So far this week we have had the unholy triumvirate of attacks against Brexit and the United Kingdom. First there was Jeremy Corbyn and Labour’s proposal to bind the United Kingdom into a Customs Union with the European Union. This appears to be a purely cynical move designed to drum …
Read More »Fishing, Fisheries and #Brexit
There have recently been many wild claims about the effect of Brexit on the Fishing Industry. The most important three facts about the UK fishing industry are that almost half of UK fish quotas are caught within the UK 200 mile limit, Foreign fishing companies operating in UK can easily …
Read More »Energy Security after #Brexit
The House of Lords has just published its inquiry into energy security after Brexit – see Brexit: Energy Security. This publication is fairly complete in its coverage of the changes that will be needed in the coming year. The government will have had almost 3 years to plan for Brexit by …
Read More »What immigration reform should look like post-Brexit
In the EU referendum of 2016, the pro-EU metropolitan liberal elite ran a campaign scaremongering about what might happen to the economy if we voted to leave the European Union. Since the referendum, all of Remains doom and gloom predictions about us returning to the stone age if we voted …
Read More »Was #Brexit all about Class?
“My father was a miner, I am working class and supported remaining in the EU”, so said a primary school headteacher not long after the Referendum. Obviously the headteacher was not working class but it is amazing how many people who are middle class or even upper middle class identify …
Read More »The wisdom of the “ordinary man”
How often do you hear the expression “it’s not rocket science”? A hundred years ago such an expression would have been assigned to the world of H.G.Wells and his War of the Worlds. Literally a war of this world was just coming to an end. Americans were not long from …
Read More »Falcon Heavy Takes Flight, Rebooting Human Ambition
At a time when distracted Western governments and decaying institutions are incapable of providing visionary leadership, with society increasingly split along partisan lines, it took the vision of a private citizen to remind us what real ambition looks like “Ad astra per aspera”, reads one of several memorial plaques to the crew …
Read More »Big Business attack #Brexit
The attack by Multi-National businesses on Brexit has now been fully organised. It consisted in late 2016 of two main groups, “UK-EU Open Policy” which poses as an independent think tank but is dedicated to reversing the Referendum and “Common Ground” which pushes for continued membership of the Common Market …
Read More »The Future of the UK is in the hands of the Conservative Party.
It was only in May 2017 that the Conservative Party enjoyed the best local election performance in a decade, making significant gains at the expense of the Labour Party. The Conservatives won four out of six metro-mayoral areas, including in the traditionally Labour-voting Tees Valley and West Midlands while increasing their local government seat count by 563 …
Read More »We Need To Constrain Unchecked Government Power, For The Sake Of Brexit And Our Future Democracy
Does the UK government have the unilateral right to ignore instructions from the electorate if it finds them to be “harmful” based on narrowly subjective criteria? And if so, shouldn’t we do something to constrain that power? A couple of days ago I mused that the most fundamental question facing …
Read More »The Treasury Reports – Is the Treasury really lying?
Is the Treasury producing reports for political motives? The Treasury report before the Referendum, called HM Treasury analysis: the immediate economic impact of leaving the EU was so extreme that everyone called it “Project Fear”. The punch line of the report was “..a vote to leave would represent an immediate and profound …
Read More »Don’t Expect Better Political Outcomes In Britain Until We Change The System
Upset by how Brexit is being prosecuted by the government, overseen by Parliament and reported on by the media? It’s time to stop lamenting the symptoms and fixing the underlying issues with our constitution and system of government Of the sum total of British political discourse at all levels, a …
Read More »The Eurozone Trojan Horse
The UK has a trade deficit with the Eurozone of about 90 billion euros per annum. The Eurozone has a trade surplus with the world in general of about 200 billion euros pa so the UK supplies almost half of the Eurozone trade surplus. When pundits praise the Eurozone for its trade surplus …
Read More »Falling off a cliff
The stats for my blog have fallen off a cliff. No doubt this is because I have ceased running on the treadmill that kept them going. It had become something like an addiction watching the number of readers increase and fall each week. I would scramble to get next week’s …
Read More »It’s a no-brainer: children should sing the national anthem
This week, Ian Pye published a fantastic piece on the importance of remembering and learning the lessons of history after watching the recent film The Darkest Hour. Many people agree with him, as it has been reported that in theatres across the country people are giving standing ovations to Churchill’s …
Read More »Pound Recovers
Unlike the vast publicity given to the sharp, but relatively small, fall in the pound after the EU Referendum, the recent recovery of the pound has had little mention. The graph below charts this recovery: You can check this graph for yourself at XE.COM, a major commercial currency and foreign exchange …
Read More »The False Allure Of A Second EU Referendum
Beguiled by the irresistible prospect of overturning Brexit before it even happens, many Remainers are even more oblivious to the consequences of forcing and winning a second referendum than Brexiteers were to the fallout from victory in the first What would actually happen in the event that there was a …
Read More »Learn from history
A knowledge of history should be the bedrock of our development and thinking as it is on previous experience that our current decisions, our values and our lifestyles are based. The lack of teaching of our more immediate history is, I know, something that disappoints Jacob Rees Mogg. It is …
Read More »Have economists and economics journalists sold out?
Those who follow economics now know that the economic “experts” were wrong about their predictions for the period between the Referendum and today. This has scarcely been covered by broadcasters and this lack of coverage has left many Remain voters believing that an economic disaster is imminent. The absence of any coverage …
Read More »Theresa May just blew her last chance
At last the long awaited cabinet reshuffle has been called and my word it was depressing. I kept an eye on the TV reporting live from Downing Street while I was in the Gym this morning hoping that a major rejuvination might boost me, but instead I watched the same …
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