I/O

Sense & Sensibility

There’s a rather distinct lack of that. It’s getting to the point where the madness of actually voting to leave is taking a back seat to the chaos following… Who would have imagined that UKIP and the LibDems would be the two political parties that are still sort-of functioning. The Tories blew up over this whole thing, and I’m really not sure what word would be best to describe Labour. Haemorrhage comes to mind.

Meanwhile, Brexit might have difficulty keeping its promises. That £350M figure was discredited within a day and you don’t get open access without freedom of movement. Still, stupid people think this somehow gives them the right to shout “Paki!” in public (no, I’m not going to asterisk it out like the press) which is a bit fail as Pakistan is nothing to do with the EU (and I think the victim was British of Indian heritage, so fail again). But, wait, did somebody mention sense and sensibility? Let’s continue: Farage made an ass of himself at the EU. Again. And we don’t need to point out that a fair bit of what “project fear” predicted has just happened. Okay, the markets will stabilise, they can’t go on in turmoil; however the UK might have just trashed its economy for a decade, if not longer. Even if a snap election votes in said LibDems who have pledged to disregard the referendum, it’ll take a hell of a long time for this mess to get fixed. Both in and out of the country.

All this from a non-binding referendum where nothing has actually happened yet.

What a mess.

What a farce.

Makes me wonder what’ll happen tomorrow.

I would give a slow hand-clap, but I’m busy facepalming with both hands.

And yes, Frenchies at work have asked me “What the hell is going on in England?”¹ and “Is everybody in your country completely mad?”². Imagine what the rest of the world thinks. It’s quite the spectator sport, don’t you think? Well, better than the English³ showing at football at any rate.

¹ England in the sense of “anglais” where subtle country/territory distinctions are missed.

² I suspect this is a rhetorical question.

³ England in the sense of England. Oh look, another leader that just up and quit.

The economy seems to have stopped dropping, I would say the reason is Boris’ statement could be taken as easing out the idea of remaining in the EEA.

Staying in the EEA would be business as usual, no deportations etc, economy would bounce back, and in a few years everything would be forgotten. It would not be a racist move, just a case of wanting less power to be central.

Leaving the EEA is what will provoke all the economic and social disasters.

The markets are still of the opinion that we aren’t dumb enough to do that. And anyway the pro-exit voters should fine with the EEA option, because it’s not like they are all racists or anything is it?

I would say the reason is Boris’ statement could be taken as easing out the idea of remaining in the EEA.

Has anyone told the rest of the EU that this is on offer?

The reason the market has stopped dropping is because all the betting has finished and the idiots have realised how much they lost.
All the markets want is stability.
@rick Farage is an idiot, but so is Junker and the rest of the EU commission, pretending like the UK leaving isn’t a big deal. Hopefully the EU leaders will get a grip, or the EU really will be screwed.

@steve there were other EU people who mentioned this too, others that said no way. Arse and elbow?

BoJo retreated. I’m afraid the dirtiest part of the job is on its way.

The BBC at one point mentioned a rumour that the head prefect knifed BoJo because that nice Mr Murdoch wasn’t keen. Gove now looks like being somewhere between being crazy and idiotic. Mind you, what’s new? 8-]

So the people that caused the mess will now presumably leave sorting it out to someone else – then try and blame them when the result doesn’t match the fantasy view they were promising.

If I’d written a novel five years ago that used the recent chain of events, no-one would have published it. Or if they did, it would have been labelled ‘fantasy’.

Private Eye are going to have a field day. Not that it’ll help us much beyond being able to laugh at our own predicament.

The thought that keeps coming to my mind is: Will ‘Dave’ trigger Levison Two now he has nothing left to lose? That way he could get some pay back for what the deceitful tabloids did to him and us.

Boris chucked in a grenade and then ran away.

So Gove can’t even do his own dirty work and has to get his wife , Sarah Vine, to do it by “accidentally” sending an email somewhere other than she meant to.. You couldn’t make up a sillier plot line for a book if you tried.

How much trust do MP’s have now given amonst other things Gove’s retreat on certain things like the poster he distanced himself from after of course the damage had been done and Boris’s retreat on full exit and Farage’s broken promise on the mythical £350M.

As someone once said about another MP, there is certain element of the night about Mr Gove but it just proves that they are all dancing to a certain tune, given the email, of the big puppet master Mr Murdoch and his likes which is really even sadder for us.

Still this will fade as they have the Levison report due soon and the flames will be directed else where whilst they carry on plotting away.

The lack of spelling out what should expect with a full exit plan just proves that there wasn’t one, as if I and others didn’t know that anyway,

Mean while in a street near you according to reports hate crimes have risen from an average of 63 a week to over 300 because of the way they campaigned and our own collective inability to have a grown up and sensible debate about Immigration.

1. David Cameron thinks he can appease his anti-EU party members by having a referendum which he is sure will say “stay”. Poor judgement!

2. Boris Johnson sees an opportunity to to raise his profile by jumping, after some internal debate, on the “leave” bandwagon, still being sure we will say “stay”. He just wants to be “higher profile”. Poor judgement!

3. The result – nobody thought this was possible – just political posturing! But they under-estimated the racist element vote. OK – not a majority of “leavers”, but enough to tip the balance, evidently!

4. Cameron resigns but fails to fall on his sword literally¹. He decides to soldier-on for 3 months, despite everyone hating him on all sides for various reasons. Poor judgement!

5. Boris withdraws (thank goodness!²), knowing that it’s really all too complicated for him to actually implement this unforeseen consequence. He’s also stabbed in the back by his erstwhile colleague Michael Gove – but he’s already decided (and all credit to him for that!) that sorting out this mess is beyond his capabilities anyway! He was just there for the ride!

6. During all this the “parliamentary opposition” tries to find an electable leader, having paradoxically elected an un-electable. Poor judgement!

7. The sky falls … There is no credible opposition, all Tory candidates are determined to implement the “will of the people”.

Why would we want a representative democracy, when we could have total chaos by relying on the will of the people as judged by a referendum!

I guess you can see where I stand – or cower.

Whatever happened to that other party? What was it called?

¹I would expect him to, at a minimum, leave public life forever. Such poor judgement leaves him unemployable and without any credibility!

²Imagine having a loveable jokey opportunist buffoon as a PM! The stuff of nightmares!

You couldn’t make up a sillier plot line for a book if you tried.

That’s why I’ve not written anything on my blog. I mean – okay, I view Brexit supporters as being stupid (1, to believe those lies; 2, because I’ve yet to find a sensible exit strategy that isn’t ultimately worse than the current situation; unless 3, they really think they can ditch the EU and revert to trading with the Commonwealth?). The whole thing makes no sense, it is a huge parade of stupid, and the much lauded “democratic will of the people” is about the only part that was proper, the way getting there and the lies told were anything but.

However I can’t write about any of this. What am I going to say? Boris is an ass**** and would be a terrible PM? Well, that’s no longer the case. Now Gove-who-didn’t-want-to-be-PM has crawled out of the woodwork and set his sights on being the one to ruin the (dis)United Kingdom.
Make no mistake – Cameron will go down in history as the biggest dumbass of the modern age, but whoever comes in next – if they’re dumb enough to sign article 50 – is going to go down in history as the one that “broke Britain”.

But I can’t write about that. Because it is like every other day delivers something that makes your mouth hang open. It is almost scary that this backstabbing power struggle is playing russian roulette with an entire country. These contenders, do they have what it takes to run a country? Do they even know what the next steps should be? We can’t even wonder if blowing up the Commons and wiping out the lot of them¹ would be a Big Red Reset Button because I rather suspect that as the dust settles, the skeleton of Corbyn would be seen standing atop the rubble, defiantly refusing to quit even after death.²

I’m with Jim – fiction writers would have found a written account of the last week to be too unbelievable.

¹ To the pathetic: This is hyperbole and sarcasm, not a threat or wish to see people die…

² See? Told you. It’s sarcasm. Duh. ²

The biggest dumb ass of the modern age, by a clear mile is Gordon Brown, then followed by Mr. Blair – I doubt even leaving the EU will cause even fractionally that much damage.

I’d say it’s those two that “broke Britain”, leaving the EU may be more akin to setting the ashes on fire – I’m just not convinced it can burn much more.

It should also be recognised that Junker “broke the EU” and did as much as he possibly could to make the UK vote turn out the way it did. He could have only done more by promising a million quid for everyone who voted leave.

What did Brown do asides from some spectacularly bad financial decisions? I’ll agree that Blair (aka Bush’s lap puppy) is a contender; but while the idea of an EU referendum has been around for quite a while, neither of them were dumb enough to actually do it.

Yes. I do wish Juncker would STFU. Imagine the shock he’s going to get if the incoming PM refuses to sign article 50. Well, sir, since the referendum was purely advisory, there is actually nothing that states that the PM has to resign from the EU that week. It could happen next month. Next year. Next decade. It’s up to parliament to decide, and Juncker screaming sign it now now now now now (slightly paraphrased) is not going to change reality.
Yes, I know. The horror of a referendum that isn’t effective instantly…
;-)

He could have only done more by promising a million quid for everyone who voted leave.

I think the leave camp already had their eyes on that, with the “predict euro 2016 winners” competition. I wonder if anybody will win – what with Iceland’s surprise show of force. I’d laugh my ass off if the winner grabbed the £50M and left the country.

The stuff of nightmares!

Even through all the chaos and brimstone that is raining upon the green and pleasant land, there is one word that invokes a nightmarish scenario that trumps all other nightmares.
I’ve already used the word.
The word is Trump.
There is nothing that the UK can do to the EU or to itself that would be more catastrophic than one week of the Trump administration.

I was looking forward to a Boris/Trump line up, while I was on a one way trip to Mars.
It’s not what Blair/Brown did, it’s what they didn’t do – they screwed every part and section of the UK from the NHS to the banks, I suppose they were fair about how they went about it though.
I’m not sure of any part they didn’t leave untouched.

To inject a slight note of fairness. Brown’s main problem was that he fell for the fantasies peddled by the Banks, etc. The reality is that the crash was primarily a USA event in which the City of London banks were a greedy participant. We got badly hurt because we’d become a “Switzerland on Sea” mainly for the benefit of the finance system tied to Wall St, etc.

Governments from the days of the Sainted Margeret felt that the City of London was holy ground and that ‘light regulation’ was needed. On the surface it seemed to be generating ‘growth’, but was of course a bubble of epic proportions.

They were all warned, despite the myth that ‘no one predicted they crash’. But it was easier and more convenient to go on riding the wave. So they did.

Since the crash, and despite promising lessons would be learned, politicians have drifted back into the same old ways. As have the banks. So here we go again…

Oh, and one of the reasons the right-wing and rich newspaper owners hate the EU is the risk that it will actually regulate the finance system, etc, and tackle the idustrial-scale tax dodging.

The money didn’t cease to exist. It is just taking a long holiday in the BVI, etc. Should have quite a nice suntan by now. :-)

Ignoring all advice and over-ruling government bodies who said this will cause a disaster to allow the merger of HBOS was the start of the mayhem that was in 2001.
So no the reality is the huge scope of the disaster and it’s affects in the UK was a direct result of massive egos, caused by stupidity of the wider public continually voting in those idiots not once but multiple times – with expected results. A massive deficit and a destroyed economy and infrastructure.
But the guy who ran HBOS was a con-artist. His excuse for the collapse was essentially “Oh! I don’t have any experience of banking”.
More amazingly he then managed to get a job, not only a job – unfortunately not cleaning the inside of live nuclear reactors with a toothbrush, but as a CEO.
It seems gross stupidity is a disease that can’t be cured.
Sound at all familiar?

Another thing of interest, the investment banks were, this time the reason the banks recovered at all.

I agree with your comments about HBOS. However the wider context was the junk bonding, etc, in the USA. That triggered collapses there which in turn knocked down the house of cards in the City of London. From Regan + Thatcher onwards governments on both sides of the pond are actually responsible for failing to correctly regulate and allowing the lunatics to run the asylum. But of course, those lunatics did fund the politicians and there was a ‘revolving door’ between civil service and the finance sector. Regulatory capture and indoctrination.

I say ‘was’, but of course it continues with no sign of anyone actually doing anything about it. Private Eye has reported on these things for decades, and people at Westminster read it… but do nothing. Meanwhile the Daily Hate tells people to blame “immigrants”.

Whereas the EU does slowly do some good. e.g. dealing with roaming charges on mobiles. And they were aiming to deal with the way companies like Sky split the market so they can charge more in some contries than others for the same things. Plus tackling some of the anti-competitive practices of MS, etc. Whilst a UK government has lain supine before the moguls.

Whereas the EU does slowly do some good. e.g. dealing with roaming charges on mobiles.

Why is this good?

It’s not what Blair/Brown did, it’s what they didn’t do – they screwed every part and section of the UK from the NHS to the banks

Now I’ve seen you make that comment before, and I really don’t see that putting a large amount of extra cash into the NHS really counts as “screwing” it.

It did almost the whole of the first term of office for the New Labour government putting extra cash in to take effect in removing the damage done by Thatcher and co in the previous administration.

I speak as one who has observed from the inside. Information sources who really knew the figures being the drinking companions on a Friday evening. If the Chief Exec and the Finance director didn’t know the details then no one did.

Why is this good?

I suppose it really rather depends on whether you like paying mobile phone companies lots of cash just because your phone is being used via a transmitter in France but your contract is with a company in the UK. Especially annoying for those people on the UK coast getting a poor signal from the transmitters in the UK and a much better one from transmitters in France so the phone hops to the strongest signal.
Or you forget to kill various services on the mobile you took on holiday and get stung for 1,000’s for a service use that would be 10’s in the UK or 10’s in that Euro locale if you were on a euro-locale contract.
Euro-law steps in and levels out the charges – obviously that’s bad because you desperately wanted to fund the mobile company exec’s next yacht.

Note: Never been clobbered with charges like that since it always seemd like a good idea to not take the mobile on trips in Europe. That and the fact that it isn’t mine and my employer would get the bill.

I suppose it really rather depends on whether you like paying mobile phone companies lots of cash just because your phone is being used via a transmitter in France but your contract is with a company in the UK. Especially annoying for those people on the UK coast getting a poor signal from the transmitters in the UK and a much better one from transmitters in France so the phone hops to the strongest signal.

You talk of people too dumb/lazy/whatever to disable their data roaming?

Euro-law steps in and levels out the charges – obviously that’s bad because you desperately wanted to fund the mobile company exec’s next yacht.

No, it is obviously bad because people who do not need roaming at all now pay for those who need it, but were previously too dumb/lazy/whatever to pick the right mobile contract for their needs.

It just shows again that the EU is often anti-market and introduces whatever laws they like for no good reason instead of just trusting the market to come up with the solutions people really need.

It’s still too early for speculation. Remember the Churchillian dictum: this is not the end; it’s not even the beginning of the end; it may just be the end of the beginning (but don’t hold your breath).

The dust has still to settle (and if you’ve ever swept out your loft, you’ll know it takes a long time). Once all the excitement of various leadership elections dies down, we may just start to be able to discern some recognisable shapes through the haze. Until that happens, all these intelligent, well-informed opinions are just so much whistling in the dark.

It just shows again that the EU is often anti-market and introduces whatever laws they like for no good reason instead of just trusting the market to come up with the solutions people really need.

No. It shows that people making the same call should be treated in a comparable way. Not exploited.

Listening to Gove today made me seriously wonder if he has had some sort of mental breakdown. He is now stating an ‘Xmas list’ of ‘promises’ in a situation where:

A) No-one knows how much money can be splashed around as he promises during the next fews years as a result of the mess he helped create.

B) No-one in their right mind who has already been fooled by him and BoJo, and seen him flip state, would trust any promises he makes.

Usually, the Tory party settles things via the “men in dark suits” who visit. This time it looks more like they need some “men in white suits”…

A and B are absolutely correct, Jim. It will come as no surprise to you that as an ex-teacher I’ve long wondered about Gove’s mental stability, indeed his whole psychological make-up. It concerns me that a person about whom many have such profound doubts can be in the place where he now finds himself. But then, our political ‘elite’ do seem to inhabit a Looking-Glass world.