'Swivel Eyed' Brussels is 'Away with the Fairies' on Brexit

Mainland Brits and the Irish have been coming to terms with each other for around a thousand years. We both have a certain amount of experience. We both have skin in the game. We're both going for a solution that pretty much leaves the border exactly as it is. All of which has prompted the crude Brussels thugs and Berlaymont bullies to fling insults at us again last week. If they seriously think we're stupid enough to trade peace and mutual benefit for protecting the EU's tax coffers, they are away with the fairies. It simply won't happen. 

The Guardian reports that senior EU clerks have been 'eye rolling' over the border issue; I suppose this is the same as being swivel-eyed. And they're certainly lunatic if they imagine either we or Eire will change our positions.  

Negotiations start again on Monday, and the Federast freaks have pompously declared they will be producing an end-of-term report to opine on whether the UK has submitted sufficiently quietly to the Empire's demands. The answer, as we all already know, will be negative. 

Failing the EU's exam will be a singular mark of success for our negotiating team and they should be rewarded at this point; greeting cards, tributes from the floor of the Commons, a crowd-funded champagne fund, a ticker tape reception for the Eurostar carrying them home are all possibilities. 

However, the half time whistle has not yet blown - and we must knuckle down at this critical stage of the game and ensure that we DO fail their crooked little tests in the next few weeks.

Judicial competence

This is a post in praise of the EU. Or maybe to the UK's influence in having introduced to sclerotic and protectionist Europe just a little of the many advantages in terms of access to justice that we enjoy in the UK.

Austria, like much of Europe, has no commercial law small claims procedure. To resolve an intractable contract dispute here, even a small one, means each side lawyering-up at €300/hr for even the most mediocre and least competent of lawyers and a full court hearing before career commercial judges. Contrast with the UK, in which claims for up to £10,000 (£1,000 for personal injury and landlord/tenant) are dealt with under the small claims track of civil procedure, often called small claims courts or county courts, in which an experienced local solicitor often sits as Recorder. Legal costs are not claimable, and court fees are fixed in advance. 

Well, the EU has introduced a cross-Europe small claims track, and you can sense the dragging of the vast protectionist hulk of Euronational self-interest in opposition to it. For a start, the limit is €5,000. And it only applies to disputes with persons or firms in other EU countries. Otherwise, it's remarkably like our own small claims procedure. It's invaluable to anyone doing business with Germans, who have still to discover how customer relations works. I buy a lot of building material online from German firms - they tend to be 30% cheaper than local Austrian outlets for the same materials - and of course from time to time there are problems. 

I ordered two WCs for the en-suites from a German firm. One was broken in transit and they went back to the firm without reaching me. A UK firm would have said "Tut mir leid Herr Raedwald we've broken one of your WCs. We can't get another for three weeks. So if it's OK we'll send you the good one now and the other when they come into stock. And we'll give you a £50 online voucher by way of apology". 

The German way? "One of your WCs has been broken and we can't replace it until September. If you want the other one now, that will be an additional €90 carriage." Well, I wasn't happy. The emails went back and forth until the Germans smugly responded "And what are you going to do about it?" whereupon I sent them my draft of the EU claim form, requesting also that the case be heard near to me in Austria, by an Austrian court, this option being available for consumers when dealing with foreign firms. 

The result? No online voucher - they haven't learnt that much - but a surly confirmation that my intact WC was on its way. Free of additional charge.   

Pulling down statues

Those engaging in the current orgy of statue-toppling need to be aware of the rules of the sport. I publish an extract below;

"... statues in public places are classified into three classes, as below

CLASS I - Erected by dictators, rulers, absolute monarchs, depicting themselves in poses of vainglorious pomposity. E.g. Saddam Hussein. These may be torn down, abused, insulted and destroyed without further consideration

CLASS II - Erected by public subscription, private societies, arselicking subordinates, official bodies using tax money, depicting their private hero or heroine in a public place, or a living figure with whom they seek to curry favour. These should in the first instance be offered back to their erectors to be re-sited on private land. Secondly they should be moved to some obscure location out of the public eye. E.g. Embankment Gardens in London, home to naff, unwanted, outdated or obscure bits of public statuary removed from the streets. Here they are planted deep in shrub beds in which ivy can gracefully cover them. Or the huge park in Budapest at the top of Andrassy Ut, around Vajdahunyad castle, to which all the city's communist-era brutalist statuary have been moved. Marx in the woods.  

CLASS III - Erected by popular demand to honour true national heroes to commemorate victories or glorious defeats, or feats of statecraft or heroism, statues of dogs, whimsical statues having a place in public consciousness. These should under no circumstances be removed but rather protected and preserved. E.g. Nelson, Churchill in Parliament Square, Cromwell outside Westminster Palace, Greyfriars Bobby, Manikin Pis. 

Statues of classes II or III should under no circumstances be threatened by racial or religious crowds or mobs incited by specious rhetoric, incendiary bluster, mass ignorance or sheer stupidity. ..."

There.  

Yet more lies from the False News BBC

Booker details in the Telegraph the heinous falsification of historical fact on Kirsty Wark's Newsnight. The lie propagated in the programme was that the 2m deaths upon partition - Hindu on Muslim, Sikh on Muslim, Muslim on Hindu and Sikh, rape, murder and carnage - were all the fault of the British for partitioning the Indian Empire into India and East and West Pakistan. 

No doubt this is not just BBC fake news but the lies are taught in schools to children of Indian and Pakistani immigrants. 

As Booker points out, it was the Muslim leader Jinnah who refused to accept a single nation and insisted on lines on a map dividing Hindu India from Muslim Pakistan and which led directly to an ocean of blood and 2m slaughtered across the subcontinent. 

Even the BBC cannot get away with telling a lie this big.