Let's not Forget Brexit(2)

Arrested and locked up, I hope!

Heidi Alexander giving a good argument. Gives a way of hopefully bringing the country back together by recognising that A50 does not mean that we will be leaving the EEA.

Arguing that most people who voted to leave did not also vote to leave the single market.

Some voters might have been persuaded to vote Leave by the "nobody is talking about leaving the single market" statements of Daniel Hannan et al.

www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/six-times-campaigners-reversed-promises-12540612

Sarah Wollaston - for whom I have a lot of time- has said that the whips office leaked a private conversation she had with them to the torygraph. I trust the scrutineers will stand firm against such underhand and bullying tactics.

I've never been able to understand why Sarah Woolaston is a Conservative and not a LibDem.

And me. I used to live in the totnes constituency and it is very Tory or was 40 years ago

Trump tweets all the time.

This is interesting. Hope it upsets a few people.

www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2017/11/15/one-brexit-for-the-city-of-london-another-for-the-rest/

Russian interference on twitter and facebook don't matter?

www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/05/russia-funded-facebook-twitter-investments-kushner-investor

"The leak of more than 13m documents from offshore law firms and registers have exposed in vivid detail the mechanics of a normally invisible and secretive industry – an industry that regards the Isle of Man as one of its global headquarters.

The papers show that this 33-mile long island – a short ferry ride from Liverpool – is a place of choice for billionaires and businesses that want to avoid tax, and quite a lot else.

Manx companies have been used to transfer Kremlin-controlled state funds into Twitter and Facebook; they have obscured the financial connections between two Premier League football club owners; and they have been used to issue $1bn (£764m) of tax refunds to wealthy private jet owners, including sanctioned oligarchs from Vladimir Putin’s inner circle.

It’s an island where hundreds of “straw” men and women will, for a small fee, stand in as the nominee directors and shareholders of shell companies – a legal, if increasingly dubious way, for the real owners of companies to obscure their real identities."
From the Guardian.

Three separate academic studies say that Putin bought Brexit.
Of course, they are by experts.

infacts.org/putin-buy-brexit/

There are many addresses in the IOM where the number of registered companies vastly outnumber the number of residents.

Having said that this British (but not UK) island is not as murky as many others in far-flung parts of the world.

The fact is that the rich, and especially the ultra-rich do not like paying taxes and will go to great lengths to avoid doing so. We ordinary folk do not have that choice.

I remember (I think in the 1970s) there was an American millionaire (Leona Helmsley?) who said "only the little people pay taxes" and she was rightly considered to be a pariah and a parasite then. Nowadays Donald Trump can get away with defending his non-payment of tax for twenty years by saying "that means I'm smart" and people still voted for him.

As a matter of interest, this (on the left) was posted on twitter. You have to ask yourself why Russia would go to so much trouble...




The reason I doubt the Russian tweets would have made any difference is because, apart from a few mavericks (Gove, Boris, Dyson, etc), the entire "Establishment" was (and is) pro-Remain.

I'm struggling to follow your reasoning here, Baggs.

Are you saying that people would have voted against the Establishment anyway? I think that the rejection of the Establishment, as talked about in the extract below, from a BTL comment on a Financial Times story, was exploited by Russia in their social media campaign and people were very receptive to the exploitation.

The core development that provided the spark is the implicit rejection of neoliberalism by millions of voters in Britain and America, who are using their opportunity at the ballot box to say that contemporary politics is just not working for them. They want something new but, in facilitating diverse (and perhaps concerning) outcomes such as endorsing Trump and voting to leave the EU, they do not quite know what the 'something new' should look like yet.
Critically, the presidential election and the EU referendum gave voters a platform to react against the status quo. In Britain, this was a reaction against the brand of suave, corporate politician epitomised by then-Prime Minister David Cameron, who was the default if somewhat unconvincing figurehead for the Remain campaign

The next passage deals with the effects and handling of the 2008 financial crisis and this comment follows;

There was one crucial difference that would affect ordinary people. The crisis would open the door to an unprecedented (in terms of the modern era) period of austerity which would promote savage cuts to public expenditure in order to, allegedly, balance the public purse. There were only two huge flaws with such an approach – the first being that it comprehensively did not work and the second being that it entirely failed to address broader structural deficiencies within the economy, such as the arrival and consolidation of incredibly poor wage growth (or even stagnation) alongside rising welfare dependency, house prices and job insecurity

I think you are wrong about 'the old' not using twitter. The Baby Boomers (who were the most likely 'old' people to have voted Leave, apparently the reallyold,who'd lived through WW2, were less likely to have voted Leave) seem to me to be quite enthusiastic tweeters. I 'know' plenty. And to reduce Leave voters to 'the old, and, uneducated is just simplistic. People of all ages and educational status voted Leave; it's just that the young and the better educated were more likely to have voted Remain.

The votes seem to be getting closer and closer. The last one was just lost by 12.
We'll soon win a vote.

Caroline Lucas on at the moment talking about environmental protection.

www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/nov/16/leaked-eu-paper-dents-mays-hopes-for-bespoke-brexit-trade-deal

Another leak, this time from the EU.

Hmm. I seem to remember the Brexiters saying it would be easy to get a good deal and to retain access to the single market.

Been back for a few days- not been to UK since last January. So just a quick comment 'wow - prices have shot up like crazy, and so many packages have become smaller (be it loo paper with huge central cardboard roll, smaller chocolate bars, etc, etc'. Perhaps if you live here all the time, it is not quite so shocking as it has been slowly creeping.

I noticed one thing last week, jura, as I tend to mix my coffees, using 50% decaf and 50% caffeine. I mix them up in the same jar.
This was the first time that both new packets fitted in, so I looked and they had reduced from 227 to 200g.
Quite a difference.

I'm hoping you will keep us updated on the differences you see.

So 1 ounce less per packet- and they think we are so stupid we won't notice. That is of course deliberately done to hide huge price increases

I wonder if that's just particular brands. My 100g chocolate bar is still 100g. My coffee is still the same weight in the same packaging but I'd need to research Andrex, I don't think that's different ..... which brands did you notice have changed?

I use a make up product which is imported from France.
The price has increased from £10.99 to £18.99

I must be one of the few people whose regular brands have not increased their prices then Ilovecheese. Not sure I'd still buy something that's almost doubled in price overnight! It's interesting to watch who is rising prices and who's not.

You must be Primrose. The ONS has recorded 2,500 products that have subject to what has been termed shrinkflaction over the last five years.

We're talking about a different timeframes gg as I was replying to Jura, who was commenting on changes since last January. No idea about the makeup.
Is 2,500 products over 5 years a lot? I know the large Tesco stores carried 90,000 products. No wonder I have not noticed.