Tuesday 13 August 2019

Shouty headlines etc again

P Toynbee this time.Much of her article is taken up with the special pleading of a 'family-owned firm in Haddenham, Cambridgeshire, making specialist chocolate and fudge in two factories employing 50 people',facing complexities with new customs forms and facing, apparently, a 20% tariff. The headline:

Brexit has turned our government into an Orwellian Ministry of Truth 

Mostly because the Government has so far been pretty unhelpful to the chocolatier, and HMRC has delayed giving him information.  The experience is echoed by a spokesperson for the Food and Drink Federation:

“The industry can never be ready,” says Wright.[Oh dear --what an admission]  “With so many possible eventualities, it’s pinning jelly to the wall. There will be random shortages and unpredictable chaos. No commodity prices can be fixed. No one knows what haulage will cost, if queues or fear of visas make EU drivers refuse to come here. Some things will be fine, but some will be much worse than we think – the unknown unknowns.”

Isn't that what 'businessmen' claim to be dealing with when they reward themselves with 'profit'?  So the UK is not ready for Brexit then [and who is to blame for that?And will it be?].For Toynbee, the claims are therefore Orwellian?

She thinks:

The great “ready-for-Brexit” sham paraded in Downing Street with all this “task and finish” talk may be designed to convince EU negotiators that Boris Johnson is deadly serious about no deal. But Brussels knows it’s all bravado.

She ends with a typical flourish:

The Times yesterday revealed that Cabinet Office plans include invoking the Civil Contingencies Act, with its almost unlimited emergency powers if Brexit threatens “serious damage”. Meanwhile, the Treasury seems to have spare time from its preparations to include Sajid Javid’s bizarre intention to mint new 50p coins. They will be embossed with the words “friendship with all nations”, a Ministry of Truth upside-down inversion to commemorate a no-deal Brexit with a no-£39bn crash-out that breaks friendship with our neighbours for years to come.  

Breaking a trade agreement means breaking friendship. A rival prediction is a lie. THAT is Orwellian newspeak. There is doubtless unintended distortion too in the view, common among Remainers that: 'unsalable sheep will be slaughtered when the door to 90% of the UK market slams shut on 1 November.' 

Even the source cited explains that it is 95% of exports that might be threatened, not the whole 'UK market' (I assume she meant UK output?)

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