Increasing taxation increases austerity for normal people.

Ending austerity?  Well it appears more and more that increasing taxation is the way to stop austerity.  Yes, tax everyone to allow the government to have more money.  Austerity on the government purse will end.    

But hang on a moment, if you take money away from Mr or Mrs Average, that will mean they will actually be poorer.  So the government may have less austerity.  But the people who pay for it will be poorer, hence living in greater austerity.  Funny old world isn’t it.

We already have a deal on the table. It's called WTO.

James McGrory from pressure group Open Britain, said there should be "a choice between leaving with the deal that the government negotiates, or staying in the European Union". 

Sorry, James, it might have escaped you but that vote has already happened.  No matter the deal, we're leaving the EU. 

Anyhow, as anyone who understands business knows, and this is where Gina Millars involvement in Open Britain surprises me because she does understand, we won’t be leaving without a deal.  WTO is already on the table.   

That is the deal we will leave with if the EU continue to refuse to negotiate in good faith. The only question is, if the EU does come up with a deal, will be the deal be better than what we get already from WTO.  If not, no deal with the EU.  It’s not as if we won’t continue trading with EU nations as Remainers try to assert. We will continue to trade, from day one. They can’t stop us. It will just be on WTO rules which 50% of UK international trade already operates under.  Our businesses are well used to trading globally under WTO.

Airbus

So Airbus threatens to stop dealing with the UK after we leave the EU. Hang on a minute.  Is this the same Airbus that has a factory in the USA and since 1990, has spent some $200 billion dollars with hundreds of U.S. suppliers – $48 billion in the last three years alone.    I don’t recall the USA being in the EU.

Airbus opened its first commercial aircraft production site in the United States in 2015.  The U.S. Manufacturing Facility, in Mobile, Alabama, produces A319s, A320s and A321s.  Not only that, Airbus has identified global sourcing as one of its long-term objectives and aims to source 40% outside Western Europe and the U.S. by 2020. 

So the stories about Brexit are laughable at best, or at worst, deliberate industrial sabotage by Remainers.

Where is your ambition?

You know, the longer it goes on, the more scare stories that are produced, the more utterly ridiculous forecasts that are made, it all leaves me sadly coming to conclusion that the most vocal Remainers are people without talent, who cannot do anything for themselves or others.    

For example they think our laws are better made by people we don’t elect, namely the four arms of the European Empire, that is the European Commission, the European Council, the European Parliament and the European Court of Justice of the European Union.  

As a reminder, the facts are, the European Union makes two thirds of UK law if we count EU regulations which, according to the treaties we have signed over the years, we must implement as part of 'UK law'.While it is true EU direct influence on UK-only laws is about 13%, the reality is there is an additional 52% of laws we have to obey that are EU wide and not UK specific.   

So it’s pretty disconcerting that as much as 13%, or indeed any laws or regulations that are UK only laws, should be set by people we have no power to vote out of office.  That certainly is not democratic.   

As Joshua Rozenberg noted back in 2013, a decision by the Employment Appeal Tribunal shows that EU law will trump laws passed by parliament.  The ruling demonstrates once again that EU law trumps laws passed by parliament. Despite all the attention paid to human rights law, EU law is much more powerful. 

But back to Remainers. They seem to believe we won't, as an independent nation, have the wit nor will nor ambition to improve our standard of living, to improve our environmental standards beyond the EU one size fits all belief, or produce better law.   

Where is their self-motivation?  Why do they believe we have to depend on others?   Why do they seriously believe we will be worse off in the medium long term freed from the EU?  

The EU will go down in history as an empire that lasted barely a few generations.  And like most empires that collapse, the root will be they left the people behind because they, the ones at the top, thought they knew best.

Back in Paris in 1849 in Les Guêpes, the Private Eye of its time, Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr remarked, with rather bitter wit, “Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose”.   How true.

It's Anarchy in the UK.

So, another day, another group of non-democrats.  This time a grassroots group of Jeremy Corbyn supporters and trade unions is to launch a major UK speaking tour, billed as the left-wing campaign to remain in the UK.   The Left Against Brexit tour will attempt to persuade Corbyn and his allies of the left-wing case for a pro-EU position and will argue that the party can reap electoral benefits from a shift.     

Maybe they haven't noticed but the time for people to persuade others has passed.  There was ample time before the referendum.  And even with the resources of Government, the EU, and all the pro EU organisations like the CBI, they still could not persuade the people of the UK of its case.  They tried to persuade a majority of their view.  And they failed.   And they didn’t like the answer the people gave.   

What bit of democracy don't these people get?   

Add to the mix the extremists the other side of the left vs right divide, people like George Soros and Nick Clegg and MPs like Kenneth Clarke and Anna Soubry, and it is quite a cast.   

If these people do get their way, we will have kissed goodbye to democracy.  What is the point in voting if the people who have the power simply ignore the will of the people as given in a democratic vote all sides said they would accept. One could argue that they have already, by their actions, introduced anarchy in the UK.  Want to know what that looks like?

Fish is good for you.

Talking of food stuff, Bertie Armstrong of the Scottish Fishing Federation gives us one of the clearest and most sensible analysis of what’s going on in the EU trade negotiations.  

 “We don't ask for a share of French grapes as they sell us wine - so why are they asking the same for fishing?” 

It's bananas.

Typical BBC.   

Nick Triggle, the BBC Health correspondent, states in a headline in an article this morning that “Tax rises needed 'to prevent NHS misery'” makes them a slave to the Labour party.  If they had said, as Laura Kuenssberg, BBC political editor carefully did in a report this morning on the Today programme, that spending needs to rise, that would have been ok.  Subtle but very important difference.

But the BBC has assumed it knows best and says the way to increase spending on the NHS is to increase taxes.  No it is not.  The other ways are, cut out the waste that already exists in the NHS.  And secondly, cut funding to other less important budgets and transfer the moment to the NHS.    

If you or I all of a sudden needed, for example, to eat more bananas than we did before, while continuing to eat the same amount of other food, we would look at all of our other spending and decide what we could cut back on so that we could have the bananas.  It might mean difficult decisions.  But I am sure none of us would take the decision to go out and rob someone for the price of the bananas. 

Only people like Sir Patrick should have the vote.

So actor Sir Patrick Stewart, who backs the campaign to stay in the EU, said that if people voted to reject the exit deal in a second referendum, the UK would "simply stay" in the EU.  For the record, one million, two hundred and sixty nine thousand, five hundred and one more citizens voted leave than voted remain.

If it had been the reverse at the vote in 2016 and we had been asked do you want to join the EU, there would have been no question as to the outcome if the vote had been Yes.  We would have voted to join all the institutions, the single currency and courts of the EU.  No cherry picking.  

It may have escaped his notice but the people of the UK voted to leave the EU.  That vote is over with.  And the two key things that came from that vote are, one we voted to leave the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice and two, we voted for our UK parliament to be sovereign over our laws.   

The only thing now to consider is what sort of relationship does the remainder of the EU want with the UK.   

Yes, perhaps people don’t like the result.  I often don’t like the result of elections.  But that doesn’t mean you can over turn it just because you don’t like it.   

People like Sir Patrick simply don’t believe in democracy.  They believe they know better than the majority who voted Leave.   

Putting it simply, they believe people who voted Leave are stupid and didn’t know what they were doing when they voted the wrong way.  On that basis we should only allow people like Sir Patrick to vote in elections and to be on juries at trials.  No one else will understand the complexities of the issues to be decided.

The problem with GPS.

Next week I’m going to a meeting in my local Town Hall to learn what NATS are planning to do to the flightpaths around Glasgow Airport.  Big changes to save fuel and pollution is their headline.  (Will our ticket prices be reduced if less fuel is used?  No, I don’t think so either.) 

Anyway, NATS Holdings, formerly National Air Traffic Services and commonly referred to as NATS, are the business that boasts of being the UK's leading provider of air traffic control services.  Each year they handle 2.4 million flights and 250 million passengers in UK airspace.   In addition to providing services to 14 UK airports, and managing all upper airspace in the UK, they provide services around the world spanning Europe, the Middle East, Asia and North America. So a big important business.  And big on keeping our skies safe.

So why is NATS going full steam ahead for GPS based systems?   

Reflect for a momnet back to last June when more than 20 ships on the Black Sea noticed something odd about their satellite-based navigation systems. Instead of being at sea the systems said they were actaully on land.  Instead of their true positions well away from Russia’s south-west border, each ship’s GPS placed it inland at Gelendzhik, a small airport terminal!  

Now, if ships can be miles away from where they thought they were, imagine a plane being disorientated. 

Remember the problems the USA navy has been experiencing with apparently invincible ships hitting commercial ones?  Then there was the US Navy plane that crashed into the ocean southeast of Okinawa, marking at least the sixth apparent accident involving a Navy asset in East Asian waters in 12 months.  

GPS being interfered with? 

One does wonder if our reliance on the ColdWar satellite technology is an accident waiting to happen.

One more thing Sir Vince.....

Too many older people who voted for Brexit were "driven by nostalgia" for a world where "faces were white" Sir Vince Cable also said today at his party conference. 

Maybe it’s just me, but that sounds awfully close to calling 17,410,742 Leave voters racists. 

Sir Vince believes he knows better than 17,410,742 voters.

The Lib Dem leader said today that the votes of the older generation had "crushed the hopes and aspirations of young people for years to come."  Quite hysterical language I dare to suggest. 

17,410,742  million people thought quite the opposite.  That free from the EU they will have greater chances in a bigger world.  His suggestion that because younger people voted to stay is easily countered by the notion that older people are wiser through years more experience and know how bad the EU is to those who transgress it.  See what they did to Greece, Italy and Ireland.

But clearly Sir Vince isn’t really a democrat.  He prefers to think his opinion is more important than a majority of the electorate.  Perhaps that is why his party is in such a state.

Foreign powers

Tony Blair, John Major and Jeremy Corbin.  Two former prime ministers and one who aspires to be pm.   

One does wonder if any are the agents of a foreign power such as the EU.

Does John Major despise the people of the UK? It looks like it.

So John Major thinks British people have “every right” to reverse a democratic vote with further referendum.  No Sir John, they don’t.   That option wasn't on the ballot paper.  

His words are all the more remarkable when you consider that when he thought the Remain camp had it in the bag, he said somthing rather different.   

“There will not be another referendum on Europe. This is it.”  Yip, Sir John Majors own words on 29^th May 2016.   

After he was elected to office I didn’t hear anyone say there should be a right to a second vote to try and oust the Conservatives from power.    

Nor when Tony Blairs government was elected.  What the people do have a right to is, at some time in the future, apply to re-join the EU.  

But that two former prime ministers should be so unwilling to accept the democratic will of the people of the UK is, to put it mildly, unsettling.

What's the point in voting?

If we had been voting on 23 June 2016 on the question “Do you want to join the EU”, there would have been no doubt that a Yes vote would mean we had to join the EU, no picking bits we liked and rejecting  other bits we didn’t.  That’s what happens when you vote in a democracy.   

So what’s so different when we vote to leave the EU?  We are told now by the Labour leader that leave doesn’t actually mean leave.   

Now that Labour, the Liberal Democrats, a number of Conservatives have given up any pretence they are democratic, can they explain to us how ordinary people whose democratic voice they have taken away are supposed to respond?    

One hardly needs to look far in time or distance to see the disasters that occur when the elite believe they know best.

Deal or No Deal.

I went to see Darkest Hour last night.  A most moving and revealing film about Churchill and, among others, Halifax.  It was a story of two ways to deal with a problem.  Negotiate or fight.   

The negotiators led by the persuasive Halifax felt that Hitler had the upper hand and to stand up to him would lead to more deaths.  We can get a negotiated settlement he intoned.  Hitler won’t be that bad to us if we negotiate now.  He will be fair.     

The other side, led by Churchill said, no, Hitler can’t be trusted.  We must fight.  One of the most remarkable scenes is (spoiler alert) when Churchill goes on the London Underground and meets real people.  They overwhelmingly say we must never give in to Hitler.  Never, never, never.  Did that really happen?  Probably not.  But Churchill must have taken "soundings", an early version of the focus groups the Blair government was so fond of.   So on one hand the professional politicians and military who wanted to go one way, and the people who wanted something else.  The people got their way.  And five years later it resulted in victory.    

While there is no comparison of the evil and wickedness of the Third Reich and the EU, it is almost like a parable.  On leaving the EU, politicians on one side say, let us negotiate a deal, I’m sure the EU will be generous and reasonable towards us, let’s trust them.   The other side says, let’s put markers in the sand, lines we will not cross.     

Clearly some people haven’t learned anything from history. As Churchill said, "you can't negotiate with a tiger when your head is in its mouth".

No cliff edge ahead.

When we leave the EU, the question is not trade deal or no trade deal.   

Only those who are either deliberately wanting to sink the only vote that mattered, the vote of the people of the UK that parliament itself set in train, or those who don’t understand how trade works, talk about that so called nightmare scenario.   

But that’s not the way it will be.  If we say our base line is WTO, if the EU cannot come up with a trade deal that is better than what we have under WTO, we go with WTO.   

We should now kick the ball back firmly in the court of the EU and say, we're going with WTO unless you can come up with a better deal.   

Simple.  

A final thought.  On the 29th of May 2019 we leave the EU.  That has already been voted on by parliament.  Unless there is a repeal Bill, and who would introduce that given parliament voted in favour of triggering Article 50, we’re out.

Keeping the poor, poor. It’s what the EU does so well.

You probably have never heard of Ahmed Shiaan.  He is the Maldives’ Ambassador to the UK.   Nice place he comes from you must be thinking.  And it is.  

But paradise comes with its own problems.  The EU causes him and his country problems.  The EU deliberately keeps the people in his country poor.    

EU protectionism has hampered their largest export, tuna, through a 24% tariff – unless, and here is the rub, it is to be processed in the EU.    

He explains how this has harmed economic development in the Maldives and expresses his hope for a Free Trade Agreement with the UK.  Oh yes, the EU generously offers the Maldives a 0% tariff on fresh tuna, provided it  destined for processing in the EU.  The “added value” is made up in the processing.  So by not allowing the import into the EU of tuna unless it is to be processed in the EU means the people of Maldives remain poor.  So the people of Maldives can’t ever get the opportunity to actually make money on the most profitable part of the tuna industry, the processing.   

I wrote about this before in relation to coffee.    

The EU is a protectionist club that destroys opportunity in some of the poorest nations in the world so that its people can make a fortune.    It is morally outrageous.  Yet that is exactly what he EU is doing in your name. 

The EU artificially creates the conditions to capture more of the value chain.  At the same time, it stymies the development of canning facilities in the Maldives by encouraging raw export.  The long-term consequences of this is a lack of development. 

The sooner we are out of this rotten club the better.

Mind your language.

The government doesn’t command an overall majority. There is a small minority party.   

When it comes to votes they “are supporting” the government.    Or perhaps they are “propping up the government”.  What’s the difference?   

Well, on the BBC today the former description as used to describe the relationship between the SNP and the Greens.  The second description was for the Conservative and the DUP.  

It smacks of bias.  Language matters.

"We want the United States of Europe".

It’s a while since the Referendum on whether we wanted to remain or leave the European Union.  It’s a while since we heard much from Martin Schulz.  Remember him?   President of the European Parliament 2012 to 2017.   

Now he is back in Germany serving as Leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany since March 2017 and a Member of the Bundestag since September 2017.   He was a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from Germany from 1994 to 2017.  So, putting it mildly, he knows all about the EU and where it;s going.   

Well, today he spoke again.   

And if what he said doesn’t make everyone in the UK sit up and take notice, they must be mad.    

He told the SDP party conference that a new EU treaty should be presented to member states creating a United States of Europe and countries who oppose it must leave the EU.  He demanded “there to be a constitutional treaty to create a federal Europe… the treaty will be presented to the member states and those who are against should just leave the European Union… We want the United States of Europe”.     

And he doesn’t want to hang about.  His plan is for this to come into existence by 2025.  And, remarkably, some Remainers think they have a hope of changing the public’s mind about Brexit.   

Somehow I don’t think we will be seeing his thoughts on the News at Ten tonight.  It's the last thing Remainers would want the people in the UK to hear.

German cars. German profits.

Germany dominates car production across Europe and makes eight of the top selling cars in the UK.  

So says an investigation by car magazine AutoExpress.    

Which, putting it in incredibly simple terms, means Germanys car industry needs the UK.  It makes a fortune here.  They want to sell to us.  We want to buy.   

But if the EU plays its hand the way they are, when we leave the EU, German built cars will be much less of an attractive proposition to UK buyers.  

So, I may be wrong, but I don’t think the board rooms of BMW, VAG and Mercedes will like the idea of the EU and their chancellor punishing the UK.  It will punsh them too and with it take away a rather delicious slice of their profits.  And jobs.