Johnson and Brexit

An article in The Sunday Telegraph.

If they presented this fake news as a fact I hope they will issue an apology.

Priti Patel now wants border restrictions applied to EU citizens after 31 October. That means they can't leave the country until this is resolved, after being promised that there would be transition arrangements.

An apology wouldn't be enough. The "news" has already been spread and people have believed it. They won't bother to buy the Telegraph to read any apology. They probably don't even know (or care) what the source of the "story" was.

I don't think the fake news was an article in the Sunday Telelgraph; I suspect that Ug was responding to an earlier question about the signing of the commencement order.

The fake news article has been circulated on, guess what, social media.. It has been faked to look like an article from the Guardian. As the fullfact link shows.

There seem to be a few Government ministers whose noses may grow when you listen to the comments on the leaked government reports.

Ah! Apologies to the DT in that case.

I see that Patel is going off on a tangent again. She isn’t the sharpest tool in the box is she?

Gove has been doing the rounds on the media reassuring the gullible that the leaked document is Sooo out of date.

It is dated 01/08/19

Gove does almost as well as his leader in the lie stakes.

Ian Birrell, writing in the "i" today-

"A hammer blow to our country- leaked official document outlines a frightening future. Despite its unassuming name, the Government’s ‘Yellowhammer’ report underlines the damage that a no-deal Brexit could cause to this country"

"As someone whose father has severe dementia and daughter has profound disabilities, I am well aware of the depth of the social care crisis confronting this country with starved services, diminishing facilities and dwindling staff. There has been endless talk and much hand-wringing, but no real action, to solve a scandal causing immense distress to many families."

He concludes-

"Brexit is defended on grounds of democracy, but as I have seen reporting from autocratic states, this noble system of government is about far more than the simple act of voting. It is about accountability, fairness, freedom, rights and trust. Democracy is not the tyranny of a one-off majority.

It is the ability to challenge our rulers, question our decisions and, above all, to change our minds – especially in changing times.

The detail underlines the disgusting duplicity of those that led us into the debacle"

www.pressreader.com/

Gove really is a lying toe rag - and not a very good one.

Yellowhammer was first uncovered before the original deadline, but the new document, dated 1 August 2019, claims that the UK is even less well-prepared for 31 October than it was for the original leaving date.

The latest document is available online, if anybody's interested.

I just don't know how low this government is prepared to sink and I'm dumbfounded that anybody can claim that this is in any way democratic and transparent government.

I don’t think it will matter what comes out of Downing St - the Leavers seem to believe that it’s all fake news, it’s all been exaggerated, we were fine before we went into the Common Market and it will all be fine again. We’re British after all, we’ve lived through worse!

The rest of us though are watching in disbelief as we lurch towards utter chaos - or at best, a more rubbish version of what we have now.

I agree. Values such as trust and honesty really have been turned on their head.

It's the "World turned upside down" Mark 2.

PS. Mark 1 was 1647-50.

Most of us haven't lived through worse. Even those who have, didn't consciously choose to live in chaos.

I wonder if we will ever get back to decency, honesty and fairness in our lifetime?

I think not.

What happened to our society that encourages people to ignore learned opinion and facts, preferring to believe in spin, hate and lies?

It will be very interesting to see how this government introduces a whole new immigration system in 10 weeks.

How many years have they been trying to get the UC system right?

No - but they point to things like the Blitz and the Cuban missile crisis and claim that the generations who lived through this survived to tell the tale and we will too. We’ll just have to adjust - turn our gardens into allotments as they did in WW2 if needed - and British people should be made to work in the fields or lose their benefits to make sure our farmers can grow what we need. Simple really - we need to be more optimistic! After all, the Govt has people who know what they’re doing working hard behind the scenes

If it does try, it's going to be in trouble. I was reading about the arrangements for UK ex-pats in the EU, especially Spain. The Spanish government has made it clear that it's happy to keep ex-pats until 2020, but the arrangement is strictly reciprocal.

If the UK tries to exclude EU nationals by refusing entry, all the people with second homes in Spain could very well find themselves refused entry.

Yes, but …. Many people who experienced the Blitz didn't survive it and they didn't actually choose to go to war. The Cuban missile crisis didn't happen on home turf and didn't affect our everyday lives.

Are these people working behind the scenes the same civil service that the government itself seems to think is negative and corrupt?

I know that growstuff and you know that, but it’s all part of the narrative of the Leavers...

The Cuban Missile Crisis?

How on earth did that affect the UK apart from a few days of being worried that WW3 was about to break out and that we were all going to die in a nuclear holocaust?

They are truly demented.

Well at least we don’t have to worry about dying, unlike The Blitz or the Cuban Missile Crisis. Come on - you’re all just scaremongering. Lighten up! Time for some optimism folks! <insert your choice of meaningless Leavers rhetoric here>

Silence from the usual enthusiastic leavers,maybe the penny has finally dropped. Or they are out buying Vera Lynn albums

It's OK, we'll be in charge

Not of our imports (food included) from the US because they will be exacting a pound of flesh for condescending to sell us anything, not of our exports because they will put high tariffs on what we want to sell to them>

No influence whatsoever on the rules and charges made by the EU for all the things that have free entry through customs to our supermarkets. At the moment our elected MEPs put our view and lobby on our behalf (except Nigel who didn't even turn up except to grab his pay) After we leave we just accept what has been voted in without us.

Not of our imports from or exports to anywhere else, under WTO rules, because we must give the same conditions to everyone we buy from or sell to.

Not of our travel arrangements - we will have to get visas for the places we wish to visit, joining a long queue for them, in which will also be all the people who wish to visit here. That will have a knock-on effect on our tourist trade, which we will be regarding as a useful income generator.

Not on the wider education of our young people, formal and informal. They will no more have unlimited movement to and from European centres of learning, and to travel in their gap year (if they can still take such a thing) they will be yet another burden on the visa issuers.