As we exit the EU we will have more scope to decide what items should be matters for national security or resilience. Under EU rules we were allowed to favour UK suppliers of defence equipment, though even here the UK ended up buying support naval vessels from abroad and only confining the warship programme to UK yards. In future we should encourage competitive UK based companies or UK based subsidiaries of world companies to compete for crucial business.
We also need to make sure we have title or rights to use crucial intellectual property in complex systems and equipment. The Covid 19 crisis showed our vulnerability through relying for some medical equipment and protective clothing on world markets instead of having a domestic capability which it would be easy to scale up.
Arranged well this need not be dearer. It will mean more UK tax revenue and budget savings, as the work will be done by UK employees and profits will accrue in the UK. During our years in the EU we came to rely for more and more of our goods and supplies on imports.
We could grow more of our own timber, generate more of our own power and grow more of our own food. I will be exploring these opportunities in future blogs. They all will help bring down the twin deficits we face- the government budget deficit and the balance of trade deficit.
July 27, 2020
To help the balance of trade we need to be competitive in world markets which needs cheap energy, easy hire and fire, far less government, no green crap, lower simpler taxes and a bonfire of red tape. No sign of this at all. This government is still extending making tax digital, still pissing money down the drain on HS2, still increasing taxes, still pushing the renewable lunacy and making taxes ever more complex. Only four year to the next election mate get a move on.
July 27, 2020
On radio 4 the other day I heard:-
A Hazy Shade of Winter on A Point of View by
Rebecca Stott tells the remarkable story of 536 AD – the year the sun ‘disappeared’ and the devastating pandemic that followed.
About the large volcanic activity that changed the climate for over 100 years. I thought for moment she was going to point out the obvious fact that you cannot predict the climate well (even if you have very expensive and shiny computers). But no she being on the BBC (and professor of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia hot bed of climate alarmism) she turned it round to say the ice records would show 2020 as the year we took climate change seriously as CO2 emission have fallen due to the pandemic shut down. (Quite wrongly as that is clearly not the reason for the lock down)
My thought for the day is why on earth does any sensible person think you can predict the climate for 100 years without even knowing all the inputs and events that can affect it? And even if if you did you still could not.
July 27, 2020
When will the BBC have someone with a sensible point of view? One such as carbon dioxide (CO2) is not a significant driver of planetary temperature increases and many of the effects of increased CO2 levels are positive and not taken into account by climate scientists. Such as increased agricultural yields and thus more uptake of Carbon and production of O2, more tree growth and more biodiversity. The positive benefits of CO2 probably outweigh the negative effects. The computer simulation models used to predict climate change will/do not/cannot really work and political efforts to reduce causes of climate change distract from other more real global health and other problems that should clearly take far higher priority. There is no climate emergency.
Never I assume on the absurd BBC
July 27, 2020
Impartiality does not mean presenting truth and rubbish as if they were the same thing.
July 27, 2020
@MiC; Indeed, so why does the leftwing, the BBC & Ch4 only do the latter – actively preventing any inconvenient truths (or just diverging opinions) from being heard – flagging them as deignal or hate speech etc.
July 27, 2020
Are you seriously telling us the BBC has been impartial for the last 10, 20 years – even longer?
An incredible focus on minorities to the exclusion of the massive majority. Ignoring balanced news, which should be truth, even if unpalatable, is typical. Clear poitical, gender and race agendas are thrust on the public.
July 27, 2020
You’ve gone off at a tangent, Fred.
July 27, 2020
where was impartiality mentioned in LL’s piece? Tangent ? — good coming from you.
So tell us do you think the BBC is totally impartial?
July 27, 2020
corrrect – the story and truth should be told
July 27, 2020
Fred.
I don’t agree that you’ve gone off on a tangent. It was reported on the BBC website last night, that our coins and notes are to be âethnically diverseâ for the first time. The Bank had representation from a group from BLM.
July 28, 2020
Emissions may have fallen, but CO2 levels in the atmosphere continue to rise.
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
I hope the BBC wasn’t making any false claims. I know they have already been caught out on this.
July 27, 2020
Without more that just means the good old Race To The Bottom, and wretchedness for the people.
That was a main point of the European Union.
Yes, by all means strike trade deals with the rest of the world, but only on terms where those employed in supplying the goods or services were granted some standards of decency in their terms and conditions.
That offered some protection for people doing similar work at home.
When you’re as big as the European Union is, then you can do that, and change the world for the better.
July 27, 2020
Martin, We have better standards than the EU’s standards already. And the EU imports stuff from exactly the same places, under the same conditions, that we do. Level playing field, eh? Come back when the EU stops exploiting African states’ fisheries. I’ll be waiting.
July 27, 2020
“only on terms where those employed in supplying the goods or services were granted some standards of decency in their terms and conditions. ” – Martin in Cardiff
Or simply to block the transport of finished or partially finished goods from developing countries, which stifles development and trade with them and has been, as even the Guardian admits, (and I quote their headline): “The European Union is an ongoing disaster for Africa ”
There are new concerns that the replacement 2020 EPAs will be used to flood out developing industries in Africa, for example the effect of mass poultry imports on local producers.
July 27, 2020
Yes the point of the EU was the race to the bottom and wretchedness for the people.
Mission accomplished!
July 27, 2020
In what way is the World the better for the EU? The small fry joined in the hope of a piece of the improved rebuild economy, and a hope military force used by Germany was over. However, they didn’t take steps to limit Germany’s economic clout, aided by France, Germany and Italy.
So now they are downtrodden once again – economically.
But – in the wings was a gentle probing to assert the need for an EU military capability. Guess who would organise, make the decisions, choose who builds the weapons?
July 27, 2020
HS2 a 100year old technology in new clothes. As such it doesn’t fit in any imagined future with prosperity at its heart.
July 27, 2020
I@B; “HS2 a 100year old technology in new clothes”
The motor car is also just a development of a 2000 year old technoligy, the hose and chariot, in fact the idea for railways came from the ruts left by chariot/cart wheels, and the first rails resembled such ruts, wagon wheels being flangless.
By your (illogical) argument we should not build any more roads either. The railways have come a long was since Gresley, never mind Stephenson, just as roads have since Carl Benz patent of 1886…
July 27, 2020
Modern aviation, a hundred year old technology in new clothes…….. Beam me up, Scotty.
July 27, 2020
@LL
INDEED – Don’t they know that this is the dawning of the NWO age — where everything is destined to be different, except it seems for taxation, arbitrary legislation and a communist supporting establishment.
July 27, 2020
I.e. still following the EU ‘plan’.
July 27, 2020
Lifelogic:
I must say I agree with your points.
Boris campaigned as if he was a libertarian, but is now becoming a nanny state Theresa May clone.
We need lower and simpler taxes. We need cheap and reliable energy. We do not need HS2, mass immigration, compulsory electric cars and more nanny state nonsense. If Boris wishes to give up cheese and chocolate he is perfectly free to do so, he has no mandate to impose his own dietary requirements on the rest of us.
July 27, 2020
Exactly as is Sunak with his anti-business stance (entrepreneurâs relief, making tax digital, attack on pensions pots and the other endless attacks on small businesses) and absurd interventions for insulation grants.
July 27, 2020
If they want to win the next election or even three elections as Thatcher did they need policies what will work and to start them now. FOUR YEAR is not that long sensible policies take a little time to work.
July 27, 2020
John K, Exactly so. And especially since the obesity epidemic is caused by the government’s propaganda for 40+ years against animal fats, based on fake science.
July 27, 2020
The first epidemiological papers linking sugars (like High-Fructose Corn Syrup) to obesity appeared in the 2010s. And all the original studies were ‘condemned as “fake news”‘ by the food industry, particularly in the USA.
July 27, 2020
I saw my first government anti obesity ad this evening. C4 20-15hrs Monday. Like all government propaganda films, it ticked all the fashionable difference and diversity boxes and told we plebs to do as we’ve been told. Sadly for Kim Jung Bo Jo, straight after this ad was an advert for deliveroo and its fast food delivery service… Laugh? I almost choked on my king sized Mars bar.
July 27, 2020
News is that Business Rates are to be charged to the Landlord!
July 27, 2020
Good morning
Yes we could develop more of our own power, grow more of our own food but, with an ever increasing population it will never ever be enough. First you must tackle the demand side. For as long as government pursues a policy of MASS IMMIGRATION to inflate the GDP figures, artificially keep inflation down and interest rates low, we will not get any of the above or any real growth.
The advantage of producing more things at home is that we can better control the quality of the product. As someone here posted a while ago, some products made in China may be cheaper but, the quality is poorer compared to their UK counterparts. We saw this over the masks fiasco where he UK handed over vast sums of money for inferior products. “Made in the UK”, just like in Germany is a symbol of quality, quality people are prepared to pay for.
July 27, 2020
Should products be allowed to be made/designed with built in redundancy after a couple of years? I current have an electric tooth brush about 3 years old still works fine but the battery no longer lasts more than one brush (as the manufacturers would clearly have known). But they design it so that you cannot change the battery (or cannot do it easily or economically). Same with many phones, tablets etc.
I even had a gas boiler which was deliberately designed so that when the rechargeable battery failed you had to change the whole PCB board at vast expense (about ÂŁ260) rather than just replace the ÂŁ3 battery.
July 27, 2020
Lifelogic, I have pointed out to the likes of Andy that the batteries in his battery car don’t last either. That’s not a deliberate ploy on the part of the battery manufacturers, though. It’s because a battery is not magic – it’s just a box of chemicals, and the (charge/discharge) life is limited by the natural deterioration in the internal chemical process.
July 27, 2020
Which is another reason why the battery pack should be simply removable as a module.
July 27, 2020
Design it then.
See how you get on.
Milions await you.
July 27, 2020
The ploy by manufacturers is to design products in such a way that the battery cannot be cheaply and easily replaced.
July 28, 2020
Yes, and governments should not unwittingly facilitate that.
July 28, 2020
Try designing a battery cassette that is interchangeable.
It is an integral part of the entire machine.
Dozens of cables, connectors plugs all submerged into the chassis.
Some battery packs weigh 500 kg
Swopping that at Watford Gap services isn’t quite ae easy as it appears.
July 27, 2020
“Should products be allowed to be made”
“allowed”, really!
Make your mind up, do you want a laissez faire capitalism with no subsidies and where you can sack people on a whim, or do you want state control with suffocating regulation of everything.
If you don’t like a product then it is simple, don’t buy it and caveat emptor.
July 28, 2020
I think, for most people, that means “where you can be sacked on a whim”.
There.
July 27, 2020
@Mark B; The flaw in your agreement is the fall in indigenous birth rates, so even with “MASS IMMIGRATION” our food supply is stable, never mind the land currently not being farmed, due to CAP set aside rules.
Also GDP need a willing, active, workforce…
July 27, 2020
If mass immigration outweighs the falling indigenous birth rate, which it is now doing, then the food supply is not stable.
You would solve the increasing need for food due to population increase, if that happened, by farming all the available land in the country ?
July 27, 2020
@Otto; Outside of the EU we can increase our food production, off-seting any rise in population, just as it had to during the post war baby-boom, and the increase in population also allows the UK to increase GDP as there are -or should be- more working age people.
Why not farm all available farm land, what would you do with it, pay farmers not to farm it, like the EU does?!
July 28, 2020
OK ,you like a nightmare society, I don’t.
July 28, 2020
@Otto; “OK ,you like a
nightmaresociety, I donât.”There, I’ve corrected that for you…
July 27, 2020
@Jerry you are in fine contrarian form today with your first few posts
July 27, 2020
Population still rising, Jerry.
July 27, 2020
@John Hatfield; The birth rate is not keeping up with the numbers of the war generation who are now dying and this problem will only increase over the next 25-30 years as the baby-boomer generation follow – if this country doesn’t want migrants then we really need to have a deep conversion as to the future, either a smaller GDP or more babies to be born for the next 25-30 years.
July 27, 2020
Why not a smaller GDP and bigger GDP pe⏠capita?
July 27, 2020
Mark B, That’s correct – it all comes down to supply and demand. Increasing the population of a small already overcrowded island, via mass immigration, inevitably means higher land prices, housing shortages, and/or reduction of food production (all else remaining equal).
July 27, 2020
The problem with open door mass migration supported by our corporate/global elites via the membership of an ever expanding EU and by the signing by Mrs. May of the UN migration pact is that it becomes impossible to know how many people will come to the country and consequently makes it impossible be able to plan for sufficient houses, schools, hospitals and general infrastructure etc..
The result is an overcrowded country living with permanently insufficient resources and causing eventual social unrest.
July 27, 2020
I see Rishy is proposing to tax on online businesses.
Not sure how that will work if online shops can move the credit card payment offshore. You canât create an online tax that is any greater than an FX margin or companies will simply move their payment systems off-shore.
The FX markets will simply love an online tax. FX âmicro paymentâ systems in UK banks are more than capable of handling billions of FX transactions a day. Ironically many on them run on âAWS cloudâ computers also supplied as a service by Amazon. Even more ironically Amazon makes more money from its AWS cloud than it does from its online shopping. Iâm sure Amazon is now big enough to set up its own FX trading operation so FX margins will be âas thin as pipsâ (ie 0.0001%).
The other solution will be to tax deliveries but that involves another VAT like tax that works the opposite to take away food: If you get it delivered you pay more than buying it in a shop. Amazon will simply charge an online fee and make the taxable cost of goods minuscule or set up âshopsâ that do drive thru click and collect in industrial estates.
But lots of people making the point in the comments section that fundamentally the retail market has âevolvedâ and high streets can no longer be cash cows when you can get cheaper milk online. The problem is that Government, local councils, landlords and parking companies are reluctant to stop their predatory behaviour of milking the high streets. It appears just like losing vast amounts of income tax from offshoring white collar jobs, due the cost of predatory rents and taxes on office spaces, that retail activity and taxes will now be off-shored through the internet as well.
Rishi obviously doesnât understand how capitalism works. No wonder they call him the âman who bankrupted Britainâ. The fundamental problem here is that people, goods and services can be off-shored and the UK needs to build a stronger internet âtaxâ border around the UK, not just for online retail but also offshoring jobs and services as well.
Governments are in danger of waking up to the reality that the very nature of tax has been off-shored.
July 27, 2020
Sunak needs to ask himself why on earth he removed VAT on e-books. This was an absolute gift to those suppliers able to ship profits abroad.
July 27, 2020
Javelin, That is a beautifully reasoned comment – thank you. I recommend that everyone should read it.
July 27, 2020
I understand that Landlords are to be charged the Business Rates even when their properties are tenanted (we pay when they are empty of course). My rents are lower than the business rates charged to my tenants and of course I work my socks off maintaining High Street properties regularly vandalised because there is no policing to speak of. Landlords far from milking the High Street, have been supporting it for decades, in spite of being victimised by the Landlord and Tenant Act – (we canât recover our properties even when the rent is not paid)!
If this new Communist atrocity is pushed through, I will stop supporting my tenants and I know they will therefore not last very long in business. I will then demolish the properties. Rishi can deal with the new benefit claimants. See if he can off-shore that little problem.
July 27, 2020
You’ll demolish them?
Without Planning Permission?
July 27, 2020
You donât need PP to demolish.
July 28, 2020
No, not always.
July 27, 2020
Lyn Atkinson
If this new Communist atrocity is pushed through, I will stop supporting my tenants and I know they will therefore not last very long in business. I will then demolish the properties.
Well said Lyn. Do not think you are alonee on that one.
July 28, 2020
So what will replace your rent for income then?
July 29, 2020
Capital turned into cash.
July 27, 2020
An online sales tax is a stupid way to save shops.Look for savings from government spending starting with HS2.
July 27, 2020
I am annoyed by this suggestion. I already pay VAT on online purchases, on top of a lot of Income Tax.
There has to be ways to cut unnecessary Government expenditure. I suggest they try some of those first.
July 27, 2020
Yes, this is how we should be thinking. Make sure that those who run our supermarkets get the message. Additionally we are part of a Commonwealth so when we look for food items that we cannot grow they should be our first stop. Trade is better than aid, so when Commonwealth countries are happy to reciprocate duties should not exist. In the rush do do trade deals with the USA, Japan et al do not forget our Commonwealth friends as we did when joining the EU.
July 27, 2020
agricola
As you so rightly point out, we deserted our Commonwealth friends in our rush to join the EU when exporters of Australian lamb and New Zealand dairy products were dropped overnight and had to look to Eastern markets to survive.
Do you really think they have forgotten and are now ready to trade with us again? Why should they not think we will do it again if a better opportunity arises?
July 27, 2020
It appears they both are keen to agree a trade agreement with the UK.
There have been many positive comments made by their politicians.
July 27, 2020
Because, Margaret, they are better friends than ever the EU would be. And despite your, and other Remains’, wailing, I do not think we will make the same mistake again by re-joining the EU. As an aside, the UK did prevail upon the EU to set up ZTQs for some Australian and New Zealand exports, including lamb.
July 27, 2020
and many countries are watching, some from a distance, just how China reacts when dissent is shown toward them.
Take note, begin reduction in trade, look for new partners that won’t beat up on you as soon as you say you don’t agree.
July 27, 2020
…or like last time when we joined the EU – âworse opportunitiesâ?
July 27, 2020
Seconded.
July 27, 2020
I’d research all the many countries of the Commonwealth – of which Aus NZ and Canada are but three – and what food safety issues have been discovered in relation to some of their exports to the UK.
When you have done that, I surmise that you will decide that it would be better on the whole to stick with European Union suppliers.
I trust that I have not been too specific this time for John.
July 27, 2020
The major food safety issues have been from EU suppliers.
Horsemeat frauds for example.
July 28, 2020
Edward 2
yes because they provide most of the food form foreign or domestic UK sources
July 28, 2020
Oh
So because the EU provides a lot of food it is acceptable that frauds take place which threaten the health and safety of UK citizens.
July 27, 2020
Martin, On the contrary I have decided to eschew EU suppliers. I get British or New Zealand meat. Other food from from Senegal, Kenya, India, Chile, USA, Morocco, and of course primarily the UK. I don’t buy from the EU unless it is completely unavoidable.
July 28, 2020
NickC
Most of the pig meat you eat in the UK are supplies by EU owned slaughte houses
July 31, 2020
Very interesting Bill, are these the same meat processing plants that are having lots of problems with covid 19 infections?
July 27, 2020
you surmise wrongly.
July 27, 2020
Australia and New Zealand are Dominions! Their citizens are subjects of HM like us. They are not just another commonwealth country!
July 27, 2020
Are they the European suppliers that sold us horse as beef?
July 27, 2020
And anti-freeze as wine?
July 27, 2020
Boris is planning to reduce obesity!
Cut out junk food by banning advertising.There is no such thing as Junk Food. We eat too much food. When we visit our Doctor we must weigh ourselves on the surgery scales.
The Doctor can then tell us that part of our health problem is that we are overweight!
Boris should tell us his weight once a week to encourage the electorate to follow suit.
July 27, 2020
Yes virtue signalling rubbish. We gave heard for ever about food labelling, all,the calories are there but who reads it. Look at peopleâs trolleys, does the government really think it is all because of advertising?
Actually it is about personal lifestyle choice and responsibility but this woke government will do anything but admit that. Could risk votes so letâs blame others. They are now looking to spoil my dinners etc by putting calories all over the menus The hospitality industry is doing too well. Tell you what letâs knock it back.
Hereâs an idea letâs give people vouchers to encourage eating out, much will be spent onâ junkâ and then condemn that spending. You couldnât make it up.
Sir JR if you were honest as a âfree marketeerâ you would be despairing where your government is going.
They have now made it âillegalâ to be overweight. What next? Publicly employed sneerers to shame people?
July 27, 2020
It isnât illegal to be overweight but it definitely reduces your chances of survival if you find yourself on a ventilator in intensive care, and perhaps you wonât even make it onto a ventilator if there is a shortage of ventilators/personnel and your chances of survival are considered less than someone elseâs.
Better than âpublicly employed sneerersâ would be for being overweight to become as socially unacceptable as smoking or not wearing a seatbelt.
July 27, 2020
So true. For those with a problem it isn’t what they eat but the amount. Exercise, the much promoted cycling doesn’t make a difference unless there is also a reduction in food consumption.
Boris is know for being a cyclist, so how come he is still over-weight?
July 27, 2020
If you increase your basic metabolic rate by exercise you burn more calories even when not exercising. Our council leisure centres have finally re-opened, but with restrictions from the Covid jobsworths that deny access to some of the exercise classes. The studio which once held 30+ was marked out with 15 berths nine feet apart and then the ‘experts’ restricted it to nine because of air volume. So the would-be user finds every activity ‘Full’ eight days in advance.
July 27, 2020
Sound simple, run up and down the stairs at home for half an hour and you are fit and trim – then have another pizza.
And Boris stay’s overweigh.
July 27, 2020
The problems with obesity lay not only with how much we eat but also what we eat and our lifestyles. You do not have to eat a lot of chocolate, crisps, pizzas, chips, cakes and biscuits while sitting on your backside most of the day and evening to put on weight and become obese with the danger of developing diabetes. Some people’s diets consists of mainly this type of food. Young children are being taken into hospital because their digestive tracts and bowels are simply not working properly due to lack of fibre in their diets. When you look at the price of take away food, even something cheap to make like a pizza but expensive to buy it’s not difficult to see that to eat good basic foods would be cheaper and better for us. There has been and is enough information out there for a change of diet and lifestyle but people choose not to follow it. Perhaps until they change their ways and become more responsible for their own health their GP should send them away. Its a waste of time, money and rescources treating some people.
July 27, 2020
@fedupsoutherner As you say ‘you do not have to.’
Corvid, if the science was correct in the first place can’t live outside a human host for more than a day or so. It can’ be spread by those that have isolated for 14 days and so on. Yet it persists because on that basis a chunk of the population chose not to listen to advise.
July 27, 2020
That’s because we no longer teach our children, particularly girls, about good housekeeping and food preparation. It’s seen as “liberated” to be ignorant.
July 27, 2020
where does fruit, veg and meat come from?
The average kid in primary school will tell you ‘Tesco’s’ or another supermarket name.
July 27, 2020
FUS
Well said you have raised some really relevant points.
Regarding NickC comment: It is not only the girls that need teaching, but too many young men are also the victims of their own ignorance when it comes to diet and food preparation let alone cooking skills.
July 27, 2020
Fatties are encouraged to be body positive in our egalitarian culture where everyone’s identity is paramount and no one is a burden on society.
When I was at school fatties were mocked and consequently there were fewer of them. If your parents were fat you were mocked, if you were fat you were mocked. The current tattooed covered, onesie wearing, fat mothers would have been a source of vilification (the mothers would no doubt aggressively have something to say for themselves but they would need to catch us first).
Now everyone is a winner and has something to contribute.
Fatties don’t need access to free bikes, they need to be made aware that they are fat and want to do something about it.
I speak as someone who has been obese and grown obese again and addressed it once more. No thanks to those around me who would not tell me I was fat for fear of offending me.
Each time, my intake of calories changed hugely and the volume and intensity of exercise increased. When I was fat, I would exercise and assume that meant I could eat more so giving fatties prescribed bikes will just improve MacDonalds’ profits.
July 27, 2020
The only exclusion clause to NHS treatment was non contribution.
Presumably the supermarkets have wanted us to keep buying processed food? The takeaway business has not shunned our money either!
Presumably govts KNEW the dangers of women going out to work and the breakdown of trad family? No proper shopping or meal times.
And now we are fat! And ill and imprisoned. Well fancy that!
Be careful what you wish for. Do you imagine for ONE MINUTE that the exclusions will stop with obesity?
If the NHS can not cope it is because too many people are using it.
And still the boats come!
July 27, 2020
Presumably govts KNEW the dangers of women going out to work and the breakdown of trad family?
Unintended consequences. One parent (male or female) should be at home to make the family work.
July 27, 2020
My belief is that surgery scales are deliberately weighted up to make people read heavier than they are. I have scales at home, brand new, that weigh me at seven pounds LESS than the ones at surgery. It annoys me intensely, especially as I have, during this past year, reduced my weight by some seventeen to twenty pounds. The doctor’s room scales make me look like a liar.
July 27, 2020
Have you considered the weight of your clothes when in the doctor’s surgery as opposed to your condition in the privacy of your bathroom or bedroom?
July 27, 2020
And do you have a cup of tea before going to the Dr? And maybe breakfast? It all weighs..
July 27, 2020
Good job the ex MP Cyril Smith isn’t here to listen to BJ’s obesity speech.
July 27, 2020
Isnât that âfat shamingâ and illegal under our new dispensation?
July 27, 2020
breathing used to be totally legal – but now only under certain circumstances — starting with a contraption elasticated across your nose and mouth.
July 27, 2020
Johnson is just stealing someone’s clothes, in the hope that their usual owner will be blamed for his catastrophic mishandling of the covid 19 epidemic in this country.
It’s yet another Cummings’ stunt, I think.
July 28, 2020
As Sir Humphrey told us about smokers, it turns out that the lifetime health costs of the obese are less than normal, because they have foreshortened lives and don’t live to require multiple procedures and expensive care that apply to the elderly. I hope Boris has done his sums, but I fear he has not.
July 27, 2020
I look forward to your future blog explaining where all the entrepreneurs are desperate to bring back large volume low cost manufacturing to the U.K. and how it will be competitive given your anti business approach in terms of regulation and minimum wage.
We see from Leicester what that means in reality. Given this governments track record I wouldnât be surprised to read it had bought a site and was going to PPE, obviously if Covid subsides demand will do so also so output for âstrategicâ stockpiling at vast cost but who cares, its only money.
As for IP, politically fine words but the reality is it takes umpteen years to achieve and can easily be stolen with little or no recourse or circumvented.
If you were serious you would be going down the Lifelogic route, maybe not quite so far, re free markets but sentencing people to 14 day house arrest for no reason, anti car, absurd interventions to come on obesity etc shows you support a condescending Blairite nanny state.
Your manifesto said you would listen to the people. Failed in the first year.
July 27, 2020
Maybe they listened to the fifty million, as well as to the seventeen million.
They’re people too.
But I see little evidence of that.
July 27, 2020
Martin, That’s because they listened to the 51 million as well as the 16 million.
July 27, 2020
“Maybe they listened to the fifty million”
UK population 2020 – circa 67,8 Million
0-17 year category circa 21.3% (14.45 Million) taking Scotland into account – source Satista. Who are these extra millions you speak of?
Perhaps 16 and 17 year olds, but I don’t believe babies, toddlers or preadolescence can give you an opinion on current political affairs, but no doubt Remainers are seeking their opinions?
July 27, 2020
They’ll give you opinions on everything and anything as soon as they can speak, Den.
Did you never have children?
They are no more likely to be ill-informed or naĂŻvely ignorant than many of voting age either, especially at the other end.
July 28, 2020
Martin
So true on the kids side, I remember it well.
However, I would trust long experience over individuals fresh out of college and wet behind the ears!
Btw, both my kids are grown up with University degrees and respectable occupations….and both voted for Brexit. Who’d have thunk it?
July 28, 2020
Yet Shemima Begum is about to be offered the chance to defend herself on the grounds that she was young and so easily influenced.
July 27, 2020
offer free Uni courses and suddenly you have several million 14 to 20 extra votes you probably wouldn’t have got outside of Scotland.
July 27, 2020
He’s always pushing this tosh. He has been told umpteen times, including by myself at least twice, but like a true Remoaner prefers to continue to tell lies than use facts. You may as well not take any notice because I guarantee within a couple of weeks he’ll say it all again.
July 27, 2020
We Westerners are a senile society. We have somehow lost our drive. We are not what we were. A global economy was very promising just before Covid struck. Now that is fast disappearing.
Just half a century ago we were the world leaders in atomic power, medical research and computers. No more.
Ibn Khaldun says that when countries get senile, the tax burden increases but the yield goes down. People get soft and demand luxuries where before they made do. Eventually the have nots come along and start a new civilization. I think we are at that point now.
July 27, 2020
“People get soft and demand luxuries where before they made do”
I believe you are really speaking about the youth of today?
Btw: Just half a century ago we had world leaders, sadly not today!
July 27, 2020
EU rules have never prevented us from procuring here. All that EU rules have required is an open tendering process. There is no obligation on the government to choose the cheapest bid. Spain, for example, builds it own warships. France doesnât allow its passports to be produced elsewhere. The UK used to make its own burgundy passports too. But the Tory Brexiteers awarded the contact for our new black passports to a Polish factory. With the loss of 250 jobs in England as a result.
As for cheaper prices … Brexit might reduce some prices. But the vast majority of goods will be more expensive. It is all the extra Tory Brexit bureaucracy which will cause the increases. Most consumers are price sensitive – particularly less well educated people and lower earners. Who, ironically, are more likely to have voted for Brexit. They will be shocked when their food costs more. They will be cross when the parcel they ordered from Amazon in Poland attracts customs duties. They will be appalled when they are charged an entry fee to visit Spain, when their drivers licence doesnât work in Magaluf and when they lose free roaming and access to UK content on their mobiles while on holiday.
Brexiters have done themselves no favours by refusing to prepare your supporters for these changes – some of which a lot of Brexit voters will not expect and will find very negative. It will be fun watching what happens.
July 27, 2020
So you have now added the ill educated and low earners to the elderly who you despise. A little man with a persuasive loud voice in 1933 could have found you employment.
July 27, 2020
A keenness for European integration have been seen from both the little man and Andy so they might have got on well.
July 27, 2020
formula57
Much was said in those days and not just for European integration. As for example Churchill hoped that the
Empire should last a thousand years:
“If the Empire lasts a thousand years men will say, this was their finest hour'”. 28 June 1940.
Rather more ambitious than the little man with a loud voice.
July 29, 2020
Churchill spoke about Europe.
The EU is different.
July 27, 2020
There is plenty of research about who voted for Brexit – and who did not. The biggest determining factors are age and education levels.
Old people who left school with no qualifications are significantly more likely to have voted for Brexit than young people who went to university.
This is why there has never been any doubt that your project for the old and ignorant would eventually be undone.
But thank you for making such a mess of it that it will be undone even sooner than I had expected.
July 27, 2020
…which, Andy, would tend to suggest that older people have independent minds and younger ones are indoctrinated.
July 27, 2020
they always have been. However most people grow up – and with life experience think for themselves. Exceptions to every rule.
July 27, 2020
“Old people who left school with no qualifications are significantly more likely to have voted for Brexit than young people who went to university.”
The older generation have experience, common sense, worked hard all their lives and can see through self-serving Political intrigue, whilst a significant number of young people are coming out of University with useless degrees and limited common sense…like you Andy!
July 28, 2020
Dennis Zoff
Brexiteers were more likely older people who have had the deep dyed prejudices of their younger years hardened.
As for your snide remark about young people with ‘useless university degrees’ – in my experience our young educated people here and in Europe are among the most delightful generation yet. I much prefer them to the often boring oldies of my own age.
As the saying has it: There’s no fool like an old fool.
July 28, 2020
margaret
You missed my point: âuseless university degreesâ are a travesty to our youth. I blame the Government not the students?
Snide remark: Andy is quite happy to make rude “snide” remarks about Brexiteers and the older generation, however, what is more interesting to me is that you appear to support and agree with Andy?
I therefore must agree with you. “Thereâs no fool like an old fool”
July 27, 2020
+1
July 27, 2020
Andy, Older people never had the same chance to go to university. That’s the only educational reason that more young people with degrees voted to Remain subjects of your EU empire. Of course the other main reason is that age gives wisdom.
July 27, 2020
Old people left school at 14 with more learning than younger generation have after leaving university. They could do fractions for example, in their heads!
July 28, 2020
Lynn Atkinson
“Old people left school at 14 with more learning than younger generation…”
Are they the ones who got us into space?
Invented sat navs?
Did heart transplants and all the other brilliant achievements of modern medicine and technology?
I don’t believe being able to do fractions in their heads had much to with that.
July 27, 2020
agricola
Do not know , what Andy has done in the past , but you interpretation of his latest contribution is worng as this is not what he is saying. And you use of such fake news does not serve you particularly well
July 27, 2020
Bill
Andy is inferring those elderly persons that left school at 15/16 are less educated than those that are leaving University today, which is complete piffel.
Up until some years ago those that left school early went on to Colleges of Further Education (Vocational/Trades/Apprenticeships+), Technical Colleges (Technicians+), Polytechnics (Applied Engineering+) , while Universities were mainly held for the more academically able with higher academic aspirations.
Incidentally, these Johnny come lately Universities formed from the old CoFE/T/P Colleges, do not have, imo, the same degree of educational rigour. There are without doubt many excellent established Universities in the UK, but the recent crop of wannabe Universities, with their many dumb downed degrees, are not worth the student’s money. The debts incurred by students today and the mystical employment opportunities marketed by these Universities does students a great disservice.
July 27, 2020
Bill B, It seems that rationality is not your strong point. Agricola was pointing out how the young and naive, more than older wiser people, are too often beguiled by an ideology. For example I voted to remain in the EU (EEC) in 1975, but have since learnt better as I grew wiser.
July 27, 2020
Who orders stuff from Amazon in Poland? I’m cross when items I order from America attract duty and ‘handling charges’ in excess of their value due to EU laws that George Osborne was ordered to impose. I would imagine that women are cross when their sanitary products are taxed by order of the EU.
July 27, 2020
You still don’t get it Andy.
Most people have no problem whatsoever with the EU and certainly none with the Europeans.
What caused Brexit was our own *British* (did you get that ? BRITISH) ruling class (who happen to all be Remainers) who outsourced our work and imported competitors for the jobs left.
Yes. I do wonder if Boris is really for Brexit. But up until the PPE fiasco Remainers were fully in charge since Mrs Thatcher and she was pro EU until she changed her mind and was immediately kicked out because of it.
I wonder what she would think about how things have turned out post industrialisation.
July 27, 2020
Thanks anon.
Yes, you confirm what J. C. Juncker said about the referendum. The voters answered a different question.
July 27, 2020
Martin, There was only one question. We answered it. Maybe you and Juncker didn’t like the answer, but that’s your problem. The idea that everyone does (or should) have precisely the same motivations – as though we were all identical plastic robots – when answering a question, is merely the dream of authoritarians everywhere. Like you.
July 27, 2020
As ever, you translate my words into baloney of your own strange imagination.
July 27, 2020
Well said Nick
EU fans will always denigrate those who chose independence and freedom.
July 27, 2020
UK leadership could not be trusted within the EU. From border control to criminal trials much was an affront to the common person.
A few small concessions and alterations by our own Remainers would have brought an entirely different result – instead they called us names and accused us of being racists.
July 27, 2020
Deporting all the people whom you personally do not like might be a “small concession” to you, but would actually be quite difficult under international law.
People would also realise that nearly all of them did not have their roots in the European Union.
July 27, 2020
It would not have changed the result. We want to be able to sack our law-makers. Itâs called Democracy.
God knows we all want to sack our lawmakers this very day! That power is non negotiable.
July 28, 2020
It went worse than that, Martin.
Remainers called us names and called us racists.
A silly thing, maybe but it’s why you lost the referendum.
July 28, 2020
Lynn, you cannot sack those making the laws – which you evidently dislike – for another four years.
Also the common law is made by the Court, and you can’t sack the judges either.
And this country has just exercised its indefeasible right to withdraw from the very limited jurisdiction of the European Union, by the simple sending of a mere letter of notification – as it always could do.
July 27, 2020
correct – you’re spot on with you summary of why british working classess voted for Brexit
July 27, 2020
I wonder how much the passports are to buy from Poland plus the transport element compared to the UK price plus transport?
July 27, 2020
None of these things will happen unless the EU decides to start a trade war. We can’t do anything about that if that’s what they want to do. We will just have to make the best of it and have sensible free trading arrangements with the rest of the world. Which will lead to lower prices overall, albeit not on EU goods.
July 27, 2020
Precisely all of those things will happen – whether or not there is a trade deal.
To travel to the EU you will soon need an ETIAS visa waiver. The EU is introducing the system and have confirmed it will apply to Britons. Your regular driving licence will not work in European. This has been confirmed in the latest EU Brexit preparation guidelines. You will need to buy an international driving permit instead.
Two mobile operators have already confirmed they will reintroduce roaming charges on some of their cheaper tariffs. And access to UK produced content while in Europe falls under audio and visual services – which the UK has removed itself from.
Amazon has already confirmed that its UK marketplace sellers will have to make their own customs arrangements when selling to the EU, and vice versa.
And the UK government has admitted that there will be significant border disruption – this is why it has started building lorry parks which will hold nearly 10,000 lorries in Kent.
July 27, 2020
Andy – I totally agree, and the sooner we return to the EU Customs Union the better and I am very confident that we will as the old die out
July 27, 2020
The old never die out, they are replaced by the ageing young (who grow wiser each day). Therefore with a low birth rate itâs the young who are on the decrease and therefore the demographics are against the Rejoiners.
July 27, 2020
They Government never said there will be signififcant border disruption.
But thay have decided to plan for the EU to behave badly.
Hence the lorry park.
July 28, 2020
Edward 2
anger of what I have a lot of known and necessary patience with distinguished people like you
July 28, 2020
What does this post mean?
July 27, 2020
All of those things are a matter of choice for the EU, that’s the point. they could easily dis-apply any of them and the UK would gladly reciprocate. Just as the UK eg has had a special arrangement with Ireland for 100 years. but the EU chooses not to. we can’t do anything about that so we shouldn’t worry about it. What we should of course not do is give in to all the ridiculous demands to hand over fishing grounds and agree legal subjection in order to avoid minor irritations like getting an international driving license.
We’ve had years of practice with stacked lorries in Kent due to French strikes. Normal flows – absent French strikes – will work fine, especially with the new lorry parks, which will be a great relief to local residents who have had to put up with diverted and backlogged traffic in the past.
July 27, 2020
subjugation
July 27, 2020
Andy, Have you yet found any reasons why the UK cannot be independent of the EU like New Zealand and India are? No?
As for your pathetic list of bureaucracy imposed by the EU, it is only slightly different to what the EU imposes already. Most will be handled by the travel agent or shipper, as happens now.
July 27, 2020
I don’t want to travel to Europe any more. So no problem for me. For decades I did, and elsewhere. Never picked up animosity anywhere being British – usually respected for doing things our way, not being told. In recent years I have picked up constant animosity from EU – so guess where my vote went?
July 27, 2020
Richard 1
this is a big maybe your wroking hypothsis
July 27, 2020
?
July 27, 2020
Bill B, If you’re going to make derogatory remarks about my country, then at least make them in fairly comprehensible English.
July 27, 2020
Sadly bill cannot type.
His anger gets in the way.
July 28, 2020
Nick C
yuou mean our country or are you now discrimainating against Europeans with two passports as well?
July 28, 2020
Perhaps Bills’ normal keyboard is in a foreign language so when he types English it does the auto-correct to try to make the English words comprehensible.
July 27, 2020
Andy,
Brexit supporters did not vote for Brexit for cheaper prices or easier access to the EU, although it was expected that leaving the EU would reduce our ÂŁ100bn/YEAR trading deficit with the EU and the return of our fishing grounds.
No, they thought the enormous benefit to us now and for our children in the future is the ability to be able to influence our laws and policies (trade, fiscal, taxation, energy, environmental, foreign, military, immigration etc.) through retaining the right to elect and remove those who make these decisions.
Remaining in the EU, where decisions are made by those we did not elect and cannot remove and hence cannot influence, would truly be a journey into the unknown.
July 28, 2020
Thanks for yet another patient, factual explanation Andy.
July 27, 2020
What about Hinkley Point, it now transpires that the French have up to 150 Chinese engineers working on the site and are relying on their technical skills and equipment to complete the job.
Do we really want to be relying on China for spares and backup for the next 60 years.
July 27, 2020
Off topic but current. Positive news on Sunday about changes to the Treasury bringing them into the 21st century. Not before time if they can be achieved.
Very worrying that we will be giving away 40% in our negotiations with the EU. If true not surprised but I didnât vote Leave on that basis.
July 27, 2020
I think it fair to ask 40% of what. The Treasury may shuffle seats on their Titanic but we need a root and branch simplification of our horrendous tax system. It does not merit description as a system.
July 27, 2020
Nigl
Time for us to tell the EU very politely, thank you, but no thank you, and walk away if we cannot 100% control our own affairs in our own Country.
July 27, 2020
Exactly, you can’t be 60% pregnant. Tories will be dead to me if they mess up Brexit.
July 27, 2020
If? Have you not watched the news for the last four years?
July 27, 2020
Andy, that’s because the Tories – along with Labour and SNP – were doing what you wanted and trying to reverse Leave. Fortunately you failed.
July 27, 2020
Agree totally. If I leave somewhere, 40% of me doesnât remain. I continue to be âsuspiciousâ of Borisâs bluster.
July 27, 2020
Trust your instincts with regards to our Dear Leader….
Zorro
July 27, 2020
Nig1, I too remain suspicious of Boris. And the latest concessions to the EU are entirely unnecessary and foolish.
We were offered Remain or Leave. We were endlessly promised that Leave meant leaving the EU entirely. And that our decision would be implemented. So far it hasn’t been.
Government promises (and promises!), but doesn’t deliver. Is the Tory party aware how little it is trusted (and with good reason) by the people who elected it?
July 27, 2020
100%?
Then the UK also needs to walk away from NATO, from extradition treaties, from and every other, of the many treaties to which it is a party, and into abject global pariah status.
July 27, 2020
NATO doesn’t interfere in our laws in our laws or our tax policies.
July 27, 2020
The European Union doesn’t bomb anyone – a then UK non-enemy – from our soil without Parliament’s involvement.
July 27, 2020
Were you against NATO in Bosnia.
Come on Martin make a decision.
July 28, 2020
I was against the bombing of Belgrade.
July 28, 2020
Bully for you.
July 27, 2020
Leave the UN first. Talking shop while watching mass slaughter.
July 27, 2020
@MiC; You finally get it! Yes, as an independent sovereign nation we co9udl walk away from NATO (even the UN), and I bet some of your hard left friends in Militant and the SLP would!
Not what I want but if achieved via the Ballot box…
July 28, 2020
Nor me, but these silly people who bang on about sovereignty, like old maids discussing virginity, fail to grasp that it is always pooled with allies in some way or other.
That which we pooled with the European Union was not in anything like such life-or-death matters as that we share in NATO.
July 29, 2020
Martin, you fail to understand the difference between mutually advantageous relationships with other independent nations and the law making powers the EU has over the UK.
July 29, 2020
@MiC; No, sovereignty is never pooled, that is why NATO works but the EU doesn’t and never will, should sovereignty be pooled by the EU27 they will have become the USE – you might need to think about that. đ
NATO is a defence pact, the EU is political, for example, the people and govt of the Netherlands do not need to accept the politics of the POTUS but they do have to accept the politics of the POTEU, on the other hand post Brexit the UK need not accept either…
July 27, 2020
Why, Martin? In NATO, the UK is sovereign, since NATO does not make new law. By contrast in the EU, the EU is sovereign, since the EU makes new law all the time.
July 27, 2020
No Treaty apart from the Treaty of Rome compromised our Constitution. That is why it was illegal do you understand that word? The Treaty of Rome was signed using the Royal Prerogative to destroy the Royal Prerogative and nobody has that power. So the Treaty of Rome is void! But because our Parliament did not understand that and subjected our Courts to subservience to the ECJ (ie EU law) we could not win a case.
July 27, 2020
What utter baloney.
July 27, 2020
Andy you say âthe EU doesnât bomb anybodyâ đ± every heard of Serbia?
July 28, 2020
Where is the European Union’s air force? Or its ministry of defence, Lynn?
July 28, 2020
Coming soon.
It is only a short time ago that you EU fans told us an EU armed force was a ridiculous fantasy.
How times change.
July 28, 2020
A military dimension is overtly and expressly in the Lisbon Treaty as an aim.
No one said what you foolishly claim yet again.
Merely that the UK could always veto such a proposal.
But it can’t now.
Hooray.
July 28, 2020
Lynn Atkinson
And we follow the US and bomb countries like Iraq and Libya and kill hundreds of thousands of their people and destabilise the whole region.
July 29, 2020
Wrong again Martin.
Nick Clegg (and others) rubbished claims that the EU would have its own armed forces during the referendum campaign.
Remianers having denied it now tell us they knew all along saying it was implied in the Lisbon treaty.
PS
Don’t forget the rapidly changing veto list and the qualified majority voting rules the EU is bringing in more of.
July 27, 2020
Sir John, Would you kindly take a look at the exit clause provisions in the final treaty with the EU? I don’t want to see us locked-in to a bad deal.
July 27, 2020
@Nigl; 40% of what?
You sound like the BBC, it’s the hottest/wettest year on-record, yet for all we know the record being cited made its first recording only last year!
40% of zero is still zero, 40% of ÂŁ100t is a hell of a lot….
July 27, 2020
Yeh the BBC just love saying its the hottest, wettest, driest on record……since
July 27, 2020
Nigl, you were never asked why you voted Leave.
Why must so many of you behave as if you were?
July 27, 2020
Indeed people like you keep telling us why we did.
And always guessing wrongly
July 28, 2020
Edward 2
If you are ot even able to read what is written I cannot discuss issues with you , nobody except you discussed total soverignty
July 28, 2020
Try again bill so I can understand your point.
July 28, 2020
There were many reasons and degrees of conviction.
It is you, who claim endlessly, that seventeen million people were all of exactly the same, fixated, puritanical mind.
July 28, 2020
Neither were Remain all of the same mind.
July 28, 2020
the 17m voted in the same way.
You can try and imagine they didn’t but will fail.
Every day you wake up and the result is the same.
July 27, 2020
It has been obvious for ever that importing cr*p from China and wherever else has been a totally bad idea.
How can there be any argument in favour of a country not being self sufficient?
However, isnât all this COVID thing about de-industrialising/de-developing?
About NOT making stuff.
About sitting in our houses ruled by an insane Marxist govt.
The latest from the vile forces of the Left….mandatory face masks for school kids…or no school in September. How to bully Boris. Easy!
You can not allow this to happen!
July 27, 2020
âThe latest from the vile forces of the LeftâŠ.mandatory face masks for school kidsâŠor no school in September. â
Everhopeful
Oh no! I do hope youâre wrong!!!! Iâve not looked at the papers yet…
What IS wrong with this government??
July 27, 2020
It is vile and dehumanising like the whole of this charade. I hope and pray that people rebel against this dehumanising behaviour from the powers that be. We MUST resist them.
Zorro
July 27, 2020
GPs not seeing patients and teachers not teaching kids but you can get your nails done.
Insane!
July 27, 2020
But you voted for these “powers that be”, and crowed about their indefeasible eighty-seat majority.
There was one question on the ballot paper in 2016.
It was not “should the Government from now on do everything that you want it to do?”
Get over that simple fact, and stop behaving like a spoiled four-year-old.
July 28, 2020
What are you talking about? This government is acting in complete contradiction to what it said. It is slowly moving into a state socialist nightmare. It is ruling by decree, where is Parliament, where is the opposition, where are the challenging journalists? You have no idea.
Zorro
July 28, 2020
it said Leave or Remain.
The electorate decided.
You really need to get over it and stop this daily stamping of feet like a two year -old denied sweeties in a supermarket. Not that mine ever did, and I don’t think the grandchildren ever did. But – I have witnessed it – and something reminded me of it.
July 27, 2020
Helen Whatley this morning trying to sell an ill conceived travel policy to Spain and other holiday destinations that can now change at an hours notice. This is the overdose of morphia given to a dying airline and tourist industry when alternative solutions are available. If you can test for Covid19 in car parks it is even easier with a captive group at an airport. Yet more piss up in brewery syndrome.
July 27, 2020
Same government that allowed flights from Wuhan and other hotspots during the pandemic. They must think we are stupid.
July 27, 2020
the decision makers are stupid.
July 27, 2020
+1
July 27, 2020
I’ll salute the speed, and general thrust, of the government’s decision-making but applying a one-size-fits-all solution to the problem is clearly barking mad. The Balaerics, for example, have a very low infection rate.
July 27, 2020
Many airlines and tour companies are Lame Ducks (as defined in the 1970’s) and I recall there was a very capable lady who had taught us the futility of drowning them in taxpayer subsidy and bailout. Old lessons need relearning.
Had this Government been rather more in tune with current realities, it could usefully have had a “buying more at home” drive for holidays.
July 27, 2020
I hear you on this agricola but Grant Shapps told us all on 17th April that he wouldn’t be booking a summer holiday this year then jets off at the first opportunity!
âI wonât be booking a summer holiday at this point, letâs put it that way.â
With one sentence and a chuckle, the transport secretary crushed the hopes of the UK travel industry for an early resumption in anything like normal business.” The Independent
These MPs are dopes.
Spain has only re-opened to get the pounds in, we caught this virus from Italy and Spain and yet I’ve seen dozens of people I know waltzing around those locations without a care, then shocked when they’re told CV19 is spiking again in their choice of holiday destination.
H e l l o ! We’re told we can’t have weddings with more than 30, we can’t have funerals in groups (well some of us can’t), we can’t visit outside social bubbles where we must keep distance, we have to wear masks to shop and on public transport but it’s ok to go on jolly holiday.
P a t h e t i c
July 27, 2020
A-tracy, We had Martin’s assurances that all these EU countries had stamped out the disease. Unlike useless old Blighty. Of course we rushed off to the EU for our hols, safe in the knowledge that Martin was handling it.
July 27, 2020
đđ Yes remember that assurance from Martin. Surely he is not wrong! Must be the nasty British taking this disease to the lovely Continent. We should be sent to Coventry!
July 27, 2020
NickC
totally soverignty is an illusion julst like your Eu empire.
Try and be a bit more realistic it would serve you well.
Full sovereignty doesnot exist in an interedependent , global world
July 27, 2020
Nick never mentioned total sovereignty.
Try to be more accurate and factual.
July 27, 2020
You canât qualify Sovereignty. You are Sovereign or not. That means you decide what co-operation or allies or trade partners you deal with, and that you can change the list and reverse your decisions!
July 27, 2020
On the contrary, Bill, full sovereignty is absolutely essential precisely because of interdependency. Otherwise we could be kicked around by the first bully turning up on our doorstep. As the EU did. All the time.
July 27, 2020
No, you didn’t, Nick.
Do stop writing nonsense about what I have said.
I said that they now shared New Zealand and other countries’ goal of Eradication, and were working on that.
July 28, 2020
Martin you’ve praised on numerous posts that various countries had eradicated ‘almost’ !
Now that probably none have, and many are finding, or at least admitting, that it is cropping up again – perhaps you will now share the FACT that all countries have the goal of eradication.
Some even admit they are failing…..
July 27, 2020
I look forward to seeing the government’s PPE strategy, which must include:
a. Sourcing all items in this country. (There are no allies in a battle for PPE.)
b. Our being able to cope with the steady-state demand AND surge demand. (This means some production capacity will lie un-used, ‘in reserve’.)
c. Concentrating production capacity in areas of high structural unemployment but which have NOT shown themselves highly susceptible to the pandemic. (Leicester, for example, would be a bad choice.)
d. Reducing the amount of waste, by ensuring a proportion of the PPE stock is washable. (A doctor relative took hers home each night and put it in the washing-machine.)
e. Having a stockpile, sized to meet the needs of the NHS, the private medical sector, the Care sector AND the general population.
July 27, 2020
If we imported fewer people, we would also reduce the additional imports of timber, power and food they consume every year.
We could grow more timber, generate more power and grow more food at home, but should not grow too many of our own people. Many of them are too full and need to reduce their consumption, weight and blood pressure to grow healthier.
Generating better education would build more power to produce health, and happiness across the world. Wealth for its own sake is often wasteful.
July 27, 2020
Aware, of course, that PPE has a shelf life and that we would have chucked away millions of tonnes of it in the time between the Spanish Flu epidemic and this one.
That loss of money, in itself, would signify a loss of treatments and lots of death in the NHS.
Still no-one has run the figures for death by economic depression vs death by CV19 and the UN’s upper prediction is of 1.9bn jobs lost worldwide.
That’s a lot of people going to go hungry.
July 27, 2020
Yes, I was aware. But I can also do my sums. If, for example, PPE has a shelf-life of five years and the NHS gets through, say, 10 million items/year, then you can safely stockpile 50 million items, without having to throw away any stuff at ‘LIFEX’. There is, of course, some complex MBA-stuff to be done to find the optimum mix of PPE solutions. And some common-sense challenging of any shelf-lives stated by manufacturers with a vested interest in keeping them low.
July 27, 2020
e. There should be a commitment to the amount of regular stock replacement cycle required moving forward dependent on the number of staff you have and the number of residents, a three-year stock control should then be able to cope with a peak pandemic.
Id like to know who actually makes ppe in the UK and how does each item cost compare, and gowns and other ppe must be re-useable (able to be sterilised with plastic nose grips moving forward with replacement filters.)
July 27, 2020
Make as much as possible in the UK, all very sensible if the quality is good, and the prices competitive, as all of the money is circulated within the UK instead of being exported.
July 27, 2020
Is it true that ag money saved by leaving EU will not be handed over to farmers? It will be withheld pending fulfilment of ridiculous requirements?
Surely to grow more food farmers must be âon sideâ?
And surely the tories will have to stop carpeting every field with bl**dy concrete if more food and timber are to be produced?
Or are we all to be sealed in tower blocks in âsustainableâ( ie primitive) cities while the Collective destroys the harvest?
We should all be very worried, very, very worried. Especially the sparrows!
July 27, 2020
Ever hopeful
Concreting the fields…….You forgot wind turbines, solar panels, food supplies to feed bio digested. All a legacy of our green “save the world unsustainable policies”
July 27, 2020
Agree! 100%
July 27, 2020
Some good points Turbo
July 28, 2020
It seems the plan is to decide what we may eat. That is made easier if farmers are told what produce they are allowed to provide. Energy crops (regardless of their poor energy yield) also reduce the land available for feeding us.
July 27, 2020
Sir John
All very logical and easy to agree with
You could also look at it as a way of supporting those that contribute to the UK tax system. Government purchases when going out to tender should also factor in buying from UK sources that pay tax in the UK. It does seem a nonsense to use ‘UK taxpayer’ money to fill the coffers of another tax authority – that is unequal tender process, the taxpayer pays twice.
July 27, 2020
Meanwhile Boris wants yet more red tape regulations on food adverts and the likes.
Surely the way to go is to charge people for medical services perhaps charging them even more if they are overweight as they need more of it. Perhaps even cut the benefits of people who are heavily over weight as they clearly have more money than they need and they are spending on food and drink while sitting about and not getting a job. Certainly cut the absurd ÂŁ10 tax payer funded discount for eating out that Sunak introduced.
Can someone tell the many deluded lefty dopes on the BBC that healthy food is much, much cheaper than unhealthy food choices. The idea that people cannot “afford” health food is complete and utter nonsense. Plus if you eat and drink alcohol less (as many people clearly need to) it clearly cost less.
July 27, 2020
L/L spot on! Just what I was saying in my post..
July 27, 2020
It’s wrong that you can’t buy a standard sized packet of crisps in many places. Instead there is the ‘Grab Bag’ which is something approaching a family sized packet. The word ‘Grab’ connotes an infantile and disrespectful attitude to food and the size normalises large portions. This item signifies the insidious cultural problem with food more than any other – so too the ‘duo’ bars and the offering of ‘supersizing’ in burger outlets. We have got fat by stealth.
If a person wants to upsize their portions then they should be forced to buy two of them thus there would be a demarcation between eating normally and eating greedily by means of a second transaction – instead our nation has been encouraged to get fat by normalisation.
There is nothing wrong with full fat or sugar so long as it is taken in sensible portions so there is no need for a tax – just stop the discount on the single transaction upsized portion by abolition it. You want supersized chips ? Well buy two ordinary portions of them then – and take the shame of adding the packaging to the waste mountain too.
With 2/3 of our adult population officially overweight the visual impact has been to make those of us within the healthy weight range (having fought hard against obesity) look skinny and to be considered outside the norm in any social or work setting.
And far from finding obese people lacking in confidence a good many are rude, selfish and self entitled and they confuse taking up space with power and ability.
Obesity needs to be stigmatised. There is nothing good or beautiful about it.
July 27, 2020
Yes, yet again it was on the news this morning about how expensive it is to eat healthily. This is a total lie and needs to be dispelled. Rather than punish all of us the Government should introduce a BMI tax to target those who can’t manage their weight.
July 27, 2020
+1
July 27, 2020
BMI is unfortunately extremely inaccurate, for example many athletes and others register as obese since it make no distinction between muscle weight and fat and has other problems. It works for groups, but fails for individuals. The accurate measures, such as displacement, are more complex to record.
Is another layer of complex tax and bureacracy really a good thing, or a case of the cure being worse than the disease?
July 27, 2020
It depends what you mean by healthily. Do you mean salads, carrots, cauliflower, legumes etc.? Are they healthy if too much pesticide, herbicide etc. are in them? Well we don’t know as it’s not on the label.
Perhaps one can eat healthily with many foods but must be without those poisons in them but then they are expensive. Aren’t many things grown in sealed greenhouses, eg. tomatoes, lettuce etc. so poisons not necessary? If so why are these produce not labeled as such or are they as ‘organic’?
July 27, 2020
Just more social (family) engineering
Easy route – tax it to adjust behaviour
Hard route – teach good food and cooking at schools, do more physical education and sports in schools, fund after school and weekend sports clubs
Looks like its the easy route for this media savvy government
July 27, 2020
“charge people for medical services”
Who do you think the main people are that use the health service?
Retired – are you planning on charging them out of their ÂŁ13,000 pa couple earnings? This is what a lot of our current retired couples are living on, or ÂŁ9500 pa singleton.
Disabled – I presume you would exclude those people?
Unemployed – for some reason they fill up the surgeries with minor complaints to get free prescriptions for over the counter drugs – you won’t be able to charge them?
Or is it mainly the paye workers contributing 25.8% national insurance over ÂŁ9500 pa you are proposing to pay more? What about if self-employed people all have to contribute the same 25.8% national insurance?
July 27, 2020
I would charge all who can afford to pay and cut taxes with the money raised. Clearly some safety net is needed for those who really cannot pay.
July 27, 2020
I think the idea is to reduce taxes and hypothecate the health part to health via a system such as Switzerland’s. I don’t see retired people there in problems.
July 27, 2020
“Surely the way to go is to charge people for medical services perhaps charging them even more if they are overweight as they need more of it. ” – Lifelogic
Except that weight gain is a symptom of many medical conditions, not a cause, e.g. Lymphoedema, thyroid conditions or, in women, PCOS. Charging people for having a medical condition that the NHS fails to get under control (or fails to diagnose correctly) would be adding insult to injury.
But I definitely agree with cutting the ÂŁ10 eating out voucher. I’m not sure that even covers the cost of cleaning the restaurant and PPE for the restaurant workers.
July 28, 2020
Actually the obese have a lower than average lifetime healthcare cost, because they tend to die earlier, rather than surviving to need expensive procedures and care.
July 27, 2020
As other have said here. Less Government, as in red tape and medaling. They have never been good at it so why pretend and keep spinning.
Tax is over messy, over complicated as a result is unfair to all. Simplify it for corporations just get them to pay based on economic activity. That removes the discussion of internet versus high street tax. Measure them the same, they are not different, both forms consume the same UK resource of its wealth, health and infrastructure. It also removes the escape mode for some to offshore.
July 27, 2020
Whatever costly decision made by government, it is always the people of the country that pick up the tab.
At this time I would expect that a thorough review of all public spending should be done — There is an enormous amount of waste in the system as TPA remind us often, and this should be targeted and removed.
The onus is on government to make things better – their decisions – their responsibility.
Your proposals JR are sensible, but why does the government have to be shown
July 27, 2020
@Brian, Government likes to infer they have money when like you the rest of see the access to our pockets
July 27, 2020
JR
As you so rightly point out “Under EU rules we were allowed to favour UK suppliers of defence equipment, though even here the UK ended up buying support naval vessels from abroad…” it can’t have been lack of expertise as we are the world’s second largest arms exporters.
So was it greed and shortsightedness again?
July 27, 2020
Margaret H, Of course greed and shortsightedness are limited to the UK as you observe. The EU is perfect in every way – particularly in removing greed . . . (cont. p94). Alternatively, you are talking anti-UK hysteria. Again.
July 27, 2020
The worst possible thing would be for government to istitute even more central planning. The free market is infinitely better at arranging this, all government needs to do is reduce regualtion and taxation annd his it’s meddling hands off.
July 27, 2020
They don’t understand. Everyone can do a better job than them, or maybe they do understand, then problem is then why do we need them especially in such vast numbers. Self preservation of the ruling class appears to be the stumbling block to the country’s success.
July 27, 2020
I read an article in the Telegraph that indicated the government was intent on modernising the way the Civil Service was tasked to implement projects. The intention was to use modern project planning systems based on silicon valley methods of taking projects forward, many of which are very complex and potentially of long duration. It would require each project to be broken down into small steps and each step worked through until completion or failure and a renewed approach. This will mean that instead of the Civil Service hiding behind the “complexity” of a project, with everyone being responsible for every thing, making nobody responsible for anything, each step forward will be focused, time constrained and therefore manageable and flexible. The bureaucrats of the Civil Service will hate it, which is good.
July 27, 2020
Like a Gantt chart? BTW, Henry Gantt lived between 1861 and 1919. So one century later might be a reasonable delay for the adoption of such a management tool?
July 28, 2020
What works works. What doesn’t work is the Civil Service.
July 28, 2020
hefner
How on earth did the ancient Chinese, Egyptians, Romans, Etruscans, Aztecs, Mayans get along without Gantt Charts?
Golden rule: simplify everything and then simplify it again. The Japanese are very good at using this principle, surprisingly, Germans less so…..and many many years ago the British were masters of this principle.
The UK Civil Service, however, work on reversing this principle?
July 27, 2020
The major problem with sourcing more home made stuff is the choice.
A few well made items at higher cost or multiple pieces of tat, made in a low wage economy and imported at little cost.
Business, government procurement and consumers have opted for tat – a difficult mindset to change especially in a recession.
July 27, 2020
All very sensible until you take into account the British establishments insane over population policy, then if face of the millions they want to bring here it’s all futile.
July 27, 2020
And as it turns out…just a lot of hot air from the Home Sec.
As ever.
July 27, 2020
Do you mean generate our own reliable power John? Fat chance. Fracking has been an option for a long time now but our successive governments keep listening to the Green loons.
Not much chance of progress there then unless it’s for expensive unreliable energy from bonkers tidal lagoons and wind farms.
July 27, 2020
‘Grow more of our own food’? Yes indeed. So how can you help to get more clarity for farmers on how the post-CAP future will operate? Defra is supposed to be ‘introducing new policies and schemes’ for 2021 onwards, we were told six months ago. I wonder when they’ll be announced, and how they will compare with CAP. We know that paying for the Covid shutdown will be placing huge demands on government spending for years to come. How can that not affect what will be available to support farming?
We do need to grow more of our own food, and if this means you will be speaking out against concreting over yet more green fields in your constituency, Sir John, that will be good.
July 27, 2020
CAP is one of those well-meaning concepts that does a lot to secure the safety and security of internal markets. If only it stand as an internal subsidy. As soon as the same products are released on to the world/external markets it becomes a taxpayer subsidized weapon. It deliberately sets out to destabilize those country’s described as emerging markets. It stops Countries developing, it stops Countries from becoming food secure. It stops poor country’s getting a foot on the self reliant ladder.
It seems strange the WTO turns a blind eye to this unfair super funding of trade when it does so much to distort World Trade.
The way the EU weaponizes the CAP is deplorable
July 27, 2020
there is something of a shortage of green fields in Sir John’s Wokingham!!
There was, but not now…housing estates, roads, roundabouts, business parks.
Farmers? where?
July 27, 2020
Farmland what is that for?
Grays Farm has been given a slight reprieve, it id destined to become playing fields for the ……..children of the incomers.
Good to see that the Microsoft campus is empty – they are all working at home.
July 28, 2020
so when we get the hoax calls ‘I am calling from Microsoft’ with an odd ‘residential’ looking number -they could be genuine. Ha Ha.
July 27, 2020
“Arranged well this need not be dearer.”
Well. Let’s consider the alternative. That’s to have a subsidised people sitting idle at home on welfare while other nations make simple but strategically vital goods for us abroad, because “it’s cheaper.”
Of course it need not be dearer.
As we wander our boarded towns with face masks on was it really ‘cheaper’ especially as we look at the helpless and soft people we have become ?
And to those fools who believe that we have become greener because of the closure of factories and use of windmills – all we did was move our filth to the far east. Our waste and consumption was greater than ever, take disposable fashion as an example.
July 27, 2020
Yes, it’s tough work shuffling those Chinese made deckchairs…
July 27, 2020
To improve quality and conditions on all government and local authority contracts is to outlaw the situation where the main contractor subs it out and the sub contractors then sub it out further. The end result the actual installer or supplier is working for peanuts, rushing and cutting costs and quality goes out the window. The finished job no way resembles the original specification tended for.
Specifications should reqiremade in the UK components. All local and government departments and other organisations supported by taxpayers money should only purchase UK vehicles or have their funding reduced. By supporting UK manufacturing it’s good for jobs and our tax revenues.
I assume that to supply our own energy the word reliable was accidentally omitted?
July 27, 2020
I note you have seen the reality. It seems strange the Government hasn’t noticed this slight of hand.
July 27, 2020
+â TT
July 27, 2020
+1
July 27, 2020
Rolls Royce selling off the Euro Jet Aero engine is one to ponder and focus the mind indeed
Also Arm Holdings being considered by the USA tech giant Nvidia due to not being able to meet the 3,500 UK staff agreed in several years time….
July 27, 2020
Well RR has been cut to junk with the world inc’ Hancock et al’s knee jerk reactions destroying the aviation industry. Burning through 3 billion cash is an indication that it isn’t just sandwich shops that the policy has destroyed. In my dream world the aviation sector would step in and buy the technology to provide a CV19 testing regime for travellers – without this further confidence destroying madness will continue. (Even if this were suggested it wouldn’t be allowed to happen by UK’s centralised power, we have already been stopped by buying private sector antibody tests). Hancock et al clearly had no plan to get the UK’s new world class testing regime into airports, much easier just to tell nearly everyone returining to not work in another unprepared knee jerk reaction I say nearly everyome, of course care and health workers interacting with the vulnerable don’t have to self isolate.
July 27, 2020
The whole thing is weird.
GPs won’t see you unless you’re in desperate need. Stories of misdiagnosis abound. You can’t even emter a surgery without a face mask, yet you’re met by a receptionist head on without one.
Teachers won’t teach – although zero children suffer from this virus.
Yet people can arrive here by boat and train from virus hotspots with no checks. Sweatshops carry on without monitoring.
Anybody would think there’s a conspiracy to import, house and work people from third world countries without any attention being paid to the health, welfare or well being of these people themselves or of the wider community in the UK. There’s no way we voted for this.
July 28, 2020
Don’t forget Caterpillar the people that make these decisions are on full pay whilst ‘working at home’ or ‘quarantined at home’ or indeed ‘sick at home’ so they have no idea what it is like for to tell self-employed people or typical paye workers in sme’s they can’t go to work (Grant Shapps will have no problem quarantining, they’re laughing at us!) they won’t have an income so they simply won’t follow this rule – the type of people that jetted off at the first chance don’t believe the scare stories of covid 19 anyway, they were very loose with the rules previously and want to show their tans off now they’re back.
Or they’re the likes of A tv presenter who have told us all to lockdown whilst he enjoys his freedom going out to work, going off on holiday at first opportunity, mixing it up with his celeb mates in the South of France for the summer.
July 27, 2020
If the pandemic has shown the importance of self-sufficiency, then surely, as we are told so much of current life and business depends on the GPS system, we should have our own system and quickly.
July 27, 2020
We haven’t been self sufficient in timber since the 1700’s. It was a key factor driving the start of coal mining and the industrial revolution. It was the first major commodity to be freely traded without tarrifs. The UK population in 1720 was 7 million.
I know you are a Conservative but turning the clock back 300 years does seem ambitious.
July 27, 2020
Because of the application of science and technology the uses for wood today are no longer those of the 1700s.
For instance, wood is no longer used for the majority of heating, smelting and the building of vessels etc. so you cannot compare the amount of wood required pp today with the mount required in 1720.
July 27, 2020
‘The UK population in 1720 was 7 million’. Hmm, still greater than many 1st world European countries today. Switzerland has 8 million. Seems we don’t really need 65 million plus.
July 27, 2020
If youâre using tax-payers money to purchase something it has to be British made
If you canât buy off the shelf than use tax-payers money to commission, design, build, manufacture and buy
July 27, 2020
+1
July 27, 2020
Boris gave the Marxists the biggest GIFT ever when he mandated the wearing of face masks.
They have now weaponised it against children going to school.
(Mind you…good luck to the so-called âteachersâ in rough areas in enforcing the wearing).
Sack all teachers who refuse to return to school In September .
There are plenty of unemployed graduates who would jump at the chance of a job.
July 27, 2020
and remember the expiry date on the wearing of masks regulation is July 2021
July 27, 2020
If the virus can enter via the eyes what is the point on covering only the mouth and nose?
July 27, 2020
Oh yes the mask is supposed to stop the droplets getting to the eyes from other people – forgot that.
July 28, 2020
Just like the good old fashioned hankerchief
July 27, 2020
Spitting hairs, you mean ‘Face Coverings’, face masks are to be kept for the ongoing safety of the NHS. In its announcement the Government was very clear about that. It is just the media that is distorting what was said.
Covering your face in a something that doesn’t conform to at least KN95 does nothing to protect the wearer, other than give a false sense of security so they may enter shops and spend money. Its about getting the economy moving – although I don’t think the government was thinking that to mean the Spanish economy.
July 27, 2020
…and a number of supply teachers who would be glad of the opportunity.
July 27, 2020
Download an exemption certificate if you are asthmatic, Claustrophobic or anything else.
July 28, 2020
I doubt being ‘pis*ed off’ will do on the form?
July 27, 2020
Have it on good authority 95 applications for a NQT primary school role in Manchester area. No shortage of people wanting to teach.
July 27, 2020
The UK may be limited to growing our own food. Successive Conservative Governments have pursued a policy of selling off the family jewels, so there is not much ability left to make a great deal left of manufacturing.
July 27, 2020
Very laudable. We must of course become more self reliant and increase self sufficiency.
But there is some virtue signalling gojng on here. After detecting a growth in that belief among the people we get a change of tone. We must not forget that our host has for years supported and encouraged the policy and foreign investment into the UK. He was pergectly happy for the government to act as a pimp; prostituting the country to any and all countries with money to spend. Just look around; you can’t avoid seeing foreign ownership.
We could do with an admission thst was wrong and has got us into the mess we find ourselves. Giving business to foreign owned manufacturing is giving money away in profit and surplus cashflow.
We need policies to protect what is left in our ownership.
We need a total.attitude change.
July 27, 2020
The UK goverments and UK company managers, usually prefer to buy from anywhere but Britain. This might be because they are not too smart, having all been educated at private schools, and are therefore entitled to lead us.
England is the least wooded country in the world, and the trend is for more and more concrete and houses for all the illegal immigrants.
What is ahppening about the Northern Forest, that we are supposed to be planting, to stretch between Liverpool and Hull ?
July 27, 2020
“England is the least wooded country in the world”
Really? Less wooded than Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait or Algeria? I doubt it.
July 28, 2020
There are lots of trees in Singapore – compared to land area.
July 27, 2020
In the future I want a young dynamic Government not constantly looking backwards at tradions. I want Politicans with Personalities a good exampole for me was Tony Blair, I want people straight out of Uni. Im tired of seeing Politicians over 70 who are really walking dead with standard sound bites.
I want Britian in the EU Customs Union in the future and readopt all the EU regulations. I know and feel the next generation can shake up the old peoples home called Parliament.
The EU is a young generations organisation at heart and this has been classically demonstrated here in Britain when I see and heard old people taking about the EU.
July 27, 2020
Yes, let’s allow 8 year olds to vote and run the country. Surely once you can read, you can make serious decisions about policy just by reading the policy and understanding it.
Idiot.
July 27, 2020
Yawn
July 27, 2020
Tony Blair – personality! Would be President of Europe?
Even Euan admits his father got it wrong over university for all, preferring apprenticeships.
July 28, 2020
I thought it was an EU target to get over 40% of people into University education. I read they achieved this across the 27 EU Countries.
‘Modernisation of Higher Education in Europe’
Change has been afoot – “To be successful this could mean a reduction in traditional HE student numbers, but an expansion in a variety of other forms of HE and a re-framing of what âhigher educationâ means.
The English Association of Colleges believe that one mechanism to create a more diverse and flexible vocational HE
system is the creation of lifelong learning credit accumulation and transfer systems (CATS) in member countries linked by a EU trans-national referencing framework…..Member counties could learn from the strengths for example of the German âdual systemâ at
lower VET levels ” parliament uk 20.09.2011
July 27, 2020
The young EU and One World Govt centric donât need Westminster. Britain will have no politicians, old or âprofessional politicians straight out of uni like Charles Kennedy for exampleâ (very old chestnut – we have suffered professional politicians for a generation, which is why we are in such trouble, they know nothing outside the champagne swilling ranks of the taxpayer subsidised bubble).
July 28, 2020
Yet all I see is old white people running the EU. Our own Government is younger and more multi racial.
July 28, 2020
and we see them being foul-mouthed. Doesn’t happen in the ‘House’ unless it is done under the breath?
July 28, 2020
David, It would be interesting to know why you think being in a “Customs Union” with the EU would benefit the UK?
As far as I’m aware the EU Customs Union is protectionist to producers in the EU and not beneficial to the UK producers and services that we would wish to protect and at the same time making imports of products that we do not or cannot produce here in the UK more expensive.
July 27, 2020
I agree, but without the skilled labour at all levels in society this will not happen. We need the focus on science and engineering and have these appreciated by UK society as opposed to media studies and all the other soft options preferred now by most of the younger generation.
I noticed that CO2 has popped up in this topic not sure why, but increasing levels of CO2 means we are, or the planet is warming itself ( but good for plant life). Local production may reduce international transport and the heat and pollution this generates.
It was not just the EU that got us into relaying on imports, but forced to do so by Globalisation (the rich get richer and the poor get poorer). And as mentioned by other respondents getting the fair Tax from the likes of Amazon would be a great help.
July 27, 2020
I’ve noticed from historical records of poverty that as the rich get richer, so do the poorer.
July 27, 2020
What is 60% Brexit? Is that were someone else calls the shots so you don’t get to succeed, making Sir Johns well thought out reasoning here – just wishful thinking.
As some elsewhere has said you cant just be 60% pregnant.
July 27, 2020
Indeed nor can you just “fall” pregnant I understand.
July 27, 2020
I didn’t vote 60% leave I voted 100% leave
July 27, 2020
Barnier is telling EU governments that a deal with the U.K. is probably, making it likely they will remain intransigent in their demands. Reportedly the Dutch government is saying a deal will âcome swimming across the English Channelâ indicating their expectation is the U.K. will agree to EU demands with them having to do nothing. Once again, at a time when the U.K. should be making itself unambiguously clear that the EU mandate must be changed immediately we see that Brussels interprets silence from London as a sign of weakness and impending concessions.
The next general election will be decided by the deal with the EU. Trading on WTO terms would mean the U.K. achieved its negotiating goal of no EU law, no ECJ jurisdiction and control of our borders and fisheries. There is no reason to concede to the EU demand for a single overarching agreement that would be used by Brussels indefinitely as a means to pressure the U.K. into doing things against our interests. Far better that the WTO court of arbitration oversees U.K.-EU trade than the EUâs own institutions. If the latest reports of concessions from David Frost on the structure on the agreement are true then your party will bleed support as it did under Theresa May.
July 27, 2020
“The next general election will be decided by the deal with the EU. ”
The next election will, I suspect, be decided by the new electorate that this government and its predecessors have imported and it is now more than eighteen years since this started.
July 27, 2020
No, most of the ‘new electorate’ recently imported, except maybe the BN(O) passport holders from Hong Kong, are very unlikely to have become British (it usually takes six years, see gov.uk) and therefore will not be eligible to vote.
July 27, 2020
Buy British if you can and please stop buying Chinese goods. Japanese goods are better quality.
July 27, 2020
+1 always buy britsh if using public funds and tax-payers money
July 27, 2020
But how do we square this new-found belief in buying British, with global Free Trade?
The UK is an expensive place to make things, compared to countries where they can dump their waste in the nearest river.
July 27, 2020
I agree with what JR says here but would add that it is a disgrace that our new exEU passports are being printed abroad. Somebody should have had a quiet word in De La Rue’s ear
I cannot help thinking that the Government should be encouraging investment by firms with 100% capital allowances and cutting Corporation tax to (at least) 12.5% to stimulate startups, re-shoring and overseas companies to bring their domiciles and production here
July 27, 2020
Others have noted STEM subject’s profile needs raising and Australia are introducing the requisite financial incentives reducing University fees fro. ÂŁ6k to ÂŁ600 approx for mathematics and other degrees needed for the national economy shortages whilst increasing the fees for Mickey mouse degrees.
Whilst HE argue they are ” not job factories” in the end they rely on the public purse not the Magic Money trees.
July 28, 2020
The EU project on Higher Education states “In April 2018, Parliament adopted a resolution on the implementation of the Bologna Process[10]. It requested that the next 2018 EHEA Ministerial Conference in Paris provide a critical assessment of the process…… It also called for the EU and the Member States to increase their education budgets in order to guarantee that public higher education is free and accessible to all.”
So all those English young workers educated from Blairs decision to introduce a 9% tuition fee repayment graduate tax at 9% of their earnings from the 2008 intake to date and those paying the whopping increase George Osborne foisted upon their shoulders from 2012 will be the only ones paying this tax in the future.
July 27, 2020
Over 40’s to pay more tax for social care. That should please Andy. He must be nearly there himself or already there.
July 27, 2020
Labelling items so that we know the origin of the product and its components would be useful.
July 28, 2020
And may I suggest buying more holidays at home instead of making risky journeys overseas in order to cook in the sun and pick up a melanoma.
This country is going to have to work hard in 2021 and 2022 on improving its debt position – both public and private – and its balance of payments.
July 28, 2020
Many UK businesses and heritage sites have angled themselves predominantly at foreign visitors over the past few years. That concentrates large numbers of foreign consumers in a few areas. The retail economy of Knightsbridge, the Cotswolds, Bath, Stratford-in-Avon, Edinburgh and hotels in the Scottish Highlands must be taking quite a bashing, possibly the Oxbridge retailers too. All places one used to visit with delight, but no more since they became overrun and rather snobbish.
The Manager of a large and well-known Knightsbridge emporium has said that US and Asian visitors will probably not return until 2022. Perhaps he should take the opportunity to gear the store to selling to British customers as well? It used to do this very successfully, before it began to chase the almighty riyal and spurn the humble shilling. (Not that a shilling ever bought much there! One recalls the story of Sibyl Thorndike at the Food Hall cash desk, blenching as she heard the total cost of her modest purchases, then smiling seraphically and murmuring: ‘Here’s a five pound note, my dear. You’d better keep the change – I think I trod on a grape as I came in! đ
July 28, 2020
Agreed and great ending moral : don’t tread on the down-trodden customers…
July 28, 2020
Buy more British. Absolutely !
A more prominent labelling of British goods would help. A bigger “UK”, a Union Jack and a county e.g. Somerset, Northern Island, etc. Something to make UK goods stand out and get shoppers attention