Should the UK remain a member of the EU

[Nelly-Matip 8,544]

Every word was a lie. Who’d a thunk it? 
 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/3329763480403530/permalink/6546271902085989/

[Kepler-186 552]

Any ideas about these farmers’ protests that have kicked off in Netherlands? Seems it’s down to an EU directive over nitrates and livestock numbers. 
 

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/dutch-farmers-protest-by-blocking-supermarket-distribution-centres-2022-07-04/

[Colonel Bumcunt 808]

On 30/06/2022 at 09:53, Gnasher said:

Golden girl back in the news. The whole organisation is full of Capitalist crooks.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/29/european-commission-defiant-over-von-der-leyens-pfizer-texts

 

https://www.politico.eu/article/commission-says-cant-find-ursula-von-der-leyen-pfizer-text-doesnt-need-to/

 

Goldman Sachs awaits.

Article from Daniel Boffey...lol.... 

I don't see the problem myself.  

The Tories talk to each other via auto-delete on What's App. Same difference.  No, it's not ideal, far from it, but it is the way many of us work these days. 

I'm presuming the big leap is that UVdL is somehow making an illegal fortune from this secret deal with Pfizer and we're just missing the texts where they go "€190m in my Swiss account, today, you win".  Is that it? 

[Gnasher 2,814]

7 minutes ago, Colonel Bumcunt said:

Article from Daniel Boffey...lol.... 

I don't see the problem myself.  

The Tories talk to each other via auto-delete on What's App. Same difference.  No, it's not ideal, far from it, but it is the way many of us work these days. 

I'm presuming the big leap is that UVdL is somehow making an illegal fortune from this secret deal with Pfizer and we're just missing the texts where they go "€190m in my Swiss account, today, you win".  Is that it? 

As an amateur sleuth might say you are possibly not very far from the beaten track there Columbo. 

 

 

 

[Mudface 5,383]

Oh well, it only cost a week and a bit's worth of the money the Brexit dividend will be giving back to the NHS. Any. Time. Soon.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jul/05/portsmouth-border-control-post-eu-imports-brexit

 

Portsmouth’s £25m border post stands empty after minister’s imports U-turn
At least £450m of taxpayers’ money has been spent on facilities to handle post-Brexit checks, now delayed

Portsmouth International Port's border control post
Portsmouth’s facility has 14 lorry bays, as well as sterile areas and air-lock quarantine zones.
Next to the container terminal at Portsmouth International Port, just a few hundred metres from the water’s edge, stands a new hi-tech border control post.

Built over the past 18 months at a cost of £25m, a cost shared by the taxpayer and the port’s owner, Portsmouth city council, the high-specification facility should be in its inaugural week of use, handling post-Brexit checks on imports of animal, plant and forestry products arriving from the EU.

The building stands empty and silent, however, following the government’s decision in April to delay, probably for good, the introduction of physical inspections of fresh meat, fruit, vegetables and plants from the EU.

The facility was completed before the government’s previous and much-delayed start date of 1 July for the new border measures.

The government is now working on a new operating model for imports – due to be published in the autumn and come into effect at the end of 2023 – following the announcement by the Brexit opportunities minister, Jacob Rees-Mogg, at the end of April that all checks and paperwork at the border would be digitised.

The decision has left ports such as Portsmouth counting the cost and wondering what to do with their impressive but redundant multimillion-pound white elephants.

The British Ports Association (BPA), a lobby group for the industry, calculates that at least £450m of taxpayers’ money has been spent on these now mostly unwanted new border control facilities.

This includes the £300m spent on buildings at ports, as well as an estimated £250m spent by the government on building 10 inland border facilities, in places such as Dover and Holyhead where there is not space for a checkpoint next to the terminal. These buildings will be difficult to repurpose.

“It is designed specifically for government inspections, nothing else,” said Mike Sellers, director of Portsmouth International Port.

“The cheapest option would be to demolish it. It’s taking up two acres of operational land; we are not blessed with lots of land so it’s a big problem for us in terms of operations.”

Mike Sellers, the director of Portsmouth International Port
Mike Sellers, the director of Portsmouth International Port. Photograph: Jill Mead/The Guardian
The port would have earned money from the border control post by levying charges on importers for the goods checks. Under the grant fund arrangement agreed with the government, Sellers said the port was currently unable to use the facility for other commercial reasons.

Even if this was allowed, it would be time-consuming and costly to reconfigure for another use.

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Portsmouth, along with 40 other ports, received £200m in funding for the new control posts through the government’s port infrastructure fund. However, this was oversubscribed, leading the ports themselves to pay an estimated £100m to make up the shortfall.

Portsmouth, the UK’s second-busiest cross-Channel port, applied for £32m of funding and received £17.1m.

It subsequently modified its plans to reduce the cost, but Portsmouth city council took out a loan to cover the £7.8m shortfall.

The leader of the council, Gerald Vernon-Jackson, said it “has been left to foot the government’s bill” and is facing loan and interest repayments at a time of stretched budgets.

“The most serious issue is the phenomenal cost the council has had to absorb,” said Vernon-Jackson. “We have no way of recovering the costs and no offer of financial support from the government.”

The port estimates it will cost £1m a year to keep the facility running, even in a mothballed state.

Constructed to handle “high risk” products such as meat, as well as plants and trees, Portsmouth’s facility has 14 lorry bays, as well as sterile areas and air-lock quarantine zones, designed to prevent any cross-contamination between different categories of goods.
Nearly 70 workers, including port health staff, vets and port operatives, were expected to work at the facility, checking goods 365 days a year, alongside officials from the government’s Animal and Plant Health Agency and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Port health officers had already been recruited.

When the Guardian visited on Tuesday, workers were laying the final paving stones outside the building. Inside, the freezers – which would have been used to store meat products during the checking process – were being tested and running at a chilly -20C (-4F) degrees.

Stephen Morgan, the Labour MP for Portsmouth South, has written to Rees-Mogg to express his concern about the public money wasted on the construction of border control facilities that may not be needed.

Rees-Mogg said in response that the government would be working with the port to “identify ways of minimising such costs, or recouping costs, if possible”.

The Guardian understands that government officials visited Portsmouth’s facility in recent days, while ministers are exploring other potential uses for the border facilities.

Portsmouth city council is calling on ministers to reimburse it for the original funding shortfall, and give them clarity on whether the border control posts will ever be needed.

When the government announced its U-turn over the introduction of import checks, Rees-Mogg said it was to avoid placing additional costs on British businesses and consumers during a cost of living crisis.

“The decision to postpone and reshape sanitary and phytosanitary controls is probably the right one for the freight industry and the economy,” said Richard Ballantyne, the BPA’s chief executive.

“But from the port operator point of view this has come two years too late.”

[Creator Supreme 1,807]

10 hours ago, Mudface said:

Oh well, it only cost a week and a bit's worth of the money the Brexit dividend will be giving back to the NHS. Any. Time. Soon.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jul/05/portsmouth-border-control-post-eu-imports-brexit

 

 

 

For fucks sake, what an absolute balls up!

 

Make Rees Mogg pay the fucking shortfall, the useless inbred fucking nazi!

[AngryOfTuebrook 24,980]

Although the UK Government is worse in every conceivable way, let's not forget that the EU really is a bit shit.

 

[Bruce Spanner 6,122]

 

'Boris Johnson’s term in office has been notable for repeated abuses of power and attempts to quash opposition – from proroguing parliament to clamping down on the right to demonstrate. But even though he is on his way out and the Conservative party is gripped by its leadership contest, his plans to erode our democracy are continuing below the radar.

 

The starkest example is the Northern Ireland protocol bill, proposed by the leadership hopeful Liz Truss, that is still making its way through parliament and currently in the committee stage. Much of the attention, and the condemnation, has rightly been on how it could break international law by invoking article 16 of the protocol. But, far less widely reported, there are sinister clauses in this bill that again amount to blatant power-grabbing domestically.

 

The bill would have the effect of giving parliament the ability to constrain the courts, and hand increasing powers to ministers. This bill accelerates the increasing dominance of the government over all other branches of the state – notably the courts and parliament.

 

Clause 22 in particular will convert every regulation-making power in the bill into a “Henry VIII” power, meaning that ministers can make any provision that could be made by an act of parliament, without parliament.

 

The fundamental doctrine of the separation of powers – which requires that the principal institutions of state, the executive, legislature and judiciary should be clearly divided in order to safeguard citizens’ liberties and guard against tyranny – is being systematically destroyed by this government. As the political thinker Montesquieu said in 1748: “When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty … there is no liberty if the power of judging is not separated from the legislative and executive … there would be an end to everything, if the same man or the same body … were to exercise those three powers.”

 

Contrary to the charge that government lawyers are incompetent, what is quite remarkable is how the drafting of the protocol bill pushes what many constitutional lawyers and experts have long known but have never seen a government dare to do.

 

It’s another nail in the coffin of the naive “good chap” model of our government that few expected to be tested as it has over the past few years. It is, however, a thin, skeleton bill, containing few details, and as Lord Judge famously said: “As for skeleton bills, I find it absolutely extraordinary that we ever pass them. We say to ourselves, ‘Let us give the minister powers before the minister has the slightest idea how he or she is going to exercise them.’” The bill also includes clauses that mean parliament can legislate freely to constrain the courts, and there is very little the courts can do about it – meaning that a successful legal challenge to the protocol bill, or the act that follows, is very unlikely in the UK courts.

 

But the bill goes further. It gives ministers eye-wateringly broad powers. For example, they will be able to come up with new regulations on the movement of goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the Treasury will be granted powers to regulate customs issues. Sneaky new Henry VIII powers will be introduced, which will enable ministers to alter primary legislation without requiring parliament to vote in favour.

 

Clause 19 of the bill will empower a minister to take measures he or she considers appropriate in order to implement any post-protocol agreement reached with the EU – ending parliamentary scrutiny of international treaties.

 

So continues the route to what Lord Hailsham once called an elective dictatorship. An ideological plan by government ministers to manipulate a supine parliament into giving them ever more powers. Creating phoney wars in the media to distract attention while they fast-track laws that diminish our democracy. Brexit was supposed to be about protecting our parliamentary sovereignty: but this government of Brexiteers are eroding our sovereignty, our constitution and our ability to hold the government to account.

 

But I have another worry; could this bill mean the government can bring back a no-deal Brexit by the back door? If negotiations over the Northern Ireland protocol break down, could ministers fundamentally alter the infrastructure of the EU withdrawal agreement, without parliament? The political and economic uncertainty faced by Northern Ireland and post-Brexit Britain are only exacerbated by this bill. The man who created this scenario may be on his way out, but we cannot afford to drop our guard: otherwise his poisonous legacy may endure for years.'

 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/19/tories-democracy-northern-ireland-protocol-bill-powers

 

 

[skend04 2,579]

Absolute mayhem in Dover. Critical incident been declared. Dover population knew exactly what it was voting for. Gridlocks through the city.

[cloggypop 11,880]

On 04/07/2022 at 18:22, Kepler-186 said:

Any ideas about these farmers’ protests that have kicked off in Netherlands? Seems it’s down to an EU directive over nitrates and livestock numbers. 
 

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/dutch-farmers-protest-by-blocking-supermarket-distribution-centres-2022-07-04/

It's the Dutch government, not an EU directive. 

 

https://www.iamexpat.nl/expat-info/dutch-expat-news/everything-about-governments-nitrogen-policy-and-dutch-farmers-protests

[Pete 2,132]

46 minutes ago, skend04 said:

Absolute mayhem in Dover. Critical incident been declared. Dover population knew exactly what it was voting for. Gridlocks through the city.

It's all the Frenchies fault.  Not ours. We didn't do anything to cause this. No siree Bob!
 Anyway, Brits love to queue so what's the problem? 

 

[Kepler-186 552]

17 minutes ago, cloggypop said:

It's the Dutch government, not an EU directive. 

 

https://www.iamexpat.nl/expat-info/dutch-expat-news/everything-about-governments-nitrogen-policy-and-dutch-farmers-protests

Cheers for clearing that up. 

[magicrat 7,104]

1 hour ago, skend04 said:

Absolute mayhem in Dover. Critical incident been declared. Dover population knew exactly what it was voting for. Gridlocks through the city.

So glad Johnson got Brexit done before all this shit hit the fan `

[AngryOfTuebrook 24,980]

The "divorce bill" (not counting the economic costs of Brexit; just the outstanding bills we have to pay) has gone up to £42 billion. More increases are likely, but the Treasury has decided not to tell us about them.

 

 

[AngryOfTuebrook 24,980]

 

[Chairman Meow 4,612]

Don't know if I'm jumping the gun a bit here, but I'm starting to suspect there is an outside chance that the people running the government might be a teeny bit incompetent. 

[Anubis 21,791]

Elphick says more French border force officers are hotfooting it to Dover….

 

 

[Anubis 21,791]

3 hours ago, skend04 said:

Absolute mayhem in Dover. Critical incident been declared. Dover population knew exactly what it was voting for. Gridlocks through the city.

They need to declare a critical incident for the entire fucking UK.

[Section_31 25,653]

5 minutes ago, Anubis said:

Elphick says more French border force officers are hotfooting it to Dover….

 

 

Could be a big boon to border security.

[Gnasher 2,814]

British government inefficiency exposed. Good. 

 

In more important news than queues at Dover, France voted for two anti EU politicians in Melenchon and Le Penn and Italy have has saud no to the EUs top boy 'Super Mario's economic constraints.

 

 

People across Europe have had a gutsfull of this EU legitimate slave labour bollocks. That's all it is, swarms of people's travelling across the length and breadth of Europe to do jobs which suppress the labour rate and increase profits for those in power. 

 

Ursula ain't on your side. Europe has had enough of this centre ground bullshit.

 

 

[skend04 2,579]

3 minutes ago, Gnasher said:

British government inefficiency exposed. Good. 

 

In more important news than queues at Dover, France voted for two anti EU politicians in Melenchon and Le Penn and Italy have has saud no to the EUs top boy 'Super Mario's economic constraints.

 

 

People across Europe have had a gutsfull of this EU legitimate slave labour bollocks. That's all it is, swarms of people's travelling across the length and breadth of Europe to do jobs which suppress the labour rate and increase profits for those in power. 

 

Ursula ain't on your side.

 

 

 

Negged for Far Right hate speech.

[Mudface 5,383]

6 minutes ago, skend04 said:

Negged for Far Right hate speech.

The mask slips occasionally, in amongst the bullshit about 'workers'.

[skend04 2,579]

2 minutes ago, Mudface said:

The mask slips occasionally, in amongst the bullshit about 'workers'.

Yeah, it does. 

[Numero Veinticinco 8,364]

They’re all starting to see it. 

 

Mwuh-ha. Mwauhahaa. Mwuhahahahahahah. 
 

 

[Gnasher 2,814]

15 minutes ago, Mudface said:

The mask slips occasionally, in amongst the bullshit about 'workers'.

Good god give me strength,