Johnson’s Government

Freedom will always be priceless.

What on earth is happening to this country. People receiving death threats for speaking the truth; other people trying to close down parliament. Someone who is only good at one thing, and that is telling lies is set to become PM even though everyone knows he is at best useless and at worst downright dangerous....

Agree mcem, listening to Duncan-Smith dismissing the OBR yesterday I did wonder what categorised an expert as being trustworthy? It would seem that the bloke down the pub who assures everyone that they need us more than we need them and that Italy will go bust if they do not import Prosecco to us is worth listening to whereas anyone running a business or even gasp, a Chancellor of the Exchequer is dismissed as scaremongering. Funny that eh?

It is much the same as Health and Safety here. There have been so many urban myths taken as gospel that they have a website to deny the existence of the rules.

www.hse.gov.uk/myth/index.htm

Still doesn't stop certain newspapers carrying on perpetuating this stuff though.

If the comments made by experts experienced in business and finance can be summarily dismissed as useless, why would we have any faith in 'clever advisers' (who are employed by BJ or anyone else and have their own agenda)?
Do different experts/advisers acquire their experience/wisdom in different ways?
Is one way more valid than the other?
How do we know which to trust and which to dismiss?
Ah, yes! If they're pro-brexit, they are entirely credible and trustworthy!!
While anyone who sees through the brexit fiasco must be written off as a liar and scaremonger!

It was our UK government's interpretation of the EU regs which caused all the problem.

It's called 'gold plating'. This article explains it:

Gold-plating, also known as super-equivalence, happens when the national implementation of a directive goes beyond the minimum necessary to comply with it. It is this practice that leads citizens to believe that the culprit of over-regulation can be found in Brussels.

mycountryeurope.com/politics/european-union/gold-plating-regulate-blame-brussels/

Despite the fact that this article, and others I read, assert that the UK has done much to eliminate gold plating, anecdotal evidence seems to indicate that we actually haven't.. (Yes, I do know that anecdote does not equal data...)

All those “clever advisers” are not elected are they? I seem to remember someone complaining about non elected civil servants running the government.

In the past, I have been told (wrongly as it turned out) both that a hotel had to provide scented pump soap and not the plain white bars because of EU regulations and a few years ago a restaurant refused me a glass of tap water, also citing EU regulations, though it was happy to give my grandchild diluted juice using the same water.

Then there is the case of a request for all EU farmers to provide maps of their fields some years back.

British farmers had to pay experts from the local agricultural college to draw detailed maps under threat of penalties if they were a few inches out. There was a strictly-enforced deadline for handing maps in at a distant government office with restricted hours. It caused heartache and financial strain for smaller farmers.

We were told this system had been ordered by the EU. Again we were lied to big time.

French farmers were allowed to hand in a rough sketch of their land to their local town hall as and when weather and practical farming allowed. No deadline, cost or pressure.

It was our UK government's interpretation of the EU regs which caused all the problem.

So, no, the kipper caper does not surprise me one little bit and I am resigned to the utter chaos about to descend upon us with Boris as PM sooking up to Twittertrump across the Atlantic.

Brexit Madness. All of it.

Thanks west beat me to it.

It was in the Guardian yesterday.

Where has that story come from, WWm2? I can't find any reference to it.

HMRC head steps down after receiving death threats from Brextremists.

I'm sick of hearing about Clever Boris and his clever advisers.

How "clever" is he actually? He lies, he doesn't prepare properly, he cheats, he puts people in danger, he makes offensive racist comments. In what way is that clever?

Are we so dim that we are impressed by his wealth, his privilege, his public school boy bluster?

Urm, he is surrounded by 'clever advisors' at the moment, yet this didn't stop the kipper incident.

He was surrounded by 'clever advisors' at the Foreign Office and it did not stop him saying stupid and incorrect things about Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and making her situation worse.

I am not sure I want a Prime Minister who is merely a very uncertain channel for 'clever advisors'

As for your last sentence, it is so stupid that I will assume you were half asleep, no, 99% asleep when you wrote it.

So Urm that would be the clever advisers who oversaw the kipper fiasco? Great. I feel so much better now

At least Boris has a ‘Can do’ optimism and he will be surrounded by clever advisers plus a Brexit focused cabinet. Yes he’s a buffoon but after Teresa the Appeaser and being no further on 3 long years after the referendum, Leavers are wanting to get this done now.

We kept being told that ‘business needs clarity’. All this uncertainty is poison to the economy. It’s time now to deliver Brexit.

If the Tories can’t deliver it, Nigel Farage will.

Interesting Elegran , I think his eccentricities can draw not only politicians but the voting public.

I have just read an article in the which may explain Johnson's incomprehensible appeal to so many politicians.

"There is a long tradition of embracing the eccentric (though in reality only the upper-class male eccentric) as proof of the English love of liberty and individualism in contrast to the supposed slavishness of the European continentals. No less a figure than John Stuart Mill wrote in On Liberty (1859) that “precisely because the tyranny of opinion is such as to make eccentricity a reproach, it is desirable, in order to break through that tyranny, that people should be eccentric.” Mill associated eccentricity with “strength of character,” but Johnson has been able to turn it upside down—his very weakness of character (the chaos, the fecklessness, the mendacity) provides for his admirers a patriotically heartening proof that the true English spirit has not yet been chewed up in the homogenizing maw of a humorless and excessively organized EU" The Ham of Fate Fintan O’Toole

If any one wanted evidence that Boris is on much the same level as the pea brain POTUS, then this story must prove it. Grab something and announce it, do not bother to check the facts, who wants facts to spoil a good story?

I hope when he takes over as PM someone will wrest the phone out of his hands so we do not get the deluge of half-baked tweets tha POTUS specialises in.

Still, at least he cannot prorogue parliament now to get a 'no deal' through.

Now this ridiculous story about the kippers, which are UK not EU regulations.

I think this needs just a little bit more than a line in the middle of a post, MOnica

Johnson held up a vacuum packed kipper (would have mean more effective to have had a bare one, really, but that's by the by). He then told his deeply appreciative audience that the processor of this kipper was no longer able to send kippers through the post as he'd previously been able to as EU regulations required that they had to have an 'ice pillow' posted with them to keep them cool. Waste of money, ecologically unsound and quite unnecessary' crowed Johnson to huge applause from his audience. Those damn EU bureaucrats with their piffling regulations..

Except it turns out that no such EU regulation actually exists. It's a UK regulation...

Of course, the damage is done now. All those hard of thinking Johnson supporters will be spreading the news of yet another silly EU regulation that we will be escaping from. I expect it will even pop up on here in a week or two's time...

I do M0nica. What I wonder is how many leavers actually know what he is suggesting?

They can only make predictions - you do know that? Thu 18-Jul-19 20:39:56

They are not Mystic Meg Day6, nor are they weather forecasters who are going to tell you sterling will go up or down tomorrow. They deal with long term trends. You are not looking for exactitude from a Macro Economist but a sense of direction and breadth. I have seen nothing from the no-nothing Brexiteers to explain why, although they may disagree on the detail, the vast majority of economists agree on the direction this country will take if we leave and if we leave with no deal.

What, economically, do your Leaver-biased reports say will happen? Over what period and to what degree?

GGMK3, I assume you mean Patrick Minford and the others that support Economics for Free Trade (previously Economist for Brexit)' Others supporting this organisation include Jacob Rees-Mogg and Sir James Dyson

Their ideas for the future of this country include slashing taxes and removing laws that protect workers rights. Minford was one of Margaret Thatcher's favourite economists and he would have an economy red in tooth and claw and probably even more market only orientated than the USA.

That may be what you want Day6. I certainly don't.

Once again Boris b*llses it, because he didn't bother to check his facts.

First time it was that poor woman Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who today was carted off to a psychiatric ward in chains by the Republican Guard, who suffered as a result of his failure to read his briefing. Now this ridiculous story about the kippers, which are UK not EU regulations.

Is this man fit to hold power? More importantly, why are the people supporting him and managing his campaign, who know what he is like and have therefore been very careful about how often he is seen by the media, after in being on his side. What is their agenda? What are they after? That is the bit worrying me.

You trust your experts then GG. I'll read Leaver-biased optimistic reports.

They can only make predictions - you do know that?