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Post by wookeywombat on Nov 23, 2022 16:17:22 GMT 1
Ever felt we are back to square one with Teresa May being held to ransom by the ERG group. Plus ca change.
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Post by northwestman on Nov 23, 2022 16:53:04 GMT 1
Once described as “the most influential [research group] in recent political history”, the ERG is part-funded by subscriptions from MPs’ office budgets – with each MP paying £2,000 a year out of the public purse for access to briefings and materials.
The ERG was seen as a driving force behind the arguments for a hard Brexit, as well as an organisational base for hard-right MPs through its WhatsApp group, meetings, and members’ media appearances.
It was described as “instrumental” in defeating then Prime Minister Theresa May’s efforts to find a compromise deal and subsequent pressure that forced her to resign. Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg boasted at the time that the ERG was “the opposition” to May and her Chequers agreement.
According to filings to the expenses watchdog, the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA), the ERG had 35 members in 2020-21. Byline Times’ analysis also reveals that, since 2016, 64 Conservative MPs have been paying members of the group.
ERG Members 2020/21.
Adam Holloway
Andrea Jenkyns
Andrew Bridgen
Andrew Lewer
Anne Morris
Bernard Jenkin
Bill Cash
Brendan Clarke-Smith
Chris Green
Craig Mackinlay
Crispin Blunt
Danny Kruger
David Jones
Dehenna Davison
Desmond Swayne
Greg Smith
Iain Duncan Smith
Jacob Rees-Mogg
John Whittingdale
Jonathan Gullis
Laurence Robertson
Lee Anderson
Marco Longhi
Mark Francois
Michael Fabricant
Owen Paterson
Paul Bristow
Pauline Latham
Richard Drax
Robert Courts
Robin Millar
Sarah Dines
Sheryll Murray
Steve Baker
Tom Hunt
Other Tory MPs who’ve been members since 2016:
Bim Afolami
Mike B Wood
Suella Braverman
Jonathan Djanogly
Nadine Dorries
James Duddridge
Charlie Elphicke
David Gauke
Michael Gove
James Gray
Chris Grayling
Chris Heaton-Harris
Gerald Howarth
Stewart Jackson
Sajid Javid
Andrea Leadsom
Edward Leigh
Peter Lilley
Tim Loughton
Kit Malthouse
Stephen McPartland
Nigel Mills
Penny Mordaunt
David Nuttall
Priti Patel
Michael Tomlinson
Martin Vickers
David Warburton
Bill Wiggin
Byline Times.
Elphicke (jailed), Paterson (resigned) and Warburton (suspended) can be discounted, but there are some interesting names in those lists. Gauke was kicked out by Johnson.
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Post by northwestman on Nov 27, 2022 20:00:12 GMT 1
www.theguardian.com/society/2022/nov/27/brexit-worsened-shortage-nhs-doctors-euBrexit has worsened the UK’s acute shortage of doctors in key areas of care and led to more than 4,000 European doctors choosing not to work in the NHS, research reveals. The disclosure comes as growing numbers of medics quit in disillusionment at their relentlessly busy working lives in the increasingly overstretched health service. Official figures show the NHS in England alone has vacancies for 10,582 physicians. Britain has 4,285 fewer European doctors than if the rising numbers who were coming before the Brexit vote in 2016 had been maintained since then, according to analysis by the Nuffield Trust health thinktank which it has shared with the Guardian. In 2021, a total of 37,035 medics from the EU and European free trade area (EFTA) were working in the UK. However, there would have been 41,320 – or 4,285 more – if the decision to leave the EU had not triggered a “slowdown” in medical recruitment from the EU and the EFTA quartet of Norway, Iceland, Switzerland and Lichtenstein. The dropoff has left four major types of medical specialities that have longstanding doctor shortages – anaesthetics, children, psychiatry, and heart and lung treatment – failing to keep up with a demand for care heightened by Covid and an ageing population.
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Post by northwestman on Dec 1, 2022 10:39:11 GMT 1
www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/dec/01/brexit-added-nearly-6bn-to-uk-food-bills-in-two-years-research-findsBrexit added almost £6bn to UK food bills in the two years to the end of 2021, affecting poorest households the most, research has found. The cost of food imported from the EU shot up because of extra red tape, adding £210 to the average household food bills over 2020 and 2021, London School of Economics (LSE) researchers discovered. As low-income families spend a greater share of their income on food, the impact of Brexit on their purchases was disproportionately greater, they said.
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Post by wookeywombat on Dec 2, 2022 9:13:33 GMT 1
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Post by northwestman on Dec 12, 2022 10:13:46 GMT 1
www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/dec/12/watchdog-reprimands-tories-over-800bn-post-brexit-trade-deals-claimThe official statistics watchdog has reprimanded the Conservatives for claiming the UK had secured £800bn in “new free trade deals” since leaving the EU, saying the figure includes deals rolled over from before Brexit. The UK Statistics Authority (UKSA) said it had written to the Tories about the infographic, shared last month by Michael Gove among others, also warning that the party should provide sources for such figures in the future. Now we need the UKSA to examine Sunak's ridiculous claim that meeting all the unions' pay demands would cost every family in the UK £1,000 a year. www.bbc.co.uk/news/63917967
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Post by staffordshrew on Dec 12, 2022 16:43:19 GMT 1
www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/dec/12/watchdog-reprimands-tories-over-800bn-post-brexit-trade-deals-claimThe official statistics watchdog has reprimanded the Conservatives for claiming the UK had secured £800bn in “new free trade deals” since leaving the EU, saying the figure includes deals rolled over from before Brexit. The UK Statistics Authority (UKSA) said it had written to the Tories about the infographic, shared last month by Michael Gove among others, also warning that the party should provide sources for such figures in the future. Now we need the UKSA to examine Sunak's ridiculous claim that meeting all the unions' pay demands would cost every family in the UK £1,000 a year. www.bbc.co.uk/news/63917967 Expect the BBC are not far off
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Post by northwestman on Dec 18, 2022 14:07:09 GMT 1
www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/dec/18/anger-brexit-tories-red-wall-conservatives-reform-uk-party-immigrationNot a penny of the £350m a week that Johnson said Brexit would release for the health service has ever been seen. Increasingly, the whole Brexit endeavour is viewed by business leaders and economists as a self-inflicted disaster that has severely weakened the British economy, despite continued claims to the contrary by former Brexit opportunities minister Jacob Rees-Mogg on the BBC’s Question Time last week. For Brexiters who followed Johnson, it was not supposed to be like this. He had promised them a new dawn of independence, deregulation, prosperity based on global trade deals and lower taxes. Instead, the reality is one of diminishing UK influence, dud trade deals or none at all (notably with the US), extra bureaucracy, reduced exports, lower gross domestic product and higher taxes. Across much of the red wall, there is disillusion with Labour as well as the Tories. Lynne Dunning has lived nearby in the former mining village of Goldthorpe, eight miles from Barnsley, for 47 years. “People feel abandoned by both parties,” she says. “And I voted for Brexit, but what we’ve got isn’t what people voted for. It doesn’t seem to have happened as it was promised. I think a lot of people feel like that.”
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Post by northwestman on Dec 18, 2022 15:31:07 GMT 1
Getting out from this lot was clearly a benefit of Brexit, but not one for our MEPs it would seem! www.politico.eu/article/european-union-scandal-parliament-qatar/MEPs make a gross salary of about €9,400 a month, but they’re also allowed to hold second (and third and fourth and …) jobs. And about a quarter of MEPs do just that, according to a 2021 Transparency International EU analysis. One lawmaker — Italy’s Sandro Gozi — had 20 side hustles, raking in at least €360,000 a year (and perhaps twice that), according to his voluntary financial declarations. An aide to Gozi later said these disclosures had been filed incorrectly and the numbers shown were not accurate. The most recent figures show Gozi wears 13 extra hats, earning up to €5,988 a year. This, noted Transparency International, opens the door to all sorts of conflicts of interest. For example, the watchdog cited Miapetra Kumpula-Natri, a Finnish Socialist “who holds paid positions on the boards of two energy companies in her home country while serving as a Member of the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy.” On top of their salaries, MEPs receive a monthly €4,700 travel allowance and a €4,800 “general expenditure allowance.” This is intended to be spent on things like office rental, internet connections and the organization of meetings — but nobody knows whether it is. In October, the Parliament’s leadership voted to no longer require MEPs to provide receipts for the money they spent. “It’s not about relaxing the rules, it’s about improving transparency and accountability,” a Parliament spokesperson told POLITICO at the time. MEPs have also resisted calls to report all their meetings with outside lobbyists. It’s only required for committee heads and rapporteurs — and those requirements have inconsistent compliance rates. On top of that, so-called friendship groups — often operated by embassies of foreign countries and interest groups — create a willing audience to receive perks and propaganda through junkets. |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 18, 2022 19:36:20 GMT 1
Getting out from this lot was clearly a benefit of Brexit, but not one for our MEPs it would seem! www.politico.eu/article/european-union-scandal-parliament-qatar/MEPs make a gross salary of about €9,400 a month, but they’re also allowed to hold second (and third and fourth and …) jobs. And about a quarter of MEPs do just that, according to a 2021 Transparency International EU analysis. One lawmaker — Italy’s Sandro Gozi — had 20 side hustles, raking in at least €360,000 a year (and perhaps twice that), according to his voluntary financial declarations. An aide to Gozi later said these disclosures had been filed incorrectly and the numbers shown were not accurate. The most recent figures show Gozi wears 13 extra hats, earning up to €5,988 a year. This, noted Transparency International, opens the door to all sorts of conflicts of interest. For example, the watchdog cited Miapetra Kumpula-Natri, a Finnish Socialist “who holds paid positions on the boards of two energy companies in her home country while serving as a Member of the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy.” On top of their salaries, MEPs receive a monthly €4,700 travel allowance and a €4,800 “general expenditure allowance.” This is intended to be spent on things like office rental, internet connections and the organization of meetings — but nobody knows whether it is. In October, the Parliament’s leadership voted to no longer require MEPs to provide receipts for the money they spent. “It’s not about relaxing the rules, it’s about improving transparency and accountability,” a Parliament spokesperson told POLITICO at the time. MEPs have also resisted calls to report all their meetings with outside lobbyists. It’s only required for committee heads and rapporteurs — and those requirements have inconsistent compliance rates. On top of that, so-called friendship groups — often operated by embassies of foreign countries and interest groups — create a willing audience to receive perks and propaganda through junkets. Perhaps it would also be worth looking closer to home before anyone in this country starts throwing any stones.
Former education secretary Gavin Williamson took on a role in June as chairman of the advisory board of RTC Education Ltd, a private education group whose chairman Maurizio Bragagni and chief executive Selva Pankaj are major Conservative party donors. Williamson was set to earn £50,000 a year for a total of 80 hours’ work. The Observer understands he left the role in October after he was offered a position in Rishi Sunak’s cabinet, from which he has since resigned after bullying allegations. Former social care minister Caroline Dinenage was appointed in March as an independent non-executive director of LNT Care Developments Group, a residential care home developer and constructor, a role worth £30,000 a year for 15 hours’ work a month. LNT Care Developments Group founder and racing tycoon Dr Lawrence Tomlinson has donated at least £91,000 to the Conservatives and individual Tory MPs since 2017 directly and through LNT, according to the electoral commission.
Former universities minister Chris Skidmore saw his outside income rise from £10,960 to more than £62,000, thanks to a quadrupling of his salary from Oxford International Education Group, a private company that links foreign students with UK universities, when he was made a non-executive director in May.
Ex-transport secretary Chris Grayling earned £100,840 from outside work, largely from remaining in his £100,000 a year role as adviser to shipping company Hutchison Ports, for which he does seven hours of work a week.
Former attorney general Cox earned more than £1m in fees as a barrister, while Tory MP Fiona Bruce earned £281,415 from her legal work with Fiona Bruce and Co LLP.
Cox faced accusations last year of a conflict of interest, after it was revealed he had lobbied against tougher financial regulation on the Cayman Islands while earning tens of thousands of pounds from legal firms based in the tax haven.
Apart from Cox and Bruce, the highest earners included former prime minister Theresa May and former and current ministers John Redwood, Andrew Mitchell and John Hayes, who all listed six-figure earnings in the last year.
I don't of many people that can justify a wage of £100k a year for 7 hours work a week, must be nice to be so fantastic at your job that someone like Grayling can earn that, considering that he handed a contract worth £13.8m to a ferry company without a single ferry to their name.
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Post by servernaside on Dec 19, 2022 19:46:22 GMT 1
Good to see all the lefties on this politics forum enjoying each other's ill-informed echos.
Meanwhile, back outside in the real world.
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Post by kenwood on Dec 19, 2022 21:28:31 GMT 1
Good to see all the lefties on this politics forum enjoying each other's ill-informed echos. Meanwhile, back outside in the real world. Yes, back outside in the real world things are going to plan just as Johnson and others such as Gove and Rees-Mogg said they would . Don’t know how anyone could say anything else , it’s all been an absolute roaring success hasn’t it. I really enjoy you and others of a similar ilk enjoying each other’s well informed echoes . Yes, you’ve shown us the way , otherwise we would all be in dire straights wouldn’t we . Those sunlit uplands are certainly glowing , shining bright . How could we ever think differently .👍 |
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Post by wookeywombat on Dec 20, 2022 12:22:40 GMT 1
Good to see all the lefties on this politics forum enjoying each other's ill-informed echos. Meanwhile, back outside in the real world. Brexit was never a question of left versus right and I am really surprised that you hadn't realised that. |
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Post by northwestman on Dec 21, 2022 13:54:11 GMT 1
Has Brexit been a success for Britain?
Economically? No. The growth and trade opportunities have rarely been worse. The outlook for the next decade is poor specifically because of the costs of Brexit. The government’s own office predicts that Brexit reduces our trade by about 4%.
Has it united the nation around a common vision? No. More the opposite. The nation is politically more divided than ever, and there’s at least a possibility that the union will break apart.
Has it controlled immigration? No. Immigration has actually risen.
Have we seen wages rise for British workers now they don’t compete with Europeans? No
Has it reduced the burdens on the NHS? No. The loss of EU workers has left the NHS desperately short-staffed. The waiting times are longer than before.
Has it restored British sovereignty? No. UK businesses still have to meet EU regulations to export to our existing markets. We just have no say in what those regulations are. European nations have always had sovereignty.
Has it saved British Fisheries and Farmers? No. It has made it far more difficult for them to export and they are worse-off now than before.
Didn’t it mean our vaccine roll out was faster than in Europe? No. EU nations were always free to roll out independently of the vaccines authority. Romania is in the EU and acted independently.
Has it saved all that money it used to cost us to be members? No. We are now giving more money to the EU to repay existing obligations. The loss of trade is costing us far more than the membership contributions ever did.
Quora.
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Post by martinshrew on Dec 21, 2022 14:03:55 GMT 1
Have we seen wages rise for British workers now they don’t compete with Europeans? No Couldn't read on past this, that's completely untrue. Lorry drivers is just one tiny example? |
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Post by northwestman on Dec 21, 2022 14:34:19 GMT 1
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Post by northwestman on Dec 22, 2022 9:44:42 GMT 1
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Post by northwestman on Jan 1, 2023 21:09:35 GMT 1
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/01/wreckage-of-brexit-politicians-denialThis year will mark the 50th anniversary of a musical masterpiece that continues to speak illuminating truths about the impossibility of the human condition, and how people from these islands tend to cope with it. Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side Of The Moon was released in March 1973, as the last traces of postwar optimism gave way to mounting economic strife and international tension. The response it offered was twofold: a call to empathy and mutual understanding, and the pointing-out of a national trait that this writer – among many others – has probably quoted far too much. It comes nearly six minutes into a song simply called Time: “Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.” As a new political year begins, those nine words seem more apposite than ever, and they snugly fit one defining fact of our national predicament: that the wreckage of Brexit is all around us but our politicians will still not acknowledge it. The evidence now encompasses reduced trade, diminished investment and the fact that the UK has been the only major economy not to have returned to its pre-pandemic size. Brexit has resulted in a hit to tax revenues estimated at an annual £40bn – enough to have prevented 75% of the spending cuts and tax rises that were announced in November.
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Post by staffordshrew on Jan 8, 2023 14:42:41 GMT 1
So Brexit is said to account for 75% of the cuts in Hunt's emergency budget. Truss' errors surely easily account for the other 25%.
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Post by northwestman on Feb 5, 2023 12:40:37 GMT 1
www.theguardian.com/business/2023/feb/05/it-is-hard-to-admit-being-wrong-but-brexit-voters-are-doing-so-in-droves The majority of respondents to recent surveys now believe the nation was wrong to vote for Brexit, and a tidy majority would like to rejoin the European Union. Admitting one is wrong is not a natural inclination; but in the case of Brexit many leavers have the reasonable excuse that they were woefully misled by a gang of lying charlatans. A powerful condemnation of this bunch was made recently by the well-known City of London figure Guy Hands – a former Tory donor – when he told the BBC Today Programme that Brexit was “a complete disaster” and “a bunch of total lies … the biggest issue about it, and you can take the Brexit bus as a good example, is the lies that Boris Johnson and the Conservative party told about the NHS. In fact, what they did was throw the country and the NHS under the bus.” The biggest factor accounting for the inflation, trade and growth differential between the UK and comparable economies – which have all, of course, been hit by Covid, gas prices and higher interest rates – is Brexit.
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Post by Valerioch on Feb 5, 2023 13:24:33 GMT 1
Guardian 😂
I’m yet to meet 1 single person in the real world who voted leave who has now changed their mind
Leaver and proud of it
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Post by northwestman on Feb 5, 2023 18:20:27 GMT 1
Guardian 😂 I’m yet to meet 1 single person in the real world who voted leave who has now changed their mind Leaver and proud of it Another Guardian article for your perusal. www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/05/britain-brexit-liz-truss-keir-starmerIn reality, Brexit’s arrival has caused supply chain disruptions, staffing shortages, higher food prices and extra red tape for business. Public opinion is shifting towards remorse. Instead of hurtling away from the EU into the swaggering prosperity promised by the Leave campaign, Britain is instead receding into a dark timeline of recession, strikes, and political instability. Last week, it was forecast that Britain will be the only G7 economy to shrink in 2023. But the truth is that Britain was broken way before Brexit. What Brexit did was heap pressure on a country already struggling with weak public infrastructure and stagnant wages, mainly by limiting the labour market and diminishing volumes of trade. It is because Britain was breaking that Brexit happened in the first place. |
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Post by kenwood on Feb 5, 2023 23:48:57 GMT 1
What I find particularly interesting is that David David commented that we would all be buying him champagne in 10 years time when we realise the benefits of Brexit .
Don’t remember the 10 year time line being written on the side of a bus ?
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Post by staffordshrew on Feb 6, 2023 12:31:28 GMT 1
Guardian 😂 I’m yet to meet 1 single person in the real world who voted leave who has now changed their mind Leaver and proud of it You need to get out more  |
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Post by sheltonsalopian on Feb 7, 2023 10:52:02 GMT 1
Guardian 😂 I’m yet to meet 1 single person in the real world who voted leave who has now changed their mind Leaver and proud of it I voted leave and changed my mind |
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Post by martinshrew on Feb 7, 2023 13:48:53 GMT 1
Guardian 😂 I’m yet to meet 1 single person in the real world who voted leave who has now changed their mind Leaver and proud of it I voted leave and changed my mind Is it based on a true change of opinion, or because this government have made a b******s of it? |
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Post by Deleted on Feb 8, 2023 7:27:22 GMT 1
I voted leave and changed my mind Is it based on a true change of opinion, or because this government have made a b******s of it?I think that might be the main reason that many people have changed their minds.
People were sold on sunlit uplands, cutting immigration, £350m every week for the NHS, a Norway type deal, fishing rights and a multitude of other things, none of which have come to pass. Labour, The LibDems, the Greens, the SNP and Plaid Cymru all attempted to get Theresa May to discuss the way forward and come up with a consensus with which to enter negotiations with the EU. Instead she pushed them all away and declared that 'no deal is better than a bad deal'. Prior to that 'no deal' hadn't even been an option, but as soon as she uttered those words 'no deal' became the default position and any meaningful negotiation was done with.
Instead we got blue passports (which we could have had anyway), a new trade deal with Japan that is actually not as good as the new deal that the EU negotiated with Japan, people like Crispin Odey making many millions of pounds by shorting Stirling, reduced trade with our nearest neighbours and the largest trading bloc in the world. Funny how some of the biggest names in the Brexit campaign aren't affected too badly by it, Johnson can move to the USA if he so desires, Farage has a German wife so can live there or anywhere else in the EU if he chooses, Rees Mogg moved his investment firm to Ireland straight after the vote.
The Tories are attempting to change many of the laws and rules that were brought in by the EU, many of which are there to protect the likes of you and me. They also want to leave the European Court of Human Rights. Now from my point of view if someone wants to leave the ECHR it implies that they are hoping to do something that the said court might disapprove of. That isn't something to aspire to IMO. It might only be deporting refugees and asylum seekers to Rwanda this week, but you have to wonder what it will be next week or the week after.
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Post by sheltonsalopian on Feb 8, 2023 13:35:14 GMT 1
I voted leave and changed my mind Is it based on a true change of opinion, or because this government have made a b******s of it? When I voted leave I had just come out of Uni, didn't have a job, didn't think it would make much of a difference and just copied my parents. Now I work for a business that has the majority of its market share with Europe and deal with europeans daily I just think it was a mistake, we're alot more alike then I thought. I've also grown up a bit, own a property etc so the economy is a lot more important to me then it was when I voted originally. |
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Post by staffordshrew on Feb 8, 2023 14:08:38 GMT 1
Have we seen wages rise for British workers now they don’t compete with Europeans? No Couldn't read on past this, that's completely untrue. Lorry drivers is just one tiny example? The rest I agree with, but that one is a moot point, lack of EU migrant workers has put up wages in certain low paid sectors.
The probem is we have swapped EU migrants for boat migrants, who are not even allowed to work and continue to cost the country millions to keep them in hotels.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 9, 2023 7:25:31 GMT 1
Good to see all the lefties on this politics forum enjoying each other's ill-informed echos. Meanwhile, back outside in the real world. I voted leave and changed my mind Is it based on a true change of opinion, or because this government have made a b******s of it? Two views from posters on the right of the B&A political spectrum that sum up the problems with Brexit.
One near as damn blaming us lefties for not making Brexit a raging success. The other admitting that the Tories have made monumental screw up after monumental screw up.
I have stated previously that I could have actually got behind a sane Brexit that delivered on just some of the promises and ideas that the Vote Leave and Leave EU campaigns offered, things like the £350million a week to the NHS, a Norway type deal, remaining in the Customs Union or Single Market, even reduced or targeted immigration.
The vote was close, nigh on 50% of the population was going be *ed off the day after the vote, but no-one in power saw fit to consider the 48% that lost, they just gloated that we lost and should get over it. That is no way to build any sort of consensus and work towards fixing the divisions in the country, instead they took that frustration on the remain side and turned it into anger and resentment. I'm not suggesting that had the result gone the other way that the Remain side would have been any more inclusive, but I hope that they would have at least recognised the divisions within the country and tried to reconcile them to some extent.
There was no left right divide on Brexit, many Labour MPs stood alongside their Tory counterparts on both sides of the campaign. The Red Wall fell to the Tories because Johnson turned many traditional Labour voters heads with his 'Get Brexit Done' slogan. If Brexit hadn't been on the ballot again in 2019 there would not have been an 80 seat majority. Johnson's purge of pro-EU or anti-Brexit MPs before the election also ensured that should there be any opposition to the Bill it would not come from his side of the house. The funny thing is that even by 2019, 3 1/2 years after the Brexit vote the Tories only managed to get 43.6% of the popular vote, up from Theresa May's 42.4%. Hardly the ringing endorsement of the 'Get Brexit Done' mantra.
Getting Brexit done hasn't made my life better, in fact I doubt you could find many people for whom life is substantially better, the odd millionaire or hedge fund manager maybe, a water company CEO who can now get away with dumping raw sewage into our rivers and onto our beaches, the people traffickers along the French coast are doing pretty well out it too, but for the average Joe/Jo there has been little, if any tangible benefit.
I personally know life long Labour voters that voted to leave, but I also know lifelong Tories that saw that it was a mistake to leave. Christ on a bike if the vote had been 5 or 6 years earlier I would have been in the Leave camp, but after 6 years of Tory austerity I knew that our best chance remained in being a part of the EU. If nothing else I could sell up and move to somewhere sunny and warm. Thanks to Brexit I can't even do that any more.
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