One of the co-founders of the fashion label Superdry has donated £1m to the campaign for another EU referendum.

Multi-millionaire Julian Dunkerton said he was backing the People's Vote campaign because "we have a genuine chance to turn this around". 

The People's Vote, a cross-party group including some Labour and Lib Dem MPs, want a vote on the final Brexit deal.

The government has ruled out another referendum after Britain voted to leave the EU in June 2016. 

The UK is on course to leave the EU on 29 March next year.

• Brexit: All you need to know
• Have voters changed their minds about Brexit?
• Gary Lineker backs Brexit vote campaign

Mr Dunkerton said he believes his brand, which he left earlier this year, "would never have become the global success that it did" if Brexit had happened 20 years earlier.

His donation, the largest received by the People's Vote, will go towards funding opinion polls.

He added: "I will be paying for one of the most detailed polling exercises ever undertaken by a campaign so that more and more people have the confidence to demand the democratic right for their voice to be heard."

The People's Vote campaign is hoping to get enough MPs, including the Labour leadership, to back a referendum on the deal Prime Minister Theresa May strikes with Brussels, which is due to be put to a vote in Parliament in October.

They have organised a number of events over the summer to step up pressure on MPs.

Hundreds of people attended a rally in Edinburgh's Festival Square on Saturday in support of the campaign.

Read more:

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-45235655

The most likely result of a new vote would be in favour of a harsher Brexit... I could be wrong...

see also:

What happened to David Cameron?

In October 2016, Cameron became chairman of the National Citizen Service Patrons.[306] In January 2017, he was appointed president of Alzheimer's Research UK to address misconceptions surrounding dementia and campaign for medical research funding to tackle the condition...

Read more:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Cameron

Britain could wind up sterile in the event of a “no-deal” Brexit. That’s because the country would have a much harder time importing sperm donations, which it primarily sources from the US and Denmark.

The UK voted to leave the EU in June 2016, but it's still having a bit of difficulty working out the kinks of that process. Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab said at a Thursday news conference that the prospect of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union without a negotiated deal is "unlikely," but the government nonetheless published technical notes on the consequences of barren negotiations.

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/viral/201808241067455675-Britains-Exit-EU-Sperm-...

Some journalists seem to have a good sense of humour... Read from top.

Substantial Brexit progress was never on the agenda for the EU’s Salzburg summit in Austria, so its absence comes as no surprise. More revealing is what the gathering says about the balance of power: European leaders can send Theresa May away humiliated and empty-handed, and still imagine they have done her a favour.

May was given 10 minutes to address her fellow heads of government over dinner last night, but no subsequent discussion was permitted because, formally, Brexit terms are negotiated with Michel Barnier and the European commission. Any British hopes that those lines might blur at Salzburg and more productive channels might then open up behind Barnier’s back were dashed. Concluding the summit, Donald Tusk, the European council president, re-affirmed member state solidarity behind the commission process. He also said bluntly that the economic aspect of May’s Chequers blueprint for Brexit “will not work.”

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/20/brexit-eu-theresa-...

Got to go back to the ballot box...

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An outspoken former Conservative party donor has said he is prepared to go to prison to keep a giant “Bollocks to Brexit” poster above his London office after he was told to remove it by his local council.

Charlie Mullins, the founder of Pimlico Plumbers, accused Lambeth council of interfering with his freedom of speech and succumbing to people’s sensitivities over a word that was proven in a Sex Pistols case in 1977 not to be obscene.

The council said it had received complaints from commuters about the sign near Waterloo station and, as it was not related to his business, Mullins would have to remove it or apply for planning consent, which he would be unlikely to get.

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/oct/05/millionaire-refuses-tak...

https://www.abc.net.au/insiders/brex-it/

Key industries will be destroyed by a hard Brexit, one of the country’s most powerful chief executives has predicted, amid warnings that Britain’s imminent EU exit has dented investment by four in five businesses.

Ralf Speth, the boss of Jaguar Land Rover, said that such an outcome would lead to the closure of plants and major job losses as he warned that some exposed industries would have “no way to survive a hard Brexit”.

His stark intervention comes as Downing Street desperately tries to reassure the business community over Brexit, despite senior Tories such as William Hague now putting the chances of a “no-deal” outcome at 50%. Theresa May conducted a conference call on Friday involving around 130 business figures after a chaotic week that veered perilously close to the collapse of Brexit talks. She told them an emergency summit could still be called in November to finalise a deal.

Speth stood by his claim that tens of thousands of jobs would be lost. “That’s correct,” he told the Your Money channel during a trip to Australia last week. “Everybody can do the maths. It is very open and very transparent. It is not only at Jaguar Land Rover, but it is also an element for the supplier industry and export industry in the UK.”

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/oct/21/brexit-industries-ralf-...

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Please note that the MAJOR  problem with Brexit is that the CITY OF LONDON IS CONTROLLING A LOT OF CASH IN OFFSHORE tax HAVEN. It might also be a savior as it might offer ever more tax exeptions to other European enterprises... The CASH INDUSTRY might survive...

Brexit Negotiations

Watching a Country Make a Fool of Itself

No country in the world has cultivated arrogance the way Britain has. But the sad truth is: The former global power can't even find its way to the door without tripping over its feet.

In his book "We Germans," journalist Matthias Matussek writes about an evening spent at the German Embassy in London. The ambassador was hosting the writer Antonia S. Byatt as his guest of honor and Matussek was on hand to make a toast to the author. In response, she surprised him by asking what he thought of the idea of a European constitution. Matussek answered by saying it's probably not such a bad idea if the European community of nations agrees on a few foundational principles.

Lady Byatt then said: "You know, we British don't need a constitution. We are the oldest democracy in the world." She paused briefly before continuing: "For young countries like you Germans, constitutions could very well be useful." It would be almost impossible, writes Matussek, to overstate the haughtiness and contemptuousness that dripped from her voice. "Essentially, she was saying," he writes, "you are barbarians, you have only recently put down your cudgels. You need the leash."

Such are the British, and we love them for it. They are never short of an answer and constantly ready to put someone in their place. The problem, though, is that if you act like you are the center of the world, you should actually be the center, or something close to it. As things currently stand, though, the British soon won't even be within shouting distance of the center of Europe.

The United Kingdom is currently demonstrating how a country can make a fool of itself before the eyes of the entire world. What was once the most powerful empire on earth is now a country that can't even find its way to the door without tripping over its own feet. 

It has now been 28 months since the British voted to pull out of the European Union. Unfortunately, they haven't taken a single step further since then.

Nothing But Sympathy

When Theresa May shows up in Brussels with yet another Brexit-related proposal, you can be sure that just one day later, it will no longer be worth the paper it is printed on. She either presents ideas that Brussels has long since rejected or her plans have already been chucked in the round file by her own party. Or Boris Johnson has torn her apart in his column in the Telegraph.

Until recently, I felt nothing but sympathy when I would see the British prime minister wander in front of the camera at EU summits, with her crooked smile and kooky offers. Lately, though, I have been catching myself thinking: "Go with God. But go!"

Read more:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/brexit-talks-watching-a-count...

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It looks as if the UK government still wants to stay in Europe... But this alone, the Europeans should be weary. The EU should ask Britain to abandon the Pound and adopt the Euro, and to open the books of the City of London tax havens. This should scare the pants off a dancing May...

Food and environment campaigner Dr Rosemary Mason has just produced the report ‘Shockingly high levels of weedkiller found in popular breakfast cereals marketed for British children’. In this 68-page document, she draws from new research in the UK that mirrors findings from the US about the dangerous levels of glyphosate found in food, especially products aimed at children (glyphosate is the active ingredient in Monsanto’s weedicide Roundup). Readers can access this report here (which contains all relevant references).

Mason begins by reporting on research that significant levels of weedkiller were found in 43 out of 45 popular breakfast cereals marketed to US children. Glyphosate was detected in an array of popular breakfast cereals, oats and snack bars.

Tests revealed glyphosate was present in all but two of the 45 oat-derived products that were sampled by the Environmental Working Group, a public health organisation. Nearly three in four of the products exceeded what the EWG classes safe for children to consume. Products with some of the highest levels of glyphosate include granola, oats and snack bars made by leading industry names Quaker, Kellogg’s and General Mills, which makes Cheerios.

Back in April, internal emails obtained from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) showed that scientists had found glyphosate on a wide range of commonly consumed food, to the point that they were finding it difficult to identify a food without the chemical on it. In response to these findings, however, The Guardian newspaper in the UK reported that there was no indication that the claims related to products sold outside the US.

In view of this statement by the Guardian, Mason was involved in sending samples of four oat-based breakfast cereals marketed for children in the UK to the Health Research Institute, Fairfield, Iowa, an accredited laboratory for glyphosate testing.

After testing the samples which were sent, Dr Fagan, the institute’s director, said:

The levels consumed in a single daily helping of any one of these cereals, even the one with the lowest level of contamination, is sufficient to put the person’s glyphosate levels above the levels that cause fatty liver disease in rats (and likely in people).” (Access the Certificate of Analysis here.)

Just as concerning were results for two ‘organic’ products from the US that were also tested at the time: granola had some glyphosate in and ‘organic’ rolled oats had even higher levels of the chemical.

Mason argues that the fact such high levels of glyphosate have been found in cereals in Britain should ring alarm bells across Europe, especially as the distribution of glyphosate and aminomethylphosphonic acid in agricultural top soils of the European Union is widespread.

As in her previous documents, Mason describes how regulators in the EU and the UK relicensed Roundup for the benefit of the industry-backed Glyphosate Task Force. Even more alarming is that, on the back of Brexit, she notes that a US-UK trade deal could result in the introduction of Roundup ready GM crops in the UK. Indeed, high-level plans for cementing this deal are afoot.

Mason offers worrying data about the increasing use of biocides, especially glyphosate, as well as the subsequent destruction of the global environment due to their use. As usual, she produces a very data-rich report which draws on many sources, including official reports and peer-reviewed papers.

Of course, there is a strong focus on Monsanto. Aside from the use of glyphosate, she also documents the impact of the company’s presence in Wales, where she lives, with regard to the dumping of toxic chemicals (PCBs) from its manufacturing site there between 1949 and 1979, the effects of which persist and still plague the population and the environment.

Mason asks:

Monsanto has been bought up by Bayer, so the Monsanto name has disappeared but where are the Monsanto executives hiding?”

She is aware of course that such figures don’t have to hide anywhere. The company ‘got away with it’ in Wales. And its recent crop of executives received huge ‘golden handshakes’ after the Bayer deal despite them having perpetuated a degenerative model of industrial agriculture. A model that has only secured legitimacy by virtue of the power of the global agritech lobby to lock in a bogus narrative of success, as outlined in the report ‘From Uniformity to Diversity’ by The International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems.

As that report notes, locking farmers into corporate-dependent treadmills, state support of (export) commodity cropping via subsidies and the discounting of the massive health, environment and social costs of industrial agriculture ensures that model prevails and makes it appear successful. If you base your food regime on short-term thinking and a reductionist yield-output paradigm and define success within narrow confines, then the model is a sure-fire winner – for corporate growth (profit) if little else.

Without being able to externalise the health, social and environmental costs of its actions and products, this model would not be viable for the corporations involved. Widening the parameters to properly evaluate ‘success’ entails asking the industry questions that it finds very difficult to gloss over, not least what has been the cost of input-(biocide)dependent yields of commodities in terms of pollution, health, local food security and caloric production, nutrition per acre, water tables, soil quality and structure and new pests and disease pressures?

Why have African countries been turned from food exporters to food importers? Why is land in South America being used for Roundup Ready crops to feed the appetite for meat in rich countries, while peasant farmers who grew food for themselves and local communities have been displaced?

And what are the effects on once thriving rural communities; on birds, insects and biodiversity in general; on the climate as a result of chemical inputs and soil degradation; and what have been the effects of shifting towards globalised production chains, especially in terms of transportation and fossil fuel consumption?

The global food regime degrades public health and the environment, and it has narrowed the range of crops grown, resulting in increasingly monolithic, nutrient-deficient diets. Yet the powerful industry lobby calls for more deregulation and more techno-fixes like GMOs to ‘feed the world’. This is in spite of the fact that hunger and malnutrition are political: these phenomena are in large part the outcome of a global capitalist food regime that, with help from IMF/World Bank geopolitical lending strategies and WTO rules, has undermined food security for vast sections of the global population by creating a system that by its very nature drives inequality, injustice and creates food deficit areas.

Moving to a more sustainable model of agriculture based on localisation, food sovereignty and agroecology calls for a different world view. Proponents of industrial agriculture are resistant to this because it would harm what has become a highly profitable system based on the capture of political, research and media institutions.

And this is where we return to Rosemary Mason. If there is an overriding theme within her work over the years, it is corruption at high levels which facilitate much of the above. For instance, she notes the determination of the UK government, working hand in glove with global agribusiness, to ensure certain biocide products remain on the market and to help major corporations avoid any culpability for their health- and environment-damaging practices and chemicals.

Mason and various whistleblowers and writers have over the years described how these corporations have become institutionally embedded within high-profile public bodies and scientific research policy initiatives. Regulatory delinquency, institutionalised corruption and complete disregard for the health and well-being of the public is the order of the day.

If the UK is about to introduce GM crops into its fields on the back of a post-Brexit deal with the Trump administration, then it should take heed of what the ex-director of J.R. Simplot and team leader at Monsanto Dr Caius Rommens says in his new book:

The main problem about the current process for deregulation of GMO crops is that it is based on an evaluation of data provided by the developers of GMO crops. There is a conflict of interest. I propose that the safety of GMO crops is assessed by an independent group of scientists trained at identifying unintended effects.”

This former high-level Monsanto researcher of potatoes now acknowledges that genetic engineers had limited insight into the effects of their experiments. Genetic engineering passes off the inherent uncertainty, unintended consequences and imprecision of its endeavours as unquestionable certainty. And the USDA accepts industry information and reassurances.

After finding that most GMO varieties of potatoes that he was involved in developing were stunted, chlorotic, mutated or sterile, and many of them died quickly, Rommens renounced his genetic engineering career and wrote a book about his experiences, ‘Pandora’s Potatoes: The Worst GMOs’.

In an interview with GMWatch, Rommens is asked why regulators in the US, Canada and Japan, which have approved these potatoes, are ignoring these aspects.

Rommens responds:

The standard tests needed to ensure regulatory approval are not set up to identify unintended effects. They are meant to confirm the safety of a GM crop, not to question their safety. None of the issues I address in my book were considered by the regulatory agencies.”

A damning indictment of regulatory delinquency based on ‘don’t look, don’t find’. GMOs have nonetheless become the mainstay of US agriculture. Now the industry is rubbing its hands in anticipation of Brexit, which would pry the UK from the EU and its precautionary principle-based regulation of GMOs.

The push to open up Britain to globalisation in the 1980s ushered in a free-for-all for global capital to determine the future direction of a deregulated UK. Three decades down the line, the consequences are clear for food, agriculture, democracy and public health. The worrying thing is that thanks to Brexit, it could be the case that even worse is yet to come!

Read more:

https://off-guardian.org/2018/10/24/from-gm-potatoes-to-glyphosate-regul...

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Most people in the UK do not know in fact what they are voting for; they vote for political parties the same way they support a soccer club, totally ignorant of policies or manifestos (with few exceptions) and on that fateful, sunny June day in 2016 the Brexiteers also had no idea what they were doing.

REMAIN would today win by 60% to 40%. We demand a referendum

Many were from the more elderly section of the population who leave behind a sour apple for their grandchildren to eat, and most of the grandchildren wanted to remain. A sufficient number of the former have now departed, and as many young people are now able to vote, which translates into an entirely different picture: according to opinion polls, the REMAIN vote today would win by 60% to 40% at the very least. So why is it not democratic to hold a second referendum?

As it stands today, the United Kingdom is about to play Russian roulette, taking a leap in the dark while standing on a cliff-edge. The Government itself admits that it has no idea what will happen, after two years of negotiations and after presenting part of a report to Parliament. But it is clear and common sense what will happen.

REMAIN would today win by 60% to 40%. We demand a referendum

Scotland will refuse to accept this dreadful  legacy imposed on it by its English cousins, not one single constituency in Scotland voted to leave the EU, so if Scotland is a country, which it is, why should it leave the EU when the vast majority of its population wishes to remain? Is this democracy?

Here where I write in London (I work in the City) not a single person I know thinks Brexit will bring anything but chaos. Those of us who work with the EU know very well what will happen.

REMAIN would today win by 60% to 40%. We demand a referendum

The financial institutions are already prepared to move to Germany, France and some of them to a second tier of countries including Portugal and Italy and Spain. This will cost the capital, the most prosperous region in the UK, a substantial part of its wealth involving terrible social knock-on effects. Along with the financial institutions, the headquarters of numerous countries are preparing to pull out and relocate inside the Union, creating a social tsunami as even more money pours out of this island.

As regards jobs, the UK universities, besides costing an arm and a leg for their students, do not provide enough raw material for the work market. Portuguese Universities provide doctors, nurses and many working here in the financial markets, and they are far better prepared than their British counterparts. English firms will be undermanned, understaffed and under-qualified.

REMAIN would today win by 60% to 40%. We demand a referendum

And now for the question of trade. The European Union, today, is the main trading partner of the United Kingdom. It accounts for 44 per cent of all UK exports and 53% of UK imports.

The largest percentage of these exported products came from Wales and the North-East of England, two regions which stupidly voted to leave without thinking of the consequences. With increased tariffs on these products (inevitable after Brexit) get ready for massive increases in unemployment in these areas, coupled with crippling social costs. Next, imports. Since the UK imports more from the EU than it exports to it, the cost of products will be even higher than it is today.

REMAIN would today win by 60% to 40%. We demand a referendum

Now, for those working in the services sector (engineering and technical services, legal, accounting, advertising, research and development services) prepare yourselves for a massive blow dealt to you by the idiots who voted LEAVE without knowing what they were doing. For those working in research projects involving the EU, these projects will be pulled out of the UK and relocated. This is not fantasy, it is clear, unadulterated, common-sense fact. So suppose those who voted LEAVE pick up the tab? Not so funny now is it?

With increased tariffs, how are our goods and services going to be competitive, especially when our Universities have fallen behind those of other EU nations in terms of producing the goods? With higher transportation costs involved in exporting to Australia for example, how are our goods going to be more competitive than those available from Indonesia, Vietnam and the PR China?

REMAIN would today win by 60% to 40%. We demand a referendum

Brexit is like sitting in a hot bath on a freezing winter day, pulling out the plug and watching the water go down into the sewer, then finding out that the tap has jammed shut. True, Brussels' interference is annoying, true, the EU went too far and too fast. But also the UK was never a full member of all the EU institutions and of all the countries, it is already the one with one foot in and the other, out but, and crucially, with free access to the market which represents most of our trade and crucially, with a voice inside EU mechanisms.

Now thanks to the idiotic decision of those who do not understand what they have done, the people of England will be saddled with a mountain to climb without any equipment. We will have to pay for access to what we enjoy today for free, and more ridiculous, not have any say in any part of the proceedings because with Brexit we lost our voice. I say England, because Scotland, if it votes for Independence, which it should, will be far luckier.

The REMAIN campaigners will hold the LEAVE campaigners responsible for this decision, we will find out who they are (easy) and we will make them compensate us for the damage they have done.

REMAIN would today win by 60% to 40%. We demand a referendum

My thanks to Professor Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey and PRAVDA newspaper for printing this article.

Photo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet#/media/File:French_Squatter_Toilet.jpg

John Whitehouse

London, England

See more at http://www.pravdareport.com/opinion/columnists/09-12-2018/142101-britain...

See also:

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/32269

http://yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/33757

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/35134

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The British Government has chosen its post Brexit strategy. On 30 December 2018, the Defence Minister, Gavin Williamson gave an interview to the Sunday Telegraph, in which he denounced what has been the policy since 1956.

In 1956, a British-French military expedition supported by Israel, seized the Suez Canal. However the United States and Russia forced their allies to withdraw. This fiasco marks the end of European colonization and the beginning of the progressive withdrawal of European armies from the territories that they were occupying throughout the world.

According to Theresa May’s government, the United Kingdom then oriented itself to the European Union, something it had never dreamt of becoming a member of. The time is over.

“We have to be clear, it is a policy that has been torn up. Great Britain has become once again a world nation”, Mr. Williamson made clear. The Ministry has been trying for quite some time to negotiate the opening of new military bases abroad. Currently, the United Kingdom only has bases in Gibraltar, Cyprus, Diego Garcia and the Falkland Islands.

According to the Ministry of Defense, the world expects the United Kingdom to demonstrate moral, military and global leadership, because it defends tolerance, democracy and justice.

Translation 
Anoosha Boralessa

Read more:

http://www.voltairenet.org/article204627.html

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Join me in a brief hypothetical. Imagine that Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party had won the 2017 General Election.

Such a reality was within our grasp, after all. A few hundred votes here and there and we’re living under a Labour government. The specifics of the alternate universe don’t really matter – just that Jeremy Corbyn is Prime Minister.

In just the last few months Corbyn’s cabinet has been blighted by dozens of resignations, a UN report has condemned the UK’s growing poverty and described the government as being “in denial” about the problem, and his cabinet is the first in the history of the nation to be found in contempt of Parliament.

And then, on top of all that, two days ago, his proposed Brexit deal suffered the most lopsided, the most humiliating, Parliamentary defeat in nearly 100 years.

If all this had happened to a Jeremy Corbyn government, what would the national reaction be? More tellingly, what would the reaction of the press be?

How many newspapers would run front-page editorials calling for his resignation? I would suggest all of them. They would strike different tones, and they would support different replacements, but every paper would be repeating that old David Cameron line: “For Heaven’s sake man, go!”

In this hypothetical world…would Jeremy Corbyn still be Prime Minister?

No. He would not.

Of course – Jeremy Corbyn isn’t Prime Minister, Theresa May is. Still. Somehow.

And, of course, each of the above things happened to her and her government in the last six months.

Since the 2017 election, Theresa May has fielded thirty-two resignations – roughly one every 2 weeks, over 20 of them in the last six months. Her Home Secretary resigned in disgrace over her lying to Parliament…only to be re-appointed to the cabinet, in a different position, just 6 months later.

In November 2018 Professor Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, released a report on poverty in the UK. The statistics are unpleasant reading:

14 million people, a fifth of the population, live in poverty. Four million of these are more than 50% below the poverty line, and 1.5 million are destitute, unable to afford basic essentials. The widely respected Institute for Fiscal Studies predicts a 7% rise in child poverty between 2015 and 2022, and various sources predict child poverty rates of as high as 40%.

…but more telling are the parts that are directly critical of the government (my emphasis):

The Government has remained determinedly in a state of denial. Even while devolved authorities in Scotland and Northern Ireland are frantically trying to devise ways to ‘mitigate’, or in other words counteract, at least the worst features of the Government’s benefits policy, Ministers insisted to me that all is well and running according to plan.

The costs of austerity have fallen disproportionately upon the poor, women, racial and ethnic minorities, children, single parents, and people with disabilities. The changes to taxes and benefits since 2010 have been highly regressive, and the policies have taken the highest toll on those least able to bear it. The government says everyone’s hard work has paid off, but according to the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, while the bottom 20% of earners will have lost on average 10% of their income by 2021/22 as a result of these changes, top earners have actually come out ahead.

Imagine a UNSR had written these words about a Labour government: Would they have been so buried? Would you be reading about them here? Or would they be splashed across the front pages of the Times, Telegraph, Mail and Sun?

On December 4th Theresa May’s government was found to be in contempt of parliament over its refusal to publish Brexit legal advice. To hammer home the impact of this: this is the first time, ever, that a sitting government has been found in contempt of parliament.

Imagine a Corbyn government had been the first EVER to be found in contempt of parliament. How long would you expect his career as Prime Minister to last? How many editorials calling for his head would there be?

And so we come to the Brexit deal vote of January 15th this year. A defeat margin of over 230 votes. The heaviest defeat of a government bill since the 1920s. The government bill wasn’t just “not passed”, it was cut into pieces, set on fire and buried in a pile of manure on unconsecrated ground. Theresa May’s “best possible deal” is dead. Gone. Finished. But Theresa May soldiers on.

Each of these failures is enough to bring down a government. Governments of the past have crashed and burned over far less. The famous incident, oft-cited the last few days, is Neville Chamberlain resigning as PM after winning a vote, because the 80 vote margin of victory was far less than his majority.

Theresa May’s government has a strong argument for being the worst in the history of our democracy. So why is it allowed to continue?

The Conservatives are hamstrung by the situation. They can’t replace May, because a new unelected PM justifies Labour’s calls for a general election. They have nailed their colours to mast on the Mary Rose. They have chosen their hill to die on, and it’s a heap of Theresa May’s failed deals, broken promises and resignation letters, strewn with the bodies of rejected benefit claimants. Their position, though contemptible, is understandable. They have no choice.

The media, however, are far worse. Disgusting, even. They are more than complicit in this, they are a vital component. A driving force. Their selective reporting hides the embarrassing incompetence of the cabinet. Where are the editorials calling for May’s resignation? Where the notionally “left wing” or “progressive” journalists demanding an immediate general election? They are nowhere to be seen. The media hold their fire whilst May stands out in the open with a target on her chest. A sitting duck. A very small barrel full of very large fish. She begs to be put out of her misery, but the media let her limp along.

Corbyn is right to refer the Conservative “zombie government”. It is dead. A construct. Propped up and posed by an establishment terrified of the only alternative. They have turned our politics into a farce. A cross between House of Cards and Weekend at Bernies. An embarrassment.

So I ask again: Why is Theresa May still Prime Minister?

The answer is simple: Because she has to be, because the only alternative is Jeremy Corbyn and the establishment has shown they will do anything and everything in their power to stop that from happening.

Read more:

https://off-guardian.org/2019/01/17/why-is-theresa-may-still-prime-minis...

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If a picture is worth a thousand words, these three are worth three million words...:

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The government of the People’s Republic of China has cancelled a meeting that had been scheduled between Vice Prime Minister ‎Hu Chunhua (see photo) and the Finance Minister, Philip Hammond.‎

In an address made at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), the UK Minister of Defence, Gavin Williamson, recently threatened to send an aircraft carrier to the China Sea to make Peking “pay dearly” for “its aggressive conduct” [1]. ‎

The cancellation of the meeting with the Finance Minister deprives the UK of a trade agreement which would have given it access to a market worth more than 10 billion pounds [2].‎

The British Prime Minister, Theresa May, distanced herself from the declarations of her Defense Minister and made it clear that the British airplane carrier would not be travelling to Asia until 2021 and that its journey would first need to be approved by whoever was the UK Prime Minister at the time. ‎

Translation 
Anoosha Boralessa

Read more:

https://www.voltairenet.org/article205228.html

British Prime Minister Theresa May has taken the United Kingdom to a cliff's edge.

It now looks very unlikely she can deliver what the people voted for — at least not in time for the March 29 deadline.

MPs voted down Mrs May's Brexit deal 391 to 242.

It was a slightly less humiliating defeat than the first vote on her deal in January, which lost by a massive 230 votes — the largest in British political history. 

But in politics, defeat is still defeat.

Yesterday's last-minute political theatrics in Strasbourg seemed to get some MPs across the line.

But in reality, it delivered no change to the deal and the assurances granted by the European Union were deemed largely irrelevant by Attorney-General Geoffrey Cox.

The last-minute changes reduced the risk that Britain could be stuck inside EU regulations indefinitely.

"However, the legal risk remains unchanged," he declared, putting a knife into the heart of the deal.

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-13/theresa-may-brexit-ploy-political-genius-or-miscalculation/

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No-deal Brexit voted down by British MPs against Theresa May's plan

British MPs have returned to the House of Commons and voted against leaving the European Union without a deal.

It comes after Parliament rejected Prime Minister Theresa May's Brexit deal for a second time yesterday.

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-14/brexit-no-deal-vote-live-blog-the...

For a long time, I have promoted the idea that the Brits should never have been allowed to join the "common market". This was the position of the General de Gaulle until he resigned the Presidency of France in 1969. Eventually Britain joined the Europe for the benefits—  without giving up its many privileges that the Europeans in their dependance upon the USA allowed to the UK. The Pound Sterling has been a thorn in the Euro. The UK has been spying on its European partners on behalf of the USA. Many tax evasion haven are under British rule. Europe had to mop up the refugees due to the US little wars and some British people saw this as another dilution of their Britishness.

This was Eric Margolis in 2016:

...

That old imperialist, Winston Churchill, patron saint of America’s neocon right, dismissed India’s great Mahatma Gandhi as a ‘half-naked fakir.’ He loved the British Empire and sneered, like many of his countrymen, at “the lesser races.”

Problem is, that the “lesser races” have poured into Britain since the 1950’s, changing its traditional character, politics, and rules. White Britons are losing ground in the new, multicultural United Kingdom, just as whites in California are headed for minority status. A lot of Brits, particularly north of London, don’t like it. Add now the flood of over a million Arab and African refugees into the Continent has many Britons in a frenzy that their happy little island faces growing troubles.

Hence the “Brexit” movement that wants Britain to ditch the European Union, bar the wogs, and sail off serenely on its own. They are whispering, “better be a full colony of the United States than another member of the do-nothing European Union.” To many Brits, it’s intolerable watching the hated French and Germans be the big dogs of the EU. Particularly the sneaky French who lust to get revenge for Waterloo. 

Brexit partisans, taking a page from Trump’s book, ‘Presidency for Dummies,’ are becoming increasingly anti-Muslim, warning of fanciful terrorist threats and armies of lust-crazed Muslim dervishes coming to rape and pillage peaceful Britain.

Read more:

https://ericmargolis.com/2016/06/europe-let-the-brits-go/

In June of 2017, about a year after the Brexit referendum, the BBC dedicated a show to the British prime minister. At that point, Theresa May had been in office for 11 months and had been Home Secretary for six years before that. Her severe face, her garish shoes and her gangly walk were familiar to every British boarding-school student. But May also remained strangely alien to her fellow Brits. There were no anecdotes about her and very few memorable quotes. Nobody really knew who she actually was.

The BBC reporter set out to solve the riddle -- and was forced to admit in the end that he wasn't any smarter than he had been at the beginning. None of the old school friends and associates he interviewed seemed to have truly gotten close to her. But, amazingly, they all agreed about one thing: If she were ever stumbled, it would be because of her inability to build bridges. "She lacks the ability to form a gang." 

Shortly before 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, May was sitting in a jam-packed British parliament. She had just been badly humiliated by her own Conservative Party once again, but nobody seemed willing to stand by her. May sat sunken, ashen, with one of those chunky necklaces around her neck that look like they could drag her into the abyss at any moment. She was alone. Even her voice had left her.

But then she stood up, uttered words of regret and proceeded to announce the next steps. She apparently wanted to keep going. Onwards and onwards. As if nothing momentous had happened at all.

Yet something momentous had happened. This week, 17 days before the date when the United Kingdom is set to leave the European Union, British parliament rejected the divorce deal for the second time. And once again, it did so by such an overwhelming majority that the last remnants of Theresa May's control over events -- if she ever had it in the first place -- evaporated. Whatever happens now is no longer up to her. 

Despite massive pressure exerted on her own fellow Conservatives, despite blatant attempts to lure the opposition with money, despite tentative concessions from Brussels, and despite nightmarish predictions for what would happen if she failed, May hasn't managed win over a single one of the opposing factions in parliament in recent weeks. The Brexiteers, the fans of a second referendum, the supporters of a soft deal: They all marched together, shoulder to shoulder on Tuesday, issuing to May an unequivocal: "No." 

May has merely been reacting to events for quite some time now. Rather than building bridges, she has burned them. And even though MPs have now voted against a no-deal exit from the EU and in favor of extending the deadline, it is unclear what that extra time should be used for.

And by whom.

It has become increasingly clear that May has led her country, her party and herself into a labyrinth, and that she apparently has neither the power nor the ideas that will allow them to find a way out. Brexit would have been a momentous challenge for any prime minister, but May's stubbornness and ineptness have made it even more difficult. Because of this, Brexit has become, for many, a referendum on May herself.

'She is Rude. She is Cruel'

The degree to which this week's events had to do with May herself became clear from the off-the-record admission from one MP, who said he despised the prime minister too much to ever vote for one of the deals she presented. And he's not the only one.

Read more:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/theresa-may-s-brexit-disaster...

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The speaker of Britain's House of Commons has dealt a potentially fatal blow to Prime Minister Theresa May's ailing Brexit deal, saying the government couldn't keep asking MPs to vote on the same deal they have already rejected twice.

• The deal was rejected by 230 votes in January and by 149 votes last week
• Parliamentary rules prevent a motion being brought back repeatedly
• EU leaders say they will only grant a postponement if Britain has a solid plan

The government intends to try a third time to get MPs to back the deal.

Mrs May has warned opponents that failure to approve the deal would mean a long, and possibly indefinite, delay to Brexit.

Speaker John Bercow said Monday that centuries-old parliamentary rules prevent a motion being brought back repeatedly for votes in the same session of Parliament.

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-19/uk-parliament-speaker-says-brexit...

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a unique view from Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey...

Take an S and the final E off the word Brassiere (an undergarment supporting the breasts) and you get Brasier, the maiden name of Theresa May, the British Prime Minister who spent two and a half years negotiating with the European Union without creating a consensus in her own Parliament.

In general, in my columns, I do not do political assassination pieces and try to find the other side of the person in focus. In Theresa May's case, I am certain that she would be an excellent host of a sophisticated dinner with a nice, tasty, crusty, aromatic English pie with the right amount of cheese sneakily added in the dough mix for the pastry, served with some fresh vegetables cooked to perfection, a silky, heavy gravy yet with a curious twist of something special, some excellently chosen fine wines before she wows the table with an exquisitely decadent French gateau oozing with raspberry jelly topped with molten 70 per cent cocoa chocolate. That, with an intelligent, lively and interesting rendition of the season's cricket.

However, what really gets my goat with Theresa May is her sheer and unadulterated arrogance and the utter stupidity of her strategy. Let us face it, when she was Home Secretary (Minister of Internal Affairs) she became famous for the repeated one-line policy justification when asked a question. Fair enough, because when you find yourself as a POS in these Positions of (Public) Service, you are given two lessons: first, to have your bag packed by the door because you might have to leave tomorrow morning and secondly, to respond to interviewers' questions by turning everything into up to three concise answers and bring all the questions back to these, the backbone of your message.

In Theresa May's case, it is disappointingly one single phrase, such as "a strong and stable Britain under a Conservative government", or "We are leaving the European Union on March 29th" or "It's my deal or no deal". It is getting shorter. Perhaps next week it will be the word "Cornflakes".  So Mrs. May, what is the alternative to your deal on Brexit? "Cornflakes". Hmmm...Which brings me round to the analogy of the Bipolar Brassiere, one painted black, the other, white with no seven shades of... in between.

The point is not whether Theresa May has the negotiating skills to master her brief at this point in time - she has not and never has had. She is reasonable material for a junior ministerial level in which one has to toe the line and utter the right sounds at the right time, without having to think much, speak much or appear much in public. What happens when someone like that does, is the cringingly embarrassing dance routine.

The point is whether the British Government or indeed its entire political class has any idea of what Brexit is all about, and here it is, lock, stock and barrel:

The European Union is the fruit of a Germany endemically needing Lebensraum for its industries because the Germans are regimentally well organized and hard-working and disciplined and always have been, their technology is sound and their machines work. Ask any driver of a Mercedes taxi whose car has been running 24 hours a day for 20-plus years without the need for a revision. It is also the fruit of a France and Belgium scared sh*tless that the Germans will invade again. So much for the origins.

And today, the European Union is the fruit of a load of ninnies who in the 1990s went too far, too fast, creating something in a decade which should have taken centuries as thousand-year-old economies and societies with their socio-economic-societal vectors were hurriedly patched together to form what is after all clearly a neo-liberal project, Fortress Europa. That entity which went gallivanting across the globe drawing lines on maps, forcing people to leave their families and be carted off across the oceans in a sea of excrement to become slaves for the rest of their lives while their families starved to death back home. They destroyed entire nations, committed genocide, stole resources then declared that the inhabitants of the lands they destroyed were "illegal immigrants".

On the other hand, diatribe over and back to today, Europe and the European Project is part of the process of cultural globalization in which common standard operating practices are used for accounting (OK except for the Germans but they are...sort of...über Alles, so to speak), in which common rules apply to guarantee minimum levels of security and well-being, in which development projects are implemented with common funds and in which Universities pool their knowledge, people are free to work and travel across some invisible line called a "frontier".

It is far from perfect but when you form a block you have to take the rough with the smooth and you cannot have things all ways to your own selfish advantage all the time. If you don't like it, vote against it. This is 2019, not the nineteen-twenties when you just invade someone, shoot the natives in the whites of the eyes and civilize them with the Bible and the Bullet, elevating the secondary power group to a state of primacy so that it needs the invader to remain in power, and in so doing, totally destroy the status quo. It's called Divide and Rule, something the British have always excelled at. They're not so hot when the chickens come home to roost.

And now let us focus on Britain and Brexit. We finally see what the United Kingdom is: a collection of peoples, almost micro-states sewn together under a common reference, the Monarchy (which does its job very well). Open the can of worms and what happens? Something like Brexit.

The peoples of the United Kingdom have been fed decades of ridicule by a mass media bordering on the hysterically absurd, which presents evidence of the level "someone heard someone else who thinks she heard someone say at the hairdressers' " and being a good-natured but gullible bunch, half of them fell hook, line and sinker for the utter nonsense and sh*tfaced lies peddled as the truth by toffs and toffs' friends about how much more money the UK would have if it did not belong to the European Union.

The reality is quite simple, and let us use an analogy. A family thinks about selling its historic home, a mansion set deep in the leafy Surrey countryside. They call the family together (seventeen of them) and have a vote. Just over half, nine of them, are swayed by the discourse of the Prodigal Son, a trader of intelligent bathrooms called Justin Thyme, who claims that the family will make billions from the sale because the land can be developed into housing estates.

Little do they know that prospectors have discovered oil deep beneath the property and that other prospectors suspect that part of the estate is rich in shale gas. The whole area is about to be drilled to the core and have the living daylights fracked out of it.

The family starts to have second thoughts about whether it is such a good idea to sell the property, and the younger ones coming along, now eligible to vote, want to retain this pearl in the English countryside and open it to schools to use as an eco-park or Biosphere. Three of the elders have since passed away, so a family vote today would go the other way, eleven in favor of remaining in charge of the property and six against, with two of the six now over 85 and with three of the next generation aged 17.

Justin Thyme said "No, we said we will sell, so sell we shall". In fact he said it 376 times in just four days in a series of interviews.

Back to the real world. This is where the Peoples of the United Kingdom stand today, faced with the reality of what Brexit means. It means losing any voice within the EU, it means paying to do business with a block where today they do it for free, so it means continuing to accept EU norms, paying for it and with no voice in return to change anything. It means paying more for imports, which means rising prices. It means fewer exports, so it means growing unemployment. It means the positive employment figures peddled today by the Government (it also depends on how you cook the figures) reflect the UK inside the EU. Wait till the UK comes out and see what happens, however the figures are cooked.

It means fewer opportunities for the young, it means fewer University exchange programs, it means the closing of research centers in the UK employing, today, thousands of people, it means panic among insurers, among banks, it means a drain of business, cash and opportunities for generations to come, it means the UK falling apart at the seams as a bunch of elitists talk of cloud cuckoo land without having a clue what they are doing.

Now for those who really want to know what Brexit means, Google up millions made by shorting the Pound (about those who made tens of millions out of Brexit while the people were sold lies, using them like guinea pigs) and Google up 2019 EU tax law on offshore funds (under which those who have their cash offshore to avoid paying taxes will have to declare and pay tax on their stash, in their own countries).

To conclude, it is incredible that anyone, including and especially the Prime Minister, could even be considering that a No Deal Exit is on the cards less than a week before the UK might leave. It is equally incredible that the Prime Minister and Parliament can refuse a second referendum when it is clear that the first referendum was illegally managed, was flawed, was based on lies and when people had no idea what they were voting for.

Democracy would dictate that the people are given a second chance, because it is evident that Parliament is a failed medieval project, or at best one belonging to the Early Modern Historical period. Given that official polls place REMAIN at over 60% and LEAVE at under 40% (the gap widens by the day), perhaps the Prime Minister, her Government and Parliament should try following Democracy. They will not, because they know that a second referendum = no Brexit.

It is by now clear that Brexit was fixed, the people were duped and the Government does not want to practise any form of democracy. A flawed vote taken in 2016 does not reflect the reality today.

See more at http://www.pravdareport.com/opinion/142318-brexit_making_sense/

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See also:

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/35134

...

Pubs have never been completely devoid of politics. The London-based Institute for Public Policy Research noted in a 2012 report that “in the 18th century, working men’s clubs, unions and Jacobite clubs made pubs their meeting places,” with different political groups often meeting at opposing public houses. During the Second World War, the British politician and novelist A. P. Herbert described pubs as being “the one human corner, a center not for beer but bonhomie; the one place where after dark the collective heart of the nation could be seen and felt, beating resolute and strong.” Even today, British politicians have taken to pulling pints in their local pubs to prove that they really are just like everyone else—the equivalent of American presidential hopefuls visiting diners and kissing babies on the campaign trail.

Read more:

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/04/brexit-britain...

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John Cleese has laid into the "cowardly and gutless" BBC after an episode of Fawlty Towers was temporarily removed from a BBC-owned streaming platform.

A 1975 episode titled The Germans was taken off UKTV's streaming service because it contains "racial slurs".

In it, the Major uses highly offensive language, and Cleese's Basil Fawlty declares "don't mention the war".

Cleese wrote on Twitter: "The BBC is now run by a mixture of marketing people and petty bureaucrats."

He added: "I would have hoped that someone at the BBC would understand that there are two ways of making fun of human behaviour.

"One is to attack it directly. The other is to have someone who is patently a figure of fun, speak up on behalf of that behaviour."

Read more:

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-53020335

Methinks that brexit is more of an insult to the Germans than any Basil's rants...

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