Quotulatiousness

March 23, 2019

“[T]he Withdrawal Agreement … resembles the surrender terms that might be offered to a vanquished enemy”

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Government — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Alex Noble isn’t a fan of the surrender document Withdrawal Agreement:

Let’s be clear – The Withdrawal Agreement is poorly-named.

It does not involve withdrawing from the EU in any meaningful sense, but instead commits us to Remaining within the EU and strips the UK of any future self-determination. It removes from the UK control of any future departure from the EU, and places it in the hands of those who reside in the building in Brussels with the statute of Europa outside – a woman riding a bull, keen students of the Book of Revelation may notice.

To this extent, the Withdrawal Agreement is actually a treaty for staying in the EU – it resembles quite closely the surrender terms that might be offered to a vanquished enemy, or the document that might be initially given to a small country wishing to join the EU.

Like say, Scotland.

One wonders if the EU wrote it in the run-up to the independence vote of 2014, threw it on a shelf when the Scots voted to stay in the UK, and then Angela Merkel simply tossed it across the desk at her puppet Theresa May at their meeting the day before it was announced at Chequers?

If the EU was a lending institution, this would not be a lengthy mortgage offered at a very low fixed rate, to a woman of considerable status, means and integrity (as might be expected of a deal offered to the fifth-largest economy in the world, the second-largest in Europe and the EU’s biggest customer), but is instead deeply punitive, almost insulting, perhaps comparable to a payday loan.

The Withdrawal Agreement is actually The Wonga Agreement.

And this is to be expected of course, because while Britain leaving the EU would be a disaster, Britain leaving the EU and thriving would mean the end of the generational attempt at reviving communism at the heart of Europe – many other countries (and the richer ones at that) would all suddenly be demanding the same terms and the EUSSR would fracture irreparably.

And at that point, all the ex-communists currently gorging at the trough in Brussels would have to accept the death of their dream.

If Britain left and thrived.

So the EUSSR can only survive Britain’s departure if it is made into a disaster for the UK.

Which meant they simply could not offer us a good deal, even if they had wanted to.

17 Million F*ck Offs – A Song About Brexit

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Humour, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Dominic Frisby
Published on Mar 5, 2019

Please help take this song to number one by buying a copy of the single at iTunes/Amazon etc
Amazon – https://www.amazon.co.uk/17-Million-F… ITunes (ignore Apple Music and go to the iTunes store) – https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/17-…

I’ll put in other links as and when they come in.

Written and performed by Dominic Frisby
Music composed and played by Martin Wheatley (based on a traditional Devon folk song)
Video directed by anon
Audio mixed and recorded by Wayne McIntyre
Assistant director Mark “Yeti” Cribbs

Lyrics

On the 23rd of June, 2016
The people of the United Kingdom – and Gibraltar – went to vote
On an issue that for some had been burning for years
The question in full – and unaltered – was – I quote

Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union
or leave the European Union?

It was the greatest democratic turnout in British history, I do not scoff
And when the time came to speak the British said f*ck off.
F*ck off.

Campaigning had gone on for many a month
With debate and discussion on many a front
They’d argued they’d fought they’d smeared and pulled stunts
There was David Cameron. Theresa May. George Osborne.
Tony Blair. John Major. The BBC.
The British told them to f*ck off. The British told them to f*ck off.

If you vote to leave, you’ll lose your job
Vote to leave, you’ll lose your home.
The ensuing recession will last for years
Said David Cameron. Theresa May. George Osborne.
And the Treasury. Tony Blair. John Major. The BBC.
The Bank of England. Mark Carney. The EU. The IMF. The US president. Saint Obama. Back of the queue. Loads of celebrities. Gary Lineker. JK Rowling. Benedict Cumbertwat. Lord Adonis. Who the fuck’s he anyway?
The British told them to f*ck off. Seventeen million f*ck offs.

They wheeled in the experts to tell us what’s right
They gave us the benefit of their foresight
To leave is calamitous, that’s definite.
Food shortages. No medicine. Planes grounded. House price crash. ½ a million jobs lost. Cost of £4,300 to every home. Stock market collapse. Riots. No sandwiches.
There’d be an outbreak of super gonorrhea. They seriously said that. Donald Tusk at the EU said it would be the end of Western civilization as we know it. I’m not joking. And one more thing. If you vote to leave, that makes you racist.
The British told them to f*ck off. Seventeen million f*ck offs.

The vote is final, there’s no going back
Although now they want to go back and re-vote
I think we know what the answer will be
To Gary Lineker. Alastair Campbell. Dominic Grieve. Chuka Umana. Keir Starma. Vince Cable. Anna Soubry (not a Nazi). Rory Bremner. Armando Ianucci. Delia Smith. Steve Coogan. David Lammy. Lord Adonis. Who the fuck’s he anyway?
The British will tell them f*ck off. 17 million f*cks offs.

ISRC#: TCAED1904492

The NHS, Britain’s “national treasure”, gets panned by other EU patients who’ve experienced non-NHS care

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Government, Health — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In The Conversation, Chris Moreh, Athina Vlachantoni, and Derek McGhee report that — contrary to British myth-making — the National Health Service isn’t the envy of the civilized world:

Britain’s National Health Service is often described as a “national treasure”. And it is a sentiment those on the left and the right of the political divide agree on. The British public are so proud of the NHS, they made it the central theme of the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympic Games.

But this pride has also been coupled with fears that the universal healthcare provided by the NHS might be taken advantage of by patients from outside the UK. A few months after the Olympics, the then health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, felt the need to clarify that “we are a national health service, not an international health service”. The 2015 election-winning manifesto of the Conservative party made this point even clearer when it pledged to “tackle health tourism” and “recover up to £500m from migrants who use the NHS”.

But our research shows that while the NHS may be a national treasure to British people, EU migrants would rather be treated in their countries of origin. As a 38-year-old woman from Germany put it: “Sorry, NHS? No thanks.” And the reasons for rejecting the NHS? A 25-year-old man from the Netherlands says it’s because the “NHS is slow and the medical care mediocre”. Or, at least, it “is rather poor compared to healthcare in my country,” says a 45-year-old woman from Germany.

But why should British people worry about what EU migrants think of their health service? What EU migrants think and choose is important because they are familiar with at least two European healthcare systems. They have the information and personal experience that most British citizens do not. There is a lot to be learnt from them.

Lie-Nielsen vs. Veritas Router Planes | Tool Duel #7

Filed under: Tools, Woodworking — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Matt Estlea
Published on 11 Oct 2017

In this video, I compare the Lie-Nielsen No.71 Router Plane with the Veritas Router plane to help you work out which one will suit your work the best.
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Support what I do by becoming a Patron! I want to increase the production quality of my videos and thus need to finance some new equipment. Follow the link below to help me out! Thank you in advance! https://www.patreon.com/mattestlea
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See what tools I use here: https://kit.com/MattEstlea
My Website: http://www.mattestlea.com
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My name is Matt Estlea, I’m a 22 year old Woodworker from Basingstoke in England and my aim is to make your woodworking less s***.

I come from 5 years tuition at Rycotewood Furniture Centre and 4 years experience working at Axminster Tools and Machinery where I still currently work on weekends. During the week, I film woodworking projects, tutorials, reviews and a viewer favourite ‘Tool Duel’ where I compare two competitive manufacturers’ tools against one another to find out which is best.
I like to have a laugh and my videos are quite fast paced BUT you will learn a lot, I assure you.

Lets go make a mess.

QotD: Pity the poor politicians

Filed under: Media, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The first reason to pity them, however, is that someone, or rather some group of people, has to do politics, just as people have to do other unpleasant jobs, such as cleaning lavatories. If it were not for the politicians whom we actually have, there would only be others, not necessarily better. Politicians are like the poor: You have them with you always — except in Switzerland, that happy land where people do not even know who their president is, he being so profoundly unimportant.

But the second and more compelling reason to pity the poor politicians is that theirs is a dreadful life judged by normal standards. If it has its compensations, such as power, money, and bodyguards, they are bought at a dreadful cost. The other day I caught a glimpse of what that life must be like.

A television crew came to make a documentary about me. It will last about 45 minutes, will be watched (thank goodness) by only a small audience, and took two and a half days’ filming to make. The television crew was very nice, which is not my universal experience of television people, to put it mildly; but even so, two and a half days being followed by a camera is more than enough to last me the rest of my life.

I found the strain of it considerable, even though, really, nothing was at stake. It did not matter in the slightest, not even to me, if I made a fool of myself by what I said. There would be no consequences for my career, such as it is (it is almost over); there would be no humiliating exposures of my fatuity in the press, no nasty political cartoons as a consequence, and no insulting messages over the antisocial media. The television team was clearly not out to trip me up or perform a hatchet job on me. It was friendly and I could trust it not to distort what I said by crafty editing. But all the same, the attempt to act naturally while in the constant presence of a camera and a microphone with a furry cover was tiring. The order to be natural is a contradiction in terms. You might as well order someone to be happy.

Of course, one grows accustomed to anything in time. Just as a bad smell disappears from one’s awareness if one remains for long enough in its presence, so eventually one forgets about the presence of a camera and a microphone. No doubt politicians who live half their waking time within the field of these instruments learn to ignore their physical intrusiveness; but, of course, much more is at stake for them than it ever was for me. They are under constant surveillance; and just as the pedant reading a book pounces upon an error, even if it be only typographical, and marks it with his pen, so journalists and political enemies pounce upon a gaffe uttered by a politician and try to ruin him with it. And the more subjects come under the purview of political correctness, the easier it becomes to make a gaffe that will offend some considerable part of the eggshell population. In fact, much of that population actually wants to be offended; being offended is the new cogito that guarantees the sum. I am offended, therefore I am.

Theodore Dalrymple, “Pity the Poor Politicians”, Taki’s Magazine, 2017-04-01.

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