Day 5531: Brexit is for the Faeries

Monday:




Once Upon A Time…

"I assume also that no great power would shrink from its responsibilities ... if that country from a perverse interpretation of its insular geographical position, turns an indifferent ear to the feelings and fortunes of continental Europe, such a course would, I believe, only end in it becoming an object of general plunder.

"So long as the power and advice of England are felt in the Councils of Europe, peace I believe will be maintained, and maintained for a long period."

Margaret Thatcher, quoting Disraeli, last time we had a referendum on Britain in Europe.

Britain + Europe

The Brexit Brigade LURVE their FAERY Stories.

They are already pushing three MYTHS about what this referendum is about.

MYTH #1: "Who runs Britain"

(And I am already sick to the top of my trunk of Conservatory MPs who voted AGAINST fairer votes and voted AGAINST reforming the unelected House of Lords sitting pretty in their SAFE SEATS and having the GALL to tell us that the problem with Europe is "we cannot kick them out"!)

MYTH #2: "We would have freedom to trade"

(The leave campaign say that they want Britain to be free to make trade treaties with whoever we like… and they want to begin by pulling out of the largest free-trade area on the planet. Does this make ANY sense WHATSOEVER?)

MYTH #3: "Remain are SCAREMONGERING (nudge nudge, fear the immigrants)"

(Mr Farrago cannot open his mouth without scaremongering about Turkey, or about "500 million people with the right to come to live in Britain" – clue: 70 million of them are ALREADY HERE: they're called "the British"; Michael Gove – Mr Balloon's Smeagol – raises the spectre of razor wire across Europe as though that's a product of working together and not a symptom of the very nationalism with which he's flirting; and how many times do we hear the pitiful excuse from a country that is 92% undeveloped country "we're too crowded, we can't take any more"? Scare, scare and more scare.)

Pied Parper

So since they are all so KEEN on FABLES and PARABLES, let me tell you a story too. Spoilers: it has a HAPPY ENDING.

Long ago, but not that long, there was a WAR and EVERYONE LOST. And in the ruins that remained, friends and enemies alike came together and decided to try something, a very – I might say – British idea of making it easier to trade together.

Because, quite a lot of the time, people who trade with each other don't fight with each other. Trade brings prosperity to both sides and with prosperity comes peace. Business is good for peace and peace is good for business.

I say that's a very British idea because Free Trade was sort of at the heart of the dispute between the Liberals and the Conservatories i.e. between Mr Gladstone and Disraeli over the Corn Laws; and was sort of at the heart of the conflict between the British Empire and Napoleon (grossly to oversimplify four-hundred years of history).

And because protectionism and nationalism and the MYTH of "destiny" had done so EXTREMELY very badly in the years of the Great Depression that led to the War.

So the idea was actually a very simple one. It started with COAL and STEEL and the idea was that customers for coal and for steel should be able to pay the same price for the same stuff wherever they were.

That meant getting rid of trade barriers between countries.

But also, making sure that people on both sides played by the same rules, rules like how long it was safe for people to work so you couldn't undercut your competitors by paying slave wages or working dangerously long hours; or rules saying what the measurements should be measured in, so you couldn't short change the customer by having a slightly shorter "inch" or a slightly lighter "pound".

There have been "weights and measures" rules since the time of Bad King John. In fact, one of the reasons he got CALLED "Bad" King John by the barons is that the barons didn't like him going about the place stopping the business of putting a thumb on the weighing scales and shaving the gold off the coins.

So Europe's rules are about FAIRNESS to CUSTOMERS.

Now, it's a bureaucracy and bureaucracies grow rules like topsey, and not all of them always make sense, even more so when you take them out of context.

And sometimes – quite a LOT of times in fact – a "rule" from Europe is more of a GUIDELINE in Brussels but becomes gold-plated, copper-bottomed, red-taped LEGISLATION as it passes through the British Civil Service and the Houses of Parliament, but they still blame all the finicketty details because "Europe".

And sometimes people just MAKE THINGS UP (like the infamous MYTH of the STRAIGHT BANANA – but there ARE rules to protect banana buyers from ROTTEN bananas, but that sounds too much like GOOD news).

We PERPLEX our friends in Europe with our attitude to the rules. We make them EXTRA HARD, and then COMPLAIN about them. But STICK to them like glue. We need to RELAX, UNCLENCH a bit. Be a bit more, well, EUROPEAN.

Missing Out

Let us take an example: the Tampon Tax. It is said that we cannot remove the VAT from ladies' tampons because "Europe".

Well, the short answer is of course we can. No other country would be so RIGID.

Things get redesignated all the time. If Marks & Spencer can get a teacake redesignated as a cake, it is not beyond the wit of a Minister of the Crown to redesignate a tampon as an essential. And obviously we should do so.

But more broadly, it comes back to that business of FAIRNESS for the CUSTOMER. You want your customers to be able to compare prices wherever they go in Europe. So you want (roughly) the price of things that are basically the same to BE basically the same. So if there's a sales tax that is part of the price, you want that to be basically the same too.

Now good old Blighty didn't HAVE a general sales tax when we joined the (then) EEC (although there was a purchase tax on certain "luxury" goods). So a part of our negotiated conditions for entry was that we would introduce the broad-based Value Added Tax or VAT.

BUT, we negotiated a GOOD deal – VAT rates across Europe tend towards the 20%-25% rate, and Britain was allowed not only a LOWER rate (10% when we started, but of course it's gotten up to 20% now) but also some substantial exemptions, in particular for FOOD. Other countries have LOWER rates of sales tax on food, but no other European country has ZERO tax on food.

The Quid Pro Quo for this deal was that we would only ever move our VAT rates TOWARDS the European average. So the VAT rate only goes UP and not down (except in emergencies like when the economy went through the floor at the end of the last Labour government's time).

So we could not GENERALLY lower the VAT rate, or create broad new exemptions, but ONLY because we AGREED (and signed a TREATY to say so) that it was FAIRER to CUSTOMERS if the sales tax rates across all of Europe generally converged to the same level, so that everyone knew they were getting the same deal.

Gove takes the VAT rule out of context to make out it's some matter of HIGH PRINCIPLE that we have lost POWER over our taxes. When in truth we made a CHOICE that more fairness to customers was worth a bit less power over taxes. In other words we USED that tax power, rather than HOARDED and WASTED it, the way Smeagol horded and wasted the precious ring.

Let's take another example: Google's Tax Bill. Everyone seems to think that Google's tax bill is not terribly fair. But the REASON that they are able to shuffle their taxes around – do the so-called "Double Irish" – is because the Republic of Ireland chooses (and is able) to set it's Corporation Tax rate at 3%, so large companies are tempted to relocate their European offices and (theoretically) the profits they make to Dublin.

That unfairness is a consequence of NOT setting an agreement among the members of Europe that we will keep Corporation Taxes (broadly) in line. That is the sort of UNFAIRNESS that Brexit will ENCOURAGE. It is the "race to the fluffy bottom". And the only winners are the BIG COMPANIES, not individuals, not small or even middle-sized companies, but only the giants that can easily move countries. And of course the sorts of people who end up on the BOARDS of those companies. (Not looking at ex-ministers. No wait, that's EXACTLY who we should be looking at.)

Now we COULD pull out of Europe and try to compete with Ireland on Corporation Tax… so long as you don't mind cutting a further THIRTY-THREE BILLION out of the budget, pretty much the ENTIRE spend on EDUCATION, say, or two-thirds of the DEFENCE BUDGET. The sort of cuts that would make even Master Gideon wince. A little.

Or we could stay IN Europe and work together to make corporates like Google pay their taxes more fairly, and get Ireland to play nice too.


Is Europe UNDEMOCRATIC? Yes, but less so than BRITAIN – the Commission are appointed by elected governments (unlike the British secret Civil Service); the Council of Ministers are the representatives of those elected governments (unlike the British Cabinet, who are mostly old Etonian chums of the Prime Monster); the Parliament of Europe is elected by a proportional system (unlike the British Parliament at Westminster where the Conservatories have an illegitimate majority of 12 with 37% of the vote and Mr Farrago has no representation at all – given that his one MP cannot hardly bear to even talk to him, let alone be in the same leave campaign.)

Could Europe be MORE democratic? Yes, we could have more powers for the Parliament to approve commissioners and initiate legislation but only if the Kippers and Conservatories stop BLOCKING it. But equally, our MEDIA could stop being so PAROCHIAL and give the European Parliament the SAME coverage as the Westminster one – that's the KEY way to make people feel more informed and involved. Mr Farrago only gets away with NOT DOING HIS DAY JOB because no one sees that he's NEVER THERE!

We need to be IN to fight for MORE democracy. OUT just leaves us at the mercy of an UNDEMOCRATIC Westminster controlled by the Conservatories and the SPECIAL INTERESTS that back them.

Who are the unelected "elite"? The council and parliament of all of Europe or the Conservatory party with a tiny majority trying to shore up a system that gives them, a minority, absolute power, while they are using (abusing) that power to cut off the Opposition and the charities and the Lords who try to stand up to them?

So who rules Britain? The people who vote? Or the rigged system that gives all power to a Westminster controlled by a Conservatory elite and their secret big-money backers?


GREAT FLUFFY GRIEF there are four months of this to go!

Here's the HAPPY ENDING: on June 23rd we CAN vote to stay part of something Greater than just Little England; we CAN break the hold of the Conservatory elite. This DOESN'T just have to be about Boris's career plan; it can be about hope and a better future.

Fairytale Ending

Good luck!

Day 5007: Goddammit, We're BRITISH!

Tuesday:


OK, nobody needs a fluffy elephant wading into the debate that Scotland is having over her future. Where do fluffy elephants even come from, anyway? I'm as British as a Tikka Masala! I don't feel English. English is small. British is about being part of something bigger!

But this referendum looks like ending in a dead heat and that's going to leave a lot of people unhappy. 50% plus 1 vote for staying is not going to settle the question for a generation; but equally it's no mandate for a brave new nation to cast itself upon fortune's ocean.

The campaign that started out so well appears, at least from a safe distance, to have degenerated into a lot of anger and name-calling and egg-throwing.

I suppose I should not be surprised that the arguments about dividing the country have proved divisive.

I want to see a world where there are fewer borders between people, not more. That's why I'm in favour of the European Union as well as the British one. The more we share, the lighter our burdens – only working together will help solve problems like climate change and energy shortages, or protect workers' rights or defend us from the threat of violent extremism.

And I am quite sure that Scotland can be, as "Yes" keep telling us, a perfectly successful small country.

But why be adequately successful as small country when you can be outstandingly successful as a BIG one?

People want the positive case for the United Kingdom, but Better Together did start with a positive case, saying: "look at all the benefits of being in Great Britain: a stable currency; membership of the EU; and NATO; jobs, trade and travel; sport; the BBC; the Queen!"

And Mr Salmon replied: "Oh but we will keep all of those things."

"No you won't."

"Now you're just being negative!"

"But here's why we can't keep all those things."

"Now you're bullying and scaremongering!"

Faced with that sort of thing, it's difficult to see how the "No" campaign could go any other way.

Meanwhile, the "Yes" campaign has been one of "nothing will change and everything will be better!"

If nothing is going to change, why do you want independence?

Obviously, it's the very BEST possible chance for the Scots Nats, when the Tories have ruined their reputation by their government in the Eighties destroying industry and jobs, and Labour have ruined their reputation by their government in the Noughties destroying the economy and Iraq, and we Lib Dems have ruined our reputation by the government in Coalition because… the Tories.

And it's so EASY for an independence movement to play the "let's walk away from all the troubles" card, rather than the harder – but right – thing to do of all mucking in together, sharing the pain to make it less. It's the nasty side of nationalism, that it's all about putting the blame – and the pain – on someone else. It's funny how "we only want our fair share" always means "more for us" and never for the other feller. Telling people that they are being shafted by the wicked rich "other" is an old, old lie. It's been "the Jews". Or "the Chinese". Or "the Poles". Or "the Asylum Seekers". Or "the Europeans". Today it's "the English".

It isn't the fault of the Englanders – or even of our pie-faced loon of a Prime Monster – that people in Scotland are having a hard time. By and large, the English are having a hard time too. As are the Welsh, and the Irish and gee look, everyone everywhere in Europe and beyond.

Only together was Europe able to save Greece. Only together were the British able to save those banks with "of Scotland" in their names. Together we weathered a terrible storm.

Personally, I think if Scotlanders do vote to go their own way, we in the rest of the UK certainly should share the pound, and the BBC, keep open the borders, and lobby the EU to continue Scotland's membership… we should look out for our friends and families, like good neighbours, as we did for Ireland recently when their banks got into trouble too… but I also think that will be a really hard sell to the 90% of UK voters left in the country, and I don't see any political party being able to stand on a "let's play nice with Scotland" platform.

That's the hard political reality that airy promises about a "yes" vote "forcing" Mr Balloon and Mr Oboe to the negotiations will run up against. And just how well-inclined do you think they'll be if you force them to the negotiating table? Might they not decide to play hard-ball with Scotland just to look good in the run up to a tricky general election?

But on the other fluffy foot, the voices of the people of Scotland have at least been heard enough to see the Westminster Parties scrambling to offer a new political settlement in recognition of the justifiable claim of a right to self-determination.

For far too long Westminster governments – Labour as well as Tories – have centralised more and more power to London, not just hoarding power away from the Scots, but also enfeebling the great cities of Northern England, disenfranchising whole regions from the Kingdom of Cornwall to the Empire of Yorkshire, and treating all four nations of our nation – yes, England too – with little or no respect at all. No wonder the peasants are revolting!

But now, both sides are asking the voters to make up their minds based on promises of what will happen, rather than on a concrete plan. Which is why I'm thinking, whatever side wins (unless it's unexpectedly decisive, and the polls don't point that way) both sides need to think very hard about a second referendum (I hear the groans already) in eighteen months' time to agree the outcome.

I say eighteen months because that is the timeframe for exit negotiations set out by the "Yes" campaign, and they should then put the outcome of those negotiations to the vote. If they've fulfilled their promises about the currency, the EU membership and the Queen then they'll have no problems. If they've got the best deal they can, short of that, they should still let the people decide based on what they'll actually be getting, rather than Mr Alec Salmon's slippery promises.

But by the same lights, if Better Together prevail – and I hope they do – we should hold a constitutional convention for Scotland, in which the "devo max" powers that have been promised by all the Unionist parties will be decided with the people and at the end of that process they can have a say on whether they have done enough to keep the United Kingdom's promise and to keep the United Kingdoms united.

And why stop at Scotland, when we should be doing the same for England and Wales and Northern Ireland, Cornwall and Yorkshire, Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Bristol…

Break the stranglehold of Westminster and set out a path to reform Europe, reconnect people to their regions and to the nation and to the EU by handing power back and making the institutions more democratic and accountable.

Let the cry go up: Home Rule for all!

It's catchy and it might just keep us together.

Day 4212: But if it DOES come to a Referendum...

Friday:

Hard Labour CLAIM that they're FOR the PRINCIPLE of Lords Reform, but AGAINST the SPECIFICS of this Bill. So if we DO cut a DEAL that involves a REFERENDUM, let's make it one UP FRONT on the PRINCIPLES of reform.

This means it HAS to be WIDER than just a "YES/NO" to the current proposals.

The many different CONTENTIOUS CLAUSES in Cap'n Clegg's Bill give the reactionaries many different directions to attack from. So what say we make sure the PUBLIC get to decide on ALL the main issues, settling each question one way or the other. Like this:

The House of Lords is the second chamber of the United Kingdom Parliament. It reviews and revises legislation and can amend but not block legislation sent to it by the House of Commons. At present, the members of the House of Lords (peers) are appointed for life, mainly (80%) by the leaders of Political Parties, with some, known as Cross Benchers, selected by the Appointments Panel, and some Church of England Bishops.

The main question in this referendum is to decide in principle whether we should elect peers rather than appoint them.

Supplementary questions are asked about what an elected chamber might look like and how it might be elected IF it is decided to change to an elected House of Lords. Please answer all the questions, whatever your preference for an elected or appointed chamber.

MAIN QUESTION: Should the House of Lords be appointed or elected?

• Appointed
• Elected

SUPPLEMENTARY QUESTIONS:

QUESTION ONE: If it is decided that the Lords should be elected, should peers be mainly or entirely elected?

• Mainly elected peers (80%, per the Government's proposals)
• Wholly elected (100%)

QUESTION TWO: If it is decided that the Lords should be elected, a proportional voting system is proposed. Should the voting system for the Lords be:

• Party list system (as used in European Parliament elections)
• Ranked preference system (as used in Scottish local elections or Northern Ireland)

QUESTION THREE: There are currently around nine hundred unelected peers. The Government proposes to reduce this number to four hundred and fifty. There will be six hundred member members of the House of Commons. How many peers should there be:

• 300
• 450
• 600
• 900

(vote for first and second preference)

QUESTION FOUR: The Government's proposals are for peers to sit for a single term of office of fifteen years, electing one third of the House at the same time as a General Election. If the House of Lords is elected, how long should their terms be:

• Fifteen years (electing one third of members at each General Election every five years)
• Ten years (electing one half of members at each General Election every five years)
• Five years (electing all the members at each General Election every five years)

(vote for first and second preference)

QUESTION FIVE: The Government's proposals for fifteen-year terms include a provision that peers should not be allowed to stand for re-election. Do you agree?

• Yes, peers should only be elected for one term
• No, peers should be allowed to stand more than once

QUESTION SIX: Presently there are twenty-six Church of England Bishops with seats in the House of Lords. The Government proposes to reduce this to fifteen in line with the proposed smaller House of Lords. If it is decided that there should continue to be some appointed members, do you think that the Bishops should have seats in the House of Lords?

• Yes, there should be seats for religious leaders
• No, only members appointed by the Appointments Commission should have Cross Bencher seats

QUESTION SIX-A: Should the seats continue to be reserved for the Church of England or should other religions be represented as well?

• Yes, the seats should remain exclusively for the Church of England
• No, there should be representatives for people of all religions (and people with no religion)

QUESTION SEVEN: Under the Parliament Act, the House of Lords is only a revising chamber and cannot block legislation passed by the House of Commons. The Government's proposals will keep this provision. Do you agree?

• Yes, the House of Commons should always be able to overrule the House of Lords
• Yes, the House of Commons should be able to overrule the House of Lords, but only on the Budget
• No, the House of Commons should not be able to overrule the House of Lords at all

A quick bill (haha), with all-Party support (hahaha), passed through the Commons this Autumn would pave the way for a poll next year. If the public reject an elected Lords then we drop the issue; if they approve, then we have a ready-made Bill that can be also be passed quickly, because only a bunch of BLINKERED SELF-INTERESTED IDIOTS would tell the Public that THEY know better... Oh.