An Open Letter to my Representatives – update

My e-mail of July 6 has yet to elicit a response. That is over 3 weeks ago, and our representatives should at the least acknowledge receipt of correspondence from their constituents within two weeks. Of course, it is quite possible that, as my representatives grapple with the complexities of their new hi-tech offices and systems, things are slipping through the net. So today I have resent the e-mail. With summer holidays on (though an MEP should maintain a skeleton staff at all times, since they have the taxpayer-funded budget for this), I would expect to receive a reply by the Bank Holiday.

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Vote or be damned

We now have two UKIP parties, UKIP led by Batten, and The Brexit Party led by Farage. They and their MEPs rarely turn up for work yet collect a big fat salary.

There is ONLY ONE WAY to stop these freeloaders getting a fat salary for no work: vote for someone else.

How to get rid of these scum

1. Register to vote and go and vote (MEP elections will follow the Council ones).
2. Check that 10 of your mates are registered and that they go and vote on the day.
3. Make sure each of your 10 mates gets 10 of their mates out.

That way we get a result.

Who to vote for? Anyone, but not UKIP or The Brexit Party.

Why will this work?

The elections to the European parliament are by proportional representation. That means each party is allocated seats according to the % of the vote they get.

This is completely different to how we elect Councillor sand MPs, where the candidate with the most votes in a ward/constituency gets elected, regardless of the % of the vote a party gets across all constituencies in the country.

Core  UKIP voters vote anyway. The reason UKIP gets MEPs is because the rest of us cannot be bothered to turn up and vote. So there are less votes in total and the UKIP % is inflated accordingly. The more of us vote, the lower their %, the fewer MEPs they get. It is that simple.

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The road to Brexit

Other than self-indulgent and stupid gits who go on about ‘getting back control’, I have yet to hear a single coherent argument in favour of Brexit.

If there is one, I would love to hear it.

Now that Theresa May has Triggered Article 50, with the acquiescence of Jeremy Corbyn, we can make predictions with a degree of certainty.

1. Theresa May will go down as one of the three worst Prime Ministers in History. The arguments will be whether she is worse or better than Neville Chamberlain and David Cameron.
2. Jeremy Corbyn will go down a the most inept leader of the opposition, for not fighting tooth and nail (regardless of Parliamentary majority) against the vision of one of the three worst British Prime Ministers.
3. The economy will shrink. News comes in dribs and drabs and doesn’t make the front pages. Use your eyes and brain and you see the jobs getting ready to go. European Medicine Agency with 900 key jobs in London is planning its departure. It is important for the biotechnology and Pharma sectors. Over 5-10 years you can count the knock on effect in the 1000s, if not 10,000s of highly skilled, well paid jobs. Use the classic economics multiplier of 4-5 and just one sector leads you to economic depression.
4. Financial sector and associated services are busy setting up offices elsewhere so as to retain passporting rights.
5. The government has a series of documents that look at the effect of Brexit on diverse sectors. One has been leaked, indicating that around 40,000 nurses will leave by 2026.

So why the obsession with Brexit and the volte-face by a good many Remain supporters in the Conservative Party, including the Prime Minister? One reasonable explanation is that Brexit has all to do with the Conservative Party and power.

In this respect, job pretty much done.

The opposition is dead. Jeremy Corbyn cannot lead a Labour Party to anything other than ‘opposition’, due to his lack of opposition to Brexit itself. He has long been a Leaver, regardless of the importance of the EU and the ECJ in safeguarding the rights of workers, including equal pay, Health and Safety. Safe to say that despite the noise made by his supporters and Momentum, they are Socialist-free.

The UK has no full separation of powers. Unlike in the US, where the architects of the American Revolution continued the logic of Cromwell’s revolution by separating the executive, legislative and judiciary, in the UK, these are still very much intertwined. Brexit will lead to more executive power. So we effectively head for a one party state, with a tolerated, but weak opposition.

Might there be another reason too? If we consider the staunchest supporters of Brexit, before and after the referendum, they have one thing in common: they either don’t pay much tax or they are extremely sympathetic to those that do not pay their way. Aaron Banks, Lord Rothermere and so on. Boris Johnson, who was whingeing about having to pay US tax (he holds dual citizenship). This is entirely consistent with the concept of a low wage, tax haven economy. Also known as a corrupt shithole.

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Positions open

Two postdoc positions are available in my lab.

Both are part of the larger, European Commission-funded FET-Open programme, ArrestAD, which has recently been funded.

Position 1 aims to characterise heparin-binding proteins in Alzhiemer’s disease.

Position 2 aims to develop inhibitors to Golgi sulfotransferases.

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Kick-off meeting

ArrestAD

The ArrestAD team had its kick off meeting in Paris on 5 January 2017. This was held on Paris, the base of our coordinator, Dulcé Papy-Garcia and was hosted by the APHP in the Espace Scipion. Team members from outside Paris stayed at the Hotel La Demeure  situated nearby and though on the Boulevard St Marcel, nice and quiet.

The kick off meeting started with a presentation form our coordinator, which provided the backdrop for the day. Science presentations from the participants then followed. These provided an overview of the position of the field of the participant and then summarised research plans. In a multidisciplinary project, one cannot be fully up to speed with the other fields, so we all learned a lot. The more technical part of these presentations gave us an opportunity to discus the nuts and bolts of our research plans and how these fitted together. It…

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On Brexit and Theresa May

At a primary school during break 28 children are playing a peaceful, if somewhat idiosyncratic ball game, with a ball bought by the 6 oldest kids.

Theresa has recently joined the school. She is not happy and and screams from the edge of the game “LISTEN”.

27 kids stop playing and look at Theresa.

Theresa “We will play My game NOT yours”

27 kids resume their peaceful game.

Theresa screams “I will take my ball away”.

But it isn’t her ball, so she goes off to sulk.

Next day she isn’t at the school. The 27 continue their game, developing it, as they mature.

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What ho, we’re in a bit of a stew chaps

Monty Python sum up what I think here. Leave voters?  A dose of Derek and  Clive might be useful.

Otherwise, some thoughts on the Brexit referendum

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