Here is a bit of 'anti European rant' as you no doubt will consider it, describing the EU's attack on third world living standards - from the notoriously right wing organ, the Independent.
[Link]

We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men. [Orwell]

Bit cheap. Churchill stuttered.

Churchill was pissed most of the time. What is Kier's excuse?

"That was fun and to round off the day, I am off to steal a charity collection box and then desecrate a place of worship.” - Smokey, The Selhurst Arms, 26/02/02

Even cheaper.

Face it, Kier has been put up as the sacrificial lamb Labour need on Brexit. After the student debt fiasco, all the Corbynites are distancing themselves from Brexit.whilst Kier fits the bill of most Corynites, he is rich, well spoken, from a good background, went to a good university and is a middle class, I get the impression he isn't really one of them and could easily be sacrificed if Labour get it wrong on Brexit.

This 'policy development', not the uturn most of us view it as, as Kier said, is Labour's 10th or so Brexit policy. I got the feeling from Marr today that Kier himself didn't believe what he was saying, therefore that probably a contribution towards his mumbling, incoherent performance.

Let's see how he plays out Philip Hammonds 'transition period' policy, making out its his own idea and isn't the perpetual EU membership those whom lost the referendum want.

Edited by matt_himself (03 Sep 2017 12.51pm)

"That was fun and to round off the day, I am off to steal a charity collection box and then desecrate a place of worship.” - Smokey, The Selhurst Arms, 26/02/02

The Independent is still rightly reporting on the iniquities of the Common Agricultural Policy, in September 2016 they said: “Today, farmers represent three per cent of Europe’s population while the CAP amounts to 42 per cent of the EU budget. As well the £4bn of UK tax money paid towards the CAP, the perversely regressive effects of the subsidy mean consumers endure the inflated price of agricultural goods due to the distorted market.”
Even that slave to the EU, Nick Clegg, described the CAP as a “wasteful and economically perverse support system for Europe’s farmers”.
The Common Agricultural Policy is 42% of EU budget and still adds £100s a year to family food bills.
The EU common external tariff makes food prices about 20% higher than world food prices. 80% of the subsidies go to the top ten percent of farming households by income. The average support per farmer is about £24,400. A hill farmer gets about £14,700 a year, while, in recent years, the Earl of Plymouth received some £669,000, the Queen £500,000, the Duke of Devonshire, £260,273, and the Duke of Buccleuch, £251,729..
Outside Europe, the effects of the CAP are even worse. The aberrant economic incentives for farmers to produce more only increase world inequality. Tonnes of subsidised produce from the first world are dumped in Africa and Asia, impoverishing relatively uncompetitive local farmers and worsening third world trade deficits. 2015 saw a wretched record set in India for highest level of farmer suicides in its independent history. In many areas, it has become profitably only to produce raw goods like cocoa or wheat, rather than the finished products. A quasi-colonial relationship has re-asserted itself, where poor African and Asian states dutifully export raw materials to be refined and manufactured in Europe.

The situation today is just the same – the EU is incapable of reform.

Edited by hedgehog50 (03 Sep 2017 12.57pm)

We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men. [Orwell]