Whilst the BBC is still holding back on reporting that Corbyn is ‘more dangerous than a hard Brexit’ to the economy they have this important piece of news…..

Prime minister’s convoy goes wrong way at roundabout

The prime minister is filmed by a passer-by taking an alternative route to work as she leaves her Berkshire home.

The Metropolitan Police said they will often close roads for people under their protection as it helps officers get to their locations safely.

Nice that they broadcast a film that pretty much gives away where the PM lives in her own home.

The EU benefits from being one of the most open economies in the world and remains committed to free trade.

Over the next ten to 15 years, 90% of world demand will be generated outside Europe. That is why it is a key priority for the EU to tap into this growth potential by opening up market opportunities for European businesses abroad. One way of ensuring this is through negotiating agreements with our key partners.

European trade policy

Odd, Big Pharma makes a big investment into the UK despite the BBC telling us that Brexit means science and R&D investment will be history and the BBC hardly mentions Brexit at all in its report…merely a snide, off-thread comment…this is happening ‘despite Brexit’…please note Dimbleby…

Of course, all of these new initiatives are being born under the star sign of Brexit which makes them children of uncertainty.

And that’s it….no indepth analysis of why we get this investment even as the ‘catastrophe’ of Brexit looms, no big cheer for Britain, no analysis that suggests this might bode well for the future and that Britain may not sink into economic obscurity and cultural isolation after Brexit….but no…..the BBC’s approach is still to sneer [very quietly in this case] and warn of hard times to come because of all that uncertainty…#duetoBrexit.

Odd also that though the BBC is keen to publish anything said by bankers about fleeing Britain for the Continent they don’t seem too keen to report this double whammy for their worldview…From the Telegraph…

Corbyn more dangerous for markets than hard Brexit, warns Morgan Stanley

The prospect of a radical Left-wing lurch under Jeremy Corbyn is a more serious threat to British asset markets than Brexit and risks setting off a drastic repricing of UK plc, a leading US bank has warned.

In the Guardian too…Corbyn becoming PM is ‘worse threat to business than Brexit’, says bank

You may also remember the BBC totally ignored this warning during the election instead telling us what a champion of anti-terrorist action Corbyn was…despite him being, in essence, a terrorist himself such is his open support for such groups and methods….

The once head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, said:

If you have been listening and watching widely on the BBC recently you will have noticed a very constant theme…that Capitalism is dead, we need a new economic model, and, of course, that Brexit is a disaster.  It seems the BBC is loading many of its programmes with some subtle, and not so subtle, pro-Corbyn messages, never missing a chance to slip in some cheerleading for the thought that the old ways are dead….we need a radical new solution.

On Sunday we had Will Self wheeled on for his thoughts….Will Self reflects on the epidemic of sleeplessness. …harmless enough no?  Ah but…you’re sleepless because you’re a voracious consumer, never happy unless you’re buying something, a victim  of a capitalist plot to keep you on the hamster wheel and under their thumb.  I might suggest the biggest leech on the consumer society is the like of Self who produce complete twaddle and still get paid for it by gullible hacks at the BBC.

Then we have something like today’s effort on Start the Week about Finland….a happy, multicultural, wide open place before it sought independence [geddit?] and we hear that the West’s economic system is broken and needs to change [geddit?] and there is talk of the ‘rise of the Populists’…naturally the evil populists are all right-wing….why is Corbyn not a ‘populist’?

Whilst neither Brexit nor Corbyn were mentioned directly they lurked in the shadows unsaid…apart from an outburst from one speaker who told us that ‘the European Union is one of Man’s greatest creations!’.

There there’s the likes of this little comment from Kamal Ahmed [a Remain supporter and possibly somewhat inclined towards Labour]…

Analysis: Kamal Ahmed, BBC Economics Editor

What is the point of capitalism?

That might seem like a pretty big question, but one answer could be “to provide people the opportunity through work to become richer”.

What, though, if the economy fails in that endeavour?

If the system leaves you – despite all your efforts – worse off in December than you were the previous January?

Or worse off now than you were a decade ago?

If a system does not deliver increasing wealth – even if it is a modest increase – then people, quite naturally, begin to wonder what is the point.

During the referendum Ahmed was very easy going on the Remain camp as he ‘fact checked’ their claims….the worst he’d say was that maybe a bit exaggerated but, you know what, the gist is right….yeah…post-referendum we’ve had that emergency budget, the economic disaster, the never ending dole queues, the rush to the exit of banks and businesses…and oh yes…world war 3.

He also seems to be a long term pal of pro-Remain Alistair Campbell……

Ahmed latched on to Tony Blair’s spin doctor, Alastair Campbell. As a result, Observer readers were “slowly soaked in disinformation” as Ahmed became a “conduit for government announcements”. When The Observer supported the decision to invade Iraq, Davies recounted how colleagues feared Ahmed had crossed the line between dispassionate journalist and government aide.

In fact, senior staff at The Observer did approach Ahmed with their concerns. One says he did believe Ahmed had become too close to Campbell, and told him so. “Kamal would go around calling himself ‘Campbell Ahmed’,” he recalls. “A joke’s a joke, but at the same time, never a truer word was said.”

Ahmed spreading Labour disinformation in the Observer…who’d a thunk?  Not much seems to have changed.  Ahmed like the BBC prepared to hold his nose about Corbyn as long as Labour win?

The BBC is definitely laying the groundwork for the Corbyn narrative on the economic system, that it is broken and needs replacing.  Just a shame it is all so simplistic, idealistic and completely lacking in thought….for instance if we buy nothing then we don’t need all those factories, shops, and transport systems to move the goods…and of course we don’t need the jobs that go with them.  Maybe we can all be poets or ‘thinkers’ like Self…but of course he only eats because he leeches off the system he hates….and if the system isn’t there?….oh….he didn’t think of that.  Never mind, we can all eat grass as they do in North Korea.  Happy days ahead.

This blog will be staying open for the foreseeable future #duetoBrexit and the complete certainty, #duetoBrexit, that the BBC will be pumping out relentless bias relentlessly…list it all here….

Those crazy Russian hackers….”Vote for Mollie King”

The BBC faithfully serves the devious needs of a foreign master, the EU, as it disseminates information that favours the EU world-view, and misinformation when it comes to those who oppose the EU’s ever-growing power and influence over our lives.  The BBC betrays not only its funding principles but the country it supposedly represents.

Nick Robinson seems quite happy to put his name to that betrayal as he continually presents as fact, in both the Today show and the pro-EU Sunday Mail, that Brexit was won by Putin claiming that the People didn’t really want Brexit, their minds were manipulated..the silly, simple-minded fools….

If you can game the algorithms it is all too easy to manipulate the emotions of a large part of the population.

That’s why we all need to wise up to what is going on: a state-sponsored effort to hack into our national conversation. It’s why politicians, social media companies and we as citizens should do more to protect our democracy and freedoms.

So, was it ‘the Kremlin wot won it’? So far, there is no firm evidence the Kremlin tried to, let alone succeeded, in bringing about Brexit. However, we do need to ask why so many tweets and posts about the things which divide people in the UK seem to come from Russia.

I am not arguing that those who backed Brexit or Scottish independence fell for a foreign plot. But we need to understand why the Kremlin might want to set up its own TV news network in London called RT, or Russia Today, and a news agency in Edinburgh called Sputnik. 

So having a news organisation in a country means you are plotting the downfall of that country?…..

Then what of this?

‘….why so many tweets and posts about the things which divide people in the UK seem to come from Russia.’

So all those news broadcasts, not just Tweets and other social media publications, from the BBC trashing Trump are not equally an attempt to subvert American democracy?  How about the outrageously dangerous claims from the BBC that white police officers in America are ‘executing’ unarmed Black men when that is totally untrue…such stories led to the death of many police officers then targeted by Black killers.  The BBC plays a very dangerous game.

Robinson has placed himself front and centre of the campaign to undermine Brexit, this is blatantly part of the highly political and partisan pro-EU Project Fear, a project whch failed miserably despite having the might of the combined forces of the world’s finest and most powerful cheerleading for it…Obama, the Clintons, Merkel, Cameron, the BBC, vast arrays of businessmen and banks, ‘respected’ international institutes such as the IMF and…Putin?

What’s missing from Robinson’s puff piece is any mention that Putin also shilled for the Remainders….his aim is to divide and rule, to sow as much confusion, doubt and instability as possible…thus it is logical that he would back both teams if any at all…as he quite possibly did in the American election….why is it that the BBC claims Putin supported Trump and yet can also report that serving Russian intelligence officers fed our very own 003.5 a pack of lies that damned Trump and still claim Putin only tried to help Trump and not Clinton…also ignoring the millions of $ of Russian money that flooded into Clinton accounts?  The BBC ignores all that preferring to say Trump won because Putin won it for him and thus it wasn’t a legitimate election….and they do the same with Brexit…happily ignoring any possibility that the dread Russian tweeters also helped Remain and never mind that massive ‘Establishment’ push for Remain…against which we had essentially Boris and Nigel Farage and a red double-decker bus [which the BBC normally tells us is ‘wot won it for Leave’.…maybe Putin paid for the bus?  or was it a vast programme of data mining and targeted canvassing as the BBC also claimed?  or was it the young were robbed of a chance to vote on their future?…as in 1975 then?].  Why doesn’t the BBC just come clean and admit it hates Brexit and is going to ignore it completely and pretend it never happened instead of inventing ever more preposterous excuses for the failure, not just of Project Fear, but of the Grand Project of the EU itself?

Amusing how Robinson recruits May’s last statement about the threat of Russian  interference in the West to his cause….when she first made that statement the BBC ridiculed her and mocked her and defended Russia….even as Robinson first made his conspiracy theory public….

Putin’s new bestest friend…the BBC

Has Lord Hall Hall been handed a large brown envelope of roubles, has he been on the vodka, has he been seduced by a Russian temptress and rudely compromised?  Who knows but the BBC is suddenly very Putin friendly as it mocks May for her warning to Russia to stop interfering in British democracy.  What a turn around by the BBC.

It was only a week ago that the brilliant Nick Robinson was giving us alarming news that both the Brexit referendum and the general election had been hacked by the Russians….indeed the BBC and MPs have been hot on the trail…

‘British MPs have asked Facebook if it has evidence of paid-for activity by accounts linked to Russia at the time of the Brexit referendum.’

Interesting when Robinson does a roll-call of elections he claims the Russians have tried to influence he doesn’t mention the German one….because it is known they didn’t.  He asks no  questions…such as why they wouldn’t interfere in an election that was pretty much a sure-fire win for Merkel?  Maybe they really, really like Merkel….who was working as an eager young communist in East Germany when Putin was a KGB officer in the same town.   Germany and Merkel run the EU….if Merkel is the Russians’ most successful plant then the Russians ‘run’ the EU.

Far more plausible than a few tweeters in a Moscow flat deciding the fate of Brexit you might think….certainly worth  a mention……and I suppose 4 million voted for UKIP due to the Russians?  If the might of the BBC can’t persuade people not to vote for the nazifacistracistlittleenglanders of UKIP I’m not sure a few tweets or facebook posts will have much effect.

The BBC is the biggest troll factory out there pumping out endless fake news and alternative facts.

and Nick Robinson is a waste of space.

The Iranians have released some of their ‘proof’ that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was training Iranian journalists when she worked for the BBC in the form of some of her emails.  The BBC will only admit that she worked for the BBC’s Media Action ‘charity’….which is, to be blunt, in fact an organisation that trains foreign journalists to subvert political regimes in their own countries…it is ‘soft power’ deployed by Britain to influence events and politics abroad.

As yet the BBC has not reported this latest Iranian statement [Sky, The Mail, Evening Standard, Telegraph, Independent, the Sun Huffington Post…all have reported it many hours ago] though they were quick off the mark, and quite vocal about it too, to report when an Iranian court said Boris’ comment about Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe proved she was guilty.  The BBC used this to put enormous pressure on the figurehead of the Brexit campaign and continually suggested that ‘perhaps he should resign’.

Why might they not be so keen to report the latest statement?  Because it proves Boris was correct [as we knew] and because it puts the blame squarely on the BBC which has been trying hard to avoid any ‘contamination’ from this story…flying the flag for Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe but not quite all the way up the flagpole….did the BBC ever advise Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe about the likely consequences of going to Iran in light of her job?  Consider the huge effort the BBC put into getting Alan Johnson back from Gaza…a massive amount of publicity and effort….where is that in this case?  The BBC denies everything saying…

“Ms Zaghari-Ratcliffe was never a journalism trainer but undertook administrative duties such as travel bookings, typing, and filing.”

Her husband doesn’t say that the emails are faked and they do seem to back the suggestion that she was more than a ‘clerk’ as the BBC would like you to believe.

The BBC have a lot of questions to answer not least their attempt to exploit the situation to topple a government minister that they do not like….I guess if you can’t topple the Iranian Mullahs then why not have a go at the Tories at home?

[Polish Government video….with English subtitles…no irony that Tusk is doing the EU’s dirty work and tries to blackmail Britain into turning NI into an EU colony by default but opposes EU forced relocation of migrants to Poland…Brexit was in the main about immigration forced upon us by the EU.]

Perhaps we should adopt the ‘Norwegian Model’…not for Brexit but for immigration and supposed asylum seekers who are anything but…..from the Spectator:

Norway is hard on migrants – but tough love works

The country’s outspoken immigration minister, Sylvi Listhaug, on the best way to help genuine refugees.

When Angela Merkel invited refugees to Germany in 2015, tearing up the rules obliging migrants to seek asylum in the first country they arrive in, the consequences were pretty immediate. Over 160,000 went to Sweden, leading to well-publicised disruption. Next door, things were different. Norway took in just 30,000; this year it has accepted just 2,000 so far. To Sylvi Listhaug, the country’s young immigration minister, this might still be a bit too much.

‘We have a big challenge now to integrate those with permission to stay in Norway to make sure they respect Norwegian values,’ she says. ‘Freedom to speak, to write, to believe or not to believe in a god, how to raise your children.’ Also, she says, what not to do. For example: ‘It is not allowed to beat your children in Norway.’

It’s unusual for a European government minister to link immigration with child-beating, but the 39-year-old Ms Listhaug is accustomed to speaking plainly. The rest of Europe, she believes, is coming around to the Norwegian position.

While Sweden and others saw the migration of 2015 as a blip caused by conflict in Syria and Iraq, she sees it as part of an irreversible demographic trend. ‘Africa is going to gain almost 500 million more people by 2030,’ she says. ‘Much of the Middle East and Africa is fragile. People have difficult lives but can see via mobile phones that life in the West and in Europe is quite different. So I understand why they would like our life, our kind of standards. But it’s not sustainable to integrate so many.’

The case for limiting economic migration is clear. But about half of the registered asylum seekers in the EU last year were from countries that were struck by conflict. Can Norway justify taking so few? Ms Listhaug is a practising Christian (albeit sceptical of the ‘thoroughly socialist’ Church of Norway) and says her government’s immigration policy, when combined with its aid policy, is not just a moral response, but the most effective moral response.

‘For me it’s a moral issue as well. You can’t just help the ones you see. You have to think about the millions you don’t see and that have a very difficult life in the world.’

She’s referring to the refugee camps in Jordan, where both Norway and the UK send aid to help those displaced by war. Norway gave £23 million to its Jordanian mission last year, almost twice as much, per capita, as Britain. The cost of helping refugees at home is taken from its foreign aid budget, so as its influx subsides and costs fall, all savings are used to help refugees abroad. Some £370 million has been transferred so far, with more expected next year.

So to Ms Listhaug, it’s not a question of whether to help refugees, but how best to do so. We meet after she visited Brandon Lewis, her British counterpart, who gave her a striking statistic: ‘The immigration minister here in Britain said that for the price of helping 3,000 young people here, he could help 100,000 children in other parts of the world.’

She sees this as a modern way to help asylum seekers — and more practical than the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, which obliges signatories to accommodate anyone with a ‘well-founded fear of persecution’.

‘It was an agreement for its time,’ she says. ‘But when people travel through 20 countries to come to a safe haven, I think people can see that this is not right. You could have a safe haven in your neighbouring country, so why go so far?’

Western countries that define their virtue by the number of refugees they let in, she says, also face a moral question: ‘Why should we have a system that works for the people who have money [to pay for the journey] while the rest of the refugees and people in need don’t have the money to go?’

People traffickers, she says, thrive on governments that follow the old rules and accept those who turn up on their shores. ‘If you smuggle an unaccompanied minor from Afghanistan to Europe, they say it is between $3,000 and $20,000.’ Young girls, she says, are sometimes sold to old men to finance such a journey. ‘Also, children are killed, or raped, on their way. So we need to have this under control.’

 ‘A lot of countries in Europe are thinking more like us: like Denmark and Austria. Germany, as well… France has big problems right now with integration, as does Belgium. A lot of countries in Europe see that we need to have this under control.’

The Norwegian model, she says, is very different and very clear. “If you are an economic migrant, you are declined in Norway,” she says. “We send people back to Afghanistan if they are not in need of protection; we send them back to Somalia if they are not in need of protection.” Isn’t this a rather expensive process? “Yes, but it’s well worth it.” Police are also sent out to areas where illegal immigrants are suspected of living and working. “If we find them, we send them out. That has also decreased crime in Norway, that’s very good.”

I ask Listhaug if she is getting used to being called cruel and heartless. How does it make her feel? ‘I don’t give a damn,’ she says. She believes that she’s doing the right thing, turning away those who don’t need protection, to spend more money on people who do. You might call it the Norwegian model of handling asylum. It might just catch on.

https://twitter.com/Independent/status/932657308584300550

I’d read Guido’s tale of the Independent and various other media outlets spinning a gigantic lie about the government not thinking that animals are ‘sentient’ and can feel pain and suffering gaining a willing and gullible audience, including a large number of lobby groups and organisations, who hyped the story as much as possible.  So it was with interest I listened to the Today programme…first their ‘what the papers say,’ and you’d be hard pressed to know what the story was about, they mentioned ‘fake news’ but what was it about?  They then gave the impression that the Independent was the victim almost of whatever was going on…this approach was set in stone at 08:10 as Webb interviewed Gove [who I have to say not totally impressed with…too eager to please and not got the killer facts to slamdunk what is a very stupid story].  Webb told us this was a story whipped up by ‘social media’ which the MSM got dragged into…not true as far as I can see…the Independent were pretty forthright in their story….as was George Osborne’s Evening Standard [which has deleted one, in fact several seem to have gone awol, of their guilty tweets about this…if they deleted everything they misled readers on about Brexit that would leave a few cartoons and the sports pages].  Webb worked hard to twist the story so that the Independent was almost right and the Government wrong…Webb, rather than seeking truth, sought to prove the Independent story was right.  Trouble is it wasn’t.  Far from it and very easy to demonstrate….literally 10 minutes on Google gets you a very full picture…certainly one more informative and insightful than the BBC’s flagship current affairs programme brings us.  Then again the BBC’s own report is far from innocent on this…and it’s own follow up still tries to suggest the government is somehow guilty of not caring about animal suffering.

For a start the Independent had already retracted the story last night…though remarkably it finds little fault with its own reporting.

Here is their initial headline….pretty clear what their sensationalist message is and what it is attempting to do….

The Tories have voted that animals can’t feel pain as part of the EU bill, marking the beginning of our anti-science Brexit

At least Laura Kuenssberg has put some effort in…

Important 'Animals can't feel pain' vote debunking here #AnimalSentience @estwebber https://t.co/mFVpzQxE5M

— Laura Kuenssberg (@bbclaurak) November 22, 2017

So a Labour MP tweets Labour’s narrative on the budget and what is more surprising, perhaps, is that the BBC comes up with exactly the same narrative almost word for word.

I had the misfortune to catch the first 5 minutes of Emma Barnett’s show.  It was more than eough, she’s always good value for money….this blog could run on her nonsense alone or what she calls ‘original journalism and surprising news stories.’

It’s certainly new and unusual though I’d have to question the ‘journalism’ claim…just seemed like a simple matter of regurgitating Labour’s anti-Tory, anti-Brexit propaganda today as Barnett informed us that the Tories were spending more on Brexit than on the NHS….and…just think how many hospitals, nurses and operations we could have if that £3 billion had been spent on the NHS rather than Brexit as promised to us by the Leave campaign on their bus.

Trouble is I was pretty sure Hammond had mentioned the figure of £10 billion for the NHS, it certainly wasn’t only £2.8 billion as Barnett was telling us. [And interesting to read the comments about the NHS on this BBC/Labour press release]

Checking his speech and we get an entirely different story…

It is central to this government’s vision that everyone has access to our NHS, free at the point of need.

That is why we endorsed and funded the NHS’s Five Year Forward View in 2014.

And met its funding ask – providing an extra £10 billion in real terms per year by 2020.

But even with this additional funding, we acknowledge that the service remains under pressure and today we respond.

First, we will deliver an additional £10 billion package of capital investment over the course of this Parliament.

To support the Sustainability and Transformation plans which will make our NHS more resilient.

Investing for an NHS which is fit for the future.

But we also recognise that the NHS is under pressure right now.

I am therefore exceptionally, and outside the Spending Review process, making an additional commitment of resource funding of £2.8 billion to the NHS in England.

£350 million immediately to allow trusts to plan for this winter

And £1.6 billion in 2018-19, with the balance in 19-20, taking the extra resource into the NHS next year to £3.75 billion in total.

Meaning that it will receive a £7.5 billion increase to its resource budget over this year and next year.

So the government is on target to fund the NHS with an extra £10 bn per year by 2020, there will be an extra £10 billion on top of this…and ‘exceptionally, and outside the Spending Review process, making an additional commitment of resource funding of £2.8 billion’.

So the £2.8 bn is on top of large increases in NHS funding…it is extra to already promised funding.  The NHS will get £7.5 billion over 2 years, the £3 billion for Brexit was also over two years….so the NHS is getting at least double what Brexit gets.

It’s the same story with wages….the BBC is going into overdrive telling us a big lie…..that income has stalled and that we are being ‘squeezed’ more than ever.  They pump out a forecast from a think tank, the IFS, as if it were the voice of God and use it to continue peddling their narrative that ‘we’ve never had it so bad’ and it’s all #duetoBrexit.  They introduced their news bulletin with the claim that things were grim as we are set to lose two decades of earnings growth….according to the IFS… does real world experience of people bear that out?  Doubt it.  Amusingly that was followed by a Freudian slip as the announcer told us Hammond’s Budget day had  ‘passed off better than many hoped’.  Yeah…I’m sure they were all hoping he’d fall on his face in BBC Towers.

Trouble is they ignore, as always, a few salient facts…such as a massive, and endless, influx of EU workers who undercut wages, we have had incredibly low interest rates for a decade, inflation has been low and only rose to 3% as a peak….as predicted [and Hammond predicted it would fall back to 2% next year…’With inflation peaking at 3% in this quarter, before falling back towards target over the next year.  And today I reaffirm the remit for the independent Monetary Policy Committee, and its 2% CPI inflation target.’], then there’s the Living Wage and the Minimum Wage rises, and of course tax allowances have increased enormously and will increase again next year giving us more cash in our pockets……

Making work pay is core to the philosophy of this government.

That is why we introduced the National Living Wage in 2016.

From April, it will rise 4.4%, from £7.50 an hour to £7.83.

Handing full-time workers a further £600 pay increase.

And taking their total pay rise, since its introduction, to over £2000 a year.

We also accept the Low Pay Commission’s recommendations on National Minimum Wage rates.

Today, income inequality is at its lowest level in 30 years.

The top 1% are paying a larger share of income tax than at any time under the last Labour government.

The poorest 10% have seen their real incomes grow faster since 2010 than the richest 10%.

And the proportion of full-time jobs that are low paid is at its lowest for 20 years.

When we came into office the personal allowance stood at £6,475.

From April, I will increase the personal allowance to £11,850.

The typical basic rate tax payer will be £1,075 a year better off compared to 2010.

And a full-time worker on the National Living Wage will take home more than £3,800 extra.

The BBC happily ignores all that as it blasts out sensationalist and alarmist headlines and context free brief news bulletins spreading gloom and doom as fast as it can and as far as it can.

The BBC’s reporting seems entirely out of touch with the real world…some might think deliberately so….here we have this from Kamal Ahmed who provided us with such insightful and intelligent briefings during the Brexit referendum…..the BBC, always peddling Corbyn’s Marxist line about capitalism….I seem to remember the BBC telling us it was dead 10 years ago when ‘Occupy’ was all the rage and on every journalist’s[BBC’s] lips as the coming future…

Analysis: Kamal Ahmed, BBC Economics Editor

What is the point of capitalism?

That might seem like a pretty big question, but one answer could be “to provide people the opportunity through work to become richer”.

What, though, if the economy fails in that endeavour?

If the system leaves you – despite all your efforts – worse off in December than you were the previous January?

Or worse off now than you were a decade ago?

It was Lord Adair Turner, the former head of the Low Pay Commission, who put it succinctly.

“The UK over the last 10 years has created a lot of jobs, but today real wages are below where they were in 2007,” he told me earlier this year.

“That is not the capitalist system delivering its promise that over a decade or so it will raise all boats, and it is a very fundamental issue.”

About time for another open thread…definitely no shortage of BBC bias #duetoBrexit….list it all here….

A seat at the top table and those other silly meaningless metaphors about losing “global influence”. What gibberish.

Now WE, yes you and I, have lost OUR seat at the International Court of Justice. Gosh how will I recover from this? They deal with such important matters as Alleged Violations of Sovereign Rights and Maritime Spaces in the Caribbean Sea (Nicaragua v. Colombia).

“This is a failure of UK diplomacy“, says the BBC, and “a retreat from the international stage”. That’s it I’m getting in my nuclear bunker and I suggest you do the same, because Laos or Djibouti could invade any second and wipe us all out now that we are so tiny and frail. Little Britain all alone in the world. We’ll probably sink into the Atlantic some time soon if Laos doesn’t get us.

What these people are suggesting is that if we had a UK representative in the ICJ, they could simply ignore any kind of objectivity and legality in order to ‘influence’ things and make the rulings turn out in our favour – subverting international bodies to benefit the UK. Now that may be how many of these organisations work, and it’s certainly how the EU works, but to propose such a course of action says a lot about the neo-imperialistic approach some people support.