by John Ward
While lachrymose self-identifying ‘liberals’ blather on about “Human Rights”, they seem not to understand citizen rights. Whether you’re a US taxpayer, an honest bourse investor, a Brit keen to re-establish national self-determination, or an UK expat in the EU, it’s time to wise up: Human Rights are easy to write into constitutions (and then ignore) but, when it comes to citizen rights, you don’t have any.
Last week, US Federal Reserve boss Jerome Powell told a Congressional Committee that the banking cartel he heads up has “you know, a ten year plan to deal with our current difficulties”.
Interesting use of the personal pronoun there; but I suppose if you start from the observation that his profession caused the whole mess and We the People are paying for the consequences, then yes, maybe ‘our’ is allowable. It is, after all, a usage for which there is a George Osborne precedent: “We’re all in this together”.
However, given the last Ten Year Plan plundered two-thirds of my private pension, removed 95% of my income on savings and lumbered Planet Earth with a $30 trillion debt, on the whole – taking all things into account – I’d feel much safer if Powell didn’t have a plan.
Which is fine, because I am 99.9% certain that he doesn’t. He’s just back-writing the plot of what is soon to be a new Hollywood Bankbuster, Hypercrash nightmare on Wall Street.
What corporate (rather than Wall Street) America now seems to have in mind beyond Mr Powell’s Planet Dimon is a last killer scam before the casino finally files for bankruptcy.
Under Ben the Benanker, the game was to reward directors with share options at quoted bourse prices at the start of the fiscal year, talk up those shares by Zirp borrowing to offer shareholders big returns, and then sell at year end.
The coming trend is to eschew buying your own company shares….watch confidence collapse – and then buy back the shares following ‘disappointing results’….having hyped the results expectation in Q1 of that year.
As a fat cat, you can’t lose: come swings, roundabouts or Wall of Death, you sell high and buy low.
Bourse capitalism is a Parliament of Pimps. And I record that opinion as a lifelong capitalist.
Talking of pimps, following the French Boy King’s public demand that Brussels should demand all EU workers’ rules be followed by Britain, Jean-Yves Le Drian, Manny’s foreign minister, mouthed off in Munich yesterday with this conciliatory message:
“I think that on trade issues or on the measures for our future relationship that we are going to discuss for starters, we are going to rip each other apart, especially on fishing rights”.
I put that one out there not least because, once the Sprouts start trying to rewrite history by saying the truculence was all our fault, people can refer back and see precisely where the animosity started. Despite this, yet again yesterday Number 10 refused to react publicly….beyond stressing the need for conciliation not confrontation.
I hink it’s called “manners” isn’t it? Not that I’d expect the UK Left to grasp that concept.
Both Macron and Le Drian display the arrogance that typifies every last senior EU functionary from the new Commission President at the top all the way down to Verhofstadt swilling about in his own bitter cider at the bottom of the barrel. We have left, but they still don’t get it.
We should do nothing more than insist that the EU – as a foreign entity – stays out of our territorial waters for fishing or indeed any other activity. And as an independent sovereign power, we will write our own agenda on workplace rights and welfare standards. Le Drian went on to say that, if French boats are not allowed a free hand to plunder, “then we will refuse to accept any UK fish exports to the EU”. Bring it on: we don’t eat enough fish as a nation anyway, so we’ll eat the lot and become more self-sufficient. It works for me
Nobody seems to like Dominic Cummings very much. I suspect this is primarily because (not having to worry about his popularity) Dom can just get on and do the right things. In the EU sphere, he has already been influential (aka blunt) about the UK’s lilly-livered mincing about during the first stage of withdrawal. It seems (unless I’m being led astray) that his advice will start being taken tonight when David Frost, the government’s chief trade negotiator, is to outline Britain’s vision for our future relationship with the EU during a lecture in Brussels.
The speech is going to make a number of points strongly. I severely doubt that this will make any difference to the petrified Belgian forest, but for the record, those who are paying attention will quickly pick up signs of an entirely new British tone. Frost will first of all bring up the Japanese and Canadian trade deals already signed by Barnier & Partners and say that, as a close neighbour who has contributed hundreds of billions to the EU coffers over the years, anything less than what they got is going to strike us as a tad vindictive. He will also repeat the PM’s insistence that we will happily face tariffs rather than follow EU rules.
What I also understand, however, is that – in the light of Le Drian’s bizarre comments – last minute changes to the speech on fishing rights are still being discussed by Frost and Team Boris. I sense that this is key: only a strengthening of our line will do from my pov – but we shall see.
Brussels may continue to ignore that it is now dealing with a competitor, but the French have been ultra-quick in their response to every UK expat in France. I pitched up to vote in the local elections here last year, and was told I was not on the list. Right, I said: I am a homeowner, resident and EU citizen paying all my taxes to you, but I don’t get to vote? No they said, you have to register. So I registered….but it was too late to vote.
The great and fraternal Vth Republic is a few sheets behind the music re this one – 250 years-worth, to be precise. Clearly, the adage No Taxation Without Representation is not as yet part of the revolutionary lexicon. Imagine my surprise at that.
And now, the epilogue….
We left the EU on Friday 31st January. On Tuesday 4th February, an unpleasant and somewhat triumphal letter arrived from the Mairie, saying this departure decision would “of course have consequences for all aliens” and that, with immediate effect, all my newly gained voting rights are rescinded. So I pay all my taxes in France, I have a permanent residency status, but because we’re no longer in the EU, my right to vote in even local and municipal elections that are nothing to do with the EU has also been taken away.
I checked, and sure enough – there it is in Bojo’s breakthrough WA: Article 127. So much for HMG’s continued insistence that the rights of EU-based expats will be protected. I am now disenfranchised in where I live, and where I come from.
So you see, this is why – whatever they’re paying Cummings – it isn’t enough. And you know why? Because he isn’t a scumbag politician sucking Whitehall, globalist, NATO or any other dick.
Sorry about the tone of that sign-off. I’m angry about this. I just wish enough others were as well.