Tag Archives: US

June 6, 2018 · 00:54

Save Our Soul, Keep Theresa May As Prime Minister Plus Customs Union

Hello

No Prime Minister is ever popular, as there are self-serving Cabinet members ready to take the role.  It is disgraceful that the new Home Secretary caved in to a suggestion to join the guys in the Cabinet.  Lobbyists may be  trying to destroy our democracy. Have they been investigated?  Do we know where they come from?

Mrs May is doing a fine job, which is generally thankless.  Thank you.  You have stood up for businesses and for the existing export route via Customs. Before the EU/Common Market, if anyone can remember, we had petty rivalries with the French. They refused our beef, so we went tit-for-tat and refused entry to the UK of their lamb.  We cannot afford to have that happen, with every product.

If it is true that 75% of our exports go to the EU, then we must preserve a fast-track Customs between us. 75%. 3/4, most of our trade. We will put our businesses out of business!

If it is also true that the UK would run out of food within days of no Customs Union, then we are doomed. Unless others in Cabinet put aside their wishes to pursue new  and perhaps lucrative Customs deals with countries outside the Commonwealth. The country and your constituents need you to stand with the Prime Minister.

Those who wish to make Customs Unions  with the USA should talk to Tesco. They had their fingers severely burnt after diving into the American market.   Fiercely, maybe half of the USA think the UK is in Europe and only as part of a tour.  Read not interested.

I don’t care whether there are splits within the Conservative Party. They don’t matter. Food does.  You have to keep happy every person who contributes to our GDP, from steel* to utilities to every person in a strained NHS, who turns up to work day in day out.

 

LucyLou

  • Don’t get me started on a ridiculous attempt at the US choosing to be introverted. Their problem is that they cannot manufacture the type of steel that we sell to them. £300 million odd? When we had an Empire, we sent our citizens to teach people in other countries how to trade with us.  We could offer the same to the US? Outrageous? So is chlorinated chicken.

 

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April 11, 2018 · 00:37

Pride Comes Before A Fall

Senior UK Civil Servants and politicians must eat humble pie.  We are the tiniest of countries, compared with the US and post-Brexit, we will be of no account, unless we stick by our democracy and our principles.

UK law says that you cannot go to war unless you have parliamentary approval.  It does actually beggar belief that Parliament is on holiday, whilst the US tries to start World War III.  Mr Trump is not a fan of the UN and appears to think he is above international law and beyond them.  They are simply not as fast as Twitter.

Who knows, if by next week, he will want to use our forces in Cyprus (peaceful for 44 years, since the Turks invaded Cyprus), to launch US weapons of mass destruction?  Then his hands will not be soiled by war.

The delay in asking Parliament to vote for military action may save us.  At least, it will give us some time whilst we recall Parliament. Mr Trump has cancelled a state visit to South America.  Come back UK politicians, whatever hue, before Mrs May bows down to Trump and allows US planes to refuel on Cyprus.

Has anyone asked for Cyprians’ thoughts on being used to incite war?  If chemical weapons are being used on the children in Syria, then a reprisal to Cyprus would be made with a shrug of the shoulders. British citizens should leave immediately.

That the US sent home 60 Russian diplomats is perhaps in proportion to the size of country. We cannot be trumped by the US in Syria.  It is so much better to wait for the UN, whose peacekeepers work globally. It is a peculiar triumvirate here: the US, France and Britain against the world. We are signed-up members of the UN and NATO.  What does France achieve out of this? We all know that Mr Trump thinks he is leader of the world; maybe a misunderstanding, he should be a world leader.

It is also unhelpful for a former UK Prime Minister to advocate war when he made such a hash of it last time. No weapons of mass destruction, (the reason for our entry to war), were found in the desert and we were left with loss of such brave soldiers.  They must be given the respect of going to war, if the UN agrees and not on a Twitter whim.

So, to the Civil Servants: it is up to you to persuade your departments’ politicians to wait. Who is behind the chemical attack? I do not often agree with Jeremy Corbyn, yet here he is right about waiting for an investigation into the chemical weapons’ attack.  Then we can perhaps save some of the children.  Going blindly into war helps no-one and last time under Tony Blair, it did not work.

It is weird, under a Conservative government, to even consider going to war without the democratic decision of Parliament.  To a believer in democracy, it is worrying.

As a note off the subject, the US wants us to change our trading principles so that they can sell us chickens washed in chlorine. Give over; we’ve seen the scary smiles.

Lucy Lou

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October 11, 2017 · 07:03

Take the Americans to task, before they obliterate our trade

Hello

We cannot slump out of Brexit, just because it seems too hard.  It has always been the case that an exit on any subject involves a British law or one that needs to be made.  Presumably, MEP’s are pulling their weight and helping to disentangle us.

The reality of building inland lorry parks before they can begin to transit UK Customs means fewer exports.  This is why we must stay in the Customs Union.  I do not understand why this is a sticking point as the EU will have the same trouble exporting here.  The worst case scenario is that they dismiss the UK market, as import levies and traffic-choked roads is too expensive and time-consuming.

Ah, why not have a Premium Service, which will fast-track regular importers and exporters?  This is designed to keep hauliers in business from Dover.

So what is the UK as a business entity?

We trade with the EU and across the world.  They trade back with us.

Our Financial Analysts are the best in the world (according to ‘The Times’, 8 October 2017).  Companies are ignoring Goldman Sachs slipping away to Switzerland and digging in their heels here, in greater numbers. Great, thank you.

Start-up companies increase year-on-year.

Manufacturing reduces in public spats like the US Department of Commerce, which has temporarily slapped a 220% import tariff on C-series jets to be sold to Delta Airlines, in the US.

The US aircraft company, Boeing, complained to its government at what it saw as unfair subsidy by the British and Canadian governments.  Since all multi-billion projects have inward investment, the complaint looks unfair, to put it mildly.  And that is the problem; we are being too meek, unsure of which way Donald Trump will jump.

A word for the Irish company,Bombardier’s 4,000 highly-skilled workers who make the wings of the aircraft.  Their highly specialised jobs are at risk and for every worker, there are apparently four outsourcing jobs which rely on them.  Northern Ireland needs the UK government to object more strongly.

Sir Michael Fallon, Defence Secretary, said:

“Boeing is a major defence partner and one of the big winners of the latest defence review, so this is not the kind of behaviour we expect from a long-term partner.”

We cannot have Northern Ireland’s economy take a dive, as we are worried about upsetting our American partners.  Hello?  They don’t want to be partners anymore.  The special relationship does not exist in the brain of Donald Trump.  We have to object, or better still, take the Defence Review apart and see where else we can give out contracts instead of to the US.  This attempt by Boeing, which has doubtless had US government subsidies before, to extinguish a competitor, reveals an inward-looking attitude.  This is bad news for trade.

Boeing is one problem.  The import tariff exacerbates it.  The short- and long-term trade with the US, shows where their heart is: in the US.  Britain has been disrespected as a trading partner. They cannot be allowed to get away with it.  Otherwise Boeing is only the beginning.

LucyLou

 

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September 29, 2017 · 08:30

A Worldwide Failure in Computer Check-Ins – 28/09/2017

Hello Everyone

Does no-one see this as a warning?  Last time this happened, a young man was sent to jail, extradited from Britain to the US, because he infiltrated their computer systems.  But he saved the world and hackers everywhere are rightly angry.  We need them on our side.  How about putting them to work on the space race?

Someone is practising disruption or testing a system.  Maybe they think that ‘network problems’, cited  everywhere by software company, Amadeus, will mean less concentration on security, so as to get harassed passengers off the ground.

It shows me that there should be at least one desk at check-in where passengers are processed manually, not a computer in sight.  It is then the customer’s decision whether or not to use a manual check-in desk. It depends on what section of the market appeals most to a particular airline. If a section of airline passengers worry excessively over travelling, that should determine the airline’s response.

The response to a threat is always to keep customers safe and broadly give them, with respect, the experience they want.  War is irrelevant in this context.

LucyLou

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July 10, 2017 · 00:24

Ronald Reagan’s Jellybeans & The US/UK Special Relationship

 

It would easy to criticize the way that President Ronald Reagan, USA,  did things, but now seventeen years after he left Office, his legacy of charm with fair-mindedness prevails.

For instance, every journalist of the twenty or so foreign newspapers lined up to see him, be asked to take a jellybean.  If you ate it you would have been in a pickle.  He used them as a way of being fair to everyone and not giving one person favouritism over another.

I will see the person with the yellow jelltybean.”

I remember thinking that was daft, but it is actually very fair.

One day he made these tough, global journalists laugh.  He said that he had written John Major, Prime Minister at the time (1990 – 1997) a ‘Dear John’ letter.  The British people present fell about laughing!  Okay, I can see that some of you will be bewildered, so let me explain.  Before the advent of email, if a girl sent a gentleman a letter, starting ‘Dear John’, it meant she wanted to dump him, excise him from her life.  Ronald Reagan was appalled and ever the fair-minded gentleman that he was, he uttered those seemingly immortal words:

“No, no.  The US and the UK have a special relationship.”

So it has been for 27 years.

Enter Theresa May who was captured on camera by the BBC, wondering where she should stand for the G20 members’ photograph.  She was alone; no-one else was there.  Why wasn’t she talking with anybody?  Angela Merkel and Francois Marcon were seen talking to her earlier in the G20 Summit.  (Fishing policy is the first policy to change, so that was good news before the Summit.  I am almost dreading her view on the G20 Summit.)

Enter Donald Trump, whose paltry excuse for not coming to see us during his world tour, was that he did not want to be booed.   He certainly got his comeuppance from anti-establishment demonstrators in Hamburg.  It seems that he has no political sympathisers old enough to remind him about the special relationship with the UK and he obviously sees us as a bit-player on the world stage.  He is mature enough to possibly blame the Scots who refused to take down a windfarm out at sea, as it destroyed the view from the golf course he wanted to build.

He should be reminded that the special relationship revolved around the American bases parked in our country, as part of their refuelling and firing strategy between the US and Russia. I never was keen on being the first country to be hit, should Mr Trump decide to press the red nuclear button.

Personally I think we should join the Trans-Pacific Alliance as soon as possible.  Let us consolidate our relationships within Europe, yet take other relationships  elsewhere.  Canada and Australia have both issued invitations.  I hope that we accept with grace.  The person who somehow thought it politic to mention Norway’s deal with the EU should be put in the stocks.

LucyLou

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