Author Archives: Alan

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

Funny old thing…it looks like the BBC’s Kamal Ahmed is a one man hit squad for the Remain camp out to neutralise any Leave campaign ‘good news’.

We’ve already noted his immediate rebuttal to Steve Hilton’s claim that all economic forecasts about Brexit are so much bunk and now as James Dyson tells us that it is ‘cobblers’ that the EU won’t trade with us Kamal again slips in a spoiler.  Just a week or so ago he was painting a gloomy picture of the economy on Brexit…

All the different effects are actually derived from one significant starting point – that the economy would be smaller if the UK left the EU relative to where it would be if “remain” won on June 23.

On this issue, with varying degrees of pessimism, there is widespread – though not total – agreement among economic institutions from the International Monetary Fund to the Bank of England.

On trade, most economists agree that moving out of the single market will negatively effect Britain’s economic relationship with what is left of the EU.

It is also argued that British exporters will find it difficult to replace that trade by increasing economic links with countries such as America and China, particularly in the first few years.

Now, with the famous and credible billionaire businessman Dyson rubbishing claims that trade will stop Kamal changes his tune…Brexit – and stay in the single market? Here’s how.  However, this being the pro-EU BBC, it’s not that simple as a seemingly pro-Brexit piece still pushes the ‘Brexit is a huge risk’ scenario the solution to which is still in doubt…

Today, Wolfgang Schaeuble, the German finance minister, appeared to say as much – a vote for Brexit is also a vote for leaving the single market, and all its advantages.  “If the majority in Britain opts for Brexit, that would be a decision against the single market,” Mr Schaeuble told Der Spiegel.

“In is in. Out is out. One has to respect the sovereignty of the British people.”

For some business leaders sympathetic to Brexit – and close to the Prime Minister – this is a problem.  They agree that leaving the single market could result in significant economic headwinds.  But, they tell me, there is a solution – the UK remaining in the single market but without the need for full free movement as presently constituted.

Kamal ends with this after having set the scene that Brexit will be an economic disaster for Europe…

The economic needs of businesses in the rest of the EU may force the hand of political leaders.

Why has the BBC’s economic editor only just realised the truth that has been obvious for a long time…as indeed we set out before in April…..

Would the EU lock the UK, the 5th largest economy in the world and an important trade partner with the EU, out of its markets?  Hardly seems likely when it is committed to open markets and free trade……import tariffs very low or zero…..

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

• The average applied tariff for goods imported into the EU is very low. More than 70% of imports enter the EU at zero or reduced tariffs.

• The EU’s services markets are highly open and we have arguably the most open investment regime in the world.

• The EU has not reacted to the crisis by closing markets. However some the EU’s trading partners have not been so restrained as the EU has highlighted in the Trade and Investment Barriers Report and the report on protectionism.

• In fact the EU has retained its capacity to conclude and implement trade agreements. The recent Free Trade Agreements with South Korea and with Singapore are examples of this and the EU has an ambitious agenda of trade agreements in the pipeline.

   

And here was our very own PM back in 2012 urging the EU to finalise a trade deal with Canada and all without free movement of people…

Cameron urges EU to strike free trade deal with Canada.

27  Jan 2012 Toronto Star, page A4

OTTAWA— British Prime Minister David Cameron is urging his fellow European leaders to move quickly to sign a free-trade deal with Canada.

He said opening up export markets for the European Union’s 27 member countries is a key part of an urgently needed effort to strengthen the continent’s economies.

“Let’s get EU free trade agreements with India, Canada and Singapore finalized by the end of the year,” he said in a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

If these trade liberalization deals were in place, it could generate an additional $118 billion in economic activity in EU countries, Cameron said.

And now?  Cameron tells us such deals are impossible.

Funny how long it takes Kamal to come anywhere near close to reporting that the EU is desperate to do free trade deals with all and sundry as a matter of course.  Remain must love him…Attaboy Kamal.  Good lad.  Keep up the good work and keep Leave down.

From BBC Watch:

In conclusion, with the exception of a vague and tardy mention of mortar and shooting attacks on the Gaza Strip border, the BBC News website did not report any of the terror attacks which took place during May. The corporation’s record of English language reporting of the missile attacks launched from the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the year remains at 0% and its record of reporting all terror attacks in the same period stands at 4.07%.

Have all those in the Remain camp converted to Islam?  Are they budding Muslims?  Do they kneel in submission and pray towards Mecca?  You might have thought so from the reverence that the BBC treats them with…nary a word agin them…Andrew Neil aside.  It has become apparent that a Remainer’s word is Gospel, or is that Koranic?, and is now taken as The Truth by default with the Leave campaign forced to counter it in the face of hostile BBC questions.

After Cameron’s mauling last week, a mauling unless you get the news from the BBC who saw it as a victory for the PM, we heard on 5 Live from the BBC presenter that the economic benefits of immigration were very positive, according to one academic study, and that ‘we should be hearing more of that in this campaign’…as she lectured the Leave spokesperson and claimed by implication that Leave were lying about the effects of immigration.

The BBC headlines after the Cameron bashfest were all about how Cameron would control immigration (LOL), never mind that the BBC has been previously heavily criticising him for his obvious and massive failure to do just that.  In the news bulletins we had clips of Cameron and Miliband talking about immigration at length…and Leave?  They got a 2 second mention…‘Leave disagrees with all that’…or something along those lines…blink and you’d miss it.

Last Saturday Today (08:20) brought on Kinnock, to speak for the Stay camp, who got such a free ride, such an easy ride it was embarrassing…compare that to how Whittingdale, Leave, (08:55) was treated…continually interrupted and abused in an aggressive manner…..Leave were accused of ‘masquerading as leftwingers’ in their concern for workers (never mind that the Church of England has just admitted it was wrong about Thatcher in the 80’s and that her policies were good for workers…not see the BBC make a song and a dance about that!) and that the things that Leave say they might do, such as spend more on the NHS, will never happen…ie they are lies suggests, speculates wildly, Nick Robinson.  No bias there then.

Throughout this week whenever I’ve tuned in, and it must just be a coincidence, the BBC has been plugging the Remain campaign’s ‘issues’…whether its the EU health card for travellers (you probably automatically pay insurance anyway as part of your holiday cost and there is no good reason to cancel the EU arrangement on Brexit…it is unconnected to the ‘EU’ as such).  Then we had warnings about the ‘EU’s law enforcement agency’…otherwise known, when not in EU referendum mode and bigging up the EU, as Europol…curious how the BBC decides to use that turn of phrase recently to describe Europol….and so many times.

This morning I heard the usual format in operation on ‘Wake up to money’ (34 mins) as the Remain spokesman was given a freeride to state his case, this was taken as the baseline correct version of how things are and it was up to the Leave person to counter that ‘truth’ with the BBC presenter butting in to argue against him…unlike the Remainer who was not interrupted or questioned in any way he might find inconvenient or displeasing.

We also heard that the EU was responsible for creating the success of the City…hmmm…again wasn’t that Thatcher and the ‘Big Bang’?  Curious how the BBC flip-flops on history when it suits….Thatcher has always been the bête noir of the BBC for creating the ‘capitalist monster’ that is the City (Gordon Brown’s subsequent deregulation free for all ‘golden age’ that helped create the crash is always ignored by the BBC)…and now…not so…our jobs and prosperity depend upon the City and the EU is the cause of all that prosperity from the wonderful City.

When Wollaston jumped ship the BBC were constantly stating that Leave were claiming that the whole £350 million would be spent on the NHS and that they didn’t ever qualify their claim with acknowledgements about the rebate and EU spending…the BBC always, deliberately, misses the point on that…that it is us in the UK that should decide how to spend that money not bureaucrats in Brussels who also take their own huge cut.

Wollaston was clearly a Remain stooge…whether from the start or just persuaded to come over and time that betrayal to suit Remain you decide…but she had a script ready from No10 when she announced it…..it might have been Cameron speaking as she talked of being ‘safer in Europe‘, tick, that we get more back on research spending than we give (curiously a comment made by Cameron on PMQs just the day before)  tick, that Brexit would mean world war…tick.  I’m sure her 81 year old father, whom she claims sees the very real threat of  ‘conflict in Europe’, would be ashamed of the daughter he spawned who exploits his name and betrays the democracy he served so long in the Forces to defend.

Wollaston was given, not unexpectedly, a very easy time and was barely challenged at all on her betrayal made all the more remarkable by the number of ‘concerns’ she suddenly has about Brexit and yet previously was ardently for …how can that be credible?  The BBC didn’t delve too deep.  I thought Montague was getting ready to tackle Wollaston and suggest she was a Remain plant…and indeed she suggested Wollaston was always a Remainer…oh hang on…she continues……‘But you didn’t think through the consequences early enough’….ah…silly girl….Remain is the default, obvious choice and Brexit has inevitable dangerous consequences…what were you thinking?  The interview is here (08:37)  No bias there then.

The BBC’s ‘Reality Checks’ and analysis of claims made by the two camps are laughable….Remain are hardly challenged at all on their numerous claims whilst Leave are forensically gone over.  The BBC’s Kamal Ahmed is a perfect example as he examines, LOL, Remain’s economic claims.

When Steve Hilton suggested we should Brexit and that the EU made the UK ‘ungovernable’ and that the economic claims were so much guess work…’the bottom line on the economic argument is that no one really knows. It’s clearly ridiculous to claim that it’s settled in either direction; there are risks whatever we do.  The real choice is not economic security or economic risk, but what kind of government will equip us best to cope with a risky, fast-changing world?’

Ahmed immediately produced a counter to Hilton’s piece claiming that the Treasury’s analysis was credible….

Political hubris to one side, the Treasury analysis can be set apart from the “he said, she said” tenor of much of the EU referendum debate. It is based on a well-understood and tested economic model.

It might be wrong, or the outcomes might be substantially different once real events take hold – as is true of all forecasts – but it is very much worth the paper it is written on.

The Treasury’s analysis is pure guess work and projected impossibly way into the future…but not for the BBC’s Kamal who just adores it…never mind the Treasury is Osborne’s domain and the Bank of England’s governor is his placeman.

Peter Allen yesterday was sure the NHS would collapse on a Brexit as the economy will tank.  When it was suggested that the EU economy wasn’t working Allen claimed that it was the same for the whole world…curious how when Cameron claims it is the worries about Brexit that create uncertainty and a falling pound etc the BBC didn’t challenge that with the obvious point that America is also in exactly the same boat as us and they don’t have a referendum in the offing.  The EU economy, Germany aside, is tanking….and it is to do with the single currency and the restrictions that places on countries limiting their possible actions to deal with problems.

Later we heard that the Leave crowd are more passionate in debates…why? Because they don’t care about the consequences of Brexit says Allen…it is all about emotion for them…whereas, Allen suggests, the Remainers are all pragmatic and can see the real problems that will be caused by Brexit.  No bias there then.

Just a few examples of many that illustrate the slanted, pro-Remain ‘reporting’ from the BBC.

Must be nice to have not only the full resources of the government, and its friends in high places, on hand to support your campaign but also the massively resourced, influential and unprincipled BBC backing you as well.

Interesting to hear Laura Kuenssberg’s take on events as she reported on how the Remain campaign have targeted Boris as they see him as not only leader of the Leave campaign but also as next Tory leader….Kuenssberg says this claim, that Boris wants to be leader of the Tory Party, is out in the open after having been merely ‘vicious rumours’ before.  Just ‘vicious rumours’?  Somewhat surprised to hear that as the BBC’s Kuenssberg has been reporting it as ‘fact’ for the last few weeks and implying that Boris is a fraud with no real interest in Leaving the EU and is only using the campaign as a lever to take the Tory leadership.

Just the BBC doing its usual bit to undermine the Leave campaign and help Remain.

The News Quiz…not really much to do with news it seems, more a front for the Labour Party, EU collaborators and taking the mick out of the usual suspects that the BBC luvvies don’t like or approve of.

Jeremy Corbyn has at least one fan, Jeremy Hardy, who can find nothing critical to say about him or Labour, ever….every appearance is just a blatant Labour party political broadcast.

The Leave campaign got roundly panned and generally called racists for wanting to control immigration and who apparently are completely unaware of the amusing irony that as they whinge about the EU they are  drinking French wine and German beer served to them by a Polish waiter.

The real irony is that the no borders, pro-mass immigration, anti-Britain, pro-EU superstate (as is ironically all his mates in the Scottish National Party)….. Frankie Boyle references ‘French’ wine, ‘German’ beer and a ‘Polish’ waiter…..all such nomenclature and identification with a state must surely be prohibited in the new ‘Greater Europe’ where nation states no longer exist and are now mere regions of the EU empire.  So much for diversity and multiculturalism in the new Deutschland Über Alles ruled EU.  No doubt Boyle has an EU tartan Kilt on order for the 24th.

EU wine, EU beer and EU waiters anyone?

Time for a new one of these….The BBC has given up all pretence of being impartial as it ‘reports’ on the EU referendum which gives us plenty to talk about….the floor is yours….

Amazing…Cameron gets roasted on Sky but you’d never know it from the BBC’s ‘analysis’ which reads more like a Remain campaign briefing….the BBC’s chosen headline probably designed to give us confidence in Cameron’s pledge to reduce immigration (LOL)...We can control migration inside EU, says PM

The Telegraph headline gives a much more honest assessment of what went on…

EU referendum debate: Angry Sky News audience rounds on ‘waffling’ David Cameron as he is accused of ‘scaremongering’ over Brexit fears

Even the Guardian admitted the tone of the debate was hostile and that Cameron was ‘on the run’…

Hugh Muir: ‘He was the fugitive from the outset’

It should never have been like this. The prime minister aimed to win the arguments and then rout the Europhobes to make his party electable for the future. Instead, he emerged as a man on the run. David Cameron, the fugitive.

Janet Daley in the Telegraph nailed it by pointing out who it is driving the pro-EU Remain campaign…Big Business…remember them?  The big bogey men of the Left and the BBC….now apparently we must dance to their tune…both the BBC and even the Marxists like Corbyn seem to have buried their ideological differences with Big Business as they team up with the enemy to keep us in the EU.  Big Business doesn’t care a hoot about people, just the bottom line….which is why they import millions of cheap workers from Europe instead of training and employing Brits on decent wages…The BBC always claimed there was a productivity puzzle, a low wages puzzle and a puzzle as to why employment kept going up in recession…the answer is über cheap workers flooding the market meaning BIG Business didn’t have to invest in new technology and techniques to increase productivity and wages…they just employed more people on lower wages.

Suddenly the BBC, and Labour, have lost interest in those questions which dominated the BBC’s coverage for years….and yet it is still going as Big Business and the EU stitch up the national public services according to this report…

EU trade deals with Canada and the US could endanger citizens’ rights to basic services like water and health, as negotiators are doing the work of some of the EU’s most powerful corporate lobby groups in pushing an aggressive market opening agenda in the public sector.

A new report released today by an international group of NGOs and trade unions (“Public services under attack“) sheds some light on the secretive collusion between big business and trade negotiators in the making of the EU’s international trade deals. It shows the aggressive agenda of services corporations with regards to TTIP and CETA, pushing for far-reaching market opening in areas such as health, cultural and postal services, and water, which would allow them to enter and dominate the markets.

 

Janet Daley reminds the BBC of what is going on…….

Analysis: David Cameron made it clear whose side he is really on…  

Janet Daley

“Cameron won’t have won over any Tory – or Labour – Brexit voters with this performance. He had only one theme and he repeated it over and over again: the EU is Very Big. It is too big for us to risk leaving it. And all the Big Organisations (and Big Vested Interests) agree with that. There you have it. Any problems created by our membership would get worse, he claimed, if we left. That is because the economy would be weaker outside of the Big Single Market.

If an IRA bomb had killed the 96 at Hillsborough do you think the BBC would have so enthusiastically campaigned for an enquiry?

We’ve looked before at the BBC’s decidedly lacklustre approach to the thought that there should be more inquiries into the Birmingham bombing, it’s almost as if they didn’t want any IRA killers to be caught and prosecuted.

It seems that wasn’t a one off interview and that this tone of indifference to IRA murder might be ‘institutional’ as Kathy Gyngell reports…

The BBC sank to a new low yesterday (Weds) morning. Its Today Programme coverage of the Birmingham pub bombings inquest resumption left me as angry as I can remember feeling.

We were told that, after more than 40 years, the survivors and families of the victims of the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings were to find out if their request for the resumption of the inquest into the deaths of 21 people would be successful – without which the perpetrators of this shocking terror attack could never be brought to book.

So was the usually victim-charged BBC celebrating this ‘win’ for justice?

No.  The mood in the studio was unenthusiastic. In fact they set out to put a damper on it. They invited Chris Mullins, a former MP and the ‘investigative journalist’ instrumental in freeing the six men wrongly convicted of the Birmingham pub bombings, to comment. And none too sympathetic was he.

Humphrys had already set the scene. The ‘real’ shocking miscarriage of justice had been to the freed Birmingham Six.

Insensitive did not even begin to describe it.

IRA killers, Islamist killers, Palestinian murderers, terrorists of all creeds and colours welcomed and given a platform to help them explain away their murders by the BBC.

As said many times, it is the BBC that is one of the biggest dangers to our society as it consistently supports those who use bombs, bullets and street thuggery to thwart the democratic process.

The BBC cheerleads for terrorists and murder.

The BBC is in full-on Remain life support mode as the polls indicate Leave is ahead despite all the OTT alarmist scaremongering by the Eton toffs and friends, or perhaps because of it.

We’ve already looked at the BBC’s false claims that the economy is in freefall because of EU referendum uncertainty and today we bring you yet another example…..Manufacturing has picked up and not fallen as Remain predicts but apparently even if the economy has an upward trend this is still bad news according to the BBC…

UK manufacturing sector scrapes back to growth in May

UK manufacturing activity rose slightly in May, raising concerns over the economy’s strength in the run-up to the 23 June European Union referendum.

I’m sorry, what?  Manufacturing activity rose and that is a cause for concern…due to the referendum?

Hang on, the BBC continues…

“The headline PMI index recovered from its three-year low in April, ticking up from an upwardly revised 49.4 to 50.1 in May, above the consensus expectation of 49.6,” she said.

Ms Miller said this was still far below the average since the economic recovery picked up at the start of 2013. However, she thought the situation would “improve for UK manufacturers later this year”.

Overall new orders rose in May.

So manufacturing rose above expectations and there were new orders in May….what’s the problem?

Seems like the BBC is making it up as it goes along….just feeding us Remain campaign propaganda.  The US economy is showing exactly the same trends as ours and they are not having an EU referendum, manufacturing in the UK rose in May when it should have been plummeting fast if Remain are to be believed and the BBC paints a gloomy picture blaming it all on the referendum.

The BBC is a shameless propagandist for Remain and is treating its audience with contempt…contempt for their intelligence and contempt for their views and right to have impartial information…but what’s new?

The Remain campaign have been countering Leave’s effective immigration blast with claims that this shows Leave have lost the argument on the economy.  Hold on….that wasn’t their argument anyway….immigration, red-tape, sovereignty and freedom from an unelected EU government are Leave’s main platforms.

This shows that Remain know they can’t win the argument on immigration…but did they win the ‘argument’ on the economy anyway?  Firstly this was their own ‘argument’, it was the ground they chose to fight on and the ground that the BBC ceded to them as it concentrated on reporting on economic issues and the EU and doing its best to avoid immigration, sovereignty and most important of all, what happens if we stay in the EU?  Will the EU steamroller be ratcheted up and ever-closer union be closer than ever and the UK dragged in with UK politicians collaborating to willingly bring the UK into the EU super-state?

Firstly of course the polls are pretty much neck and neck, the latest from ICM putting Leave ahead…in fact, you may not have noticed, but Leave has been ahead in many polls.  What is interesting is that the polls that put Remain ahead are mostly phone polls done by IPSOS Mori…most other polls which put Leave ahead or on a par, are online….where you might think a more considered answer might have been given and the questions mulled over longer than you would give a phone call….the tone of the questions on which would depend upon the pollster at the other end.

I haven’t heard the BBC giving much airtime to the fact the Leave seems to be doing far better than they are credited to be doing…as said, ahead or drawing in most polls.

So did Remain ‘win the economic argument’?  Certainly not with me…I suspect much will stay the same long term,  short term there may be a bit of a downturn perhaps but with things picking up and improving once free of the EU strait-jacket.

Tory MP Rishi Sunak lays out a credible case for Leave.

What else of significance?  Whilst pumping out anti-Brexit warnings from the OECD and the Dutch PM the BBC seems to have missed this significant revelation for some reason…..

Two thirds of people think Brexit would not leave them any poorer

Two-thirds of Britons believe that they would not be worse off in the event of a Brexit vote, in a blow to the assembled forces of “Project Fear”.

The findings came despite warnings issued by the Treasury, the Bank of England, the International Monetary Fund, and the OECD, all of which have cautioned on the economic repercussions of a Brexit vote to some degree, and suggest that most voters have been left unconvinced.

Some 58pc of the public believe that their living standards would stay the same in the five years after a UK withdrawal from the EU, according to an Ipsos Mori survey of more than 4,000 Britons. A further 11pc expect that their financial well being would actually improve if voters decided to leave the political bloc behind on June 23.

How can the BBC have missed that?  Kind of a bombshell for the Remain campaign…in fact Andrew Neil has retweeted the article…so maybe at least one at the BBC will be willing to tell the truth…

What else has the BBC failed to report?

Tusk blames ‘utopian’ EU elites for Eurosceptic revolt and Brexit crisis 

European Council president Donald Tusk has warned EU leaders in the bluntest terms that their “utopian” illusions are tearing Europe apart, and that any attempt to seize on Brexit to force through yet more integration would be a grave mistake.

In a passionate plea to Europe’s top conservatives, he accused the EU elites of living in a fool’s paradise and provoking the eurosceptic revolt now erupting in a string of countries.

“It is us who today are responsible,” he said, speaking at a conclave of Christian-Democrat and centre-right leaders in Luxembourg. “Obsessed with the idea of instant and total integration, we failed to notice that ordinary people, the citizens of Europe, do not share our Euro-enthusiasm.” 

Mr Tusk, alert to the patriotic revival in his native Poland, lambasted the EU establishment for pushing “a utopia of Europe without nation states” that goes against the grain of European history and has produced a deep cultural backlash that cannot be dismissed as illegitimate far-right populism.