A50 letter

Stairway to Brexit

There's a lady who knows
all that glitter's not gold
and she's climbing a stairway to Brexit.

When she gets there she knows
if the doors are all closed
with a word ('bye') she'll get what she came for.

There's a sign on the wall ('We're leaving')
but she wants to be sure
cause you know sometimes EU words have two meanings.

In a vote by the Brits
We've decided to quit
Sometimes all of our thoughts are correct ones

There's a feeling I get
when I look to the east
and my spirit is crying for leaving

In my thoughts I have seen
Threats of problems unseen
And the voices of those who stand hoping

That it won't go so well;
That we'll suffer, they'll yell
That 'we told you so' loudly and often.

But it's whispered that soon, now that we call the tune
then the PM will lead us to reason
and a new day will dawn, for those who've waited long
and the forests, hills and streets will echo with laughter.

Does anybody remember laughter?

But I've got some good news..

If there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now,
it's just a spring clean for the MAY queen.
Yes there were two paths we could go by but in the long run,
We're better off on the one we're on.

Your head is humming and it won't go, in case you don't know
The PM's calling you to join her
Dear Lady can you hear the wind blow, and did you know
Our stairway lies in the British winds?

And as we wind on down the road
Our shadows taller than our souls
There walks a lady we all know
Who shines white light and wants to show
How everything will turn to gold

And if you listen very hard
The tune will come to you at last
When all are one and one is all
To be a rock and not to roll.
To be a nation, and in control.


And she's climbing a stairway to Brexit.

I was there! :)

With profuse apologies to Led Zeppelin.

Thanks for reading.

Response Brexit positives

OK my optimism is based on where we are. The Brexit debate happened last year and the result was clear. So that debate is largely over as far as I'm concerned; I'm now looking forward and backing the UK.

I find it depressing on a human level when people want everyone else 2 suffer so they can say 'I told you so'

Firstly sovereignty- UK laws will now be made by people who live here, know our issues & we can kick out if they don't deliver what we want.

Second, control of borders does not mean no immigration (I'm an immigrant); it means control & knowing the numbers coming in so we can plan infrastructure provision for everyone, including those who pay 4 it.

Controlling borders is what a proper nation state does. It's fundamental & we've seen the mess Merkel is making of Europe by ignoring perfectly good existing laws on 'Illegals'. It's a disaster 4 Europe.

After that it's trade: Leaving EU is not leaving Europe. (I love Europe btw, have lived & worked there).

We are the EZ's biggest customer in the world. There's a £106.4bn/yr (2015 ONS) trade deficit in their favour. They simply will not mess w' their biggest customer. It's in both sides' interest 2 do a free trade deal and I'm very confident that this will happen. If not we revert to WTO rules which are fine for us too.

Meanwhile we're leaving a declining & protectionist trade bloc, free 2 trade w' whole world on our terms & the world is queueing up 2 do deals with us. As part of the Commonwealth we are at the head of a group that includes about 1/3 of the world's population. And we are able to do deals on our own behalf acting as a sinle nation state not needing the agreement of 27 other nations or, worse, regions like Walloonia - which is ridiculous.

It its also true that 90% of future global economic growth is forecast to come from outside of Europe. An ability to do trade deals on our own behalf, with the growing economies and trade blocs of the world (as a nation which boasts the global number 1 financial, legal and business services sectors and is therefore in fantastic shape to take advantage of this fact) is fundamental to ur future prosperity.

As a nation we have 10 universities in the world's top 30 (the highest EU university is Munch at 34), we have the world's #1 financial centre in London; the top EU financial centre is Frankfurt at #20. We're the 5th biggest economy on the planet, the world's 5th biggest military power and the second most influential nation on earth. Yes the EU is a market of 500m people, but 350m of them don't have two Euros to rub together and we've been bailing them out for decades.

None of the doomsday forecasts of project fear has materialised - mass unemployment, a punishment £30bn budget, a DIY recession, WAR!!

The pound has been over-valued for years; a decline is good for exports, balance of trade & UK jobs.

Finally, for now, we're now good mates with the US who distrust the EU/Germany. Biggest economy in the world.

Finally, finally, you need to understand that while I welcome Brexit, my main concern (for 30 years) is about the EU. I'm anti EU because it has not fulfilled its role to protect weaker European nations from stronger, bullying ones. It has been a disaster for everyone in Europe except Germany. Its policies have directly led to massive youth unemployment in southern Europe.

I genuinely believe (and I have been watching this very closely for 30 years) that the EU is effectively a German take-over of Europe. See next blog. (which was written as a blog rather than a staccato tweet-based piece like this - for which my apologies.


Thanks for reading.

A new Royal Yacht would be fantastic

Not a 'Royal Yacht' like Mr Green's gin palace; a place for pleasure or ridicule or contempt, but a symbol of the UK as a trading, maritime nation. A symbol of our status in the world, a symbol of our history as a global player.

Something, actually, that no other country has. A reminder, to other nations of our class and history and reliability whatever else is happening in the world.

And nor would it be a plaything for the Queen and other royals. It would not be a weekend 'toy', but a serious statment of our capability and our confidence.

Obviously not a Sunseeker or Princess Yachts' jelly-mold; nor a MacDuff shipyard trawler. These things are currently built in Germany or Holland or Italy. Usually with MTU or Caterpillar engines.

We'd need to do better than that for our Royal Yacht. It would obviously have to be British built. Could we do it? I think we could. Vospers? Babcocks? Harland & Wolff? Might just help to kick-start our national shipbuilding strategy too.

Not ostentatious, not something Abramovich would own. Something the Queen, or actually, the UK would own.

I'd go for something like this personally.

Essentially a floating advertisement for our nation. A place used by the Queen on state visits but also a floating conference & trade facility.

In short, a facility for impressing the fuck out of foreigners.

And which can be built without costing the UK taxpayer a bean.

What's not to like?

Thanks for reading.

We won't get an acceptable EU deal, but that doesn't really matter

Having said for ages that we'll get a great deal with the EU when we leave (mainly to piss off Remainers), I don't actually think we will do so. Shock horror, but bear with me.

And it doesn't matter all that much anyway. What matters is that we're leaving the EU. It's always been about that - and for me, it's actually a bigger picture thing: I am much more anti-EU than I am pro-Brexit, although Brexit is a very welcome by-product, particularly for the future prosperity of the UK.

Brexit will almost certainly mean the end of the EU project and that's the best news for Europe since VE Day. Because it will allow proud nations like France, Spain, Italy et al to once again be sovereign and stand on their own two feet rather than being taken over by Germany (which is what the EU project has really been about from the start).

I must say that it was absolute genius for Germany to mount its take-over bid so soon after the last unpleasantness and get the rest of Europe to actually pay for that take-over process to happen. Utter genius. But thankfully we have woken up to it just in time. (I think).

Anyway the deal. Two years they say. A decade at least, they say. The basis of our (UK's) deal with the EU will be clear after about an hour of negotiations. Our starting point is that we want free trade on the current basis, we want our fishing grounds back and we want to continue to be good neighbours in terms of security, environment and residents' rights. But the main thing is free trade.

The question is, can you (the EU) accept this or not? If not, (and remember this is a day one question), we walk.

And if they say yes to this, that's great and we then go into the two-year period of 'colouring in' to sort out the details, but the deal has effectively been done on day one.

The reason why this won't happen, why we won't get this 'deal' (which would, by the way, be the best thing for all concerned on both sides),  is that we will go in on the basis of wanting a professional, rational and above all fair solution for everyone involved and the EU will not. Because it is not professional or rational; it is a rag-bag of 27 countries all of whom have views and few of whom actually understand the damage that an unfair deal (which causes us to 'walk') will do to their economies. Many have nothing to lose and so very little to gain. Many will delight in being seen as being important on the world stage for the first (and probably last) time.

You see, the thing is, this is not about us trying to sell a deal to 27 disparate (and not a little desperate) members of the EU. That's what the media and Remainers would have you believe. But it simply is not. This is about us making a single, simple offer to the EU about our future relationship. Bearing in mind that we are the EU's biggest customer on the planet. It then becomes the EU's problem to sell that offer to its 27 members. If it can't do that, then it's the EU's problem. Not ours. Because if (I think when) we 'walk' they have a massive problem.

Let me just repeat that for clarity. Selling the deal to the 27 EU member states is an issue for the EU, not the UK. It's up to them to do the deal with their members not us. We are negotiating with the EU. Not each and all 27 members. That's for them to do.

If they can't do this, if a situation of non-agreement does arise then I think German industrialists will call Merkel in for a quiet chat and the problem of the deal may be solved. If you seriously think the Wallooons or some other fucking widget farmers from Slovakia will stop an EU-UK trade deal from happening, then I think you're mad. But, such is the unpredictability and desperation to punish the UK to try to stop other countries from leaving when they see us do well outside the EU, that this could conceivably happen. Particularly given the fact that the Eurocrats have nowhere else to go and have already been seen, time and again, to favour the EU and their solid gold remuneration packages over the countries they're supposed to represent. See Mandelson, Kinnock, Heseltine etc just in the UK.

So, we have three choices: We say to the EU - this is our offer, you sort it out or we walk, and then we leave the negotiations within the 27 EU members to them... or: We walk away from the negotiations with the EU and actually target those countries - Germany, France, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Poland, the Low Countries, Scandinavia - with whom we do want to trade, on an individual basis, deal by deal and exclude the EU... or: we revert to WTO rules and effectively consign the EU to the history books overnight - because that option will fuck them and empower the UK to trade on its own behalf with the rest of the world.

That's the choice facing the UK and the EU. I know where I'd rather be.

Thanks for reading.

Special steak & pancake recipe just for you

Just wanted to share my extra-special Steak & pancake recipe with you:

Take a good thick fillet steak & crust both sides with sea salt and freshly-ground black prepper. Heat a griddle on max heat for about 4 minutes so it's really hot then cook the steak for 2 minutes on one side and 1 minute on the other side. 

Leave it to stand (rest) for 4 minutes; then serve with English mustard and a side-salad.

What about the pancake? I hear you ask.

Who wants a fucking pancake when you've got fillet steak? 

Sorry. :)

Thanks for reading

Would you really throw open your doors to strangers without asking any questions about them?

Would you, seriously, open your doors and take somebody into your home without asking to know anything about them first? Given that you may have young kids, vulnerable older people, women, living there.

I think you'd want to know a bit more about the newcomers before you just let them in. I don't think you'd open your doors just on the basis that they were members of the same species as you.

But it's not even as simple as that is it? We're not talking about incomers about whom you know nothing are we? They have a track record which makes investigation even more vital.

You know that incomers, from the same place and having the same moral compass as supplied by their religious beliefs, who moved into your Western neighbour's house next door, have now made that place much worse than it was before.

Their previously happy home has now become a conflict zone, with areas of it no longer accessible to them. The incomers have taken over parts of the house and established their own laws and rules and are now unwilling to negotiate any kind of compromise or abide by any of the former house rules - rules which had, hitherto, meant for a stable, safe and prosperous environment in which everyone was very happy to live. And your neighbour is now advising the women in the household not to wear fashionable clothes or to go into areas of their former home on their own, because they're likely to be attacked, molested or raped by the people to whom your neighbour showed such generosity.

So, knowing this, I ask again, would you simply open your doors and welcome anyone in without wanting to ask some questions about their motivations and values and without making it clear that abiding by your 'house rules' was a fundamental requirement of your generosity?

I think if you would do that, you want your head examining.

What Donald Trump is advocating, is finding out the motivations and values of these potential incomers to find out how they might fit successfully (for you and them) into your home. Finding out (before it's too late and they have already settled in), whether they will play a positive part in the household and live by the rules that have made the 'house' so attractive in the first place, or whether their beliefs and values ought to preclude them from coming into your home because they would make it the same kind of hell-hole that exists next door and also exists in the lawless and terrible 'homes' from which they're fleeing. Where women in particular, are treated as third class human beings at best, where the victims of rape are prosecuted, where gay people are not just prosecuted but executed and there is a distinct lack of respect for anyone not sharing their religious beliefs (to say the very least).

I think Trump is right to want a pause in the influx so that we can ask these questions and establish the facts of the matter so that we can then take an informed decision on whether we should be welcoming these people into our homes or not.

is this what we want to happen in the UK? The US? It is happening in Germany & Sweden already

For what it's worth, I think we should be trying to help these people: We (in the guise of Blair, Bush and others) have contributed significantly to the creation of the hellish war zones from which they're fleeing. But we didn't effect the lifestyle change illustrated in the image above, they did that all by themselves. Because unscrupulous men made use of a set of archaic religious 'rules' written by an illiterate goatherd in the C7th when they thought the earth was flat, and whose medieval doctrine has always been oppressive of women and advocates an expansion of the religion through violence.

So we need to find a way in which we can welcome these oppressed people and which will allow them to be safe in, and contribute to, the West. We cannot do that without engaging and finding out what motivations and bullying doctrines need to be addressed before that can happen. Which means that just opening our doors without finding out what we're dealing with, just because we want to be seen as 'nice' people, is utter madness. It is also an approach which is leading directly to the loss of thousands of lives in the Mediterranean and the growing success of the totally evil people-traffickers. That's what our 'kindness' is actually doing.

It's time someone stood up for our Western values and our way of life and, given that the UK and European governments have so far proved to be doing anything but standing up for 'us', who better to take this much-needed stand than the President of the USA?

Those who are marching and protesting against his actions are effectively advocating that we open our doors without asking questions. But they wouldn't dream of opening their own doors if the situation arose. This makes them not just useful idiots, but dangerous idiots as well. It makes it imperative, for the very survival of our relatively free and fair lives in the West, that their stupid liberal views do not prevail.

Tell me I'm wrong.

Thanks for reading.