Yet another tale of dodgy dealing, this time including a Hertfordshire company, (Radlett), a Hong Kong based company registered in the British Virgin Islands and a court case in the USA. The Herts. company has a nice website with lots of people with important roles, yet it obtained the £45M upfront which seems slightly odd. They then placed an order valued at £21M with the BVI company for the total supply of the goods. £24M sounds like quite a nice little add on, until things go wrong, and the goods don't arrive. They then find that the American lawyer who was only to pay for the goods in stage payments has in fact handed over all but $1M for goods that have never appeared. DHSC say that "due diligence is carried out for all government contracts and we take these checks extremely seriously. " https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/nov/03/45m-deal-for-nhs-masks-collapses-amid-claims
Only seen this from one source, so cannot say if it is correct or not. From a very reliable source in the 'Tunnel... there will be a UK-EU trade deal agreed next week. I quote: "Britain has CAVED. Unless someone in Westminster does something really stupid between now and then a deal will be signed." *clearly this cannot be ruled out! this will give the UK access to the Single Market, tariff and quota free BUT with specific sanctions to be put on the UK if we lower standards or move away from the Level Playing Field on state aid etc. This means that the UK becomes a rule taker inasmuch as when the EU implement new regulations or standards, the UK MUST also implement those new rules too but without being in the room or being able to vote on drafting the new regulations. importantly this agreement does NOT keep the UK in the Customs Union meaning that the worst case scenario of thousands of stranded trucks in Kent is still on the table as are the 30 million customs declarations required between GB and Northern Ireland, not to mention the hundreds of millions of new customs declarations required to ship from GB to EU customers. Also: FISH. The UK will allow EU boats to continue to fish in UK waters, yes French ones too but the UKs quota will be gradually increased by agreement. Based on history though, any new fishing quota issued to the UK will probably be sold to someone in Spain or Denmark in the future just like we did with our last ones. As I said I do not know if it is true, but it does tie in with other news items that have come out in the past couple of days regarding ports who need money to buy land for custom facilities and government failure to defend their position on the internal market bill. The next week or so could be interesting.
If true, I suspect there will be a large queue for tickets to watch the heads of the likes of Farage and various ERG members explode. But I wonder if the EU would bother with such an agreement, given that recent events show that the UK government are not averse to breaking agreements it has signed.
How this isn't a landslide for the Dems is a horrific reflection of the 'Murican psyche. I have family and close friends out there but at this rate Mrs Fez (and she's way to the right of me politically, which is why we NEVER discuss politics) and I will not be returning.
The United States of half of North America is the last place on this planet I would want to visit Fez ! I have renamed them because they have no right to name themselves after a continent The beauty about Covid 19 is that many of them are masked, but the only shame is that the masks are not thicker so that we can't hear them murdering our language. My dream is to be in a World where the election for president of this place is of no more significance than an election in Burundi. I would excempt some Americans from being gagged by masks - like all of Lynyrd Skynyrd, anyone who has played with the Allman Brothers Band or CSN.
From yesterday's Telegraph - either BoJo is totally deluded or he's trying to deflect attention away from some bad news.Or maybe both. please log in to view this image
Goldman Sachs planning to move up to£46bn worth of assets out of the UK and into Germany due to Brexit. Not the first and probably not the last. I really find it hard to understand why the UK government pursued this nonsense. https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/g...966.html?soc_src=social-sh&soc_trk=fb&tsrc=fb
This is assets being moved almost daily. Just as big a problem will be that the clearing houses that transfer vast sums between € and £ countries will not be allowed to operate from London. Huge sums are derived for the Treasury from this source alone which will now benefit the EU. As you say none of it makes any sense.
Ironic as most of us as more to the centre left of the spectrum... and we are seeing this so clealry....
Unfortunately the USA has a curious system in as much as the outgoing president remains with presidential powers during the transition period up until the inauguration of the new president on January 21st. I am not sure how much power the president holds over this period - conventionally outgoing presidents are seen as 'lame duck' presidents - but I don't think Trump sees himself as a lame duck, or cares much for convention.
