TheGoodSoldierSteve🇪🇺🇬🇧🇭🇰

Old China Hand who wants his freedom of movement through Europe back!
Europhile.
Hong Kong Belonger.

[Peter Jukes @peterjukes]

Obviously Yaxley Lennon f*cked up by jumping on a riot while hanging out in Moscow with far right influencers

Now check his finances Met Police for Russian funding https://t.co/uzW6jU3DEH

[Prem Sikka @premnsikka]

10 years after the Brexit vote.

UK economy is significantly smaller than it would otherwise have been.

Trade has suffered.

Business investment and productivity growth have stalled.

Families are on average thousands of pounds a year worse off.
https://t.co/EmqbiCSEvV

[Charles Tannock @CharlesTannock]

@SarahLudford We Remainers who had deep knowledge of the EU all agreed on the negative economic aspects of Brexit. The fact £ devalued 15% the next day effectively making the UK economy smaller said it all. The markets also knew Brexit was damaging to the economy and so it has come to pass.

[Richard Corbett @RichardGCorbett]

How Brexit has made Britain poorer – in charts
https://t.co/hevjTO96nG

[Richard Corbett @RichardGCorbett]

‘Brexit was a con, and those who sold it are guilty of a heinous crime’ – Michael Heseltine
https://t.co/qgOHeD9uBm

[dave lawrence 🐟🐟🐠 @dave43law]

The liars of Brexit are suddenly being exposed

They have got away with it for so long - sooner or later it was going to catch up with them.

Is this yet another reason Farage is in hiding

[Prem Sikka @premnsikka]

Amazon UK entities' pre-tax profits up from £455m to £555m.

It pays corporation tax at an effective rate of 7.1%, headline rate is 25%. Profits shifted through intragroup transactions.

UK retailers can't compete with hard-wired systematic tax avoidance.
https://t.co/uIjxEHV1wp

[Richard Corbett @RichardGCorbett]

We wouldwelcome the UK back into the EU, say Members of the European Parliament from across the political spectrum:
https://t.co/vrweVSqN5T via @MetroUK

[Ray Planet Earth 🇬🇧 @JimBob1046620]

@campbellclaret Admit it, you find him oddly arousing ;)

[Steve Shovlar 🇪🇺🇺🇦 #AFCB 🍒 #PROEU @SteveShovlar]

We all know Brexit is dead in the water. Even the Brexiteers know, though they won’t admit it in public.

So much money lost every single week by being outside the EU. Money that could be used throughout the UK.

Give us a follow if you have the same thoughts.

[Resolution Foundation @resfoundation]

Brexit has likely done more economic damage than feared.

Recent evidence suggests the economic cost of Brexit may be approaching twice the 4% impact assumed by the OBR.

The Chancellor has signalled a shift in approach to EU trade, but the effect will depend on how far the govt goes on alignement.

[Prem Sikka @premnsikka]

UK democracy in action

The state unable/unwilling to provide people with clean water, timely healthcare, decent housing, pension, affordable education, energy or transport.

Corporate profits guaranteed through PFI, privatisations, outsourcing, subsidies.
https://t.co/0mI6LTFXlN

[Mary-Lou Schagena @radiogirl985]

"Prof Pedro Arrojo-Agudo, UN special rapporteur on human right to clean #water, has singled out the #UK system for criticism, saying water should be managed as a publicly owned service, rather than run by private companies set up to benefit shareholders."
#ONpoli #DougFord 🚰

[Dave Jones @CleanPowerDave]

Wow, Thames Water and.. everyone🤮

I highly recommend watching Dirty Business, it's mind blowing.

I had no idea English water companies poisoned us so illegally, so consistently, and so recently...

https://t.co/dUpNy8WlSl

[BENEATH BRITISH WATERS Our Freshwater Planet @UnderwaterMedia]

@HackedOffHugh @Channel4 Bang on the money with that. We have been documenting England's rivers for 35 years and we now regularly film areas with more sewage litter than fish and sewage fungus as in the clip attached all in the name of greed. Been the biggest scam going at our expense and nature's

[SOS Whitstable @SOSWhitstable]

@HackedOffHugh @Channel4 We have a petition calling for nationalisation with 292k signatures @HackedOffHugh.

If by any chance you could share it, it would be a massive help: https://t.co/QXLPJyn7re

[lan Byrne MP @IanByrneMP]

‘Dirty Business’ on Channel 4 is essential viewing.

A damning exposé of Thatcher’s failed water privatisation polluting rivers, hiking bills and rewarding shareholders while the public pays the price.

We owe a huge debt to the brave whistleblowers & campaigners who exposed the tangled web of politicians, regulators and corporations behind this corrupt model.

Labour now faces a choice: renationalise our water and enact the Hillsborough Law or prop up a utterly broken & discredited system.

[Feargal Sharkey @Feargal_Sharkey]

HOLY SHIT and I don't say that very often...

At the behest of the water industry the Department for Works and Pensions has deducted £22.4 MILLION from people's Universal Credit payments simply to pay arrears to water companies.

The arrogance and greed of these companies knows no bounds exploiting the most vulnerable in society and who the hell in DWP authorised this nonsense?

https://t.co/HxVToqA903

[Liz Webster @LizWebsterSBF]

🚨 The clearest, most devastating summary of Brexit’s damage which answers every remaining excuse.

Brexit caused a slow economic bleed:
•GDP is 6–8% smaller than it would have been by 2025: worse than forecast.
•Investment is down 18% compared to similar economies.
•Employment and productivity are 4% lower.
•The damage accumulated year after year, driven by uncertainty, friction and lost integration.

Nearly 1 in 10 CFOs spent 6+ hours a week dealing with Brexit fallout for years. Huge amount of time/money preparing for economic sabotage.

👀The killer finding 👉firms most exposed to the EU:
�� Were the fastest growing before Brexit
😥 Became the most damaged after Brexit

Brexit punished Britain’s most productive, outward-facing businesses, the exact engines of growth.

Brexit is a rare modern case study of a rich country which proves deliberately raising barriers and the result is:
•Lower growth
•Lower productivity
•Lower wages
•Permanent relative decline

⚠️ A BIG warning for any country flirting with economic nationalism, trade wars, or sovereignty over integration.

[John Sweeney @johnsweeneyroar]

The Epstein Sewer

I've been a reporter for 40 years more, man and boy, and I can't remember being as shocked by a data dump as reading the Epstein files this morning. Sex with under-age girls. Torture. Snuff jobs.

Something like 30 members of the Trump administration or people in his circle pop up in the Epstein files, sorry Epstein sewer. Donald Trump, time and again. Stories of him taking part in the sexual abuse of girls under the age of consent. Photos of Brett Ratner, the director of the un-hit movie Melania, with Epstein and young girls. Our own Andrew, formerly known as Prince, cavorting with what looks to be on the face of it a child, not a woman. And the news that Peter Mendelson's husband was paid $10,000 by Epstein when he was a convicted paedophile. Maybe more. Maybe a lot more. There is even a walk-on part for Bill Gates, one of the richest men in the world, catching the clap from a Russian prostitute and worrying about how to slip his wife medication without her knowing about it.

Immediately, we must step back. In any investigation, whether by the FBI, by the Met here in London or even by a simple journalist like me, you come across fantastic stories which can be, on the surface, at first brush, terrible and alarming and shocking. And then you work a bit harder and you interrogate the stories and they turn out to be dross. The source cannot possibly know the details of the story they claim to have. The source is weak, foolish and wrong about detail.

But, some of the time, they be telling the truth or part of the truth. And some of the time they may be fantasists. Working out the difference is hard. This is a particular difficulty with the victims of sexual abuse and child sexual abuse. We all know about “Nick” whose fantasies led the police to probe the former Chief of the Defence Staff Lord Bramall and former European Commissioner Leon Brittan, among others, in the infamous Operation Midland historic child sexual abuse investigation. “Nick” – real name Carl Beech — was found to have fabricated his allegations and he was convicted in 2019 of perverting the course of justice.
It was all nonsense. So, we've got to keep that in mind.

It may well be that Trump and the Mandelsons and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Bill Gates and Brett Ratner etc have been stitched up by dark fairy tales. The presumption of innocence must be at the forefront of everybody's minds.

Having said that, for example, the photograph of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor cavorting with what seems to be a child is shocking.

The multiple times Trump is alleged to have been up to no good is shocking, even for someone like me who has challenged him to his face about his financial relationship with a Russian-born gangster.

If true, why did Peter Mandelson go along with the $10,000 gift from Jeffrey Epstein convicted paedophile to his husband? What did Jeffrey Epstein get out it? This story, on the face of it, is shocking.

And the one about Bill Gates? Not good, not good at all.

Now there's a terrible problem here. What normally happens in a great democracy like the United States of America is that the president commissions a good judge or good people to carry out a full and open inquiry in the beautiful light of day. I'm thinking of the Warren Commission, the investigation into the assassination of JFK, and the brilliant and beautifully written report by Congress into 9/11. For most reasonable people, and certainly me, both those reports laid some of the silly conspiracy theories to rest. The Warren Commission concluded JFK was killed by a lone assassin. Congress concluded that 9/11 was the product of a kind of Saudi death cult led by its Evil Messiah, Osama bin Laden, but that was it. There wasn't greater collusion.

The problem is Trump is so toxic to the proper process of the rule of law, to honesty, to decent conduct. Any such inquiry has no hope until he's out of the White House. So, for a time, millions and millions of people will suspect that those who hold democratic power in the United States, in Britain, in Europe and in Israel are fundamentally evil because there are terrible bits of evidence pointing them to be in hock to a paedophile, an extremely rich one at that, who used his money and his skills and his ability to manipulate people to be served on an industrial basis by girls under the age of sexual consent.

I know this story well because I did a podcast for Global, Hunting Ghislaine, and then wrote a book of the same name. And it's obvious, yes, that the only person who helps Jeffrey Epstein conduct his disgusting sexual perversions on an industrial basis and ends up in prison is a woman, Ghislaine Maxwell. On the face of what we've seen, there are many others, all male, who have grave questions to answer.

Now, those questions may be unfair. The problem is, of course, the source of this scandal is Donald Trump. He brought his own high explosives to the Epstein sewer and lit the blue touch paper without realising it was a delayed action fuse. In 2020 when he's out of power, he's telling President Joe Biden: “you've got to release the Epstein files. What are you hiding?”

The moment he is back at the White House again in 2025, everybody says: “Release the Epstein files.” And Trump has been forced to do so. His creatures in the FBI and the Department of Justice have tried to cover up his involvement but they've done an incompetent job. Emails have come out pointing to horrific events. Then they've been redacted. But too late. We’ve seen some of it.

The stink will stay until there is a proper and open and well-led public inquiry by the Americans into this sewer. But so long as Donald Trump has got his hands on the machinery of power in the White House, I don't think such an inquiry is going to happen. And that's bad news for all of us who care about democracy because obviously the Russians and the Chinese are watching.

Let me throw one name at you: Sergei Belyakov. When Russian “model” Guzel Ganieva threatened to blackmail some of Epstein's not-that-good and not-so-great friends in in 2015, he turned to Belyakov who so happens to be a FSB officer. That is Epstein was pals with a Russian spy.

Yes, I have doorstepped Vladimir Putin and yes, I have been spied on by the FSB in Moscow and yes, I have been detained in a Russian police station, albeit for an afternoon in Moscow, because I was asking the wrong kind of questions about the Russian secret police, the FSB. And, yes, I've written a book called Killer In The Kremlin. So yes, I know about what I'm talking about. If Belyakov knows all about the blackmail attempt, so does Putin.

Indeed, there are emails pointing towards Epstein planning a meeting with Putin but we don’t know whether that ever happened. At least, not yet.

But all of this is bad news. This festering sewer will continue to poison the democratic process and how power is called to account until Trump is out of the White House. This is seriously worrying.

In a crisis, one should always look for silver linings. Here are the following: one, Trump is in serious trouble. The Republican Party will be trounced at the midterms and that means that the Democrats will be able to ask serious questions from November onwards, while the Orange One’s grip on power weakens.

Two, the Andrew formerly known as Prince is a nonce, period. There is a big question about our royal family: should they have stripped the titles off their loathsome creature earlier? The answer to that is a screaming yes, but it's clear that our king understood the sick and hideous nature of his brother better than the politicians. Yes, there should be a proper inquiry by the Metropolitan Police into the full circumstances of this hideous picture of Andrew cavorting with what looks to be a child.

Three, Peter Mandelson is also finished, for good. He benefitted from his husband getting a $10,000 gift from a convicted paedophile. He may have taken more, a lot more. What did Mandelson give Epstein in return? We need to know the answer of that and from now on, I don't want to hear Peter Mandelson be a pundit on anything until he admits and confesses and apologise for his sins.

Four, Bill Gates: maybe he was stitched up. But he should never have been friends with Epstein after he was convicted of being a paedo.

Five: Don’t watch Melania the movie but you knew that anyway.

Once again we must bear in mind the possibility that some of these allegations may be grossly unfair and maybe dross, that there is no substance to them. But all of these people in the Epstein files have to explain what's happened for the good of democratic government because the dictators in Moscow and Beijing and Pyongyang and Tehran are laughing at us.

And right now, millions and millions of our own people think our system stinks.

And to be honest with you, for the moment, it does.

John Sweeney is the author of Hunting Ghislaine.

If you wish to back John Sweeney's work, he is on Patreon at https://t.co/pxhITvJw2F