• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Useful Ideas Project

A website about examining the stories we're supposed to believe

Brexit and carelessness

December 10, 2020 By Useful Ideas Project Leave a Comment

Johnson and Gove

Michael Gove has been careless with the truth again. It’s worth noting that this is not surprising.

On the BBC Today radio programme (9 December 2020), Michael “Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster” Gove was interviewed.
He’s a senior politician, a leading Brexit-ist and surely aware that the UK is in the final stages of negotiations with the EU that will alter millions of lives.

In the interview, Gove said that after Brexit:

“yes there will be appropriate access” to free medical treatment for people from the UK when they visit EU countries.
&
“yes for a period” UK students will still be able to study abroad through schemes like Erasmus.

The next day, Chris Morris the BBC’s Reality Check correspondent fact-checked Gove’s interview.

Gove said people from the UK will be able to access free medical treatment in the UK.
Morris said: “as far as we understand the immediate answer is no there won’t be access… if there is no overall deal there will be no coverage and the government’s advice at the moment is buy health insurance from the beginning of the year”.

Gove said yes, for a period UK students will be able to study abroad through schemes like Erasmus.
Morris said: “he’s right up to a point in that that the students that are already there will be allowed to finish their courses although they could be subject to new immigration rules which means they can only stay in some countries for 90 days in any 180 days… but with no new deal or no new arrangements then for new students they will not be able to study abroad using Erasmus it will come to an end”.

Gove’s expedient relationship with accuracy and truth helped him into power.

But illness and education are important issues now, and will still be important when Gove’s populist obfuscations congeal, dry and flake away.

Four years on from the vote to Leave, Brexit has normalised political carelessness and lies.

Reminds me of:
“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
– F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby.

See also

Flooding the zone

Brexit, empire and cultural dementia

Brexit explained in three tweets


Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook

Filed Under: Politics Tagged With: Brexit

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Subscribe for more useful ideas

Enter your email address to subscribe and receive notifications of new ideas by email.

Follow on social media

MASTODON

TWITTER

Pages

  • About
  • All posts
  • Contact
  • Home
  • List of useful ideas

Search this website

Recent Posts

  • False equivalence; one of the true reasons why Musk bought Twitter
  • The ‘it’s incompetence, not a conspiracy’ argument
  • The conditions that were needed for an alternative political story to reach voters
  • Why the ‘media is left-wing’ is one of the Conservatives’ most important lies
  • Fundamental attribution error in political media

Footer

Categories

  • Arts
  • Culture
  • Features
  • Film
  • Health
  • History
  • Politics
  • Technology
  • UIP
  • Uncategorized
  • Visual arts
  • Watch

Tags

a brief history of neoliberalism Adam Curtis Adam Curtis consumerism Advertising Ann Pettifor Audio BBC BBC Radio 4 BBC The Men Who Made Us Spend Bertrand Russell Bertrand Russell consumerism Boris Johnson Brexit Capitalism Capitalist Realism Carillion Chamath Palihapitiya Charles F. Kettering Charles F. Kettering industrialist competition Conservatism Consumerism Corbyn corbyn media reception corruption Danial Hannan Danny Dorling Disinformation Donald Trump Edward Bernays consumerism Electric vehicles in the UK EU facebook Fascism Frances Ha history Home inequality Koch brothers media Monarchy nationalism neoliberal economics neoliberalism Russell Brand

Follow us on Twitter

The Useful Ideas Project on Twitter

Copyright © 2023 Useful Ideas Project