Today, dear readers, we go back to the House of Lords where another of this blog's favourite people, Lord Stoddart of Swindon asked
a question:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what was the total trade deficit or surplus with the European Union in goods and services between 2010 and 2013; and what is their estimate of any deficit in 2014 to date.
There are certain advantages to asking purely factual questions that cannot be twisted too much. Even Lord Livingstone's official had to come up with some figures:
UK’s trade deficit with the European Union was £28.5bn in 2010, £21.7bn in 2011, £39.5bn in 2012 and £56.2bn in 2013. Currently, UK trade balance figures cover the period up to the second quarter of 2014. In the first half of 2014, UK’s trade deficit with the European Union was £25.5bn.
Remember those figures next time some idiot or europhiliac (but I repeat myself) tells you how vital and important Britain's membership of the EU is to its trade with the rest of the EU.
And now to something completely different:
ReplyDeleteHelen,
September 10 (a couple of days before our national election) I wrote this on your blog:
"If the recent polls are not badly wrong, it seems certain that the Swedish Democrats will hold the balance of power in the next parliament. Given that none of the other parties will (or so they say now) cooperate with SD we are in for either a large right-left coalition ad modum Germany, or one or many weak minority governments before the people prematurely are called to the urns again."
As you noted some days later the result turned out as predicted. And also as predicted the bien pensants were shocked about the outcome since the Swedish Democrats (SD) was the only party that bettered its result significantly.
The political parties, aided and abetted by the media claque, decided to ignore the actual result and formed a Social Democratic-Green government supported by the Left Party (the former Communists). This coalition did not have a majority, and needed support from some of the centre-right parties (or the anti-immigration SD).
Totally oblivious of this the government proceeded with a hard-left policy, and therefore to the major surprise of all the media experts, politicians etc the budget of the government was defeated in the parliament and the PM found no other recourse than decide on an extra election in March. Just as was predicted on this blog.....
/Mikgen
Heh! Look at the next posting.
DeleteThanks.
Delete/M