Also at the Jewish Chronicle: https://www.thejc.com/blogs/financial-crisis-and-subprime-1.38100?highlight=martynineurope
Oh dear, whatever happened here? After years of over-borrowing and under-saving, the plentiful supply of cheap and easy money, the enthusiastic recklessness of a number of financial managers, and the complaisance of governments, the inevitable happened, and panic ensued.
Martyn Richard Jones
Brussels Saturday 22nd June 2019
In 2016 the UK held what was offically known as the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, a non-binding consultation with the people of the UK on the question of the UK leaving or remaining in the EU.
51.9% of those who voted supported the UK’s exit from the European Union.
(more…)
Martyn Martyn Richard Jones
Bruxelles 27th May 2019
As I commented to Keir Starmer today “Labour are making a fundamental mistake and it ain’t working, Keir”.
Labour’s approach to Brexit is completely the wrong strategy and it’s doing nobody (apart from Nigel Farage) any favours. No Brexit will benefit the immense majority of the country, we know that, and we know that the EU is not going to cut a better deal for anyone, regardless of their political flavour, because that’s just the way it is.
Like it or loath it, but, Theresa May probably struck the best Brexit deal that the UK can aspire to, and it was roundly rejected, for various reasons, by Westminster. No, the best Brexit deal is no Brexit at all.
Martyn Richard Jones
Bonn 31st August 2017
It doesn’t matter where you are in the world, the view of the UK government doesn’t get any better.
Edinburgh, London, Brussels, Beijing or Washington. It’s increasingly obvious that Theresa May and her cabinet are a painfully embarrassing and unfunny joke.
They stand as an obdurate aberration where once there had been some semblance of cultured diplomacy, breadth and depth of intelligence and strategic thinking. They defy the laws of reason, good sense and decency. They are the Keystone Cops, the Chuckle Brothers and the Carry On Camping of governance. (more…)
Martyn Richard Jones
Bonn, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany – 8th August 2017
Is Britain becoming a scoundrel’s paradise?
From the massively lucrative and almost risk-free student debt being sold on the cheap to a select band of chums in the private financial sector. To the scandalous misrepresentation, mendacity and downright deception of the leading guttersnipes and pimps of the Brexit campaign. Through the loud zoo of opportunistic, scabrous and malignant political animals chafing at the bit to return the UK to the dark ages of jungle law, rotten political leaders and nastier political masters, and with it, the ability of the few to effortlessly intimidate, coerce and mistreat the many.
Legion are the examples of the erosion of values in a Britain that once aspired to be a truly decent society.
Martyn Jones
Bonn, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany – 6th August 2017
They told us that by voting for Brexit we would take back control.
They told us that Brexit would mean control over sovereignty and immigration. Which would mean total control over the economy, culture, society, law making, international relationships and trade.
They told us that voting for Brexit was the only patriotic option on offer.
This is what the backers of Brexit, through media, political and celebrity bullshitting agents, and a plethora of Brexit’s useful idiots, were telling us we would get once we were out of the EU. (more…)
Martyn Richard Jones
Carmarthen, Wales 23rd July 2017
The UK government is in a mess. Theresa May’s team lacks coherence, cohesiveness and credibility. It’s driven by instinct and its instincts are not clever. It’s a team that has taken on far more than it can adequately manage. It has bluffed and blustered its way to the forefront of the political beauty stakes only to be confronted with significant political, economic and social challenges for which it has no rational or reasonable strategies, policies or plans.
The Tory cabinet is about as effective, credible and desirable as an unruly gang of drunken revellers on an extended stag-do in Benidorm.