ANY claim that the Westminster government is a de facto English Government is undeniable. It is also beyond peradventure that the parliament itself is a de facto English Parliament stuffed to the gunnels with a vast majority of English Tory MPs who have no objection, when it suits, for it to be named the UK Parliament, or hide their English nationalism behind the names of the other countries the letters UK are supposed to represent.
When Reuters reports that “the UK warns it may not buy electricity from an independent Scotland”, it is quite simply a naked English government threat to Scotland, masquerading as one from a United Kingdom – a threat that is not supported by Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. So much for Tory extreme right-wing, blood-and-soil English nationalist ideas of what democracy should really mean when they have conned the English public into voting for them to have the whip hand in such matters.
God help them when our friends and family in England discover the misery these incompetent fools intend to inflict upon them for their own personal enrichment. Especially now that even 60% of English voters are demanding a deal with the EU. Now we have sub-prime minister Johnson’s latest word on the subject, with Scottish farmers facing ruination with World Trade Organisation tariffs of up to 60% on lamb sales.
He says: “We have made huge preparations for this. We’ve got ready. Either way, whatever happens, the UK will do very very well.” He also said: “The UK can’t be locked into the EU’s regulatory orbit and we’ve obviously got to take back control of our fisheries.”
Fisheries England intend to grab back from Scotland on the first of next month. Earlier this year they admitted that they had only one-third of the fishery protection vessels needed to patrol THEIR waters, having forgotten Scotland’s waters were at least two-thirds larger than England’s. This is what they mean by “taking back control.”
I call it theft, and the world is watching. So much for Johnson’s much-vaunted “oven-ready deal.”
Bruce Moglia
Bridge of Weir
GLOBAL Britain, now a mere sovereign coastal nation! Tramp steamers and lighters! There are echoes of “Where are you you going to, all you Big Steamers?”, the poem they probably chant still at Eton.
Reminders of a bygone age! The UK is a state, not a nation.
It looks like it will be peering out under a No Deal as the ports clog up, the lorry queues build up and the trade hardly will get beyond the coast.
Some are probably looking out in junk shops the old maps which were on the school wall and showed in red the extent of the Empire!
Uncle Sam is not going to come the rescue now that Trump is history. Biden has other special relationships in mind and does not need the UK to man the bridge between it and the EU – a delusional construct thought up originally by Churchill in his fantasmagorical idea of the English-speaking nations. I do not think he had India in mind at the time! His was as far from reality as the Whig interpretation of English history, which was debunked by Herbert Butterfield, an English historian, in the 1930s.
It is decision time now. The clock has ticked out!
As the gutter press down south hurl insults at EU leaders and revert to unseemly insults, it only alienates our European allies in other areas where we share “sovereignty”.
Symbolically, HP Sauce is now produced in the Netherlands! Perhaps Rees-Mogg would now want to repatriate it! Sovereign sauce for a sovereign! Shake it on the fish – can’t have it foreign-made, it will spoil the taste – but it will have a tariff on it under WTO rules, which are set in Geneva.
John Edgar
Kilmaurs
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