Tag: Brexit

Play Video 2:16 Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire media mogul and former mayor of New York, has said Brexit is the “single stupidest thing any country has ever done” apart from the election of Donald Trump as US president. Bloomberg argued that “it is really hard to understand why a country that was doing so well wanted to ruin it” with the Brexit vote, in a series of outspoken remarks made at a technology conference in Boston a fortnight ago. The CEO was in London on Tuesday to open a new European headquarters for Bloomberg in the City, covering 1.3 hectares (3.2 acres). “My former wife was a Brit, my daughters have British passports, so we love England – it’s the father of our country, I suppose. But what they are doing is not good and there is no easy way to get out of it because if they don’t pay a penalty, everyone else would drop out. So they can’t get as good of a deal as they had before.” He added: “I did say that I thought it was the single stupidest thing any country has ever done but then we Trumped it.” Bloomberg employs 4,000 staff in the UK and 20,000 worldwide, and the New York-based firm has long made the country its headquarters in Europe. “One of the things that is hurting us both in the United States and in the UK is that we have employees, not a lot but some, who are starting to say: ‘I don’t want to work here – can we transfer to some place else? This country doesn’t like immigrants,’” Bloomberg said. Whether we change the immigration laws or not, there is general feeling around the world that America is no longer an open, welcoming place and a lot of people don’t want to go there, and the same thing is happening in the UK because of Brexit.” Bloomberg first made the comments about Brexit at the little-reported HUBweek conference in Boston less than two weeks ago – and then repeated his quip about Brexit and Trump at an event in France on Monday. People are already taking space in other cities over there [Europe], us included.” On his visit to London, Bloomberg was more circumspect.

"I'm not saying it's true, but [Hillary Clinton] was pictured as a candidate of the elites," French President Emmanuel Macron tells Christiane Amanpour.

Piss-up in a brewery CANCELLED after Britain’s Brexit negotiators put in charge. A piss-up in a brewery had to be cancelled after Britain’s team of Brexit negotiators were left to plan everything. Desperately needing a confidence boost ahead of the next round of negotiations, Theresa May gave her negotiating team an open goal by giving them £100,000 of tax payer money and telling them to show everyone a good time. Problems quickly emerged though when none of the team could decide what constituted a ‘good time’. ‘We all made our separate plans and when we came back as a team to discuss them they were wildly, irreconcilably different,’ said one negotiator. After an intense four-day negotiation, the team realised they had missed their deadline for the piss-up whilst still debating how it should be done. ‘So, after careful consideration, we decided to just split the £100,000 equally between us,’ the anonymous negotiator told us. Could Brexit also be cancelled as a result of their incompetence? It’s looking increasingly likely.