they could enter the UK. This has already created problems for some importers.

Not only has it added extra costs to orders – the certificates can cost up to £200 for each product line – but some suppliers have struggled to find vets to carry out the checks or simply turned their backs on supplying the UK, unwilling to deal with the added bureaucracy. The result has been gaps on some deli shelves.

Boo-fucking-hoo. Who cares about deli’s in the real world? If it was a choice between getting my hands on some artisanal chutney from Austria or being a citizen of the first country in Europe to have a Covid vaccination programme, I know which one I’d choose.   

World Trade Organization rules state that UK trade borders with the EU need to match those with the rest of the world, so as not to give the bloc a trading advantage.

So one massive cartel has rules that another smaller cartel is only too willing to enforce, because it highlights the risks to the smaller cartels members should they too wish to leave. Think of Pablo Escobar telling cartel members they are free to leave as he calmly loads a pistol.

But trade will be more costly. The government itself has admitted that businesses will have to pay £330m a year, which could add 0.2% to food inflation over three years. 

The key word there is could. Sure it could add 0.2% to food inflation over three years, of course it could, but the sky could also fall in, water could be turned into wine and pigs could fly. And 0.2% over three years is functionally meaningless anyway. How stable has food inflation been or not been since Brexit, is that 0.2% figure large or not and anyway inflation projections are as we know, famously reliable.

And might not the ongoing brouhaha in Ukraine, and with it the rise in the cost of the fuel across Europe, the fuel that’s needed to help produce, store and transport this food, be more of a causative factor? How about climate change and its effect on food production? Or farmers across Europe, in the Netherlands, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal and Ireland protesting about the EU’s increasingly burdensome environmental regulations, might that also be involved?

No, its all because of pesky Brexit. 

Brexit is in the fever-dream imaginings of ‘The Guardian’ like the lighthouse keeper in ‘Scooby-Do’, inasmuch as it views everything that happens to the UK almost exclusively through the lens of how awful Brexit was and continues to be.

Ah,”The Guardian’, which imagines that its readers exist in a world of a Woolworths style ‘Pick n Mix’ democracy, one where they believe in democracy, of course they do do, but only up to a point. And that point is when the democracy they cherish so very much, interferes with how they want to live their lives. 

This was perfectly summed up in yesterdays headline, “ ’Confined to this little island’: Britons criticise rejection of EU youth mobility deal”, because it was tailor made to bolster their never ending sense of entitled grievance about Brexit. 

‘Hundreds voice dismay at Sunak and Starmer, accusing them of misreading UK attitudes towards Europe. Last Friday, the prime minister rejected the post-Brexit youth mobility deal, which would have allowed Britons aged between 18 and 30 to live, study or work in the EU for up to four years, after Labour declined the offer the previous day.’

Never mind that only an incredibly small proportion of people aged between 18-30, would have, I’d wager, the necessary qualifications, skills or experience that EU employers would want for this to become a reality. Never mind that one of the EU’s fundamental principles, the free movement of people, which was one of the reasons why the majority of Britons for voted for Brexit, would be reinstated were this deal to go ahead. 

“This scheme seems like a no-brainer – I cannot think why anyone would disagree with it,” said Elena, who works in the healthcare sector in north-east England.” Doesn’t say she’s a nurse or junior doctor, care worker or ambulance crew does it though? ‘Healthcare sector’ reads to me like deliberate obfuscation, to conceal the fact that she has exactly the skills that an employer in the EU would be invested in.  

‘She dismissed concerns that people could end up trying to overstay and settle in the UK permanently. I have friends who have taken advantage of such schemes with Canada, Australia and New Zealand and none of them ended up moving permanently to those countries.”’

Only someone so wilfully obtuse could be unaware of the utter irrelevance of this reasoning. English is spoken in all of those countries and whilst English might well be spoken at some levels of European society, it is far from universal. In the Netherlands, you’d be fine but good luck to an  English person who can only speak English trying to to order a drink in Toulouse, to get help from a shop assistant in Palermo or to order a meal in Koblenz. 

“I suspect the resistance from the Tories and Labour is based on a belief that a sizeable chunk of the British public would balk at the idea of eastern Europeans freely crossing our borders again.”

And there we have it, the belief never far from the mind of a ‘Guardia’ reader, that everyone who voted for Brexit was to some extent xenophobic, if not actually racist. 

Because the idea that perhaps concerns about increasing pressure on already struggling public services and the NHS might be more of a issue doesn’t accord with a negative narrative. Instead of viewing doubts over the ability of schools and the housing sector to cope with rapidly growing demand as a positive, which it is, it is much easier to dismiss them as somehow rooted in racism 

As I’ve pointed out many times before on this blog,, “The Guardian’ has managed to monetise the saying ‘I’d rather be a hypocrite than be the same man for ever.”, by pandering to its readers unbelievably selfish notion that that their anger over Brexit has greater value than anyone else’s feelings on the matter, and to that end the staff at Guardian at constantly run stories that will bolster that narrative.

“Improved mobility did not just appeal to graduates and their employers: scores of people, many of them parents of sons and daughters in their teens or 20s, said such a scheme could restart the funnelling of young baristas, waiters and au pairs into countries on either side of the Channel”

See! Not only can foreign workers have McJobs here, but British nationals can have McJobs in Europe too. And it fulfils one the EU’s primary objectives, that of lowering wages for businesses whilst increasing the financial obligations of the state.

Oh, I’ll just point out once again that I voted to Remain, but, you know democracy, losers consent….