AFTER BREXIT

Lord Ashcroft ‏@LordAshcroft 5h5 hours ago
Major donors to the Remain campaign...



And they still lost.

More utter incompetence from Sturgeon:

http://stv.tv/news/politics/1365121-no-minutes-taken-at-meeting-over-eu-farm-payment-deadline/

No minutes were taken at a meeting between the First Minister and an EU commissioner over extending the payment deadline for farm payments, STV News can reveal.

In May the First Minister, rural affairs minister Fergus Ewing and EU commissioner Phil Hogan met at Sturgeon's official residence in Edinburgh.

The meeting was held just a month before the deadline for all Common Agricultural Payments (CAP) to be made by the Scottish Government to farmers.

If the deadline was breached the government would be liable to receive a fine up to £125m by the EU.

Following the meeting and discussions between Scottish Government officials and EU officials by email, the deadline was moved to October 15.

The lack of any formal records was discovered by STV News following a freedom of information request.

The failure to formally record the meeting was described as a "cock-up" by a Conservative MSP.

More at link, including:

The government IT system which has been blamed for the late payments to farmers has cost £178m.

In the last 18 months, the Scottish Government has spent £4.1m on overtime to try to clear the backlog.

That's the best part of nearly £200,000,000 thrown away on this mess - and there are many more like it. And Sturgeon will still have the nerve to bleat about Toaries!!!! Foodbanks!!!!, etc.

Oh God, now what's she done? *goes to read*

The Scottish Government has made a commitment to publish data on its website that shows what their trips cost the taxpayer.

The website states: "The Scottish Government has adopted the practice of publishing on a monthly basis three months in arrears details of engagements carried out by ministers."

However they have not updated their information for more than six months.

Sounds about right. She has NO mandate or legal authority for any of these jaunts, the EU doesn't want to know, but it plays well with the rapidly-shrinking Party faithful.

So beloved is she by the general public, she is now managing to lose council by-elections to the Labour party, which really takes some doing.

Sturgeon's greatest achievement so far - apart from running up the biggest deficit in the Western world - has been to spark a revival of the Tory party in Scotland.

Sounds like typical troughing?

Yup, classic, Lily.

This is a fairly good illustration of the sheer incompetence of Ms Sturgeon at home, away from the cameras and photo-ops with other people's children:

Pressure is growing on the Scottish Government to set out the future of the national police force amid uncertainty over a long-running commitment on officer numbers. The SNP dropped its pledge to maintain an extra 1,000 officers from its Holyrood manifesto earlier this year. But First Minister Nicola Sturgeon this week said she expected Police Scotland to maintain numbers for the current financial year. The force is facing mounting financial pressures and is heading for a £21 million “overspend” on its £1.1 billion revenue budget for 2016-17. Senior officers have called for more flexibilty on officer numbers to allow the force to better manage its budget. Conservatives yesterday called on the SNP to set out how Police Scotland would “cope” with reductions in frontline staff. It followed publication of a parliamentary question in which justice minister Michael Matheson said no conclusions had been reached on the shape and size of the force. He said: “The Scottish Government budget for 2016-17 made a commitment to retain police officer numbers at 1,000 higher than in 2007 while working with the Scottish Police Authority to consider the implications of changing demands. “That work is currently on-going and no conclusions have been reached on implications for the future shape and size of the police workforce.”

Read more at: http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/scottish-government-under-pressure-to-set-out-police-numbers-1-4214297

Far from decentralising power, the SNP have tried to grab as much as possible - including the police. In an act of authoritarian madness, they merged ALL of Scotland's varied police forces into one.

This naturally means that local knowledge has been lost, offices have been shut, civilian staff paid off, etc. Officers who should be on the beat are now doing paperwork while dreaming of retirement.

Sturgeon was also warned that a quirk of EU law would mean that, bizarre though it sounds, the resulting national police force would have to pay VAT - and ignored it.

Mr Matheson said the Scottish Government was committed to ensuring the police have more specialists to tackle growing areas of criminality such as cybercrime and fraud.


Cybercrime = someone said something rude about Ms Sturgeon on Twatter. Don't bother reporting burglaries, or junkies terrorising your neighbourhood, the Scots police will be too busy monitoring social media.

The SNP are now in the process of doing the very same thing to our Fire Brigades. The sheer incompetence is mind-boggling, and the only hope is that they have lost their majority, which may at least slow down this maladministration.

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/704388/Andrew-MacNeil-nationalist-mp-tweeted-scottish-people-foolish

The Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland (GERS) report also revealed the economy is worse than that of Greece or Spain.

But SNP veteran Mr MacNeil tweeted: "Icelander asked me today to effect 'Are Scots still falling for that GERS deficit p***?' - 'some fools like to be fooled' was the reply ))"



Oh, it's only Sh*gger MacNeil.



He takes a keen interest in Icelandic affairs.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/aug/27/theresa-may-acting-like-tudor-monarch-in-denying-mps-a-vote-over-brexit

Theresa May has been accused of displaying the “arrogance of a Tudor monarch” over her reported intention to deny a parliamentary vote on Brexit before beginning the process of pulling the UK out of the European Union.

The prime minister is allegedly planning to prevent MPs from voting on the decision to leave the EU before article 50, the legislation that will trigger the UK’s formal exit from the bloc, is triggered...etc.

If I was in her shoes, I would be very tempted to have a quiet word with all those unhappy non-Corbyn Labour MPs, and call a snap election.

Sounds good....

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/704647/Nicola-Sturgeon-HIJACKED-Remain-vote-independence-Ruth-Davidson

Quote:

Ms Davidson, who voted to remain in the EU, said: “The thing that I find most disreputable is that Nicola Sturgeon has spent the past two months trying to use my Remain vote and thousands of Scots like me to coop that into trying to leave the United Kingdom, and that’s not what anybody was voting on.

“Within three and a half hours of the last local authority announcing the EU referendum result, Nicola Sturgeon said she had already instructed government officials to start drawing up legislation for a second independence referendum.

"That was the thing she went to first. She didn’t take stock, she didn’t wait to reassure the country, she didn’t look to be a First Minister of all Scots, she played directly to her nationalist base, and it’s telling.”

Sturgeon didn't even stop to THINK. If she had, she would have realised that 350,000+ voters who normally back the SNP voted Leave - that's those votes gone forever, because of her party's antics.

None of the more than a million Scots who voted Leave will ever vote SNP again. How does Ms Sturgeon imagine they felt about the spectacle of that troughing SNP MEP begging the other troughers in Brussels to be nice to Scotland - besides sickened?

The majority of the Remain votes came from non-SNP voters like Ms Davidson - no way are any of them going to vote SNP.

Sturgeon has painted herself into a corner she cannot get out of - and that's without all the bad news which is piling in on her on a daily basis.

At least you know where her priorities lie......

UK Elections
‏@Election_UK
UK General Election Seat Forecast (29th Aug)

CON: 420 (+89)
LAB: 140 (-92)
SNP: 51 (-5)
LD: 12 (+4)
PC: 6 (+3)
UKIP: 3 (+2)
GRN: 2 (+1)

If I was one of the Labour 'moderates', I would be BEGGING May to hold a snap general election. The moderates might just manage to hold onto their seats, but most of the Corbynistas would be wiped out, except in places like Islington.

That would then give them five years to get rid of the fellow travellers, and rebuild the party.

This morning's Caledonian clusterf*ck:

http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/yes-scotland-500-000-in-debt-after-referendum-1-4215513

(snipped)

THE official Yes campaign has admitted it is almost £500,000 in debt after the independence referendum. They are expected to face questioning after previously filing accounts saying they were £75,000 in the black. Director Scott Martin has said this was due to a “technical amendment” to their accounts.

There you are, folks! Next time you file fake tax returns and get caught, just explain it away as a 'technical amendment'.

To cut through the financial verbiage, they were either trading knowing they were insolvent, or they were nothing more than a front for the SNP all along.

Yes Scotland Ltd originally said it would remain independent of SNP funds, but received two cash sums of £275,000 and £550,000 in 2014 from the political party. The company is now stating its assets and liabilities as zero. The advisory board members includes Nicola Sturgeon, Scottish Green leader Patrick Harvie, former Socialist MSP Colin Fox, the writer Pat Kane, SNP MP Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh.

Read more at: http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/yes-scotland-500-000-in-debt-after-referendum-1-4215513

Oh, Tasmania Shaky Shaky is involved, is she? She of the dodgy 'charities'? She's quite high-profile these days - it is alleged she often advises one A. Salmond on Iranian affairs.

Oh Lord! Some grim, crop-haired 'female' eurocrat is Outraged! because Apple dared to make its own tax deal with the Irish government, and this is interfering with the harmonization of the Most Perfect European Union.

http://news.sky.com/story/apple-ordered-to-pay-836413bn-in-back-taxes-10557945

Ireland's finance ministry said it "disagrees profoundly" with the decision and would prepare an appeal.

The sum to be paid by Apple is 40 times bigger than any previous demand by the EC in such a case.

Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said: "Member states cannot give tax benefits to selected companies - this is illegal under EU state aid rules..

I hope that Eire, and Apple, tell her and the EU to .

You just know that she's lived off the taxpayer her entire life, and has never had an original idea or created a single job in the real world. But - Someone's broken my Rules! And they have money! They must hand it over instantly!

She probably hums Ode to Joy in the shower.....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margrethe_Vestager

Yup. Professional politician that's never actually done a day's real work in her life. Just another publicly-funded trougher.

I suspect the EU has picked on the wrong people this time....

A Message to the Apple Community in Europe

Thirty-six years ago, long before introducing iPhone, iPod or even the Mac, Steve Jobs established Apple’s first operations in Europe. At the time, the company knew that in order to serve customers in Europe, it would need a base there. So, in October 1980, Apple opened a factory in Cork, Ireland with 60 employees.

At the time, Cork was suffering from high unemployment and extremely low economic investment. But Apple’s leaders saw a community rich with talent, and one they believed could accommodate growth if the company was fortunate enough to succeed.

We have operated continuously in Cork ever since, even through periods of uncertainty about our own business, and today we employ nearly 6,000 people across Ireland. The vast majority are still in Cork — including some of the very first employees — now performing a wide variety of functions as part of Apple’s global footprint. Countless multinational companies followed Apple by investing in Cork, and today the local economy is stronger than ever....etc, including:

The European Commission has launched an effort to rewrite Apple’s history in Europe, ignore Ireland’s tax laws and upend the international tax system in the process. The opinion issued on August 30th alleges that Ireland gave Apple a special deal on our taxes. This claim has no basis in fact or in law. We never asked for, nor did we receive, any special deals. We now find ourselves in the unusual position of being ordered to retroactively pay additional taxes to a government that says we don't owe them any more than we've already paid.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/08/30/apple-ordered-to-pay-11bn-after-european-union-tax-investigation/

The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said today that the dispute about whether Apple had benefited from state aid was “clearly an issue for the Irish government, Apple and the European Commission”.

Asked if the UK would like to see Apple locate here, the spokesman said: “The narrative of the Government has been well set out. Britain is open for business, we welcome any company wishing to invest in Britain and Britain’s workforce.

As I understand it, Apple has issued a choice. Jobs or tax money.