** The Brexit Thread ** - 'Brexit Means Brexit'

[bovlomov]

Quite a few university vice-chancellors get more than half a million quid a year. Local authority chief executives get nearly as much.

Of all the things wrong with the EU, this seems like small fry. Closer to home, we are about to get as PM a person paid £5000 a week to cobble together a few lies for the Daily Telegraph, and who gets hundreds of thousands a year for standing on a stage telling lies, all the while 'earning' an MP's salary (with expenses).

[reohn2]

Maybe the anaolgy is more like being offered a bike, billed as top notch & ensuring stunning performance (but as yet unseen) free of charge. Not only that you've been told there is a cashback offer that you will also benefit from.

Once you've signed up there are worrying reports that the bike isn't all that it is cracked up to be, possibly not even roadworthy without considerable work & the cashback has mysteriously morphed into a sizeable charge.

Probably a more acurate analogy

[bovlomov]

Maybe the anaolgy is more like being offered a bike, billed as top notch & ensuring stunning performance (but as yet unseen) free of charge. Not only that you've been told there is a cashback offer that you will also benefit from.

Once you've signed up there are worrying reports that the bike isn't all that it is cracked up to be, possibly not even roadworthy without considerable work & the cashback has mysteriously morphed into a sizeable charge.

Probably a more acurate analogy

Or like those blokes who go around in vans, stopping to offer unsuspecting members of the public cheap TVs. They show you the top of the range flat screen TV, and after taking your money they give you a box and drive off. When you get home and open the box, it has nothing inside but a few house bricks. Your mate did warn you about the scam, but you believed the blokes in the van instead, even though they were obviously coked out of their heads and there was blood all over the windscreen of the van, and one of the blokes looked like Boris Johnson and the other one looked like Dominic Raab, and you'd seen their faces on Crimewatch the night before, and they'd told you the TV does all the voltages, up to a thousand, and it has stereotronic sound and a high demolition screen 'great for watching porn'.

...and they were towing a caravan full of nazis.

[mercalia]

Quite a few university vice-chancellors get more than half a million quid a year. Local authority chief executives get nearly as much.

Of all the things wrong with the EU, this seems like small fry. Closer to home, we are about to get as PM a person paid £5000 a week to cobble together a few lies for the Daily Telegraph, and who gets hundreds of thousands a year for standing on a stage telling lies, all the while 'earning' an MP's salary (with expenses).

but tax payers dont pay those sums?

[bovlomov]

Quite a few university vice-chancellors get more than half a million quid a year. Local authority chief executives get nearly as much.

Of all the things wrong with the EU, this seems like small fry. Closer to home, we are about to get as PM a person paid £5000 a week to cobble together a few lies for the Daily Telegraph, and who gets hundreds of thousands a year for standing on a stage telling lies, all the while 'earning' an MP's salary (with expenses).

but tax payers dont pay those sums?

Universities and Local authorities get public funds. And the public pays for Johnson to represent the people of Uxbridge, while he spends most of his time on his other jobs.

True - only Telegraph readers pay that part of his income. Do people pay to hear him lie? I don't know - perhaps they get it on expenses, with tax breaks.

[mr bajokoses]

It's clear from the last few posts on here and on the leadership thread that Boris Johnson is the obvious choice to unify the country...


... just not in the way he is telling us he will.

[bovlomov]

It's clear from the last few posts on here and on the leadership thread that Boris Johnson is the obvious choice to unify the country...


... just not in the way he is telling us he will.

Imagine if he became PM and then lost his seat. His majority in Uxbridge is about 5000. I would have thought that would make him vulnerable to tactical voting, especially as he has peed off a lot of Asians in the past couple of years.

[mr bajokoses]

It's clear from the last few posts on here and on the leadership thread that Boris Johnson is the obvious choice to unify the country...


... just not in the way he is telling us he will.

Imagine if he became PM and then lost his seat. His majority in Uxbridge is about 5000. I would have thought that would make him vulnerable to tactical voting, especially as he has peed off a lot of Asians in the past couple of years.

I imagine that beneath Johnson's bluster and bluff, he knows he is being backed into a corner. I think he recognised the impossibility of the situation in 2016 and was happy to see May drink from the poisoned chalice.

Nothing of the little he has said about his plans is possible, or makes any sense when questioned. He is not so stupid that he doesn't know he is lying.

Eddie Mair has the measure of him:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhV_UdO6ztQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqz6H0Crbm8.

Losing his seat might be a relief for him in the end.

Happily for non-fans of Boris, whatever happens next Johnson is going to fail, catastrophically. It's just a shame the whole country has to pay the price of his ambition.

[mjr]

Imagine if he became PM and then lost his seat. His majority in Uxbridge is about 5000. I would have thought that would make him vulnerable to tactical voting, especially as he has peed off a lot of Asians in the past couple of years.

Technically, he could continue as PM even then although you would suspect he'd probably have lost the confidence of his party and the country by that point! There is no requirement for any minister to be a sitting MP, even if that is usual now, or even a Lord, although as PM he could nominate himself as a life peer. In the UK, it could cause problems because parliament can't hold ministers to account unless they're MPs or Lords, but I think unelected ministers have held office in France amongst others and they get special permission of some sort to enter parliament to be scrutinised. Dominique de Villepin was a recent unelected PM of France, while Mario Monti was an unelected PM of Italy, although appointed Senator for Life a few days before taking office.

[mjr]

Of all the things wrong with the EU, this seems like small fry. Closer to home, we are about to get as PM a person paid £5000 a week to cobble together a few lies for the Daily Telegraph, and who gets hundreds of thousands a year for standing on a stage telling lies, all the while 'earning' an MP's salary (with expenses).

I agree. The UK doesn't generally pay severance packages to its ministers, so we get disproportionate numbers of rich toffs who can afford not to take another conflicting job immediately and of politicians going through the so-called "revolving door" between ministry and consultancy made notorious by the various "cash for access" and "cash for questions" scandals over the years.

Wouldn't it be better if the UK kept ex-ministers on the payroll for a while to discourage them from perverting our democracy like that?

[kwackers]

Wouldn't it be better if the UK kept ex-ministers on the payroll for a while to discourage them from perverting our democracy like that?

Perhaps we should just treat each replacement as a coup.
When they get removed they're taken away and shot.

Problem solved.
No payoff, no danger of subverting democracy and with the added bonus of them trying a bit harder whilst they're in power (and of course the chance to get rid of BoJo permanently).

[merseymouth]

Hello all, Life in the old Brexit thread yet?
I seem to recall examples of other countries that took measures to try and stop the fat cats get fatter when in power. One country weighed the leader on a regular basis to stop them living high on the hog! How many M.P.'s would survive that?
But better still where the wealth of the leader was checked before and after office to try and stop pocket lining!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
But regarding high renumeration packages I can see a benefit for profit based concerns but surely not appropriate for most other fat cats.
Examples have regularly been posted. Keep it clean folk, or suffer the dreaded Sanction! IGICB MM

[mercalia]

do ex PMs get some kind of svererance payment? or what is their pension entltement? if it is serious money would be worth being PM for a few months to just get the cash?

[Spinners]

Perhaps we should just treat each replacement as a coup.
When they get removed they're taken away and shot.

Problem solved.
No payoff, no danger of subverting democracy and with the added bonus of them trying a bit harder whilst they're in power (and of course the chance to get rid of BoJo permanently).

You are Jo Brand and I claim my five pounds.

[kwackers]

You are Jo Brand and I claim my five pounds.

I was going to mention the Jo Brandesq nature of my post but I figured it was too obvious.