Priorities

Running The NHS With "That £350 million"

NHS commissioning budget for 2022/23, excluding drawdown of previous years’ surpluses, is £153 billion. (Source: NHS England). So imagine most people's surprise when you tell them that, not only is the £350 million a week (£18.3 billion per year), (on the side of the Vote Leave big red bus* is not only not going to get to the NHS, but also Brexit is costing the UK  an ongoing £100 billion per year (Source: Bloomberg). 

To add insult to injury, the £350 million per week EU subs we're not paying anymore will not even cover the required 50,000 border customs agents that our new Brexited UK will now require, (Source: ONS). We require these agents as a consequence of leaving both the EU Single Market and the EU Customs Union. (Unless they're happy on £26,000 per year before tax and National Insurance), which I doubt very much.

Brexit Saga continues

The UK is still not policing the borders. Goods are both leaving and entering the UK unchecked. How come? The EU requires this, but they cut the UK some slack some that they could put into place adequate security and customs checks. The UK government does what it believes it is increasingly entitled to do. They enact a law at UK level effectively saying they have a legal exemption from checking goods. 

I'm sure that it has occurred to many people in the UK that a huge flotilla of illegal goods could be imported into the UK without being checked. Drugs, lethal kid's toys, substandard food etc.

Will We Rejoin?

Politically, it's impossible right now. The Conservatives have decided to become a Brexit Party. Labour, has avoided the subject. (Presumably, they don't want to be associated with "overturning the democatically elected result". I would like to rejoin in a heartbeat, but I understand the logic of this. Producing a poll saying that nearly half the people who voted Leave now believe this to be a mistake. 

That they were lied to. 

Because of that, as James O'Brien, LBC journalist/presenter says, "we should have compassion for the conned". Save our venom for the Brexit pushers, Nigel Farage, 

I Campaigned To Remain In The EU - And I Have The T-Shirt!

I took to the EU campaign trail for Remain. The people who told me they intended to vote Leave fell into two categories: 

1. They wanted to give the government a kick up the a**e.  
2. They wanted the £350 million per week to go to the NHS. 

I did meet some agressive people who couldn't wait to get their blue UK passport, which couldn't be made in the UK. The story is complex, like most Brexit news tends to be. 

However, you can read about this here.

Was There A Plan "B"?

Nope! The government believed "remain" would win.

Which Names Are Still Brexiteers?

These people were consistently in favour of Brexit and still maintain their Brexit habit to this day.

• Dominic Cummings - Vote Leave's equivalent of "The Master"
  

• Boris Johnson - Vote Leave's Joker-In-Chief
  

• Nigel Farage - Pre-referendun, in every fishing port. Post-ref. in no fishing port.
  

• Paul Dacre - Daily Mail Chief. Need I say more?
  

• Daniel Hannan - Irrepressible, Shakespeare-quoting MEP (former Daily Telegraph)
  

• Julia Hartley-Brewer - hosts the weekday breakfast radio show on Talkradio.
  

These people were Brexiteers but token campaigned for Remain.

• David Cameron - the twerp who tabled the referendum!
  

• Jeremy Corbyn - JC's Labour hoped it would all go away!
  

Various Ranting Going On

In 2016, the EU Commission offered aid from the EUSF totalling €60.3 million to deal with the consequences of regional floods occurring in the UK in December 2015 

This aid was rejected by the Cameron Government on the grounds that it was better that the UK Government should provide such relief on its own terms, rather than with the "strings attached" by the EU as to how flood relief funds should be spent. 

Perhaps the "strings" being that the EUSF money didn't find its way mysteriously into other folders, such as the "Nothing At All To Do With Flood Relief" folder. The EU know by now, that you have to be super-specific with the Tories! Some future Tory Prime Minister may need his or her Prime Ministerial abode redecorated with wallpaper that costs lots.

Needless to say, we know how David likes to put a bit of spin on all things EU. This rejection was spotted by at least one award-winning journalist of the time (Jon Danzig) as the "politics of pride" - which is certainly a matter of judgement, depending upon one's point of view. 

I think I more than agree with Jon Danzig. 

We were comprehensively lied to by the government about Brexit. Lower food prices, lower energy prices. Various Tory MPs had their trousers taken down by Jo Coburn, a BBC journalist on Politics Live. They claimed that the UK was growing faster, the economy was strong. In fact, the UK was "growing" by minus 0.4%. All the other EU countries had stronger economies and were growing faster than the UK. Still, easy mistake to make, if you have the graph displayed upside down. 

I expect that these MPs considered this action to be reprehensible. "Dont the BBC know that they forbidden to criticise the government?"

I wrote to my MP about the scandalous conditions facing the immigrant workers in Qatar who, if lucky enough to have not died, haven't made a single rial from their labours. They were conned, perhaps even more surely than I would've been had I sent my my bank details to share in a huge fortune from a Nigerian bank executive, (using a Yahoo e-mail address). 

The MP was obliged to send me the "we have confidence we can help reform Qatar, encouraging them to reform" letter. If I had taken the same stance when I was working in retail, I doubt whether I'd have had any stock left.