Election Communication From Mr Toad...

Toot toot!

What we need is a majority government...

It might have terrible plans for your future but it will get them done...

Letter from a lady who is not married to a spy

Hi Anthony —

There is currently no law to protect British nationals abroad.

As a British citizen, you or your loved one could be away on a holiday, a business trip or visiting family and you could be arrested and imprisoned. There is no guarantee that the UK Government will step up to protect you or your family.

This gap in the law is how my dear husband Matt - an innocent young man, was detained last year in the UAE after a two-week research trip for his doctoral thesis at Durham University. He spent 7 months of hell, held in solitary confinement, in state-led extrajudicial conditions.

I’m writing to you now to ask you to sign a new petition calling for a law that could have helped stop Matt and I going through a year of heartbreak and separation.

Sign now with a single click

During his imprisonment, Matt was heavily interrogated without access to a lawyer, forced to stand shackled for up to 15 hours at a time, force-fed an unhealthy cocktail of medication without the consent of an independent medical assessment. As a consequence, he is still dependent on said medications today - a year after having been released.

In some countries they have a law which means every citizen has the right to protection if they are imprisoned abroad - this law might have been a life-saver for our family.

Sign now with a single click

At first I thought Matt’s situation was exceptional, but right now there are over 2000 British people imprisoned overseas - and there is no guarantee the Government will do anything to support them.

That’s why I am working with other families who have had loved ones unfairly detained, to launch a campaign calling for the Prime Minister to give UK citizens, like you and me, the right to protection - will you sign?

Sign now with a single click

Since we launched the campaign, we’ve had over 250,000 people sign our petition and those voices have helped us get national media and a commitment in Labour’s manifesto.

We’re trying to get a commitment from every political party, so that no matter who wins the election we know the next Government will do more to protect British citizens like my husband.

Thanks for reading,
Daniella.

Daniella

According to your husband

"For years, I had been researching the United Arab Emirates’ national-security strategy, a subject I was well versed in—I had previously worked in the country’s defense and security sector, often on the same topic as my thesis. Before leaving for the Gulf, I submitted my research plans to Durham University, where I was getting my doctoral degree. The school’s third-party risk-assessment firm found nothing sensitive with my plans and cleared me for travel to the UAE from both an ethical and a safety standpoint."

Call my attitude to life cavalier but for some reason I feel I have to say that I do not feel overly worried that there is no guarantee that the UK Government will step up to protect me or my family from being imprisoned for spying whilst visiting an undemocratic state to investigate their security arrangements . 

Thank you for contacting my about this clearly important matter.  It is obviously very important that Parliamentary time is spent passing laws to regulate what goes on in other countries.

Thanks again

Anthony Miller

Another leaflet today…

Another leaflet today… in this one Sarah Jones informs us sagely that it is a two horse race in Croydon and to underline that point only two horses are shown.   

In other election news I watched the Prime Ministerial debate... 

Surrounded by a set of interlocking hexagon shapes that looked as though it had escaped from the interior of Jodie Whittaker’s Tardis both candidates stood at podiums and were suitably Prime Ministerial as the specially selected plebs were allowed to ask their pre-prepared questions.  One really wants one of them to switch a question at the very last minute to throw the candidates and Nick Robinson but then unrealised dreams are like that…  Both Nick and the candidates had what appeared to be a huge button on their podium but no one pressed it so we'll never know what it did...

Boris enjoyed himself immensely by repeating his slogan “get Brexit done” repeatedly at random intervals while staring down the barrel of the camera like he was reading the autoqueue on Have I Got News For You.  Jeremy came over well as well calmly making remarks about how manufacturing industry were a bit worried about their last minute supply chains but he didn’t manage to make it sound very worrying.  Boris stuck to his main theme that Jeremy is both indecisive and a reckless fanatic and Jeremy stuck to his theme that Boris is both callous and a dishonest fanatic.  Probably the most interesting question was when someone asked what should happen to politicians who lie during election campaigns.  Boris gave a suitably colourful grandiose answer while Jeremy assured us that if politicians lied during an election campaign the democratic solution to that was another election.  No one mentioned Boris’s illegal suspension of Parliament or lying to the Queen.  I think it was Harold Wilson who said “a week is a long time in politics but last month in an eon.”

What is up Michael Gove's nose in this photo? Is it nostril hair or bogies?

I'm trying to decide how to vote and I need the answer to this crucial question. What is up Michael Gove's nose in this photo? Is it nostril hair or bogies?

I thought your colour was meant to be blue?

Christmas at Croydon Village Outlet...

Fire Brigade Union Points Finger At Lib Dems / Tories

https://twitter.com/fbunational/status/1200670812338053120?s=09

More propaganda

Today's leaflets are from the Liberal Democrats.... Clearly positioning themselves as the Stop Brexit Party...

... and Ester Sutton of the Greens clearly positioning themselves as Yes to Europe... And... Well... green.

Neither of them have got a hope here but I suppose it's the taking part and splitting the vote that counts.

Corbyn's nodding donkeys...

I'm not saying that the Labour party is rapidy dematerialising up Corbyn's posterior but...

“…it isn’t fair to heap the cost of the climate emergency onto the nurse, the builder or the energy worker” so under Labour “the big oil and gas corporations that profit from heating up our planet will shoulder the burden and pay their fair share” so says Jeremy Corbyn in his defence of the £11bn windfall tax he is intending to impose on the UK oil industry.   

Because, of course, the nurses, builders and energy workers are not responsible for energy consumption – it is entirely the fault of the upstream industry.  It is those who do the dirty work who do not have lilly white carbon free hands.

“North Sea oil and gas production has been hugely profitable for UK continental shelf oil and gas companies which, between 1997 and 2018, made a net operating surplus of £273 billion” says the party.  Perhaps but what’s past is the past.  If the government wanted to tax the industry during the boom years then it should have done it then when the money existed.  Since the OPEC price war of 2015 the price of oil has halved and the industry is only worth £5bn.  When I point this out people just say that “Labour’s policies are costed”.  But £5bn - £11bn = -£6bn … so they are written down but that doesn’t mean that they are costed …if they were costed that equation would come out at =£0.

Also the £273bn quoted is the production surplus for 19 years making the yearly figure £14bn … even £14bn -£11bn = £2bn so in a poor year the industry would go into the negative … When you need a Tardis to implement your tax policies it’s time to give up…

Still, it’s this nonsense or the Tories taking the £ off a cliff with their Hard Brexit plans.  Choices choices.

The longer I’ve been round the oil industry the more I’ve come to realise that there is only one eternal truth.  Oil wealth never made anybody happy…

I saw a documentary the other day about plastic waste ending up at the bottom of the ocean and began to wonder if future geologists will talk about “the plastic layer”.  “This was formed 5,000,000 years ago when a species called homo sapiens dug up the oil and turned it into long polymer chains and threw it back into the sea.”

Interestingly in the Labour manifesto there’s also a commitment to build more nuclear power stations to bridge the energy gap.  Mind that elephant in the room…

Corby says that “the next Labour government will create a Just Transition Fund, paid for by a new windfall tax on these corporations. The Fund will, in particular, provide an expected £11 billion support package for nearly 37,000 oil and gas workers, the 126,000 people in jobs dependent on the sector and their communities to make the transition to a clean economy.”  The problem is that the £11b is going to be taken from the oil industry to give the money back to oil industry workers which seems something of a positive feedback loop.  Tax our jobs to create us new jobs.  Except that tax alone cannot create jobs… so how would this even work?

“The size and precise scheme of the tax to pay for the Fund will be determined after consultation and a comprehensive assessment of what is necessary.” 

Says the manifestio … but we know it must equal at least £11bn because that’s stated earlier.  So how will it work.

“The tax will have no effect on prices for consumers at the pump as oil prices are determined by a global market.”

So we’re just going to tax the ailing UK oil industry and buy in our oil from abroad?  Also while you can source oil from elsewhere it’s not as easy to source gas from elsewhere …it’s most economical to burn it close to where it was drilled since by the nature of gas being gas it’s not easy to store…

Sigh… Oh well they did ask me if I would help write the manifesto and I said "no, busy".  

More fool me.

Ode to the ban on Bollocks to Brexit Stickers

Brexit has only got one ball,
Nigel has two but very small,
Johnson has got no Johnson
and poor old Ress Mogg has no nob at all...

Oh well if it doesn't work out ...

Oh well if it doesn't work out for Jeremy Corbyn and he doesn't get the job as Prime Minister there's always the seasonal role of Santa Clause for which he has a lot of transferable skills - Dressing in red, having a beard and promising things that someone else will have to pay for and deliver....

The Grand Old Duke of York

The grand old Duke of York
He had 10000 women
Some were above our age of consent
But in the US it is higher so then
There legally a nonce was a nonce
Here legally a nonce he was not
And when he's upon his transatlantic jet
He is neither nonce nor not

Cough

Coughs are an interesting bit of body language.  They can mean someone is concealing something, or they can just mean that someone has a dry throat which can be due to talking for a long time or can be a stress reaction.  Today's cough belongs to Prince Andrew when asked by Emily if he would repeat his statements on oath...

Secretive but Not On Her Majesty's Service

Yesterday I was home alone and had Victor Meldrew type adventures answering the phone to all the people who ring the landline when I am usually at work.

One was the man who threatens to have one arrested on behalf of HMRC for non payment of taxes.  I played along for a bit and gave him a false date of birth and National Secuirty number to see how far the thing would go.  Eventually he asked me to write down a string of reference numbers at which point I got bored and asked him how he lived with himself .... at which point he started shouting "motherfucker" a lot and slammed the phone down.  I would have recorded it but I believe Paul Chowdhry has beaten me to it ...



...and this man ... who apart form being a somewhat inept satirist seems to be talking to exactly the same person I was ....



I mean seriously the police really can't do anything about this....?  It makes them look like idiots that these scams continue unabated...