EU Tells Tweezer Unwelcome Fact, So Bojo Spout Nonsense as Distraction

More spin and misdirection from the Tories. Yesterday, Mike put up a piece commenting on Bojo’s bizarre utterance about building a channel bridge. He doesn’t like the Chunnel, you see, and thought that a bridge would be much better. This drew down a barrage of criticism from everyone, who had any connection or knew anything about the shipping industry. 500 ships go through the straights of Dover daily, and so the construction of the bridge, if not the structure itself, would cause massive disruption to international shipping. This was pointed out by one of the shipping associations.

The idea’s a complete non-starter.

But as Mike points out, it looks like a clever piece of misdirection on the Tories’ part. Tweezer had been told earlier that day by the EU that Brexit would mean the financial sector leaving London. This is absolutely true. The EU financial regulatory body has packed up and moved to Paris, another international financial organisation has sought pastures new overseas, and Frankfurt ‘Manhattan’ Am Main is doing its level best to encourage financial houses to relocate there.

But the Tories, and Blairite Labour, are handsomely support by the financial sector, and govern on their behalf. One Tory industrialist, who actually came from manufacturing, has said that he couldn’t get Thatcher to understand that a strong pound damaged British exports abroad. And under Blair we were told that British manufacturing was finished, and we shall concentrate on getting jobs and supporting the financial and service sectors. Deanne Julius, who was given a high-ranking post at the Bank of England after working in various American banks, actually said that we should concentrate on servicing American industry. Which shows you which way the Americans think the ‘Special Relationship’ goes.

Bojo is known for uttering nonsense, and saying things that are stupid and controversial. It seems the Tories have weaponised this. And so when the EU told Tweezer the unwelcome news, which would upset her backers in the financial sector, someone it seems prodded Bojo to make a stupid comment. Thus the bilge about a Channel Bridge, which got everyone talking about that, rather than the boring, but very real threat, that the City of London was going to be decimated by Brexit.

And I expect that as more unpleasant news comes out about the effects of Brexit, we can expect more stupidity from Bojo to take the heat away from his party, and the mistress he barely supports.

David Tennant Reads Out Scottish Tweets Attacking Trump for Brexit Comments

Way back in July Donald Trump travelled to Scotland to open one of his golf courses. At the press conference there, one of the assembled hacks asked him what he thought about Brexit. Trump was very positive, stating that the strong pound had meant that Britain had lost trade. Now it was weak, trade would recover, and we Brits had taken our country back.

This annoyed the guid people north of the border, as the majority of Scots had voted to remain. In this clip from the American Full Frontal satirical news show, the former Doctor Who, David Tennant, reads out some of the tweets directed at Trump by outraged Scots. Warning – there is a lot of profanity, so be careful where you play it. As the Beeb used to warn audiences, it’s not really suitable for children and those of a sensitive disposition. On the other hand, some of the insults are highly inventive despite the obscenity. One of the show’s hosts, Samantha Bree, asks Tennant, as a former Dr. Who, if he could go back in time to stop people voting Brexit. Cue that clip from Dr. Who, of the Doctor explaining how he can’t go back in time to save people.

Here’s the clip:

Of course, it’s not just Trump’s stupid and ill-informed comments about Brexit that have angered people in Scotland and across the rest of the UK. He’s also managed to make himself massively unpopular by purchasing land and trying to get people evicted from their homes for his wretched golf course, in an area that already has far too many of them. Scots already had one good reason to despise Trump, quite apart the threat he poses to peace and any chance of international prosperity and justice throughout the world if he gets to be America’s next president. His remarks praising Brexit were just one insult too many, and so the floodgates opened to this wave of spleen and vitriol. Which he justly deserved.

Scriptonite: Farage Is A Millionaire Banker

Scriptonite has also joined the fray over UKIP’s attempt to censor the image used to show just how oppressive and exploitative their domestic policies are. Their article ‘UKIP Brings in Police and Lawyers to Censor Bloggers – It’s on Farage, It’s on’ discusses the way they sent two policemen to harass the Green party activist, Michael Abberton, and then similar attempts to intimidate the Angry Yorkshireman over at Another Angry Voice. He pulled the image, and thousands of conversations relating to it on Facebook, after receiving legalistic threats from a UKIP candidate. Mike has already blogged on the article, with a link to it, which I’ve reblogged. Scriptonite goes further and shows how this is part of a wider pattern of political policing following Tory legislation that has gradually eroded our constitutional freedoms. We have lost our rights as free citizens, and almost nobody noticed.

She also presents Farage’s background as an extremely wealthy financier. She writes

The party leader Farage is a millionaire banker, from millionaire banking lineage – his father Guy Oscar Justus Farage was a stockbroker.

Farage didn’t work his way up from the bottom. He was educated at £10,000 a term private school Dulwich College. On leaving college he used daddy’s contacts to become a commodities trader in the City. He is one of those suited, champagne quaffing, morally bankrupt traders that helped bring our economy to its knees. A vote for UKIP, is a vote to install another wealthy heir into Number 10.

This is important. The party poses as an outsider, challenging the established political parties of Labour, Lib Dems and Tories. They claim they are the only real alternative. In fact, Farage is exactly like Cameron, Osborne and the rest of the millionaires making up Cameron and Clegg’s cabinet. And the ideology UKIP espouses, is the same Neoliberalism now infecting the Tories and Lib Dems. There’s precious little difference between them. As Max Headroom used to say, ‘And now … more of the same’.

And in many ways, Farage’s connections to other rich financiers is an extremely grim joke. Tom Pride sometime last year posted up a photo showing Farage hobnobbing with Ron Paul, the godfather of the Tea Party, and one of George Soros’ banking partner. Soros and this particular bloke in 1992 bet against the pound in order to cause a run on it. The resulting crash was called ‘Black Wednesday’, and just about bankrupted this country. There were jokes about yuppies committing suicide – the opening cartoon titles for Have I Got News For You showed a City executive jumping out of the window and falling to his death. And some people took it extremely seriously. I can remember a friend telling me at the time that we shouldn’t worry, as there was still food in the stores for the next fortnight, so we had at least that long before the starvation and rioting started. As Tom Pride said, Farage’s connection to these people is a strange attitude for someone who claims to want to keep the pound.

One of Farage’s policies to is have the City completely deregulated. He claims the banking crisis has been caused by Labour’s regulation of the City. This is a lie. Under Blair and Brown, Labour retreated from regulating the City and financial sector, claiming that things would be better if it policed itself. This it spectacularly failed to do, with the result that the poor have been paying for the bankers’ excesses ever since.

If UKIP got in, they would privatise the NHS, the schools and remove workers’ right to maternity pay, paid annual leave, and set termination dates for dismissal. They are another party of the extremely rich exploiting the working class and working class. The cover of Ford and Goodwin’s book on UKIP, Revolt on the Right, shows him with a pint and a cigarette in his hand, laughing and smiling. Make no mistake: he’s laughing at us.

UKIP is a party of and for the rich sneering at the poor. No wonder Farage is laughing.

The Scriptonite article is at http://www.scriptonitedaily.com/2014/05/13/ukip-brings-in-police-and-lawyers-to-censor-bloggers-its-on-farage-its-on/. Go and read it.