RANDOM THOUGHTS

And all, apparently, for 30p.

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MP says people should get a better job such as “a banker” to protect themselves from cost of living surge pic.twitter.com/CaXBSJUilK

— Rosie Holt (@RosieisaHolt) May 16, 2022

This is, of course, a spoof. But, at the same time, it’s frighteningly realistic.

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Boris Johnson being booed as he arrives in Northern Ireland to try and rip up the Brexit deal he himself negotiated, won an election on, and put into law pic.twitter.com/pHpBodmkoz

— Sarah 🇮🇹🌹#WearAMask (@sazmeister88) May 16, 2022

I see he’s as popular in NI as he is in Scotland and Wales, or indeed as popular as Wee Wullie and his national anthem is in Liverpool, England.

John Major: 9/6/16. Brexit risks destabilising the complicated constitutional settlement that underpins stability.

Can someone please ask Johnson why he signed this international agreement, why he then boasted about it, why he commended it to the queen and parliament and fought a general election based on the fact he had this “oven-ready” deal to get Brexit done, and then changed his mind? Had he not read it? Did he read it and not understand it? Had he, like Raab, not read the Belfast Agreement? Did he not understand that either?

He and his ministers say that the EU is being intransigent. What is intransigent about signing an international treaty in good faith and sticking to the terms and conditions of it? Is that not what usually happens with international treaties? Help me out here, I’m a novice. And finally, does he understand the sort of reputation for untrustworthiness he is giving his country?

“You must be furious with whoever signed up to a deal this bad?”

Boris Johnson wants to make reforms to the Northern Ireland Protocol, @PGMcNamara asks the prime minister why he signed it in the first place? pic.twitter.com/BJkPVuJWK3

— Channel 4 News (@Channel4News) May 16, 2022

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Brexit, we were told, promised the possibility of £350 million a week for the NHS. Now, this, of course, would have been hard to achieve given that we only actually sent Brussels around £278 million a week there, thanks to the discount originally negotiated by Thatcher and then again by Blair. But, hey, what’s a wee white lie here and there when your name is De Pfeffel?

Clearly, it also took no regard of all the many and various grants, large and small, that the EU provided under the heading European Structural Development Funding … most obviously Farming Subsidies, Social Fund, University Science Funding, Cohesions Fund, and the Maritime and Fisheries Fund, but also smaller schemes like Erasmus. It also ignored all the savings that we have by sharing so many common tasks and the agencies that provide services.

The Bank of England is saying that Brexit has been costing us around £440 million a week for some time.

So, for those of us who expected to be £350 million a week better off, that’s a short fall of around £790 million a week that works out at £41,080,000,000 a year.

I wonder if that would fit on the side of a bus, or if you’d need a train!

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