Fur coat and no knickers

On the one hand (here):

Donald Trump has said he will deport two to three million undocumented immigrants “immediately” upon taking office.

In his first television interview since winning the presidential election, Mr Trump insisted that he is going to carry out his hardline immigration policy proposals, while insisting that he would build a wall between the US and Mexico.

“What we are going to do is get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, where a lot of these people, probably two million – it could be even three million – we are getting them out of the country or we are going to incarcerate,” Mr Trump told 60 Minutes.

On the other hand:

...  it still remains unclear how Mr Trump plans to carry out this proposal. Undocumented immigrants are entitled to full removal proceedings in immigration court. And as the courts already have a major backlog of hearing, there would be no immediate removals. Additionally, he fails to explain how his policy would be different from the current law in place under the Obama administration, which prioritises removal of immigrants convicted of criminal offences. 

Music of the week

Displacement

 

Pass the sickbag

Enfin

Front page of the day

   

A so-called financial expert opines

Just shows how much I know.  The FTSE100 is up by over 40 points, while the FTSE250 has risen by over 100 points.  Adding jam to the butter, the pound sterling is up to over 1.13 euros.

WTF?

 

Oh dear

Trump past the winning post.  Now for absolute carnage on the stock market.  And who knows what else ...

As The Guardian points out:

The people of America have stepped into the abyss. The new president elect is an unstable bigot, sexual predator and compulsive liar; he is capable of anything.

 

Cartoon of the day

 

By their actions shall ye know them

Well, there's a surprise (not).  The Guardian reports:

The UK government is fighting a rearguard action to prevent Guernsey, Jersey and British overseas territories from going on an EU blacklist of tax havens.

At a meeting of EU finance ministers on Tuesday in Brussels, David Gauke, chief secretary to the Treasury, will tell his counterparts that the UK opposes attempts to put territories with a zero rate of corporation tax on an EU list of “non-cooperative” jurisdictions.

The EU vowed to draw up a blacklist of tax havens following the revelations in the Panama Papers, an unprecedented leak of 11.5m files from the database of the world’s fourth-biggest offshore law firm, Mossack Fonseca. Brussels pledged to throw light on the shady “treasure islands” that help multinationals and wealthy clients avoid paying tax.

So much for the government's protestations about fighting tax avoidance ...


   

Aw diddums ...

Jeremy gets himself in a lather:

Jeremy Clarkson has described plans to make the BBC reveal the pay of stars who earn more than £150,000 as disgusting, saying management should be trusted to pay enough to keep them from joining commercial rivals.

Asked about his earnings from new Amazon show The Grand Tour, which reportedly cost £160m for three series, Clarkson lashed out at those he said were “obsessed with money”.

“Take the business of BBC talent. What country are we living in when we want to know how much people are paid? It’s disgusting,” he told the Radio Times.

Some of us might regard this as rather more disgusting:

Until he was dropped last year from Top Gear after allegedly assaulting a producer, Clarkson was on one of the largest salaries at the BBC, thought to be around £1m a year.

He had also earned millions in dividends from Bedder 6, the company he formed with long-time production partner Andy Wilman, which exploited the Top Gear brand globally. In 2014 the pair sold their stakes in the company to existing shareholder BBC Worldwide, the corporation’s commercial arm, taking Clarkson’s total earnings for the year to more than £14m.

His salary at the BBC was paid for from the licence fees levied on the public.  Why should that salary be secret?

   

The fake

Not the Real Thing.  For that you'll have to wait until Thursday.




   

Was he leaned on?

You have to feel sorry for James Comey, FBI boss, the J Edgar de nos jours.  In July, he controversially cleared Hillary of illegality with regard to the e-mails on her private server.  Ten days ago, he - again controversially - re-opened the case anent some 650,000 e-mails found on a laptop (some laptop!) owned by ex-Congressman Wiener.  Yesterday, after extensive FBI analysis (man, they really got through all those e-mails!) he admitted there was nothing to look at and could everyone just move on, please.

As a result, he has offended just about everyone in every quarter of the political establishment - Hillary for re-opening the case and the Donald for then hurriedly dismissing it.  Lesson for young James?  Don't mess with the big boys ..

A storyline for The West Wing?  Not likely - too improbable.

   
   .

Map of the day

From here:

It's no joke living in Siberia ...

Least irritating advert of the week

Factoid of the day

From The Observer (here) (my emphasis):

Britain’s biggest banks are preparing to relocate out of the UK in the first few months of 2017 amid growing fears over the impending Brexit negotiations, while smaller banks are making plans to get out before Christmas.

The dramatic claim is made in the Observer by the chief executive of the British Bankers’ Association, Anthony Browne, who warns “the public and political debate at the moment is taking us in the wrong direction”

...

Browne warns that both British and European politicians who appear to be pursuing “anti-trade” goals need to recognise that “putting up barriers to the trade in financial services across the Channel will make us all worse off”.

Browne, whose organisation has been in intense negotiations with the government, further warns the EU that banks based in UK are currently lending £1.1tn, therefore “keeping the continent afloat financially”, and that this arrangement is at risk.

Not a lot of people know that ...

   

Music of the week

Theresa at the European Council

From The Guardian (here):

The time passed slowly. Ten o’clock came and went. Eleven o’clock came and went. Midnight came and went. Just after 1am, a steward tapped her on the shoulder to let her know there was a spare five minutes if she had anything she wanted to get off her chest while the few remaining people still awake finished their coffee.

“I’d like to talk to you all about Brexit,” Theresa had begun.

“Parlez à la main,” shouted a lone Belgian, before falling off his chair.

Theresa continued, determined not to be distracted. “I’m here to tell you that Brexit means Brexit and that the UK remains committed to getting whatever deal with the EU we can manage to negotiate once we’ve got some sort of a clue what it is we really want. Merci, danke.”

Silence. Two people staggered off to bed without saying a word; the rest remained asleep in their chairs. The épaule had never seemed so froide.

“I think that went quite well on the whole,” Theresa said later to one of her advisers.

Plus ça change ...

Quote of the day

Boris at Parliamentary Questions (here):

Boris appeared disappointed to find so many people doubting him on both his own and the opposition benches and when Labour’s Ben Bradshaw drew attention to an American chamber of commerce report that suggested the US was planning to withhold $600bn of investment from the UK due to uncertainty over the single market, Boris had had enough. “All this bremoaning gloomadon popping is getting me down,”  Pangloss  moaned. “Let me tell you here and now that everything is going to be absolutely brilliant. Why can’t you all just cheer up a bit?” Because they’d all read the foreign secretary’s article saying it was all going to be a nightmare. That’s why.

 

Not getting off the pot

A Tory Prime Minister faced with a deeply divided Tory party has little option but to kick the can down the road.  The Guardian reports:

Theresa May has retreated from holding a parliamentary vote on airport expansion this autumn after the government was warned that Tory MPs could resign their seats if ministers backed a third runway at Heathrow. Two Conservative sources said Downing Street had been warned by whips that May could face resignations and byelections in seats that could be lost to the Liberal Democrats in south-west London.

The prime minister appeared to prepare the way for a decision in favour of expansion at Heathrow on Tuesday, as she revealed cabinet responsibility would be suspended for longstanding opponents of airport expansion in west London. This would allow Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, and Justine Greening, the education secretary, to carry on voicing dissent on behalf of their constituents.

However, May also signalled there may not be a major vote in parliament on the issue until winter 2017/18, despite the belief of senior government and opposition figures that a vote would take place this autumn.

But it merely postpones the problem; it does not resolve it.  And, meanwhile, the adverse consequences for business and the economy continue to mount ...


 

Quote of the day

Niall Ferguson in The Times (here):

In the age of the smartphone it’s too good an analogy to pass up. Increasingly, as his presidential campaign flames out, Donald Trump is the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 of US politics — a phone so hurriedly assembled that it spontaneously combusts. That would make Hillary Clinton the iPhone 7. She’s essentially the same as your current president but harder to connect to and with inferior email security.

Music of the week

A lady speaks

Infamy ...

... Trump is now channelling the late Kenneth Williams.  The Guardian reports the latest carry-on:

Donald Trump scrambled to dig himself out from an avalanche of fresh abuse allegations on Thursday after a series of women came forward to dispute his claim that his comments about sexual assault were only empty boasts.

The torrent of accusations, which includes claims from beauty pageant contenders who allege he burst into their dressing rooms to ogle them while they were nude, added nearly a dozen new names to the tally of women who have accused the Republican nominee of inappropriate behavior.

Many say they were galvanised into speaking by Trump’s denials during Sunday’s presidential debate, where he dismissed a recording of him bragging about groping women as “locker room talk” and insisted they were “words not action”.

But with allegations to the contrary casting an ever-growing shadow over the campaign, Trump instead sought to dismiss the accusations as a vast establishment conspiracy, orchestrated by his opponent Hillary Clinton “as part of a concerted, coordinated and vicious attack”.

"A vast establishment conspiracy"  - yes of course.  The whole world has it in for him ...

 

In charge of the asylum

Bizarre.  The Times reports:

Doctors, nurses and other NHS staff need to be more positive at work, the new whistleblowing chief for the health service has said.

Henrietta Hughes said that low-level grumpiness could harm patients and contribute to a mistrustful “toxic environment” in which staff were reluctant to speak out. She said that “every single person” in the health service had to help to make it a happier place to work and end a culture of bullying and poor care.

The NHS needed more of the “trust and joy and love” hormone oxytocin, Dr Hughes said, citing the happy embraces of reunited families at the start of the Hugh Grant film Love Actually.

“If you think about that scene in Love Actually where everybody is meeting at the airport, that’s the oxytocin feeling. So wouldn’t it be better if oxytocin was the predominant neurotransmitter in the NHS?”

Speechless!  Underpaid nurses, overworked doctors, forget your troubles and be happy ...

 

Music of the week

   

That speech

It's all going downhill.  The Guardian reports:

A change was gonna come. Theresa was gonna build hundreds of thousands of new homes. Huge swaths of green belt would be concreted over. She didn’t know how she was going to pay for any of her promises, but that wasn’t the point. She just had to hope that no one noticed her policies were as brittle as her performance. It would take a while for her to acquire the easy rubberiness of her predecessor. Still, she had to say something about money so she threatened to clamp down on tax-dodgers, but none of the millionaire Tory donors in the hall batted an eyelid. They knew no change was gonna come. Their cash was safe. Politicians always say they are going to tighten up tax loopholes, but they never do.

A change was gonna come. The vision Theresa wanted to leave us with was of a Britain where the Brownlees were an example to us all. One brother stopping to help the other across the finishing line. Back in hospital, a second grown man cried. George Osborne rubbed his chest. He still had the bruises from where Theresa had kicked him unconscious before taking the tape alone. Do as I say, not as I do.

A change was gonna come. The prime minister tried to convince the conference that she alone cared for the working-classes and that it was Labour who were now the nasty party. Some of the more gullible even believed it and gave her a standing ovation. She lapped it up, as well she might. A change was gonna come. It was just as well no one had bothered to enquire if the change would be for the worse.

   

Quote of the day

The Guardian's John Crace at the Tory Party Conference (here):

Back in the main hall, Jeremy Hunt was trying to prove that he wasn’t an automaton like the rest of the cabinet by having the lectern removed and speaking to the hall from the front of the stage. It was a move that badly backfired as it just made the strings operating his arms and legs even more visible. “Let’s give a clap to all the hardworking people in our NHS,” he said, his arms being yanked together by an apparatchik up in the flies. After that, his legs repeatedly kicked the hardworking people in our NHS by telling them they could all sod off back to wherever they had come from because British people only wanted to be treated by British doctors and nurses. The audience loved that.

   

Twas ever thus ...

Shock, horror.  Investing in shares is gambling.  The Guardian reports:

Global central bank policymakers have turned world financial markets into a casino with their unprecedented monetary policies, the bond investor Bill Gross has warned.

Gross, who oversees the $1.5bn (£1.2bn) Janus Global Unconstrained Bond Fund, recommended bitcoin and gold for investors who are looking for places to preserve capital.

“Our financial markets have become a Vegas/Macau/Monte Carlo casino, wagering that an unlimited supply of credit generated by central banks can successfully reflate global economies and reinvigorate nominal GDP growth to lower but acceptable norms in today’s highly levered world,” Gross said in his latest investment outlook, titled Doubling Down.

Some might argue that the financial markets have always been a glorified casino, although the odds are slightly more in favour of the investor than when playing blackjack.  At least, that has been my experience.

   

   

Do the maths

Fur coats and nae knickers.  Fantasy politics again.  The Guardian reports:

Jeremy Hunt is to pledge that the NHS in England will be “self sufficient” in doctors after Britain leaves the European Union as he sets out a package of measures aimed at reducing its reliance on foreign-trained medics.

The health secretary will use his speech to the Conservative party conference on Tuesday to promise that medical schools in the UK will be allowed to offer up to 1,500 extra training places a year, and released figures that said that one in fourNHS doctors have been trained abroad.

Hunt will stress that foreign-trained doctors do a “fantastic job”, and say that “we want EU nationals who are already here to be able to stay post-Brexit” before adding: “Is it right to import doctors from poorer countries that need them while turning away bright home graduates desperate to study medicine?”

He wants NHS England to reach the target in 2025. “Of course it will take a number of years before those doctors qualify, but by the end of the next parliament we will make the NHS self-sufficient in doctors,” Hunt is expected to say.

It takes six years for a doctor to become qualified.  So, assuming all those extra places are filled with effect from 2017, there might be an extra 1500 junior doctors by 2023.  But it will take another ten years before they are ready to replace the consultants who will be retiring during that period.  Self sufficiency is a target for the distant future ...

   

Getting old

I suppose it's my own fault.  I should get with the program (sic) and download my movies from Netflix or whatever.  But no, I prefer to buy my DVDs and thus have some substance to ownership.

Nevertheless, I fail to understand why it is so difficult to extract the DVDs from their cellophane 

wrapping. Are they trying to tell me something ...

   

All very difficult

Brexit may or may not mean Brexit but it appears to get more and more complicated.  Look at this stuff from a so-called constitutional expert in The Guardian:

Article 50, providing for Brexit, will be triggered by the end of March next year, Theresa May has promised. Two years after it is triggered, Britain will find itself outside the European Union, unless there is unanimous agreement among the other member states to extend the time limit.

Contrary to popular perceptions, article 50 inaugurates a withdrawal process, not a trade agreement. It will involve negotiating essentially technical issues, though important ones – such as the rights of British citizens in the EU and of EU citizens in the UK – and can be achieved within the two-year limit.

Article 50 does allow for a shadow negotiation on trade matters. But, clearly, the EU cannot conclude a trade agreement with another country until that country ceases to be a member, and it is highly unlikely that a detailed trade agreement can be achieved within two years. When, in 1985, Greenland – whose population is smaller than that of Uxbridge, and whose one staple industry is fishing – withdrew, an agreement took three years to negotiate.

In any case, EU procedures for ratifying most trade agreements are far more stringent than for ratifying a withdrawal agreement, which requires merely a qualified majority in the council and a majority in the European parliament. A trade agreement would probably require unanimity in the council, a majority in the European parliament, and also ratification in national parliaments as well as in some regional parliaments – for example, those of Flanders and Wallonia. That involves 36 legislatures, each of which has a veto.

If all this proves to be the case - and I have no reason to doubt that it will - it may be many years before the detailed implications of Brexit for trade and movement of labour become apparent.  It also implies, I suspect, that some kind of interim trade arrangement needs to be in place for 2019 onwards until a full trade agreement can be negotiated and put in place.

Do you suppose that Messrs Johnson, Fox and Davis understand all this?  No, me neither ...

   

The Great Repeal Bill

The illusion of progress.  Doing something at last.  The Times reports on the PM's big announcement:

Announcing the historic change, May said: “We will introduce, in the next Queen’s speech, a Great Repeal Bill that will remove the European Communities Act from the statute book. That was the act that took us into the European Union.

“This marks the first stage in the UK becoming a sovereign and independent country once again. It will return power and authority to the elected institutions of our country. It means that the authority of EU law in Britain will end.”

Under the plans, the 1972 act would be overturned in advance of Britain leaving the EU but the repeal would take legal effect the moment the UK formally pulled out. On that day domestic law decided by British judges would be supreme once more and the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg would no longer be able to deliver judgments binding on the UK. All Britain’s laws would remain but the government could pass new laws to overturn EU rules in any areas it wished.

But it does not offer any clues as to the Government's plan - if they have one - for the Brexit negotiations.

Furthermore, while it may sound relatively straightforward, the repeal of the 1972 Act may be rather more complicated than it appears.  Disentangling EU and UK legislation is a far from easy task.  It  will nevertheless be a day or two before the more perspicacious pundits begin asking awkward questions.

 

Music of the week

 

Worth a smile

Steve Bell in masterly form.

Quote of the day

No fence-sitting for Ken Clarke.  The Times reports:

Ken Clarke, the former chancellor, said that Theresa May was running a “government with no policies” in the first major Tory assault on the new regime.

Mr Clarke, who first entered government in 1988 and left in 2014, claimed that the prime minister had no plan on how to execute Britain’s exit from the European Union.

“Nobody in the government has the first idea of what they’re going to do next on the Brexit front,” he told the New Statesman.

The emperor has no clothes?

 

Diagram of the day

Splendid stuff from Bloomberg (here):

    

Happy Birthday ...

... to Brigitte Bardot, 82 today.

   

Who won?

Bloomberg reports:

Financial markets judged the first of three American presidential debates a win for Hillary Clinton, as Mexico’s peso rallied from a record low, U.S. and European stock index futures gained and gold retreated.

The peso, a proxy for Donald Trump’s election prospects, rebounded almost 2 percent and Canada’s dollar strengthened from its weakest level since March, a sign investors see a reduced chance the Republican candidate will win the November vote. Haven assets fell out of favor with gold declining for the first time in seven days as the yen weakened and U.S. Treasuries declined. Asian shares advanced, having started the session lower.

Hey, don't ask me - I don't understand it, either ...

   

The unity of the graveyard?

Not the best of starts re-starts.  The Guardian reports:

The kinder and gentler politics didn’t get off to the kindest and gentlest of starts on day two of Corbyn 2.0. Having spent much of the previous day calling for unity, the Labour leader went on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show to give his own version of the prayer of St Francis of Assisi. “Where there is hope, let me sow despair; where there is faith, doubt; where there is love, hatred.”

Corbyn ran through his checklist. First off, get back into the antisemitism row. The Jewish peer Lord Mitchell should reflect on his decision to leave Labour, he said. One box ticked. Next up was to alienate those Labour voters who were thinking of voting Tory or Ukip. Sounding less than enthusiastic about Britain’s national security should do it. That just left his party’s MPs to deal with. Telling them that most of them would not be deselected was a masterstroke. It would sound consensual while putting the wind up all of them. Bastards, the lot of them.

   

Ready to rumble

Will you sit up for tonight's debate?  The Independent sets the scene:

Will Trump indulge his penchant for witty epithets by addressing his opponent as “Crooked Hillary”, or will he play it chivalrous with an overdue stab at appearing presidential? Will Hillary avoid coughing fits and retain motor control at all times? Can she project the wit and warmth she reportedly shows in private, or bore viewers into the Trump camp with overly detailed, robotically delivered answers? 

Will he have taken the trouble to memorise some faintly coherent policy positions, or rely on the trademark stream of semi-consciousness that allows him to drift between rambling and often conflicting observations several times per sentence? 

Will the moderator, Lester Holt, correct Trump’s most blatant whoppers, or leave the fact-checking to Hillary? Do enough voters care about facts in this post-objective truth era for that to make a difference?

It starts at 2 am, British time; you can hear it on the World Service or watch it on the BBC News Channel.

 

Music of the week

A word of explanation:  Back in the early 1950s, we baby boomers experienced the Welfare State via (a) cod liver oil, a spoonful of which served as a curative for all sorts of ailments, including coughs, flu, constipation and even broken bones, and (b) so-called orange juice, which came in a glass bottle with a blue top and which tasted nothing like modern orange juice (but we were none the wiser, as few of us had ever seen an orange let alone tasted one) but which was generally regarded as having health-giving properties.

 

Quote of the day

A bit harsh, perhaps?  From The Times (here):

... there is a terrible flatness to politics at the moment and that is because nobody has any idea who the next prime minister will be. Or even has the decency to speculate.

And it is mostly because we have been lumbered with this deathly, humourless, stooping technocrat for a leader. This twitchy, joyless crow. This Ealing Comedy headmistress with a gift for joke-telling that makes Thatcher look like Victoria Wood. Theresa May is so lustreless, so derivative, so repetitive, so wooden, so without hinterland, family, identity, sex, passion or wisdom, so bereft of anything like a mantle that might be passed on, that nobody, literally nobody, ever talks of who her successor might be. She is such a big, tall, pointless pot of low-fat yoghurt that there is no sense of her having anything worth inheriting or wrestling from her, bar her jewellery and the occasional pair of shoes.

 I guess the honeymoon is nearing the end ...

     

Can we take BoJo seriously?

Is he speaking with all the authority of Her Majesty's Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs?  Or is he simply opening his mouth and letting his belly rumble?  The BBC reports:

The UK will "probably" begin formal negotiations to leave the European Union early in 2017, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has told the BBC.

The foreign secretary said it was still "subject for discussion" but the "Article 50 letter" would be produced "probably in the early part" of 2017.

But Number 10 said the government's position had not changed and Article 50 would not be triggered in 2016.

PM Theresa May has not yet given a clear statement on when it will begin.

Asked about Mr Johnson's comments, a spokeswoman for the prime minister said the government position on when it would trigger Article 50 was "not before the end of this year".

"The decision is hers [Mrs May's] and she will do that at a time which is most likely to get the best deal for Britain," the spokeswoman added.

That would appear to set Johnson's gas at a peep ...

Spies are us

Austerity?  What?  Not when it comes to the intelligence services.  The Times reports:

MI6 is recruiting almost a thousand spies to fight global terrorism and exploit the potential of the digital age.

The recruits will increase the size of the force from 2,500 intelligence officers and analysts to nearly 3,500 by the end of the decade.

...

Details of the recruitment drive emerged as Alex Younger, head of MI6, described the digital age as an “existential threat and a golden opportunity”. In rare public comments, he predicted that within five years the intelligence services would have to learn to combine information from data analysis, the internet and other forms of digital technology with traditional human intelligence — or face failure.

In my naivety, I had rather assumed that the services had already learned to combine information in the manner suggested.  But I suppose the internet has only been around for 20 years or so ...

Undue optimism?

Maybe they will, but maybe they won't.  But the Prime Minister seems undaunted.  The Guardian reports:

Theresa May has dismissed threats by EU countries to veto Brexit negotiations with the UK, as she declared: “The 27 will sign up to a deal with us.”

The prime minister said other nations would accept an agreement with Britain after the Slovakian prime minister said that four central European countries were willing to block talks unless their citizens retained their rights to work in the UK. Robert Fico said last week that Slovakia, Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary would be “uncompromising” during talks and ready to veto arrangements “unless we feel a guarantee that these people are equal”.

However, May rejected such warnings when asked whether it would really be possible to secure the agreement of all other member states for Brexit and trade talks. “The 27 will sign up to a deal with us,” she said. “We will be negotiating with them. And … we will be ambitious in what we want to see for the UK. A good deal for the UK can also be a good deal for the other member states because I believe in good trading relations and I have said I want the UK to be a global leader in free trade.”

Stressing that the other EU countries would have something to gain from a deal being struck, May added: “This is not just about us, it’s actually about their relationships and trading within that European arena.”

The position of the Visegrad Four is that they will veto a trading deal which fails to satisfy their requirements with regard to labour movement.  Even though the absence of a deal would put their citizens in an unprotected position with regard to residence in the UK?

Meanwhile, Mrs May continues to believe that she can secure a successful trade arrangement as well as limiting the free movement of labour.

Doesn't compute ...

   

Has the House of Lords nothing better to do?

The Guardian reports:

When Larry the cat, chief mouser at No 10, was spotted limping shortly afterTheresa May took up residence, the new prime minister’s top team took no chances. 

A vet was swiftly summoned to examine Larry’s front-right paw as Palmerston, the Foreign Office cat, emerged as chief suspect.

It was with no little relief that a government spokesman was able to announce that the famous feline, adored by all in Downing Street – including, despite rumours to the contrary, David Cameron who declared his love in his final PMQs – “was expected to make a full recovery”.

The matter of Larry’s paw, however, is now causing consternation in the House of Lords over who should pay the vet’s undisclosed bill, according to the Telegraph. At the time, it was reported that Downing Street staff, fearful of the taxpayers’ wrath, had willingly dipped into their own pockets for a whip-round.

One peer has questioned whether May’s government is taking its responsibilities for animals such as Larry seriously enough if civil servants are forced to foot the bill.

Lord Blencathra, formerly the Tory environment minister David Maclean, has submitted a formal question to the government in the House of Lords asking if Larry’s treatment was met by staff donations, and, if so, whether the government would refund those staff who had helped to pay the vet.

Apart from the No 10 staff concerned, does anyone care?

   

May's feet of clay

For once, Jezza scores.  The Guardian reports:

May crashed and burned on the grandest of stages. In her first PMQs earlier in the summer, Tory backbenchers had been able to delude themselves that they had got themselves a mini-Maggie. This time they got to see May Unplugged - brittle, lacking in humour and unable to think on her feet as one of her key policies was dismantled in front of her eyes. Dave had come up with some bad ideas in his time, but he was never inept enough to let Jeremy Corbyn take them apart at the dispatch box.

It wasn’t even as if the Labour leader had needed to be on top form. Competent was more than enough to get the job done. “I’d like to congratulate the prime minister on managing to unite Ofsted, the teaching unions and education secretaries on both sides of the house with her plans to introduce more grammar schools,” he began. “Can she name any experts who think this is a good idea?”

Theresa couldn’t, and tried to steer the argument on to faith schools. For once, Corbyn didn’t allow himself to be distracted and got stuck in. “So you don’t have any experts to support you,” he said. “Well let me quote a few more experts who don’t, starting with the Institute of Fiscal Studies.” By now, May was looking badly rattled. She glanced behind her for encouragement, but no Tory backbencher would catch her eye. Her grammar school proposals are almost as unpopular with her own party as they are with the opposition.

“Well, I went to grammar school and you went to grammar school so they must be a good idea, right?” she said. Tory heads went even further down. When the personal is the only defence for a public policy, the game is up.

But at least one Tory was pleased, probably:

Somewhere in a house near Witney, a slightly overweight 49-year-old man hauled himself off the sofa and punched the air. Dave takes his victories where he can find them these days. 

   

Am I bovvered?

The Guardian reports (amidst unnecessarily extensive caterwauling):

The Great British Bake Off will switch to Channel 4 following its current series after rights negotiations between the BBC and the show’s production company collapsed amid a disagreement over price.

The BBC indicated that financial demands made by Love Productions now made the programme “unaffordable”, leaving Channel 4 to take on the most popular programme on British television in a three-series deal.

Can't say that I'm bothered; I never watched it.  Let us hope its trip into the desert (dessert?) spaces of Channel 4 is emulated by "Strictly", another program I never watch.

   

Music of the week

 

Politicians in glass houses throwing stones

It is seldom a good idea for politicians to make generic attacks on whole sectors of society, as in this case:

Liam Fox, the international trade secretary, has launched an attack on Britain for “growing fat and lazy”, making it ill-prepared for the business deals that need to be done after leaving the EU.

Fox, a former GP and staunch Eurosceptic, suggested business executives would rather be playing golf on a Friday afternoon than negotiating export deals.

He made the remarks, first reported by the Times, at a Conservative Way Forward event for business leaders in parliament.

“If you want to share in the prosperity of our country, you have a duty to contribute to the prosperity of our country,” he said. “This country is not the free-trading nation that it once was. We have become too lazy, and too fat on our successes in previous generations.

This kind of criticism might have carried more weight if Dr Fox and his fellow Brexiteers (i) had undertaken some kind of pre-referendum planning about how to take Brexit forward and (ii) had not spent all summer jockeying for position rather than getting on with their respective jobs.

 

Scare story?

I suppose that the prognostications adumbrated in this Guardian report might come to fruition but I rather doubt it.

British citizens may have to apply online and pay to travel to Europe after the UK leaves the EU, under plans being drawn up by the bloc for a visa waiver programme similar to the US system.

The European commission is due to unveil draft legislation for the EU travel information and authorisation system (Etias) later this year as part of a broader response to calls for greater security across the continent following recent terror attacks in France and Belgium.

The scheme would cover all visitors to the passport-free 26-nation Schengen zone – of which Britain is not a member – from countries that do not need a visa to enter, EU sources confirmed.

France and Germany both back a system based on the US ESTA scheme, under which visitors from countries that do not require full visas must apply online for permission to travel, preferably 72 hours before they leave, at a cost of $14 (£10).

Bearing in mind that it would be open to the UK authorities to adopt a similar system with regard to EU visitors, I suspect that - regardless of the UK's Brexit status - exemptions all round would be the order of the day.  Nor are Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece likely to support anything which might diminish the number of British tourists seeking the Mediterranean sunshine.  Besides, think of the bureaucracy involved (on both sides) in processing millions of visa waiver forms every year.

It's not gonna happen ...

 

Worth a smile

Here

Quote of the day

Theresa on Brexit, according to The Guardian (here):

Most MPs had hoped May might have had a little more to show for her jaunt to China and several tried to tease out a few more details about what Brexit deals were in the offing. “I understand that you don’t want to give away any sensitive information,” said Conservative Anna Soubry. “But could you at least tell us some of the principles that will underlie the negotiations?”

“No.”

Labour’s Yvette Cooper tried another tack. “Without giving away any sensitive information, could you give us an idea of the values that will inform the negotiations?”

“No.”

No principles. No values. No progress. No clue.

No wonder ...

   

Perhaps a little vulgar ...

The Times reports:

The Russian oligarch, in London with his wife, Aleksandra, 39, a former model and pop singer from Serbia, chose to moor his superyacht in the most eye-catching spot on the Thames, tying up next to HMS Belfast against the backdrop of Tower Bridge.

The bridge had to be raised to allow Motor Yacht A, a 120m boat created by the French designer Philippe Starck and worth £225 million to pass through. The craft is currently up for sale.

Mr Melnichenko, who started out in banking before diversifying into energy, mining and other industries, is estimated to be worth £8.4 billion, according to Forbes.

His boat is inspired by a submarine and boasts three swimming pools, seven cabins, a helipad and bombproof glass. It sleeps 14 and has a crew of 42.

Its masts are almost 100m tall, it has a top speed of 23 knots and is the 21st largest yacht in the world. Two speedboats are concealed within its sloping stern. Tables are encrusted with Baccarat crystals and the walls lined with white stingray skins.

There is an all-white, 230 sq m master bedroom suite with a rotating king-sized bed. There is also a bedroom with a circular bed that is located behind two glass panels and has a flat screen TV on the ceiling. Employees have dubbed it the “nookie room”.

What a show-off ...

   

Brexit means ... never having to say you're sorry

Things are not becoming clearer.  The Independent sums up the state of play:

Does Brexit mean leaving the single market entirely, mostly, a fair bit, or not really at all? Who can say? Does it mean ending, partially restricting or barely tinkering with freedom of movement? Not a clue. How long will it take to negotiate trade deals with the EU, the US and other nations, and how punishing might the terms be? Go figure. Will British expats retain the right of residency in EU countries? Beats me.

There are scores of other intriguing questions raised by the June vote, and to all of them the official reply may be paraphrased as follows: you might as well ask Larry, the Downing Street cat.

It is now 10 or 11 weeks since the referendum and there are not even the vaguest outlines of what the government thinks Brexit means ...


   

Too smarmy by half

It is always the little details that add to the ridicule:

The MP is alleged to have told the men that his name was Jim, adding that he was a washing-machine salesman.

   

Nothing is ruled in and nothing is ruled out ...

Does the Prime Minister have a cunning plan?  The Guardian reports:

Asked about bringing in a points-based immigration system, May said: “A lot of people talk about points-based systems always being the answer in immigration. There is no single silver bullet that is the answer in terms of dealing with immigration.”

When pressed on whether failing to bring in such a system would not respect the reasons people voted for Brexit, May said: “People voted, I think, for control. What they wanted to see was control of the freedom of movement of the European Union countries into the United Kingdom.”

During the referendum campaign, in which she backed remain, May had appeared to be negative about the idea of a points-based system but this is her first steer on the subject since the vote.

She was also asked about whether she would hand more money to the NHS, and scrap VAT on energy bills using funds saved by leaving the EU. These were two more promises made by Vote Leave, whose senior politicians toured the country in a bus saying £350m a week sent to the EU could help fund the NHS instead. Shortly before the vote, this was refined by Vote Leave to a promise of £100m a week more for the NHS out of money saved from ending contributions.

Asked whether she would work towards these goals, May would not commit to either pledge. She also would not rule out giving any contributions to the EU budget or retaining full access to the single market, which many Eurosceptic Conservative MPs and Ukip figures would find unacceptable.

Or is she simply floundering about?

 

Music of the week

 

Quote of the day

Ed Balls, hoofer and ex-senior Labour politician, in The Guardian (here):

He says Blair regarded him as insolent, a young punk babbling nonsense. “But it wasn’t nonsense. And if you don’t say what you think, what’s the point of being in the room? He told me to wash my mouth out once. It was very early on, ’96, before the ’97 election. There were the typical Gordon/Mandelson tensions going on about who was running the election campaign, there were about 12 people in the room, and Tony said: ‘I think we should make a commitment not to raise the tax burden’. I then said, in front of everybody, ‘You can’t do that’, and he said why, and I said: ‘Because then when we raise the tax burden you’ll have broken your promise.’ He said: ‘Wash your mouth out young man.’”

   

Is Trump channelling Shakespeare?

Can a wall be beautiful?  Trump thinks so:

Donald Trump has again seized the mantle of immigration hardliner, gambling that he can win the White House with rhetoric as unyielding as the “impenetrable, physical, tall, powerful, beautiful” wall that he has promised to build across the southern border.

Perhaps he sees himself as Pyramus addressing Wall in Midsummer Night's Dream

O grim-look'd night! O night with hue so black!;

O night, which ever art when day is not!

O night, O night! alack, alack, alack,

I fear my Thisby's promise is forgot!

And thou, O wall, O sweet, O lovely wall,

That stand'st between her father's ground and mine!

Thou wall, O wall, O sweet and lovely wall,

Show me thy chink, to blink through with mine eyne!

Wall holds up his fingers

Thanks, courteous wall: Jove shield thee well for this!

But what see I? No Thisby do I see.

O wicked wall, through whom I see no bliss!

Cursed be thy stones for thus deceiving me!

And so, it will end in tears for all concerned ...

    
   
  

Hard and soft borders?

Seems clear enough, maybe?  The Guardian reports:

David Davis, the Brexit secretary, has promised there will be no return to any “hard” border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic when the UK leaves the European Union.

On a visit to Belfast on Thursday, Davis vowed there will be “no return to the past” in terms of armed checkpoints and border checks along the UK’s only land frontier with an EU state.

...

Writing in the Belfast Telegraph, Davis made his vow about not returning to the past in terms of armed checkpoints and border checks. He wrote: “We had a common travel area between the UK and the Republic of Ireland many years before either country was a member of the European Union.

“We are clear we do not want a hard border – no return to the past – and no unnecessary barriers to trade. What we will do is deliver a practical solution that will work in everyone’s interests, and I look forward to opening the conversation about how that should operate with my colleagues today.”

I look forward to Mr Davis' explanation of how he intends to prevent the free movement of East Europeans into Ireland and thence - unhindered by border checks - into the UK.

But, as Dr Pangloss might have put it, perhaps all is possible in this best of all possible brave new worlds.  Alternatively, Mr Davis has not quite thought it through ...

   

Is the Cabinet living in fantasy land?

I'm beginning to think so.  The Guardian reports on yesterday's Chequers pow-wow:

Theresa May has agreed with her cabinet that restricting immigration will be a red line in any negotiations with the EU, in a move that experts claim will end Britain’s membership of the single market.

The prime minister and her team, who met at Chequers – the PM’s country retreat – also confirmed that MPs will not be given a vote before the government triggers article 50, beginning the two-year countdown to a British exit.

“There was a strong emphasis on pushing ahead to article 50 to lead Britain successfully out of the European Union – with no need for a parliamentary vote,” May’s spokeswoman said, before setting out how restrictions to freedom of movement would be at the centre of any Brexit deal.

“Several cabinet members made it clear that we are leaving the EU but not leaving Europe, with a decisive view that the model we are seeking is one unique to the United Kingdom and not an off-the-shelf solution,” she said.

“This must mean controls on the numbers of people who come to Britain from Europe but also a positive outcome for those who wish to trade goods and services.”

When will they learn that they cannot have restrictions on immigration as well as membership of the single market?  If the EU were to accept a deal of such a nature, other EU states would claim something similar and the free movement of labour pillar would crumble away.