Smell the coffee.

Coffee.  Did you start your day with one?  Or perhaps a relaxing one later in the day? Nice.     

But like many foods, do you ever stop and think how it got to your cup?  Not just its physical farm to fork journey.   

But the processes it went though, the economics of the trade, the tariffs that flood around.   And critically, where on the route to your cup do they provide a sustainable living for the farmer that grew it.    

It is a strange expression that we want people to have a “sustainable living”, as if that is all we expect the people who made the coffee we find such pleasure in should enjoy.  I’m sure if you or I were told that all we could expect from our daily work was a “sustainable living” we wouldn’t be too happy. 

And of course, for them, sustainable living is not a life on benefits.  It’s an extra dollar a day that will help them pay for their children’s already meagre education.   

Now there is a reason why the poor are only able to gain a "sustainable income".   And it’s outrageous.    

Take the example of coffee growers in Africa.  Well, believe it or not, we can point the finger firmly for Africa’s continued poverty at the EU.  Both the Common Agricultural Policy and EU trade tariffs keep African farmers poor and use your money to do it.    

Here’s how it works.

1.      Continental European farmers are subsidised to produce more food than we can eat, distorting the global food market. This means African farmers cannot compete and are forced into subsistence farming, where one bad season brings economic ruin and a couple of bad seasons means starvation. 

2.      Tariffs mean that in 2014 the whole of Africa made just under $2.4 billion from coffee exports, while Germany made $3.8 billion. Incredibly Germany made more money from coffee without growing a single bean than a whole continent which grows vast amounts.

3.      Germany’s coffee producers need cheap, raw beans to make money, so there is no import tariff on green, unprocessed coffee.  That’s why the vast bulk of African coffee exports are unprocessed.

4.      Import tariffs creep in. There are import tariffs on processed coffee because it is in the processing, branding, packaging and marketing that Germany makes its money.  These tariffs protect it from African competition.  If African farmers could do all the value added stuff, their farmers wouldn't be living in "sustainable" world.  They would have more money.  It’s the same story with cocoa.

This is protectionism, pure and simple.  Being done in your and my name by the EU.  That is not an opinion, it’s a fact.   

But why should we care?  Perhaps you feel that Africa’s problems are for Africans to deal with and are not our concern. I would agree to an extent.    

But when the trade systems are so clearly biased by institutions like the EU, we can’t stand back and say to our fellow human beings, you make the coffee for a “substance living” and I’ll sit here in the comfort of my home and enjoy the product of your toil with virtually nothing of what I paid for it going back to the farmer.   

The EU is helping to keep some of the poorest people in the world in poverty. That can’t be right in anyone’s book. And the EU is using YOUR money to do it.     

There is one way to stop this madness and unfairness.  Vote LEAVE.

Saint Frank speaks the truth.

It’s funny that all these let wingers keep telling us that we will be doomed to a life of crime and zero human rights if we leave the EU.  Where did they get such nonsense from?  Some spin machine that is constantly spewing out half-truths or even whole whoppers of porkies.

Frank Field made a very significant comment yesterday.

Now Frank is a bit of a saint, really.  No one can have a go at him because he almost literally floats above the fray.  He is intellectual, he is left wing.  And on this occasion he is right.  “Many of the social rights, which are trumpeted about as European, were ones which we actually took into Europe. It’s not that in fact somehow workers in this country were bereft of rights until we joined the European Union.”

So next time somebody tells you that there will be a bonfire of human rights legislation, just remember the quiet thoughtful words of Frank Field. 

Dinner chat.......

I’m not sure if the rumour is true or not, but did the room turn colourful when the queen entertained the president?

Qn     Hello, it’s you again.  Like my Philips driving?  Not bad for 95, eh.  Had to laugh when I looked at your Michele’s face.  Same colour as her dress.  Talking of which, why are USA designers so poor? 

Ob     Oh, Ma’am. I’m not sure that…..

Qn     Not sure?  That’s about the most sensible thing you have said all day. 

Ob     Oh, Ma’am. I’m not sure that…..

Qn     Well, I’m looking forward to coming back to the old colony some time soon.  The invite in the post?

Ob     Oh, Ma’am. I’m not sure that…..

Qn     Oh yes, Mr Obama.  And I am so looking forward to telling the people of your republic that they really should start to allow Canada, Mexico, Cuba and that other bunch of countries packed into central America that they are going to have the chance to help set the laws that govern you.  After all, you just told my people to do just that.

Ob     Oh, Ma’am. I’m not sure that…..

Qn     Or the jobs.  Yes the million job threat you are making to people who work for UK companies in the USA.  Why have you have decided to put all these jobs at risk by putting us at the back of the queue?  Odd use of words was it not Mr Obama?  Queue. Where did you learn that line?  No American says queue.  Sounds like straight out of the scare briefing book kept at No 10 and No 11.  Must have a word with dear Mr Cameron about that.  It was a cheap line.

Ob     Oh, Ma’am. I’m not sure that…..

Qn     Of course it’s because we’re in the EU that we don’t have a trade deal with the USA.  Tell me Mr Obama, how do you think voters in my country will react when they see the USA President threatening them on the News at Ten?

Ob     Oh, Ma’am. I’m not sure that…..

Qn     Also worth reminding you, Mr Obama, that even now with no trade deal in place with the USA, the UK is the biggest investment partner already and the USA is the biggest investor in the UK (324 billion in your dollars).  And UK investment in the USA last year was 282 billion of your dollars.  Over a million Americans work for British companies and over a million Britons are employed by American companies.  We are already at the front of the queue doing $56 billion of transatlantic trade last year…So, how are you going to tell your people you are putting their jobs at risk?

Ob     Oh, Ma’am. I’m not sure that…..

Qn     Anyway, what is for pudding?

Why won't the USA sign treaties? It would interfere with USA’s sovereignty.

If the USA is so keen on countries working together and pooling sovereignty, armies and foreign policy, here is a few questions for the USA leader when he touches down on UK soil.

• Why is the USA not signing the U.N.'s global arms treaty?
• Why won't the USA ratify the UN convention on children's rights?  (The USA is one of only three countries not to have signed the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The others?  South Sudan (which only became a country in 2011) and Somalia, which barely has a functioning government.)
• Or how about the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea?
• Or the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)? (The only other countries not to have ratified are Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Iran and the two South Pacific islands of Palau and Tonga).
• Perhaps ask about The Convention against Enforced Disappearance which prohibits the secret detention and abduction of people by the state? Awkward one that.
• If you have time would you like to ask about the non-ratification of the Mine Ban Treaty, the Convention on Cluster Munitions?
• Or the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD)?

And this is just the start of the list!

The biggest barrier to the USA signing these treaties are fears that they will interfere with the USA’s sovereignty.  

All rather amusing given Mr Obama will be coming here to tell us to concede sovereignty to others.

I'm waiting for the USA to out-source its law making to surrounding countries.

There is something peculiar in the way the political classes in the USA are dealing with the referendum in the UK in relation to the EU.

The questions they really need to ask themselves in the USA are these.

• Would they outsource their law-making to a grouping including Canada, Mexico, Cuba, Brazil, Peru or indeed Russia which is just across the water from Alaska?
• Would they share a foreign policy with these countries?
• Would they sign up to a joint army with these countries?

Of course they wouldn’t. 

So why will Mr Obama becoming here to lecture us to do the same thing in ever increasing measure with countries that border the UK?

This all is shown in its wonderful bizarreness in an article in The Times, on the eve of President Obama's UK visit.  Some former US Treasury Secretaries say it would be "difficult" to negotiate trade agreements outside the EU.  Really?  Does the USA not have lots of different trade agreements with nations and trading blocks across the globe?  Last time I looked they did. 

Leave campaigners accused the men of double standards and "belittling Britain's place in the world.  Not content with doing down Britain's economy, No 10 are now soliciting help from across the pond," a Vote Leave spokesman said.

Indeed, sadly that is a continuing refrain from the REMAIN camp, we're not good enough. But again last time I looked, the UK was more than holding its weight on the world stage.

• Fifth largest economy in the world.
• Fourth military power in the world.
• Leading member of the G7.
• One of five permanent seat-holders on the UN Security Council.
• Leading member of NATO.

Which all suggest we are at all the top tables in all the important areas of action in the world on our own merit, not because we are a member of the EU.

Is the world about to end?

According to the Stay in the EU camp, this could quite possibly be the outcome if we have the temerity to Vote Leave.

Michael Gove parodied the BSE campaign to stay in the EU:

“The City of London would become a ghost down, our manufacturing industries would be sanctioned more punitively than even communist North Korea, decades would pass before a single British Land Rover or Mr Kipling cake could ever again be sold in France and in the meantime our farmers would have been driven from the land by poverty worse than the Potato Famine. 

To cap it all, an alliance of Vladimir Putin, Marine Le Pen and Donald Trump, emboldened by our weakness, would, like some geopolitical equivalent of the Penguin, Catwoman and the Joker, be liberated to spread chaos worldwide and subvert our democracy. 

I sometimes think that the In campaign appears to be operating to a script written by George RR Martin and Stephen King. Brexit would mean a combination of A Feast for Crows and Misery. 

It’s a deeply pessimistic view of the British people’s potential, and a profoundly negative vision of the future which just isn’t rooted in reality. The idea that if Britain voted to leave the European Union we would instantly become some sort of hermit kingdom – a North Atlantic North Korea, only without that country’s fund of international good will – it’s a fantasy, it’s a phantom, it’s a great grotesque patronising and preposterous Peter Mandelsonian conceit, that imagines that the people of this country are mere children, capable of being frightened into obedience by conjuring up new bogeymen every night.”

Nice one.

Beware of the Fact Checkers, George.

Be careful when you say something in this internet age.  No sooner do you say something than it is being “fact checked” by various organisations. 

So when George Osbourne happily trumpeted the Treasury report warning of households being £4,300 a year worse off if we left the EU, he must have known it would be scrutinised in great depth.  So why did he say something so stupid, and was, as Fraser Neslon said, “simply breath-taking dishonesty“?

Others describe Osbourne with similar scathing terms.  Andrew Lilico says the Treasury report is “irrelevant” and Allister Heath describes as “shameful, undoubtedly the worst piece of research from a government department in years”. 

The BBC’s Reality Check is scathing:

“it is very difficult to predict anything in 15 years… it is a bit odd that the Treasury has used ONS forecasts for what will happen to population by 2030, without considering what difference leaving the EU would make… The precise figure [households £4,300 worse off] is questionable and probably not particularly helpful”

Channel 4’s well respected FactCheck goes further:

“It’s not quite right to say that Brexit “will cost each family £4,300”, since the actual impact on household incomes from a fall in GDP would almost certainly be lower… The Treasury paper offers a pessimistic view of what might happen to Britain if we left the EU”.

Ian Duncan Smith joined in:  “Also remember at the spending review in December 2015 the Treasury said we would have £27bn more in taxes by the end of the Parliament. By January, one month later, this forecast was revised down dramatically. If they can't forecast one month ahead, how reliable can the forecast be for 15 years ahead”.

So why did the Chancellor expose himself to such ridicule?  I don't know either.

There you go again, George.

Remember the Ronald Reagan one liner put down "there you go again" in the 1980 presidential debate with Jimmy Carter.  It all but ended the aspirations of Carter to serve a second term.

Is history repeating itself? Here we go again.  Another scare story.  They are getting so silly they are really beginning to make the Chancellor and the PM look like maniacal cartoon characters. Unbelievable.

So, to balance, here are some facts with you in relation to the EU referendum.

• By a 2:1 margin, UK businesses think the EU and Single Market are bad for jobs.
• About two-thirds of businesses think Britain should take back the power to make our own trade agreements
• Leading companies such as Vauxhall, Bentley, General Motors and JCB have said that their investment will not be damaged if we Vote Leave.

·         After we Vote Leave, we will have a friendly free trade deal with the EU. It is in all our interests.

Which does contrast rather with the scare tactic “facts” The Chancellor talked about on Monday.  A Treasury analysis, he suggests, shows an EU exit could see the UK economy 6% smaller than it would otherwise be by 2030 if we left the European Union.  Not many economists would bet their house on a prediction 14 years hence.  But the Chancellor expects us to accept his word.  Or more accurately, the Treasury’s word.  They may well be right.  But this of course is the same Treasury that got it so spectacularly wrong in the past.

• The Treasury failed to forecast the huge damage membership of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism would inflicted on the UK.
• The Treasury proffered dire warning if we didn’t join the Euro.  You can look back give thanks we didn’t join.  But what if the Treasury had got its way? 
• They failed to forecast the damage to the UK of the Eurozone crisis of 2011.

So if they got it so utterly wrong on such big occasions in the past, how can we be sure they will not get it wrong this time.  We can’t.  And given they were the major decision of the recent past they got wrong, really, would you as a business leader back their judgement?  I wouldn’t.  Which is why the LEAVE approach is not to come up with ridiculous figures.  Of course they are criticised for not doing so with the suggestion that not coming up with figures somehow indicates they don’t have big arguments in its favour.

And if you go to Vote Leave you will find masses of information to help you understand why it is vital we Vote Leave. 

Those who say Vote Leave have no ideas couldn’t be further from the truth.

There is one observation more people are beginning to make.  It looks like the debate is dividing into two camps.  One side has the Chief Executives, the hired guns as it were and the institutions of Europe and the UK government.  Increasingly on the other side are the real entrepreneurs and risk takers in society.  The people who set up and run their own businesses.  The ones who really do put their house on the line in the spirit of enterprise.

I’m not sure which one of these two groups you would put your faith in when it comes to looking after our nation’s future.  If you are like me, I think I would rather go with those with that entrepreneurial spirit.

If you do then our nation can truly begin to be freed to breathe again.

Poor wee UK, it could not cope on its own. Apparently.

Well, the starting pistol has been fired.  So as we begin, let us get some facts straight.  Things that we can all agree on.  Things Vote Leave and Britain Stronger in Europe can agree on.

Our place in the world.  The United Kingdom is the fifth largest economy in the world.  It is the fourth military power in the world.  It is a leading member of the G7.  It is one of five permanent seat-holders on the UN Security Council.  A leading member of NATO. These are facts about our position in the world no one can disagree with.  Which suggests we are at all the top tables in all the important areas of action in the world.  All on our own.  Not because we are part of the EU.

What about the economy?  Britain has created more jobs in the past five years than the other 27 EU states put together. Think about it, it is a truly extraordinary statistic. So our job creating economy is in a better state than the rest of the EU.

What happend on the road to Damascus?

The Conversion on the Way to Damascus (Conversione di San Paolo) is a masterpiece by Caravaggio, painted in 1601 for the Cerasi Chapel of the church Santa Maria del Popole, in Rome.

It depicts the moment recounted in Chapter 9 of the Book of Acts when Saul, soon to be the apostle Paul is overcome with the spirit of Jesus Christ and has been flung off of his horse.

And today we were, according to the trailing of the speech, to be treated to a story of a similar journey for Jeremy Corbyn from being all for the UK leaving the EU to his new Damascus state of being a convert to staying in the EU.

My only question about his speech was why did he take so long to deliver it.  He really only needed to say four words.  Conservatives bad.  Europe good.  The immediate analysis by a journalist from The Times after it suggested as much.  It really was just a Tory bashing speech dressed up with a bit of pro Europe tinsel.  Nothing about his journey of conversion..

Actually there was a sub text to his speech.  Well, it wasn’t so much a sub text.  It was more hitting you between the eyes.  Basically, according to Jeremy,  the EU is based on socialist ideas and as the leader of a socialist party he supports the EU because it is a body that is based on these socialist ideals.  He clearly said soon more than one occasion as if to rub in the point.

He called for an EU minimum wage to prevent "unscrupulous" employers from undercutting wages, and said: "Just imagine what the Tories would do to workers' rights here in Britain if we voted to leave the EU in June.  They'd dump rights on equal pay, working time, annual leave, for agency workers, and on maternity pay as fast as they could get away with it. It would be a bonfire of rights that Labour governments secured within the EU."

In other words, he has such little confidence in his own party gaining power he wants to off shore the making of our laws so that an unelected Commission in Brussels can do it for us.  Strange position that to adopt given all the stuff about off shoring tax in recent days.  But there you are, Labour are pro off shoring our law making.

Which led me to wonder, is Jeremy really in favour of leaving?  He will know that many people in the VoteLeave Take Control camp will use this as a tool to use for their campaign “what did we tell you,the EU is a left wing cabal”.  And now Jeremy has given them the ammunition to say so.

There was one really sad thing in his speech.  It is really amazing for the leader of the Opposition in the UK parliament to have such little respect for the authority or ability of the UK parliament to make laws for itself that we need to be subservient to others in Europe.  To take his thinking to a logical conclusion, we should just close down Westminster because he clearly thinks the EU is better placed and able to make our laws. 

If you don't like what voters do, don't let them vote.

Where do they think like this one may ask.  Some banana republic?  Some nasty dictatorship?  Some totalitarian regime?

Well, no. You couldn’t make this stuff up.  This is a direct quote from Fraser Cameron, a former senior adviser to the European Commission.

Fraser Cameron. "Perhaps it is time for an EU ban on referenda!"

"Referenda are becoming a huge problem for the EU.  The latest result in the Netherlands on the Association Agreement with Ukraine is probably the worst possible outcome. If the turnout had been below 30% the Dutch government could have safely ignored the vote…

Undoubtedly there is a growing trend towards referenda. There have been over 50 in the last twenty years. Sometimes referenda are forced upon governments if there is sufficient voter support, as was the case in the Netherlands… Perhaps it is time for an EU ban on referenda!”

Well I never, governments having to bow to the pressure of the people who elected them.  How radical is that.  But Fraser Cameron really wouldn’t know much about that.  As far as I can see he has never stood for election.  

Your money is not your own, apparently.

David Miliband was on the BBC Today programme this morning.  Most of the interview was about the EU.  He clearly has been out the country too long and was rather out of his depth under critical examination.  Tired and laboured slogans did nothing to inspire you.  Nothing new or constructive added to the debate.

To my ears it was a rather poor defence of staying beyond the usual scare stories.  But let’s grant him his some leeway as he is now based in the USA and perhaps is a little detached from the mood music that is going on in the opinion polls.

Whatever.  But he rather spoiled it all right at the end.  On inheritance tax.  He didn’t answer the question about his families own tax juggling on the occasion of his father’s passing.   

Instead he said “I think the government is proposing to increase to £1m the amount you can inherit.   I don’t support that.  There are better uses of public money.”  What?  Did her really say that?  Yes he did.  Listen from 1:57:03 at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b076c9j8#play .

In seven words he displayed the real motivations of the Labour party.   He really believes that your money is owned by the government.   

It’s all about how much they will leave us with after taxing us rather asking the question “what can we do that we can reasonably ask tax payers to pay for”.

All governments are given permission by we, the people, to allow them to levy taxes.  It is with our consent. They should not take our money for granted.  That includes an inheritance we may leave to our children.

IMF predicts UK growth on BREXIT

Here’s a funny thing.

The latest International Monetary Fund figures predict that UK growth will outpace both Germany and France as well as the Eurozone as a whole in the short term in the aftermath of the UK taking control of its own future by leaving the EU.  

So why, in the next breath, is IMF chief Christine Lagarde talking up the view that freedom for the UK on a world stage by achieving Brexit will damage the UK.   What?  Both cant be right surely.  As one of my business colleagues always tell me, always forget the spin.  Numbers don’t tell lies.   So I think we should stick to them rather than listen to spin.

And is this not Christine Lagarde, the lady who is due to stand trial over an alleged €400 million fraud case?

Anyway, the Bank of England will stand ready to flood liquidity into the markets in the event of Brexit, which will have a soporific effect on markets. 

Cumulative economic impact?  Nothing will change, except, the UK will have gained political, economic and democratic freedom.

There is a long way to go before the vote, but the Financial Times is suggesting that a LEAVE vote is becoming more likely.

Define balance.

Balance?  What is balance?  And what do we mean when we say the BBC should balance its coverage?

It is not just the paranoid nerds who think something is not quite right at the BBC when it comes to things relating to the EU.  It has emerged  that one of the BBC’s flagship news programmes has shown a “strong” bias towards Britain staying in the European Union (EU).

Work done by News-watch, a media monitoring group, suggested that from the 13th of January to the 11th of March 2016, Newsnight had 25 guests who appeared on the programme who were in favour of Britain staying in the EU, compared to only 14 who advocated the UK leaving the EU.

In a slightly surreal note given this is supposed to be a democratic process, News-watch  noted that: “The former President of the EU Commission, José Manuel Barroso, and the former Swedish Prime Minister, Carl Bildt, have had the clear opportunity in main interviews to explain why leaving the EU would not be in the UK’s interest".  

There has been no balancing opinion from similarly weighty figures” who support Britain leaving the EU.

Makes you think.

Oh, and another little aside, did you notice in the credits on the Obama four part series on BBC?  The final credit show that one of the funders of the programme was, the EU.  Well, there you go.  I’m sure the president will repay what was a very soft analysis of his presidency with a barnstorming performance on why the UK should stay in the EU.

£9.3m = 408 nurses.

Dear Tax Payer.  David Cameron, our prime minister, is spending £9.3million on a pamphlet which will go to every home the UK to tell you one side of the EU referendum story.  Basically, to tell you how to vote.  (Don’t they do that in N Korea and China?)

By all accounts it is a pretty ridiculous document.  But let us lay aside the content.  Any sensible person will take one look at it and dismiss it as propaganda, no matter what side of the debate they are on.

If David Cameron really believes he has a totally brilliant case, would it not have been better to go to an outside body, some respectable organisation, that could draw up a document giving a balanced view?  If David Cameron is so sure he is right, he would not have any problem with that, would he?. He knows his view of the facts would win people to his view.  Doesn't he?

But no, just days before the “purdah” time begins, the prime minister uses your money and mine to send us a pretty ropey piece of propaganda.  My goodness, there is many a dictator in the world who would blush at such bravado.

And as an aside, £9.3m could pay for 408 nurses for one year.

Knock knock. Who's there?

“If people vote to leave it will automatically follow that no British government can ratify the present TTIP.  Thereafter, we can take back control and protect the NHS.”  So said David (now Lord) Owen in a speech today. 

What’s this?  The LEAVE campaign getting into in the act of scare stories?  Well I never!

And on he went, taking to bits this argument for staying, demolishing another.  A bit of a star performance by all accounts.  Indeed, one journalist present observed that “A Big Beast was in full flow. No one dared intervene.”

Given the government have arranged for a scare story a day to keep the Leave vote away, maybe it’s time to stop being nice by simply saying the benefits of leaving.  Perhaps the LEAVE camp should start telling the scare stories of staying.  And there are big ones to tell.  

Let’s start with one.  Imagine you get a knock on the door tomorrow.  There is a police man.  He has come to take you away, to another country.  For a minor offence that may not even be an offence in the UK.   

Yes, you are about to be taken from the UK on a European Arrest Warrant that allows British citizens to be sent abroad and charged for crimes in foreign courts, often for minor offences.  No need to appear in a court in the UK before they take you out of the UK.   They will just take you. 

Don’t think it won’t happen.  It already has already happened to many individuals who have ended up in foreign gaols with no bail, on occasion for over a year, for a small misdemeanour like a traffic offence that may result in a fine in the UK..  Lives, jobs, families destroyed.  And we can’t stop it.   

Imagine that was you, or your son or daughter.  Leaving would stop this madness.