What is it with right-wingers and their neckties?

An attempt to compensate for deficiencies elsewhere?

 

"I love Paris in the fall" (?)

An outcome I did not expect ...

 

Paragraph of the day

From The Guardian (here):

It’s right up there among the worst moments of my life. On the way home from a night out at the opera – a first-rate, if not stellar, production of Verdi’sSimone Boccanegra – the Northern line tube train was crowded. Rather gracelessly, my wife pushed me aside and made a beeline for the only available seat. Just as I was glorying in my heroic selflessness, a young man of about 30 got up to offer me the priority seat for elderly and disabled passengers. At first I blanked him, unable to believe he was actually talking to me. But he wouldn’t give up and asked again if I would like the seat. I hastily said I was fine, that I was only travelling a couple of stops but – through gritted teeth – thank you so much anyway. It then turned into a face-off. He kept insisting and I kept saying I was fine where I was, until I caved in and sat down. My wife looked at me and burst out laughing. I just wanted to disappear. I am now officially that old person to whom the more polite offer their seats. That person I somehow never thought I would ever be. It’s all downhill from here.

I know the feeling.

   

Deal or no deal?

When you begin telling fibs, you have to remember which ones you told.  According to The Guardian, President Trump seems to be floundering:

Cohen pleaded guilty to making false statements to Congress about a deal he pursued on Trump’s behalf to build a Trump tower in Moscow.

Court documents revealed Cohen was in contact with top Kremlin officials about the prospective tower; that Trump was closer to the negotiations than previously acknowledged; and that the deal was alive as late as June 2016 – six months longer than Cohen told Congress.

The court filing appeared to expose multiple and repeated public lies by Trump about his links to Russia. “I have no deals that could happen in Russia, because we’ve stayed away,” Trump said at a press conference during the presidential transition. “I have no deals … because I think that would be a conflict.”

Confronted with the contradiction outside the presidential helicopter on Thursday morning, a visibly agitated Trump said “this deal was a very public deal – everybody knows about this deal”, then denied there was ever a deal, then said if there had been a deal it would have been no problem.

“This was a deal that didn’t happen,” Trump said. “That was no deal. If you look – this was an option. To my way of thinking, it was an option that we decided not to do.”

Exactly.

   

Beyond the call of duty

It must be 1 April?  The Guardian reports:

A team of doctors who swallowed Lego and timed how long it took to pass through their bowels say the results of their research should reassure concerned parents.

In a paper published in the Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health, six researchers from Australia and the UK swallowed the head of a Lego figure – roughly 10mm by 10mm – in the “noble tradition of self-experimentation”.

Toy parts are the second most common foreign object that children swallow, and frequently cause anxiety among parents, but usually pass in a matter of days without pain or ill-effect.

...

They developed their own metrics: the Stool Hardness and Transit (Shat) score and the Found and Retrieved Time (Fart) score.

The Fart score – how many days it took the Lego to pass through the bowels – was between 1.1 days and three days, with an average of 1.7 days.

Using the Shat score, the researchers also found the consistency of their stools did not change. They compared Shat and Fart scores to see if looser stools caused quicker retrieval but found no correlation.

Sounds like a load of crap ...

 

Reductio ad absurdum

The Times has a means of cutting short the Great 5-day Debate:

There are essentially three points that all MPs now make: a) this isn’t great but it’s as good as we’re going to get; b) this is dreadful and we should leave right now on Canada +++ terms; and c) this is terrible and we should have a second referendum.

They could just rise, say “argument B, Mr Speaker” and Mrs May can reply “I refer you to the answer I gave earlier”. It would save an awful lot of time.

   

It is of little consolation

Brexit realities revealed by The Independent:

Your fellow citizens are deluded racists who read the Sun and the Mail, fetishise two World Wars (and one World Cup) – get used to it

Brexit might be “the moment” when you simply have to come to terms that the folk you share this sceptred isle with aren’t as clever/open-minded/tolerant/humane/woke/whatever as you are.  But you’re lumbered with them. Even the shift in opinion since 2016 hasn’t been that dramatic, and, while Remain would probably win now, and a Final Say is the right thing to do, a solid quarter to a third of your fellow citizens just want out of the EU whatever the cost, and would probably personally volunteer to bomb Germany. Worth acknowledging if nothing else.

   

Compare and contrast

From The Guardian:

Here:

Denise Coates, the multibillionaire founder and boss of the gambling firm Bet365, paid herself £265m last year in a record-breaking pay deal for the chief executive of a British company.

...

Her pay is more than 9,500 times the average UK salary, 1,700 times that collected by the prime minister and more than double that paid to the entire Stoke City football team, which Bet365 owns and which was relegated from the Premier League last season. Coates’s pay is also 27 times that earned by Tim Cook, the chief executive of Apple, the world’s most valuable company.

And here:

The quadrupling of child problem gamblers to more than 50,000 in two years has been branded a “generational scandal”.

A Gambling Commission audit due for release on Wednesday reveals that the number of problem gamblers aged 11 to 16 rose to 55,000 over two years. It also found that 70,000 youngsters were at risk and that 450,000 children bet regularly, the equivalent of one in seven children aged 11 to 16.

The audit, reported in the Daily Mail, said the youngsters were staking an average of £16 a week on fruit machines, bingo, betting shops and online games, which are all illegal for under-18s.

 
   

Quote of the day

From The Guardian (here):

... the ERG has seemingly managed the impossible. In less than a week, they have made Theresa May appear vaguely plausible while relegating themselves to an embarrassing, long-past-its-best, music hall act. With Rees-Mogg as Archie Rice. In a straight fight between the ERG and Dad’s Army, Captain Mainwaring would come out on top every time. Tuesday’s event had all the feel of the final hurrah before the knacker’s yard.

Behind the stage was a placard with the words “Global Britain”. Global Britain turned out to be seven old, white men waiting for the golf club bar to open. Only the presence of Rees-Mogg brought the average age below 65 and he was feeling every one of his 49 years. Even he never thought he’d sink this low. Whatever would Nanny think?

   

Somewhat premature?

Now who is over-egging the pudding?  The Times reports:

European citizens will no longer be able to “jump the queue” for jobs in Britain, Theresa May will pledge today as she attempts to shore up political support for her troubled Brexit blueprint.

...

She will hint that the deal being negotiated in Brussels for the future relationship will allow the UK for the first time to create a level playing field, as EU citizens compete with other countries for the right to work in Britain.

“The difference will be this: once we have left the EU, we will be fully in control of who comes here,” she will say. “It will no longer be the case that EU nationals, regardless of the skills or experience they have to offer, can jump the queue ahead of engineers from Sydney or software developers from Delhi.

As I understand it, the position on immigration will not change until the transition period has ended, which may not take place until 2023.  And, even then, it will depend upon the deal to be negotiated on the future trading relationship.

Furthermore, is it really the case at present that EU nationals regardless of skills and experience "can jump the queue" ahead of Australian engineers or Indian software developers?  And, if it were the case, perhaps the Home Office (recent proprietor - Theresa May) and its obsession with cutting immigration may bear some of the responsibility?

   

The last straw?

Disaster looms.  The Independent reports:

The iconic chocolate nougat Mars bar could face extinction in the UK should the country leave the UK without a Brexit deal, secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs Michael Gove has been warned.

Last year, it was revealed that all confectionery imports in the UK, including Mars bars, would drastically increase in price as a consequence of a hard Brexit.

However, the situation could be even more dire than previously thought, with representatives from the food industry telling Mr Gove that a no-deal Brexit may result in the country running out of Mars bars in a matter of weeks.

The country will never forgive that Rees-Mogg fellow.

 

Picture of the day

From New European:

Quote of the day

From Theresa May:

“When you strip away the detail, the choice before us is clear, this deal … Or leave with no deal, or no Brexit at all.”

I'll vote for no Brexit at all, thank you.

 

Quote of the day

Matthew Parris in The Times (here):

Listen to Mrs May’s proposed deal as it unfolds. Listen to the caveats and exclusions and tortuously worded ambiguities. Listen (as Democratic Unionists now can when they read yesterday’s leak to The Times) to the strangled verbal formulations. And keep repeating this single question: “How is this better than just being in the EU on the terms negotiated by Margaret Thatcher and John Major?”

Answer comes there none, nor ever will, because there is no answer and the prime minister knows it. She accepted the instruction to get the best deal available. But it isn’t any good.

Can we call the whole thing off?

   

The wagging finger

 

Deja vu again

The Independent records:

Theresa May has denied she is preparing to hold another general election, stating that another vote would “not be in the national interest”.

Aye, that's what she said the last time, up to the point when she decided that it was in the national interest.

 

The do-little budget

No change in

• income tax rates
• corporation tax
• inheritance tax
• capital gains tax
• dividend allowance
• ISAs

   

Quote of the day

Will Hutton in The Observer on Sir (for the moment) Philip Green (here):

Green was a foul-mouthed, amoral deal-maker with an ego the size of a house who could only float to the top in the crazed world of credit-driven, property-bubble Thatcherite and Blairite capitalism, aided and abetted by an unsavoury cast list of loan sharks, fraudsters, indulgent bankers and fawning journalists, notably the former Sunday Times business editor Jeff Randall to whom he regularly fed gossip in return for admiring write-ups.

He had a talent for cutting costs, but his greater talent was creating the reputational halo that allowed him to get finance to acquire the next business and then using every available loophole to direct as much money as possible to himself – from the £1.2bn tax-free dividend to his wife in Monaco in 2005 to the attempt to avoid his responsibility for the BHS pension fund after he had knowingly sold it to a bankrupt. Under intense public pressure last year he finally inserted £363m into the fund.

   

Music of the week

1.  The Story of Bohemian Rhapsody

2.  How The Beatles rocked the Kremlin

3.  Sergeant Pepper's Musical Revolution

Enjoy!

 

Why not just hit it with a hammer?

When my desktop computer starts acting up, my less than fail-safe solution is to turn it off and start again.  It seems that NASA takes the same approach to the Hubble telescope.  The Guardian reports:

The Hubble space telescope is close to resuming full operations after Nasa “jiggled it around”.

The telescope was sidelined earlier this month after a gyroscope failed, leaving it unable to point in the right direction during observations....Nasa has said Hubble is expected to return to normal science operations soon after it performed a “running restart” of the gyroscope on 16 October, which turned the device off for a second. The intention was to clear any faults that may have occurred during a restart on 6 October.

The wonders of modern technology.

   

 

The law is an ass, but ...

So Lord Hain has taken it upon himself to name the individual businessman at the centre of the Me-Too allegations.  He did so by using parliamentary privilege to overcome the application of a legal injunction forbidding the media to reveal the businessman's identity.

We may consider the businessman's behaviour deplorable (and I do).  We may think that the decision of the courts was legally and morally questionable (and I do).

But this is the legal system we have.  Like any legal system, from time to time it may throw up 'wrong' decisions.  But is it right that any maverick parliamentarian may choose to subvert that system, just because he happens to be in the House of Lords or Commons?

 

Ridiculous

According to the BBC:

President Donald Trump has called on people to be more civil in politics, after a series of suspected explosives were sent to high-profile US figures.

...

Speaking at a Wednesday night rally in Wisconsin, the president vowed to catch the perpetrator and called on the media to "stop endless hostility"."Those engaged in political arena must stop treating political opponents as being morally defective," he said.

Some might think that President Trump has done more than most to coarsen the political discourse of our times ...

Some rustic charm ...

 

Quote of the day

Theresa May, lost among the backstops.  The Guardian reports:

As expected, the final 5% was the Northern Ireland backstop, which the EU had managed to deceive the UK into signing last December by sprinkling magic dust in the government’s eyes so that no one bothered to read what they had signed up to. May was outraged that the EU had reservations about the UK’s insistence on reopening the negotiations.

Their lack of trust over our own proven untrustworthiness merely proved that they basically couldn’t be trusted. And because they were now asking for a backstop to a backstop, she was going to up the ante by demanding a backstop to a backstop to a backstop. Or something like that. Basically she had no idea how to resolve the matter but expected that sooner or later she would make some kind of compromise that she would try to pass off as a gain.

   

Music of the week

Newly released acoustic version


 

Getting found out

In my time. I have done plenty of public speaking, and it's never easy.  So I can sympathise with the Prime Minister in her difficulties:

Theresa May had 15 minutes to impress European Union leaders with a new way out of the political morass that has become Brexit.

Instead, the British prime minister came across as nervous, speaking too fast for an audience of non-native English speakers. At the end of her pitch in Brussels, no one was any wiser as to what the U.K. was bringing to the table other than a familiar serving of warm words. May left her confused counterparts to dissect her presentation over a fillet of turbot.

Nevertheless, you expect better of a Prime Minister.  I cannot imagine that Harold Wilson, Jim Callaghan, Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair or Gordon Brown would have been similarly troubled.

 

Clear as mud

The Prime Minister's lexical tick offends The Times:

Theresa May has long believed that clarity begins at home. Or in the House, anyway. “Let me be clear” is the prime minister’s motto. Clearly it isn’t working. The more she tells MPs that she wishes to be clear, the deeper grow the furrows on their foreheads. Her explanations cut through the fog of Brexit like a guttering candle.

When Mrs May used the C word four times yesterday in a brief answer to Steve Baker (C, Wycombe) — let’s give three clears and one clear more for the hardy captain of the Brexit bores — I searched Hansard for how often she uses this crutch. And let me be very clear: the prime minister has said “clear” 98 times in the Commons since June. In second place, with 64, is Dominic Raab, her Brexit secretary. Keep saying it, chaps, and one day the mist will lift.

Or maybe not ...

   

The danger of not thinking things through

Deeper and deeper into the mire.  The Guardian reports:

Theresa May faces a frantic 48 hours to try to save her Brexit negotiating strategy after she admitted talks had ground to a halt because of the EU’s insistence upon a Northern Ireland-only backstop.

The prime minister is expected to plead with EU leaders to drop their Irish backstop proposal at a make-or-break summit dinner on Wednesday night after seeking the support of members of her cabinet on Tuesday morning.

With time running out before Wednesday’s meeting, May used an emergency Commons statement to say the EU’s plan “threatens the integrity of our United Kingdom” because it could lead to the creation of a customs border in the Irish Sea.

She should have thought of that last December when she formally committed the UK to no hard border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.  Because that meant either that the UK remained in the single market/customs union or that the hard border was set in the Irish Sea.

Update:

And from elsewhere in The Guardian: 

May appeared to have forgotten she had already agreed to a Northern Ireland backstop last December and was now asking the Commons to share her outrage that the EU wasn’t prepared to rubber-stamp the UK’s attempts to renegotiate the backstop agreement with another that included the whole of the UK. Confused? You ought to be. When May started talking about “the backstop to the backstop”, a little piece of everyone died inside.

By now the prime minister was running on full Maybot. She wanted the backstop to be temporary but we shouldn’t get too worked up about finalising an end date because she hoped there would be no need ever for it to come into operation. Basically, she was waiting on a miracle. “No deal is better than a bad deal,” she concluded. “But a no deal outcome is one that no wants.” So something no one wanted was somehow better than something else that no one wanted. At which point logic died and her circuit boards melted.

   
   

 

Lost in a maze

Just like Brexit.  The Foreign Secretary and his European counterparts wonder how they got into this mess and how do they get out ...

   

Blown away?

This seems a doubtful prescription:

Doctors in Shetland are to start prescribing birdwatching, rambling and beach walks in the Atlantic winds to help treat chronic and debilitating illnesses for the first time.

...

Patients will be nudged to go hill walking on Shetland’s upland moors, and directed towards coastal paths to watch fulmars, to beachcomb for shells, draw snowdrops in February, and spot long-tailed ducks, oystercatchers and lapwings.

...

Helen Moncrieff, the area manager for RSPB Scotland, said that during winter the prescriptions would be “elemental”, where strong Atlantic winds would be the main feature.

Some people may be asked to take their hoods down and stand still and silent for three minutes, in a form of open-air mindfulness, for instance. The NHS leaflets were entitled “Nature your soul”, Moncrieff said.

Really?  Is it actually possible for fully healthy Shetlanders (never mind those with debilitating illnesses) to stand still for three minutes in the teeth of an Atlantic gale on the windswept upland Shetland moors?

 

Changing of the guard

Never mind about Zoe something taking over from the abominable Chris Evans.  Some of us still miss Terry Wogan.



 

It's not dad-dancing but ...

 

Labour Party leadership shenanigans explained

According to The Guardian (here):

 It has been no secret that Jeremy Corbyn and his deputy, Tom Watson, do not get on that well. The Labour leader reckons Watson is too off message, and does his best to keep him at arm’s length. So much so that Watson wasn’t even given a speaking slot on the stage of the main hall. At a pre-conference meeting, Labour’s national executive committee had come up with a plan to limit Watson’s power by backing a motion for the election of a female co-deputy leader. Doubts began to creep in over the weekend when some on the NEC realised that giving someone like Angela Rayner, who had been one of the favourites, a bigger platform might be more of a threat to Corbyn’s leadership than was comfortable, but what really swung it was when Watson himself backed the election as he found being deputy leader rather lonely. Anything Watson supported had to be a bad idea, so the NEC instructed conference to vote against the plan it had originally backed. If Watson were to run a campaign saying “Please don’t make me leader”, he would probably be in with a chance of the top job.

It would be nice if, just occasionally, politicians spared a thought for the good of the country ...

   

A man with problems

How long for Mattis before the "heave and ho"?  The Times reports:

The US defence secretary told hundreds of military cadets that he was so happy to be out of Washington for the day that he “could cry”.

Jim Mattis, a former four-star Marine Corps commander, told trainees during a visit to the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington that he had stopped reading or watching the news to save himself from getting depressed.

“If you watch the news you can start wondering what’s going on in this country . . . We all know our country is having a tough time right now,” he said. “I am so happy to be out of Washington DC right now I could cry.”

Mr Mattis told the cadets that he did his best to keep the Pentagon separate from “the heave and ho” elsewhere in Washington.

US sources revealed to The Times this month that President Trump has stopped calling his defence secretary by his nickname “Mad Dog” and now referred to him as “Moderate Dog” because of their contrasting stances on important security issues.

   

Slightly past its sell-buy date?

Jeremy Corbyn goes back to the future.  The Guardian reports:

The Labour leader will say: “Ten years ago this month, the whole edifice of greed-is-good, deregulated financial capitalism, lauded for a generation as the only way to run a modern economy, came crashing to earth, with devastating consequences.”

The "greed is good" trope originated (or at leasst was made famous) in Wall Street, a movie made in.1987, some thirty years ago.  Perhaps Jezza needs a younger speechwriter?




 

Pie in the sky?

I am not unsympathetic to Labour's idea of allowing workers to participate in company profits but I wonder about the practicalities in the hatest proposals.  The Guardian reports:

Employee ownership schemes in large companies could result in almost 11 million workers being given up to £500 a year each, in plans to be expanded upon by the shadow chancellor on Monday.

...

Under Labour’s plans, legislation would require private sector companies with 250 or more employees to transfer at least 1% of their ownership into an IOF [inclusive ownership fund] each year, up to a maximum of 10%. Smaller companies would be able to set up an IOF on a voluntary basis.

Labour calculates that 10.7 million people – or 40% of the private sector workforce – will initially be covered by the scheme. Dividend payouts will be made at a flat rate to all employees. The funds will be held and managed collectively and their shares cannot be sold or traded. Workers’ fund representatives will have voting rights in companies’ decision-making processes in the same way as other shareholders.

It is perhaps worth noting that companies do not in themselves normally own shares - shareholders do.  How then is it possible for companies to transfer 1% of their ownership into a separate fund?  Would companies forcibly divest each of their shareholders of 1% of their shareholdings?  Or would they buy back 1% of their shares on the open market?  Or would they create an additional 1% of their shares?  Each of these options has technical and political difficulties - the stock exchange has a myriad of rules on such matters.  I pity the parliamentary draftsmen who would have to prepare the legislation.

Eleven million workers being given £500 per year each in dividends amounts to an annual total of  £5.5 billion.  Given that this would amount to only 1% of the total dividends, that would imply total annual dividends of  £550 billion from  the companies involved.  Is that a realistic expectation, given that full year prediction for UK company dividends in 2018 amount to less than £100 billion?

Perhaps we willl learn more when Mr McDonnell delivers his speech ...

   
 

Quote of the day

The Guardian on Theresa May's cri de coeur (here):

The Salzburg summit hadn’t gone very well, she began. Nothing like a statement of the obvious to get things rolling. But now she wanted to make some things very clear to the EU. Cue her best death stare. The one she usually reserves for Boris Johnson. What she was clear about was that the Chequers plan – rubbished by many Tories, dismissed by the EU leaders and without a prayer of getting through parliament – was still the plan she intended to get through parliament and get the EU to accept.

As a denial of reality it was already a bravura performance, but within minutes things had lurched into another space-time continuum. One that even Stephen Hawking could never have imagined. Everything was basically the EU’s fault. It was the EU that had forced the UK into leaving the EU. It was the EU that was making the UK confront the possibility of a hard Irish border because the UK had voted to leave. She had fallen over backwards to come up with a sensible solution and the EU had come up with none of their own. Other than, of course, to make it clear right from the start that the Canada and Norway models were the only options available and there could be no cherrypicking. Madness.

     

It's all gone a bit pear-shaped

So we can't have the Chequers agreement because cherry-picking the single market for goods only  would undermine the EU single market for goods and services and, not unreasonably, the EU would object to its customs duties being collected by a non-member state.  (Would the UK allow another country to collect its customs duties?)

We can't have a Canada-style agreement because that would inevitably mean a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.

We can't have a Norway-style agreement because that would leave the UK as rule-takers, as well as paying handsomely for the privilege.

A "no-deal" agreement would be utterly disastrous for the economy and much else, especially because preparations have been totally inadequate.

Another referendum would subvert the democratic decision of the people last time around and, anyway, might produce much the same result.  Nor is it necessarily the case that a general election would resolve matters; even if Labour were elected (a big if), what would be their negotiating position.

And time is passing.  Tick-tock, tick-tock ...

 

Mushrooms, Stormy and all that

Hadley tells it like it is:

Much has been written about Daniels’s refusal to be shamed. But what is really remarkable about her is how she’s turned the whole narrative around. Not only will she not be humiliated – she will humiliate him. And why not, damn it? She wasn’t the married one. She is not the one with the power to ruin women’s lives by banning global abortion funding and defunding Planned Parenthood while having bragged in the past how, when you’re a star, you can grab women “by the pussy”. He is. While we may well live in a post-shame era, Daniels knows how to hurt Trump. And given how much Trump is hurting women, I think this is one instance in which we can indulge in some guiltless body-shaming. Go get him, Stormy.

Amen to that.

 

How to spoil a nice dinner

The BBC reports:

Theresa May has urged EU leaders to focus their minds on getting a Brexit deal in the next two months, saying negotiations will not be extended.

At a dinner in Salzburg, she told her 27 counterparts her priorities are maintaining economic ties and ensuring promises to Northern Ireland are kept.

There are suggestions the UK will put forward new ideas for regulatory checks to address the current Irish deadlock.

It comes as the PM insisted the EU must also rethink its stance on the border.

If your future economic life depended on it (and it probably does), is Theresa May the person you would want to represent you on such an occasion?  Think back to last year's disastous conference speech, to her lacklustre performance during the last general election, to her robotic demeanour during parliamentary questions.

Perhaps that is why the EU leaders decided to restrict her to ten minutes?

The Cassandra of the IMF

We're all doomed, as my compatriot Private Frazer was wont to say.  The Guardian  reports:

The UK economy would rapidly start to contract in the event of a disruptive exit from the EU next spring, according to a stark International Monetary Fund report that highlights the recession risks of a no-deal Brexit.

Christine Lagarde, the IMF’s managing director, added that there would be costs to the UK under any outcome that involves leaving the EU.

Expressing the IMF’s growing concern at the possibility of an acrimonious divorce next March, Lagarde said: “If that happened there would be dire consequences. It would inevitably have consequences in terms of reduced growth, an increase in the [budget] deficit and a depreciation of the currency.

“In relatively short order it would mean a reduction in the size of the economy.”

Cassandra's problem was not that her prophecies were untrue; it was that nobody believed them.

 
   

Quote of the day

From The Times (here):

The prime minister is pursuing a policy she seems to fear will make the country poorer and less safe. Asked by the BBC’s Nick Robinson whether she truly believed in Brexit, Theresa May, a former Remainer, could answer only with the vague platitude: “I believe our best days are ahead.” If she appears tortured by the leadership of her party it may be because she feels she has a democratic duty to implement a change that she worries is a dangerous mistake.

From that flows all the tactical trickery. It’s simply not true that MPs must choose between the Chequers plan and crashing out of the EU with no deal, as Mrs May suggests. There are multiple alternative routes to leaving and many other options — including a second referendum or a general election — if parliament is deadlocked over the terms of Brexit. The prime minister will also have to make further compromises if she wants to get an agreement in Brussels. Her ultimatum is the false bravura of a woman who is parroting lines rather than speaking with genuine conviction.

In order to speak with conviction, you need to have some.

   

Headline of the day

From Bloomberg (here):

The Airport of the Future is Here. And It Doesn’t Need Humans

Oh yes it does!  It needs human beings to explain to idiots like me that, at Edinburgh Airport, you need to have the bar code on your boarding card facing up when checking in luggage and facing down when going through security.

 

A resurrected calumny

The Times re-visits one of the many fantasies concocted by MI6 in the bad old days:

MI6 believed that Michael Foot had been a paid informant of the Soviet Union and was prepared to warn the Queen of his “KGB history” when he stood to become prime minister, its officers have revealed in a new book.

The British intelligence apparatus concluded that the evidence presented by a Soviet defector about the Labour leader’s links with the KGB was strong enough to warrant the unprecedented constitutional action.

They have to admit, however:

The revelations come 23 years after Foot successfully sued The Sunday Timeswhen it published Gordievsky’s claims that the KGB held an extensive file on the former Labour leader, whom it had named Agent Boot.

Foot, who died in 2010 aged 96, had described the allegations as a “big lie” and said that as far as he knew he had never met or seen a KGB agent in his life. He and his supporters dismissed the allegations as MI5 smears.

I had the privilege of meeting Michael Foot in the early 1970s when he was Leader of the House of Commons.  A nice man, a genuine democrat.  The least likely guy to be a KGB agent.

   

Headline of the day

From Bloomberg (here):

Humans Having Fewer Babies Is a Big Economic Problem

That's as may be, but it's not at the top of my to-do list ...

 

How goes it with the European Research Group?

Not so good.  The weird mixture of Tory MPs who are either Canada++++ advocates or ne plus ultra WTO headbangers is in crisis.  The Guardian explains:

After the complete Dadaist clusterfuck of their economic Brexit plan the previous day and an evening meeting when the Provo lunatics momentarily took over the asylum, the European Research Group has had a reality check. Boris, their leader in waiting, has been exposed as a hollow man whose commitment even to himself is wavering, and they just don’t have the clout to bring down the prime minister and impose their Brexit vision.

No wonder, then, that their event to explain their solution to the Irish border had the feel of the morning after the night before. The Day of the Living Dead. Theresa Villiers, Owen Paterson, Maria Caulfield, David Trimble and David Davis sat behind a table with the expression of people who had only just realised they had volunteered to appear in their own hostage video.

No one had much to say. “There’s nothing new here,” said Paterson, a man more used to being outwitted by badgers. “It’s all really boring.” For once he was telling the truth. The ERG had come up with not much more than ideas for an exciting development in international borders that existed nowhere else in the world and had already been rejected by both the EU and the UK.

It was Davis who looked the most depressed. Normally he can manage a smile even in extremis. Now he was just crushed. There was a time when he had been a contender. Out of his depth, maybe, but still a contender. Now he was just out of the loop. He had given up a career to throw in his lot with a bunch of losers and psychos who didn’t have a prayer. The numbers just didn’t stack up. If only he had been better at maths.

Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of losers and psychos ...

 

Quote of the day

The Sunday Times goes to town on Bonking Boris:

Another close ally said: “At least you know what you are getting. People talk about politicians with skeletons in their closets. All Boris’s skeletons have skin and big tits and are walking around the West End.”

   

Music of the week

 

Front page of the day

 

Is there a problem? Yes, but there's also an answer ...

The rail system in the UK is collapsing.  Something needs to be done.  The Guardian spells out the government's response:

The government is considering a full review of how Britain’s railways are run, after a succession of crises in the industry and growing commuter discontent.

The transport secretary, Chris Grayling, has pushed for an overarching inquiry after the collapse of the Virgin Trains East Coast franchise and the recent rail timetabling chaos concerning Northern Rail, Southern and Thameslink services.

According to a report in the Financial Times, Downing Street now backs Grayling’s view.

When in doubt, set up a review.  It is a fine way of kicking the can into the long grass, while conveying the illusion of action.  By the time the review reports, the Ministers concerned will have moved on to other posts and it will be somebody else's problem.

   
 

Brexit update (if you are not yet bored to tears by the whole matter)

The Guardian reports on the Brexit Miniater's announcement of the lack of any real progress:

There were still a few problems, mind. Northern Ireland was still proving a bit tricky but he was sure it would get resolved one way or another without war breaking out. There again, maybe not. On the bright side, a no-deal wouldn’t be as bad as all that. We would be keeping a six-week stockpile of medicines, so there was a fair chance that no one would die unnecessarily immediately. And if everyone put aside a few cans of baked beans, then no one should starve while the government tried to come up with a better plan.

“There are some risks to a no-deal scenario,” Raab generously conceded. But, one way or another, the UK would be ready for Brexit next March. His voice rather tailed off as he added that last bit, as he realised the fundamental absurdity of what he was saying. The UK is going to be ready for nothing. The only Brexit we are going to get is the one the government manages to smuggle past both the EU and parliament. And right now it doesn’t have a clue what that might be.

 Never mind - look on the bright side: the Scotland women's football team has qualified for the World Cup finals.

 

Misinterpretation

Can doctors write in clear English?  The Guardian reports:

Hospital doctors are being told to write letters directly to patients, and in plain English, in a move the profession’s leaders hope will sweep away the use of baffling medical terminology.

The initiative by the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges aims to make medics use clear language to describe medical conditions instead of Latin words, acronyms and complex jargon.

All very well, but scientific language (jargon, if you like) is frequently used for the sake of greater accuracy.  Plain English is seldom as plain as its adherents think it is.  It seems to me that there is just as much scope for misinterpreting a letter written in plain English about a complex medical condition as there is in respect of a more scientific approach.