fahrenheit451:358

#YellowRose #NotinMyName  are the latest hashtags -the flotsam and jetsam of Soros' deep pockets to fan the flames of a EU orchestrated make-believe persecution complex about the supposed fate or otherwise of EU citizens working and sojourning within the borders of the UK.

 

For those who genuinely haven’t the foggiest notion as to how the world came to have such a thing as an ” EU citizen “,it maybe worth noting how this quasi-legal abortion came into existence. Via the 1992 Maastricht treaty as it happens. Which is :-

 

The Maastricht Treaty (formally, the Treaty on European Union or TEU) undertaken to integrate Europe was signed on 7 February 1992 by the members of the European Community in Maastricht, Netherlands.[1] On 9–10 December 1991, the same city hosted the European Council which drafted the treaty.[2] Upon its entry into force on 1 November 1993 during the Delors Commission,[3] it created the European Union and led to the creation of the single European currency, the euro. The Maastricht Treaty has been amended by the treaties of Amsterdam, Nice andLisbon.

 

A referendum was expected to take place in the United Kingdom in 2006 to decide whether the country should ratify the proposed Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe. However, following the rejection of the Constitution by similar referendums in France in May 2005 and the Netherlands in June 2005, the UK vote was postponed indefinitely.

The question was rendered moot when the constitution was superseded by the Treaty of Lisbon, which Parliament ratified in 2008 without holding a referendum.

 

 

And here we are,the bogus #The3Million aka #PeoplesVote aka EU funded seditionists spearheaded by Labour  actually sabotaged Brexit and in effect won!

fahrenheit451:317

We're stuck inside the EU's prison walls. We remain " EU Citizens ",even though we were never asked if we wanted to become EU citizens in the first place let alone asked to make a decision about it.

The creation of  EU Citizenship opened up the Road to Sedition upon which the UK is journeying.
I originally posted this on February 21 2017 -And So It Goes...#849 :-

The trouble with people who suffer from paranoid delusions is that, clearly there might well indeed be someone out to get them. But not right now.

Various cities across  Britain were ,on Monday 20 February once again awash with the flotsam and jetsam of placard waving detritus. Yes, exactly the same shills out earning their CIA funded stipend who were placard waving and reciting platitudes with all the fervour of a papist penitent the previous week,were out metaphorically flagellating their own consciences yet again.

#stoptrump was supposed to be the catechism,although as the seemingly interminable hours of faux-rhetoric and student common room sedition passed, all manner of vituperative hyperbole ended up getting spouted and placards waved at it.

#Brexit was a popular target along with plaintive invocations against racism, islamophobia and the recently rediscovered complaint of xenophobia. The most bizarre rant amongst such a crowded field of idiolect terminology was the now trending and therefore fashionable lamentation involving the fate of EU citizens working and sojourning within the borders of the UK.

  For those who genuinely haven’t the foggiest notion as to how the world came to have such a thing as an ” EU citizen “,it maybe worth noting how this quasi-legal abortion came into existence. Via the 1992 Maastricht treaty as it happens. Which is :-

The Maastricht Treaty (formally, the Treaty on European Union or TEU) undertaken to integrate Europe was signed on 7 February 1992 by the members of the European Community in Maastricht, Netherlands.^[1] On 9–10 December 1991, the same city hosted the European Councilwhich drafted the treaty.^[2] Upon its entry into force on 1 November 1993 during the Delors Commission,^[3] it created the European Union and led to the creation of the single European currency, the euro. The Maastricht Treaty has been amended by the treaties of Amsterdam, Nice andLisbon.

 

A referendum was expected to take place in the United Kingdom in 2006 to decide whether the country should ratify the proposed Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe. However, following the rejection of the Constitution by similar referendums in France in May 2005 and the Netherlands in June 2005, the UK vote was postponed indefinitely.

The question was rendered moot when the constitution was superseded by the Treaty of Lisbon, which Parliament ratified in 2008 without holding a referendum.

 POSTSCRIPT

And here we are 2 years on, the bogus #The3Million aka #PeoplesVote aka EU funded seditionists spearheaded by Labour have actually won!

fahrenheit451:308

February 7 1992 is a day that shall live in infamy.

It is the day on which that most heinous and treasonable Maastricht Treaty gave birth to the concept of  " citizen of the european union ".

It is a day when the EU funded seditionist garbage known as Peoples Vote aka metropolitan elitist Remoaners celebrate the historic self-annihilation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland as a sovereign nation state.

Worthwhile reminding ourselves therefore of how the metropolitan ruling elites across the EU and its 28 satrapies including the UK utilise referendums.I originally posted the following blog , And So It Goes...#741  on February 25 2016 - 4 months before our Referendum on EU vassalage.

And How Was The Referendum Process For You ?

On June 23rd.2016AD WE the British Electorate get to cast our vote on whether to remain enslaved behind the barbed-wire of the EU Kz or opt to leave and walk out from under the EU’s, ” Arbeit Macht Frei “sign.

Referendums though are a tricky thing,especially when it comes to expecting the Kommissars of Strassbourg to respect let alone abide by the outcomes of referendums where those very outcomes weren’t the ones foreseen by the Thaumaturgists of Brussels.

Every Treaty ,every amendment to a Treaty,every nationally conferred campaign on a referendum to ratify a Treaty or an amendment has been systematically subjected to the most reprehensible propagandistic interference and attempts at subversion that the European Union has been able to deploy. The once and former sovereign and democratic national states of Ireland and Denmark have suffered more than even Britain from the unashamed and blatant finagling orchestrated by the EU.
Herewith a brief historical resume.

The Irish referendum on the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe was a vote that was planned but did not occur. The referendum was expected to take place in 2005 or 2006 to decide whether Ireland should ratify the proposed EU Constitution. Following the rejection of the Constitution by voters in the French referendum of May 2005 and the Dutch referendum of June 2005, the planned Irish referendum was postponed indefinitely.

National referendums on the European Constitution
Czech Republic	Cancelled
Denmark	Postponed
France	No by 55%. 69% turnout.
Ireland	Cancelled
Luxembourg	Yes by 57%. 88% turnout.
Netherlands	No by 62%. 63% turnout.
Poland	Postponed
Portugal	Postponed
Spain	Yes by 77%. 42% turnout.
United Kingdom	Postponed

LISBON TREATY

The rejection of the Constitution by French and Dutch voters halted the ratification process. As support by all members was required the Constitution was dropped and in July 2007 theEuropean Council agreed upon the foundation of a new treaty to replace the rejected Constitution. The text agreed upon at the European Council meeting on 18 and 19 October 2007 contained many of the planned changes of the Constitution but would not replace the existing treaties, as the Constitution would have done, but amended them. Before this Reform Treaty of Lisbon was signed on 13 December 2007

The first referendum on the Treaty of Lisbon held on 12 June 2008 was rejected by the Irish electorate, by a margin of 53.4% to 46.6%, with a turnout of 53%.^[5]

The second referendum on the Treaty of Lisbon held on 2 October 2009 and the proposal was approved by 67.1% to 32.9%, with a turnout of 59%.

In Denmark, two referendums had to be held before the treaty of Maastricht passed. The first was held on 2 June 1992, had a turnout of 82.9% but approval of the treaty of Maastricht was denied by a slim margin, with only 49.3% in favour of the treaty.

 The failure resulted in the Edinburgh Agreement, a deal which accepted the Danish “national compromise” and kept Denmark within the EU, on condition that the country was granted exemptions, so called “opt-outs”, on four areas of cooperation: the adoption of the euro, security and defence, justice and home affairs (JHA), and EU citizenship.

With the addition of the Edinburgh Agreement, A new referendum was held on 18 May 1993. There was a turnout of 85.5% of which the 56.8% voted in favour of the renegotiated treaty.The four opt-outs have since defined – and to an increasing degree limited – Denmark’s participation in the European integration process.

The controversy around these exemptions has long been a focal issue in the Danish EU-debate. A referendum in 2000 already rejected a proposal to introduce the euro.

On December 3, 2015 , 53% of Danish voters rejected a proposal of six parliamentary parties to replace Denmark’s long-standing opt-out from the EU’s justice and home affairs system with a case-based opt-in model.

The yes-vote would have ensured sustained participation in Europol, the EU’s police agency, plus the adaption of 22 additional legislative files. What started out as a practical issue became a general opinion poll on relations with the Union with likely impacts on Danish EU policy.

June 23rd. is going to turn out to have been a very interesting day indeed.

fahrenheit451:231

By 1945 ,even the most ardent Nazi fanatic  realised that the game was up.
Shortly after the War ,those leading figures who had escaped the Noose ,such as Speer claimed to have opposed Hitler's policy against the Jews and had in fact begun plotting to overthrow Hitler himself ! Yeah ,right ,whatever.
The original Nazi inspired  " dream " of a European Union , ( yes it really was theirs first ) is even now going the way of the Third Reich.
And what is clearly hastening its cataclysmic demise is the shibboleth " freedom of movement of labour. " A horrendously stupid and worthless idea let alone sentiment,but there they go getting all multiculti as if it was somehow intrinsically  " better " or more " worthy " or expressed some innate,deep positive human condition. It never did.
The make-belief " left " as much as the make-belief " right " have jointly wasted the past 70 years arguing the wrong question. And the smug ,kleptocratic Ruling Elites have profited from exploiting this divisive non-sequitur to the max. writing in the Daily Torynoncegraph  on January 24,2016  Executive Chairman of Capital Economics ,Roger Bootle sums it up thus :- ( pay attention ,this is a capitalist telling you how the real version of The Big Con functions )
But the world has changed. The manufacture and trading of goods has become a smaller part of our GDP, while tariff barriers have come down dramatically around the world. The free movement of labour is now the most important of the three freedoms – and it poses serious issues for the EU.
It has become so important because of two major factors: first, the huge expansion of the EU to the east, including countries with much lower standards of living, whose people, therefore, have a strong economic incentive to move; second, the mass of people outside the union who want to get in.
The onrush of people from outside is due to the breaking down of states in the Middle East and Africa, the increased allure of the life apparently on offer in the EU, and the inexorable rise in the populations of these regions.
Over the next few decades, the population of Africa and the Middle East is set to soar.
As a result, today’s migration issue isn’t about the allocation of resources; it isn’t even primarily about economics at all. It is about the ability and willingness of people, cultures and institutions to absorb large numbers of people from the outside, often with very different values, beliefs and traditions.
What is the answer?
Clearly although the Ruling Elites could all comfortably relocate en masse to the Cayman Islands and no-one would notice ,they aren't searching for an answer right now or ever. To all those who have never experienced it and wondered what Schadenfreude is ,well this is getting to be as good as it ever gets. I'm loving it already.

fahrenheit451:227

You know that feeling of dread you get at the onset of what you know will be a migraine headache?

The same sickening sense of foreboding is achieved by listening to what that vapid and lacklustre straw man masquerading as the current leader of the British Labour Party has to say on the EU’s ” Freedom of Movement “.
The impending sense of nausea he induces when evading the issue is all too palpable.

It is also all too indicative of the 200 #LabourIn MPs’ tawdry metropolitan PC ideology.

For some reason, this antidemocratic, seditionist, parliamentary rabble and quite a large swathe of otherwise serious and rational people on the British ” Left ” think and behave and speak as if the ineluctable Laws of the Capitalist means of production,distribution and exchange , i.e. the totality of the Capitalist economic system has ceased to operate.

Despite their voluble and disingenuous abusive harangues to the contrary, they e.g  most of Labour most of the time and most of the other ” left ” most of the time categorically deny the following.:-

The basis of the laws of supply and demand are – that the less you have of something,the higher the price of it inexorably is.The more you have of something the lower the price of that becomes.

Seriously,the operation of the capitalist system is really simple, that’s why it works.

An increase in the availability of labour in what is ” a labour market ” will overall lower the price of labour.A shortage of labour would increase the price thereof.

Adam Smith expounded on this, Marx certainly knew that this is how our world operates.

But not according to Corbyn or Slogans With Placards or any other amongst the dreck of failed PC multiculturalist neophytes who show off their faux-revolutionary,anti-capitalist politics at Uni.

Sad.

Unrestricted labour market competition is called freedom of movement.

Utterly ghastly.

Time for sovereign borders and tariff barriers and each nation State to its own.

Time for autarky and higher wages.

Time to smash the #EU to smithereens.

And that Comrades, is Revolutionary!

( The observant reader might be aware that but with a few minor edits,this blog post originally appeared on January 10,2017 under fahrenheit451:117 )

fahrenheit451:226

Winter is here.

And so the annual plethora of otiose ideological partisan cant and vacuous platitudes aka  the " NHS is in Crisis " discourse is once again under way.

The answer to " will the NHS ever be out of a state of crisis?" appears after many decades to be; no.

The only differences to be discerned amongst all the world's national health systems is the degree to which they are all in one way or another perceived to be " performing " or  functioning at a noticeably lower standard than any other arbitrarily chosen health system or systems to which they are compared at any point in time.

For example ,the reputable body on such matters , The King's Fund posted online on June 8 2017,  ( herewith an extract gleaned )  from " How Does the NHS Compare Internationally ".

" Although the UK has been at the forefront of the development of measures of health care quality (like the national patient survey programme) and the use of quality improvement techniques (like evidence-based clinical guidelines), performance on some indicators of health care quality remains ‘average or disappointing’ compared to international benchmarks according to the OECD. For example, although there is a comprehensive screening programme for breast and cervical cancer, survival rates are below the EU average (despite improvements in recent years). Rates of hospital admissions for asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) (combined) have improved at a faster rate than many other countries in recent years, but also remain well above the EU average. The UK has also slipped down international league tables for infant mortality and is now 15th out of 19 comparable countries. In a recent study that compared access to and quality of health care in 195 countries by analysing ‘health care-amenable mortality’ – ie, mortality rates from causes that should not be fatal if effective health care is in place – the UK is ranked 30th out of 195 countries – its overall score was similar to Portugal and Malta but lower than comparable countries like Germany, The Netherlands, Spain and Sweden. "

It is invariably the ready ammunition of  facts 'n' figures that the contending ideological parties in the annual grand remonstrance on the NHS resort to in order to bolster their respective cases.

The Winter 2017 / 18 clash of opinionated otiose cant differs somewhat markedly from previous annual tourneys in so far as the Spend -a -heck -load -More faction is noticeably a virtual appendage of the Remoaner anti - brexit lobby.

They have unashamedly incorporated their metropolitan elitist  anti- brexit prejudices,stuff and nonsense about EU citizens,unrestricted EU labour market competition,etc. into their narrative of a NHS about to collapse because of a shortage of staff.

Which of course can be empirically refuted.An objective process that Remoaners find to be anathema.

fahrenheit451:224

The year draws to a close pretty much in the same state that it first opened 360 days ago.

Whining,whingeing,cantankerous,obfuscating,disingenuous,blathering non sequiturs,otiose cant and vacuous platitudes ad nauseam being excreted from that prominent orifice on the faces of Remoaners that is usually located at the opposite end on the rest of us homo sapiens.

The bogus #The3Million #OpenBritain #Labour et al have demonstrated amply that reason,common sense,logic and economic reality have no part to play in their deluded fantasies of what #brexit does or doesn't do.

You'd probably have more success in trying explaining the workings of a digital camera to a peasant from the Middle Ages,than you would economic theory to the metropolitan elitist EU shills masquerading in their variety of pantomime costumes who're pretending they're not intellectually and economically subservient to and dependent upon the European Union for their existence.

Capitalism 101 - an increase in the supply of goods is accompanied by downward pressure on the price of those goods. The same inexorable iron law applies to the supply of labour in any given market.The greater the number of workers available leads to downward pressure on wages.

These iron laws are immutable.Capitalism does not alter.

Unless,of course you're an  university academic or professional scientist or cultural arts luvvie or metropolitan domiciled legal shyster where,amazingly there never has been nor is there ever likely to be a sudden,cataclysmic increase in the numbers of those vying for employment in these rarified almost reserved for the elites' occupational groupings.

Or if you're a City finanicer of some ilk.then you get to deliberately engineer the wholesale annihilation of the global economy,cash in your winnings and then after the Deluge blackmail the stupid political classes to dig you out of the hole,cover your losses and ensure your continued career in the same manner as before.

17.4 Million of the UK electorate -52% of those that voted -gave their verdict as Leave on the proposition of should the UK withdraw from the EU.
Again something vehemently denied by the metropolitan elitist remoaners and their insidious,seditionist campaign.

2018 is,I fear going to be more of the same.

More zero hours Agency contracts because the supply of endless cheap compliant toadying labour from eastern europe is not going to be cut off.Which turn keeps wages down and GDP chronically handicapped.Which in turn prolongs Austerity.Which in turn keeps up the DWP onslaught of sanctions against the long term unemployed and other benefits dependent claimants;because there are fewer and fewer jobs,and less housing and longer GP surgery and Hospital queues etc etc.

Nothing to do with economics according to the anti-democratic, anti- populist Remoaner seditionists.

We'll see in 2018.

fahrenheit451:221

The Referendum on whether the UK would choose to Remain within or choose to Leave the European Union was ineluctably flawed from its inception. Parliament voted to undertake to accept and implement the referendum's verdict whichever way the vote went.Of course,why wouldn't they?

Except that nobody in the hallowed corridors of Westminster and Whitehall,not a single MP or civil servant nor any of their expert advisors had given the slightest passing thought nor consideration to the EURef. coming out with the verdict in favour of Leave. Nobody.

Great events in History that mark a sea change in the fortune and destinies of Peoples and Nations tend to manifest themselves and occur more often through mis-steps and fortuitous accidents than meticulous planning,organisation and disciplined execution.

The least mistake ridden,the least error prone, the least incompetent and idle of any given set of contending and mutually irreconcilable parties tends to be favoured by the driving,determining forces of Historical development.

In the wake of the preposterous announcements of a breakthrough in the Brexit negotiations,the last few days have seen a Comedy of errors parlayed into an farce of operatic proportions.

The insidiously venal and ideologically corrupt Remain campaign run by #Labour aka #LabourIn re-emerged as the more robust amongst the plethora of contending and lacklustre combatants simply because of the inexcusable insincerity and errant stupidity of the useless UK government in its conduct of our side of the withdrawal negotiations.

No doubt other historically significant movements and events that have shaped and informed our Great Nation such as The Reformation,the English revolutionary aka Civil War,the Chartists and so forth endured similar dilemmas and encountered painful vicissitudes.

One thing remains certain; come April 2019,Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty will have run its course. We shall be free again.

That is of course unless all 27 constituent national parliaments and the faux-EU parliament happen to agree unanimously to extending the time allowed under Article 50.

Make mine a Schadenfreude, shaken not stirred.

fahrenheit451:214

The following was gleaned from twitter -

 

Donald Tusk‏Verified account @eucopresident 20h20 hours ago

 

Discussed with PM @theresa_may the calendar of #Brexit talks. Only if UK makes progress by early December, will I be ready to propose new guidelines on transition and future relations at December #EUCO.

The current UK withdrawal negotiations with the EU are predicated on three points being met before any negotiations on the future trading relations between the UK and EU can commence.

These three points relate to the status,( some might argue legally bogus in any event,but in the interests of brevity we'll let that pass for now,) of EU citizens sojourning in the UK; the status of the Irish border post-brexit and more substantially,the amount demanded by the EU as a " financial settlement " aka " Divorce Bill " in tabloid speak.

Tusk is to all intents and purposes a jumped up, strutting,venal,little tinpot fleamarket Pilsudski who has the audacity to be telling the UK what the EU expects from us!

And he's being allowed to get away with it pretty much in the same way as the EU as a whole has been getting away with it's treatment of and behaviour toward us for the past 45 years.

Tusk is President of what is officially designated the European Council.The European Council Presidency is one of five such presidencies within the EU. There is also President of the European Commission;currently held by a former wine salesman from the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.Then there is the Presidency of the European Parliament that has a mafioso politician from Italy in its seat.Then there is the Presidency of the European Central Bank; run by another corrupt goombah,greaseball guinea. 

And finally there is the six-monthly rotating EU Presidency that allows peripheral Teutonic satrapies such as Croatia and Latvia to wallow in the delusion that their homeland actually counts for a little more than nothing in the vast EU scheme of things.

And to this menagerie May is making us kowtow and pay respect to.

Unforgivable.

fahrenheit451:205

Arch-bootlicker and Kowtowing Toady-in-Chief to the EU, Theresa May is at present sojourning in Brussels.
We know this to be the case as the Corporate MSM is currently reporting on the prevailing status of Brexit negotiations.
The term " negotiations " is purely an arbitrary one that's used for ease of reference. Imbroglio is nearer the mark.
Various pro and anti - brexit factional interests are in the throes of vying over the putative content of the much vaunted " deal " that might or might not be struck between the UK and the 27  remaining satrapies governing the former's exit from the EU.
And yet, despite the EU's very best propagandistic endeavours and the hundreds of millions spent on multimedia platform campaigns to persuade the British people otherwise, Brexit remains intact and the UK's impending departure from satrapydom is secure for the end of March 2019.
It is that straightforward. The Labour sponsored front organisation " The 3 Million " can whine and stamp its tiny feet and repeatedly chuck its toys from the pram as much it wants; nothing alters. We are leaving.
The Maastricht Treaty 1992 -which was never approved by the UK electorate- created the egregious legal fiction of " Citizen of the EU ". Just how you can be a citizen of a non-nation is itself a bizarre a notion as the human intellect could ever possibly have to deal with.
Nevertheless the EU created and our supine,spineless Parliament agreed to accept  this legal impossibility a la Lewis Carroll's Humpty Dumpty " Words mean precisely what i want them to mean.."  And ever since the EU Citizens were conjured into faux-existence,these cozening wretches have been going around slitting their morally superior consciences and bleeding them all over the rest of us.
Our contrite supplicant of a PM, has now gone along with this idiocy and caved in to this alien agitators' charter thus ceding a significant advantage to the EU side in the so-called negotiating process.Just how much more else she will hand over without a murmur before the end of March 2019 is open to strenuous conjecture. Quite a lot, one imagines.

So,on with the motley!

fahrenheit451:202

Either blatant crass stupidity or an inability to engage with,read and comprehend written english as regards Article 50 is having a widespread debilitating effect on the legions of Remoaner,metropolitan elitist,seditionist EU shills.

Their OCD driven campaign to sabotage,stop and annul the UK's withdrawal from the EU aka Brexit, has clearly impaired the Remoaners' cognitive functions to such a degree that they have all reverted to some pre-industrial primitivism where thaumaturgy and vocal appeals into the ether have substituted themselves for human intellectual reason.

And that is cause enough to celebrate the cathartic benefits, to the rest of us in civilised human society,of Schadenfreude!

Parliament was scheduled to undertake serious and grown up scrutiny and debate related to the ineluctable passage of the EU Withdrawal Bill.These proceedings has now been delayed due the submission of an unprecedented and inordinate amount of proposed amendments and putative additional clauses to the original legislation.

Not that any of it effects the assigned due date for the UK's termination of EU-Serfdom and satrapyhood -March 29 2019.

The European Union and its various democratically nebulous institutions,Council,Parliament  et al are themselves struggling pitifully under a burden of bureaucratic and legalistic flim-flammery which only abject citizens born under the yoke of the precepts and practices of the wholly alien and absurdist Code Napoleon could possibly endure.
None of which effects the implementation of Article 50.

Michel Barnier, the EU's putative chief negotiator is clearly labouring under the illusion that by rigidly sticking to his masters' formula for conducting the withdrawal negotiations,that somehow this will impair,dissuade or discourage the UK government to such a degree that Brexit will to all intents and purposes never take place.

Again,this is the very best news that Brexiteers could possibly have.
The EU's insistence that the issues of " a divorce settlement ", EU citizens rights in the UK post- brexit and the future status of the Northern Ireland /Republic of Ireland's border arrangements are ALL to be settled to the EU's satisfaction prior to any trade negotiations commencing with the UK; is of course to be embraced!

For whom the bell tolls.It tolls for the EU.

fahrenheit451:186

Another day, another self-perpetuating damnable lie uttered and then broadcast and published by the smug metropolitan elitists of the Seditionist Remain campaign.

 That's enough said about Chuka Umunna and his latest in a long line of deluded ramblings and unsubstantiated assertions on the non-existent " demonisation" of migrant workers.

The latest flagrant disregard for anything approaching empirical proof,logic or remotely cogent argument comes from the Food & Drink Federation.

They concocted, ( sorry conducted ) a survey that was meant to somehow meant to be authoritative and credible and impress anyone with an intellectual attention span less than an amoeba.

The survey covered, they claimed, 627 companies from across trade bodies such the Association of Labour Providers, the British Beer and Pub Association, the British Hospitality Association, the Food and Drink Federation, and the Fresh Produce Consortium.

Nearly a third of respondents to the survey, conducted between March and May, said some EU staff had already departed.

" Some EU staff  ", this isn't admissible,verifiable empirical data from which one might draw a conclusion,is it ?

 

While the UK's economy has slowed sharply this year, evidence that the Brexit vote made an impact on the labour market is less clear.

Less clear? than what ? the ephemeral " Some EU staff " ?

 

The Chief Spokesdroid for this intellect-free,integrity-lite survey , Andrew Opie, director of food and sustainability at the British Retail Consortium made the following pronouncement to the effect that:-

 

An abrupt reduction in the number of EU workers eligible to work in the UK after Brexit would result in significant disruption for the entire food supply chain and that this would have consequences for the availability and price of food in Britain.

 

Around a fifth of the 2 million EU nationals working in the UK are employed in the food and drink supply chain.

36% of companies in the survey said their businesses would be unviable without access to EU workers.

 

So,the British Retail Consortium has issued a threat against Her Majesty's democratically constituted government,that should the  brexit process be carried out to its agreed conclusion,i.e. departure from the shackles of the EU,then the entire food supply chain for the population of the UK will be existentially imperiled by Companies withdrawing themselves from the supply infrastructure. Is that what Opies meant to say?

 

It seems that the egregiously  exploitative Agencies ZeroHours Contracts that for decades have underpinned the systemically lazy,stupid,greedy,inefficient cheap foreign labour grubbing shennanigans of the UK Food and farming Industry have come home to roost.

 

In a passing nod to Realpolitik  and Real Economics,the Food & Drink Federation acknowledges,much like a penitent before the Inquisition that:-

 

Over time [training local workers] is something that will have to happen as a result of the Brexit vote. We recognise that immigration was a big factor in the Brexit vote.

 

To deal with fewer foreign workers, the federation will have a strong emphasis on building skills through apprenticeships and investment in technology to support automation, it said.

 

How jolly big of the F&DF!

 

Why the hell haven't they as well as most of British industry across all sectors been pro-actively doing this over the last 40 odd years?

 

Then again the Labour Party & Trades Union Movement and virtually all the anti-capitalist Left maintain that unrestricted labour market competition actually increases wages! and that to argue against that is to scapegoat aka demonise immigrant /migrant workers.

 

Which brings us back to Chuka Umunna.

 

Schadenfreude.

 

fahrenheit451:178

The Social Europe site published an opinion by Simon Wren-Lewis on  the current state of the UK's brexit negotiations with the EU. In general, SWL's article was a broadly social-democratic critique of what he regards as the Left's case- " Lexit "- for leaving the EU.
So far so good,after all just like every vote cast in the EU referendum was of equal value, so too, were we to extend the argument ,ought not one man's opinion be of equal validity to everyone else's opinion on any given issue? In practice,of course this is never the case, to believe that it could be is the height of naivety.
You see, the  Simon Wren-Lewis article had as a footnote his official moniker  " Professor of Economics at Oxford University ". Of all the varied demographic groupings it was the AB social class alone amongst all of them that had a majority vote Remain in the EU referendum. And  Remain metropolitan elitists being the seditionist nest of vipers that they invariably are, it doesn't stop at the opinion,learned or otherwise of just one professor.
Today's MSM has been assailed with the announcement of a list of demands delivered to our doltish Prime Minister by no less an august grouping than that representing the UK's leading 10 universities. Their particular strategic line of assault against Brexit is centred on the supposed infringement of the copious Rights enjoyed by EU citizens sojourning in the UK who also happen to be working at universities.
And so it goes. The metastasizing Remain insurgency asserts that every conceivable sector of the economy in one shape or form or another is under dire immediate existential threat because of the looming brexit. Whether or not it even actually eventuates or not.
As for the democratic will of the UK's sovereign electorate as expressed in a binding referendum agreed as such by parliament itself; that clearly counts for less than nothing.And in any event the 52% were misled,didn't understand the question or did and perversely voted Leave because they are racist,insular cretins.

That would include me then?

fahrenheit451:177

I'm sure some famous,infamous,oft-quoted Chinese general wrote something along the lines of, the purpose of warfare is to convince the enemy in their own minds that they cannot win. And of course it was an irascible Lutheran Prussian general whose maxim that, War is the continuation of politics by other means, strikes an all too familiar chord today.
Once Article 50 was promulgated by Parliament,the metropolitan elitist organised and led Remain campaign knew that their anti-democratic, seditionist cause was on the ropes and facing imminent collapse.Politics is war and the sinister forces of globalist-neoliberalism were never very likely to accept the verdict of the Judiciary and Parliament let alone as well as a binding referendum on the matter. Their best and only hope lies in a continuation by any and all means,however subversive and destabilising,of the conflict ensuring that the war over #brexit goes on.
Even the now lawful triggering of Article 50 that set in motion a defined two year timeframe for withdrawal negotiations- no agreements being reached after the set two years would mean the UK exiting the EU and going immediately onto WTO rules for Trade- even that has now been called into question by the very metropolitan and shadowy foreign interest groups and organisations that insisted on everyone abiding by and adhering to Article 50.
The MSM and other social media platforms are abuzz with newly engendered,fevered speculation over the synthesised concept of  a " Transition Period ". And this from those supposedly leading on brexit. Cliff edges,hard brexit, labour shortages,here ,there and everywhere throughout the national economy are now the weapons of mass deception being deployed on a rapidly recurring hourly basis by Remain.
A few days ago it was Bloomberg.com sounding the trumpets of doom on a shortage of agricultural labourers ; today its the George Osborne edited London Standard on waiting and bar staff. :-
" Brexit is causing a crisis in the hiring of bar and restaurant workers, a top hospitality boss has warned.
Leslie Kwarteng, a senior general manager at three of central London's most popular restaurants, said it is becoming increasingly difficult to hire waiting on and bar staff since the Brexit vote.
The 29-year-old runs the iconic Quaglino’s restaurant in the heart of London’s Mayfair, rooftop venue Madison, which has terraces looking out onto St Paul’s Cathedral, and swanky eatery and lounge bar 100 Wardour Street in Soho. "
Clearly,the tried and trusted capitalistic method of offering higher wages and improved working conditions has yet to occur to this particular denizen of the squalid,wheedling,greedy,corrupt sector of congenitally incompetent and arrogant UK bosses and business leaders.
The shame is that no-one on the democratic populist side who actually won the Referendum has ever read,nor would be perhaps even capable of understanding the works of Macchiavelli or Clausewitz or that Chinese general.
In any given situation,the most determined wins.

fahrenheit451:176

The problems faced by those opposed to the UK's departure from the EU are not my concern. It is axiomatic that nothing worthwhile can ever be achieved without pain and sacrifice. The restoration of the UK's national sovereignty is precisely such a worthwhile undertaking and I am content for that necessary burden of pain and sacrifice to be shouldered exclusively by all those opposed to Brexit.  It goes some way to mitigating the shame and dishonour of our now 45 years long abject subjugation to the tyrannical despotism of the Franco-German European Union.
The insidious,shrill demagoguey of the Remain campaign continues unabated. The metropolitan elitist led Remoaner rabble are still helmed by the 200+ Labour MPs who never rescinded their allegiance to the plainly seditionist #LabourIn ,who so unexpectedly lost out to the democratic will of the sovereign Electorate,something that took them and their sinister globalist corporate confederates completely by surprise on June 23 2016.
 Bloomberg.com carried the black propaganda headline , " Even Immigrant Managers Fear Brexit These Days ".
Like we should even give a f***. The gist of the Remoaner stance being summed in the Bloomberg article up by :-
" The potential departure of EU migrants means tough times ahead for countless British businesses, including Traditional Norfolk Poultry, one of the companies Bloomberg is tracking through the Brexit process. Set in rolling farmland in East Anglia, the company relies heavily on migrant labor to oversee the farming and processing of more than 5 million turkeys and chickens every year. And it depends on people like Migut to recruit and manage workers who often don’t speak much, if any, English.

 “It’s getting worse and worse. We just can’t find people,” said Mark Gorton, the company’s co-founder. “They’re just not there to recruit.”

Gorton says he and his staff talk about trying to hire more Brits at their weekly meetings, but they can’t even find enough east Europeans to fill vacancies. He tries to move workers off of the minimum wage—7.50 pounds ($9.80) an hour—as soon as he can to retain staff. He’s done away with the requirement that all workers speak English as he struggles to find people."

Even the dumbest Leftist, Another Europe is Possible, marxist-manque ought by this late stage acknowledge the efficacy of the iron law of economics;supply and demand. Capitalists are forced against their own ideological prejudices and personal consciences to actually increase their offer on wages in a vain attempt to attract the necessary numbers of workers.They can of course brutalise and exploit those workers later, on other terms and conditions once they've got them to swallow the bait on remuneration.
It was ever thus. 40 years of stagnant and declining levels of real wages, the rapid cancerous spread of Zero Hours precarious casualised employment are inextricably linked to ever increasing levels of globalisation. None of which is ever in the interests of the workers.
Neither is the EU pantomime of  " freedom of movement of labour ". A heretofore one country's jobless becomes several other countries' problem in so far as the jobless mendicants from Latvia,Lithuania,Romania,Bulgaria, Poland's moribund dysfunctional economies have displaced those who would otherwise have been employed in ,for example,the UK.
The aggregate total of officially 30,000,000 jobless throughout the EU remains undisturbed; the Titanic continues to founder,only the deckchairs have been rearranged.

fahrenheit451:137

Read and understand. :-

straw man

noun

1) an intentionally misrepresented proposition that is set up because it is easier to defeat than an opponent's real argument.

2)a  person regarded as having no substance or integrity.

Clearly these last couple of days have been one elongated mainstream media straw -man jousting tournament. Britain was threatening possible military action against Spain over Gibraltar! or maybe it wasn't,but Gibraltar did get a mention in the EU's negotiating procedures document vis a vis the UK's Article 50 exit. Within the EU's document the Spanish government would be guaranteed some kind of definitive say over the future status of Gibraltar once the UK has exited the EU. Or possibly not, depending on how excruciatingly nuanced an interpretation EU theologians-manque could possibly contrive from the words actually written. The massed ranks of seditionist EU shills in all their guises immediately seized upon the apparently bellicose and intemperate responses from various former Tory government ministers to this allegedly diplomatic faux-pas occasioned by the beleaguered Spanish government. The Straw Man was now fully animated. Lazy faux-journalism coupled with superficial news reporting and the repetition of kneejerk off the cuff responses added to the less than entirely convincing imbroglio. If this was supposed to be a bone being thrown to the rabid pack of seditionist dogs to feast off,then evidently there wasn't enough meat on it to last more than a sniff and a lick. Schadenfreude once again!! #Brexit Ahoy!!

fahrenheit451:132

First,the context.A year ago Peter Hitchens, journalist and commentator non pareil wrote the following for Mail Online :-

A THREAT FAR BIGGER THAN PUTIN

 noisy promoters of a ‘New Cold War’ rage and shriek at the wrongdoings of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, even though Russia has no designs on us and poses less of a threat to this country’s freedom and autonomy than Jean-Claude Juncker or Angela Merkel.

How odd that these people seldom if ever say anything about Turkey’s swollen and increasingly dangerous despot, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

President Erdogan, who rules his spectacularly corrupt country from a gigantic new palace, kills his own people by thuggishly suppressing peaceful demonstrations. He hates criticism. His political opponents are arrested at dawn and tried on absurd charges.

He throws journalists into prison and seizes control of newspapers that attack him. He has been one of the keenest promoters of the disastrous Syrian war, which has turned millions into refugees and hundreds of thousands into corpses.

He is an intolerant religious fanatic, and curiously unwilling to deploy his large armed forces against Islamic State. And now he seeks to blackmail Western Europe into allowing his country into the EU and dropping visa restrictions on Turks, not to mention demanding trainloads of money.

If we do not give him these things, then he will continue to do little or nothing about the multitudes of migrants who use Turkey as a bridge into the prosperous West.

And yet for years he has been falsely described as a ‘moderate’ by Western media flatterers, and his country has been allowed to remain in Nato, supposedly an alliance of free democracies.

He is a direct threat to us. Yet the anti-Putin chorus never mention him. Is it because they cannot pronounce his name?  "

Or is it because they have a silly phobia about Russia, left over from the real Cold War, and aren’t paying attention to what’s really going on?

Behold, fast forward a year and Turks are rioting on the streets of Rotterdam having been incited by Erdogan and his cronies.The last few days have seen the Netherlands deny entry into their country by leading Turkish politicians, a similar refusal of permission having previously been enacted by Germany.The faux-casus belli is the imminent referendum on the constitution and extension of presidential powers, being held in Turkey. Turkish Law itself expressly prohibits electioneering abroad by politicians.The particular edict itself is almost uniformly ignored by the very legislators who promulgated it. No matter, what drives the demagogues in the cheap suits to wander all across western europe are the hundreds of thousands of potential voters who retain,in effect, dual  Turkish nationality. Given all the preceding and seemingly ineluctable events involving Erdogan,Syria,the Migrant/Refugee crises,EU accession ,etc. to say that the rioting in Rotterdam is disconcerting is an understatement.  The legions of gastarbeiter / guestworkers who were enticed to pour into the booming national economies of post war western europe have over the decades metastasized into a clear and present existential danger for the hosts. #brexit has for lucky Old Albion presented us with a chance,and a slim one at that, to cauterise and avert to a large degree the unholy cataclysm set to engulf  the PC multiculturalist,neoliberal, globalist Continent. But only by a whisker.

fahrenheit451:130

The antidemocratic, metropolitan elites who continue to conspire for the annulment of the EU Referendum result by any and all methods, really are the  excresence of society. Having managed to finagle into the law courts and thence on into parliament the triggering of Article 50 which ought by actual constitutional right been done by Royal Preogrative,the Seditionist EU shills carried out the singularly most dishonest and hypocritical debate imaginable in the House of Lords that ended in the adoption of an  absurdist amendment to the government's Article 50 Bill.

The actual law pertaining to the legal status of EU citizens sojourning in the UK is as follows:-

" EU nationals automatically acquire the right of permanent residence in another EU country if they have lived legally there for at least 5 years continuously.

They can then apply for a permanent residence document, which confirms their rights to live in the country where they now live permanently, without any conditions. "

Why even raise the faux concern over any of the estimated 3 million EU citizens in the UK's non-existent,implausible concerns over a wholly specious threat to their continued residency? Reason, logic and fact that all would have cut the seditionists absurdist theatrics short were morphed into an even phonier debate over the UK wishing to take the " moral high ground " in the presumed upcoming negotiations vis  a vis the EU over #brexit. Quite what the  " moral high ground " was supposed to be in regard to which attributable danger was never actually debated,since there are none. To repeat the blindingly legal obvious that the seditionist cranks and PC placardwavers chose to obfuscate and ignore:-

" EU nationals automatically acquire the right of permanent residence in another EU country if they have lived legally there for at least 5 years continuously."

That is however not to say that,of course they ought to be made bargaining counters and their rights as EU citizens ought to be abrogated and ignored. The absurdist quasi-legal concept of  being a " EU citizen " only came into existence after the promulgation of the Maastricht Treaty 1992. What was enacted by an act of treasonable sedition cannot stand. Still, we haven't heard the last of this...

fahrenheit451:128

The trouble with people who suffer from paranoid delusions is that, clearly there might well indeed be someone out to get them. But not right now. Various cities across  Britain were ,on Monday 20 February once again awash with the flotsam and jetsam of placard waving detritus. Yes, exactly the same shills out earning their CIA funded stipend who were placard waving and reciting platitudes with all the fervour of a papist penitent the previous week,were out metaphorically flagellating their own consciences yet again. #stoptrump was supposed to be the catechism,although as the seemingly interminable hours of faux-rhetoric and student common room sedition passed, all manner of vituperative hyperbole ended up getting spouted and placards waved at it. #brexit was a popular target along with plaintive invocations against racism,islamophobia and the recently rediscovered complaint of xenophobia. The most bizarre rant amongst such a crowded field of idiolect terminology was the now trending and therefore fashionable lamentation involving the fate of EU citizens working and sojourning within the borders of the UK. For those who genuinely haven't the foggiest notion as to how the world came to have such a thing as an " EU citizen ",it maybe worth noting how this quasi-legal abortion came into existence. Via the 1992 Maastricht treaty as it happens. Which is :-

The Maastricht Treaty (formally, the Treaty on European Union or TEU) undertaken to integrate Europe was signed on 7 February 1992 by the members of the European Community in Maastricht, Netherlands.^[1] On 9–10 December 1991, the same city hosted the European Councilwhich drafted the treaty.^[2] Upon its entry into force on 1 November 1993 during the Delors Commission,^[3] it created the European Union and led to the creation of the single European currency, the euro. The Maastricht Treaty has been amended by the treaties of Amsterdam, Nice andLisbon.

A referendum was expected to take place in the United Kingdom in 2006 to decide whether the country should ratify the proposed Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe. However, following the rejection of the Constitution by similar referendums in France in May 2005 and the Netherlands in June 2005, the UK vote was postponed indefinitely. The question was rendered moot when the constitution was superseded by the Treaty of Lisbon, which Parliament ratified in 2008 without holding a referendum.

Well bollocks to all of that! Schadenfreude all around.

fahrenheit451:126

Contemporary western PC leftist-liberalism has created and is perpetuating a Statist leviathan and a totalitarian ideology. Its ultimate expression is ineluctably economic in its realisation across civil society. Unrestricted labour market competition is represented in official language or newspeak as some wholly specious immaterial notion which they call" equality ". Its most immediate expression is embodied in the EU's " freedom of movement ". This is in practice a neoliberal mechanism that perpetuates the necessary conditions for the existence of a " reserve army of labour " which is a fundamental requirement in order for capitalism to maintain its own existence. There is no intrinsic mystery about the basic laws of capitalist economics.The greater the number of available units of labour ( workers ) you have competing for a finite and decreasing number of job vacancies,the lower the general level of wages needs to be in order to attract applicants.Supply and demand. Helping to naturalise this state of affairs is an ongoing ideological process initiated and conducted by metropolitan academic elites through the various apparatuses of the state which by turn is itself wholly committed to the goals of the hegemonic project of the global corporate ruling elites. And so we come to the political / industrial dispute in which the EHRC is currently embroiled.

The Equality & Human Rights Commission was established in 2007 to help eliminate discrimination, reduce inequality and protect human rights in the UK

( The EHRC has offices in Manchester, London, Glasgow and Cardiff. It is classed as a non-departmental public body (NDPB) sponsored by theGovernment Equalities Office, which is part of the Department for Education (DfE). As an NDPB it is separate and independent from Government but still accountable for its use of public funds. )

EHRC has been accused by a union of targeting disabled and ethnic minority staff after 10 people were sacked by email and given one day to clear their desks.PCS claimed seven of the sacked staff members were of black or minority ethnic origin, and six were disabled

The Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union said dismissal at such short notice was "unprecedented" in the civil service and government agencies. However, the staff had previously been threatened with redundancy.

The dismissal, emailed while PCS and United members were striking over cuts to the Commission, said: “I therefore give you notice of the termination of your employment by reason of redundancy…Your last working day will therefore be Friday 10 February 2017.”

PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka called the decision "reprehensible."

“That this has happened at the government body charged with upholding human rights and fair treatment in our society is an absolute scandal and we will continue to fight it," he said. 

The irony in all this, is the role played by the official Trades Union movement which itself is historically tied to implementing the ideological fetishisation of  PC multiculturalism, human rights and the entire farrago of equality for this that and the other personal pecadillo. The time honoured adage "Hoist by their own petard " springs to mind. The busybodies busybody swallowing its own tail ; who investigates the investigators.Who indeed carries out an Inquisiton into the Inquisiton itself?