'Global Britain' hype

WE were already in 60 plus excellent and progressive trade deals with another 40 plus in the pipeline as part of the EU, and doing business all over the world, so what is all this hype about 'Global Britain' now?

The EU have just done a massive trade deal with Japan, far superior to the little one we just did and Germany exports many times more to China and India than we do, for example, as part of the EU. A cooperating Europe has far more political and financial muscle and can push standards and citizen rights up and up, obliging prospective trade partners to follow suit, and it does just that.

We are now actively reversing this process, and chasing any old deal just to justify Brexit. Hence Liz Truss's helter skelter rush to sign the dreadful deal with Australia with it's unimaginable animal cruelty, planet destroying factory farming, cheap, carcinogens such as hormone fattened beef, etc etc. 

We've thrown our fishermen under a bus. Where's Nigel Farage now? Chasing around the USA trying to drum up support for Trump, to be exact. We're throwing our farmers under the same bus too, having used them and fishermen to achieve Brexit. This collateral damage was always just factored in to the ultra Brexit project. The same goes for the shrinkage of our car industry (Honda is closing here next month, for example), or risking the the Northern Irish Good Friday agreement... or pushing Scotland further and further away. All factored in, for a narrow Edwardian nationalist ideology of the ultra freemarket rip off... the economic and social law of the jungle!

Yet, nothing we can gain will equal the volume of trade we had via the EU, not even as part of the naked capitalism of the Trans-pacific partnership, or if we get locked into a race to the bottom in tandem with USA. However that doesn't matter to this Brexit mad government because the same culture war they've inflicted on Britain suit their international backers very well. The aim of international oligarchy (especially the hydro carbon oligarchy) is to set Britain up as a Hong Kong style deregulated tax haven't and use it as a battering ram to smash the EU. 

We have been manipulated back to behaving as  'Perfidious Albion', the country which traditionally sought to control Europe by dividing it, like I the 17th and 18th centuries... why else would Johnson be cosying up to neo Fascist Victor Orban of Hungary?

This disgraceful project doesn't even need the UK intact. A reduced 55 million Little England and Wales will do it for them just as well, so they really don't care if Brexit breaks up the UK.

Half of the the good people of England have been seduced into a kind of patriotic, quasi 'religion' of Brexit and a media 'culture war' against the other half (the traitorous 'enemy within'), and against our own continent (the 'enemy without'). Such is the power of the ruthless international profit motive, masquerading as 'respectable patriotism. Same old, same old. When will we wake up?

Steve Rouse

Woodland View

Wroughton 

Thanks to St John staff and volunteers

AS St John Ambulance approaches delivery of an extraordinary one million volunteer hours given in support of the Covid-19 response and the vaccination programme, our charity’s volunteers continue to demonstrate their value to local communities throughout the country.

I would like to pass on my sincere personal thanks through your paper to all of our volunteers and staff, particularly as we approach St John’s Day on June 24, a focal point for the St John family year, when this year we celebrate the work of our charity over the past year of the pandemic, and plan our support to communities who need our help in the future.

I am delighted that many buildings and local landmarks around the country will be lit up in green on that evening to celebrate the tireless work of St John volunteers and staff.

Everyone at St John is immensely grateful to the owners and custodians of those buildings for helping us to make the day a special one.

Meanwhile, we remind everyone of St John Ambulance’s work through our nationwide Ask Me campaign (www.sja.org.uk/AskMe) which launched yesterday. I am sure that our powerful combination of billboard posters and advertisements will keep our volunteers in the forefront ofeveryone’s minds and encourage your readers to get involved with St John, or to find out more about our charity’s work in their local area.

Surgeon Rear Admiral Lionel Jarvis CBE KStJ DL

Chair of St John Ambulance