The Port of Dover today declared a “critical incident”. A shortage of French passport police caused six-hour queues and tailbacks through Dover and up the motorways. The government blames France. Lookatme Truss, UK Foreign Secretary, is concentrating on vowel adjectives: “appalling”, “awful”, “entirely avoidable and is unacceptable”. This is the same government that caused the …
Tag archives: Brexicide
An Apology: Work, Party, What’s The Difference?
Our great leader, Honest Boris the Incorrupt and Competent has had quite a week of wriggling. The long-awaited Gray Report on 10 Downing Street parties during the Covid lockdowns was released yesterday. It wasn’t flattering to Johnson, other than as a host. Johnson’s standard explanation (standard for a while, but into overdrive in the last …
Continue reading “An Apology: Work, Party, What’s The Difference?”
Northern Ireland Assembly – Here We Don’t Go Again
Here’s democracy: The Democratic Unionist Party, recently elected as the second biggest party in the Northern Ireland Assembly, have just prohibited the same Assembly from doing any work. The Assembly, a local state government, has responsibility for a wide range of things including health, social welfare and the local economy; all things that might need …
Continue reading “Northern Ireland Assembly – Here We Don’t Go Again”
Good Times to Pick a Squabble
Countries, like people, often disagree. Grown-ups deal with that through negotiation and compromise. Sometimes a bit of petulant shouting is part of the negotiation. Lookatme Truss, UK Foreign Secretary and Self-Publicist has made clear the UK intends to throw its toys out of the pram over the Northern Ireland Protocol, the UK-EU deal her boss …
Edinburgh Council Elections
This Scotsman has to vote tomorrow, but they won’t tell me who to vote for. Council elections here use the Single Transferable Vote method. This is the only sensible electoral system. It’s a Proportional Representation system, unlike the laughably awful First Past The Post (FPTP) used in Westminster – rant here – and lets us …
UK Government Finds Xenophobia A Reliable Distraction, Again
Apparently we’re to send refugees to Rwanda. What an excellent fantasy, Johnson. Disturbing for the government to play that card though. It’ll be no surprise there are sharper politicians than David Cameron. He had a problem with Tory backbench ‘Eurosceptics’, a fringe bunch of irrelevants who disguised their xenophobia as a rational dislike not of …
Continue reading “UK Government Finds Xenophobia A Reliable Distraction, Again”
More Dead People Looking for a Better Life
An estimated 27 people died trying to cross the English Channel in a rubber dinghy yesterday. Who’s fault is it? Theirs, for being so stupid? The evil people smugglers, for taking their money and giving them a high-probability death sentence? The French government’s, for allowing them to go to a beach and get in a …
Continue reading “More Dead People Looking for a Better Life”
Frost, EU and Tactics
Order of events: December 2020: (Honest Boris’) UK Government signs a deal with the EU over trade and Northern Ireland Every minute since: Same government jumps up and down about the deal being unfair and threatens to walk away 08/10/2021: EU announces that on 13/10/2021 it’ll offer ways to make the deal work easier 12/10/2021: …
Teamwork – UK Foreign Policy
Tobias Ellwood, Conservative chair of the Commons defence committee said after the Afghan debacle “We should be clear that Britain’s leverage is negligible as an individual country”…”The only means of influence we now have is if we pool efforts together with the international community” Quite right. Perhaps he should let his boss know that right …
What To Do With The Free Money
Dear Rishi, Long time no hear, how are you? And the wife and kids? I have a question. I read this morning that our friends in the International Monetary Fund, the world’s overdraft bank, have created $650 billion in SDRs (you remember special drawing rights, that made-up currency they use that works as real money). …