O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

The USA is irony-free?

The Guardian reports:

NFL owners have issued new guidelines that will see teams fined if their players or staff do not show appropriate “respect” for the national anthem. According to the new rules, “a club will be fined by the league if its personnel are on the field and do not stand and show respect for the flag and the anthem”.

The NFL commissioner, Roger Goodell, said the league had been “sensitive” on the issue. “We want people to be respectful of the national anthem. We want people to stand,” Goodell said. “That’s all personnel, and to make sure they treat this moment in a respectful fashion. That’s something that we think we owe. We’ve been very sensitive on making sure that we give players choices, but we do believe that moment is an important moment and one that we are going to focus on.”

Is it just to inflict punishment on those who bravely exercise their freedom for motives which are otherwise commendable?

 

The unwelcome guest

Send him to Scotland to keep him out of the way?  The Guardian reports:

Donald Trump is expected to head to Scotland after his visit to London on 13 July to play golf with a high quality professional golfer or possibly a member of the royal family.

The president is being offered a range of low handicap golfers as a part of a UK government bid to make the visit as pleasurable as possible for him.

Trump owns two golf courses in Scotland, and his visit to the UK following a Nato summit will give him a chance to relax in the surroundings that give him greatest pleasure. British officials have recognised he is a serious golfer and will need an expert opponent to keep him entertained.

The trip is likely to include a meeting with the Queen, but at the same time efforts are being made to ensure that he does not encounter a series of protests in London. One option will be for the president to meet Theresa May outside London, such as at the prime minister’s rural retreat in Chequers.

Do they think that he won't encounter protests in Scotland?

 

Straws in the wind

Is the great deal-maker faltering?

The BBC reports that on the one hand:

US President Donald Trump has said there is a "very substantial chance" a historic summit with North Korea's Kim Jong-un next month may not happen.

He said the North must meet conditions for the summit to go ahead though if it did not, it might happen "later".

He was speaking as he received South Korea's President Moon Jae-in at the White House.

The North has said it may cancel the summit if the US insists on it giving up nuclear weapons unilaterally.

while on the other hand:

Donald Trump once claimed a trade war with China would be "easy" to win. But consensus is emerging that the president is losing the first battles.

His team has been trying to hash out a deal to boost US exports, but multiple rounds of negotiations have yet to yield progress on key priorities, like protection for US intellectual property.

Now the conflict has Mr Trump taking fire at home from two sides: those worried he is provoking a damaging trade fight, and those who fear he will give in too easily.

Mr Trump, citing a large trade deficit and unfair rules in China, says the US is starting from such a bad position that the country stands to gain no matter what happens. 

Is it all going a bit pear-shaped?

   

Etymology

Why does Scotland have earls while England has dukes?  It is partly because Scotland was never conquered by the Normans.

The word earl is derived from the Anglo-Saxon, a branch of the Germanic languages.  The Scandinavian cognate is jarl.  Scotland never had to cope with all these Norman nobles - dukes and counts - whose titles were of Latin origin (dux and comes) and who - after1066 - displaced the Anglo-Saxon earls in England.

But there was no feminine equivalent to an earl; so nowadays the term Countess is used.

Most of the words associated with royalty are also of Latinate descent: royal, majesty, prince.  Curiously, though, king and queen are of solid Germanic stock.

I thought you might want to know ...

   

Meaningless titles

Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Earl and Countess of Dumbarton, Baron and Baroness Kilkeel.

What's the point?

And how come the Welsh miss out?

 

Boiling the frogs

Theresa May is either being very clever or rather stupid.  But we seem to be heading for an ever softer Brexit.  The Independent reports:

The frog-boiling is going well. Theresa May has turned up the temperature another notch and Boris Johnson has still not jumped out of the pan. Nor has Liam Fox, Michael Gove or David Davis. 

At the meeting of the Brexit committee of cabinet on Tuesday, the prime minister came up with a plan so cunning no one could work out what it meant. She asked them to agree what would happen if there was no agreement about trade by the end of the transition period after Brexit. 

The foreign secretary grumbled a bit, but agreed with the prime minister that the UK would then continue to apply the EU’s common external tariff until a new arrangement was ready. Considering that the systems to do anything else could not be in place by December 2020, the end of the 21-month transition period after leaving the EU, this did not appear to be a significant moment. 

Indeed, as any new customs arrangements could not be put in place until well after the next general election in May 2022, it may well be the case that we are blessed (or doomed) to remain in the EU's customs/single market regime for the foreseeable future.  And the forces of inertia (better the devil you know and all that) may preclude any significant change in status thereafter.

But perhaps I am too optimistically counting my (chlorine-washed) chickens before thay have hatched ...

 

Closing the door after the horse has bolted?

A bit on the late side?  The ermine-clad hordes grow ever more numerous:

Theresa May is expected to approve the creation of about 10 Tory peers and hand at least one to Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist party in an attempt to improve her weak position in the House of Lords, which has already voted 15 times against her government over Brexit.

The elevations, which are expected to be announced in the coming days in Westminster, were immediately criticised by high profile remain Labour peer Lord Adonis as a desperate attempt by the prime minister to enlist people to boost her fragile position in the unelected upper house.

Tories tipped for elevation include former ministers Sir Eric Pickles and Peter Lilley. Adonis said: “This is a classic example of packing the Lords to try and make Brexit easier to endorse.”

There are at present 780 peers in the Lords, far too many of whom are placemen collecting their £300  a day just for turning up.  But if the Prime Minister wanted to bolster the Tories' presence there, it might have been more sensible to do it before the EU Withdrawal Bill reached the Lords.

 

How is Brexit coming along?

Not so good.  The Guardian reports:

Last week, Corbyn broke with the habit of a lifetime by asking six short questions about Brexit and had the best PMQs of his time as leader. So quite understandably, he opted for doing the same thing this week. With precisely the same result. At this rate Wednesdays could become a cushy number for the Labour leader. Why bother to spend hours mugging up on the NHS or Windrush, when all you need to do is casually inquire how the prime minister thinks Brexit is coming along and then sit back and wait for everyone to start sniggering.

“How is Brexit coming along?” Corbyn asked. Theresa was completely blindsided by this. As if she had never heard of Brexit, let alone had a solution to it. Her mouth opened and shut as she waited for her voice to synch with her lips. Umm, Brexit, she said, stalling for time as she willed an electrical charge to fire up her circuit board.

...

Corbyn then further confused the prime minister by asking her epistemological questions on the nature of friction. How much friction was as little friction as possible? “The government has a policy,” the prime minister creaked, defaulting to her normal Maybot mode. A policy of having done almost nothing for two years. A policy of literally not having a clue.

Oh dear ...

   

"O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear?"

We've been here before, several times.  But nothing ever seems to change.  The Guardian reports:

Apart from the junior director who tried to speak against the delusion in Carillion’s boardroom, nobody emerges with credit from the two select committees’ post-mortem on the contracting firm. The other directors, led by chairman Philip Green, chief executive Richard Howson and finance director Richard Adam, were directly responsible for the failure because they were either “negligently ignorant of the rotten culture” or complicit in it. But the entire system of checks and balances failed.

The auditors, KPMG, were useless, as was the audit industry’s passive regulator. The government, in the form of the Crown Representative, was asleep. The Pensions Regulator was feeble. City advisers to Carillion were paid to be supine. Big shareholders were not inquisitive. None of those judgments will surprise those who followed the evidence sessions, but the MPs’ report will count for little unless it forces action from government.

Aye weel.  I'll not be holding my breath in anticipation of any substantial action from this government.


[Disclosure:  I was a shareholder in Carillion when it went bust and lost what to me was a considerable sum of money.  Serves me right for gambling against a rigged deck, I hear you say?]

   

Fantasy politics

It might be better to think a little, perhaps even take the odd decision, before scrambling to write up your conclusions.  But this government likes to put the cart before the horse:

Theresa May has announced plans to publish, ahead of a critical Brussels summit next month, a Brexit white paper setting out her priorities for Britain’s future relationship with the European Union.

In an attempt to get on the front foot in negotiations, the government will for the first time present a “detailed, ambitious and precise” explanation of what it hopes the final deal will deliver. The blueprint is expected to include a plan for a customs relationship that avoids re-establishing a hard Irish border, although the prime minister’s cabinet remains bitterly divided over how best to achieve this.

...

As well as customs, the white paper will cover the future security relationship, the financial services sector, aviation and fisheries. It will form part of ongoing negotiations with Brussels ahead of a political declaration in the autumn.

This might have been a useful exercise if it had been undertaken last year or, preferably, the year before.  But announcing a White Paper before you have decided what it should say is political folly.

   

Will no-one rid us of this turbulent plonker?

The Guardian has it in for Boris:

There was a time when the post of foreign secretary was considered one of the great offices of state. A person who could be guaranteed to remain calm under fire and take the heat out of global flashpoints. Someone other countries might take seriously and respect.

For reasons best known to itself, though, the Conservative government has abandoned any pretence of taking the foreign secretary seriously. Boris Johnson is now a one-man rogue state, free to do more or less exactly what he wants, safe in the knowledge that no one dares sack him. A latter-day Toby Young on speed who roams the world losing friends and alienating people at an alarming rate. His motto: there’s no bad situation that can’t be made worse.

Boris doesn’t hold with anything so old-fashioned as diplomacy. His mission is not the promotion of peace, it is the tireless promotion of himself. In Boris world, nothing really matters but Boris. Anything and everything is just leverage for his own career. A walking narcissistic personality disorder, the last remaining believer in his own genius who is oblivious to the destruction he creates.

 

Photo caption of the day

 Ivanka: ‘Not another creepy blonde with bad hair and a narcissistic personality disorder.’ 

From The Guardian (here).

  

Dither and fudge

This is becoming ridiculous.  It is now 23 months since the Brexit referendum and the government has yet to decide what it wants in terms of customs arrangements.  It has failed to agree upon either of the two latest options. neither of which is likely to command the support of parliament and neither of which is any case acceptable to the rest of the EU.  It is also extremely doubtful that either option could be implemented by the end of 2020 when the transitional phase is due to expire.

But, still, the Prime Minister kicks the can down the road:

Theresa May has divided her cabinet into two groups to fight out their differences over Britain’s post-Brexit customs arrangements, intensifying speculation that she is preparing to delay her decision on the issue.

No 10 sources confirmed that the prime minister had formed the working groups, which would report back on her preferred customs partnership model and the maximum-facilitation option at next Tuesday’s meeting of her inner Brexit cabinet.

Her senior ministers are split over how Britain should manage its customs arrangements with the European Union after it leaves the bloc, with the issue threatening to divide the cabinet and the Tory party itself.

Does anyone in government consider the needs of the country?  Or is it just personal and party survival and ambition?

 

One more thing to add to the lengthy list

The Independent reports:

One of Donald Trump’s luxury golf resorts in Scotland has risked offending the natives by banning the sale of Irn-Bru.

Guests at Turnberry have been forbidden from drinking Scotland’s favourite soft drink over fears its luminous orange colouring might stain the carpets.

The ban came to light after guests at the five-star hotel on the Ayrshire coast requested Irn-Bru but were refused because of concerns about potential spillages.

The man is so not cool.

 

Choices, choices ...

So Peppa Pig is banned in China?

Don't look at me.  I'm a Shaun the Sheep fan ...

   

Music of the week

 

Quote of the day

I have some sympathy for this guy writing in The Sunday Times:

Sometimes it seems as if half this shareholder’s investment decisions — whether to buy, sell or hold — are expensive mistakes. The difficulty is knowing, in advance, which half the next decision will fall into. No wonder City cynics say there are only two types of expert when it comes to stock market predictions. Those who don’t know and those who don’t know they don’t know.

That is why this column makes no claim to have a crystal ball and, instead, sets out to report the rough and the smooth of DIY investing. There’s no one else to blame when things go wrong, and the idiot responsible is staring back at you in the mirror every morning.

Been there, done that, got the t-shirt ...

 

   

Clutching at straws

Headline in The Observer (here):

Don’t laugh, but Scottish football really is on the rise after years in the doldrums

As John Cleese once remarked, it's not the despair. I can take the despair. It's the hope I can't stand.

   

Quote of the day

Ann Treneman in The Times (formerly a superb political sketch writer) bewails the linguistic fashions:

My word of the week is “woke”, which, when I was in New York recently, I kept seeing used in articles. It’s an African-American political term that, basically, means socially aware, as in a quiz called How Woke Are You?

Well, at this point, I’m woke enough to know that I may not be woke at all.

And so say all of us.

 

An old curmudgeon writes ...

Such a fuss over some young couple getting wed.  The Guardian reports:

The Desert Island Discs host, Kirsty Young, and The X Factor presenter Dermot O’Leary are to join Huw Edwards in fronting the BBC’s coverage of the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

The corporation has put together a more diverse presenting team than the lineup for Prince William and Kate Middleton’s wedding in 2011.

Seven years ago, the Countryfile presenter Anita Rani was the only person from a BME background who was part of the core team fronting the main BBC coverage.

She will be repeating this role in just over a fortnight’s time, but will be joined by the Strictly Come Dancing winner Ore Oduba and the Radio 1 journalist Tina Daheley.

The final lead presenter of BBC One’s live coverage of the wedding on 19 May will be The One Show co-host Alex Jones, who was also part of the BBC’s lineup in 2011. But Fearne Cotton, who was criticised for her presenting style, misses out, along with Edith Bowman, Sophie Raworth and Fiona Bruce.

The BBC at its worst, fawning over royalty, while desperately seeking diversity/

 

Crazy

The prime minister is cutting off her nose to spite her face.  The Independent reports:

Fresh questions have been raised over Theresa May’s hardline stance on immigration after reports emerged suggesting she had intervened to stop doctors from overseas coming to the UK.

The prime minister is said to have overruled other cabinet ministers arguing that more foreign doctors were desperately needed to help meet staff shortages in the NHS.

Despite pressure from the home secretary, health secretary and business secretary, Ms May is said to have refused to budge on rules that restrict the number of visas given to specialist workers from overseas.

Foreign doctors are not taking the jobs of British doctors and their arrival would obviously be in the interests of NHS patients waiting on operations or on GP appointments.  But Theresa May would rather see people suffer than breach a notional, ill-defined policy of keeping out the foreigners.

   

Quote of the day

From The Guardian (here):

The prime minister tries to sound thrilled by the future, but all the while her political body language cries out for the past. When talking about industrial strategy, she praises digital innovation. But her chief policy interest in the internet has always been how better to control it when terrorists and paedophiles thrive in its ungoverned recesses.

She says the things exuberant Brexiteers want to hear about the opportunities for Britain beyond the confines of the European Union. But she negotiates as if lost in a forest of terrible options, feeling her way to the path of greatest continuity. She is holding out for a way to change everything while keeping things the same, handling each crisis as it comes without dealing with the underlying problems, and so sowing the seeds of the next crisis.

Eventually the crisis will come that overwhelms her completely. But until then, May’s awkward political destiny is set: to be resisting and leading change at the same time; to be forced out into the world when she would rather stay at home; and to march reluctantly to a revolutionary drum when she looks as if she would rather be standing still.

 

The singing chief executive

Just a coincidence?   From The Guardian (here):

The chief executive of Sainsbury’s has been filmed singing “We’re in the Money”on the same day he announced a blockbuster merger with Asda.

Waiting to be interviewed by ITV, Mike Coupe started warbling one of the best-known songs from the musical 42nd Street. In the clip released by the broadcaster, he is shown singing: “We’re in the money, the sky is sunny. Let’s lend it, spend it, send it rolling along.”

Two drowning men clutching each other

The BBC reports:

Sainsbury's has confirmed plans to merge with Asda, which is currently owned by US supermarket giant Walmart.

The supermarkets said that grocery prices would fall in both chains as a result of the merger.

Sainsbury's chief executive Mike Coupe said the deal would lead to no store closures and no job losses in stores.

Aye, well.  Believe if you like.  I don't ...

[Disclosure:  I have owned a few shares in Sainsbury over the past year or two.  And a fat lot of good it's done me.]

Blowin' in the wind

Oh Bob, where did it all go wrong?  The Guardian reports:

Bob Dylan will next month launch a range of whiskeys, hoping to capitalize on growing demand for all things celebrity-tagged.

The 76-year-old singer and Nobel laureate has joined with liquor entrepreneur Marc Bushala to turn a deconsecrated church in Tennessee into a distillery. Their Heaven’s Door Spirits – a Tennessee straight bourbon, a double barrel whiskey and a straight rye – will first be available in Tennessee, Florida, California, Illinois, New York and Texas. A wider rollout will follow.

Dylan’s new project was announced on Saturday. “You don’t always find inspiration,” he mused in a press release. “Sometimes it finds you. We wanted to create a collection of American whiskeys that would each tell a story.”

   

Amber explains

"Look, I know I said on Wednesday that we at the Home Office had no targets for immigrant removals.  And I think I believed it at the time.

"Then on Thursday I was forced to admit that there were targets but I explained that, although I was in charge of the Home Office, I didn't know about these targets.  Nobody had told me about them.  And I think I believed it at the time.

"Now those ghastly people at The Guardian have unearthed some memo which was sent to me and which reports on progress against the targets (which I said I knew nothing about).

"What's a girl to do?  Perhaps I could say that I never read the damn memo - but then they would say that I was incompetent.  And my officials would probably leak my reply to the memo.

"Maybe I could distract attention by saying something about a customs union after Brexit?  Oh no, I've already tried that, and it didn.t really work.

"Let's face it, I'm up shit creek without a paddle.  But something will turn up.  After all, I'm a Tory ...

 

Ineptitude

Wikipedia tells us that "the Peter principle is a concept in management theory.... It states that the selection of a candidate for a position is based on the candidate's performance in their current role, rather than on abilities relevant to the intended role. Thus, employees only stop being promoted once they can no longer perform effectively, and "managers rise to the level of their incompetence".

The obvious political example of this theory is the unfortunate Amber Rudd, floundering in a sea of incompetence in her role as Home Secretary.  As The Guardian puts it:

After the best part of two weeks trying to firefight the Windrush scandal, Amber Rudd is a shell of a human being. Devoid of honour and credibility, her ambition narrowed down to mere survival. Putting one foot in front of the other and keeping on keeping on. One day after another, one blunder after another. She now knows so little she can barely remember her own name. Or what her job is. Her incompetence is now almost total.

For her latest outing in front of the Commons to explain why she had told the home affairs select committee there were no targets for deportations, when a Home Office official had minutes earlier admitted there were, the home secretary came armed with the support of, not just her Home Office team, but also cabinet members Michael Gove and Sajid Javid and several dozen backbenchers. The Tories are desperate for her to keep her job. Not because they believe in her competence but because they know that if she goes, the prime minister is vulnerable.

In any other circumstances, Rudd’s defence would be fairly straightforward. It was nothing to do with me, guv. It was the fault of my predecessor, who was a bit useless. As this is denied her, she is left not waving but drowning. She began by declaring her undying love for the Windrush generation. The home secretary has been doing a lot of hand-wringing loving in recent days. But then she’s got a lot of loving to fit in to make up for the many years when she didn’t give a toss.

And she is not the only one in this government to appear utterly unsuited to her or his appointment.  Consider David Davis, the Brexit minister who said his department had undertaken Brexit impact statements when they clearly had not and who is obviously not up dealing with Michel Barnier.

But the clearest exmple of the Peter principle is the Prime Minister who arguably reached her maximum level of competence as a respected - if unloved - home secretary and who has fallen apart since securing the keys to No 10.

   

Still digging

A generous interpretation would be that she just was not aware of the targets.  But it says volumes about her competence to manage her department.  The BBC reports:

The Home Office is to axe immigration removal targets - a day after Home Secretary Amber Rudd said they did not exist, the BBC understands.

Ms Rudd told MPs investigating the Windrush scandal on Wednesday targets were not set for immigration officials.

But after fresh evidence emerged overnight she was forced on Thursday to admit to MPs that "local" targets for "internal" use had been set.

...

The home secretary faced fresh calls to quit following her admission that the targets did exist and, according to union officials, are prominently displayed on posters at regional immigration centres.

She's toast.

 

Abba Tribute Band

Can you hear the drums, Fernando?

   

Perhaps Amber Rudd should stop digging?

No common sense.  Amber puts her foot in it once again.  The Times reports:

Amber Rudd was accused of trivialising a main Brexit issue after comparing a registration scheme for EU citizens to an account at a luxury fashion store.

The home secretary said that millions of EU citizens living in Britain would find the Home Office’s registration scheme after Britain left the EU as easy as setting up an LK Bennett account.

The women’s clothing chain, where a pair of court shoes sells for £195, is a favourite with the prime minister, who has a discount card for shopping there.

Like the overwhelming majority of UK citizens (and that goes equally for EU residents in the UK), I haven't a scooby-doo as to how easy it is to set up an account with L K Bennett.  Maybe Ms Rudd, a graduate of Cheltenham Ladies College, thinks that we all live affluent middle-class lives in the home counties ...

    

Eat your heart out Theresa May!

The menu for the Trump/Macron State Dinner:

Executive Chef Cristeta Comerford is serving up a three-part spread of largely American cuisine, with hints of French influences. The first course, using greens from the White House kitchen garden to represent a celebration of spring’s first harvest, will feature a goat cheese gateau, tomato jam, buttermilk biscuit crumbles and young variegated lettuces. Then, on to the main course: a rack of spring lamb and a New Orleans-inspired Carolina gold rice jambalaya — scented with celery, peppers and onions, and spiced with herbs from the South Lawn. Finally, the denouement will come in the form of a nectarine tart dessert infused with White House honey and accompanied by crème fraîche ice cream. No word yet on whether President Trump will ask for two scoops.

   

Headlines of the day

From The Guardian (here):

Downing Street rules out U-turn on customs union pledge

UK will leave single market and customs union, No 10 maintains, as MPs prepare for key debate

And No 10 will keep on ruling it out until it rules it in.

 

Will Zuckerberg be quaking in his shoes?

Probably not.  So why is Jeremy Hunt making threats?  The BBC reports:

Social media firms are being threatened with new laws if they don't do more to protect children online.

In a letter to companies including Facebook and Google, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt accuses them of "turning a blind eye" to their impact on children.

He gives them until the end of April to outline action on cutting underage use, preventing cyber bullying, and promoting healthy screen time.

Perhaps the health secretary thinks this kind of stunt will add lustre to his leadership ambitions.  But I rather suspect that the great British public would prefer him to concentrate on his day job and the twin problems of the health service and social care.

Quote of the day

Rawnsley in The Observer:

As I write, Amber Rudd and home secretary can still be put in the same sentence without it including the word former. Her non-resignation from the cabinet, despite a mammoth scandal perpetrated by the major department for which she is responsible, tells us something about this government, something about its opponents and more about shifting standards in public life. None of the things it tells us is good.

The suffering inflicted on “the Windrush generation” has been abominable. I struggle to recall an example in modern times of a British government treating such a large group of its citizens so atrociously. It takes a particularly noxious combination of incompetence and inhumanity to tell people who have been living in Britain entirely legally and for many decades that they are going to be thrown out.

...

What we haven’t seen is the only penance that really means anything with politicians. There have been no resignations. Lives have been wrecked; Westminster careers sail on. Ms Rudd’s reputation has taken a battering, but she is still in her ministerial suite, still cruising around in her government limo and still drawing her cabinet salary.

Worth reading the whole thing here

  .

Cruel and unusual punishment

You are an old lady, having reached the grand old age of 92.  All you want to do on your birthday is put your feet up and watch the snooker on the telly.

But no.  You have to get dolled up and sit through a tedious variety show, filled with B-list celebrities - Kylie, Tom Jones, Shaggy (who he?) and Ed Balls playing the banjo ukelele.

I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.

 

Abandoning Dr Google?

We each have to deal with a cancer diagnosis in our own way.  The BBC offers one such way:

When a cancer diagnosis is given, the first impulse is to get as much information as possible on the disease. But does a frantic Google search do more harm than good?

You could go Google cold turkey, as Emma Agnew and her husband - the BBC's cricket correspondent Jonathan Agnew - chose to when she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Talking to the BBC podcast You, Me and the Big C, the sport commentator said he and his wife made a deal not to look anything up on the internet.

Explaining their decision he said: "There is so much stuff out there that you can't even begin to understand."

"And there's so much rubbish," he added.

"We just went to our people and they looked after her and that was it."

I choose to disagree.  First, in my experience, the medics - doubtless from the most admirable of motives - only tell you what they think you need to know - which may be radically different from what you actually want to know.  Second, there are some useful and reliable websites out there.  I found both www.nhs.uk and www.macmillan.org.uk particularly helpful.

   

Democracy?

Following a day when a bunch of unelected peers undemocratically chucked a spanner into the Brexit works (however welcome I may think such a spanner might be), the Queen has announced that she would like to see the principle of heredity extended to encompass the role of head of the Commonwealth.

It is dispiriting enough that Britain appears to think that the only necessary qualification to become the head of the British state is an accident of birth.  Only in Britain would it be thought desirable to extend that principle to a multi-national organisation such as the Commonwealth.  The United Nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, the International Money Fund, the European Union manage well enough (or at least no worse than the Commonwealth) without a hereditary head.

Prince Charles may or may not be a good choice to head the Commonwealth.  But his appointment cannot possibly be justified on the basis of the identity of his mother.

   

O tempora o mores

There once was a time when government ministers took responsibility for the actions of their departments, regardless of whether they were involved in the actual decision-making.  Not nowadays.  The BBC reports on the fallout from the Windrush affair:

When a home secretary describes her own department's treatment of people as "appalling" and criticises it for "losing sight of the individual", it's clear something has gone very wrong.

Amber Rudd's admission in the House of Commons that she could not say whether any of the Windrush immigrants had been wrongly deported only made things worse.

More than one MP harked back to the department's previous leadership under Theresa May. Her intention to create a "hostile environment" for illegal immigrants had led to what David Lammy called a "day of shame" for the government.

A steady stream of stories about mishandling of cases, a minister appearing unsure about deportations and an apparent U-turn from Number 10 on a meeting with Caribbean leaders have all fuelled criticism of the government.:

 In 1954, in the light of an apparently trivial case of land transactions in Dorset, Sir Thomas Dugdale, the Minister for Agriculture, resigned even though he was not directly involved in the matter.  The case was known as the Crichel Down Affair and was for long regarded as an important precedent in terms of ministerial responsibility.

As Sir Thomas said:

 “I, as minister, must accept full responsibility for any mistakes and inefficiency of officials in my department, just as, when my officials bring off any successes on my behalf, I take full credit for them.”

Impossible to imagine any minister in the current government saying such a thing.

 

Mission accomplished?

The Observer finds it hard to see through the fog of war:

What seems almost certain is that the war in Syria will grind bloodily on, becoming more complicated than ever. The biggest victims – as they have always been – will be Syria’s own citizens.

Full of sound and fury – contrary to Donald Trump’s “mission accomplished” tweet – the strikes may not signify much in Syria’s wider war.

   

Something wrong somewhere

The weird and wonderful world of Westminster.  The Times reports:

Jeremy Hunt has admitted breaches of parliamentary rules on MPs’ financial interests and legislation introduced to curb money laundering, it emerged last night.

The health secretary failed to make a declaration to Companies House in relation to a company used to buy seven luxury flats and did not record the purchase in the MPs’ register of interests within four weeks, according to The Daily Telegraph. Mr Hunt said that he corrected the errors before they came to light and the Cabinet Office has ruled that he did not break the ministerial code.

A Downing Street spokesman said: “Jeremy has rightly apologised for an administrative oversight and as the Cabinet Office has made clear there has been no breach of the ministerial code. We consider the matter closed.”

The newspaper said that Mr Hunt failed properly to register his interest in a company set up by himself and his wife that was used to purchase flats in Southampton on February 7. Only his wife was named in documents registered when the company was incorporated last September. Laws introduced to curb money laundering require that anyone with more than a 25 per cent stake should declare their interest.

Mr Hunt, one of the richest members of the cabinet with an estimated £14.5 million, declared his interest in Mare Pond six months after its incorporation, in an apparent breach of the Companies Act, an offence punishable by a fine or up to two years in prison.

And thus a member of the Cabinet admits a breach of parliamentary rules on financial interests and apparently commits a criminal offence.  Yet there is no breach of the ministerial code?

Move along; nothing to see here?

 

How did I ever reach 68 years of age?

The BBC reports:

Having as little as one alcoholic drink a day could shorten your life, according to a major new study.

An analysis of 600,000 drinkers found that drinking five to 10 alcoholic drinks a week was likely to shorten a person's life by up to six months.

This increases with higher alcohol consumption, with those who have 18 drinks or more losing up to five years of life.

 

The Grand Old Duke of York

He marched his forces up to the top of the hill:

Russia vows to shoot down any and all missiles fired at Syria. Get ready Russia, because they will be coming, nice and new and “smart!” (From Donald Trump's Twitter feed, 11 April)

Then he marched them down again:

Never said when an attack on Syria would take place. Could be very soon or not so soon at all! (From Donald Trump's Twitter feed, 12 April)

Meanwhile Theresa May and President Macron are neither up nor down, wondering pointlessly what position Trump will take next and how to avoid being left out on a limb.

 

It's a rough old world

Feeling sorry for her?  The Sunday Times reports:

A leading BBC presenter has revealed for the first time that she was “incandescent with rage” when she found out she was being paid less than male colleagues.

Writing in The Sunday Times about her experience, Sarah Montague, who left Radio 4’s Today programme last month to join The World at One, says her lower salary was “professionally damaging” and made her feel like “a sap”.

Montague underlines calls for fair pay with a T-shirt featuring an equals sign
She writes that women who were underpaid compared with male colleagues at the BBC were angry that they had been “sold a pup”.

Montague, who until July was paid £133,000 a year for her work on Today, was the only presenter on Radio 4’s flagship news programme who was not on the BBC’s list of those earning £150,000 or more a year.

Poor girl,  Imagine the difficulties of having to struggle by on £133.000 a year.

   

Music of the week

Audere est facere

The Times reports:

Hundreds of translated pop lyrics are in a new book by Sarah Rowley, an Oxford classics graduate who runs the Twitter page @LatinRocksOn devoted to the subject.

...

Ms Rowley worked with leading classicists to make the modern lyrics as accurate as possible, although punctuation was inserted into the Latin as a translation guide. The book has pop lyrics spanning five decades, from Nat King Cole to Rihanna, grouped into 11 categories, including the 80s, nice noughties and hip-hop. Lyrics include Dancing Queen by Abba: “tu es saltans regina” (You are the dancing queen). And Shoop Shoop Song by Cher: “estne in eius oculis? eheu! Tu falleris!” (Is it in his eyes? Oh no! You’ll be deceived).

 To be pedantic, the Sloop Sloop song was first recorded by Betty Everett in 1964.

  Semper anticus.

 

Comparison of the day

From the BBC (here):

The Beano comic has issued a cease-and-desist letter to MP Jacob Rees-Mogg claiming he has modelled himself on its character Walter the Softy.

The Scottish-based comic accused the Tory MP of "masquerading" as Walter Brown, a foe of Dennis the Menace.

It listed traits including his side parting, round glasses and "snootiness" as "distinctly copying" the character.

 

Quote of the day

Him again.  The Independent reports:

Donald Trump has said only “stupid people” don’t want to get along better with Russia. 

“If we got along with Russia, that would be a good thing not a bad thing”, he said during a working lunch with Baltic leaders. “And just about everybody agrees with that, except very stupid people.”

To whom could he possibly be referring, I wonder?

 

Ms Grumpy

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump's press person:

  

The return of the saviour?

The Times indulges itself in fantasy politics:

A survey by the National Centre for Social Research found that more than 56 per cent of the British public do not feel any of the political parties represent the views of people like them. Although between them Labour and the Conservatives swept up more than 80 per cent of the votes at the last election their dominance is more fragile than it appears. What is missing is a credible alternative and a leader who can capture the mood.

Imagine if David Miliband announced that he was returning to Britain to set up a new party. It would be socially and economically liberal, internationalist and domestically reforming, including of capitalism. Opposing Brexit would be part of its agenda, but not its whole identity. The movement would quickly gain traction. The Lib Dems would almost certainly fold into it. Sir Nick Clegg says “I’m a Lib Dem but it’s not the be all and end all”, and I am told that Sir Vince feels the same. “It’s the values not the vehicle that matter,” says one Lib Dem strategist.

Labour moderates would then have to decide whether to stay with the antisemitic, misogynistic bullies of the hard left whose politics they despise, or join an alliance that would be recreating the party of Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson, Neil Kinnock and Tony Blair. Some pro-European Tories might be persuaded to jump ship too, if the prime minister continues to pay more attention to Jacob Rees-Mogg than to them. In fact it’s possible to see the former leaders of three different parties — Sir John Major and Mr Blair as well as Sir Nick — all throwing their weight behind a new centrist party, along with a host of business people, scientists, actors and writers.

Dream on.  It will never happen.