The ketchup please!

Dudes,

Time for the ketchup!

[Not at all like our little bit of Israel]

The right questions the wrong question

Hi All,

The whole EU debate is on screen 24 -7  and sometimes we need to take a step back and reflect.  The stumbling bloc right now to finalise a withdrawal deal (not , incidentally the future relationship with the EU) , is of course the Irish backstop. 

Herein Dublin and Brussels have found something with which to give the hated British (read English)  a drubbing. For the Irish government this is a good time to give the English what they see as a taste of their own medicine. Don't forget that Irish politics and the current government is dominated by Irish nationalists. For all the talk about peace the Irish government would like or rather dream of reunification of the North. Of course this dream is after ten pints of Guinness and the Irish know absorbing the North would cost billions they don't have. 

The veiled threats of returning Ulster and mainland Britain to the troubles, if the withdrawal agreement isn't ratified ,  is an insult to this country and Dublin can only get away with this because the EU machine sees it as means to punish Britain for leaving the EU. While most British politicians , leave or remain would wish the rest of the EU well, very few actually want to hurt or destroy it (even if Euro sceptics can see that in its current form the EU and the eurozone currency is unworkable and will end up destroying itself). Pace the EU has a different view and wants to make brexit fail to both warn and deter others from leaving and to punish Britain for voting against the project and the dream of a peacefully created  federal state of Europe.

Hence Brussels has latched onto the open border issue , the good Friday agreement and encouraged that arrogant Irish  Taoiseach [another strange Irish thing is the usage of English and Gaelic , even though  , no one really uses Gaelic as a day to day lanaguge. Israel at least took up Hebrew and make it a day to day language] to think Ireland is more important in world affairs than the UK, forgetting after Brexit Ireland will be on the naughty step due to its de facto tax haven status. The Irish government also forgets how it was treated by the EU after the financial crisis, wherein Dublin was forced into austerity  to  bail out, like Greece, German and French lenders.

  If the English had done that...

The trouble is that the EU isn't around to answer "the Irish question". In fact the EU and the Eurozone is an answer to the "German question". Namely how to allow Germany to be  the primus inter pars of  European powers while constraining Germany and preventing a possible return to the jackboot.   German unification worried both Thatcher and Mitterrand, who had lived through the second world war . Mitterrand had his solution:  further integration of Germany into the EU via the single currency. Of course this has backfired , albeit the  unification of Germany did restrain Germany for a good twenty years, although the single currency enhanced German power ,rather than restraining or even constraining it. Today Germany and not France is the key power broker of Europe, albeit in a fashion that tries not to leave too many fingerprints at the scene of the crime (Greece, Ireland ,  Italy et al) preferring instead to use the EU Commision as its enforcement agency.  Sooner or later there will be a reckoning, but suffice to say the EU has not resolved the German question and it will not resolve the Irish one either.

While on the subject of questions , here are five from the late Tony Benn and they apply superbly to the EU and gives inter alia the reasons why Britain has to leave the EU machine ( you will see no xenophobia or whatever nonsense arch remain liberals come up with and of course Benn was a socialist , not a liberal ) :

“What power have you got?”

“Where did you get it from?”

“In whose interests do you use it?”

“To whom are you accountable?”

“How do we get rid of you?”

The poor idiots got it wrong

Hi All,

A parody that is closest to reality that I've yet come across:

Train on the water :Boat on the track

Dudes,

An amusing song which- if you've ever worked at my pub/restaurant you'd know instantly :

The other day we had some English tourists in and in between their falafel burger and onion rings they apparently said "but we're NOT going to discuss Brexit: the 
maître d is French!"

Bloody stingy buggers left a 40p tip!

Holocaust memorial day

Hi All,

NEVER FORGET!

NEVER AGAIN!

Plan b

Hi All,

Brexit plan b- bring back the people professionals- LOL x

Brexit song

Hi All,

My brexit song -and because I'm a xenophobic, uneducated, easily duped person who *would* vote the *correct* way next time, it's in French:

Anything's better than Corbyn

Hi All,

Brilliantly done Mr Gove :

However bad May is , we simply cannot afford our great nation to be lead by Corbyn, the so called (allegedly)  Israel hater, who makes me feel like SCARRED to be a PROUD  BRITISH JEW  who LOVES the COUNTRY I WAS BORN IN, but who FULLY  supports Israel - the haven for and only  Jewish State in the world , which just happens to be a parliamentary democracy , as opposed to this man who is a Communist  and Socialist - not liberal or social democratic - Bolshevik run mad leader of the labour party ...

G-D help us all  if the British people in a moment of madness made Corbyn Prime Minister ....

Shabbat Shalom!

Dudes, 

Shabbat Shalom!

And unusually for moi, scripture from Ezekiel :

"Woe unto the shepherds of Israel that have fed themselves! should not the shepherds feed the sheep? Ye did eat the fat, and ye clothed you with the wool, ye killed the fatlings; but ye fed not the sheep.

The weak have ye not strengthened, neither have ye healed that which was sick, neither have ye bound up that which was broken, neither have ye brought back that which was driven away, neither have ye sought that which was lost; but with force have ye ruled over them and with rigour. 

So were they scattered, because there was no shepherd; and they became food to all the beasts of the field, and were scattered. My sheep wandered through all the mountains, and upon every high hill, yea, upon all the face of the earth were My sheep scattered, and there was none that did search or seek.

For thus saith the Lord G-D: Behold, here am I, and I will search for My sheep, and seek them out. As a shepherd seeketh out his flock in the day that he is among his sheep that are separated, so will I seek out My sheep; and I will deliver them out of all places whither they have been scattered in the day of clouds and thick darkness. And I will bring them out from the peoples, and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land; and I will feed them upon the mountains of Israel, by the streams, and in all the habitable places of the country. I will feed them in a good pasture, and upon the high mountains of Israel shall their fold be; there shall they lie down in a good fold, and in a fat pasture shall they feed upon the mountains of Israel. 

I will seek that which was lost, and will bring back that which was driven away, and will bind up that which was broken, and will strengthen that which was sick; and the fat and the strong I will destroy, I will feed them in justice. "

Grasping of reality

Hi All,

What a farce in the House of Commons. In the event of May's EU deal being voted down the government is now supposed to come up with a plan B.  That's great , but it sums up the problem with internal British elite politics. Both the country and the EU have "moved on".  The country wants to leave in one way or another , only the arch remainers are pressed with any and every which way to stop Brexit  . 

The EU has said it will NOT reopen negotiations. Even if it did , exactly what incentive have they got to hold anything approaching a willingness to compromise, given May's domestic weakness.   

To the perspective of the EU , they've compromised enough. Their project is more sacrosanct than anything , never forget that. Remainers to them are nothing other than Lenin and his "useful idiots".  They clearly don't listen to anything coming out of Brussels or European capitals. The EU has more important things to worry about, namely mass immigration and the political fallout, plus the ongoing crisis in the Eurozone. QE has helped masked such problems, but the structure of the Eurozone and the Euro are still ramshackle and won't survived the upcoming recession and financial crisis (they tend to happen like earthquakes or volcanoes on a fault line, every so often and we are overdue one).

As for the current government, I fail to see exactly how it could continue if they are forced to reopen negotiations.  But again if this happened exactly what would satisfy a divided house of commons?  Furthermore while we know the end objective of remain supporters is to remain, either by another referendum or parliamentary machinations ,  I fail to see exactly how they can do so. We are due to leave in March and that is that . Exactly how the House  are supposed to legislate and get a referendum- what question would be on the paper? - in for that time remains a mystery. 

In any case this does not answer the philosophical question : how can anyone place trust in politics , parties and politicians if the largest turnout of  voters in a referendum ,  by the people who elect them can causally be ignored and then overturned? At the time of the referendum it was told to us by remain that it was once in a lifetime , a final decision for a generation. We were also told by remain it was remain or what has now been called "hard brexit".  

Faithfulness and trust are the underpinning of democracy and democracy can prevail against populists, fascists, communists etc in almost any circumstances , expect when voters perceive and feel that the system is against them, that is felt to be a sham or that their votes do not matter to the elite. 

The remainers are unwittingly helping the undermining of the very system that's in place right now. Look at the House today. One side was jeering  the speaker and the other applauding him. In the UK , the speaker is neutral and not a party figure as in the USA, but he basically became one today. The system can't go on like that as they system has been overturned. That and  remainers ,  thinking half their countrymen are bigoted, xenophobic and fascist for having a view of wishing to exit from a trading political cum supranational state  and a view which let us not forget actually won. 

In respect of amending parliamentary legislation , that's something they can do , but one must remember that no parliament is bound by its successor , so any legislation can be changed in future. In addition , most of the legislation  is practical ,  substitution of EU law for UK law, as opposed to doing anything new. This is just a waste of time.

What then is the answer? May's deal is crap  for the UK. The EU don't want to reopen negotiations.  The only other alternatives are hard brexit or remain. I reject remain, so hard brexit it has to be.

Greggs Introduces "Vegan Sausage roll"?

Dudes,

WFT?

L'Chaim!!

Hi All,

Happy New Year!

L'Chaim!