Labour's "local" candidate in the Stoke Central by-election is actually from Stowmarket in Suffolk - about 4 or 5 times the distance from Stoke as UKIP leader Paul Nuttall who Labour are trying to discredit as an outsider.
Guido has been digging around the internet and found a tweet from 6 years ago in which Labour's "local man" Gareth Snell describes himself as "still a Suffolk-boy at heart". There's also a letter in the Stoke Sentinal a year later hypothesising that Snell was double jobbing in Tristram Hunt's office in Stoke whilst leading Newcastle Borough Council (as he was at the time) because he was after what would have been a safe Labour seat there at the time.
Gareth Snell is neither local, nor does he "understand Stoke-on-Trent". He is a committed Remainer who has described Brexit as a "massive pile of sh*t" and supports EU membership for Turkey. The Stoke Central constituency voted to Leave the EU by a whopping 69.4%, making it one of the most eurosceptic places in the country.
The English Democrat campaign guru and chairman of their Kent branch and south east of England region has failed to attend the first day of his trial over 10 electoral fraud charges.
Steve Uncles allegedly invented 7 fake people and entered them as local election candidates and made or permitted 3 false statements on nomination forms. Suspicions were aroused when the name "Anna Cleaves" came up on the candidates list near the home of Henry VIII's fourth wife, Anne of Cleves and supposedly living in the house that was demolished to build the house Uncles lives in.
Uncles' trial was due to start yesterday but he was taken to hospital complaining of chest pains. Judge Philip Statman has issued a statement saying he is keen to get the trial started and suggested that legal action might be taken to determine whether Uncles is trying to avoid his court appearance. He has already had the trial delayed so he could stand in the Police & Crime Commissioner elections last year.
The party's chairman and self-employed solicitor, Robin Tilbrook, usually represents Uncles and other English Democrats members but seems to have taken a step back from this one. Perhaps his failed attempt to sue me for libel - a case the High Court said was entirely without merit and threw out - has made him a bit more cautious about chancing his arm with lost causes?
Each of the 10 electoral fraud charges he faces carries a potential prison sentence.
Up to 100 academics and scientists will have to take up new jobs the firm is creating at its new science centre at Oxford University.
The way things are going with all this investment and job creation following the Brexit vote and the prospect of slashing economic immigration, there's a real danger that there will be nobody left to vote for Labour and that would be just terrible ...
The left wing media are beside themselves with excitement after finding a picture of an EDL supporter standing next to Paul Nuttall on Facebook.
Nuttall is mobbed by supporters wherever he goes looking for selfies and a party spokesman has explained that hundreds of people queued to have their picture taken with him in Stoke and nobody had a clue who the EDL supporter was.
That hasn't stopped left wing rags including the Liverpool Echo, Guardian and Mirror from trying to associate him with the group that UKIP proscribed many years ago.
Nor did it stop the Labour MP for Wirral South, Alison McGovern, from trying to make political capital out of it which is a pretty stupid thing to do when her own leader has been pictured with despots and terrorists many times over the years. There is a world of difference between posing for a selfie with a racist who you don't know is a racist and posing for pictures with convicted IRA terrorists whilst describing them as freedom fighters and campaigning to get them released from prison so they can go out murdering again.
The so-called Brexit Bill has been published, paving the way for Theresa May to finally invoke Article 50 in March and start getting us out of the EU.
A
BILL
TO
Confer power on the Prime Minister to notify, under Article 50(2) of the Treaty on European Union, the United Kingdom’s intention to withdraw from the EU.
Be it enacted by the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:—
Power to notify withdrawal from the EU
(1) The Prime Minister may notify, under Article 50(2) of the Treaty on European Union, the United Kingdom’s intention to withdraw from the EU.
(2) This section has effect despite any provision made by or under the European Communities Act 1972 or any other enactment.
Short title
This Act may be cited as the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Act 2017.
This is what Guyanan millionaire anti-democracy campaigner Gina Miller and her millionaire backers got for their money and cost the taxpayer millions in legal fees for. A short bill that is so short there is nothing the Lords can reasonably object to and thanks to Corbyn's decision to impose a three line whip on Labour MPs to vote for it, will sail through the Commons.
Meanwhile, the Green Party have launched a legal action in the Irish High Court which they hope to take to the EU Court of Injustice to get a ruling that the UK can't invoke Article 50 without the consent of the 27 members of the rump EU and that Article 50 can be cancelled if the British government changes its mind.
A Conservative councillor in Norfolk has been suspended from the party after being caught on film making inappropriate comments to a hunt protester.
Cllr Charles Carter, who sits on Breckland Council, was suspended for making lewd comments to a hunt protester in Yorkshire, including the line "I'd like to shag you". He appears to have resigned from the party rather than face an investigation.
Yesterday the "Supreme" Court ruled by a majority of 8 to 3 that Theresa May can't use the Royal Prerogative to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon treaty and begin the process of leaving the EU.
The Supreme Court isn't actually supreme because the decision could have been appealed to the EU courts but the Attorney General took the sensible view that anti-democracy campaigner Gina Miller and her millionaire backers have already cost the taxpayer enough money and the EU courts were never going to rule in the British government's favour.
Slightly making up for the fact that the Supreme Court ruled that a Guyanan millionaire, a Brazilian hairdresser and a bunch of banks and big businesses can make 17.4m votes worthless, they also ruled that the devolved governments don't have a veto over Brexit and that leaving the EU won't invalidate the Good Friday Agreement.
So what does the Supreme Court ruling mean? Very little in practical terms at this point in time. The British government intends to trigger Article 50 by the end of March still but it now needs to get a bill through both houses before it can happen. A short bill will do the job but Labour, the Lib Dems and the SNP have all promised to table amendments to complicate it and slow down the process. MPs and Peers from the LibLabCon parties, the SNP and Plaid have pledged to vote to block Brexit and if they can't then to try and water it down so much that we will still, to all intents and purposes, be in the EU.
As soon as the judgement was announced, bookies slashed the odds of Paul Nuttall winning the Stoke Central by-election to evens and that was before a poll was published today predicting a victory for the new UKIP leader with 35% of the vote.
The ruling and the reaction by MPs and Peers shows just how important it is that we get more UKIP MPs elected to make sure that our wishes are respected. The Supreme Court may have decided that our votes are worthless but when it comes to MPs every vote will count to stop Remain-supporting politicians from the other parties from frustrating the will of the people. A UKIP win in Copeland and Stoke will guarantee two more votes for Brexit.
Far left rag, the Huffington Post, is reporting Tory sources saying that they have conceded Stoke Central and are putting all their resources into Copeland instead.
Apparently, the Tories believe that it is "inconceivable" that they could take Stoke Central from Labour and "UKIP will win Stoke". They are reportedly concerned about "the embarrassment factor" of putting the effort in in Stoke and losing the seat to UKIP.
Labour's tax dodging trade union-funded hate campaign, Hate not Hope, has been distributing leaflets in Stoke making false claims about UKIP. They're scared that they're going to lose the election so they're using some of the money they got from the memorial fund for murdered MP, Jo Cox that was intended to promote community cohesion and fight fascism to produce political material for the Labour Party.
The bookies still have Labour as odds on favourite to win Stoke Central but well over half the bets placed through the Odds Checker website have been for UKIP. The longest odds you're going to get for a UKIP win is 8/5 at the moment which is good news for the election campaign but not so good if you were hoping to make a killing at the bookies!
The world's post prestigious management consultancy firm, McKinsey & Co, have reiterated their commitment to post-Brexit UK by taking 100,000ft² of office space in a new development in London.
US-based McKinsey has 11,000 employees spread across 110 locations worldwide. McKinsey's UK & Ireland Managing Partner, Vivien Hunt, said the new office "represents a renewed commitment to London and the UK".
More than six months on from the referendum and we're still waiting for the 3m job losses, global economic apocalypse and mass exodus of big employers the Remainiacs predicted. Instead we've seen unemployment go down, the UK was the fastest growing advanced economy in the world last year and big names are investing significant amounts of money in their UK operations.
Following the resignation of Labour MP Tristram Hunt in Stoke-on-Trent, UKIP announced yesterday (21st January) that new party leader, Paul Nuttall MEP, will be our candidate in the subsequent byelection.
The seat is historically a Labour stronghold but their majority was down to 5000 at the 2015 General Election and, significantly, it registered one of the highest Leave votes at last year’s referendum.
The poor turnout at the General Election (Just 49%) shows how disillusioned local voters are with the party that has represented them in the past.
If Labour lose this seat (Plus the other byelection in Copeland, another former stronghold with an even slimmer majority) then Labour could be consigned to a spot in a museum similar to the one that Mr Hunt has left his constituency to take up a post with.
With this in mind, it was no surprise to see Labour Shadow Chancellor and my old sparring partner, John McDonnell, go on the offensive during this morning’s Marr Show on the BBC. However, both his body language and his line of attack show why the Labour High Command are terrified of the UKIP challenge in the seat and must be contemplating the possibility of an embarrassing defeat.
Spin, smear and downright lies
Once again, McDonnell trotted out the standard lie about UKIP wanting to privatise the NHS – this has never been a part of any UKIP manifesto.
Paul Nuttall spoke a number of years ago about making the procurement arm of the NHS more competitive – common sense when we see some trusts paying £25 for a lightbulb and issuing costly prescriptions for painkillers that you can buy for as little as 30p at the pharmacy. Yet in Labour’s eyes, this is ‘privatisation’.
So, let us look at the reality.
Labour in government between 1997 and 2010 saddled the NHS with £80bn of debt via PFI projects – projects that carry the kind of interest rates that are enriching the private firms involved at levels a loan shark would be embarrassed with. Some sources claim that the total cost to the taxpayer over the next 35 years could be as much as £350bn.
Labour also brought privatisation in to the NHS, with 5% of it being outsourced during the Blair/Brown years. Our own hospital in Hillingdon saw the cleaning services outsourced to Pall Mall services and the wages of the staff reduced by such an extent they came out on strike, an action that was debated at Westminster in May 1999 and is on record in Hansard. Mr McDonnell makes a big thing of workers rights and wages yet his party in power degraded the services to such an extent that workers pay and the hygiene of the wards suffered. (The hospital has had outbreaks of both MRSA and Norovirus)
It was Labour who introduced the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) and gave the contract to French firm ATOS medical. This act has led to the persecution of thousands of genuinely disabled people and withdrawal of their benefits by staff who are not clinically trained. In some cases they passed terminally ill cancer patients fit for work – challenges to their verdicts overturned almost half of all decisions and led to the current government finally taking the contract away from the company but not before many were hounded to their graves.
Labour also introduced the GP Surgery contracts that have tied up those centres in additional paperwork, taking GP’s off of the front line to fill in forms and contributing to the extra pressures seen at A&E for non urgent cases. The only beneficiaries of this legislation have been those senior GP’s who own the practices – GP’s such as Labour GLA Assembly member and NHS spokesman on the assembly, Dr Onkar Sahota. He owns a company called Healthcare 360 that operates surgeries in Southall and Greenford that billed the NHS £1.368mn in financial year 2013-2014 despite claiming to want to fight for the NHS on all his literature (Although if you were making over £1mn per year from the service, you would probably want to fight for it as well!).
He also refused to open a new surgery in Heathrow Villages for residents who currently have to travel to Hayes because he stated it was ‘not viable’ – showing that Labour’s legislation now means that profitability is put before patient care, even by their elected representatives.
Mr McDonnell may bleat that this was all done under Blair but he took up his seat as Hayes & Harlington MP on the same day that Blair became Prime Minister – he was a part of the ruling party at Westminster for 13 years when this was going on and is currently in the Shadow Cabinet that has allowed candidates such as Dr Sahota to carry on his business practices on their watch.
Insulting the electorate
John McDonnell was interviewed by Sophy Ridge of Sky News on January 15th. (Below)
Part of the interview was regarding the Leave vote in the EU Referendum – Hillingdon as a whole voted 57% to Leave but his Hayes & Harlington constituency registered the highest opposition to staying in the EU, nearly 60%.
Responding to Ms Ridge, McDonnell stated that the vote was a register of dissatisfaction with people’s current conditions but, more tellingly when pressed on immigration, said that people look for others to blame when things aren’t going well – effectively, that the vote was in part down to a ‘scapegoating’ of migrants.
My team was out on the streets every week from January 2016 discussing the referendum with residents, including very busy street stalls in Hayes Town. We have a very diverse community in the area but it was made clear by the BME Britons and migrants we spoke with that there were a range of reasons for them voting to leave – indeed, one South African gentleman who I spoke with had fought against Apartheid in that state and said he couldn’t understand anybody giving up their right to sack those in power at the ballot box, a right he had fought hard to gain, which we would be doing should Remain be victorious.
It is also interesting to note that McDonnell, through his position as the Parliamentary spokesman for the RMT Union, backed a series of demonstrations that they ran under the late Bob Crow highlighting ‘social dumping’ – the undercutting of their members by cheaper migrant workers. So it is OK for Mr McDonnell to ‘scapegoat’ migrant workers but those in his constituency who voted leave because they had seen their wages and conditions degraded were wrong to look at their circumstances and come to the same conclusion? Indeed, the RMT themselves backed a ‘Leave’ vote and were part of the Trade Union Against the EU (TUAEU) group who campaigned alongside us – are they ‘scapegoating’ migrants John?
Uncontrolled migration has put massive pressures on infrastructure and is acknowledged by a number of organisations, including the Bank of England, to have compressed wages for those at the lower end of the pay scale. This is not a form of bigotry, it is about numbers and the economics of supply and demand. McDonnell talks of the pressures on affordable housing in Hayes but refuses to face up to the fact that we can’t build fast enough to keep up with a population increase of 330k per year through open door migration, or a new city the size of Hull every 12 months.
This affects not just current UK citizens but those coming to the country as well in higher rents, poorer services and lower pay – something that UKIP would address through an ethical points based migration system that treats everybody equally, not the uncontrolled model that Labour continue to promote and ironically only helps the big corporations in cheaper wages and unscrupulous landlords who hike prices way above inflation.
It is a mark of how out of touch Labour are when left wing firebrands such as John McDonnell are on the same side as the big investment banks and corporations and UKIP are the party championing the cause of the working classes, small businesses, exploited migrant workers and the squeezed middle.
That is why Labour and their fellow travellers on the ‘regressive left’ have had to resort to smears and lies in the Stoke byelection – it is also why a forward looking, optimistic and proudly patriotic UKIP will win.
UKIP’s Real Policies on the NHS and Social Care (Taken from the 2015 manifesto)
UKIP is fully committed to keeping the NHS free at the point of delivery and at time of need for UK citizens.
We will spend a total of £12bn more on the NHS in England by 2020 to make sure it stays that way.
We Will –
Fund 20,000 more nurses, 8000 more GP’s and 3000 more midwives
Invest an extra £1.5bn in to mental health and dementia services over the next 5 years
Scrap hospital parking charges
End ‘Health Tourism’ by making sure those ineligible for free NHS care pay for treatment
Replace Monitor and the CQC with powerful new county health boards to drive up standards
Care for the Elderly
There is a national crisis in elderly care. According to Age UK, 900,000 older people between the ages of 65 and 89 have social care needs that are not met.
Residential care, nursing care, home care and day care have had their budgets cut, meaning one million hospital bed days are now lost every year because patients cannot be discharged.
We will –
Integrate health and social care and bring both under the control of the NHS
Increase Social Care funding in total by £5.2bn between 2015 and 2020
Promise to invest any tax profits from ‘fracking’ in to setting up a sovereign wealth fund to pay for elderly care.
Protect services such as day care centres, home care and Meals on Wheels.
Abolish the practice of arranging home care visits in 15 minute windows
Keep the current free bus pass, winter fuel allowance, free TV license and free prescriptions and eye test schemes for all pensioners, without means testing.
It is also worth noting that only UKIP have had their manifesto independently audited and found to add up so we can afford to make these changes
Paul Nuttall has been selected as UKIP's candidate for the Stoke Central by-election, putting him smack in the middle of the biggest test of his leadership so far.
Stoke is one of UKIP's strongest areas and one of the most eurosceptic parts of the country. This is a real opportunity to gain a seat.
In his acceptance speech, Paul said that Labour will be telling lies about UKIP wanting to privatise the NHS. He said that in 2011 he said he wanted to bring some privatisation to the NHS but after seeing the effects of Labour's part privatisation of the NHS he had changed his mind. He then said something that very few politicians ever have: "I was wrong".
The Lib Dems have selected Dr Zulfiqar Ali as their candidate, pretty much guaranteeing the weaponisation of the NHS in this election. Ali is an anti-Brexit candidate (obviously) which isn't going to endear him to the almost 70% of voters in Stoke who voted to leave the EU.
Labour and the Tory vote-splitters have yet to announce their candidates for this by-election but Labour have already been out on the streets telling people that UKIP want to privatise the NHS so it looks like we can expect a dirty campaign from them.
Fiona Mills has been unveiled as UKIP's candidate for the Copeland by-election.
Mills has worked in the NHS for 24 years and helped write UKIP's health policy. UKIP was the only party to have an independently verified, costed plan to put more money into front line health services.
In an interesting twist, Labour are standing the same candidate in Copeland that Fiona Mills stood against in Carlisle in 2015. She's worked as a junior doctor for just over a year in 1991 and on that basis claimed to be a doctor and surgeon in the 2015 general election.
The Lib Dems have selected Rebecca Hanson as their candidate. She desperately wants us to stay in the EU and hopes that Remoaners will vote for her to "send a strong message" against Brexit.
The Tories have yet to announce their candidate to replace John Stevenson who resigned to take a job in the private sector.
He's more Marmite than Nigel Farage but Donald Trump managed to do something that's never been done before and become the first President of the United States who wasn't a professional politician or high ranking military officer.
A few hours ago Trump took the oath of office and became the 45th president before delivering a speech that could have been from one of his campaign rallies. A sour faced Michelle Obama looked every part the petulant, sulking socialist, trying to avoid even looking at Trump let alone engaging with him. The outgoing president, by contrast, was polite and friendly to his replacement as grown-ups should be.
While Donald Trump's inauguration was getting underway, lefties were out on the streets of Washington breaking windows and damaging street furniture in protest at the democratic process.
Donald Trump isn't everyone's cup of tea and he's said encouraging and worrying things in equal measure but one thing we know for sure is that he's different.
The Leader of Sinn Féin, former Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland and IRA commander, Martin McGuinness, will not stand for re-election in the elections he prompted by resigning as Deputy First Minister.
No details have been released by Sinn Féin but he's not standing because of a serious illness. He is rumoured to have a rare heart condition.
We won't lose any sleep over one less terrorist in a position of power.
UKIP's Mark Reckless AM has called for the Welsh government to sue the British government if they press ahead with plans to continue charging tolls on the Severn bridges beyond 2019.
The tolls on the Welsh side are devolved to the Welsh government and they were abolished some time ago. The British government continues to charge for using the bridges when travelling from England but as the law stands will have to stop when it has collected £80m of tolls which is estimated to be some time in 2019.
A £15m grant from the EU's flood recovery fund to help repair the damage caused by Storm Desmond in 2015 will be used to pay a £15m fine from the last time the UK got a payout from the fund rather than helping the storm's victims.
The UK rarely draws down on any disaster funds because as one of the few net contributors to the EU budget we have to pay a big chunk of whatever we're give ourselves making it easier and cheaper to just spend our own money ourselves rather than launder it through the EU. However, the Tories decided to use the fund for the 2015 storm and were granted £15m but because Labour misspent money from the same fund the last time it was used in 2007, the whole lot is going to pay the £15m fine the British government has been given for misspending the funds.
The Labour and Lib Dem politicians who kicked up a big fuss about the British government not wanting to apply for the grant are all strangely quiet over this.
The Welsh nationalist snowflakes were invited to give evidence to the Welsh Assembly's culture committee but responded saying that they would only attend if they could refuse to answer questions from UKIP's Neil Hamilton AM because "UKIP has promoted and tolerated prejudiced attitudes against a number of groups in our society - gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans people, ethnic minorities, migrants, people with HIV - and the Welsh language".
The chairman of the committee, Plaid Cymru's Bethan Jenkins AM, told them that they didn't get to choose who asked the questions and withdrew their invitation. Neil Hamilton said that he supported their aim of making Wales bilingual but that they should just grow up.
UKIP councillors have been pushing for investigations into dodgy dealings at Sandwell for some time. The Deputy Leader of the council and cabinet member for regeneration resigned in 2015 over allegations of wrongdoing relating to the sale of council property. The Deputy Leader failed to declare a financial interest in a company that got a large council contract, sold a council-owned property to his son on the cheap and then allegations of vote rigging were made.
Allegations of conspiracy to defraud and misconduct in public office are being investigated by the police.
Cllr Connor Furnival has been accepted back into the Conservative group on Telford & Wrekin Council.
He was kicked out of the group after pleading guilty to domestic violence against his girlfriend and mother of his two children last January.
At the time Lucy Allan MP who was only the Tory PPC then dismissed it as just a bit of shoving. She was a trustee for Women's Aid, a domestic violence charity.
Lucy Allan has had lots of negative press of course for allegedly abusing her staff and social media rants.
Sounds like a lovely woman to be around.
Only last week she wrote of him: “He’s a great guy, loads of potential, bright, hardworking – will go places, for sure.”
In a further message urging his selection as a council candidate, she wrote: "Hollinswood and Randlay needs a strong team of hardworking community representatives."
Should she be a trustee of Woman's Aid if she overlooks domestic violence against women?
It begs the question of her role as a trustee at least.
Labour won a by-election recently which took the council from being hung to a slim Labour majority. A cynical person might think this was an attempt to balance it out again.
I have been told by a local source that some local Conservative Party activists are very unhappy at what's happened and are threatening to resign.
Lets hope they do, things like this should never be taken lightly.
"Meantime ambitious Furnival, who was expecting to hear within days if he had been selected as a local Tory council candidate, has played a central role in Telford parliamentary candidate Lucy Allan’s bid to beat Labour in the marginal Shropshire constituency"
So as it stands the council is could be hung again and the local Tory party have overlooked the guilty charge for abuse. Councillor Furnival got 80 hours community service for the attack.
This seems to be the face of the local Tory party in the Telford and Wrekin area.
Theresa May has delivered her speech on the British government's approach to Brexit.
The key points are:
MPs and peers will get a vote on the final EU deal
Ministers from devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and NI will get a seat at the negotiating table but nobody representing England's interests
EU law will all be transposed into domestic legislation
The UK is prepared to guarantee the rights of EU immigrants in the UK now but some EU member states are refusing to agree to do the same for UK immigrants in the EU
Keeping the Common Travel Area with the Republic of Ireland is a priority
Free trade agreement with the EU but not membership of the single market
Payments into the EU budget will end
Retain parts of the EU customs union but not those parts that prevent the UK making its own comprehensive trade agreements
Continue to collaborate with the EU on crime and terrorism
Transitionary period of disengagement rather than a hard stop of EU membership
The Prime Minister talks a good talk but this is just a shopping list. We voted to leave half a year ago and we are no closer than we were then. She has refused to commit to introducing the same immigration controls on EU citizens as we do on non-EU immigrants and she is aiming to drag out our membership for some time after Brexit is supposed to happen on the pretext of limiting disruption. There is a serious risk that this Brexit-lite will become a strategic, rather than tactical solution - especially if Labour get rid of Corbyn and get the Tories out of power - and we won't actually leave.
Snap elections are to be held on 2nd March in Northern Ireland after Sinn Féin brought down the government by refusing to nominate a Deputy First Minister.
Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness - a convicted IRA terrorist - resigned a week ago supposedly over a botched renewable heating scheme that is costing the taxpayer hundreds of millions. Under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement either the First Minister or Deputy First Minister's party can bring down the Northern Irish government simply by refusing to nominate a candidate for either post.
Sinn Féin won't have done this if they don't think they stand to gain. Reliable opinion polling is scarce in Northern Ireland so presumably they've got access to some private polling data that looks favourable.
Convicted terrorist and IRA Council member turned politician, Martin McGuinness
Labour MP for Wentworth & Deane, John Healey, has been called on to apologise after claiming that a UKIP councillor in Rotherham "walked away from [his] job".
The offending tweet is referring to former UKIP councillor, Ian Finnie, who recently resigned from the council because he refused to take public money when he couldn't put in the hours. He lost two of his brothers last year and another has serious health problems which has itself brought on health problems of his own.
Numerous people have told Healey the circumstances around Ian Finnie's understandable and entirely honourable decision to stand down but he has yet to apologise.
This scheme is using the money of honest premium-paying motorists to compensate those who are blatantly breaking the law – everything about it is totally wrong.
Donald Trump has told the Times that a trade deal with the UK will be a priority when he takes office this week.
He said that the UK is "doing great" after the referendum and that we are "smart" to be getting out of the EU. He went on to say that whilst Barack Obama had said that the UK would be at the "back of the queue" we would, in fact, be at the "front of the line". Obama's statement was believed to have been requested by Project Fear as an American would say "back of the line".
Trump's promise that the UK will be a priority for a trade deal has prompted a swift response from the EU who have said that they won't allow negotiations to even start until after we leave.
Left wing author, Guardian writer, luvvie and owner of his own £18k a year liberal arts university, AC Grayling, has called for a general strike in opposition to Brexit.
This is a fantastic idea because the 52% can also hold a general strike in favour of Brexit.
As sneering Remoaners delight in telling us, your average Brexit supporter is a poorly educated low earner - in other words, the working class who do all the menial jobs that keep the lights on, the streets free of litter and the country's production lines going. Your average Project Fear supporter is either a higher earner, a luvvie or a snowflake student - in other words, the kind of people who would struggle to change a light bulb.
Let the Remoaners call a general strike to oppose Brexit, the workers will bring the country to its knees with their own.
The chief executive of Bolton Council has admitted that it was a mistake to allow the leader of the council to use emergency powers to make a £300k grant to a law firm.
Cllr Clifford Morris, the Labour leader of Bolton Council, angrily defended his decision to bypass councillors and use emergency powers to give taxpayers' money to ambulance chasers, Asons Solicitors, to refurbish their brand new offices.
Coincidentally, Asons have a disputed £300k tax bill in their accounts although there is no evidence of a link between the tax bill and the amount given to the firm for refurbishment of their offices.
Bolton's UKIP councillors have been leading calls for Cllr Morris to stand down and for an inquiry into what has happened.
A 37 year old professional dominatrix in Plymouth is planning to stand in next year's local elections for the Labour Party.
Margaret Corvid - or Mistress Magpie to her friends - is horrified by Brexit and Donald Trump so she wants to get elected to Plymouth City Council to oust the Tory-UKIP coalition that runs the city.
Well, the Labour Party are well known for whipping their councillors ...
Irish budget airline, Ryanair, has announced 9 new routes flying out of Stansted.
Ryanair joined Project Fear for the EU referendum, threatening to scale back its UK operations if we voted for Brexit. In fact, a month after the referendum Ryanair said it would be concentrating on growing operations in the EU at the expense of the UK. They said that this winter they would "cut capacity and frequency on many London Stansted routes".
UKIP councillor Colin Aldred has passed away after a long battle with cancer.
Cllr Aldred represented Great Yarmouth on Norfolk County Council since 2013. He had been ill for 18 months but continued to work for the local community until he became bed-ridden.
The leader of the UKIP group on Norfolk County Council, Toby Coke, said:
He will be sorely missed by all members, especially in the Ukip group. From my point of view I’m happy to say he survived long enough to see Brexit.
Tristram Hunt MP is resigning to become head of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, triggering a by-election in one of UKIP's strongest areas.
In the last general election UKIP's vote share jumped 18.3% to finish in second place. Former Labour campaigner and now UKIP Stoke branch chairman, Mick Harold, finished 5,179 votes behind the Labour MP.
This is probably the most important by-election for UKIP since Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless successfully defended their seats after defecting from the Conservatives. A victory in Stoke-on-Trent would be a watershed moment for the party, winning a new seat rather than retaining one held by an incumbent.
In the EU referendum, Stoke-on-Trent voted Leave by a massive 69% and are now losing their Remain-supporting MP. Tribal voting is no less a problem in Stoke as elsewhere in the country but Jeremy Corbyn is driving members and MPs away from the Labour Party.
The Sun ran a story during the referendum campaign saying that the Queen had expressed support for Brexit in a meeting with Nick Clegg when he was Deputy Prime Minister. She reportedly complained that the EU had overshadowed the Commonwealth and didn't know why we couldn't just leave.
Clegg initially said he couldn't remember if it was true but then changed his mind overnight and categorically denied the claim, describing it as nonsense and "A-grade, 24-carat bilge". The Palace even made a complaint to IPSO who said that the Sun shouldn't have used the headline they did but didn't rule that the story was inaccurate. BBC political editor, Laura Kuenssberg, backed up the story after the referendum.
Now Clegg has admitted to the New Statesman that the Queen did, in fact, get "grumpy" about the EU and regretted the way the EU was eclipsing the Commonwealth. This is the second time he's changed his mind and the Lib Dems are still in damage limitation mode, denying that Clegg referred to the queen as grumpy.
A Labour councillor in Scotland has been charged with possession of child abuse images.
Cllr Sean Morton was bailed on Christmas Eve after appearing in private at Elgin Sheriff Court. He didn't enter a plea on the charges of taking, making, being in possession of, showing and distributing an indecent photograph or pseudo-photograph of a child and possession of obscene material. But he did jet off to Portugal for a holiday.
There is no mention of the story on the BBC News website - not even in the politics or Scotland sections. In fact, the last time the BBC mentioned Cllr Morton was 4 days before his court appearance where they reported his comments about a piece of art he considered to be "cultural vomit".
Morton flew out to New Hampshire last year with Scottish Labour leader, Kezia Dugdale MSP, to campaign for Hilary Clinton in the US presidential elections.
The FTSE 100 finished up 15 points today to secure a record breaking 12th day of consecutive rises.
This is the longest uninterrupted run of growth in the flagship share index in its 33 year history and leaves the FTSE at its highest ever level.
The markets have been buoyed by some better than expected results from mining companies, strong Christmas trading figures and the Bank of England's governor and one of Project Fear's chief propagandists repeating his assessment that the EU has more to lose by making Brexit difficult than we do.
That global economic apocalypse that Brexit is going to cause is taking its time to materialise!
The Italian 5 Star Movement's MEPs have rejoined the EFDD group they co-founded with UKIP just 48 hours after leaving to attempt to join the federalist ALDE group led by Guy Verhofstadt.
The ALDE group rejected Beppe Grillo's application to join their pro-EU, anti-democracy alliance which would have meant the 5 Star Movement's MEPs sitting with the non-inscrits ("independent" MEPs) with little in the way of funding to do their jobs.
Reports suggest that some changes have been made to how the group is run to get Grillo and his colleagues back on board but they don't say what. Details will no doubt come out in the media soon enough once the UKIP-hating left wing press have got over their disappointment that the EFDD group hasn't folded and lost Nigel Farage his front seat and speaking rights.
There has been more terrible economic news today with the FTSE 100 finishing on a record high for the ninth consecutive day of trading.
It follows this morning's terrible news that Snapchat is joining the other tech giants Google, Apple and Softbank in moving its international headquarters to London since Brexit.
The FTSE 100 has now risen for 11 days in a row, nine of which have been at record high levels. The previous record was eight days of record growth following Labour's landslide election in 1997 and another day of growth tomorrow will see the longest period of continuous growth in the FTSE 100's 33 year history.
Jeremy Corbyn today called for a maximum wage forcing the Labour Party to backtrack on his behalf, claiming that he "misspoke" and really meant that executive pay should be capped.
Labour's obsession with penalising the highest tax payers and wealth creators is dangerous and divisive. Punitive taxes to punish high earners drives them away and reduces tax take. Inciting hatred of people who are successful causes revolution.
The American social media giant is building new offices in London and has already started recruiting extra staff ahead of a stock market flotation. The UK subsidiary will manage Snapchat's non-US business around the world and will pay tax in the UK on the non-US portion of its estimated $1bn of advertising revenue.
Snapchat's decision to locate its global headquarters in the UK follows similar decisions by Google, Apple and Japanese technology giant, Softbank's high tech investment fund.
Grillo says that the party will attempt to form its own group in time for the next EU elections in 2019 but in the meantime, the funding that his party will no longer be getting will go to the groups that promote the very things his movement opposes.
The Italian 5 Star Movement have voted to leave the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD) group they co-founded with UKIP and join the pro-EU, anti-democracy Alliance of Liberals and Democrats in Europe (ALDE) group headed up by Guy Verhofstadt.
It's not that surprising that the 5 Star Movement is looking to the future without UKIP in the EU Parliament but it's quite bizarre that a party founded on the core principal of securing a referendum on leaving the €uro and introducing direct democracy would join a grouping that is fundamentally opposed to both of those ideals.
The ALDE group has to vote on whether to accept Beppe Grillo's motley crew of anarchists but despite some strong opposition in the group to the 5 Star Movement's lack of commitment to the EU project the fact that it will bring them more money to UKIP's disadvantage will smooth the way to their joining.
There will be a reduction in funding to the EFDD group to reflect its smaller size going forward but the overall effect will be somewhat muted as Grillo's party received a sizeable chunk of it as the second largest delegation. It does leave the EFDD group in a precarious position, potentially needing only to lose a single MEP to fall short of the country requirements to form an official group. The other groups will be working hard to poach one of the EFDD members to force it to fold as they have done in the past but something usually turns up when this happens, much to their dismay.
The decision hasn't gone down too well in Italy where Grillo has been criticised by politicians on the left and the right and by Italians who feel let down that he has aligned his party with a group of federalist politicians.
TV chef Jamie Oliver has announced he is closing 4 of his Italian restaurants and blamed Brexit for the closure.
If you smell a rat it's not the two for one Sunday lunch special. He has 42 Italian restaurants in the UK but these 6 restaurants combined represent less than 5% of the turnover for all the UK restaurants. This suggests that they're turning over about half the average for the rest of them. This is against a backdrop of declining turnover across the group since 2013 which Oliver previously blamed on tough competition from high street chains.
Oliver is blaming the weak pound against the €uro - a result of uncertainty caused by the British government's lack of preparations for Brexit rather than Brexit itself - for making the restaurants unprofitable. He says that importing Parmesan and olive oil from Italy is getting too expensive as a result but what's this?
The Telegraph reported back in February last year that drought and disease in the olive oil producing countries of southern Europe have decimated crops and pushed up prices by 20%.
But what about Parmesan? Parmesan is so expensive that it held by some Italian banks as collateral and the Italian Mafia are stealing millions of pounds worth of it every year. It's always been expensive but this wholesale theft - estimated at 4% of total production - is pushing up prices.
So the real story behind the fake news is that 6 of Jamie Oliver's Italian restaurants are under-performing and the price increases he's blaming on Brexit have more to do with the result of organised crime and poor crops in Italy and Spain than the weak pound.
Paul Halliday was a PPC for Newport in South Wales, the Lib Dem candidate for Newport East for the Welsh Assembly and was supposed to be contesting this year's local elections. He is a US-trained theologian, a former church minister for the Church of Christ and a minister for his own Church of the Forgiven Family.
Unconfirmed comments from an insider in the Lib Dems' youth wing suggest that the party have been trying to keep a lid on this and other allegations for a while.
wonkotsane is an author at Bloggers4UKIP.
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