Europe’s Ambitious $140 Billion Hydrogen Plan Leaked

We’ve been telling you since we stated this blog on a different platform back on 2005 that climate change was a hoax, the real agenda was about power, money and control. Thus we have published many blogs and articles stating that wind and solare, for about a million reasons, the first hundred thousand or so of them blarantly obvious, were simply not viable solutions.

It seems we were not the only ones who thought so, the leaders of the EU and their advisors on energy policy agred, but did not say so out loud. Until now. Well to be fair, not until now, they would have preferred to keep it quiet for longer but somebody has leaked the real plan …

Authored by Vanand Meliksetian via OilPrice.com,

Europe’s most powerful supranational organization, the European Commission has earmarked the energy transition as one of the most important topics for the coming years. The European Green Deal is one of its most ambitious plans to mobilize at least €1 trillion in public-private investments over the next decade. Recently the highly anticipated hydrogen strategy was leaked revealing how Europe’s top policymakers intend to expand the fuel’s value chain from production to transportation, storage, and consumption.

A central ‘theme’ in Europe’s sustainability effort is the decarbonization of its industry, which requires high temperatures currently produced by burning coal and natural gas. Hydrogen is extremely promising as it is applicable throughout the energy value chain. Although production through electrolysis is preferred for sustainable purposes, steam methane reforming is used much more often due to low costs. The EC’s hydrogen strategy intends to tackle these challenges and establish a 40 GW market by 2030.

Imports and energy security

The EU is blessed with the availability of some of the world’s largest hydrocarbon deposits in its near abroad. At the same time, it is a strategic disadvantage that most of these reserves are located in sometimes unfriendly and unstable regions such as North Africa, the Middle East, and former Soviet countries. Energy security is an important topic for a continent that is mostly dependent on imports.

Therefore, strengthening energy security is an important goal by increasing domestic production and reducing dependence on foreign exporters of hydrocarbons. Also, domestic hydrogen production provides an economic stimulus to local energy conglomerates such as Siemens which has made electrolysis-related technologies a top priority … Continue reading >>>

Worst polluting coal and wood fires banned in fight to cut emissions
Domestic coal and certain types of wood are to be banned from sale from next year in a bid to cut air pollution, ministers will announce on Friday.

Is Hatred Of Greta Thunberg Justified?
As the backlash against the Greta Thunberg cult gathers momentum a lot of lefties are asking why the little Climate Warriorette is so hated by so many people. As usual with the left, they are asking the wrong question. Just as they asked, “Why can’t you believe the scientists, when in fact not only is it always legitimate (and scientific,) to question and challenge scientific theory, so it is perfectly rational and logical to challenge the Cult of Saint Greta ….

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Why Are The World Government Schemes, Agenda 21 and Agends 30 blanked by big media?
Since the early days on the old blog.co.uk platform we have from time to time raised the issues of Agenda 21 and Agenda 30, The New World Order, and the push for a global, authoritarian, socialist government. Any mention of these things in online forums is certain to get the author accused of being a conspiracy theorist, a right wing extremist, a nutcase, a young earth creationist and much worse.

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Greta Thunberg Slams Australia for Coal Industry, Expands List of Climate Demands
Little Greta Thunberg, who was elected by nobody apparently now speaks for us all on matters relating to climate change. The Swedish climate change hustler who is making a fortune for her handlers from donations to her campaign, again castigated Australia for continuing to mine and export coal despite her previous complaints, adding a call for an end worldwide to the actibity to her list of climate demands to be delivered at the upcoming World Economic Forum in Davos …

Another Kick In The Bollocks For Warmageddonists And CAGWARTS*
I’ve had many arguments with the Warmageddonists, the people who have been saying that if we did not shut down all coal, oil and gas related activites the earth was going to turn into a giant furnace and we would all burn. When the scaremongering first started, the deadline for frying was “after dinner”. Then it got to “Tomorrow …… or the day after tomorrow perhaps,” then “next year”, “before 2050,” and eventually “soon.”

What if man-made climate change is all in the mind?
If our view of reality is shaped by the mind and our perceptions of information, how successful are attempts to manipulate the perceptions of the whole populations through manipulated data, spin and assertions of authority likely to be. As scientists and politicians moan that the public no longer take sertiously climate change scare stories, we have to conclude, not very.

Meteorologists Begin To Admit To Climate Engineering
The freethinkers and Libertarians of New Media have been questioning the pseudoscientific certainties of the global warming lobby for a long time. During that often acrimonious process (because the Global Warming lobby are ever bit as organised and as driven by blind hatred of those who question them as the Bearded Queens In Bridal Gowns lobby) and most of us have been accused of infanticide, genocide and worse. At last the respectable climate scientists (the ones who didn’t sell their arse for the corporate dollar) are speaking, and the media are listening.

Mad Scientists Now In A Race To Create Human – Animal Hybrids
Scientists all over the world are busy creating extremely bizarre human-animal chimeras. Once again The Daily Stirrer has to say “We told you so”. There is something very creepy and sinister embedded in the typical scientists desire to play God. It is a complete, psychopathic disregard for moral boundaries. If we can do it that …

UK Offshore Windfarms Produce More Rust and CO2 Than Electricity
A private case going through a British court of arbitration at the moment involves two very large supply organisations.
Unfortunately the case is being heard away from the prying eyes and radar like ears of the media. A 1996 Act Of Parliament enabled such things as a way to free up Court time taken up by complex technical disputes…. And, perhaps, to keep embarrassing truths away from …

Doctors may withhold treatment from patients with “green lifestyle issues.”

A few weeks ago an item on the BMA’s website linked to the “Doctors against climate change” group of the doctors’ trade union. This body of medico-environmental socialist – utopians stated …

The Two Faces Of The Politics Of Failure

What a mess the modern way of doing politics based on a politically correct consensus and social engineering has produced. The daily stirrer looks at how the bipolar left – right divide stops things getting better rather than helping get the developed world back on track.

Green Policies Will Not Save The Planet But Are Costing Poor Families The Earth>

Politicians bleat sabout the plight of the poor then press on with their clean, green, sustainable energy policies which include stealth taxes to subsidise expensive and inefficient wind turbine and solar panel power generators. Can they not see it is the green agenda that is driving up inflation …[Environment]

Solar Storm Armageddon: Will This Be What Makes Warmageddonists Shut T F UP

An eruption on the surface of the sun, aka solar storn will send a flood of highly charged particles towards earth. Satellite communications and other technology might suffer sone disruption but the best thing about it is from here in the north of England we will be able to see the Aurora.

The Danish Experience – Problems With Wind Power And The Truth About Turbines
The truth about wind turbines, their real efficiency as opposed to the hyperbolic claims of clean sustainable energy firms and their lobbyists, politically correct politicians and green activists and how wind farm operators have been given a licence to pick the pockets of taxpayers

Do Conservatives Go Too Far In Demonizing Communism

As the UK General Election campaign starts to turn nasty, more and more people are trying to excuse the anti – Semitism and the authoritarianism of the Jew – hating communists who have hijacked the Labour Party. They play down the fact that party leader Jeremy Corbyn is a Trotskyite who in true Bolshevik tradition has abandoned his principles for the sake of power, (he has been a lifelong opponent of British membership of the European Union and was at least a supporter of a kind of democracy.) When it came to a choice between honouring the result of a democratic referendum or aligning himself with the advocates of global government, high taxation and uncontrolled immigration however, he chose to cling to power.

Corbyn’s de fact number 2, the Stalinist thug John McDonnell has never made any secret of the fact that he favours turning the EU into a kind of EUSSR, with Britain reduced to the status of a province.

In spite of this young (and some not so young but certifably insane,) lefties cling to the belief that life in the old Soviet Union, its satellite states in Europe and Asia, in Communist China, Viet Nam and North Korea, and in the outlying farmstead of communism, Cuba, was all beer and skittles.

In my almost 20 years as a blogger and web content creator I have corresponded with many people from Russia, the former Yugoslavian states, Romania, Poland and Hungary who experienced life under communism (or socialism as communist tyrants like to call it. And none have had a good word to say about it.

In fact most have been so vitriolic about communism / socialism that I believe conservatives and nationalists in Britain, the USA, the European Union, Canada and Australia are actually too moderate when talking about Communism. I don’t know if this is because they have not read enough about the history of Soviet Russia, Red China, Eastern Europe, Viet Nam, North Korea and the other nations that became slave states under socialist dictatorships or just trying to avoid hate attacks from the left-leaning university brainwashed millennials who fall for the ols “ah but none of those were proper socialism,” excuse but what they usually say is not even close to the whole truth.

Also, please don’t make the mistake of confusing communism with a welfare state: while there are states with a strong welfare component, high taxes, and more government control, most of these are social democracies, capitalistic economies ruled by democratic principles.

Communism was never about welfare: yes, people were getting food (though nowhere near enough as is abvious from the numbers who died of starvation or malnutrition related diseases,) and shelter, but they were forced to work until the state decreed age of retirement — which was constantly raised according to that good old National Socialist concept of “useless eaters.” If somebody refused to work on the job that the Party assigned to them, they would go to prison — where they would be put to hard labor, or if the prisons were full or the local kommisar did not like their face they would simply be shot.

Also, the free food and shelter were not subject to personal preferences: every person was given food stamps, stating what they were allowed to buy for the month — and it wasn’t a lot. “Hoarding” food was a major offense, punishable by prison time or death — and “hoarding” meant that you had a food closet at home, not freight containers. China’s communist government passed a law against hoarding food and enforced it so brutally that peasant farmers who laid aside a portion of their grain harvest for next years seed were deemed guilty of hoarding and summarily executed. But those farmers who obeyed the law and handed over all their crop faced long prison sentences in forced labour camps when they had no crop to hand over the following year.

Add to this the lack of any human or civil rights that we consider today a given: you could be arrested anytime, with or without reason, if somebody in the police felt like it. People would disappear without warning — sometimes on the way back from work, sometimes when taking the trash out. No due process was required for “enemies of the people,” there was no presumption of innocence or right to trial by jury of one’s peers; even when a trial was conducted, it was just the judge (always a ‘party’ member,) that hear the case, examine the evidence, question witnesses and pass sentence — no jury, no defense, no witnesses required because there was no “not guilty” verdict, to be accused by a party member was proof of guilt.

No significant private property was allowed: you could own your clothes, and possibly a car of you were a party member or in a protected profession such as a doctor, engineer or  senior police officer but even for those privileged people which there was a waiting list years long, but that was pretty much it. Owning a house was out of question, with minor exceptions; most people would live in government-owned apartments, which were subject to reassignment if considered necessary by the Party.

Apologists for socialist authoritarianism claim it worked for mant decades and still does in China, Cuba, North Korea and a few other outposts. After the Russian Revolution it did work for a while, because nobody dared oppose the state. Anyone who even complained about the chronic shortages or lack of freedom would go to prison or worse. There were people who tried to fight against it in the beginning — they were caught and shot without wasting time on trials or debate.

The system “worked” so well that, in about 50 years of communism, Eastern Europe became a poverty zone that everybody was desperate to get out of. The power outages were so common that everybody were lighting their homes with candles; hot water was only provided a few times a week, by a strict schedule; during winter, it was not uncommon to hear about a family found dead because they tried to use the cooking stove to heat themselves.

So it seems people in the liberal democracies who have taken the trouble to discover the truth about socialism and communism (Karl Marx used the terms interchangably,) do not go too far in demonizing a system that killed millions of people directly, enslaved hundreds of millions, and caused poverty that indirectly killed so many more than we can even estimate.

I like to remind people that in 1870 the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin warned Karl Marx, after reading “The Communist Manifesto,” that a communist government would quickly become more authoritarian and oppressive than Russia’s Czarist regime which was notorious for its brutality. Events have proved hundreds of times, that Bakunin was right.

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Chloinated Corbyn & Co Are Shafting The Electorate

Boris Johnson calls Jeremy Corbyn a chlorinated chicken after the Labour leader ducks an election. (Picture: Metro )

Let’s face facts; Corbyn and the rest of the Remain crew in Parliament, Labour, SNP and Lib Dem MPs, are trying to shaft the electorate by overturning the result of a democratic vote and preventing us leaving the European Union as it careers towards the long term goal of the bureaucratic dictatorship that runs the organisation, by turning itself into a pan – European empire, effectively a Fourth Reich.

What triggered Johnson’s insult was Corbyn and his party of cowards after voting down the government’s  propsals to prepare for leaving the EU “without a deal,” the Labour leaders then instructed his party to abstain on a vote to dissolve parliament and hold a General Election. Thus Corbyn became the first opposition leader in the history of British politics to refuse the chance to beat the government in an election. Labour also chickened out of calling for a vote of no confidence to force the government to resign.  The far left party’s positions on Brexit and immigration and their decades long flirtation with anti – Semitism and support for Islamic extremist groups has made the party highly unpopular with working class voters in the core constituencies of the industrial areas. While ducking an election which Labour would almost certainly lose is understandable, Boris has actually painted Corbyn into a corner.

Ducking a fight will almost certainly backfire on Labour when the inevitable election is held.

The people of the UK voted in a democratic process to leave the EU (what is known now as No Deal). We have been told ad nauseum by politicians who wanted to keep us in the corrupt, failing organisation known as the European Union, that we did not know what we were voting for. That is blatantly untrue, nobody I have ever heard or seen speaking or writing in support of the EU referred to “only leaving with a deal,” staying in a customs union (and thus continuing to accept EU law as superior to UK law,) or delaying our leaving indefinitely until a solution to the (entirely imaginary,) Irish border question is resolved. Neither did any of those Leave supporters claim leaving would not cause significant economic and social upheaval. But faced with the prospect of leaving or seeing our nation surrender more and more sovereignty to an authoritarian committee of unelected bureaucrats, we felt the possible difficulties were worth enduring.

The only possible area of dispute here is whether or not the people knew that they were voting for no-deal. And they did. Of course they did. We had a leaflet campaign. This adressed what “leave” meant. The leaflet even took the liberty of advising us how to vote. Vote “remain” is what it advised.

On top of that we had the political campaigns. We had the USA’s cocksucker president Barack Obama lecture us on our duty to advance the causees of globalism and neoliberalism. The BBC ensured that we knew what a Leave vote meant: disaster, catastrophe, death , destruction, economic collapse, mass unemployment, a apate of biblical placgues and more television shows fronted by Prof. Brian Cox. And even the prospective horror of the latter did not put us off voting Leave.

Some time ago last year, I predicted that Parliament would attempt to outlaw a no-deal Brexit (known as Hard Brexit at that stage). I predicted that they would hold try to force another referendum offering the choices Remain, leave with a deal or leave with a customs union. and hope voters were too stupid to notice the absence of their original choice of simply voting to leave, from the first referendum. And as has happened so many times when I have forecast a course of events or an outcome only to be called a conspiracy theorist or a crazy right wing extremist I have been proved broadly correct again.

The result of the 2016 referendum was to Leave The European Union This was rebranded as Brexit which was then split into hard and soft. Hard Brexit was rebranded as No Deal. And now an unholy alliance of Socialist, Liberals, Nationalists and Save-the-two-toed-toad cranks have conspired to ensure that what we voted for, simply to LEAVE, no strings attached, is off the menu.

Well the political, academic and media classes couldn’t let that stand could they, after all, as they have never tired of pointing out, the Leave campaign lied to us (they did, so did the Remain campaign, that is the nature of political campaigns. But while the main lie Remainers have fussed about has now been shown in a court of law to have been not a lie but merely a statement that while true lacked clarity, there also seems some confusion on the facts among Remainers. Nobody ever said that all the £350 million (approx) the UK sends to Brussels would go to the National Health Service, merely that some of it would be available to fund the NHS.

In fact the £350 million is a gross amount, so while Remain supporters tried to claim citing that amount was a lie, it was technically true. A significant amounto of that money comes back to us to pay for EU funded projects, but it has more strings attached than a puppet show. Most people who voted Leave were aware of that, most Remain supporters apparently were not.

As evidence that “the people don’t know what they voted for” media commentators like to cite alleged assurances made by the leave campaign that a deal would be easy. I’d like to remind those people that a Withdrawal Agreement and any future “deal” are two separate things. The Withdrawal Agreement should have been easy and would have been had the EU not insisted on imposing many unacceptable conditions on UK negotiators before they would allow negotiations to begin

EU policy is that on a nation triggering Article 50, negotiations would begin. But it also defied its policy in a very subtle but effective manner by demanding first a “divorce” settlement before negotiations could begin.

But again, the withdrawal agreement is not a trade deal. The trade deal cannot be negotiated whilst the UK is an EU member.

Another point which a surprising number of Remainers do not seem aware of: We cannot negotiate a trade deal with the EU until we have left. That’s the policy of the EU. The UK cannot negotiate a trade deal whilst a member of the EU. Seperate thing. The links you’ve sent are about trade deals.

The withdrawal agreement is a whole other topic. The default is No Deal. Very simple. Those who voted, voted for No Deal. This is the default. We cannot negotiate a deal until we’ve left.

The withdrawal agreement is an attempt to smooth over the No Deal process. It’s a bonus. Something the soft – handed pen pushers and back room deal makers have had three years to sort out. In the withdrawal terms and conditions forced on the negotiating team of Theresa May’s government, and which that government did little to resist, the EU inserted a non – negotiable clause that would tie the UK to the Customs Union. unless te UK was prepared to cede Northern Ireland to The Republic. In doing that, the EU would tie the UK to the law that states that it can’t negotiate trade deals whilst a member of the EU.”

So the so – called Withdrawal Agreement is not a Withdrawal Agreement, it is a surrender document and the traitors who signed it were prepared to turn the UK from an equal member of the EU, along with 27 other participating nations, into a vassal state, subject to EU law and political policies but with not input into shaping those laws or policies.

And Remain supporters think that is an acceptable state of affairs, the snivelling little shit – eaters.

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The Tory Collaborators Working With EU To Stop Brexit Exposed

Boris Johnson was ridiculed by the predominantly leftist mainstream media when he talked of collaborators in the Conservative Party working with the EU to prevent the UK leaving the bloc on October 31. People who though he was right and were brave enough to say so were predictably called conspiracy theorists.

While Remain supporters in the UK still scream that a ‘tiny’ country like Britain (tiny in the sens of having the fifth largest economy and being in the top twenty five out of 200 by population,) cannot survive outside the smothering embrace of the European Union bureaucracy.

The case is that the EU is failing economically. Around half the remaining twenty seven member states after Brexit will be economic basket cases, and even the mighty German economy is struggling. The EU cannot afford to lose Britain’s economic contribution. But self interested British politicians and bureaucrats, with their eyes on a lucrative EU job, (former Labour leader Neil Kinnock was modestly well off before he and his wife landed sinecures in the European Commission, now they are multi millionaires,) have now been exposed as having worked with top EU officials to block both a no deal brexit and the negotiation of an acceptable deal.

READ MORE about this betrayal by blogger Raedwald

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Just When you Thought Brexit Could Not Possibly Be A Bigger Cock Up

And They Call Brexit A Farce? EU Chaos As Leaders Fail To Agree Choices For Top Jobs …

 

The Council of Europe – posing for pictures was about the only thing they could agree to do yesterday. (Picture via Politicalite)

The Council Of Europe, which consists of the political leaders of all EU member states (including the UK as Britain is still a member,) gathered for a summit meeting on Thursday to decide which candidates should be appointed to fill several top jobs when European Commission president Jean – Claude Juncker and several other senior figures step down at the end of their terms of office.  They were locked in debate for the whole day and late into the night but were unable to reach agreement on who will fill even one of the positions within the EU.

The current President of the EU Council and one of the people who will retire later this year, Donald Tusk, a former Prime Minister of Poland, said he will organise another summit on the 30th of June to readdress the matter. Tusk, who has been touted as a possible presidential candidate in Poland for the centre-right and pro-EU Civic Platform, is one of the politicians still pushing for political integration of member states, a position which has been shown by the rise of nationalism both in his own country and throughout the EU to be as popular as a plague of boils with EU citizens .

Choosing a replacement for Commission President Juncker was always going to be difficult as the position has previously gone to the candidate favoured by the German government but growing resentment among other member states of the way Germany has manipulated EU policy to its own benefit, added to the huge influx of Eurosceptic European Parliament members following the success of both left and right leaning nationalist movements in the EU election last month. All previous elections have led to the centre – right Christian Democrats of the European People’s Party (EPP) and the centre – left Socialists and Democrats (S&D) groups dominating the assembly. This grand coalition of establishment parties previously divided the leadership positions based on how the two groups performed in the EU elections.

In this year’s elections voters were more polarised in their voting intentions, with a big surge in support for the Greens, the far left, and for nationalist parties.  For many reasons, including the immigration crisis, economic stagnation, an EU expansionist agenda and the increasing awareness that the EU elite is completely out of touch with the problems that beset ordinary people in EU member states, the mood has swung against the consensus politics of the traditional parties. And then there are the minor local difficulties of Brexit and Italy’s launch of a parallel currency which must lead to it leaving the Eurozone. All of this severely weakens the long standing hegemony of the leading German and French parties, all of which have adhered to the neo – liberal consensus.

The failure of the EPP and the S&D to win enough seats for a combined majority in the European Parliament has forced them to look for deals with other groups, most of which seek to overturn the status quo. President Emmanuel Macron, and the new Renew Europe group of centre to centre-right liberal parties that he leads are determined to alter the balance of power in their favour.

Manfred Weber, Chancellor Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) nominee is the EPP group choice to be the Commission President. Macron and his allies have refused to support Weber, and have called on Merkel to anoint another figure. Macron has suggested Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier or Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager as alternative option, but reports suggest neither name figured in the actual discussions yesterday.

The inability to agree on who will assume the presidency of the Commission will in turn, result in delays to the appointment of the new head of the European Central Bank (ECB). The first act of the European Parliament on returning from its summer recess  will be to elect its president from candidates suggested by the European Council, but as the current council, which has not progressed as far as considering that question yet, is unlikely to be able to agree on the candidates that position too is in limbo. Furthermore new European Commission President must be chosen prior to the first sitting of the ninth European Parliament, which takes place on the 1st of July.

Taking all of this into account puts into perspective the words spoken by Jean – Claude Juncker a few weeks ago: “Democracy is a fundamental problem.” For a group of elitists trying to merge 500 million people spread across twenty – seven different nations with widely differing cultural and economic needs into a single political entity, one can see that it is.

It was an understanding of the problems inherent in that which prompted many of us in Britain  to vote to leave the EU.

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Belgian Yellow Vests Clash With Riot Police On EU Parliament Election Day

Belgian Yellow Vest protesters and other groups protesting EU mass immigration and Federalisation policies clashed with police and left wing activists protesting against the protestors in Brussels on Sunday, the final day of voting in the Europe wide elections to the EU Parliament.

Videos taken by protestors and onlookers show multiple fights between protesters and riot police, prompting the deployment of riot squads aremed with tear gas and batons. Protesters at Brussels Nord Station chanted “everyone hates the police,” as a helicopter hovered overhead. The protestors also clashed with police outside the headquarters of the European Union in the heart of the city.

The rioters then moved on to the headquarters of Belgium’s domestic Socialist Party (PS), where they were reported to have attacked the building with paint bombs.

Police continued to hit back at rioters with tear gas and water cannons as they struggled to keep up with them.” –Express

Though results for the election cannot be released until after voting is completein all member states, and at the time of writing it is still going on in some EU nations, a leak from the Netherlands, which like the UK and Ireland voted on Thursday, suggests that the party of Prime Minister and leading Europhile Mark Rutte, the People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) have been beaten into second place by the right-wing Forum for Democracy alliance (FvD).

Forum for Democracy – a relatively new conservative party, which is known for its Euroscepticism and sympathy for a grass roots Nexit (Netherlands exit) movement built around the idea of Holland leaving the EU, was formed in 2016 and has become a big winner in the Netherlands during the provincial elections two months ago, securing 86 seats spread across the country’s 12 provinces. In three provinces, including the capital region of South Holland it became the largest party.

Matteo Salvini, the deputy prime minister of Italy and leader of the nationalist League Movement, which is expected to strengthen its position as largest party in Italy called for a “Trump-style” revolution in his cash-strapped country and across Europe to halt the growth of the EU’s bureaucratic empire.

Salvini has clashed many times with Brussels over Italy’s budget proposals and has also enraged European Union bosses with his hardline stance on immigration. He has even talked of Italy leaving the EU (Quitaly,) and has stood up to EU bullying since the unelected bureaucrats in brussels tried to overturn the result of the democratic election that voted his party into power by refusing to accept a Eurosceptic leader of an EU member state. And his proposals for tax reforms inspired by those passed introduced in the US by Mr Trump’s White House administration are sure to ruffle more feathers in Europe.

“I want a Trump-style revolution for Italy. The only way to reduce public debt is by growing and cutting taxes. That’s why a Trump-like revolution is dear to my heart.I won’t compromise on taxes. The whole government team must believe in this, he is reported to have said.”

Salvini while officially the internal affairs minister in the Italian government is the de facto leader and is set on a course of confrontation with the Brussels bureaucracy, which he feels serves German interests to the dfetriment of other EU members.

The deputy Italian PM increased his popularity at home and infuriated globalist leaders like France’s boy presodent Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Hausfrau – Volksfuhrer Angela Merkel by implementing a clampdown on migrants trying to enter Italy illegally via the Mediterranean.

“I reduced the landings by 90 percent. There were 11,000 last year, today they are 1,100. I don’t need to do anything else, the landings have been reduced and the expulsions are twice the amount of arrivals. I don’t need new ideas and what I’m doing I’m doing it without Europe, alone and with this government.”

Salvini’s move to close Italian ports to ships operated by ‘refugee’ support charities which cruise the Mediterranean picking up undocumented migrants abandoned at sea by African human trafficking gangs.

Italy goes to the polls on Sunday in the European elections with League expected to win easily, but Mr Salvini would not be drawn on predictions.

Other EU member states which are likely to provide interesting results are Germany where the Eurosceptic opponents of mass migration the AfD are expected to make significant gains at the expense of ruling coalition partners the Social Democrats and Christian Democrats whose leader, Chancellor Angela Merkel kicked off the immigration crisis by declaring Germany’s doors open to all comers and then tried to force other EU members to take the flood of uneducated, unskilled, illiterate, unemployable third world religious fanatics who flooded Germany’s cities.

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Donald Tusk, who is the President of the European Council and was the centre-right Europhile Prime Minister of Poland from 2007 to 2014 made the remarks in support of his former Deputy Prime Minister, Anglo-Pole Jan-Vincent Rostowski who is standing as a Change UK candidate in London for Thursday’s election.

EU Dictatorship: German MEP says process of choosing Juncker successor a hoax as European elections near
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Europe’s Nationalists Unite Behind Salvini Ahead Of EU Elections

With the EU elections due in May this year expected to deliver another body blow to the dream of a Federal European superstate, Europe’s more conservative nationalist parties have today announced an alliance that is aiming to become the strongest group in the European Parliament, with a view to forcing to radical reform on the EU bureaucracy in Brussels, which dictates policy on security, migration, family and the environment, according to Euro News.

Harold MacMillan’s EU warning revealed
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Leaked Document Reveals Unacceptable Demands Made By EU Ahead Of Final Talks Before Brexit Deadline
A Secret document has revealed concession the EU is demanding before beginning fresh talks on Brexit ahead of the 12 april dealine. According to a memo seen by the Sunday Times, Brussels is demanding the UK must continue to pay its share of the EU budget, must implement new measures on citizens’ rights, and sign a legally binding agreement to arrangements to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and The Republic.

Merkel: EU Members Must Cede control Of Their Border To Brussels
German Chanellor Angela Merkel sparked outrage today and pushed the EU cloers to its final disintegration when she stated that EU Member states would be forced to surrender on of their most important sovereign powers, control of their borders, to Brussels in order that the unelected bureaucrats of the European commission could ‘manage’ immigration (i.e. open the border crossings and let any criminally inclined bunch of fanatics enter Europe.

Spanish Socialist Budget Fails As Budget Rejected; New Elections Expected

We predicted last year when the socialist leader Pedto Sancjez usurped the Spanish government after the collapse of the minority government led by Mariano Rajoy collapsed, could not last. In a widely expected but destabilizing development, Spanish conservatives and pro-independence Catalonians voted to back a slate of amendments to a government budget on Wednesday by a wide margin of 191 votes out of 350,

EU Stitch Up To Promote Euronazi Selmayr’s Is Typical Of The EU’s Contempt For Democracy
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The former Prime Minister of little Luxembourg Jean-Claude Juncker to ensure his chief of staff was installed as the new Secretary-General of the European Commission, in what one senior Eurocrat has called “an impeccably prepared and audacious power-grab” at the top of the European Union.

EU “Sounds Alarm” Over New US Sanctions On Russia; Germany Threatens Retaliation
Late on Friday (21/07/17), Congressional negotiators agreed to advance a cross – party bill that would punish Russia for its (alleged) interference in the 2016 election according to the Wall Street Journal. And while it seems improbable that President Trump would sign the bill if it reaches his desk, the loudest complaint about the bill to date has emerged not from the Oval Office, but from US allies in NATO and the European Union …

Fears Over Threat To Sovereignty Could Wreck EU European Army Plan
No they’re not Star Wars Imperial Stormtroopers, they are German soldiers assigned to an international peacekeeping force, showing how like Imperial Stormtroopers a pan European army might look (Image source)

Germany Threatens Sanctions Against Poland Over ‘Lack of Western Values’ (for Western read German)
Last year, Poland’s conservative nationalist Law and Justice party (PiS), led by former Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, captured both the presidency and parliament at elections in May and November. Since taking office, the party’s lawmakers have used their parliamentary majority to initiate a series of controversial legal reforms, causing concerns both at home and abroad, specifically in Brussels and in Berlin.

Some Questions And Answers On Brexit From Quora

Most questions posed on Quora are posted anonymously, then you see the quality of the questions you will understand why. In this selection on the Brexit topic from the site it is clear that while Remain supporters accuse Brexit supporters of being ignorant, xenophobic, ignorant oiks who are incapable of understanding the issues, most questions on Brexit are clearly posed by Remain supporting trolls and the articulate, reasoned arguments offered in response are from Leave supporters. Draw your own conclusions.

How much more evidence do brexit enthusiasts need to see before they admit it is severely damaging the UK economy?

We are now seeing the services sector contract as well as manufacturing & construction. (See link) It hasn’t even happened yet!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47127927

John Gleeson

Answered Feb 5

Most know there will be a hit to the economy and periods of turbulence.

Whenever you change the status quo, that will happen.

But they understand a few profoundly important things remainers don’t seem to be able to grasp or care about.

One is that certain principles, such as our democratic system giving us more control of our lives via the democratic vote than is offered by the EU model is worth the price of leaving in order to preserve it. Particularly when the globalist trend is towards being ever more tightly controlled by the financiers and bankers and technocrats for whom democracy is simply a troublesome thorn in their side.

Two, they understand that there are two major economies in this world. The main one, ran by a small group of wealthy-beyond-imagination banking and finance cartels and heads of big business, dwarfs the scant economy for the rest of the world’s population, the one where a few percentage growth points, bull markets and gdp do not factor and do not trickle down for the most part. See the graph for the transfer of wealth from the middle-class to the mega-rich rulers of the world, the 1% dynasties.

They know the ‘economy’ spoken about in such doomday terms is the economy for the 1% but deceitfully sold to us as being about us and our jobs, the parasitic economy where they cream of the vast majority of profits they make from the workers in the other ‘wage slave’ economy, those who have to put up with austerity measures, high taxes, high cost of living, stagnant wages well behind the rate inflation.

They recognize the difference. The market speculators and investors will have a reaction, there will be a fall out, and they are in panic mode (and have managed to whip up half the country into a panic through their propaganda). Inward foreign investment might stall here and there for a while, but that it will be replaced

In time, as life and trade and building new international agreements and aliances across the globe carry on as normal, there will be new deals and investments, new economic growth engines, and we’ll be a free nation on top of that to make decisions that benefit us.

Did you not watch the program on BBC2 last night about the EU, specifically the Eurozone crisis in Greece? The bailing out of that economy, and how it’s still in a dire state, like many economies in the EU, and how it’s the everyday people of Europe who have to pay the costs through taxes, austerity and such?

A rare factual, warts and all look at the EU as it is, an elite political project built on ideological sand and the central banking pyramid scheme.

That’s what the financiers and mega-rich do. Takes the risks by speculating on the markets, fund borrowing so as to debt enslave entire nations like they did in Greece, and then make all of us foot the bill when it goes wrong, while they still make trillions on the money they loan out. And politicians are in the pocket. In fact the EU was set up for their purposes, not for the rest of us.

We did the right thing to stay out of the Eurozone, when many remainers would have forced us into it.

We did the right thing for the long-term getting out of organization we only ever had very limited power to do anything in, and which will forever be putting its own aims above the people.

If the Brexit turns out to be Armageddon for Britain, what’s your backup plan?

Adrian Patterson, lives in The United Kingdom

Answered Feb 2 · Upvoted by Tony Jackson, lives in The United Kingdom (1981-present)

I’m watching the German justice minister on BBC Breakfast who has UK/German dual nationality. Katarina Varley.

Here’s the EU negotiating position.

Please tell us what you want, because you are the people leaving. This is all your fault.

Britain puts forward a position. Technology away from the border.

The EU: No, you can’t have that. We have always been clear about our “freedoms”.

Conclusion from the EU: Britain’s position is confused and has no plan.

Conclusion from Naga Muchetty interviewing Varley, “Just what is the UK’s position?” Thanks for confirming the EUs propaganda position.

OK, that’s an aside. I work for an organisation that is global. It employs people who communicate across continents, in countries such as the US, India, the UK and China. Information and cash is transferred around the globe in milliseconds. The organisation is HQ’d outside the EU- it could be HQ’d anywhere.

Where does the EU fit into all this? It doesn’t. It’s an irrelevance. Trading blocs, tariffs are irrelevant. Yes, we’re regulated but we’re regulated in some way in every market we operate in. Money moves to the places that have the least burdensome regulations but which protect trade.

So Brexit (and the EU) is an irrelevance in the scheme of things. Does it create disruption? Yes, in the short term. People are focusing on the equivalent of what happens in the aftermath of a divorce. To begin with there is confusion. Life goes on.

Why should there be Armageddon? What are You saying? Every divorce ends up in the kids being butchered?

If British people want “Brexit” so badly, then why did they agree to join the E.U. in the first place?

Ed Holmes, Electronics Engineer

Updated Jan 20 · Upvoted by James Kirk, PHD Politics of the United Kingdom, University of Oxford (2010) and Leigh Jones, lives in The United Kingdom (1982-present)

OK bear with me for a minute. To answer this you need to know why the working class and lower middle class voted for leave and it goes like this:

Leaving was fairly directly a consequence of our country’s neoliberal economic model. Generally it goes like this:

1. Feminism basically doubled the workforce. Supply and demand for jobs meant that overall wages stagnated. Corporations made more money selling the same goods at the same prices but were paying less for labour. This was noted.
2. Globalism widened up the markets, made it easier to sell to much larger audiences. These big worldwide markets made juicy tempting targets for the corporate interests.
3. Unfortunately British wages were still pretty high compared to those in the rest of the global markets which put our corporations at somewhat of a disadvantage. Some dealt with this by outsourcing manufacturing to low wage countries like China, decent wage jobs for the working class started drying up because these jobs were most easily outsourced.
4. Fertility rates decreased due to more people struggling financially and more women spending their most fertile periods studying or climbing career ladders only to have much smaller families.
5. The population started ageing and the pool of workers started to drop. This would have led to a smaller working population and eventually rising wages. Can’t have that. Pressure was applied to open the country up to immigration. Initially to the other developed EU countries which had little effect on anything except helping jobs that required unusual skill sets find people, immigration wasn’t especially fast and had a decent mix of people from different economic levels as there was no massive driving force in either direction immigration wise. People mostly enjoyed this immigration.
6. This didn’t play into the benefits of the aforementioned corporate interests so they pushed for the government to widen it further. Cue the Eastern European countries being given EU membership and open borders.
7. Suddenly we have a whole influx of massive numbers of people from poorer countries able to come to the UK, compete for the low wage jobs (pushing wages down a bit further and satisfying those corporate interests who are now more competitive globally) but coming so quickly they formed their own areas where English was a second language and working class people in the affordable areas these people moved into started being displaced and feeling like they were being replaced.
8. To compound this, the government had basically thrown open the door to non-EU countries as well, basically deciding to allow easy immigration and turn a blind eye to illegal immigration leading to a large influx of people from REALLY poor countries like Somalia.
9. Many of the young men from these places having come from incredibly deprived areas where things are very dog-eat-dog were, by the nature of things, tougher and more aggressive than most of our criminal underclass. They brought the savage survival mentality to London gang cultur,e and stabbings/ knifecrime sky rocketed. This might have been containable but at the same time the government has been defunding the police massively, leaving no resource to prevent this escalating.
10. As countries like China developed they started having a larger skill base than before while retaining lower wages than the UK. This allowed UK companies to outsource more skilled jobs abroad. This further ate into working class and lower middle class incomes.
11. Foreign investment in the UK real estate industry was opened up and allowed to go largely unregulated. This led to massive amounts of UK property being bought up by (particularly Chinese for some reason) foreign interests and was driving prices up massively.
12. The UK public made noise several times about this being unacceptable and the government kept trying to placate the public by noisily going and negotiating with the EU. Unfortunately they didn’t really care about the working and lower middle class so they instead negotiated a bunch of special exemptions in EU rules that did almost nothing for anybody but the rich globalist types who we have already ascertained are the driving force behind much of our government’s decisions.
13. The UK public kept being fed a “Oh we would do something about the fact you are all getting poorer, and can’t afford homes, and crime is (while dropping overall) getting scarily violent when it does occur … But the nasty no-fun people in Brussels keep stopping us. Woe.”
14. Big spate of terror attacks, people getting blown up, shot, run-over, all over Europe. Largely due to the unrest in the Middle East in part thanks to the economic colonialism of the West’s leaders in support of our corporations best interests.

People have been on dropping (real-terms) incomes for decades and can no longer afford to have the basics. We have shocking amounts of people dying over winter from not affording heating for instance. We can’t afford to have families because both prospective parents need to work to make ends meet and by the time they are economically stable the woman’s fertility is declining and a small family is all that is possible. Depression and suicides are at hideous rates.

Our government likes to not do anything about it because it supports neoliberal economics and sees the UK’s success represented by it’s GDP. The British People are effectively only important in so far as they are useful resources for the corporate interests who have all the influence in the parliament. Maintaining low wages with our decently skilled workforce makes those corporate interests more relevant and competitive on the world stage (many of our skilled professions enjoy wages about half those in Germany and about a third of those in the US).

The government likes to then blame the EU for not doing anything about it despite that being patently false, and expects the UK population to simply take this or be placated with promises about welfare when most Brits HATE the idea of living on handouts. (Except the NHS which we are very proud of.) Both labour and the conservatives are steadily eroding funding and privatising while blaming the extra load caused by immigration for it’s slow decay because they are trying to make us lose faith in it so they can sell it off and go to an American model). Effectively, the UK Government likes to treat the UK population as a bunch of mugs and while most can’t tell exactly what is happening they aren’t fooled who’s fault it is.

Brexit was offered as a way to placate the masses because the conservatives thought it could never lose the referendum (because it really does not make sense to leave the EU) but underestimated how many people (particularly the most suffering working class and lower middle class) would seize the chance to throw the whole board over because any chance at escaping the hopeless downward spiral they are caught in is worth seizing. They were offered a blind jump into the unknown or the status quo that was strangling them.

So they jumped.

It’s not about the EU. It’s not about race or religion. It’s not really about immigration as nobody gave a damn when it wasn’t a flood of people moving into all the houses our middle class could no longer afford … It’s about the average person not able to live the life their parents could. Of being told “everything is OK” and “look how well the economy is doing!” while life gets harder year after year after year.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. When the average Brit does not have to worry about food, shelter, water, and supporting their family … They can focus on higher things and they (by and large) voted remain.

There is a whole lot of surface level factors to the leave vote and none of them would matter if the bottom half of the population wasn’t getting poorer. People are becoming suspicious and reactionary because they are becoming desperate. They can’t afford to be forgiving and welcoming anymore because they don’t have the margin left to absorb any more hits.

So! Finally bringing this back to your question. None of the above was relevant when Britain joined the EU. While wages had started to stagnate it had not had time to really bite. We had a strong middle and working class, decent incomes and people were hopeful and welcoming. The economy wasn’t doing too great but that’s why all the above has been implemented. All of which has been eroded away by the above economic factors over time.

Hope that answers your question.

Why do some Brexiteers think that everything will remain (mostly) unchanged after hard Brexit? Do you really think that the EU will trade and collaborate with the UK on the same terms even after no deal?

Barney Lane, Pro-Europe, Pro-Brexit

Answered Jan 7 · Upvoted by Tony Jackson, lives in The United Kingdom (1981-present) and David Hurst, lives in The United Kingdom (1953-present)

There was a very interesting piece by leading economist Roger Bootle today in today’s Telegraph.[1] I recommend a read if you have a subscription. For those that don’t, I’ll briefly summarise his main points. Please bear with the off-topic reference to the Euro. It has a point, which will become clear if you read on.

• The Euro, which has been a disaster, was seen by the European elites as a part of the political project of integration, leading eventually to a federal European state
• Although the primary motive for forming the euro was political, before its formation, key European leaders thought a single currency would have major economic benefits. They believed it would bring significant gains through a reduction in transactions costs and uncertainty
• In fact, the Euro currency has been a guarantee of structural domination by Germany and the subjugation of debt-ridden smaller economies on the periphery
• Euro supporters greatly overestimated the gains from reducing transactions costs and uncertainty about currency values. In the modern world, companies are readily able to deal with such costs and uncertainties. The gains from monetary union have been tiny
• Yet prior to the Euro’s birth, many establishment figures in Britain were strongly in favour. Proponents included Tony Blair, the CBI, representatives of big business and the City. They envisaged serious economic decline, or even disaster, if the UK stood aside. We now know that their views were comprehensively wrong
• Yesterday’s “transactions costs and uncertainty” is today’s “border frictions and disruptions”. Yesterday’s supposed need for a common currency in order to make the trading union work is today’s supposed need for a “deal” with the EU in order to enable us to trade with it
• Many Remainers are in blatant denial of the facts. The EU’s economic performance compared with other developed countries has been poor. This is for a good reason. The EU makes bad decisions. Its institutions don’t work very well and its political agenda is oblivious to economic costs
• As the EU elites make ever more disastrous decisions, the EU falls further behind the rest of the world
• We escaped membership of the euro by the skin of our teeth. We now need to grit those teeth to escape fully and finally from the entity that conceived of the euro monstrosity in the first place

That’s Bootle’s assessment. Below is mine.

If we leave the EU without a deal, the main thing that will change is tariffs. In trading with the EU we will face its “Common External Tariff” (CET) schedule. Average tariffs are around 3%.

“Trading frictions” exist in theory, but they are today’s equivalent of yesterday’s transactions costs, when trading across a currency border: existing in theory but in practice virtually irrelevant. We were so worried about transactions costs when deciding whether to join the Euro, just as we are worried about trading frictions today. In regard to trading frictions, consider the following:

• As early as in 2008, 99% of the UK’s non-EU trade was registered and pre-cleared electronically. Filling in an electronic customs registration form takes about 15 seconds
• Around 2% of goods crossings are subject to physical checks. The deputy CEO of the Port of Calais has said that in the event of a no-deal Brexit, 1% of British lorries will be checked[2]
• The CEO of the port of Zeebrugge said new capacity would be needed in the event of a no-deal Brexit but implied this would be a small expansion of existing systems and processes already extensively used to handle non-EU trade, and applying them to the UK. He implied the cost and effort would not be a big deal
• Various worries about the possible impact of a no-deal Brexit have been raised and all of them have been dismissed. The worries about whether flights will land, British hauliers will be licensed, whether the UK will be able to sell financial services to the EU have all been dismissed in memoranda published by the EU, covering its no-deal planning. Separately and some months ago, the EU assured the Irish Taoiseach that it would not require a hard border in Ireland, in the event of a no-deal Brexit
• Worries about food and medical supplies are more easily dismissed since whether we block them is our choice. We’re obviously not going to block imported necessities

Considering the above, the benefits of trading within the EU internal market are overblown and consequently, so are the costs of not trading within it.

Leaving the EU without a deal puts Britain on the same footing vis-a-vis the EU as most other countries already are. Trade works. JIT supply chains work. It operates like clockwork and with huge volumes. Today, 43% of our trade is on WTO terms; that’s about the same as our volume of trade with the EU.

This study of long term comparative economic data finds no benefit of the EU’s internal market versus alternative arrangements. From the perspective of trading with the EU in services, various studies have shown there is no benefit to being inside it versus outside.[3]

During the run up to the referendum, I had many in-depth conversations with a WTO and international trade expert. This individual is a former head of the UK’s government’s international trade policy, a British trade negotiator and one of the architects of the WTO in its current form.

His analysis was convincing and compelling: there’s almost nothing the EU can do to materially impede trade with the UK in the event of a no-deal Brexit, either in goods or services. Some of his views were expressed in an article for BrexitCentral in March last year.[4] I am in the fortunate position of having access to such expertise, as the individual I am talking about is my father.

In November, I attended a seminar hosted by a law firm of the legalities of a no-deal Brexit. The event was amusingly called: “No-deal Brexit: WTO or WTF?” One of the presenters (a senior lawyer who from his nuances was clearly talking from a Remain perspective) said as regards collaborating in financial services, the EU doesn’t really have an option. London is about three times the size of the rest of the EU’s capital markets put together and is deeply entrenched within the EU’s financial system, such that refusal to cooperate on financial services would pull the plug on the majority of the EU’s companies and governments.

To be clear, I do not think the EU will collaborate on the same terms in the event of a no-deal Brexit. It clearly will not. What I do deny is that this will make any practical difference.

Footnotes

[1] Brexit warnings echo the nonsense uttered over the euro 20 years ago

[2] Barney Lane’s answer to Where is the physical bottleneck that will supposedly cause delays at Dover post-Brexit? Why would physical inspection of no more than 2% of incoming vehicles (WTO limit) delay the other 98%?

[3] The EU single market in services barely exists, and has been slowly disappearing since 2010 | BrexitCentral

[4] Government and business should prepare for the advantages of trading under WTO rules | BrexitCentral

Why is Theresa May determined to take Britain to a cliff edge “no deal” Brexit? It seems insane! And why are the British people allowing her to do it?

David Reardon, Political Activst

Answered Dec 28

Judging by the so-called “deal” that Theresa May has secured with the EU, it strikes me that far from being “determined to take Britain to a cliff edge “no deal” Brexit”, May is actually trying to force Parliament to accept a deal that will, in essence, please neither Brexiteer nor Remainer.

This is because the “deal” as it now stands with the inclusion of the so-called “backstop” will mean nothing short of the UK being permanently bound by EU rules and regulations, which will be little different to be an actual EU Member State but without the right to influence how those rules and regulations are drawn up and implemented.

Ostensibly, therefore, there will be no “cliff edge” – a much overused and abused term – because the UK will, in effect, not have left the EU.

As to the “cliff edge”, this merely refers to the UK leaving the EU without a deal and trading with the bloc as it does with the rest of the world. And Remainer claims of the damage this will do bare no basis to reality given that our present trade with the EU is ‘frictionless’, while trade on WTO terms is beset with ‘frictions’. This is a false dichotomy, and intra-EU trading arrangements are not so different from those on WTO terms.

And here’s why:

1. We already have virtually frictionless trade with the rest of the world through electronic customs declarations, goods pre-clearance and trusted trader schemes, all operated under the EU’s Union Customs Code. This would in future apply to our trade with the EU because the only additional physical checks on EU imports after Brexit would be customs duty checks, but they are unlikely to exceed the current threshold – less than 3% of imports are checked on entry. If necessary, the UK could unilaterally suspend duties for a short period to avoid any immediate difficulties. In addition, HMRC is implementing a range of technical solutions to minimise trade frictions.
2. Most UK/EU exporters are already used to Union Customs Code (UCC) export processes, and HMRC has issued guidelines for ‘no-deal’ trading with the EU. The EU has established customs systems (already used on the Swiss border, for example), and new technology is available to trace and identify cargoes.
3. VAT and excise duties are already collected in the UK and the Irish Republic without any border control. A study commissioned by the European Parliament found that ‘international standards and best practices and technologies’ can be used to avoid a ‘hard border’, and this has been confirmed by both Irish and British authorities. Where necessary, inland inspection facilities can be established. Technology exists for tracking cargoes.

So, can we take the risk that next April UK firms will be faced with EU tariffs and potential regulatory checks?

1. Tariffs and regulatory checks could be disruptive for a minority of UK businesses, namely, those connected with dairy products and meat. This works both ways. British producers are likely to increase their share of the domestic market by reducing EU imports subsidised at higher rates than they receive. Moreover, the impact can be mitigated by government action.
2. Most engineering firms will be little affected. Car companies can withstand 10% tariffs on sales into the EU and 4.5% tariffs on components from the EU since they have benefited from a 15% depreciation in sterling. Border checks on their components from the EU will be illegal under WTO rules which prohibit unnecessary checks.

So what about travel and transportation?

1. The EU has already made a reciprocal offer to the UK in respect of air traffic rights and the validity of aviation safety certificates in the event of no-deal.
2. Reciprocal visa-free travel has already been agreed. The EU has announced that the mutual recognition of driving licences and road vehicles will continue. So taking your car abroad or hiring a vehicle on holiday should be no more complicated than it is now.

And what about “frictionless” trade under WTO rules?

1. We already have virtually frictionless trade with the rest of the world through electronic customs declarations, goods pre-clearance and trusted trader schemes, all operated under the EU’s Union Customs Code.
   1. There is no reason to turn back the clock to paper checks when goods arrive at the border, as implied by the ‘cliff edge’ doomsday prophets.
   2. We start from a strong position. The UK (in 2016) was ranked 5th in the world by the World Customs Organisation for the ease of its import and export processes.
   3. Customs can operate with no technology at all using well tried customs techniques including the EU’s own TRANSIT and TRACE systems. The heads of UK and Irish customs concur with this judgement. For example, most goods crossing the Swiss borders use established customs systems (TRANSIT and TRACE systems) to drive through customs without stopping and without any monitoring at the border.
   4. New technology in the form of tamper-proof chips can be used to connect the physical cargo with the import declaration. This would highlight incorrectly declared goods, and allow for differential taxation based on the location/declaration combination.

Then, of course, despite what we are constantly being told, intra-EU trade is NOT without frictions because:

1. EU goods are not exempt from certain controls on import, so there is no truly ‘frictionless’ trade in place even now.
   1. .Targeted checks where criminality is suspected are required even on intra-EU trade. This is to satisfy member states’ obligations to the EU to tackle fraud.
   2. In the Withdrawal Agreement backstop, the EU has mandated the creation of a paper document to accompany all goods traded between GB, NI and the EU. This will in fact add trade friction to an arrangement supposedly designed to avoid the need for border controls.

So what about imports to and exports from the EU under WTO rules? Again, we have nothing to fear because:

1. Less than 3% of total imports are checked on entry into the UK. This percentage is unlikely to change in a no-deal Brexit.
   1. Even in 2008, 99% of goods entering the UK were cleared electronically.
   2. Imports from the EU are already subject to checks.
   3. The only additional physical checks on EU imports after Brexit would be customs duty checks. But these are unlikely to exceed the current threshold required to ensure compliance with our current EU obligations.
   4. 10.5.Given the same level of EU imports after 29 March 2019 as currently, the level of physical checks that will be required on EU imports is unlikely to increase.
   5. HMRC has issued no-deal guidance for exporters.
   6. Exporters to the rest of the world (i.e. the majority of UK exporters) will already be used to the system under the EU’s Union Customs Code (UCC) rules, which will be adapted to UK law.
   7. Traders who currently export ONLY to the EU27 will not be familiar with UCC export processes, so this procedure will be new to them, but this is a very small number of exporters (only 8% of all UK businesses trade with the EU, and of those, many also export to the rest of the world under UCC rules).
   8. However, the EU’s Union Customs Code (UCC) was introduced across the EU on 1 May 2016. Anyone who intends to export to the EU after a no-deal Brexit can find out now about how it works from the European Commission website.
   9. All UCC requirements on UK exporters to the EU will be familiar to the customs authorities in the EU27, since there will be no change other than implementing the existing UCC import procedures for goods from the UK.

And when it comes to no “hard” border’ in Northern Ireland, people should note that:

1. VAT and excise dues are already collected by the authorities in both countries without anyone ever being stopped at the border.
   1. Smuggling and excise fraud already takes place across the NI border, e.g. fuel in tankers disguised as milk lorries, excise goods shipped through bonded warehouses. This is combatted by police and fraud investigators in targeted operations almost always away from the border itself.
   2. WTO rules do not require border checks on goods – that is a matter for each country to decide. The only requirement is to treat all third countries equally (the ‘most favoured nation’ rule -MFN).
   3. Physical checks can be conducted away from the border, as they already are for fraud and other non-duty checks in NI. Inland inspection facilities are now established in mainland UK and could also be set up in NI.
   4. A study commissioned by the European Parliament found that ‘international standards and best practices and technologies’ can be used to avoid a ‘hard border’ in NI.
   5. Technical solutions can ensure no hardening of the Irish border in ways that damage the Belfast Agreement and peace process.
   6. The customs technology to minimise or avoid border checks is available and is being used in many other applications. For example, at both the Norway-Sweden border and the Canada-US border, low friction borders have been created by sharing data and facilities, and the creation of electronic environments for trade and travel.
   7. Both the Irish Republic and HMRC already operate electronic customs clearance systems under the UCC – a key aspect of invisible borders. And HMRC is domesticating UCC provisions into UK law, so procedures will remain the same for customs, VAT and excise.
   8. Ireland has already published guidance with links to electronic systems for no-deal trade with the UK post-Brexit.
   9. The head of UK customs, Jon Thompson, has repeatedly confirmed in UK Parliamentary Select Committee hearings that there is absolutely no need for the UK to erect a hard border under any scenario, including leaving without a deal.
   10. The heads of a number of prominent UK and Irish businesses have asserted that invisible borders are now possible. This can all be achieved with existing technical solutions, and in compliance with the UCC.

As to the claims of chaos at Dover, people should note the following:

1. While queues at Dover are theoretically possible, in practice they are highly unlikely. WTO rules prohibit checks undertaken for political reasons or for competitive advantage. French officials have dismissed fears of a Calais ‘go-slow’ and suggested that as few as 1% of UK lorries would be subject to a physical check. New technology is already being installed at Calais to avoid delays, with automated checks.
2. HMRC is preparing for all scenarios post-Brexit (see further details below), and has set up inland inspection facilities to divert traffic away from Channel ports for targeted checks if necessary. The UK accedes to international transit conventions in its own right, and these enable simplified customs transit procedures right across the world and cover all countries in the EU
3. It would require French customs to instigate unnecessary and excessive checks at Calais and elsewhere. But this is highly unlikely, for several reasons not least because WTO rules prohibit unnecessary checks undertaken for political reasons or for competitive advantage. The UK can maintain de facto alignment with EU for as long as it considers necessary, in order to avoid the need for checks.
4. Even those who maintain that some additional checks would be required accept that these could be limited. There is no legal requirement to inspect more than a tiny fraction of vehicles.
5. French officials have dismissed fears of a Calais ‘go-slow’ and suggested that as few as 1% of UK lorries would be subject to a physical check.
6. Julian Jessop of the IEA has produced a rough calculation: for there to be an additional two-minute delay on average in crossing the frontier, it would require at least 10% of UK lorries to be subject to a new 20-minute check (i.e. ten times more than French officials have indicated will be checked).
7. EU preparations for no-deal only say that checks may be conducted, not that they will be.
8. New technology is already being installed at Calais to avoid delays, with automated checks and a turf war about where lorries might be inspected.
9. A rail freight scanner has already been installed at Fréthun near Calais for unaccompanied rail freight (boosting Eurotunnel’s freight revenues considerably). This allows French customs to scan containers on 30 trains per day without the need for them to stop before they enter or leave the Channel Tunnel.
10. Under the UK’s Transit Regulations (November 2018), the UK accedes to international transit conventions in its own right. These enable simplified customs transit procedures right across the world and cover all countries in the EU.
11. Physical checks that are needed can be conducted away from the border, as they already are in many countries.
12. HMRC is preparing for all scenarios post-Brexit, and has set up inland inspection facilities to divert traffic away from Channel ports for targeted checks.
13. Currently, ‘intelligence led’ inspections by the UK affect only 2% of non-EU goods shipments. The remainder are cleared immediately by computer-based procedures.
14. WTO rules prohibit unnecessary checks, and it is highly unlikely that more than 1% of goods would be checked.
15. Additional customs and regulatory checks could admittedly be disruptive for a minority of UK businesses, namely, those connected with dairy products, meat and fresh foods, which cannot tolerate long delays. But this works both ways as unwarranted regulatory checks at Calais could lead to French importers suffering tit-for-tat delays at Dover. So to avoid this, the French have already installed scanning technology to speed up clearance at Calais.
16. The AEO trusted trader scheme under the UCC should eliminate the need for physical customs checks at Calais, since goods can be pre-cleared for customs electronically.
17. Most engineering firms will be little affected (hence why heads of firms like Dyson, JCB and Northern Ireland’s Wrightbus support Brexit).
18. Car companies can withstand 10% tariffs on sales into the EU and 4.5% tariffs on components from the EU since they have benefited from a 15% depreciation in sterling.

And transportation and travel will not be disrupted because of the following:

1. The EU has already made a reciprocal offer to the UK in respect of air traffic rights and the validity of aviation safety certificates in the event of ‘no deal’.
2. Several French regional airports derive close to 80% of their traffic from UK-owned airlines. Local tourism would be ruined by prohibitions on landing rights.
3. France has passed legislation giving the President decree-making powers to ensure minimal disruption.
4. Reciprocal visa-free travel for trips of up to 90 days has already been agreed between the UK and EU even in the event of “no deal”.
5. In its no-deal preparedness notices on travel, the EU has announced that the mutual recognition of driving licences and road vehicles will continue under the rules of the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic 1968.
6. In March 2018 the British government announced that it would be ratifying the Convention in its own right. This means taking your car abroad or hiring a vehicle on holiday should be no more complicated than it is now.

Solutions being implemented by HMRC to minimise trade frictions as part of no-deal Brexit customs planning:

1. Replicating the rules and procedures in the EU’s Union Customs Code to operate domestically under the Taxation (Cross-border Trade) Act 2018, thus ensuring no unexpected changes for UK importers or for EU exporters to the UK. The first regulations under the Act, including the Import and Transit regulations, were made on 30 November 2018.
2. A new online Customs Declarations System to replace the 25 year-old CHIEF system. Expected to be able to handle up to 400 million declarations a year.
3. Importers will be able to declare import VAT on their VAT monthly return, rather than at the border thus mitigating cash flow and procedural problems.
4. Trusted trader schemes are provided for in the new Import regulations (Part 9). This further minimises paperwork and the need for border controls.
5. Big manufacturers or food importers reliant on just-in-time deliveries from the EU27 should be registered as Authorised Economic Operators (AEOs). This means that freight is pre-cleared electronically (as is currently the case for most rest of the world imports) and not held up for checks at the border.
6. Major supermarkets who import produce from outside the EU will already be familiar with the AEO system. The no-deal UK system will replicate exactly what they are used to under the UCC, and so should enable them to handle produce imported from the EU27 in the same way as they do for produce imported from Africa or South America.
7. Inland inspection facilities to check the small number of consignments that will need to be physically checked have already been set up. Staff are currently being recruited. There is a large facility at Magna Park, Milton Keynes and another at Hayes. This means lorries can be directed away from ports for targeted checks, minimising delays.
8. The Import Regulations mandate electronic pre-clearance for customs as RoRo ports, to avoid delays at Dover.
9. There could be contingency plans to waive checks if required to avoid gridlock for security reasons. The growth in unaccompanied rail freight scanned automatically would also reduce the number of lorries over time.
10. HMRC has already published no-deal notices and guidance for importers and exporters on its website: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/expo…

All of these plans are well advanced. If just-in-time importers get themselves set up and registered as AEOs, their EU imports should not be subject to any delays on entering the UK and vice-versa.

Need I say more?

Why did the British people vote to leave the E.U.? What factors led to the Brexit outcome?

Edward Browning, former Retired Local Government Manager

Answered Dec 7, 2017

Originally Answered: Why did Britain leave the EU? What are the pros and cons of them leaving the EU?

Yes it was all racism however on the basis of over 30 years as a local government manager I can say categorically that the strain on housing and education in the UK is entirely due to immigration. I can back this up but until 1997 I was one of a number of people demolishing modern social housing because it was surplus to requirements. Now the media just scream there is a housing crisis but never say why. As for education we had been closing and some cases demolishing primary and high schools from the 1980s onward because were simply not enough children coming through to fill them. One district I worked in had 3 High schools until 1997 now it has one and suddenly finds it is short of places.

Our politician’s attitude to the immigration stream reminds me of a tragedy that took place in England some years ago. Three boys on holiday with their High School were swept out to sea by a sudden wave and instantly disappeared. When their classmates told the teachers they went into shock and simply got everyone on the bus and drove back to their hotel. All the time the children on the bus were screaming “But Sir X Y & Z have been washed away!” There was absolutely nothing they could have done it happened too quickly but it took them half an hour before they came out of shock and called the authorities.

Our politicians are like that over immigration. They can see the problem but because the reality and the decisions they will have to make are so appalling they just cannot accept it. So they call everyone racists and fascists and somehow hope it will go away.

OTHER BREXIT POSTS:
Brexit Party MEP blasts ‘Pointless’ European Parliament As A Charade
Brexit and Europe

 

 

London’s Future?

This article, by Theodore Dalrymple, first published in Law and Liberty is reproduced by this Not For Profit site under fair use terms in the public interest, as the chaotic failure of our government to deliver the democratic decision to leave the European Union (Brexit) has revealed the chasm that has opened between the ruling elite and the nation they govern is now insurmountable.

December 14, 2017

I Have Seen London’s Future and It Is Caracas

by Theodore Dalrymple|25 Comments

 

Important (for good or evil) as Brexit may be to the future of Britain, it is not without its importance for the European Union. Indeed, it was always essential for the Union that Britain’s departure should be an economic disaster for Britain: for if it were not, why have a union at all?

It was therefore entirely predictable that the Union should drive a hard bargain with Britain, even a bargain economically harmful to itself, provided only that it was worse for Britain: for the self-preservation of the European political class is at stake. In the European Union politics always trumps economics.

In Britain too, political considerations were uppermost in the minds of those who voted for Brexit. They saw in the European Union a Yugoslavia in the making, led by a megalomaniac class without effective checks or balances. But now they are increasingly apprehensive of the economic costs of Brexit.

And the economic auguries for Britain are indeed poor, though not only, or even principally, because of the European Union’s hostility. The fact is that Britain is unlikely to be able to take any advantage of life outside the European straitjacket because its own political class is itself in favour of straitjackets that are no better, and quite possibly worse than, the European ones. The present Prime Minister, Theresa May, is very much a statist, indistinguishable from European social democrats, and the leader of the opposition, Mr Corbyn, who might well be the next Prime Minister, is an unapologetic admirer of Hugo Chavez. It is hardly to be expected that foreign investors will place much trust or confidence in an isolated country whose next government might very well weaken property rights, impose capital controls and increase corporate taxation in favour of supposed social justice. It would not take very long to turn Britain into a northern Venezuela: a Venezuela without the oil or the tropical climate.

Moreover, Britain already has many weaknesses and few strengths. It has a huge and persistent trade imbalance, because it does not produce enough of what the world wants and cannot easily be made to do so; it has a large national debt, about the same size as that of France, but without a highly functioning infrastructure such as France’s to show for it; its household debt is among the highest in the world. For many years, its economic policy might as well have been presided over by Mr Madoff; its social policy has been to smash up all forms of social solidarity or support for the vulnerable that do not pass through the state. The destruction of the little platoons has been very thorough: most large ‘charities’ in Britain are now dependent on government rather than on private funding, and hence are in effect departments of state.

As if this were not enough, Britain has enormous cultural problems, perhaps only to be expected in a country in which more than fifty per cent of children are born out of wedlock and twenty per cent do not eat a meal with another member of their household more than once every two weeks. A dangerously high and perhaps unsustainable proportion of the population is unfitted for productive life in a modern economy, having attained an abysmally low educational level despite (or because of?) considerable state expenditure. This section of the population is not merely indifferent to refinement of any kind – intellectual, aesthetic or of manners – but actively hostile to it. Similarly, it is not merely not anxious to learn, it is anxious not to learn.

This explains why Britain has persistently imported labour from Eastern Europe to perform tasks in its service industries that ordinarily one might have expected its large fund of indigenous non-employed people to perform. The fact is, however, that though these tasks require no special skills, they did require certain personal qualities such as reliability, politeness, and willingness to adapt: and these the eligible local population lack entirely. No hotel-keeper, for example, would consider using British labour if he could get foreign.

Perhaps nothing captures the levels of personal incompetence and lack of self-respect in Britain than the fact that young men of the lowest social class are about half as likely to die in prison as they are if left at liberty. In prison, though adult, they are looked after, at least in a basic way, and told what to do. They are no longer free to pursue their dangerous and crudely self-indulgent lifestyle, in which distraction is the main occupation. In prison they receive the health care that, though it is free to them under the National Health Service, they are not responsible enough to seek when at liberty. In short, they do not know, because they have never been taught, how to live in a minimally constructive fashion, though they were certainly not born ineducable.

No doubt other comparable countries have similar problems, but none (at least, none known to me) has them to anything like the same extent. These problems do not originate from Britain’s membership of the European Union, nor will they be solved by exit from the Union. They can be solved only by something more resembling a religious revival than by any likely government action. But expecting a population to bethink itself while simultaneously being offered political solutions that require no effortful cultural change is unreasonably optimistic. And politicians are unlikely to be frank about the problem for two reasons: first because alluding to the deficiencies of their electorate is probably not the best way to get elected, and second because it downgrades the providential role of politics, which politicians are understandable reluctant to do.

As if this were not quite enough, the hold on the country’s intelligentsia of statist solutions to practically all problems is still immensely strong. Nowhere is this more evident than in its attitude to the National Health Service, the establishment of which it almost universally regards as having been a great achievement, perhaps Britain’s only great achievement of the twentieth century. This is despite all the evidence that it has not been egalitarian in its effect, as it was originally supposed to be, or that almost all Western European health systems are superior to it. The fact that all Western Europeans regard it with at least disdain, and more usually with absolute horror, does nothing to shake the British intelligentsia’s faith in the essential goodness of the National Health Service. The only perceived problem with it is that it underfunded: the same problem as with all other government services. In the struggle between rhetoric and reality, rhetoric always wins.

The population by and large follows the intelligentsia, and the politicians follow the population; but the only economic advantages to Brexit would be the possibility of a nimbler, less regulated and bureaucratic economy. There is now no prospect of this. Therefore, I have seen the future of London, and it is Caracas – or very might be.

 

EU Consumer Groups Accuse Google Of Breaking Privacy Laws by Covertly Tracking Users

Watching your every move – picture: http://dericbownds.net/uploaded_images/google.gif

It seems we at The Daily Stirrer have been on Google’s case forever over their dishonesty, cavalier attitude to users right to privacy, their role as self – appointed censor of all internet content that does not conform to the politically correct pensée unique of Silicon Valley, and apparent belief that along with other internet tech corporations they are above the law. Well as long as Google keep up their world domination corporate policy, we will report their malfeasance.

European Union consumer groups from many member states have are trying to bring charges of further breaches of EU consumer protection laws against tech giant Google. The plaintiffs claim Google is covertly tracking user’s movements in ways not made clear in the terms of service.

Seven different consumer groups in EU member states have filed complaints against Google with national regulators this week in the Czech Republic, Greece, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Slovenia and Sweden. The complaints all claim that the search and advertising firm is in violation of GDPR privacy laws because it tracks users movements. The complaints cite a study by the Norwegian Consumer Council which is claimed to prove that Google used “deceptive design and misleading information, which results in users accepting to be constantly tracked,” Phys.org reports.

Gro Mette Moen of the Norwegian Consumer Council said that “Google uses extremely detailed and comprehensive personal data without an appropriate judicial basis, and the data is acquired by means of manipulative techniques.” The consumer groups allege that Google is using technology that tracks users movements via their Location History and App Activity monitoring applications, all of which are linked to every users’ Google account.

The Norwegian study noted: “For users of mobile phones with Android (operating systems), such as Samsung and Huawei phones, this tracking is particularly difficult to avoid. Due to the wide use of the Google Android mobile operating system across Europe, with almost 70 percent of mobile phones in Europe running on the system, Google can use location tracking to gain a large amount of information on users.”

“Constant location tracking and analysis of location data over time may be used to create a very detailed profile of an individual’s work and social movements and to infer religious beliefs, political leanings, and sexual orientation, among other things,” the Norwegian council concluded.

Monique Goyens, director general of The European Consumer Organisation, commented: “Google’s data hunger is notorious but the scale with which it deceives its users to track and monetise their every move is breathtaking. The situation is more than alarming. Smartphones are being used for spying on our every move.”

Now the people who have called me a dinosaur because I refuse to have a smartphone might understand my attitude. I had a long career in Information Tevhnology and so I understand what they do and how. I also understand that it is more difficult for Android users to avoid Google tracking that for a Linux or Windows user on a PC.

As one would anticipate, Google responded to these claims by denying culpability: “Location History is turned off by default, and you can edit, delete, or pause it at any time. If it’s on, it helps improve services like predicted traffic on your commute. If you pause it, we make clear that—depending on your individual phone and app settings—we might still collect and use location data to improve your Google experience.”

Unfortunately it is widely known, and very easy to demonstrate that Google location tracking is not exactly ‘off’ when the Location History setting shows ‘off.’ Google have been caught in similar lies and deceptions many times in their twenty year life, in fact it is probably fair to say the Search Engine’s owners have been involved in more scandals per annum than any other company in the western world. but like so many other Silicon Valley upstarts, the senior management seem to think technology companies are above the law.

Google was recently fined 2.42 billion euro (2.72 billion U.S. dollars) by E.U. officials for breaching net neutrality rules with the company’s online shopping service by promoting search results for their own shopping sites above those of competitors. The ruling stated that Google was exploiting its market dominance in online searches, if it is found that Google has once again breached EU privacy laws the company could face more harsh fines and may even face being broken up into separate companies in the EU. President Trump has made a similar threat to the US operation though whether he is capable of making it happen is a different story.

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Sceadugengan (poem – the shadow walker)

This Man Encapsulates What’s Wrong With The EU.

 

Selmayr’s  dogmatic attachment to European unity is matched by his bullying arrogance (Image: GETTY•EPA)

Our economic future has dominated the turbulent debate over Brexit in recent weeks. Yet British withdrawal from the EU is not primarily about economics. Many people on the Remain side of the Brexit debate have never understood that many Brexit supporters were driven by the desire for national independence and democracy, those noble ideals that have inspired freedom movements throughout history.

If ever the British people want a reminder of the need to break free from the EU’s authoritarian, quasi-imperialist rule, then the case of the European Commission’s sinister secretary-general Martin Selmayr (reported here earlier in the year,) provides one.

Selmayr,  a ruthless German bureaucrat and lawyer who has worked for the European Commission since 2004, embodies all the EU bureaucratic dictatorship’s authoritarian impulses, anti-British sentiments and ideological fervour for the integration of twenty seven sovereign nations into a single, political unit ruled from Brussels by unelected bureaucrats.

Selmayr been dubbed “the Rasputin of Brussels” with good reason. Like Grigori Raputin, the peasant – born, self proclaimed mystic and holy man who befriended the family of Russia’s Czar in the late nineteenth century and whose malign influence did a lot to exacerbate anti – royalist feelings and drive people to support the communists, Selmayr’s fierce personal loyalty to the reputedly alcoholic EU Commission president Jean Claude Juncker, dogmatic attachment to the ideal of European political unity (federalism) and bullying arrogance have prompted complaints about the “poisonous” atmosphere he creates.

“What is the difference between God and Selmayr?” the long serving German politician Wolfgang Schauble once asked: “God knows he’s not Selmayr.”

The Rasputin of Brussels has developed a fearsome reputation in the  EU organisation, despite remaining relatively unknown to the public. His authoritarian tenure as Juncker’s chief of staff  earned him a variety of nicknames in addition to Rasputin, Darth Vader, Himmler, the Monster of the Berlaymont, and Pit Bull.

But his brutal style of running Juncker’s office –  demanding that access to Mr Juncker for even the most senior EU officials was first channeled through him, has also led to a queue of enemies. Former European Commission vice president Kristalina Georgieva blamed her resignation on his aggressive style, which she branded ‘poisonous’.

British officials have accused Mr Selmayr, who has privately expressed his dislike of Brexit, of ‘hating’ the UK while describing him as a ‘psychopath’.

But nothing highlights Selmayr’s corrupting influence more than the underhanded way he was rocketed into the role of secretary general by his mentor, Jean Claude Juncker, the Luxembourgois drunk who has vowed to punish Britain for voting to leave. In February this year. he was the chief aide to the EU’s bibulous president, lacking the experience and the qualifications to run the Commission’s 33,000-strong workforce. Operation Night and Fog” a German Green Party European Palrliament called it

Because of his commitment to their cause of creating a single state, the Euronazis, headed by Juncker, were determined to put him in charge of E U administrative functions. So in blatant stitch-up, defying any concept of openness, he was catapulted into the top job.

Confirmation that Selmayr’s dramatic rise was effectively an internal coup by supporters of the federal European superstate project came this week in a scathing report by the EU Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly. Having conducted an extensive investigation into the bizarre events surrounding Selmayr’s rapid rise through the ranks, Ms O’Reilly reported that both “the spirit and the letter” of EU law had been broken by the Commission, whose conduct had been “extraordinary” in failing to challenge the abuse of procedures.

Anyone who has studied the Selmayr promotion fix (link to our report provided for people who missed the story,) would have come to the same conclusion as Ms O’Reilly. the whole business was a grotesque charade which exposes the rottenness at the core of the EU.

Over the space of a few minutes in February this year, Selmayr was shifted from his post as EU Commission Predident Juncker’s chief aide to the position of deputy secretary general on Juncker’s recommendation, thus putting him in the position of principal candidate for the top job. should it become vacant with, mysteriously it did almost instantly.

Moments after Selmayr’s promotion (which borke EU rules because all job vacances should be advertised and applications invited,) the incumbent EU secretary general, Alexander Italianer announced his retirement. At Juncker’s behest, Selmayr was immediately appointed  by the commissioners as Italianer’s replacement, though, again in line with EU rules, the vacancy should have been advertised and a proper selection process instigated.

Even within the Brussels organisation, usually so compliant with the Commission’s megalomania, there was outrage at this cynical manoeuvre. One German MEP, Werner Langen, denounced the move as “anything but transparent. It reminds us of 19th century secret bureaucracy.”

But even after the damning Ombudsman’s report published this weekt, it is unlikely that anything will change. Unassailable in his position with the protection of Juncker whose anointed heir Selmayr must now be, and other Brussels federalists, Selmayr will continue to exercise near total control over the EU’s officialdom because, more than any other figure in Brussels, he promises to fulfil the federalist agenda.

Since he first joined the EU as a press officer, aged 34, he has shown the dedication of a zealot to the goal of the creating a politically united European superstate.

Having conducted an in depth investigation, Ms O’Reilly said that both “the spirit and the letter of EU law had been broken by the Commission, the conduct of which had been extraordinary in failing to challenge the abuse of procedures.”

In the UK, where mainstream media is dominated by people who supported our remainingt any price, even the surrender of our national sovereignty to unelected bureaucrats in  EU headquarters the subject seems to be getting very little attention. Nothing to see here! Small administrative matter! Just a civil servant! Look, over here, more silliness from the ridiculous Brits on the Irish border, far right extremists are gaing ground in Germany, Italy and Sweden and those whining Jewish bigots are complaining about Muslims torching their synagogues.

I and other Brexit supporters have been called a fascist, xenophobe and racist for my well informed decision to vote in support of Britain’s leaving the EU, which only demonstrates that our critics don’t know what any of those words mean. What kind of organisation indulges in this sort of stitch up at the behest of Juncker to set things up for his ghastly sidekick, Selmayr, to be the boss of thousands of officials, extending his pal’s power? An organisation worth leaving, that’s what.

And what kind of people would want their country to be part of such an organisation? Not the kind I’d want to have a drink with for sure. But as if the stitch up was not enough, it gets worse: Though the EU’s recreation of Kristallnacht took place in February, the story was only broken (by Politico) in March and details were still emerging in August

The reporter who has made the running, breaking a series of revelations and allegations, is Jean Quatremer, EU correspondent of the French newspaper Libération.It’s getting worse by the day. Politico has a report of the insurrectionist press conference held yesterday in Brussels, in which the spokesman Schinas came under unprecedented pressure.

While Europhiles will dismiss the affair as a trivial administrative matter and certain European leaders will probably declare that ‘the little people’ are not intelligent enough to understand the complexities of running an organisation like the EU, transparency matters on a practical as well as an ethical level. The European Commission, already emired in Brexit negotiations, is also in conflict with states such as Italy, Poland, Austria and Hungary over their alleged breaches of EU rules. Why should any of those states that have shown their willingness to assert their sovereignty listen to the Commission now its corrupt and secretive modus operandi has been exposed?

All this runs contrary to the prevailing narrative in the London political establishment and UK media, that a brilliantly organised, sophisticated and united EU makes the British negotiating team look like characters from a Monty Python’s Flying Circus sketch. In fact I nave known since working for the EU in Luxembourg thirty years ago it was more like an old Three Stooges film.