'Brexit' wins, UK to leave the EU?

[sToRmR1dR]

'BoJo is trying to distract public for "Partygate" scandal.'

UK unveils ‘major military offer’ to NATO as a ‘clear message’ to Moscow

Britain is considering a “major military deployment” to prop-up Eastern European NATO allies and send a message to Moscow over Ukraine

www.rt.com

29 Jan, 2022

[...]
“The Prime Minister is expected to speak to President Putin and travel to the region early this week to relay that message in person,” Downing Street revealed.

'Don't forget to "bring your own booze".'

 

[sToRmR1dR]

BoJo desperately needs booze

UK local elections: Tories suffer heavy losses in major blow to Johnson​

06 May 2022

 

[sToRmR1dR]

'Take a sip.'

BoJo to Face Vote of Confidence Monday​

16 minutes ago (Updated: 1 minute ago)

Boris Johnson is in hot water following the publication of Sue Gray’s report into 16 alleged No 10 COVID rule-breaking parties held in 2020 and 2021. After the document’s release, BoJo told MPs that he takes “full responsibility” for partying but denied he had ever knowingly misled them about the events.

Сhair of the backbench 1922 Committee Graham Brady has announced that there will be a vote of no confidence held in UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday, from 6pm-8pm.

According to Brady, "the threshold of 15% of the parliamentary party seeking a vote of confidence in the leader of the Conservative Party has been exceeded".

He added that details will be confirmed and the votes will be counted immediately afterwards.

 

[sToRmR1dR]

UK PM survives no-confidence motion​

6 Jun, 2022

Tory MPs have voted to keep Boris Johnson as their party leader, defeating internal dissent

Tory MPs voted on Monday to keep British Prime Minister Boris Johnson as the leader of the Conservative Party. His position was in jeopardy following the “Partygate” scandal, which saw the prime minister face criticism from within the party and among the general public.

Of the 359 ballots cast, 211 MPs votes to support Johnson, with 148 voting against him, the party announced on Monday evening.

The vote was called earlier in the day by Sir Graham Brady, the chair of the Tories’ 1922 Committee. The procedure was triggered by at least 54 Conservative MPs, who sent letters to Brady expressing their lack of confidence in Johnson’s ability to lead the party.

Under current rules, another no confidence vote in Johnson cannot be called for at least a year, though Brady acknowledged that in theory the rules could be changed.

Downing Street had earlier said it expected the vote to “end months of speculation and allow the government to draw a line and move on” after the Partygate scandal.

A full report by Sue Gray, who investigated parties held at Downing Street during the Covid-19 pandemic, was released to the public two weeks ago. The damning document blamed “the senior leadership” for creating a culture of law-breaking that allowed the parties to happen despite restrictions imposed by the government. An abridged version of the report was published in January, fueling anti-Johnson sentiment in Britain and among the Tories.

 

[sToRmR1dR]

'The delusional BoJo wants to rule forever.'

British PM defuses anger over third term talk​

26 Jun, 2022

Boris Johnson has attempted to paint his mention of serving a third term as mere enthusiasm for the job

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson isn’t seriously considering staying in office until “the mid-2030s” – instead, he's merely focused on the government's “massive agenda,” he told alarmed colleagues on Sunday.

Johnson had made the controversial comments about serving a third term and leading his country into the 2030s from Rwanda on Saturday, just days after his party was pummeled in by-elections at home, leaving senior conservative politicians to believe he was joking.

“When I heard he plans to stay until 2030, I thought he was talking about the 24-hour clock,” quipped MP Andrew Bridgen, a Tory calling for another no-confidence vote against the polarizing PM. “I’m more than happy for him to stay until 20:30. He can even stay until nine o’clock if he wants – so long as he’s gone before Parliament breaks up for summer.”

Asked on Saturday if he intended to serve a full (second) term if he won a general election, Johnson said he was “thinking actively about the third term, and you know, what could happen then,” promising to “review that when I get to it.” At the time, he doubled down on the comment, confirming it would mean staying in office until the “mid-2030s.”

By Sunday, his administration seemed to have slightly pulled him back from that precipice. “What I’m saying is this is a government that is getting on with delivering for the people of this country and we’ve got a huge amount to do,” he told reporters at the G7 conference in Bavaria, citing “a massive agenda of reform and improvement, a plan for a stronger economy, whereby we have to reform our energy market, our housing market, the way our transport networks run, our public sector – we’ve got to cut the cost of government.”

However, he wasn’t completely done singing his own praises, denying the by-election defeats should be considered a source of shame and arguing that public sentiment against him had more to do with his personal life than his work as PM. “I think if you actually look at what the government is doing, it’s pretty remarkable, it is quite exceptional,” he told an ITV interviewer.

The recent electoral defeats have Johnson’s party seriously considering offloading him within weeks or months, with MPs reportedly planning to tweak committee rules to permit yet another vote of no confidence before next June. One former supporter and ex-cabinet minister told the Guardian the PM’s comments were “completely delusional.”

Johnson’s policies during the Covid-19 pandemic led the UK into its worst economic slide since World War II in 2020, with the economy shrinking by a record amount, though the subsequent years have seen some recovery. However, that was before Johnson’s government imposed sanctions against Moscow over its military operation in Ukraine, resulting in cost-of-living and energy crises in the UK.

 

[sToRmR1dR]

​

‘Now is the time for independence’ – Scottish leader​

28 Jun, 2022

Nicola Sturgeon has announced a second vote to leave the UK for October 2023

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon announced on Tuesday that a second Scottish independence referendum will be held on October 19, 2023. However, a ‘yes’ vote will not be enough to separate Scotland from the UK.

Sturgeon told lawmakers at Holyrood, Scotland’s parliament, that her government would publish the Scottish Independence Referendum Bill later on Tuesday. The bill will provide for a referendum next October in which Scots will be asked the same question as in the failed 2014 independence referendum: “Should Scotland be an independent country?”

“Now is the time ... to debate and decide the future of our country ...” Sturgeon declared, adding that she would not “allow Scottish democracy to be a prisoner of Boris Johnson or any prime minister.”

Now is the time for independence.

However, Sturgeon admitted that the referendum would be “consultative,” meaning the vote would be symbolic unless a bill was passed in the UK parliament recognizing the result. London could also grant Scotland’s parliament a so-called ‘Section 30 order’, which would make the referendum legally binding, and Sturgeon called on UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson to “negotiate the terms” of such an order.

Johnson has shown no indication that he would grant this, however, and has previously described the 2014 independence vote as a “once in a generation event.” Another referendum, he said last year, would amount to “pointless constitutional wrangling.”

In 2014’s referendum, Scots voted 55-44% to remain in the UK. While Sturgeon pointed to the fact that a majority of Scottish lawmakers elected last year support independence, polling shows that support for independence has consistently fallen since the 2014 vote. The latest Ipsos and YouGov polls from May both show 46% wanting to remain in the Union, and 38-45% wanting independence.

However, while a majority of Britons voted in 2016 to leave the European Union, all of Scotland’s electoral districts voted to remain. Should Scotland secure independence, Sturgeon has promised to take Scotland back into the European bloc.

 

[Niall]

A 'symbolic consultative vote' that requires London's permission. At least then it'll be more honest than Western 'elections'!

 

[sToRmR1dR]

'BoJo wants to be Basileus.'

Roman empire’s alliance would benefit Europe – UK PM​

29 Jun, 2022

Boris Johnson wants a political community encompassing not only the EU but the Roman Empire’s old territory

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson was reportedly so infatuated with French President Emmanuel Macron’s idea of a “European Political Community” encompassing not only the EU but Eastern Europe – particularly Ukraine – and the UK that he has claimed it as his own idea and framed it as a modern take on the Roman Empire, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday.

Johnson’s modern Imperium would stretch from the UK to the Maghreb region of northern Africa and eastward to Turkey and Ukraine, he said, declaring he had come up with Macron’s idea “back when I first became foreign secretary” and revealing he believed “we should basically be recreating the Mare Nostrum of the Roman Empire” in an audience with journalists en route to Madrid for a NATO summit on Tuesday. Mare Nostrum was the Roman name for the Mediterranean Sea, adopted at a time when the empire controlled much of Europe, the coast of northern Africa, and modern-day Turkey, extending into the Caucasus region.

However, Macron preempted even Johnson’s revisionist chronology when he proposed the idea at the European parliament, claiming his predecessor Francois Mitterrand had called for a “broad European club” all the way back in 1989 as the USSR was facing crises.

Johnson tempered his enthusiasm, describing Macron’s idea as “worth looking” at so long as it dovetailed with the UK’s strategic goals while acknowledging “inventing new structures” might not be the best use of resources that could be spent on improving partnerships between countries.

While relations between the French and British leaders have been frosty in the past, the pair agreed to start over on Sunday while speaking one on one during the G7 summit, with one UK official describing their newfound partnership as “le bromance.” However, a French official was less excited, describing the meeting as having gone “well. That’s it.”

While the two may have made a fresh start, there are still plenty of issues on which they disagree, with Paris reportedly upset over Johnson’s backpedaling on Brexit as well as his public briefings implying Macron is being insufficiently aggressive in his dealings with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Johnson was expected to touch on the subject once more during his speech at the NATO summit, telling members to “dig deep,” pony up their full 2% of GDP, and beef up the alliance’s “eastern flank.”

The remarks fit the theme of the alliance’s Wednesday meeting, during which it approved its new, even more openly anti-Russian Strategic Concept, declaring that Moscow had “shattered peace and gravely altered our security environment” by attacking Ukraine. The bloc’s members reassured each other that their alliance was “unique, essential and indispensable” and vowed to work together to thwart the “authoritarian actors” threatening its “rules-based international order.”

Johnson was also expected to meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as well as the leaders of Sweden and Finland, which NATO welcomed with open arms in its speediest approval yet of a new member. It’s not known if he plans on broaching the subject of his new and improved Roman Empire with the trio.

One of the last attempts by major European states to rebuild or claim heir to the Roman Empire was carried out by the German Nazi and Italian fascist leaders Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. It ended with a crushing defeat in 1945.

 

[Ca.]

The current UK leader Rishi Sunak has indicated that England will leave the EU while indicating total control of its immigration policies.
Right Oh!

https://twitter.com/x/status/1594649448155586560

https://twitter.com/x/status/1592888250770677760

https://twitter.com/x/status/1595084808748670982

https://twitter.com/x/status/1595085315575889923

Edit add:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1595043201093488641

A £120m festival criticised as a waste of taxpayers' money has announced audience numbers of 18 million.

Organisers said nearly three million attended Unboxed in person, while 13m watched content online and on TV.
Stuart Andrew MP, Minister for Sport, Tourism and Civil Society, said "the scale and reach of this project and what it has achieved is clear to see".

But the chair of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee called it a "very poor return indeed".
Julian Knight MP also criticised the "eye-watering" cost of the project.

The Unboxed Festival was announced in 2018 by the then Prime Minister Theresa May to celebrate British creativity. It was quickly dubbed the Festival of Brexit because of the timing.

Since February, 10 free projects have opened across the UK. These include a decommissioned gas platform called See Monster in Weston-super-Mare and a trail through the solar system called Our Place in Space in Northern Ireland, Liverpool and Cambridge.

Unboxed's live programme closed at the weekend.

In newly released data, Unboxed says 2.8 million people attended live events in 107 places across the UK, 13.5 million have engaged with the projects online and on TV programmes including the BBC's Countryfile, and 1.7 million have taken part through school trips, lessons, competitions and other learning events.

Phil Batty, executive director of Unboxed, said the festival has "been able to create joyful memories for millions of people in communities across the UK".

But Unboxed is being investigated by the public spending watchdog, the National Audit Office, after criticisms by Mr Knight's influential Parliamentary committee, which has called Unboxed an "irresponsible use of public money" and a "recipe for failure".

Responding to the audience numbers, Mr Knight told the BBC: "These final figures only confirm the committee in its view that Unboxed has been a failure and rightly the National Audit Office is investigating."

He pointed out that Martin Green, who was Unboxed's chief creative officer until he left recently to run Eurovision for the BBC, had originally suggested the festival aspired to reach 66 million people.

Mr Knight said the engagement figures "are less than a quarter of the target Unboxed set itself".

He also claimed the new numbers worked out as "more than £40" for every visitor who went to an Unboxed project in person.
The organisers argue that the projects were always intended to reach people not just in person but also more broadly. Green Space Dark Skies, for example, involved a series of films about the natural world which culminated in a BBC Countryfile special.

Galwad, a Welsh project looking at the future, blended live performance and digital and TV drama. It resulted in a four-hour finale on Sky Arts.

Unboxed, organisers say, was designed to be accessible and inclusive to all.

DCMS minister Stuart Andrew MP claimed it has "pulled in new audiences to arts and culture, brought people together and showcased the world-leading creative talent and innovation we have right here on our shores".

Unboxed won't release its visitor numbers for individual projects.

Last week, About Us opened in London, with a lightshow projected onto the Tower of London.

Combining compositions by Nitin Sawhney with poetry and multimedia, it tells the story of nearly 14 billion years of history from the Big Bang to the present day. About Us has previously been performed in Paisley, Derry-Londonderry, Caernarfon, Luton and Hull.

At the Tower of London, a steady stream of visitors gathered every half hour for the show, a combination of passers-by and visitors who had chosen to come.

They watched as creeping dinosaurs, swimming whales, flying birds and iterations of humans covered the Tower in spectacular colours.
"Mesmerising," and "really cool" appeared to be the verdict. IT worker Corey Tabb told the BBC "it was amazing to see how it travels from the start of the universe all the way up to the modern day era and how things have changed since we were cavemen."

Programmes coordinator Ruby Raw said: "I'm not sure that I understood everything but it was beautiful enough to look at anyway".

ut almost nobody I spoke to had heard of Unboxed.

That's part of the problem. This Festival has struggled, originally because of its associations with Brexit, then later with a lack of recognition. The ten fairly disparate projects weren't obviously linked under one clear banner.

The cost of the festival - four times the amount the taxpayer spent on the Platinum Jubilee - put it under justifiable scrutiny.

The organisers say the point of the festival was to bring together science, technology, engineering, arts and maths. They claim Unboxed has also supported more than 6000 jobs and paid opportunities.

But with the NAO due to publish the findings of its investigation in the next few weeks, this isn't the last we'll hear about Unboxed.

 

[Michael B-C]

When Medvedev made his list of prophesies for 2023 his number two on the list did raise my then eyebrows. I thought yes maybe but surely not that quickly. Well two months on, my eyebrows are down around my knees - for it looks increasingly as if 'Mystic Med' has some crystal ball!

The Duran boys do a great breakdown of how inch by inch the liars, cowards and bought and sold lackeys led by Sunak are inch by inch prepping the UK for a return in all but name - and its all happening now so plenty of time for it to come into effect well before the year end.

The only silver lining being that hopefully number 3 on his list follows suit as he projects.

EDIT: One thing they do not mention is that on the one hand the Republic of Ireland not only welcomed 70,000 refugees last year but plans to up this to 80,000 this year (many of them Ukrainians). At the same time the Irish Gov. is briefing the press on how there is such an acute housing crisis in the Republic, (plus the fact many hotels where they are being housed are saying they will return to foreign punters come the spring), that large numbers of these will end up on the streets. What does that achieve, I hear you say? Well there are already rumbles that the open boarder with the north is allowing said refugees to make it to the UK. So we might expect this 'encouragement' to increase in 2023 and a crisis to evolve that helps push things forward. Rejoining EU the obvious answer - to help solidarity with Ukraine. Just a thought.

 

[Michael B-C]

And now its confirmed. Using the smoke screen of unity over Ukraine, Brexit being reversed with a deal being formalized between Ursula von der Leyen, King Charles and Rishi Sunak this very day.

How No 10 sweetened up the EU president with a royal cup of tea​

European Commission president and ‘passionate anglophile’ Ursula von der Leyen met the king after NI trade deal agreed.

 

[Ursus Minor]

Brexit being reversed with a deal [...]

Today there's not even a pretense being made by the political class when they are overturning laws and international agreements to fit their agenda, as long as their decisions are depicted as favorable for Ukraine, the climate and the prosperity of the European Union.

Nothing anymore has a rhyme or reason. Have one doubt and they call it treason.

As far as Medvedev's third prophesy is concerned, I think the E.U. will collapse (probably in 2024) and the euro will obviously drop out of use when the CBDC is forced on us.

Will they use a future 'pandemic' to abolish 'infectious' banknotes?

 

[Nienna]

Will they use a future 'pandemic' to abolish 'infectious' banknotes?

Interesting that you say that. When the scamdemic first started, a cashier at the super market that I shop at told me that money is dirty, carries germs and should not be used. She was teaching a new cashier whom I told her that I was giving her dirty cash anyway and she chuckled at that. I think that a lot of people felt/feel that way so what you said may not be too far from the mark.

I have noticed that that first cashier is no longer at the store.

 

[sToRmR1dR]

'Why am I feeling that the UK will rejoin the EU?'

UK and EU strike post-Brexit deal

London and Brussels have reached an agreement on the Northern Ireland Protocol to resolve long-running trade issues

www.rt.com

27 Feb, 2023

 

[Ursus Minor]

Interesting that you say that. When the scamdemic first started, a cashier at the super market that I shop at told me that money is dirty, carries germs and should not be used. She was teaching a new cashier whom I told her that I was giving her dirty cash anyway and she chuckled at that. I think that a lot of people felt/feel that way so what you said may not be too far from the mark.

I have noticed that that first cashier is no longer at the store.

Over here some super market chains have deployed self-checkout kiosks which are largely being ignored by customers despite long checkout lines. Sometimes you can watch twenty-somethings displaying their knack for tech by making use of them.

There are a couple of experimental self-checkout super markets as well which would be completely cashless.
Cashiers could be laid off, but they would have to hire many security goons instead.