I Hate The Americanisation Of Politics That UKIP Is Spearheading

American politics no doubt suits Americans but it is a pretty bad fit for the UK.  There are no end of things that simply can't be translated from one system to the other.  Take for example the way judges work.  In the UK the judges are independent.  There is a long history behind this, but the upshot is that the role of the courts is to interpret the will of parliament as expressed by votes and debates in the House of Commons.  Top judges are appointed by the government of the day but can't be influenced once they are appointed.  On the whole the system works well.

Price Rises On The Way - Surely This Will Affect Opinion?

I have included a link below to avoid to a price rise story, but it is my own prices that I am currently grappling with.  I have to quote for some business in a non-EU country and even though it is Sunday I need to get on with it.   Costing special jobs is always a problem but now I have to bear in mind that prices I have given for similar jobs in the past now look 15% or so cheaper to my customer than they did before the vote.  I also need to bear in mind that my direct costs will be going up, and that they profit I need to make on something I will probably not get paid for until 3 or 4 months now will need to be higher if I am to generate the cash I need to stay in business.

Some Details Of Brexit's Adverse Effect On Trade

Should you blog when you are angry?  There are lots of things you shouldn't do when you are angry.  Maybe blogging is one of them. Anyway I am angry.  I have just got paid.  That doesn't usually make me angry and I sent of my customary 'received with thanks' e-mail to confirm that the international bank transfer had gone through okay.   But I had priced the job in Australian dollars.  It had made sense to do do so at the time - this was all a long time before Brexit.   As a result now I am getting the money I have rather less than I was anticipating.  The fall in the value of the pound has given my customer a bonus and me a penalty.  I hope it makes him more likely to place business with me in the future, but who knows.

Remain Back In The Lead In The Polls

Not much of a story but as I am hoping this blog will be a record of the process, the first poll to show majority support for remaining in the EU popped up this morning.

http://www.bmgresearch.co.uk/tories-best-party-handle-brexit/

That has been the direction of travel since the referendum - in fact if my reading of the numbers is correct since about a week before the referendum - so not much of a shock.  The difference is still too small to undermine the democratic mandate of the actual referendum. But modest as this news is, it is more significant than the story generating the lurid headlines this morning.  The probability of Brexit simply fizzling out from lack of interest is still not great, but it is a possibility nonetheless.

Enemies of the People Are Becoming Rather Numerous

My opinion that yesterday's court judgement requiring the government to debate Brexit negotiations in parliament was a bit of a non-event wasn't shared by this morning's tabloids.  Both the Mail and the Express were completely over the top, with the Sun not far behind.  Out of touch judges now join the Mail's rather long list of undesirables along with migrants, Scotland, leave voters, metropolitan elites, the Labour Party and life saving vaccines.  The big surprise is the 'enemies of the people' phrase.  It sounds a bit like Mao's cultural revolution.  I'd always assumed that the Mail's totalitarian government of choice would be a fascist one rather than a communist one.  Well, whatever.

High Court Non Event

The news today is that the High Court has ruled that the legislation enabling Brexit needs to be passed by the House of Commons.  The pound has recovered on the news but it doesn't seem to me that anything has really changed here.  The Conservatives won an election on a manifesto commitment to hold a referendum on EU membership.  They cannot now choose to ignore the result of that referendum and they are obliged to support its conclusion.  The only way they can get out of this is to dissolve parliament and fight the election again on an anti-Brexit programme.  Unfortunately for the country they show no sign of doing this and so Brexit it must be.

Bad News Is Bad News For Remainers

Since the Brexit vote relatively little has happened economically.  The tills have continued ringing and people have continued to draw their incomes and pay their bills.  If anything, it has been a few months that have been pretty good for most people's personal prosperity and there haven't been too many obvious Brexit losers yet.  The pro-Brexit press, which is most of the press, haven't failed to point these things out and gleefully portray remainers as not only wrong in general but wrong in particular.