Fake News: Jamie Oliver blames closure of under-performing restaurants on Brexit

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.

Fake news: Guardian blames Dutch woman's visa mistake on Brexit

The Guardian have blamed a Dutch woman refused a residency permit after failing to provide valid evidence of her right to be in the UK on Brexit.

Monique Hawkins - a Dutch passport holder - has lived in the UK for 24 years, is married to a UK citizen and has two children who are British citizens. She was taken in by the ludicrous scare stories put out by Project Fear (the Guardian included) and fearing for her future right to live in the UK, she applied for a residency permit so that she could then apply for citizenship.

But when she sent the forms off to the Home Office she failed to enclose her original passport as evidence that she was living in the UK legally so her application was rejected and she was told she would have to leave the country. Rather than accept that she had made a mistake and the Home Office had followed the rules absolutely correctly, she went to the Guardian who published yet another scare story warning EU citizens that they faced being deported just like Hawkins.

All she had to do was provide the Home Office with her Dutch passport to show that she has a legal right to live here but instead she provided a solicitor-certified copy which - as the solicitor should have been aware - is not acceptable. In fact, it is the first thing on the list of documents you must provide on the Home Office's website.

The Home Office have now fast-tracked her application and provided her with a residency permit but she's still not happy. She has told the Guardian that she believes it is unlawful for the Home Office to hold on to applicants' passports for up to 6 months whilst their applications are processed because it infringes on their right to freedom of movement so expect another Remoaner legal case soon trying to water down Brexit before it's even started.

The Guardian has been pontificating about fake news since it became fashionable at the end of last year but just like their crusade against tax avoiders they run from their tax dodging Cayman Islands trust-owned offices in London it is a cynical and hypocritical campaign that doesn't extend to themselves. The only link to Brexit in this story is that Hawkins decided to apply for the residence permit because of the Brexit vote. If she had decided to apply because she needed it to work the headline wouldn't be "Job application: Dutch woman who was told to leave UK now allowed to stay". If she had decided to apply because after living and raising a family here for 24 years she felt British the headline wouldn't be "British identity: Dutch woman who was told to leave UK now allowed to stay".

This is a perfect example of the fake news that is causing fear and division in this country and once again it is the Guardian and Project Fear who are behind it.