Either the people of this country are thick or the politicians are lying. Well, the truth, I'm afraid, is even worse: the politicians are lying and the people are believing them. It is now well known that politicians lie in pursuit of power. They want your vote, pure and simple, and if they have to lie to get it, they will. And it gets worse than that: they KNOW they're going to lie in the future too, but won't admit to anything in advance, preferring instead to prepare the ground by stealth, throwing journalists curve balls of dishonesty to make them lose the politicians' scent of treachery. Take Liam Fox, a Brexiteer, and somebody I can't say I particularly like; I feel I can't trust him and that's not good considering, by trade, he's a medical doctor. More on Fox later.
One thing's for certain, you can't trust a businessman where money is concerned. Take Andronicos Sideras. He has just been found guilty of mixing horsemeat with beef and selling it on to major food retailers in a scam estimated to be worth millions of pounds. His evil plan only came to light (and this is really horrible) when meat inspectors found the identification chips of three horses in the meat they were inspecting. Why did Sideras engage in such a heinous crime? It's not difficult, is it? He wanted to make a fast buck, pure and simple. Perhaps he wanted to retire early, landscape his back garden, who knows? And quite frankly, who cares? Imagine how annoyed he must be, knowing that his team didn't think to remove those pesky identification chips. He must be fuming. A textbook error.
I'm a remainer. Or rather I was, I'm not anymore and I wouldn't call myself a 'remoaner' either. However, I think it's fairly clear that leaving the EU, on so many levels, is not a smart move for the UK, it's not even going to rid the country of the immigration problem that UKIP and other Brexiteers warned was the chief reason for getting the hell out. We're already hearing that the borders will remain open for at least two years AFTER Brexit and when you consider that the so-called establishment sorely want to remain in the EU you must remember that they have their reasons – reasons steeped in their own greed and reasons that certainly involve the need for 'cheap labour'. Rich people, like Gina Miller, a figure of hatred for so many Brexiteers, represents the monied classes. She went to court to ensure that Parliament (and not the Tories) had the final say on whatever deal the Conservative party finishes up with in their exit negotiations with the EU. She won her case.
'Business leaders' want to remain in the single market and the customs union so they can make loads of money by exploiting cheap foreign labour, and that means keeping the open borders policy that led to the UK coming out of Europe. Newly appointed Lib-Dem leader Vince Cable (possibly the only 'proper politician' in British politics today) is saying that we might never leave the EU. If there's another general election and one party campaigns on a remain ticket we might well find ourselves 'remaining' much to the dismay of blue-rinsed old women with bingo wings and retired, beer-gutted mini-cab drivers living in bungalows in Ramsgate.
Getting back to Fox, he was on the television the other night being interviewed by Newsnight's Emily Maitlis, one of a number of high-profile, talented, female political journalists who, quite rightly, is a little miffed that she and her colleagues are paid far less than their male counterparts (of which, more later). Maitlis wanted assurances from Fox over a future trade deal with the USA as there are real fears that when we leave the EU (if we leave the EU) we might end up with chlorine-washed chicken and hormone-injected beef.
In the USA food standards are far lower than those in the EU and once we leave, supposedly in 2019, we will be desperate for any trade deal we can get. Fox said that a deal with the USA was up for negotiation and that the British Government would engineer a deal that was 'best for Britain'. He slyly admitted, however, that there was nothing wrong with chlorine-washed chicken, paving the way, laying the groundwork, perhaps, for a future lie; he knows darn well that we're going to accept hormone-injected beef and chlorine-washed chicken once we're out of the EU, but he's not quite ready to admit it yet. Soon we'll be subjected to television programmes that might promote the advantages of hormone-injected beef and chlorine-washed chicken and there will undoubtedly be a new push, sooner or later, for GM crops too. Companies like Monsanto are champing at the bit and people like Fox will slyly give them what they want.
And there lies another little problem that we're all too gullible to take in: the process of 'normalisation'. It's happening all around us all of the time. Police are now carrying considerable amounts of water in addition to truncheons and tasers as they're quietly accepting (and expecting us to as well) that the acid attack is now commonplace and something we all must accept. All part of city life, as Siddique Khan, Mayor of London, said recently. They're doing the same thing with terrorism: trying to normalise it so that we all think it's part and parcel of the fabric of society. How? By offering up the 'standard response' (tea light shrines to the fallen, professional mourners, perpetrators "known to the security services", arrests in the suburbs to show that the police are doing their job, terror suspects 'released without charge', producing 'help' videos about what to do in a terror attack.
And what about those hugely inflated and totally undeserved salaries of some BBC television presenters and the lack of parity between male and female employees at the top end of the spectrum? What will be done about it? Will they simply pay the likes of Alex Jones and Claudia Winkleman (already on unnecessarily large salaries) more money to match up with male pay packets, OR will they expect the men to accept drastic pay cuts to bring their salaries in line with the women? Either scenario is unlikely. The most probable outcome will be that we all forget about it and things carry on as normal – until the next scandal.
As for immigration, which, according to the right wing media, is clearly getting out of control in the UK, and a determining factor behind Brexit, nothing much is going to change. As Home Secretary, our current Prime Minister Theresa May's record on immigration was very poor. She's had many years to reduce non-EU immigration, which in my opinion is what Brexiteers are really concerned about, but has failed dismally. To say that 'once we're out of Europe we'll be able to control our borders' is another lie and fails to address the problem of those flooding in from outside of Europe and supposedly changing the cultural and social fabric of the country. It's all a con and we're falling for it.
One thing's for certain, you can't trust a businessman where money is concerned. Take Andronicos Sideras. He has just been found guilty of mixing horsemeat with beef and selling it on to major food retailers in a scam estimated to be worth millions of pounds. His evil plan only came to light (and this is really horrible) when meat inspectors found the identification chips of three horses in the meat they were inspecting. Why did Sideras engage in such a heinous crime? It's not difficult, is it? He wanted to make a fast buck, pure and simple. Perhaps he wanted to retire early, landscape his back garden, who knows? And quite frankly, who cares? Imagine how annoyed he must be, knowing that his team didn't think to remove those pesky identification chips. He must be fuming. A textbook error.
I'm a remainer. Or rather I was, I'm not anymore and I wouldn't call myself a 'remoaner' either. However, I think it's fairly clear that leaving the EU, on so many levels, is not a smart move for the UK, it's not even going to rid the country of the immigration problem that UKIP and other Brexiteers warned was the chief reason for getting the hell out. We're already hearing that the borders will remain open for at least two years AFTER Brexit and when you consider that the so-called establishment sorely want to remain in the EU you must remember that they have their reasons – reasons steeped in their own greed and reasons that certainly involve the need for 'cheap labour'. Rich people, like Gina Miller, a figure of hatred for so many Brexiteers, represents the monied classes. She went to court to ensure that Parliament (and not the Tories) had the final say on whatever deal the Conservative party finishes up with in their exit negotiations with the EU. She won her case.
'Business leaders' want to remain in the single market and the customs union so they can make loads of money by exploiting cheap foreign labour, and that means keeping the open borders policy that led to the UK coming out of Europe. Newly appointed Lib-Dem leader Vince Cable (possibly the only 'proper politician' in British politics today) is saying that we might never leave the EU. If there's another general election and one party campaigns on a remain ticket we might well find ourselves 'remaining' much to the dismay of blue-rinsed old women with bingo wings and retired, beer-gutted mini-cab drivers living in bungalows in Ramsgate.
Getting back to Fox, he was on the television the other night being interviewed by Newsnight's Emily Maitlis, one of a number of high-profile, talented, female political journalists who, quite rightly, is a little miffed that she and her colleagues are paid far less than their male counterparts (of which, more later). Maitlis wanted assurances from Fox over a future trade deal with the USA as there are real fears that when we leave the EU (if we leave the EU) we might end up with chlorine-washed chicken and hormone-injected beef.
In the USA food standards are far lower than those in the EU and once we leave, supposedly in 2019, we will be desperate for any trade deal we can get. Fox said that a deal with the USA was up for negotiation and that the British Government would engineer a deal that was 'best for Britain'. He slyly admitted, however, that there was nothing wrong with chlorine-washed chicken, paving the way, laying the groundwork, perhaps, for a future lie; he knows darn well that we're going to accept hormone-injected beef and chlorine-washed chicken once we're out of the EU, but he's not quite ready to admit it yet. Soon we'll be subjected to television programmes that might promote the advantages of hormone-injected beef and chlorine-washed chicken and there will undoubtedly be a new push, sooner or later, for GM crops too. Companies like Monsanto are champing at the bit and people like Fox will slyly give them what they want.
And there lies another little problem that we're all too gullible to take in: the process of 'normalisation'. It's happening all around us all of the time. Police are now carrying considerable amounts of water in addition to truncheons and tasers as they're quietly accepting (and expecting us to as well) that the acid attack is now commonplace and something we all must accept. All part of city life, as Siddique Khan, Mayor of London, said recently. They're doing the same thing with terrorism: trying to normalise it so that we all think it's part and parcel of the fabric of society. How? By offering up the 'standard response' (tea light shrines to the fallen, professional mourners, perpetrators "known to the security services", arrests in the suburbs to show that the police are doing their job, terror suspects 'released without charge', producing 'help' videos about what to do in a terror attack.
And what about those hugely inflated and totally undeserved salaries of some BBC television presenters and the lack of parity between male and female employees at the top end of the spectrum? What will be done about it? Will they simply pay the likes of Alex Jones and Claudia Winkleman (already on unnecessarily large salaries) more money to match up with male pay packets, OR will they expect the men to accept drastic pay cuts to bring their salaries in line with the women? Either scenario is unlikely. The most probable outcome will be that we all forget about it and things carry on as normal – until the next scandal.
As for immigration, which, according to the right wing media, is clearly getting out of control in the UK, and a determining factor behind Brexit, nothing much is going to change. As Home Secretary, our current Prime Minister Theresa May's record on immigration was very poor. She's had many years to reduce non-EU immigration, which in my opinion is what Brexiteers are really concerned about, but has failed dismally. To say that 'once we're out of Europe we'll be able to control our borders' is another lie and fails to address the problem of those flooding in from outside of Europe and supposedly changing the cultural and social fabric of the country. It's all a con and we're falling for it.
