"It's the same the whole world over ..."

Special treatment for the fatcats.  The Times reports:

Revenue & Customs collected £1 billion less tax from the 6,500 richest people in Britain six years after they gave them their own “customer relationship managers”, a critical report reveals.

Parliament’s spending watchdog said that HMRC could not explain why tax revenues from individuals worth more than £20 million had fallen by 20 per cent since 2009 while tax paid by everyone else had risen by 9 per cent over the same period.

The public accounts committee added that Revenue’s approach to the very wealthy suggested that they were getting “help with their tax affairs that is not available to other taxpayers”.

Stockholm syndrome, perhaps?   Ot HMRC simply seduced by wealth and power?

 

Bring on the tequila and the guacamole?

Bloomberg resurrects a somewhat fanciful idea:

In 1998, the Canadian media tycoon Conrad Black, then owner of the Daily Telegraph, a conservative British newspaper, gave a keynote speech at the Centre for Policy Studies, a free-market think tank in London, entitled "Britain's Final Choice: Europe or America?" 

"None of the continental European countries has a particular affinity with the United States and Canada or anything slightly comparable to Britain's dramatic modern intimacy with North America," he said.

Black's argument was that the U.K. should leave the EU and join the North American Free Trade Agreement:

Such an expanding Nafta would have every commercial advantage over the EU. It is based on the Anglo-American free-market model of relatively restrained taxation and social spending, which is the principal reason the United States and Canada together have created net, an average of two million more new jobs per year than the European Union for the last 15 years. Nafta, as its name implies, is a free trade area only. The United States will not make any significant concessions of sovereignty and does not expect other countries to do so either.

Given Trump's current propensity to tear down NAFTA, I cannot really see this as a runner.  But with Trump, who knows?

 

Easier said than done

So you wanna build a wall?  1900 miles long and several metres high?

Well, you can't just go and slap a few bricks on top of one another.  Your kind of wall requires planning.  It needs to be properly designed and engineered.  It also needs to take account of local soil, rock and climatic conditions.  So you are going to have to undertake a considerable amount of surveying before you start.  You will need to appoint consulting engineers and architects (probably by a process of competitive tendering - as you are the Federal US government).

You will also need to consult the state authorities of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California to ensure that your plans are compatible with local regulation and planning laws.  And you will need to acquire - or at least lease - the land next to the border from whoever owns it - you may not build a wall on someone else's property.

A contract to build such a wall would be massive - too big for any single contractor.  So you need to consider how to divide up the contract into manageable chunks.  Then again, you will need to put the contracts out to competitive tender.  And the winning contractors will need to gather their resources - labour, equipment and machinery, concrete - and move it to the areas concerned.

At each stage of the above proceedings, you will have to consult the Big Man in the White House. You know what a fusspot he can be about all the details.

And all this before the first concrete is poured.  I reckon that, if you are lucky, you might be in a position to start work in 2019.  Maybe ...

   

Welcome to the post-truth era

When I say that I am as handsome as George Clooney and as intelligent as Einstein, I am not telling lies; I am merely offering "alternative facts".

A White House aide explains the dispute over the size of the inauguration crowd:




 For what it's worth, this may or may not be evidence:

Trump on left; Obama on right

   

Photo of the day

 

Music of the week

Pure nostalgia ...

... but worth watching:




 

It doesn't happen often!

Today, snow in the mountains above Benalmadena!


h/t Jeanie

   

Inspired marketing?

Yes, actually, there really is an outfit calling itself  CheapOairlines.  Its website is here.

You may not have much confidence that they will get you to your destination.  But at least they don't have any pretentions.

 

Torymory?

h/t :  Bill Cowan

    

Naughty boy - again

He knew exactly what he was doing.  After Mrs May dominated events earlier this week, Boris was desperate to get back in the limelight.  The BBC reports:

Like some latter-day Basil Fawlty, Boris Johnson mentioned the War and didn't get away with it.

The foreign secretary urged the French president not to "administer punishment beatings" on Britain for choosing to escape the EU "rather in the manner of some World War Two movie".

Not surprisingly, uproar has ensued. Former Labour leader Ed Miliband said Mr Johnson had shown once again that he could be "supremely clever and yet immensely stupid".

Boris doesn't mind who he upsets, as long as he can be the centre of attention.  Childish, really.

 

Sycophancy

The day wee Mikey sucked up to Donald will have shredded such reputation as he had left.  Never again will he be considered a serious politician.  This photo will be resurrected whenever he puts his head above the parapet.  As The Guardian illustrates:

... he turned up on BBC2’s Daily Politics where Jo Coburn gave him the biggest putdown yet. “You had the president-elect for an hour and you didn’t once challenge him on any inconsistencies?” she observed. Mikey beamed. At last. Someone who got the point. It had never been about what Trump did or didn’t say. It had been about, he, the Great Mikey, getting a whole hour of Trump’s time. To bask in the orange glow of reflected glory. Me and Mini-Me. Don and Mini-Don. Mini-Mini-Mikey.

   

Quote of the day

The Prime Minister decides to go it alone:

“We seek a new and equal partnership – between an independent, self-governing, global Britain and our friends and allies in the EU. Not partial membership of the European Union, associate membership of the European Union or anything that leaves us half-in, half-out,” May is expected to say.

“We do not seek to adopt a model already enjoyed by other countries. We do not seek to hold on to bits of membership as we leave. The United Kingdom is leaving the European Union. My job is to get the right deal for Britain as we do.”

Is there something shameful about seeking to split the difference between full membership and a solitary. lonely existence out in the cold?  Why seek to invent a new model if an existing model might be readily adapted?  If it's good enough for the Swiss, for the Norwegians or for the Canadians, what makes us so different?  Or are we so thirled to the notion of proud Britannia's singularity that we will cut off our nose to spite our face?

 

That press conference

Music of the week

Brave New World

I'm just glad that I am retired.  From The Sunday Times (here):

Companies are fitting thousands of their staff with body-worn tracker devices that check how much sleep they have, how well they work with colleagues and even monitor their body language, tone of voice or emotions.

Supporters of the revolution in “workplace wearables” say it is creating a more productive “augmented human being”, but privacy campaigners say it is leading to a “Big Brother” society.

Employees of at least four British companies, including a major high street bank, are already carrying “sociometric badges”, often for 24 hours a day. The credit card-sized badges are worn around the neck and include a microphone for real-time voice analysis, a device that tracks the wearer around the workplace, a Bluetooth sensor to scan for proximity to others and an accelerometer to check physical activity. Monitoring employees’ phone calls and emails provides further data.

Appalling nightmare.


 

A backward step

I find it hard to believe that a responsible government would envisage the re-imposition of customs duties and other barriers to trade with our main economic partners, with untold adverse consequences for the UK economy.  And for the fiction of limiting immigration.  But it appears that will happen.  The Guardian reports:

Theresa May is to announce that the government is prepared to accept a clean break with the EU in its negotiations for the UK’s departure. In a speech to be delivered on Tuesday, the prime minister will make clear that she is willing to sacrifice the UK’s membership of the single market and customs union in order to bring an end to freedom of movement.

An article in the Sunday Telegraph cites “sources familiar with the prime minister’s thinking” as saying that May is seeking to appease the Eurosceptic wing of her party by contemplating a “hard”, or “clean”, Brexit.

In the speech to an audience of diplomats at London’s Lancaster House May will hope to end months of speculation about her intentions by setting out her aims for Brexit. According to the Sunday Telegraph, she will say that the UK must:

• be prepared to leave the EU customs union;
• regain full control of its borders, even if that means losing access to the single market, and 
• cease to be subject to rulings by the European court of justice. 

Expect the pound to sink like a stone on the foreign exchanges tomorrow morning.

 
.

Photo(shop) of the day

Jeremy Corbyn-Trump:

   

The Trump diary

Entry for last Tuesday (according to The Times):

Tuesday

Emergency conference. Kellyanne is back, and Ivanka, and the boys, and my alt-right guy, Steve Bannon. News has broken about a dossier of disgusting allegations about my relationship with the Russians.

“More fake news!” I’m shouting. “Lies!”

Ivanka says she doesn’t know what a golden shower even is, anyway. Then Donald Jr says there’s one next door, next to the golden bidet. Then Steve says it’s actually a political party in Greece.

“Great guys,” he adds.

“That’s not it,” I say. “I know what it is. Don’t ask how. But it’s a lie. I’m a germaphobe.”

“It’s a smear,” says Kellyanne.

“More a stain,” says Eric.

“Oh God,” says Ivanka, who has just looked it up on her iPhone.

   

Linguistic analysis

He don't speak proper.  The Guardian reports:

1) Trump uses a pretty small working vocabulary. This doesn’t seem to be a conscious strategy, though it works as well as if it had been. Much was made during primary season of the way in which reading-level algorithms (unreliable though they are) found his speeches pitched at fourth-grade level, ie the comprehension of an average nine-year-old.

2) His syntax, spelling and punctuation are – in conventional terms – a catastrophe. In his tweets, he is prone to run-on sentences, shouty capitalisations, unpresidented misspellings and malapropisms, quote marks used for emphasis and verbless exclamations. In speaking, he is prone to anacoluthon – sentences whose grammar collapses – and reflexive repetition.

3) The workhorses of his rhetoric are charged but empty adjectives and adverbs.Things are “great”, “wonderful”, “amazing”, “the best”, or they’re “crooked”, “fake”, “unfair”, “failing”. He sprinkles intensifiers liberally: “a very, very, very amazing man, a great, great developer”.

Plus, he tells fibs.

Doesn't seem to matter when it comes to connecting with the voters ...

 
 

Dictatorial?

Far from sure that this is the right approach.  The Independent reports:

All doctor’s surgeries in England will open from 8am to 8pm, seven days a week, Theresa May has vowed, unless they can prove there is no demand from patients.

Ministers hope improving access to GPs will ease pressure on hospitals, which has become critical. There is increasing exasperation in Government that the lack of GP appointments is driving patients to seek treatment in hard-pressed hospital accident and emergency departments.

...

In addition, GPs will be warned that in future money to surgeries which are not open when patients want to visit will be cut.

The director of acute care for NHS England Professor Keith Willett has recently estimated that 30 per cent of the patients attending A&E would be better cared for elsewhere in the system.

I have no great sympathy for GPs - the last time I contacted my local GP practice in Edinburgh, I was offered an appointment some three weeks later.  But ...

Are there enough GPs to cover a 7 by 12 schedule?  Are practices not already under-staffed and do  they not already rely on a supply of locums?  Are sufficient students coming through the medical schools and opting for general practice?  And all this at a time when the recruitment of doctors from outwith the UK is likely to become ever more restricted.

And, even if the alleged 30% of patients attending A&E but suffering minor ailments and complaints could be re-directed to GPs, would it make a significant difference to the hard-pressed A&E departments?.  After all, it is not those kind of patients who are having to wait for surgery on trolleys in corridors.

Finally, given the serious problems in the NHS, a better way forward might involve seeking the co-operation of the medical profession rather than issuing unworkable ultimatums.

 

Front page of the day

What can they possibly be hinting at?

The germaphobe speaks

From The Guardian (here):

Trump suggested that the intelligence community had fabricated documents describing Russia obtaining compromising information about him. He said “sick people,” his “opponents”, had assembled the documents, and “garbage” “fake news” media outlets had disseminated them. He rejected outright claims in the documents of contacts between his campaign and Russia, and of him behaving badly in Moscow. He said he always warned people traveling with him about cameras in foreign hotels and that in any case he is a germaphobe.

Doubt if that will satisfy the media ...

 

Not a good day

Mr Corbyn twists and turns in successive interviews over EU immigration and high pay.  The Independent sums it up, rather sympathetically:

Corbyn looked muddled and unpopular on Brexit, muddled and potentially popular on high pay, and missed a golden chance to press Labour’s advantage on the NHS. All in one day. It is hard to believe that someone who seriously wants and intends to be prime minister could have allowed such confusion around him. 

I suppose he clings in private to the idea that remarkable things happen in politics, but it cannot be fun on a personal level to have most of your MPs thinking you are a hopeless liability while the party tests record depths in the opinion polls. 

What is more, he must know that, if the Conservative Party collapsed and he, who will be 70 if the election is at the set time, formed a government, he would hate it. There is no way this can end well. 

But, while Corbyn muddles his way ahead, the country is going to the dogs.

 

Fake news? Or a president-elect compromised?

I suspect that this story might run and run.  The New York Times reports:

WASHINGTON — The chiefs of America’s intelligence agencies last week presented President Obama and President-elect Donald J. Trump with a summary of unsubstantiated reports that Russia had collected compromising and salacious personal information about Mr. Trump, two officials with knowledge of the briefing said.

The summary is based on memos generated by political operatives seeking to derail Mr. Trump’s candidacy. Details of the reports began circulating in the fall and were widely known among journalists and politicians in Washington.

...

The memos describe sex videos involving prostitutes with Mr. Trump in a 2013 visit to a Moscow hotel. The videos were supposedly prepared as “kompromat,” or compromising material, with the possible goal of blackmailing Mr. Trump in the future.

The memos also suggest that Russian officials proposed various lucrative deals, essentially as disguised bribes in order to win influence over Mr. Trump.

The Donald has responded by twitter (of course):

"FAKE NEWS - A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT!"

We'll no doubt see, in due course ...

Taking a chance?

So Theresa May is prepared to let Boris loose on the yanks.  Bloomberg reports:

U.K. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson met with some of Donald Trump’s top advisers as Britain looks to build ties with the incoming administration ahead of the country’s withdrawal from the European Union.

The sessions involved Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, and the president-elect’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, on Sunday evening before Johnson traveled to Washington to visit with congressional leaders.

The talks were “positive and frank” and covered relations with Syria, Russia and China, the BBC reported, citing unidentified aides.

Somewhat dodgy, I would have thought.  Who knows what Boris might have said?

   

Music of the week

A sensible approach to immigration?

Well at least some Labour Party MPs are thinking about it.  The Observer reports:

Labour MPs Stephen Kinnock and Emma Reynolds insist that the “mixed messages” from Labour over immigration are proving “deeply corrosive” of voters’ trust. They insist that it is time to unite behind a credible approach that recognises the strength of feeling in the country about rising immigrant numbers, while protecting UK and European workers and the economy.

Announcing their blueprint for change – with support from senior figures, including the party’s former policy chief and MP for Dagenham, Jon Cruddas, and former shadow cabinet members Rachel Reeves and Caroline Flint – they say Labour should press Theresa May to put a two-tier system of controls at the heart of Brexit negotiations.Tier one would include highly skilled individuals such as doctors, teachers and engineers, who would be admitted to take on specific jobs. EU students with a place at British universities would also be included in this tier.

Tier two would be made up of low-skilled and semi-skilled EU workers, whose numbers would be limited by sector-based quotas, negotiated between government, industry and trade unions. These sectors would include agriculture, food processing, retail, construction and hospitality.

Seems a bit on the bureaucratic side to me.  You would need an army of immigration service officials to administer the process of vetting applications and supervising appeal mechanisms.  On the other hand, there are no easy solutions ...


   

Hunt in hiding

The man to deal with the crisis in the NHS?

No, I don't think so, either.

 

Where are the Brexit plans?

A Russian computer hacker writes (in The Times - here):

Following enormous success of not hacking United States election, focus is now switched to United Kingdom. Haff been tasked with obtaining top secret documents outlining British government detail plan for Brexit.

“Is most odd,” am saying to hacking superior. “Can’t find them anywhere.”

Hacking superior most displeased. Is asking which cabinet minister computers haff compromised?

“First Liam Fox,” am saying, “but he is spending all time playing computer games of Global Conquest or Risk. Then David Davis, but turns out he is not even turning computer on. Just hitting buttons, madly, when anybody walks past, in front of black monitor. Then Boris Johnson. But half is Latin and rest is NSFW.”

“Keep looking,” hacking superior haff ordered. “Plans must be somewhere.”

“You’d think,” haff said.

 Good luck with that ...

Quote of the day

And there goes Sir Ivan Rogers as head of UKREP in Brussels.  As The Independent points out:

As of now, the Government has no published Brexit plan (though it has promised Parliament and, presumably, the Queen it will have one by the end of March), no top diplomat in Brussels and no trade negotiators to speak of. It is not a position of strength.

The latter sentence is something of an under-statement.

 

It's all doom and gloom

Whither the Labour Party?  A report by the Fabian Society suggests a future which is far from rosy.  The Guardian reports:

Andrew Harrop, the Fabians’ general secretary, who wrote the report, said Corbyn and his team appeared to have little idea how to respond to such challenges or how to win back the 4 million voters who supported Labour in 2015 but say they would not do so now.

After Corbyn triumphed against Owen Smith in a leadership challenge, his team had produced “no roadmap” for overcoming Labour’s plight, Harrop wrote, while the wider parliamentary Labour party had become “barely audible”.

“In place of the sound and fury of Jeremy Corbyn’s first 12 months, there is quietude, passivity and resignation,” he said. “And on Brexit, the greatest political question for two generations, the party’s position is muffled and inconsistent. This is the calm of stalemate, of insignificance, even of looming death.”

Hard to disagree.  Especially as the country desperately needs a competitive and competent Opposition.

   

In case you missed it ...

Heard it all before?

Funny how the honours system is continually reformed but never changes.  The Times reports:

Theresa May is to overhaul the honours system after making clear that controversial appointments in the new year’s list had been put forward under David Cameron.

The prime minister is to insist that the government gives priority to people proven to have helped the economy or boosted social mobility.

...

Mrs May has said that she wants the honours system to have five priorities. It will recognise those who boost the economy; support young people in achieving their potential; aid social mobility; help local communities; and tackle discrimination.

The new system will be in place for the Queen’s Birthday honours in the summer. The awards announced by the government over the weekend had been proposed by Mr Cameron’s team, according to a Whitehall source, who said: “These things are put together with quite a lot of time to spare.”

So, instead of Cameron's cronies, we can expect May's cronies to figure on the list.

   

Music of the week

Quote of the day

Age is not just a state of mind?  Jeremy philosophises:

Corbyn dismissed reports that he has told friends he is ready to step down in 2019 because of his age, saying: “Friends is obviously a very loose term these days – I’ve never said that. I’m very happy doing my campaigning. This is the age of the 60s – look at Trump, Clinton, Sanders, Angela Merkel – look around you. Sixties is the new 40s, I keep fit.”

I don't.  I guess I'm part of the old sixties ...


 

Quote of the day

Oh dear, Jeremy.

From The Times (here):

Mr Corbyn, a keen gardener who keeps an allotment, revealed his other foodie love this month. “I find cheese very interesting,” he said.

Yes, well that really illuminates the political outlook for 2017 ...

   

Music of the week

Just the start

One down, how many to go?  The Guardian reports:

Donald Trump announced on Saturday that he will shut down his charitable foundation, a response to mounting complaints over conflicts related to the president-elect’s charitable and business interests.

...

The closure of the Trump Foundation, which was first reported by the New York Times, requires the approval of the New York attorney general’s office, which is currently investigating the nonprofit and issued a cease and desist order to it in October.

The Donald J Trump Foundation was repeatedly the subject of controversy throughout the presidential campaign after a series of investigations by the Washington Post’s David Fahrenthold. Trump reportedly used $258,000 of the foundation’s money to pay for personal legal settlements. He also spent charitable funds on multiple portraits of himself and on a football helmet autographed by Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow.

The foundation also made a donation to a political group supporting Florida attorney general Pam Bondi, a longtime Trump backer in violation of tax law. The president-elect has since paid $2,500 to the Internal Revenue Service over the donation.

Who knows what creepy-crawlies will emerge when further stones are turned over? 

 

Not the Christmas Story

From The Times (here):

...

11. And the angel said unto them, “Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people, apart from immigrants, and gays, and women. And obviously Mexicans, who are drug dealers and criminals and racists. Sorry, rapists.

12. “For unto you is born this day in the city of Donald, a Saviour, which is Trump the President.

13. “And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, grabbing women by the pussy. Because when you are the Messiah they don’t say anything.”

14. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising Donald, and saying, Glory to Him in the highest floor of Trump Tower, and on earth peace, as long as other Nato members pay for it up front, and good will toward men. But not gays or towelheads or any of those people we mentioned before.

     

   

Have they nothing better to do?

It is a little far from earth-shattering ... but, hey, it's nearly Christmas!  The Guardian reports:

Bigger bubbles could make your champagne taste better this Christmas, research has found.

It was long thought that a steady stream of tiny bubbles in a glass of champagne was a sign of quality. But researchers in France’s Champagne-Ardenne region have found that larger bubbles may actually improve the way a sparkling wine tastes.

...

In a study published in the European Physical Journal Special Topics, they show that the bubbles form a regular hexagonal pattern on the surface. When one collapses, it creates a cavity that stretches the neighbouring bubbles, producing a pattern that looks similar to the petals of a flower, creating an avalanche of tiny droplets that are thrown into the air at the top of the glass.

Far more important: the size of the bubbles in beer.  But do fancy-pants researchers care about the working man's tipple?


 

Won't do Alex any harm

Being harangued by the Donald is a badge of honour.  The Guardian reports:

Donald Trump harangued the former first minister of Scotland as “Mad Alex” and accused him of being on a “march to oblivion” in a series of increasingly angry and eccentric letters about windfarms he claimed were blighting his Scottish golf courses.

The correspondence with Alex Salmond, revealed by the Huffington Post after a freedom of information request, demonstrated that Trump’s tone swung wildly between coaxing and threatening as he grew increasingly frustrated with his former ally’s refusal to change his policy on renewable energy.

Trump warned Salmond that his dream of Scottish independence would be “gone with the wind” if he continued to support windfarm developments, accusing the then leader of the Scottish National party of being “hellbent” on damaging Scotland’s coastline.

Now all the SNP needs is for Trump to go after Mad Nicola, and the nationalists will be laughing all the way to the polls.

   

Petty-minded

The Times reports on the penalty for saying things that displease Ministers:

Theresa May has forced one of the world’s biggest consultancy companies to withdraw from Whitehall contract bids for six months after one of its staff wrote a memo detailing Brexit strains at the heart of government.

A two-page assessment, leaked to The Times last month, reported that civil servants were struggling to cope with more than 500 Brexit-related projects and that cabinet splits were delaying the agreement of a negotiating strategy.

Publication of the memo, written by a Deloitte consultant working on Whitehall projects, infuriated Downing Street. The prime minister was said to have been personally affronted by the note, which criticised her for “drawing in decisions and details to settle matters herself”.

...

Seeking to draw a line under the furore, the company has agreed not to bid for central government contracts for about six months, The Times understands. Industry sources believe that Deloitte feared a more draconian punishment without such an offer.

It would appear that the government only wants yes-men ...

 

Hard and soft borders

Even The Times is preaching sedition:

Nicola Sturgeon, perhaps unlike her predecessor, is wary of economic insanity. She has learnt the lesson of 2014, which is that at the ballot box, if only in Scotland, it does not sell. So her strategy is to be the sane one. This, of course, being helped in no small part by sanity being out of fashion, at least in Westminster. For a Unionist, all the old arguments of prudence, caution, and economic soundness can only work if the Scottish separatist alternative can be shown to be even more batshit doolally than the stuff British cabinet ministers come out with every other day.

Sturgeon’s plan might not be. Its details remain to be seen, and on past form it will include holes you could drive a Brexit bus through. Yet the notion of a single market settlement for Scotland alone is not inherently mad at all.

It would be theoretically possible, for example, to retain freedom of movement up north, without a big fence at Berwick-upon-Tweed. Yes, EU nationals could enter Scotland and go south, but so what? Unless we’re planning on terribly strict visa controls, tourists will be able to do that anyway. Freedom of movement isn’t really about movement, but jobs and benefits. Fudge some equivalent of the EU’s border agreement with Switzerland, and the mooted deal with Turkey, and it’s certainly conceivable.

Can't see it, myself.  But let us await what the Blessed Nicola announces ...

 

French justice?

Eh bien, mes amis - c'est comme ca.  The Guardian reports on the perma-tanned one:

Christine Lagarde has been found guilty of negligence in approving a massive payout of taxpayers’ money to controversial French businessman Bernard Tapie but avoided a jail sentence.

A French court convicted the head of the International Monetary Fund and former government minister, who had faced a €15,000 (£12,600) fine and up to a year in prison. But it decided she should not be punished and that the conviction would not constitute a criminal record. On Monday evening the IMF gave her its full support.

Guilty but unpunished.  C'est la vie ...


 

Music of the week

   

A Christmas fairy tale

It's not a Wonderful Life.  From The Observer (here):

In this modern reworking of the old Frank Capra classic we find George, a former Tory minister who’s fallen on hard times. Just as he’s about to take a header off Westminster Bridge his guardian angel, Arthur appears. Arthur tells him what Britain would be like if George and his chums had never been born.

George is first taken to a giant retail warehouse full of smiling faces and red-coated managers handing out wee treats to their happy workers. There is a well-stocked canteen full of fruit and fibre where staff can buy heavily discounted products. They are all well paid and healthy and paying more into the economy by buying British-made products.

Next, he takes him to Ravenscraig steelworks in Motherwell, where thousands of workers are manufacturing the steel to make Britain’s next generation of battle cruisers and fancy new office blocks and apartments. The orders from overseas, especially from Africa and the Middle East, which have enjoyed two decades of stability, are especially pleasing.

Next, Angel Arthur takes him to a Glasgow tenement flat where three young children, who have never previously had a visit from Santa, are opening their first ever Christmas gifts. For the first time, their single mother was able to access her benefits and didn’t have to spend them all on gas and electricity following the nationalisation of the energy companies.

Now it’s on to Wormwood Scrubs, where George sees cells full of former bankers and FTSE 100 directors who were found guilty of corruption and tax evasion in the years that followed the 2008 banking crisis.

“All of this would have happened, George, if you hadn’t been born,” said kindly old Arthur with a twinkle in his eye. “So, instead of throwing yourself off the bridge, why not spend the rest of your life trying to make it happen?”

So now, boys and girls, every time you hear a bell ring you’ll know a Tory has found redemption.

Just don't count on it happening soon ...

 

British values?

The BBC reports:

Civil servants and other holders of public office should swear an oath to British values, Communities Secretary Sajid Javid has said.

Writing in the Sunday Times, Mr Javid said people could not play a "positive role" in public life unless they accepted basic values.

These included democracy, equality and freedom of speech, he said.

That would be a democracy where an unelected House of Lords participates in the legislative process and where the head of state is appointed by virtue of birth.  That would be equality where government action makes the poor poorer while the rich get fat.  That would be freedom of speech unless you say things that we do not like, in which case you may be denied a platform.

 

Thanks for nothing

See Microsoft!  The BBC reports:

An update to Windows software has caused problems for personal computer users trying to connect to the internet.

...

"Some customers using Windows 10 have reported difficulties connecting to the internet," said a spokeswoman for Microsoft.

"As a first step, we recommend customers restart their PCs.

"If this does not resolve the problem, visit our website for further support."

But if you cannot connect to the internet, how do you visit the website?

He's, like, a smart person?

Would a smart person ever say that?  The Times reports:

Donald Trump dismissed the importance of the president’s daily intelligence briefing yesterday as a rift grew with America’s intelligence agencies over alleged attempts by Russia to meddle in the election.

Asked about the top-secret briefings given to presidents every morning, and offered to presidents-elect, he said: “I get it when I need it. I’m, like, a smart person. I don’t have to be told the same thing in the same words every single day for the next eight years.”

Has he never watched The West Wing?

 

Handbags at dawn

Like ferrets in a sack.  The Tories descend into childish yah-boo politics:

Nicky Morgan insisted that she would continue to be a thorn in Theresa May’s side yesterday after it emerged that she had been banned from No 10 for publicly criticising the prime minister’s decision to pose in a pair of leather trousers costing £1,000.

...

Text messages published by the Mail on Sunday show that Fiona Hill, Mrs May’s chief of staff, promptly disinvited Mrs Morgan, a leading advocate of a soft Brexit, from meetings at No 10 following her trouser comments. She had previously met Mrs Morgan and Alistair Burt, another Tory MP, and asked them to a meeting with Mrs May next week about their views on Brexit. After the interview Ms Hill texted Mr Burt to tell him: “Don’t bring that woman to No 10 again.”

Mrs Morgan texted Ms Hill: “If you don’t like something I have said or done, please tell me directly. No man brings me to any meeting. Your team invites me. If you don’t want my views in future meetings you need to tell them.” Ms Hill, believed to be referring to the pair attending the previous meeting, replied: “Well, he just did. So there!”

Pathetic.

The wonders of the age?

I have been enjoying Planet Earth II, much of which you can still watch on the BBC i-player. Superb photography.  But David Attenborough does rather spoil it with his anthropomorphism (attributing human feelings and emotions to animals) and his hyperbole (natural features being described as the world’s tallest, greatest, most extensive, etc, with only the most obvious of dubious assertions being preceded by an “it is estimated that”).  I also find it confusing that viewers are expected to guess when the programme slips into fast-forward mode (watching grass grow for example) or reverts into slo-mo fashion.  I suppose I’m getting old and cranky (though not as old as Sir David).

Anyway, Sir David is a National Treasure and therefore well above footling criticisms like those above.

How to combine apologising with bragging ...

... not to mention name-dropping.  Niall Ferguson explains in The Sunday Times why he endorsed Remain in the referendum:

Why? The answer is partly that 14 years of living in the United States had taken their toll. Americans since the 1960s have wanted the Brits inside the EU to counterbalance the French, whom they do not trust. Writing Henry Kissinger’s biography, I had started to think that way. But a bigger factor — I must admit it — was my personal friendship with Cameron and George Osborne. For the first time in my career I wrote things about which I had my doubts in order to help my friends stay in power. That was wrong and I am sorry I did it.

Is he really sorry?  Doubtful ...

 
 

Rugby

Tremendous result for Glasgow Warriors, beating the glamour boys - Dan Carter and all - of Racing 92 by 23 points to 14, in Paris.

 

Music of the week

 

Quote of the day

Oh dear.  The by-election in Sleaford.and North Hykeham,  The New Statesman sums it up:

What's increasingly clear: the further anti-immigration turn of Theresa May's government has fixed the Conservatives' Ukip problem, but they've acquired a Liberal Democrat one.  Labour, meanwhile, hasn't fixed its Ukip problem and now has a Liberal Democrat one to match. 

   

Bizarre

Oh dear - Boris in trouble again. The Guardian reports:

Boris Johnson was not representing the government’s views on Saudi Arabia when he accused the state of abusing Islam and acting as a puppeteer in proxy wars, Downing Street has said.

The foreign secretary was setting out his own views on Saudi Arabia and Iran at a conference in Rome last week, the prime minister’s spokeswoman said on Thursday, but would be sticking to the government’s line when he visits Saudi ministers this weekend.

Johnson’s remarks, published in the Guardian, came at an embarrassing moment for Downing Street, emerging shortly after Theresa May returned from a two-day trip to the Gulf where she spoke repeatedly of the closeness of the relationship between the UK and Gulf states.

Perhaps No 10 would let everyone know in advance when the Foreign Secretary is pursuing his own agenda and when he is speaking for Her Majesty's Government.

It cannot go on like this.  I suspect resignation - or sacking -  is on the cards.


   

Headline of the day

From The Independent (here):

Carrier union boss: Donald Trump ‘lied his a** off’ about saving 1,100 jobs from moving to Mexico

So what's new?

   

Happy birthday ...

... to Professor Noam Chomsky, father of modern linguistics, 88 years old today.

Syntactic Structures and Aspects of the Theory of Syntax are among the most prized possessions on my bookshelf.

I am sad that way.

 

Not going well for the government?

The Guardian reports progress before the Supremes:

With the government’s case – what there was of it – complete, the rest of the afternoon was handed over to Gina Miller’s barrister, Lord Pannick. Seldom has a man been less well named. Pannick exudes a sense of calm and has the uncanny ability to make you think you understand legal doublespeak even when you don’t. 

A Pannick attack is a thing of zen-like beauty. He doesn’t need to shuffle his papers because he never forgets a reference. Nor does he ever miss a beat. In his hands, a legal submission is more a cosy bedside story than adversarial confrontation.

“If the government is right,” he began, “the 1972 European Communities Act has a lesser status than the Dangerous Dogs Act.”

You could see the tension ease away from the 11 justices. They knew they were safe in Pannick’s hands and whereas their line of questioning to the government’s barristers had been provocative and sharp, they now turned into gentle pussycats.

          

Déjà vu, again ...

He thinks that it’s a toy train set.  The BBC reports:

The way that England's railway network is run is set to be overhauled under plans outlined by Transport Secretary Chris Grayling.

He wants each rail franchise to be run by joint management teams, including representatives from both the train operating company and Network Rail.

Mr Grayling said: "I intend to start bringing back together the operation of track and train on our railways."

The changes will start when each franchise is renewed in the future.

It was (allegedly) Petronius Arbiter who said it best:

"We trained hard . . . but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization."

Worth dipping into?

If you are mildly obsessed with progress on the Supreme Court case on Brexit, you can watch it live here, from 11 am on.

Just don't expect drama along John Grisham lines ...

 

is common sense re-surfacing?

Probably not, but still ...  The Sunday Times reports:

“The most significant thing that happened last week is what didn’t happen,” an aide to a cabinet minister said. “DD talked about paying money into the EU budget and no one from Downing Street machinegunned him in the street.”

DD is David Davis, the minister for Brexit. When he told MPs on Thursday that the government “would consider” continuing some payments to Brussels to “get the best possible access for goods and services to the European market” it caused consternation among Eurosceptics.

Immigration is a total red line; budget contributions is where they will try to compromise
While Liam Fox, the international trade secretary, and Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, have seen many of their public pronouncements on the shape of Brexit quickly contradicted by May’s aides, this time No 10 left Davis alone, saying payments would be “a matter for negotiation”.

Those familiar with the government’s internal discussions say Davis’s statement shows that in private Theresa May is contemplating a softer Brexit than she has been publicly letting on. They say this coincides with Davis adopting a moderate approach to negotiations and Philip Hammond, the chancellor, retreating from his original position that the UK should stay in the European Union single market.

It is now nearly six months since the referendum.  The government appears to be taking an inordinate amount of time to decide what it wants and what it thinks it can get from the Brexit negotiations.

   

Convicted!

Maybe a big boy did it and ran away?

Lord Howard of Lympne has been convicted of a motoring offence after telling a court that he “could not remember” who was driving when his car was caught speeding.

The former Conservative leader, 75, said his wife, Sandra, 76, could have been behind the wheel when their Toyota Prius was recorded at 37.3mph in a 30mph zone.

The couple admit that one of them was behind the wheel while returning from a weekend at their home in his former Kent constituency of Folkestone and Hythe to their Westminster address in January.

Given their age and dodgy memory, should either of them be allowed to drive?

   

Do these guys know what they are doing?

Or do they just twist in the wind, telling audiences what they think they want to hear?  The Times  reports:

Britain is leaning towards a softer Brexit after ministers admitted that they were considering plans to allow low-skilled migration and could pay to access the single market after leaving the European Union.

The government does not want to end up with damaging labour shortages, David Davis, the Brexit secretary, said last night amid growing signs that ministers were moderating their stance.

Mr Davis told a CBI dinner in Wales that the government would be “ending free movement as it has operated before”, adding: “We won’t do so in a way that it is contrary to the national and economic interest . . . Britain must win the global battle for talent. No one wants to see labour shortages in key sectors.”

Earlier in the day Mr Davis, a longstanding Leave supporter, told the Commons that Britain could keep paying into the Brussels budget in exchange for access to the single market. The government was not ruling out the move to “get the best possible access for goods and services to the European market”, he said.

Any sign of a strategy?  Or a plan?  Apart from making it up as you go along ...

   

I wonder why?

The Guardian reports:

Boris Johnson will issue a warning that democracy is in retreat across the world 

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that clowns such as he have risen to near the top of the political tree ...