Brown Plans To Sell Our White Cliffs To France

WELLINGTON put the boot into Napoleon at Waterloo, Drake said bowls to the Spanish armada, and Churchill stuck two fingers up to Hitler's German invaders.

But zut alors! Gordon Brown is SURRENDERING a chunk of England to the French by flogging them the port of Dover.

Sorry Vera, but if the PM gets his way you'll be singing...

There'll be bleu birds over,

Le blanc cliffs de Dover,

Tomorrow, just vous wait et see

Because broke Britain needs the cash and Dover - with a price tag in the region of £500 million - is just one of the nation's treasures up for sale.

We can reveal the leading bidder is the Nord-pas-de-Calais regional council, which also owns the port of Calais. The government is being advised by blue chip merchant bank Rothschild and a source there said: "This is an exciting sale.

"Selling Dover to Calais is a very logical move as that is where most of the business is directed.

"Dover made an operating profit of £15.1 million in 2008. Now it is seeking £400m to expand, as it anticipates a doubling in freight traffic by 2040." But the move has sparked outrage. Conservative Party prospective MP for Dover Charles Elphicke said: "In trying to sell off our port and the White Cliffs, it's clear Gordon Brown has no sense of the history of our nation or the pride of our town.

"How dare he consider selling it all off to the French? Dover is the English border. We stood proud in defending our nation in times past.

"We are the nation's front line. The people of Dover have a clear message for him - hands off our port, hands off the English border, hands off the White Cliffs. He can take a hike."

But the government is desperate for the cash. The channel rail link and Dover, Europe's busiest ferry port, are in the vanguard of Brown's £16 billion privatisation plan, as he aims to halve Britain's budget deficit in four years.

The government is also looking at selling the M25 Dartford toll crossing over the Thames, its student-loan book and its stake in uranium processor Urenco. It is also reviving plans to sell the Tote.

Overseen by Standard Life Chairman Gerry Grimstone, the plan targets £3 billion from asset sales and £13 billion from selling government property. Grimstone was a key architect of Tory PM Margaret Thatcher's privatisation of firms such as BT in the Eighties.

SOURCE