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'The fish rots from the head down’: Britain Be Warned!
Enough is Enough! Let Us Reclaim our Country and Free Ourselves from the Chains and Shackles of Foolishness, Deceit, Lies, Corruption and Sleaze. We will all fall if the Head is Rotten. Carpe Diem!
Boris Johnson, this cheating and lying ‘Posh Boy’ is the latest author and architect of the decline of Britain’s moral compass, a nation engulfed in Corruption and Sleaze.
Illustration by Chris Riddell, The Guardian, 6 November 2021
‘Sleaze has become a defining aspect of Boris Johnson’s politics. Britain deserves better.’...‘Boris Johnson’s handling of the Owen Paterson affair merely confirms what we already knew of Johnson: that he is a man utterly lacking in integrity, with no regard for standards in public life…’-The Observer view on No 10’s handling of the Owen Paterson affair, Sunday 7 November 2021
See also: Return of the sleazy party: the Conservatives and the Owen Paterson affair
Boris Johnson’s contempt for integrity is at the rotten heart of the Paterson affair
‘Britain is living through the most profound crisis it has faced in modern peacetime. Its politics are dysfunctional, its society badly fractured and its economy weakened. The UK union is imperilled. The Conservative party’s answer is to put a second-rate huckster in 10 Downing Street. Mr Johnson scorns truth and is blind to ethics.’- Philip Stephens, contributing editor, Financial Times
“Selfish, ill-disciplined, shambolic, shameless clot”,... “a clown, a self-centered ego, an embarrassing buffoon, with an untidy mind and sub-zero diplomatic judgement”,...”an international stain on our reputation”- Sir Alan Duncan on who and what Boris Johnson is.
'TRUTH is important in politics. Never more so than today, when huge issues are at stake affecting the lives of every voter and the future of the nation and the world. Political deceit is a form of theft. When people or businesses get money by deceit they face criminal charges. When politicians win power by deceit they can do vastly more harm, but face no penalty at all. Our rulers expect us to comply with their laws and decrees, to pay the taxes they devise, to make the sacrifices they exhort on us, even sometimes to die in war...'-Peter Oborne, British journalist and broadcaster, and former chief political commentator of The Daily Telegraph, from which he resigned in 2015.
‘Boris Johnson is a cavorting charlatan who will be an unfunny joke as PM’-Max Hastings was Boris Johnson's boss at the Daily Telegraph
"I wrote three years ago that, if Boris Johnson ever achieved his ambition to become prime minister, Britain would forgo any claim to be considered a serious country". "I stick with that" | Max Hastings/Via The Times on Twitter
I recall reading Max Hastings' article three years ago. Given what has happened since, he was correct then, and is correct now. He warned the country, and the country did not heed him; and now Britain under Boris is walking the walk to global humiliation and self-destruction. See below for more.
‘Shameful’, ‘Politically Corrupt’, ‘Trashing the Reputation of Parliament”, ...John Major, former prime minister, on Johnson and his government- The Guardian
‘The attempt to scrap the parliamentary standards system is the latest example of a slide into corruption and moral bankruptcy’... ‘The Tories reveal yet again their belief that the rules are for little people, not for them’...’It is no surprise that Tory MPs – including the two most senior law officers, the attorney and solicitor general – lined up to trash the rule of law and undermine our democracy. They also sought to threaten the standards commissioner with the sack for having the temerity to do her job’...- David Lammy, shadow lord chancellor and shadow justice secretary.
‘Like one of Fitzgerald’s characters, the PM is so insulated by privilege that he will never see the wreckage strewn behind him.’-Aditya Chakrabortty, The Guardian
‘Corruption in Britain has reached new heights under Boris Johnson’s government.’-Martin Fletcher, the New Statesman
“O, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive!”- Sir Walter Scott
The Fooling of a Nation!
Boris and the Big Lies!
Why the Man With No Moral Compass Is Unfit For Public Office
Nota bene
We, the people, who voted for this man, cannot remain blameless. We were given ample warnings, and decided to ignore them. Carpe Diem!
‘Boris Johnson is a cavorting charlatan who will be an unfunny joke as PM’-Max Hastings was Boris Johnson's boss at the Daily Telegraph
Boris Johnson with Max Hastings in 2002. Photo: Nigel Howard/ANL/Rex Features, via The Guardian
Read what Max Hastings was warning us about: I was Boris Johnson’s boss: he is utterly unfit to be prime minister
What a pity that the nation did not listen to Mr. Hastings.
However, we can repent and redeem ourselves this time around!
Max Hastings is showing us the path on how to get rid of this ‘cavorting charlatan’ before he causes irreversible costs and consequences.
‘For his sake, and Britain’s, now is the time for Boris Johnson to ride off into the sunset’
‘He could resume his career as an entertainer and we might get a PM worthy of the office.’
Read the path to redemption HERE
And Now Lest We Forget
We did not listen to Max Hastings and see what has happened to our country and our cherished values.
Moreover, pity Boris Johnson Johnson that he did not listen to me either!
In April 2020 I wrote an open letter to him asking him to become a man for the common good, now that he had survived hospitalisation with COVID-19 complications and been given a second chance to do some good with his new lease of life.
It is better to discover late than never.
Yes, it is true Mr. Johnson, there are things in life such as society, community, love, kindness, compassion, caring, gratitude and more.
'Life is not about money, money and more money, cost-cutting, outsourcing, targets, bonuses, shareholders value, privatisation, deregulation, marketisation and such likes only, as your party via your neoliberal agenda has been telling us since the early 1980s. Life is far more complicated than what we think it is, as you have now discovered for yourself. This must never be forgotten...'
Dear Mr. Johnson, your Covid-19 survival must become a force for good
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The UK’s business rates system is “uneconomical, unsustainable and frankly unintelligible” and reform of
the property-based tax “cannot come soon enough”.- John Allan, the president of the CBI employers group, 2019
'The answer to business rates? A tax on land'
This was the heading of a letter to the editor of the Guardian which captured my attention. Due to its significance to the plight and struggles of the retail sector, I wish to quote it in some details:
‘Britain’s business leaders are demonstrably the modern Bourbons, forgetting nothing and learning nothing. They permanently complain about the manifest iniquities of business rates, but completely fail to grasp the obvious alternative despite it being regularly set out and available for more than a hundred years (Retailers warn budget will cause ‘unnecessary loss’ of jobs and shops, 27 October).
Very simply – one taxes land, not property. When one reads of property prices rising it is not that bricks and mortar have increased in value but the land. Why? Because they stopped making it aeons ago and its supply is limited. Also, the value of a site is largely dependent on the planning permission it holds, i.e. the decision of the public authority. The value of my house in Leeds is double what it would be if one applied general inflation rather than land value inflation. Why should I have this potential windfall?
If a business increases its profitability it is penalised by an increase in its business rate, whereas taxing land encourages its profitable use as its valuation is on its “maximum permitted use”. Furthermore, taxing property encourages huge enterprises and many public utilities to hold land banks for future use because they pay nothing in rates. Taxing land values discourages such unprofitable holdings and encourages their use. Spreading the tax base reduces the rate of tax charged.
The practicalities of valuing land are relatively straightforward, even with transitional arrangements during a changeover. The switch lacks only the political will to introduce it. It became Liberal party policy in 1893 and Lloyd George put it into his radical 1909 budget, only to see it defeated in the Lords. It is high time the Confederation of British Industry, Chambers of Commerce and other organisations for business stopped mere complaining and put all their weight behind this much overdue change.’- Michael Meadowcroft, Leeds, (The Guardian 1 November 2021)
Now, the pertinent question at this moment is, what is a tax on land?
I was introduced to this fascinating topic years ago by my friend and editor, Anthony Werene, editor-in-chief, Shepheard-Walwyn Publishers, London.
I had recorded this in a short piece I had written in 2017, which I highly recommend as a short introduction to land value taxation (LVT).
Would Henry George’s ‘Remedy’ help us combat today’s global crises?
Anthony Werner, Editor-in-Chief, Shepheard-Walwyn Publishers, London, UK
‘In Progress and Poverty[1] Henry George sought the ‘cause of industrial depressions and the increase of want with the increase of wealth’ and offered a ‘remedy’ which remains as relevant to the problems of poverty and inequality we face today, as when he first wrote, but it also opens a new way of dealing with environmental pollution.
To understand the relevance of the ‘remedy’ we need to understand what causes poverty and inequality. The cause is institutionalised, just as slavery once was…’-Continue to read
For more reading on Henry Gerorge please see:
GLOBALISATION FOR THE COMMON GOOD, Chapter 5, ‘Promised Land Revisited: A Philosophy for a Progressive and Just Society’.
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Then the most remarkable thing happened and the First Dog on the Moon* got hold of the plan first!
Photo:B&T
As for the leaking of the plan, to my mind, It must have been an inside job!
Photo: Via The Guardian/ Twitter/Trendsmap (*The ‘Plan’ by The First Dog on the Moon was first published
in The Guardian on 27 October 2021)
And Now for Your Perusal a Really Fantastic Plan to Save the World
Glasgow 2021 Where We Hope to Rediscover Our Imagination and Build a Better World
The GCGI Call to COP26: Make COP26 The Dawn of a New Beginning
Photo:IwmBuzz
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