Apparently Northern Ireland is expendable

Hector Drummond Posted on by

If only we didn’t have to worry about Northern Ireland!

Northern Ireland has long been a millstone round the neck of the rest of the UK and to fail to take back our independence because of it would be an historic tragedy. It is not widely known that it costs the UK more to support Northern Ireland than it does to be in the EU.

I know, let’s give away Cumbria in return for a 3% reduction in automobile tariffs.

Devon in return for graduates being allowed to work anywhere in Europe they want.

Norfolk for better access to the German banking system.

In fact, let’s just get all those people who don’t pay tax and put them on a leaky boat to China.

we pay a net £7.8 billion to gain access to a market [ie. the EU] of about 450 million people

Because of course we wouldn’t have access to that market otherwise, would we? That’s why the rest of the world is unable to trade with it. You can’t buy any Chinese products in Germany, for example, or watch a Hollywood film in Denmark.

Lazy columnist syndrome

Hector Drummond Posted on by

Janet Daley gets confused:

Can this really be happening? Can this tiny group of DUP politicians who represent a population of roughly 2 million people

2 million people is tiny?

actually be about to undermine a deal that almost everybody else – including the purist ERG MPs – is ready to accept

Where’s the evidence that everybody else is ready to accept? The Labour party certainly isn’t.

Anyway, any acceptance that is there is just because Parliament has deliberately worn people down, which was always the plan.

And stop with this lie that the ERG are ‘purist’. They’ve been willing to compromise all along. They just don’t want their country sold out.

and which the country and the EU – including the business and agricultural interests of Ulster – are crying out for?

Have you read the text of the deal? Have you heard expert legal opinion on it? The country is crying out for an EU exit, yes, but not a bad deal. How do you know it’s not a bad deal?

If it were not ridiculously superstitious to say this, I would be inclined to posit the idea that the partitioning of Ireland and the terrible events that preceded and followed it were a form of original sin from which the British can never escape. If the DUP succeeds in defeating this Brexit deal, I may even begin to believe it.

Do you think she has any inkling of how absurd this is?

It seems that even previously okay columnists have gone a bit mad. For the 500th time, there is no requirement to get a deal from the EU in order for us to leave. The only barrier to us leaving are those people in positions of power who don’t really want to leave, not those who are looking after our interests.

There’s nothing a modern conservative loves more than to give in

Hector Drummond Posted on by

Lions led by donkeys. It never changes.

Here’s a proposal: let’s give a foreign power sovereignty over Yorkshire in exchange for a 2% reduction on agricultural tariffs. What’s the sensible response?

(1) Get out before we cut all your throats.

(2) This is a great basis for negotiation, let’s negotiate through the night and produce a 600-page document agreeing terms, including numerous further surrenders in the small print, which we can foist on everyone before they even have a chance to read it.

That seems to be how the rulers of the United Kingdom are thinking. If we put up with this, we’re donkeys led by donkeys.

 

Facebook and libertarianism

Hector Drummond Posted on by

So I’ve tried to open another Facebook account, not linked in any way to Hector Drummond, purely because there’s a sports group I’m in that uses the evil thing. After a few days, the same thing has happened that always happens: ‘We want to confirm it’s you, please upload a photograph of yourself so we can confirm it’s you’. I’m not even going to bother this time, because this always leads nowhere. They’ve worked out who I am, perhaps based on my IP address, and they’re blocking me again. This is heading into Chinese territory.

Thing is, there are loads of leftists that hate Facebook, because they’re too stupid to realise that it’s on their side, and it is in fact one of their greatest weapons. So I say we on the right get together with them to bring the bastard thing down before the idiot leftists realise their mistake.

This is another reason why I’m not really a libertarian, as least not as a lot of libertarians define it. Libertarians seem to be people who will find themselves completely shut out of society by private firms, but who will say, ‘I will defend to the death the right of these private firms to shut me out of society’. They’ll be living in a garbage dump, eating rotten chicken carcasses, in rags, not able to have a bank account, not able to work, not eligible for benefits, and they’ll still be saying, ‘It’s a free country, private firms can sell to who they want’, even while the government is preventing Christian bakers from refusing to serve anti-Christians. ‘Competitors will spring up to service our needs’, they say, as across the world the banking and credit industry shuts down any business with non-approved views.

Forget the high ideals. Forget the worry that ‘Any law helping us that gets passed may help our enemies in the future’. The war is right now, and we’re in serious danger

Crouching tiger, (not) hidden with drag on

Hector Drummond Posted on by

So Peter Crouch, former England player, renowned for his humour, full of funny tales about life as a football star, gets interviewed by the Telegraph. This being the modern Telegraph, full of woke younger writers — not woke at the level of the Guardian, obs, but still sensitive to the pressing trendy issues of the day — he gets asked this:

I wonder what his thoughts are on some of the game’s more complex issues, such as the fact that there are no out LGBT players in the top tiers of men’s football.

To Crouch’s credit, this is his answer:

“I’ve got no thoughts,” he says. “It’s certainly not an issue for me, and I don’t think it would be for anyone else. If I was gay, I think I’d be fine and comfortable coming out. But I’m not in that situation, so…” Does he know any gay players who’ve not come out? “No, I don’t.”

Which is basically a way of saying, “Just piss the hell off with the woke crap and don’t try to drag me into it”.

The perils of being a print magazine

Hector Drummond Posted on by

Got this in the mail yesterday morning:

Oops. A day too late.

Of course there may still be no deal, but this cover was clearly designed after Cummings’ memo saying that the negotiations were now very unlikely.

(I currently have the Spectator on a trial free sub, which soon runs out. I want to support print magazines, and the Speccie is a fine mag, but I need to sell some more novels first.)

Pizza excess

Hector Drummond Posted on by

Pizza Express going tits-up is both easy and hard to believe. Easy, because whenever I go there I resolve to never go there again (and I only end up going back when it’s not my decision).

The reason why is that the pizzas are overpriced. They’re decent enough quality, obviously miles better than Pizza Hut and Dominos (which are incredibly bad value), but they’re not really worth the money they charge. For the same money, or a bit more, you could get a much better, and more filling, meal at a decent restaurant. Or you could save money and go to a Nandos. For a third of the money you could get fantastic pizza at a little local place near where I used to live.

There’s a lot more choice out there now, and the internet makes it easier to find about places, so why spend good money on pizzas that are never quite satisfying enough?

But it’s also hard to believe, because Pizza Express’s always seem to be full whenever you go into one, or walk past one, and with the prices they charge it’s hard to see how they could lose money. So how could they be in such desperate straits? Especially a company that has been a success for decades. By now, you’d think, they should own all their buildings, all their ovens and tables and chairs, etc., so even when times are tough they should be able to weather it because their overheads (like the wages bill, and the electricity and gas bills) will be low.

But, of course, it turns out that the problem is our old friend debt. The smart original owners cashed in when the going was good, and sold to someone else. Since then it’s been the same old story, with the firm being passed around by multinational investment companies, and the soul goes out of the business. Eventually a sucker buys it by loading up on debt, and that’s what seems to have happened here, with a Chinese mega-sucker group purchasing it in 2014. For £900 million. Yes, £900 million for a restaurant chain that anyone could see is in its twilight years, and which faces a ‘challenging’ market.

It does seem to have been a purchase enabled by debt, because the Telegraph is reporting that the interest bill alone is £100 million a year. Add in the capital repayment and you’re looking at scary figures for an owner. You just can’t weather storms for long when you have enormous amounts to pay back every month. I’m hardly a business guru but it just seems like common sense that you don’t get into massive debt over a business unless that business is clearly going to pump out money like it’s the Royal Mint for years. And the restaurant business is famously a fickle one, and there are too many mid-price chains currently competing against each other.

(It was the same with ToysRUs. They might have been able to keep going for years had they not been ladened with massive debts to service because their current owners paid way too much for it.)

Pizza Express is not dying now. Pizza Express started dying when the original owners cashed in (not that I blame them). And why exactly would anyone want to support Pizza Express now when it’s owned by Chinese capital investors? To be fair, Pizza Express is always a safe bet, and it’s never bad, but it’s stopped being something funky and good value. It’s now just another one of those bland indentikit soulless plastic chains blighting the high streets of Britain.

Update: Perhaps that last sentence is a little harsh.

A hard-to-believe success story

Hector Drummond Posted on by

A modern rags-to-riches story:

Two brothers from Blackburn whose parents came to Britain “with nothing”  stand to gain a £5bn fortune by floating their petrol station empire.

 

Mohsin and Zuber Issa, 48 and 47, opened their first forecourt in Bury in 2001 and have since transformed their company EG Group into a global behemoth with 4,700 sites in the US and Europe.

 

The firm is now exploring a stock market float which could see it valued at £10bn – and between them the brothers own half the business, putting them in line to control a £5bn stake.

Do they have any advice for anyone wanting to follow in their footsteps?

Speaking earlier this year, Zuber said: “Education is the only way to get people out of poverty. “Our parents came to the UK in the 1960s with nothing. This is our way of saying ‘thank you’ because the UK has provided us with a fantastic opportunity to build our business.”

Actually, their story makes it sound like buying petrol stations is the way to prosperity, not education.

One has to ask, though, can you really make this much money from garages in such a short space of time? Especially in an industry noted for its incredibly tight margins? And when you’re competing against global giants like Shell and BP? Or is this just another debt-fuelled disaster waiting to happen? Are they selling out just as it’s all about to decline?

The Issas – who already boast a combined net worth of £1.2bn – own EG alongside private equity giant TDR Capital …

 

Armed with TDR’s support it has been on a period of ultra-rapid expansion, tripling site numbers last year and adding an extra 1,000 locations so far in 2019.

Don’t tell me that had the cash to open these themselves. Clearly it’s ‘TDR Capital’ that’s providing the money.

From Wikipedia:

In February 2018, it was announced that Euro Garages would acquired 762 convenience stores in the United States from Kroger.

What’s the bet this is TDR Capital again stumping up the money?

EG Group is the largest independent petrol station operator and employs around 25,000 people and earns annual revenues of more than $20bn (£15.8bn).

But when it comes to selling petrol, revenues are what potential investors will be looking at, because this is a high revenue-low margin business, and most likely huge debts to service.

I don’t claim to be an expert on this sort of thing but I wouldn’t be foolish enough to put my money into this. Especially when you consider that TDR Capital were part of the Gondala Group who managed to offload Pizza Express onto a bunch of Chinese suckers for £900 million in 2014. (I don’t know if they were still part of Gondala in 2014, but even if not, I suspect they learned from them.)

Update:

Despite generating bigger revenues than engineering titan Dyson or gambling firm Bet365, whose boss Denise Coates was paid £265 in 2017, the Issa brothers declined to pay themselves a dividend during 2018.

The boss of Bet365 was paid £265 in 2017? Are there any subs left at the Telegraph any more?

Johnson is terrified of No Deal, not relaxed about it

Hector Drummond Posted on by

What happens if Johnson doesn’t get a deal agreed and in place with the EU soon? Then he’s up to his neck in it. That’s why, for his sake, he has to get a deal.

Think about the possibilities. Assume he gets an extension and remains in place as PM and there’s an election. How does he campaign?

It’s clear now that he’s terrified of campaigning on a straight No Deal platform because he thinks that will frighten away all those centrist swing-voting urban professionals and send them to the LibDems. Also, it will split his MPs badly, and I don’t think he can stomach much more of that. (Personally I think this is what he should do, he’ll win with that campaign and cleanse his party, but I don’t think he would really do it.)

He’s told Damien Green that in this sort of scenario he would, in fact, campaign on the basis of ‘My deal or no deal’. But he can’t really think that would work either. The Leavers would desert him in droves and vote for the Brexit Party. More can-kicking and endless negotiations will not win him enough votes. (Polls are already showing that the Tories would fail to win a majority if we are still in on Oct 31.)

There are other possibilities, of course, but from his point of view they are all highly undesirable, eg. he gets replaced by a caretaker PM, or he resigns rather than submit that letter, or he refuses to submit the extension and faces court action and possible jail, and a Parliamentary takeover. He doesn’t want any of those.

Absolutely the best thing for him, the thing that makes all these scary possibilities disappear, is for him to agree a deal with the EU. He desperately needs it. No Deal isn’t really an option for him, despite what he says. And the EU knows all this, and that’s why they know he’s still over a barrel.

I do accept that Boris and his team would not sign a deal that was incredibly bad for the country. But I do believe that he is so desperate that he will readily sign a bad deal. A reheated Theresa May WA.

And that, folks, is how we have ended up with Theresa May Mark II, and Brexit Groundhog Day.

Update: Jacob Rees-Mogg writes an article saying we have to trust Johnson. But the article contains no detail at all. Half of it is simply an attack on Labour. Then he talks about there being other things in the Queen’s Speech than Brexit. The only thing he really says about the new negotiations is that ‘compromise will inevitably be needed’, which hardly fills one with confidence.

This, on the other hand, does provide some confidence:

sources said Brexiteer figures such as Martin Howe, a Eurosceptic QC, Shanker Singham, a trade expert involved in drafting plans advocated by pro-Leave MPs, Barnabas Reynolds, a City lawyer, and Edgar Millar, the convenor of the Economists for Free Trade group, were among those whose work had been used to construct the plan

But this doesn’t:

Owen Paterson, the former Northern Ireland Secretary, claimed the rumoured proposals appeared to amount to “backstop mark 2”, referring to Theresa May’s plan which MPs rejected on the basis it could leave the UK tied to Brussels indefinitely.

 

The last-minute stitch-up begins

Hector Drummond Posted on by

And so it begins:

The sudden smiles from Leo Varadkar, the Irish Taoiseach, after his meeting with Boris Johnson in the Wirral on Thursday caught everyone by surprise.

They didn’t take me by surprise, because I’ve been predicting the last-minute stitch-up for years.

For the last three weeks EU diplomats and officials have been relentlessly pessimistic about the prospects of an agreement, with the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, frankly telling the European Parliament they were “not in a position” to make a deal.

 

Then Mr Varadkar emerged from his three-hour meeting with Mr Johnson saying he was “confident” the two sides could cut a deal by the looming Oct 17 deadline at next week’s European Council summit in Brussels.

All so last minute that there won’t be time to properly assess the deal, and Parliament might vote for it out of fear that the alternative is no deal. All as predicted.

The Tories may have gotten rid of some of their more extreme members, but despite the bleatings of the media that the Tories have turned into the Brexit party, this is still a soft, wet give-in-at-the-last-minute party.

Dominic Cummings was used to make it look for real that the Tories would pull out without a deal, but that was all a bluff, a device to make the EU soften a bit. He’ll soon be discarded now that his role is almost finished.

(In fact, it was barely even a bluff, given that Johnson was telling everyone within earshot that the chances of no deal were a million to one. That’s where Cummings came in. To give no deal some credibility. The only interest with him is how far he was in on this. How much was his Friday night ‘leak’ to James Forsyth true, and how much was just part of the plan?)

Despite Johnson’s tricks, the EU has still won. They held so fast for so long against such a weak opponent, and then against an opponent almost as weak, that the deal we have now proposed is going to be little different from the one the EU wrote for May in 2018.

It’s not that the EU is all that clever, but they know that you hold firm and use your advantages as ruthlessly as you can (which is much easier to do when you don’t have frightened voters to worry about, and you have a compliant media). They’ve had centuries of strong-arm rulers to set an example for them, whereas Britain has forgotten its history and seems to imagine that we’re negotiating with another nice democracy.

I told you nothing’s changed for the Tories

Hector Drummond Posted on by

It seems that on the government’s team only Dominic Cummings really wants Brexit:

On Wednesday, the Prime Minister appeared to row back on Cummings’ suggestion that the Tories would have to fight the next general election on a no-deal pledge to “marginalise” the Brexit Party in a move that prompted anger among Tories in the Commons tearoom.

 

Mr Johnson is understood to have reassured Damian Green, chairman of an 80-strong One Nation caucus that the party’s next manifesto will still promise to get a Brexit deal, not an automatic no deal.

Remember that Dominic Cummings is not a Conservative party member. The Conservatives themselves can’t be trusted to deliver Brexit.

If Boris Johnson gets an extension past Oct 31 and then campaigns in a general election for a deal then the Tories can forget about ever getting the support of most Leavers, who will switch on masse to the Brexit Party.

In fact, they should pull out of negotiations right now. Just shut up shop and say ‘Prepare for No Deal. It will be fine, we’ve got it covered’. Then see how the EU reacts. And let dozens of wet Tory MPs resign.

Of course Parliament will have a meltdown over that. Let them.

Update: Do you still think Johnson’s a No Deal man?

 

 

Holy men given police escorts

Hector Drummond Posted on by

Wartime headline:

Extinction Rebellion protests take over London’s Smithfield Market

It sounds like a civil war, which in a way it is. One side takes over a facility owned by the enemy. Normally this would be done with guns and weapons, and there would be fatalities. But this time? The police stood back and let it happen. That tells you which side they’re on. They’ve been making arrests, but only when they absolutely have to. Otherwise they’d prefer to support the protesters.

I suggest this ad for the next police recruitment drive:

Are you indecisive and afraid to go against the crowd?

Do you prefer to dance than fight?

Do you hanker to put on face paint and be a street performer?

Would you rather fill in forms than deal with unpleasant real-life situations?

 

Then join the police. Today.

But don’t be fooled. They’re only wimps when it comes their own side. You try turning up to the Treasury building in a fire engine spraying fake blood over it and see how wimpy the police are then.

The old Conservatives finally have a good quality: non-existence

Hector Drummond Posted on by

Heidi Allen finally embraces the lame side and joins the LibDems:

On Monday night Ms Allen said the Conservative party had turned into “Ukip or Brexit Party Mark 2” adding: “The party I joined doesn’t exist any more.”

Well goodness for that, because that party was not one that voters were going to vote for any more.

she claims at least 20 ‘one-nation Tories’ are ready to follow suit

Is there some way we can speed the process up? If she could pass their details on to me I can get going with the paperwork.