Tag: Brexit

Oh, the Horror!!!

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The powers that be in the UK are freaking out over a proposal to set a minimum wage of £30,000 for immigrants admitted as “Highly Skilled”.

By way of perspective, at the current exchange rate, that translates is about $38,000 a year, or a bit over $18/hour, or about 3 bucks more than Bernie’s proposed minimum wage here in the US.

Econ 101: if you pay a decent wage, they will come:

Proposals for a minimum annual wage could see the UK without tens of thousands of doctors, nurses and teachers.

Industry leaders have stressed ‘high skills do not equal high pay’ as the government seeks to curb immigration after Brexit.

………

Mr Javid confirmed the Government would be scrapping the current 20,700 annual cap on ‘highly skilled migrants.’

It will now set a minimum salary for workers applying for five-year visas and they would need to be sponsored by a company.

The Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) have recommended a £30,000 threshold.

………

The starting salary for nurses, midwives and paramedics is £23,000. Junior doctors start at £27,000 while healthcare assistants are at £17,000.

Most scientific researchers also earn below the proposed threshold.

I think that I may have identified a significant problem in the UK:  They have set up an economy where the City of London (finance) is impoverishing the rest of the nation.

Lucky That No One Else Wants the Job

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So Theresa May has managed to survive a vote of no confidence from fellow members of the Conservative Party.

I have to think that the members who supported her was because no one wants to take her seat on the political electric chair.

May seems to realize it as well, as she nas now stated that she will not be standing for reelection.

It really is remarkable how poorly Brexit has been managed since David Cameron promised a referendum, never expecting that it would pass.

Since that point, there has been no preparation for a hard Brexit, and the first action taken by the Tories was to cede any leverage they had by taking EU expats in the UK off of the table, and now they have a deal where they will be out, but unable to negotiate trade deals on their own, and any change must be approved by every single member of the EU.

Charles de Gaulle must be sitting in his tomb laughing.

Dropping the “A Word” on Brexit

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This is rather evocative language within the context of British Politics, and what it evokes is well deserved loathing of May and her Evil Minions™:

Mervyn King, the former governor of the Bank of England, has launched a stinging attack on Theresa May’s Brexit deal, likening it to the appeasement of the Nazis in the 1930s.

In a sweeping attack on No 10, the Treasury and his successor, Mark Carney, the Brexit-supporting King said the political elite was allowing the UK to become a vassal state that would be forced to accept Brussels diktats. He described the deal negotiated by the government as “incompetence of a high order”.

King’s comments came as Carney told the Treasury select committee on Tuesday that the price of food could go up by 10% if the UK left the EU with no deal and with no plans to avoid chaos at the country’s ports.

He said Britain’s ports were not ready for a shift to World Trade Organization rules for the country’s exports and imports with the EU.

King, however, slammed May’s deal as “a muddled commitment to perpetual subordination from which the UK cannot withdraw without the agreement of the EU”.

He added: “It simply beggars belief that a government could be hellbent on a deal that hands over £39bn while giving the EU both the right to impose laws on the UK indefinitely and a veto on ending this state of fiefdom.”

May’s Brexit deal is so bad that it could have been negotiated by Donald Trump.

Tweet of the Day

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BBC reporting that May is banking on people being so bored with Brexit that they will support her deal so they don't have to hear about it again.
Like being so bored with your food you take a large dose of strychnine so you don't have to eat it again.

— Craig Murray (@CraigMurrayOrg) November 26, 2018

Given her justaposition of unlikability, incompetence, and complete lack of political instincts, I am not sure how Theresa May remains at 10 Downing Street.

Signs of an Upcoming Fiasco

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As if Theresa May’s truly horrible Brexit deal were not bad enough, it appears that May’s weakness, even pro-Brexit forces imploding, has emboldened Spain, which is considering reasserting its claim to Gibraltar:

The Spanish government has threatened to reject Theresa May’s Brexit deal over the issue of Gibraltar, demanding that last-minute changes be made to the text ahead of a crunch summit.

The country’s foreign minister said Spain would not back the proposals at the European Council unless it received assurances that the agreement would not apply to Gibraltar.

But Downing Street said it would not exempt Gibraltar or any other British territory from the agreement – putting the two governments on a collision course ahead of the meeting this weekend.

“The negotiations between Britain and the EU have a territorial scope that does not include Gibraltar, the negotiations on the future of Gibraltar are separate discussions,” Spanish foreign minister Josep Borrell said on Monday morning in Brussels.

“This is what needs to made clear, and until it is clarified in the withdrawal agreement and in the political declaration on the future relationship, we cannot give our backing.”

Spain has long resented Britain’s claims on Gibraltar, a British overseas territory that is home to around 30,000 people, and has previously threatened to use Brexit to wrest concessions on the issue.

This a sign of just how weak the British position is.

There is no good ending for this for London.

I’m Sure that the Blairites Will Flock to Support Her

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The Guardian is reporting that Tory PM Theresa May is wooing Labour party MPs in an attempt to secure support for her Brexit proposals.

The (reflexively anti-Corbyn) Guardian misses the point here.

May’s appeal to Labour is not, “The Good of the Kingdom,” it’s, “You have the opportunity to stop Jeremy Corbyn.

You will notice that the report does not detail who is in discussions with the Conservatives, and I think that this is because it is the representatives of failed New Labour who are in talks, in yet another of their schemes to destroy the party to preserve their position within the party:

Theresa May has drawn up plans for a secret charm offensive aimed at persuading dozens of Labour MPs to back her Brexit deal even if it costs Jeremy Corbyn the chance to be prime minister, the Guardian has learned.

Senior Conservatives say they have already been in private contact with a number of Labour MPs over a period of several months, making the case that the national interest in avoiding a no-deal outcome is more important than forcing a general election by defeating the government on May’s Brexit deal.

Now, with talks in Brussels entering their frantic final phase, the prime minister and her party whips are stepping up efforts to win backing for a compromise deal that one minister described as a “British blancmange”.

………

Labour MPs will thus be the focus of intense lobbying, in the period between May returning from Brussels with a Brexit deal and the meaningful vote, which is expected to come about a fortnight later.

………

May appealed directly to Labour backbenchers in her conference speech when she spoke of the “heirs of Hugh Gaitskell and Barbara Castle, Denis Healey and John Smith”, saying they were on the backbenches, not in the shadow cabinet of what she called the “Jeremy Corbyn party”.

This is not an attempt at a better Brexit, it’s an attempt to sabotage Labout, an Blair and his Evil Minions™ are more than willing to aid and abet this strategy.

Tories Could F%$# Up a 2 Car Funeral – Stellar Parthenon

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The Tories are going to have an official conference, so they had an app for that.

Rather like Brexit negotiations, it was a complete fiasco:

A major flaw in the Conservatives’ official conference mobile phone application has made the private data of senior party members – including cabinet ministers – accessible to anyone that logged in as that particular conference attendee.

The data of hundreds of attendees to the Tory conference could be viewed by second guessing attendees’ email addresses, with Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Gavin Williamson and others among those whose personal information – including their phone numbers – was made accessible.

Once logged into the app, users were able to both amend and make the personal details of prominent MPs public. Twitter users claimed Johnson’s picture had been briefly changed to one featuring a pornographic image.

Gove’s picture was changed to Rupert Murdoch, his previous employer at the Times. Anyone could log in as any attendee by providing an email with no password. Many MPs had registered with their public parliamentary email addresses, making it simple for any member of the public to access their mobile number via the app.

Commentators said the flaw raised questions over the ability of the government to harness technology to solve issues around the Irish border and customs checks. The app may also have breached data laws. Its privacy policy states that it “complies with … the European Union’s general data protection regulation (GDPR)”.

………

It follows the gaffe that unfolded last year during Theresa May’s keynote speech when a comedian managed to get to the front of the stage and pass her a P45, [Layoff Form] which she accepted.

馬鹿につける薬はない (There is no medicine for stupidity.)

Find Me a Producer, I’ve Got one F%$# of a Treatment

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It is, as the saying goes, ripped from the headlines.

It’s the best heist movie concept, and in this case, the headline is that, in response to Brexit concerns, Cadbury creating a massive stockpile of chocolate:

Britain is scheduled to leave the European Union next year, but it still hasn’t reached a deal on how exactly this could happen. If it leaves Europe without a deal, some experts have warned that there may be chaos at the borders and a shortage of key goods.

On Tuesday, the owner of the beloved confectionary brand Cadbury announced that the company has a plan to deal with the threat of this dreaded “no-deal” Brexit: a chocolate stockpile.

Think about the action, think about the adventure, think about the tension, and think about the merch that you could sell.

Before you ask, I am aware that an actual sweet food stockpile has been stolen, the so-called great Canadian maple syrup heist, but that just adds verisimilitude.

And just think about the obligatory love making scene between the mastermind and the cop who has been pursuing them.

Chocolate ……… And Strawberries ……… And Gentle Heat.

I smell razzie!