Dear General Sir Mike Rose, KCB, CBE, DSO, QGM . . .&Etc...

I listened with incredulity to your comments earlier today. The use of emotive language was appalling, the political stance was shameful from a British Soldier and the premise was false, you were talking-up a fantasy creation of your own fevered mind, clearly a victim of the thundery weather, put yourself under the MO is my advice.

 

'Soldiers dressed in the drab olive of a European army'?

We all have camouflage uniforms, ergo; any European Army (not yet planned) would certainly have camouflage uniforms, you are being disingenuous Sir. And the idea that the current British camouflage isn't drab, is risible in itself, it's an awful semi-desert/semi-tropical/semi-temperate mashed-potato of a scheme matched to brown boots, the days of the striking DPM are long gone. Emotive tosh, Sir: you're talking emotive tosh.

'Queens Birthday Parade'?

If it ever happened you can be sure (and I'm sure - beyond your dishonesty in this - you know) that the French would retain their Saint Cyr cadet uniform for ceremonials, the Danes would keep their Guards, the Germans their chromium-plated helmets and we would maintain a unit of Bearskins and Household Cavalry - emotive rubbish Sir, from your potty-mouth.

There is only the 'idea' of a European Army, a proposal, a not even a 'white paper' we wouldn't have to join a European Army, we already work with all our neighbours through NATO, a closer unification would only make sense as the US withdraws from involvement in NATO and as most serious threats are or become more global; Russia, China, Terrorism, Climate Change . . . are you planning for a swift domestic campaign against Scotland? Wales? Are you wishing to retain the ability to march on Paris?

You whined about European soldiers in British barracks, well - presumably it would be UK units in UK barracks, despite the fact that half the British Army is already/still in Germany anyway! AND: we ARE European whether we are in the EU or out? Do you propose to call Britain part of Asia, Africa . . . America perhaps? The hypocrisy and nonsensical rubbish in you whingeing is staggering.

The British Army - I was in - prided itself on its political neutrality; you Sir are a disgrace to the uniform and as a once acting Lance Corporal, can I just say Sir: with all due respect to your rank, Sir . . . Shut the fuck-up, you disgraceful cockwomble, Sir!

Dear Prime Minister

Who killed Joe Cox, PM? A right-wing, semi-fascist, simplistic, impressionable fool with metal-health issues? No . . . he just wielded the weapons; the 'Establishment' killed her, and particularly the right-wing, small-c conservative, reactionaries, those U-Kippers and Tories in the Shires, you and yours Prime Minister, you and yours.

People are saying they 'didn't know there were people like Joe Cox in parliament', yet why would they when in instances like that of the current referendum, reactionary gits like the over-privileged Rees-Mogg are allowed (and encouraged by the media, by the BBC) to crawl out from under whatever rock they've been hiding under since their last fascist diner-party scandal and rehabilitate themselves by talking about the issue as if they are to be trusted and respected, when they probably should've been sacked and jailed for fraud 7 years ago! How many times has he been interviewed on the BBC in the last six weeks, how many times was Joe Cox?

 

I wrote this on Sunday but choose not to publish it yesterday, as making political points out of such a tragedy is pretty low, but from lunchtime Sunday onward, all sides have been doing just that! Yesterday (Monday) everybody had a point to make with a political angle, so here's mine.

Both sides in the Brexit debate (not a word it deserves; there has been NO debate) have been inexorably escalating the rhetoric and with it the lies, neither side questions the other with rational logic, they just throw more metaphorical rocks at the opposition, people in the street haven't the faintest idea what to vote for or why; people have been interviewed who've changed their minds three times in the last two months and with four days to go are now undecided, the first firm stance they've taken!

Intelligent people know that to stay with the devil you know is infinitely preferable to the alternative, but most people aren't that intelligent . . . 100 years of compulsory 'education', 50 years of tabloid journalism and nearly 40 years of your kind of politics have ensured that! Your 'shouty' rhetoric panders to the ignorant, and the right-wing press reinforce false values and perceptions.

The rot that lead to Joe Cox' death, goes back a long way, but since you came to power in 2010 it has escalated drastically, you yourself - Prime Minister; have made the most hideous comments on migrant 'swarms' and the 'scrounging' unemployed 'something-for-nothings', you have been a cheerleader for intolerance, isolation and the selfish agenda.

Intolerance stalks the land, bottom-line profit-margins have replaced responsible State funding-for-need, the 'other' has become a legitimate target for vitriol, whether our own poor, jobless, elderly or disabled, other countries war-refugees or the victims of despots we call 'friends of Britain' and to whom we supply arms and suppressive 'law-enforcement' equipment.

Selfishness among the 'haves' has increased the anger of the 'have-nots'. You - Prime Minister - have turned a blind-eye to UKIP's nasty form of little-Englander language, aimed squarely at those very angry have-nots, allowed Boris the buffoon to build a power-base, you've given jobs to the back-stabber's IDS and Gove and you've joined the race to the bottom on Brexit rhetoric.

It must be acknowledged that you've been helped by a toothless BBC and a right-wing media happy to go further than you on anti-migration rhetoric, xenophobic comments on our European neighbours, out-and-out lies about our own lower-class citizens and the likely economic results of a Brexit.

It is fair to point out that you (collectively as an establishment) didn't 'do a Trump' and try to immediately make political capital out of the death, but you did spent the next few days hand wringing, pretending that the causal problem lay elsewhere and all standing about together like you are all mates...by Sunday afternoon though: you were all back to slinging Euromud at each other!

The Scottish did have a proper 'debate' some 80% of the population educated themselves as to the issues and likely outcomes for over a year, in the event it was close, but a high turn-out ensured the result was taken as a result.

In this debate, in England particularly and therefore in the national press there are no facts, no measured or nuanced explanations of the true position on Euro-funding, contributions, regulation, democratic procedures,  migration vs. pension provision, fisheries, EU Social Fund input, nothing, just shouty-men, day-in, day-out, shouting about a mythical £350-million!

Whatever the outcome on Thursday, we will be facing a General Election before August has set over the yard-arm (something I predicted in May last year), and you - Prime minister - will be toast, a thought which sustains me through the dark days you have driven-us to, but soured by the fact that whether here or gone, you've got some of Joe Cox's blood on your hands.

Dear Prime Minister

Got your leaflet the other day, in fact we've had several....there's nothing in them! Large print sloganeering and text 'sound bites', vast generalisations, seemingly designed to scare rather than educate. It's almost as if you secretly want to lose? Or - at least - aren't too bothered if we do get out of Europe.

I also listened to that Mr. Grayling supping at the temple of arselikens this weekend, that was amusing; he clearly thinks we are likely to stay in now and is desperate to curry favour with you in the event that he and his mob are left out in the cold, his description of you as the man for the job left me wondering if the child of God had returned, unannounced, and was quietly leading the Tory party!

To paraphrase (the Outie): 'In or Out, my mate Dave, my very best mate Dave that wot I love like a brother and respect like Mother Teresa is the only man to lead any negotiations; evv'errr!'

Well...if we get out, France will shit on us from a great height, they never wanted us to join  in the first place and secondly: Germany won't be minded to stop them. Using Norway's figures as an example we would pay more as 'Outies' to remain within the EU trading frameworks than we pay as 'Innies'.

While if we stay in, you can kiss goodbye to whatever - un-ratified - 'changes' you think you obtained the other day! Writ in stone? They're writ in wet sand, you really are an inadequate cockwomble!

Dear Prime Minister

The third main point of the Outies; as I'm sure you're aware - you just appear to have decided not to address it? - is as follows:

“Not 1 job is at risk from Brexit”

This was forcibly stated by Lord Digby Jones, the former Director General of the CBI and ex Minister of State for Trade and Investment.

He observed how Britain will secure a free-trade agreement with the EU immediately following Brexit ensuring no disruption to trade. (Sunday Politics, 31st January 2016)

Now this is an obvious lie, not least because the day after an out vote all the MEP's would be out of a job, all the British EU commissioners and other appointees would be on two-years notice to quit, their support staff - secretariats, researchers, translators &etc, would also be looking at a two-year phase-out, with the first going at the end of the month.

However I know they mean 'other' jobs, rather than the thousands hinted at in the above paragraph, and the truth is that there would be plenty of job losses, BMW/Rolls-Royce as good as told their workforce that last week.

Also quoting an self-declared Outie, himself spouting-off on the 'Telly' with the usual self-publicity of those who believe their own hype is hardly to be regarded as unbiased, evidence-based research, is it?

The second sentence is particularly fine - as an example of propaganda; he observed? Immediately? Ensuring no disruption? What - he went forward to the future did he? The EU have made it increasingly clear there is no such certainty, indeed, some national leaders have hinted that A) They'd make it very hard to negotiate any kind of deal, and B) they'd make sure it hurt!

Image

 

Yet you continue with your vague economic-nightmare scenario 'scare tactic'? Counter this stuff with proper facts; there are lots of middle-aged, lower middle-class, tabloid-reading, more-likely-to-vote  idiots, sat down the pub muttering to each other over their beers, believing this stuff without possessing the intellectual tools to realise it's just reinforcing their prejudices!

The most important decision we will make in the next 30, 40...50 years and the Innies are just not getting the message across? Pull your finger out of that pigs-arse you've probably got it in and get the truth out there, or the Outies will ensure you'll be on the scrap-heap of history before July! The [only] sliver-lining of a successful out vote!

Yours etc...

Dear Prime Minister

Having looked yesterday at the first - rather weak - reason for the Outies to believe we'd be better-off out of Europe, I though we might as well dwell on reason two today, it's another one you and yours aren't countering with the adequacy we the people should expect, but then we've pretty much established you're inadequate, and we're only four posts in!

Here it is…reason two for why we should slink away from Europe and hide under a rock, a BRITISH rock, craft-painted with the union flag by a member of the WI:

EU Membership contributions costs

Britain £14.5 billion a year

Added to this, the cost of EU Regulations hinder 95% of UK businesses – the top

100 EU Regulations cost the UK economy a staggering £33.3 billion a year.

 

Less than 5% of UK businesses trade directly with the

EU, but have to adhere to all EU Directives.

 

As an added incentive following Brexit, Britain would be able to

sign its own trade deals with the rest of the world.

The main point ignores the fact that we got €6.3b back in direct payments, straight away (€3.1b to farmers alone), with many more millions coming after as 'hidden' payments, where would IDS and the likes of the DWP and their private contractors be without the European Social Fund paying for training? All those courses in book-keeping, computing, remedial maths and English, food service, Health and Safety, fire safety, first aid, basic catering and care-work, introductions to marketing, telesales, using a chainsaw, a fork-lift &etc.

€1.1bn in research grants, road building, subsidised youth programmes, cultural efforts, environmental and forestry grants; all paid for by Europe, our money being redistributed to..err…us! Also the Outie website has turned the € sign to a £ sign...increasing the apparent 'bill' substantially! Why haven't the advertising standards watchdogs corrected that? The adjusted figure is less than that which you're stealing from the benefits pot and pensions!

If the austerity-cuts and associated behaviour of your government and the previous coalition are followed to their logical (ideological?) conclusions, we have to assume that if we were out of the EU, you wouldn't use that €14.5b (2013 figures - I believe), to replace the lost support provided by it, you would see the hill-farmers starve, cut the courses, tell business to find the money, give the police, armed-forces and senior civil-servants a modest salary-rise, award yourselves another 10% increase, spending the rest on tax-cuts for high-earners and subsidised fracking!

The first sub-'clause' is probably the funniest, 100% of all regulations hinder me, that's their point! If UK business is avoiding 5% they're doing well! But then they say it's just the cost that hinders? All a bit odd, if you ask me.

As the Outies haven't costed their second claim, we'll ignore it for now, I will return to it when I've dug a little deeper, but…really? A third of a trillion-squid? Per year? Why aren't you countering this crap on the front page of the Times, Prime Minister?

The next bit is a fascinating example of how to use statistics…it is said that approximately 50% of our trade - as a country - is with the EU (the BRICs taking 7%), if that is only being done by 5% of businesses, we need only worry about what those 5% think? If the letter sent to employees by BMW-Rolls Royce this week is anything to go by; staying in the EU is the way to please that 5% and one has to wonder what (the Outies want us to believe) the other 95% are complaining about.

The truth is most of them have no real thoughts on the subject, beyond the vague little-Englander stuff they get from the media - and your own stranger-danger, meddling Brussels, anti-migration, 'scrounger' rhetoric.

Some genuinely don't care - a cake shop in the Midlands supplying a small market town with err…cakes, isn't going to be remotely bothered by the EU, except in so far as EU regulations help ensure that food hygiene and workers rights are kept to moderate levels.

And that's where we get to one of the big truths behind the small-c, parochial, reactionaries who make-up the Outies, they want to be free to throw out food hygiene regulation, they want to remove safety equipment from building sites, they want to spray toxic crap on our fields until there are no birds left, they want to frack (as do you) and…they want to pay their workforce fuck-all for a 50, 60, 70 hour week, until (if the headlines of the last 48 hours are to be believed) they drop-dead at their desk/machine somewhere near their 78th birthday!

The staggering irony there - of course - is that automation is going to render half the population unemployed over the next 25 years and none of you, from any party, are daring to address that elephant in the room?

So to the last sub-clause of the Outies 2nd main point for exiting the EU: that we will return to our 'glorious past' as an independent, trading-nation, busily engaged in commerce with the rest of the world:

• Those 5% of companies that do the 50% of the UK's trade - with Europe - would simply re-locate as much as they could TO Europe!
• The US is doing deals with Europe; it's not going to start faffing around separately dealing with a country in turmoil, its money-markets at rock-bottom while Scotland rightly demands a second referendum in the background?
• Canada and Australasia are lost - as major markets - to the US and Asia-Pacific, respectively.
• China has gone on record as saying "… that Britain is not a major global power..." and that "... the UK is not a big power in the eyes of the Chinese. It is just an old European country apt for travel and study."
• The rest of Asia and India want to sell us stuff, not buy it.
• Brazil's economy is struggling...and in the political sphere it sides with Argentina on other matters...
• South Africa is a mess, nearing bankruptcy, the rest of Africa...?
• Central America, the Middle East?
• That leaves...Russia...and North Korea!

Without Europe, we are nothing, and we only joined when we realised that. The EEC, now the EU and eventually; the 'United States of Europe' are only anthropological steps on the road to a world government, as a single species of dumb monkey slowly comes together; working either to escape to the stars from the mess it will leave behind, or to try and mend the mess it's made, before it goes extinct.

Yours etc...

 

PS - In today's papers I see; you're letting them question your figures! Inadequate cockwombles the lot of you, Innies and Outies...more on that anon...

Dear Prime Minister

The reason I constantly (and consistently) call you an inadequate cockwomble, is because I see through the smarmy snake-oil sales act and see a cockwomble in action, and because you are clearly far too inadequate to lead a country. Lucky for you that the electorate are so devoid of political intelligence or maturity, they vote for you huh? Although only a minority actually voted for you - one in five was it?

Case in point: The first of the three main thrusts of the 'Out-ie's' arguments for leaving the European Union is as follows…[I quote directly from their website (which is much easier to find through Google than the 'In-ie's' site?)]…

Bring Back UK Democracy

The unelected European Commission which runs the EU,

regularly rejects attempts by Britain to reform the Union.

Since 1996 – when records began – the UK has never

managed to block a single piece of EU legislation.

Mr Prime Minister: there are dozens of ways of disassembling this statement, dozens of ways of proving it wrong, yet all you do is persist with your scare-tactics of economic disaster or mass migration, neither of which is that likely; a slow trickle of immigrants to a slowly dying economy is the more likely truth. Probably balanced - or overshadowed - by an emigration crisis of the 'brain-drain' type…there's your next scare story!

Meanwhile, people like me, listened to by…err…no one…have to unpack the out'ie propaganda, while you inadequately fiddle with yourself like a snuffling cockwomble.

Firstly, the "Unelected European Commission" regularly rejects attempts by ALL the member-states to reform the Union, that requires those member-states to come together to change the EC, something which - I believe - is in the pipeline. Not for one of its main members to petulantly throw all its toys out of the pram and walk off muttering 'It's not fair, the Daily Wail says it's not fair'.

While the second point is interesting isn't it? We joined the EEC in the early 1970's, yet they've taken a date of 1996 as their starting point? Well, call me a genius if you have to, but I recon records exist prior to 1996? What is the true picture? I'm sure I remember us blocking all sorts of things. The Maggii made it her summit-sport of choice!

 

Oh look! here's one...I happen not to agree with it (only a cockwomble would force-through pro-fossil fuel stuff in the 21st century), but it's there none the less!

You, and your campaign should be pointing-out these things, you should be countering this sort of bias, you should be telling us the truth - simple people believe simple stuff, and with schools (public and private) turning-out illiterates, more that a hundred years after to introduction of universal, compulsory education, there are a lot of simple people at the feet of Westminster's benches! Some of them seem to come from Eton, and to be sitting on those benches!

Yours etc…