Just flagging up an issue.....

 

Today outside a court in Edinburgh.  Not one UK or Scottish flag in the picture.   

Sadly, it kind of says it all.  They really do want us to be totally subservient to the EU.  

Meanwhile, the rest of us were spending the day working, earning money so that Ms Cherry and her SNP friends can take a slice off to spend on their pet projects. 

The question is, why do they hate the UK so much? 

Contempt. That is what remainers like Ms Cherry hold 17,410,742 people in.

Ms Cherry said it was a well-established principle in law that it was unlawful for a minister, including the Prime Minister, to do anything that frustrated or undermined the principle of an Act of Parliament.   

Really Joanna?   You having a laugh?    

Is she then going to explain why she and her anti-democratic friends are seeking to do just that by undermining the legislation that was passed into law by her fellow MPs?  It is Ms Cherry and her colleagues that should be held in contempt, not just by the courts as they clearly are the ones who are frustrating and Act of Parliament, but by the public.   

Let’s not forget, more people in Scotland voted to leave the EU than voted SNP at the last general election.    

A final point, can you think of any other democracy that has had its legislators voting against what they themselves had enacted? 

Want to know Lib Dems policy?

A Third Way.

So Saturday is straightforward now.  Deal or no deal, if we are to believe President Juncker who ruled out granting an extension to the UK.  Mind you, I'm not sure he talked to everyone else at the EC before he spoke.  So what’s new! 

But assuming he’s is right, and why wouldn’t he be, the EU refusing an extension means for MPs there is genuinely this New Deal or No Deal, no matter how much parliamentary trickery they engage in.       

So at the Super Saturday’s sitting, MPs will be presented with a single motion, a choice between Boris’s new negotiated deal and no deal. This will be entirely compliant with the provisions of the Benn Act, rendering it meaningless.  By voting against the deal MPs would have given consent to leaving on the 31st without a deal.  Genius in its simplicity…      

Interestingly, as Arron Banks noted, if you step back from entrenched positions that exist in NI, the deal could turn NI into an economic powerhouse with a foot in both camps.  Thye would benefit from UK trade deals and inward investment from UK co.  Talk about win win!!  

Paradoxically, it would stop a United Ireland becoming reality.  Why would the population of NI throw away their new found status and riches to join the Republic of Ireland, a withering economic branch of a failing EU empire.  

But there is a third way (sorry Tony Blair).   

Given no deal is agreed till its signed, on Saturday, and assuming the Commons is sitting, perhaps the prime minister should tell MPs he has changed his mind.  He can tell them he has just pressed the reboot button and taken us right back to the stage before Mrs May ludicrously agreed to Brussels’s sequencing of the talks (in its favour) in which she agreed to hand over £39 billion without knowing what we were getting in return.  So an extension will be used to run both the agreement and trade talks in parallel which can be signed together in three months’ time.     

Now, that would get my vote!

Disingenuous? Doesn't do him justice.

Well, today Remainer MPs voted to allow backbench MPs to amend Boris Johnson's Brexit plans, in a knife edge vote that passed by 287 votes to 275.   

But it was the words of one MP that really caught my eye.  I am really not sure I have ever heard or read anything quite as astonishingly disingenuous as this from Sir Oliver Letwin today.   

He told MPs, with a straight face: "That will enable those of us, like me, who wish to support and carry through and eventually see the ratification of this deal, not to put us in the position of allowing the government off the Benn Act hook on Saturday, but only at a time when the bill has been taken through both Houses of Parliament and legislated on."   

His words fool no one.  Clearly he does not want us to leave the EU.   He is just cynically seeking to continue his mission to overturn the votes of 17,410,742 people. And it is he and his ilk that will be to blame should unrest befall our nation if we don't leave. They truly are playing with fire.

What the UK buys and sells in a day.

It was kind of sad to see Ed Balls, the former Labour shadow chancellor, on his series on BBC2 to be apparently so out of his depth, discovering things that you would have thought, and hoped, the person who had his eyes of one day taking the great office of Chancellor of the  Exchequer would have had fully under his grasp and understanding.   

No so. Like a child in the metaphorical sweetshop he was wide eyed at the issues faced in the port of Southampton.  Take the number of cars that went out and in each day.  He dicovered there were more cars coming in than going out, though the cars going out were much higher value and going around the world while the ones coming in were almost exclusively from the EU.   

Just ponder that fact for a moment.    

And yet that boyish charm of his seemed to wave away the underlying thought that this was actually probably the first time he had been in a place like Southampton, away and free from political slogans.   

Going back to Episode One where he first discovered that the majority of stuff going in and out of the UK wasn’t coming or going to the EU but to the big wide world which we are actually pretty good at trading with, in spite of all the limitations that being in the EU  brings to exporters.   

Unfortunately he spoiled the whole programme with his last sentence, a somewhat disingenuous and naïve comment about Brexit.  The programme didn’t need politics in it.  Particularly when his comment went against everything he had just discovered in the programme.

The UK is a world trader.

All around the world they are doing it.

It’s been happening in Northern Ireland since 2002.  And it happens in Europe in Greece, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden.  I could go on with the European list.  Worldwide?  It happens in Brazil, Greece, Argentina, India, Israel, Iceland, and so on.   A really big list!

What am I talking about?  The need to present some form of identification to authenticate who you are before you can cast your vote in an election.   Mr Corbyns response to the inclusion of this in the Queens Speech? "The people that the Tories are trying to stop voting will be disproportionately from ethnic minority backgrounds, and they will disproportionately be working class voters of all ethnicities."   

Now, this has all come to the surface after a report that showed there is evidence of voter fraud “especially in communities of Pakistani and Bangladeshi background” but that the cases have been ignored because of “over-sensitivities about ethnicity and religion”.  The report continues with the warning that “challenging issues” over community cohesion should never be an “excuse” for failing to “uphold the rule of law and protect British liberties”.   

So back to Labour.  One can’t help but ask, why is Mr Corbyn so dismissive of the intelligence of people he claims to represent?  He is in effect saying they clearly are not clever enough to get themselves registered in the free system that will be available at all local authority offices.  Indeed, why would anyone not want to?  

Which forces you to ask the very uncomfortable question, why is Labour so against the idea of making our electoral system safer from fraud?  Answers on a postcard…..

Remember Lisbon?

What other nation in the world, apart from Ireland in its caving in to the Lisbon Treaty with a 2nd referendum, would allow itself to be so humiliated by being told by a foreign power that we had to hold a 2nd  vote on our leaving the EU or a general election on a decision we already democratically have taken?   

No MP could possibly vote for such a democratic outrage.

Benefits outweigh downsides of brexit.

No, not the words of some LibDem or Labour MP who has seen the light, unfortunately.  No, these are words from people who actually know what they are talking about.  The people who are at the very sharp pointy end of all this leaving the EU stuff.

The overwhelming focus on the negative impacts of Brexit on UK and EU ports has eclipsed positive outcomes of the ongoing process of Britain’s departure from the European Union.  This was the theme at the UK Ports Conference earlier this year when a number of panellists spoke of the operational benefits and opportunities of Brexit.     

For example, Oxera partner Andrew Meaney praised the development of better working relationships between ports and governments as a direct result of Brexit.  He said that ports within the UK and EU are “in a pretty decent place” and that there's “a lot of reasons to be cheerful”.   Even though the sector is plagued with uncertainty as a result of the departure deal being negotiated, ports now have close working relationships with government that were not there three to four years ago, he said. “That's a positive.”      

Chantal McRoberts, principal consultant at Drewry Maritime Advisors, pointed out that there is spare port capacity in the UK which could be seen as an opportunity for shifting cargo flows from traditional UK import hubs, which would relieve pressure. “If I were certain ports, I would be out there meeting and marketing that opportunity for that risk management option,” she said. “There is some flex in the system. Dover is not the be-all and end-all.”      

UK Major Ports Group chief executive Tim Morris agreed that customers are now re-thinking supply chains which could bring opportunities in volume light, but value rich areas. “It's possible we'll see a future that’s a lot more about value rather than volume growth,” he said.     

Meanwhile, Nick Clarke, global service line director for ports, marine and waterways at Ramboll, said that the key to making the best use of the opportunities presented by Brexit is for ports to be “flexible, prepared and able to deliver”.   He added that master-planning and being ready with consenting will be critical in how well ports adapt to this changing market.

My only comment is, if these people quoted here are living in the real word, what world are politicians living in when they see nothing but obstacles?  Their real problem is, they have probably never actually worked in the the productive side of the economy that creates wealth.  They, in all likely hood, have always been on the side of spending taxpayers money.  It shows.

Adapted from an article on www.portstrategy.com

Stopping Brexit is like fighting the Nazis.

Yip, you read that headline correctly.  But Mr David Charles, a Lib Dem prospective parliamentary candidate, has apologised for saying stopping Brexit is like fighting the Nazis when he said: “So we have to stop this - just as we stopped the Nazis in Germany and their sympathizers is this country at the time from destroying this country in the 1930s (sic).”.   

So hang on a minute, what did he apologise for?  Mr Chalmers apologised "for the use of any language that has caused offence".   

Notice that?  He didn’t actually apologise for what he said, only if had caused offence.  Welcome to the new world of the Lib Dems.  

Mind you a few years ago Sir Vince Cable did himself no favours with a remarkable Nazi jibe at then prime minster, Mrs May, as he accused her of using language that could have featured in Hitler's Mein Kampf.   

But what of the current leader of the Lib Dems, Jo Swinson.  She rightly told others to mind their language in an emotional speech in the Commons a few days ago.  Mind you, her target was the prime minster who, if you actually take the time to listen to the debate in which she made the comment, his use of the word “humbug” was deliberately taken out of context by the media.  And his use of “surrender bill” was entirely warranted as the Benn bill surrenders all UK power to the EU as to when we can and can’t leave the EU for good.  Parliament itself won’t have a say.  Go read it.   

So Lib Dems, follow your leaders advice.  Stop calling people names just because they believe in a different kind of democracy from you.

German cars.

Did you know that the UK consumes a fifth of German car exports?     

Did you know that the UK is the market with the highest profit margin for German car manufacturers?      

So why would Germany not want to reach a deal with the UK based on trade alone without the encumbrance of a political deal?      

The answer is straightforward. Because the EU will not retreat on its desire to create an EU state.  And this is the hub of the current battles.  It's not about a backstop.  It's about the future of the UK.

The evidence?  Every single one of the following is in European Commission documents plotting its journey ahead.  Some are already in place.  The others are on their way.   

Single army.  Single foreign policy.  Single tax structure.  Single social policy.  Single market.  Single immigration system.  Single judiciary.  Single currency.  Single anthem.  Get the picture?    

I do not recall in the debates a single Remainer putting forward a positive case for staying in the EU.  It was all negative.  Doom and gloom.  Perhaps they just forgot to tell us the truth of the EUs ambitions.  Perhaps they didn't want to tell us the truth for they knew the people of the UK would have voted in even larger numbers to leave.  And rather than defend their position of a federal EU they continue to accuse the Leave side for not telling the truth.  Take the number on the side of the bus.   £350m.  It turns out the figure was indeed wrong.  The real figure was higher with the Office of National Statistics confirming that the Gross payment to Brussels in the period the bus was doing its rounds was £18.9 billion a year, or £363 million a week.  But so far i have not heard an apology fort any one in the Remain side.  Funny that. 

Remainers need to look at the plank in their own eye.

Who is right?

So the Supreme Court is the last word I interpreting the law?  Well, certainly some people think otherwise. 

Indeed, such was the partisan nature and bizarreness of the judgement to some they think its needs to re visited.  Even though it is unlikely that it will be.   One such critic of the judgement is Professor John Finnis.  “The Judgement was wholly unjustified by law” and “should be recognised as a historic mistake, not a victory for fundamental principle”.   Very strong views.  But when you read his paper on the Policy Exchange, you can begin to see his views make sense.        

The Professor argues, not unreasonably, that the Judgement itself undercuts the genuine sovereignty of Parliament by evading a statutory prohibition – Article. 9 of the Bill of Rights 1689 – on judicial questioning of proceedings in Parliament.  He demonstrates that the Judgement was wholly unjustified by law and “it wrongly transfers the conventions about prorogation into the domain of justiciable law”.  His conclusion is that the Supreme Court Judgement is an “inept foray into high politics and should be recognised as a historic mistake, not a victory for fundamental principle”.      

So why did the Supreme Court take such a different understanding as to what its role was?  Well, unfortunately given the comments made by at least one of the judges who sat on that bench, personal political views may have played a part.  Wearing a brooch that implied she had taken down the Hulk (the nick name some use of the prime minister) and bragging that she had done so was, putting it mildly, insensitive.  And certainly not neutral.     

There are many reason why we are in the place we are.  The main one of course is that extreme Remainers refuse to accept the result of the biggest democratic vote our nation has ever undertaken.  That those Courts don’t consider this democratic fact in any of their judgements perhaps says something about what they see as their priorities.  Upholding the democratic will of the nation?  Or continually upholding the complainants who seek to overturn that democratic mandate? Seems increasingly more like the latter.

Just read what your parliament has agreed to.

"The Prime Minister must seek to obtain from the European Council an extension of the period under Article 50(3) of the Treaty on European Union ending at 11.00pm on 31 October 2019 by sending to the President of the European Council a letter in the form set out in the Schedule to this Act requesting an extension of that period to 11.00pm on 31 January 2020 in order to debate and pass a Bill to implement the agreement between the United Kingdom and the European Union under Article 50(2) of the Treaty on European Union, including provisions reflecting the outcome of inter-party talks as announced by the Prime Minister on 21 May 2019, and in particular the need for the United Kingdom to secure changes to the political declaration to reflect the outcome of those inter-party talks."

Just imagine taking that sort of strategy into a car showroom when you next want to buy a car.

Be careful what you wish for, Joanna.

Perhaps SNP MP Joanna Cherry, QC, should be careful about what she wishes for in her seeking to have a court rule that the prime minister could be sent to prison for not sending the Brexit Surrender letter to the EU.

It is not that long ago that her colleagues in the Scottish parliament, in relation to the Named Persons Act, a piece of legislation that would not have been out of place in North Korea, were seeking to ignore a ruling from the Supreme Court when it ruled that the information sharing involved in the scheme breached the European Convention on Human Rights.   

So would she have similarly gone to court to see Mr Swinney going to the Big Hoose, aka the Bar-L, aka Barlinnie Prison for refusing to implement the Supreme Court ruling?   

Thought not.

Choices time. Which is worse?

A British rapper, slowthai, yes, that’s his stage name, screaming obscenities such as "f*** Boris" during the live BBC Four broadcast of the Mercury Prize awards ceremony while brandishing an effigy of Boris Johnson’s severed head. (I’ve yet to hear if the producer of the show, who must, or should have known the stunt was going to happen, is still in a job.).    

Or how about when Liam Byrne who said the PM was guilty of treason?   That's a very strong accusation.  And to proclaim guilt before he's even been tried, that sounds like a kangaroo court to me.  Anyway, as one response to Mr Byrne noted, “How could anyone know it was illegal before the Supreme Court published its conclusion. Even the English High Court initially found it was not illegal”. 

Or Jess Phillips who said she will “knife Corbyn in the front”.   Which is odd for Jess as she is, more often than not, measured and sensible.

But one of the biggest offenders is John McDonnell, shadow chancellor and the real Marxist brains behind Corbyn.  His track record includes comparing the PM to a "dictator" during WWII, fantasised about murdering Margaret Thatcher, made the infamous “lynch the b*tch” comments on Esther McVey, accused the Conservatives of social murder and to round it off wanted to garrote Lib Dem Danny Alexander.  What a nice turn of phrase he has.   Of course he now says they were all just in jest.  Aye, right.

Mr Corbyn and Ms Abbot do not have clean hands either.  They have, amongst other things, alleged that the Conservative /Lib Dem coalition government killed 120,000 people and the Conservative were “cruel and callous”.  Other Labour figures also get in on the act.   David Lammy said Leavers behaved like Nazis, and then adding the thought that this comparison wasn’t strong enough.   

And Jo Swinsons lily white LibDems?  Let's ignore the fact that Ms Swinson said on live TV that she wouldn't respect the result of a further referendum if it didn't go her way, Ed Davey called for a remain alliance in Uxbridge to "decapitate" Boris.   He apologised quickly enough, but the damage was done.

Then along comes Boris.  In response to a Labour MP, Paula Sherriff, who invoked the memory of murdered MP Jo Cox in her question, the prime minster replied, in essence, that a democrat like Jo Cox would have accepted the result of a democratic vote and got on with it.  At least, I hope that is what she would have done. From Boris no threat of decapitation or murder.  No calls of traitor.  No saying anyone was a Nazi. Just a statement of the blindingly obvious.  MPs should respect the will of the people.  Ms Sherriff spoiled her big moment of fame on on TV today when she sought to characterise the Conservatives as "this wicked, grotesque government".  

Perhaps Boris should not have risen to the bait.  But the faux outrage emanating from the opposition benches is somewhat nauseating given their track record in abusive language. Pot calling the kettle black and all that.  

Has the Supreme Court broken the law?

Some learned friends believe so.  And the consequences of them doing so are many.  The most obvious, and worrying, is the call that the judiciary now needs to have its wings clipped.  And if that does happen it is their own fault.       

But why are we even here?  Boiling the whole thing down, the political fundamentals against which the Miller-Cherry case fell to be decided are as follows: (1) a majority of those voting in the EU referendum voted to leave; (2) a parliament was subsequently elected in which 85 per cent of MPs won their seats on the promise to respect the referendum result; and (3) in the event most of those MPs reneged on that promise and obstructed the country’s departure from the EU both with a deal (31 March) and now without one (31 October).    

That departure was set in law by MPs themselves.     

Remainer MPs in Parliament then set themseleves on a collision course by seeking to frustrate the will of the Parliament itself and the will of the people as expressed in two votes, the Referendum and the General Election. So, the government decided it wanted to implement the will of the people and one way of doing that would be to prorogue on the basis that it would allow what people had voted for twice and parliament itself had brought into law would actually happen.   Enter the Remain establishment and the lawyers.   

As Andrew Newcombe QC argues, the power-grab of the Court concentrates on the advice allegedly given to Her Majesty.  This is a neat tactic to get around Article 9 of the Bill of Rights 1688 (and the equivalent provision in the Claim of Right 1689).  As Newcombe points out:  “That Article precludes the questioning of proceedings in Parliament, and the court held, wrongly in my view, that the act of prorogation is not such a proceeding.”      

This, he argues, ignores the concept of the monarch in Parliament.  “In proroguing Parliament, the Queen is acting as part of that Parliament and the prorogation is unavoidably a proceeding therein. If this be right, the proceedings before the Supreme Court were themselves unlawful.”   

Which rather puts a different slant on things if the court itself was breaking the law.

Winner takes all?

When I voted for my choice at the general election, I did so in the knowledge that candidate with the most votes would be the winner.  So we had the scenario that Jo Swinson had the most votes and therefore won the seat of East Dunbartonshire.  

But she didn’t have a majority.  Yes, she had 40.6% of the vote, but that’s almost 10% short of a 50%.  Still, no one argued, that’s the way it is.  She won.  Well done Jo.

So one did wonder the mind-set that was guiding the interpretation of the law of the 11 law lords in the Supreme Court if they agreed with the words of former Supreme Court Judge, Lord Sumption, who told the BBC that “52% of the electorate simply cannot have 100% of the spoils, they have to engage with the rest”.  If that was their guiding principle, we are in trouble.   

Doesn’t he realise that the way we operate in the UK is the winner takes all.  The referendum was a binary choice, Leave or Remain.   It was agreed to be a binary choice by the MPs that are now demanding its result be overturned.      

One does wonder what would have happened if the vote had gone the other way.  Would Remainers be keen to compromise for the views of Leavers to be taken into account?   

Somehow I don’t think so. 

What's next?

Now that the judiciary have decided that they do have a role in the political process by ordering MPs back to parliament, can we expect them to similarly intervene to command MPs to enact the legislation they already passed in the form of Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union which began the UKs withdrawal from the European Union?  

Many of those MPs who allege the prime minister is a liar and demand his resignation should reflect that they stood for election on a manifesto to enact Article 50, a policy that they didn’t believe in.  They deliberately misled the people into voting for them.  Shouldn’t they also resign?

A new Empire is being born.

I don’t think I have ever see a Liberal Democrat ever stand and cheer and clap the British Empire.   

So it was rather astonishing to see their conference whooping to the rafters as the EU Parliament’s Brexit co-ordinator Guy Verhofstadt declared that his vison was a European Empire.   

Forgive me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the last time someone suggested a European Empire in 1933, it all ended horribly?

Housewives, the lot of you!

“A referendum on this matter consists of consulting people who don’t know the problems instead of consulting people who know them.  I would deplore a situation in which the policy of this great country should be left to housewives.  It should be decided instead by trained and informed people.”    
So said Jean Rey, ex-President of the European Commission, in 1974.   

Clearly John Bercow, Jo Swinson, Hilary Benn and others who threw their toys out the pram when they lost the referendum still think we are housewives.