Cycles of despair

The Labour party’s strategy in power, as outlined at the party conference, seems to be to tank the economy and debase the currency, borrow vast amounts of money (from whom?) and hope to steal enough from the public purse to tide themselves over until the next Tory government has repaired the economy and the electorate has become stoopid enough to give Labour yet another chance to wreck things again. It relies on that saying about no one ever learning from history being true; which is exactly what the evidence of the past suggests.

Free language lesson

What is the real meaning of Gleichschaltung, a Nazi term revived by the Corbynites? The dictionary definition is co-ordination, unification. In a European context, this translates as harmonization – the crushing of individual national identities down to a grey Europeon sludge. In a lefty luvvie context, the translation would be diversity – every opinion has equal value, no matter how nutty, obscene or extreme.

All we need to say . . .

“We will pay whatever we are legally obligated to pay according to the terms of the EU treaties to which we are signatories.” There’s no need to say more to the EU’s gang of foot-draggers.

Yep, compared to you, mate . . .

A looney left MP has come up with a new term for the Conservatives: neo-liberals. Which makes its own sense. Anyone who doesn’t subscribe to the fascist, BIG state, robber baron policies embraced by the Corbynites has to look like a hopelessly wet liberal.

Standard response

The police shoot a guy who was driving around waving a gun for an hour or so. It happened near Bristol so will there be riots by the criminal community there this weekend?

Decisive Action

If the Eurofokkers are not prepared to start talks on a post-Brexit trade deal then our team should just leave them a note inviting them to send us an email when they are ready – and go home.

It’s cloth ears again

I’m sure I heard the newsreader say Metabolic Police (rather than Metropolitan), which sounds like something that could exist. If obesity is such a crime against the nation’s wealth – reinforced gear in hospitals and other strains on the NHS – maybe we should have a special squad dashing round like the Sweeney used to in the good old days of Inspector Regan and George Carter, busting bulging bad guys.

Right idea, wrong approach

‘We must sell capitalism to the under-40s says Theresa’ read the headline in today’s Daily Mail. But what needs to be sold is self-sufficiency, managing on your own resources and enjoying what you have instead of moaning because someone else has been clever enough, or lucky enough, to have more than you. And what needs to be torpedoed is the Labour promise of a magic money forest and everyone getting a free ride on the backs of ‘the rich’.

Labour turns its back on grown-up politics

The keynote speech by the party leader at their conference revealed that he has ditched adult attitudes to running the country. Given that Ho Chi Corbyn doesn’t really have a magic money forest on offer, all he can do is promise a return to the failed politics of the 1970s at the hands of politicians without a scrap of decency, honesty or national pride in their bodies.
    This explains why he is now so keen to keep Britain in the EU. If he gets his way, everyone with any portable cash will leave, the country will stagnate and become a Venezuela clone and Britain will join of other pauper nations in the queue for hand-outs from the German taxpayer.

They’re calling anything a uni, these days

The decision by the powers that be at Bath Spa University to 86 a piece of politically incorrect research suggests that their brains have been cooked for too long in the steam room.

No family pride

Anyone else surprised that Mrs. Merkel lets her daughter, Megan, be seen out in public with a royal prince wearing jeans which are fit only for the dustbin? Still, if the most powerful woman in Germany isn’t bothered by not having a majority in her nation’s parliament, I suppose she’s hardly going to be bothered about tatty trousers.

Don’t buy a car just yet

Women are to be allowed to drive vehicles in Saudi Arabia. By the middle of next year. Maybe.

Alien invasion theory?

“Conservatives are not human beings,” one of the Corby luvvies claimed at the party conference. “And your proof of that is, love?” Silence.

Buy your dollars now!

Should Labour’s plan to strike, strike, strike to bring the country to its knees and oust the Tories succeed, then we will be in a whole lot of trouble. J. McDonnell, Labour’s comic opera shadow chancellor, has dared to reveal that he expects the pound to nose-dive in value and investment in business to collapse if there is a Labour government.
    This scenario could make it a tad difficult for Labour to borrow the trillion-plus pounds, which McDonnell will need to meet his nationalization and giveaway promises. But hey! Making deals your ass can’t cash is the Labour way.

Look at me! Look at me

Contemptible K. Livingstone has an interesting slant on the anti-semitism, which is rife in the Labour party under the blessed leader J. Corbyn. He thinks that when people make offensive comments, it does not mean that they hate Jews.
    No, it just means that they’re trying to get themselves noticed. Right?
    The Labour party’s formal approach seems to be that if Islam’s hate preachers are tolerated, or even allowed to flourish, so should theirs.

Labour to go Tory?

J. McDonnell, Corbyn’s repellent shadow chancellor, is violently opposed to the Tory idea (allegedly) that it is normal and acceptable for people to be saddled with debt. But according to the beastly Balsoverite, D. Skinhead, Labour is gonna borrow, borrow, borrow if Corby ever makes it to the White House.
    Doublethink is NOT dead!

Silly Season on Steroids

North Korea is so desperate to be noticed that the regime is claiming that President Trump has declared war on them. (no, he hasn’t)
    The BBC is trying to pretend that it isn’t rabidly left-wing by claiming that its Jewish staff are being harassed by Labour’s nazis at their party conference.
    Tony B. Liar is claiming that the public think he was right to start a war in Iraq on a lie. (no, they don’t)
    Wot next?

‘Pro’ almost always heralds a swindle

According to the rivals for the leadership of Scottish Labour (now that inconvenient woman has been torpedoed), Council Tax is not a progressive tax. Translation: their supporters are having to pay a share and the Labour leaders would like to redo the tax so that people likely to vote for them get a free ride.

Be sure your sins will be outed

It comes as no surprised that the inept current Chancellor, P. Hammond, was offering to help Boris Johnson to ditch Mrs. May right after the general election in June, even if Hammond makes no secret of thinking that Boris is a disaster area. (Takes one to know one?)
    Hammond is the very model of a fickle politician, who thinks he’s the bee’s knees and if you don’t like his principles, like Groucho Marx, he has plenty more on offer if they'll keep him in a job.

The next big thing?

Across the pond, and at Wembley, the American football players who refuse to stand during the ritual playing of their country's national anthem have latched on to the trend of inappropriate exhibitionism. The urge to yell “Look at me!” can be irresistible in all circumstances.

Deutschland über Alles

That’s the message from the AfD party in Germany. The weekend’s election result can be seen as a long overdue response to the default attitude of the fascist left, including our own dear lefties, of putting their own country’s interests last.
    On the same day, we heard Labour's Brexit person saying that Labour will be working in the national interest instead of just for the party’s advantage, as it usually does. That’ll be the day.

Don’t let the door hit your bum on the way out, mate

A British actor called Colin Frith has thrown a Brexit hissy fit by becoming an Italian citizen courtesy of his Italian wife. No sign of him quitting London to live in Italy, though.

Awful thing happens to dear friend

Oh, no! The Sunday Post has designer disease; lots of white space on the pages, bleached out pale grey page numbers and the all important text reduced to a grey smudge of tiny type this week. Stand by for a drop in circulation, chaps, as your readers decide to buy something readable instead, if you’re not prepared to let bigger type eat in to all that white space.

Look at me! Look at me!

Whilst President Trump is in a glaring match with the North Koreans, Iran has decided to stir the pot with a missile test. The current incarnation of Iran’s Eternal Leader, the Ayatollah Bunchofcommies, insists that the missle is just a deterrent, not something anyone expects actually to use. So that’s okay, then.

Not what we wanted to hear

Mrs. May tells the EU in Florence: “I want you to walk all over us, like you usually do. And with my blessing. Brexit means Brexit, but not for two more years and you can keep your hand in the British taxpayer’s pocket for even longer.”

Not mine but worth sharing!

This gem appeared with the headline: Getting up to date

They’ve had to rename it the National Truss because now it supports just a load of old bollocks.

You’re irrelevant, mate

New York resident Martin Amis whingeing about Brexit, like Salman Rushdie doing a rant, is never going to impress anyone. Brexit is more like cancer surgery than Amis’s self-inflicted wound, if we're going to be medical about it.

Cosmology crunches curiosity

If, as we were told on Horizon on BBC 4 last night, no part of the observable universe is special, if everything looks exactly the same from every other part of it, what’s the point in going anywhere else? So much for Star Trekking!  But at least no one will be at the mercy of cowboys like Ryanair if there's no point to travelling.

Urban architecture

The Tate Organization is believed to have made a multi-million-pound offer for the 130-ton fatberg, which is currently clogging a Victorian-era sewer in East London. The only snag is that the monster has to be removed intact with all of its knobbles and bobbles still in place.
    The fatberg is 800 feet long, four feet high and just over two feet wide, and it is composed of
fat, oil and grease mixed with used nappies, wipes and condoms, and the odd dead rat. Exactly where the Tate Organization plans to exhibit this obvious health hazard remains unclear.

Alternative career?

Prince William is being aired as the next leader of the Liberal party after his warm endorsement of their ‘legalize all dangerous drugs’ campaign.

Buy-off bid = nerve failure?

The PM is planning to offer the EU £20 Billion as a Danegeld divorce settlement to get trade talks started, even though the Germans are agitating for such talks and will agitate even more if they see nothing happening. There is no mention of the EU paying the UK for its share of EU assets bought with British taxpayers’ money, however.
    It is unlikely that the greedy eurocrats who are making the ransom demands will settle for such a paltry sum. It is as unlikely that the Bremoaners in the Cabinet will be prepared to go for a “no talks = no cash and no deal” stance.

Backing off, boss!

Under pressure from the Big 9 supermarket chains, the Food Standards Agency has been persuaded to stop naming and shaming major retailers who sell chicken contaminated with the food-poisoning bug campylobacter.
    In future, the FSA will concentrate on softer targets like small butchers, independent stores and farmers’ markets. The switch of focus has been described as ‘bizarre and unnecessary’. But hey, it’s only public safety that’s at stake.

A classic accident waiting to happen

It comes as no surprise that Mexico City has been wrecked by a Richter 7.1 earthquake with an epicentre 75 miles away; the second really major quake in 2 months. The city is built on the bed of what used to be a vast Aztec lake and town complex close to the junction of two of the Earth’s tectonic plates. That sort of location; a dried up lake full of very soft soil; has been found to amplify the force of a quake by up to five times.

How very EU of him!

The Liberals’ temporary leader Vince Cable has a wonderful recipe for democracy: his supporters can have any number of individual votes and there can be any number of ballots until they get it right and go for Vince’s preferred option on any issue. Then the outcome is set in stone.

Expect to pay more in green crap taxes, not less

The ‘experts’ have been forced to admit that they got their dire warnings of a looming climate catastrophe badly wrong. The problem turns out to be that their computer models failed to predict the future (something which has been pointed out tons of times over the last couple of decades), and gazing at a crystal ball would have been as effective.
    Even so, despite wasting VAST amounts of other people’s money, and lining their own pockets, of course, the global warming fraudsters have no plans to apologize. They intend to do no more than adjust their message sideways. It will now read that, in fact, they got everything exactly right (if for wrong reasons) and the world should keep throwing money at them and their dotty scams.

No surprise

The death toll from the Grenfell Tower fire was inflated by fraudsters seeking to make cash in the confusion, the police in charge of the investigation have revealed.

Bravo, Boris!

Foreign Sec. Boris Johnson seems to have made his point rather effectively. He has succeeded in reminding the PM that we are on our way out of the EU and a majority in the country thinks that this is a good idea, which Bremainers; like Mrs. May and the Chancellor, should not be striving to screw up. Neither should they be so eager to pay to the EU enormous amounts of cash which would be far better spent here.

Labour to lose 90% of its voters?

The Electoral Commission has suggested that trolls who abuse MPs and candidates for political jobs on anti-social meeja should be evicted from office, if they hold one, and/or removed from the electoral register. Like that’s going to happen!

Platform or accessory?

Google, Facebook et al claim they have no responsibility for items related to porn, terrorism and other bad stuff when they appear on their respective websites because they are platforms, not publishers, and therefore exempt from complicity. But they do seem to be making themselves accessories after the fact, which should expose them to criminal prosecution if the government has the will to try it on.

Saintliness gives way to an embarrassed silence

Aung San Suu Kyi has suffered the worst possible fate for the professional protester. After spending years under house arrest in Burma, and becoming the darling of the world’s political luvvies, she is now her country’s figurehead.
    She is now in office but not in power. Thus, when the real wielders of power; the Burmese military; start doing a spot of routine ethnic cleansing, all she can do is hunker in her bunker and pretend it’s not happening. Oh, dear! The Universe really does hate us!

Two out of three ain’t bad (according to Jim Steinman)

Some Tories are calling for poise, purpose and unity on Brexit. Foreign Sec. B. Johnson has combined the first two: he’s doing porpoise! He’s leaping out of the political pond to announce that he is not going to stand idly by whilst the Bremoaners sabotage leaving the EU completely.

Get it right!

Ryanair has fallen foul of the Trade Descriptions Act. The non-flying el cheapo airline has been obliged to change its name to Ryangrounded.

Diversify or die

The Hebrides; how do they get away with it? They should have been renamed the Non-Gender-SpecificSpouses years ago.

Old and ga-ga

Vince Cable, the Liberal leader, thinks he’s a plausible candidate for Prime Minister. There’s a ‘Nurse, he’s out of bed again!’ moment if ever there was one.

Business as usual

The EU is running one of its weird scams in Nigeria in relation to migration, the BBC TV programme Panorama has discovered. European taxpayers’ cash is being used to persuade the Nigerian government to confiscate vehicles used by the migrant-movers, then more cash is going to the truckless people-smugglers via third parties to persuade them to take up another line of work.
    As usual, very few receipts are issued for all the cash sloshed around and the usual suspects are taking their usual cut.

Well spotted!

President Trump has renamed Kim Jong-whoever Rocketman. It would seem that he has spotted a resemblance to Elton John, who is also a bit (if not a lot) of a chubby-chops now.

Dispensable cliché

I happened to be watching some Canadian football last night because the NFL was having a weather delay, and that got me wondering. Why are we told that the Three Minute Warning is going to both benches? Is it ever likely to happen that only one team would be told about it? And that the other team would be too dim to notice that there were three minutes left in the half?

Ferrari International Assistance

Who do Ferrari think they're kidding, blaming Verstappen for the shunt caused by Vettel, which took out both Ferraris and Verstappen's Red Bull?
Who do the stewards think they're kidding, letting Vettel get away with it?

Even more outrage junkies

Oh, dear, the Venerable Mogg is in trouble again with the luvvie set for daring to be delighted that there are charitable people who support food banks with donations of time and cash. But let us not forget that there are a lot of luvvies making money out of food banks – the more there are, the more they get because even though the front-line staff don’t expect pay, you can’t say the same about the back-line bunch.

Another outrage junkie!

Liberal MP N. Lamb has just got himself in a lather over Poundland selling chocolate-covered peanuts in packets with the brand-name “nutters”, a crime against humanity which has been going on for a year with no complaints from normal people.

Fantasyland

How can foreigners living rough in Britain be a product of Tory austerity? Maybe the BBC can show us the rule that says we’re required to house anyone who inflicts their presence upon us?

The heart bleeds

Isn’t it a shame that TV news industry veteran, Remoaner and self-preener R. Peston has had his Europeon solidarity tested by fans of Köln FC giving him Nazi salutes and peeing on his doorstep!

Enuff!

A term I’d like to see banned is ‘improvised explosive device’ because it sounds much grander and a whole lot more official than what it’s supposed to be describing: a small, home-made bomb. A smack round the back of the head every time someone on TV utters the phrase needs to be mandatory.

Diversity daftness

The headmistress of Tunbridge Wells Grammar insists that her teachers have to go round a class shaking the hand of each pupil before every lesson to make the kids feel welcome and appreciated. How many pupil-days does that waste during the course of a school year?

Good, clean fun

One thing that struck me whilst watching the Cincinnati Bengals hosting the Houston Texans on TV was how clean the Bengals looked in their white uniforms. No unsightly grass or mud stains. It could have been a commercial for a washing powder rather than an American football match!
    “Wash with Viggo and stay white – no matter what!”

Alibis and faking

Professional tax-dodgers Amazon have felt obliged to remove a shower of faint-praise fake reviews of the appalling H. Clinton’s book. Noises from the White House suggest that President Trump does not have it on his ‘to read’ list. But what the rest of us would like to know is if the appalling Hillarious has read it.  Shouldn’t think there’s much danger of a Nobel for it!

ISS still there

Kim Jong-warmonger has failed in his latest attempt to shoot down the International Space Station. Like last month’s effort, this month’s overflew Japan and disappeared in to the sea. Environmental groups would like to protest about the adverse effects on marine life of being shelled by NK rockets – but they daren’t!

Wanted: Magic Money Forest

Public sector workers are 11% better off than those in the wealth-creating private sector, according to the Taxpayers’ Alliance. Staff at private firms have lost an average £305 of income in real terms over the last year, according to the Social Market Foundation. The fall in spending power for the public sector was £258.
    Unsurprisingly, no one is prepared to say where the money is coming from to pay the public sector more with government borrowing still higher than income rather than falling back towards a balanced budget.

Too well-lunched to realize what he was doing?

J.-C. Druncker, the president of the Europeon Commission, is being considered for a merit award by the British Brexit Council. A BBC spokesperson revealed that his contribution to explaining the true awfulness of the EU and its management, and its future plans for more and worse, played a significant part in persuading the British public to vote Leave in the EU membership referendum.

Serious quality deficit

Yesterday, I was reminded that past prime minister Sir Winston Churchill was awarded a Nobel Prize for literature in 1953 (I had occasion to look the year up). Can you imagine any of the sorry crew of politicians running the world right now achieving anything remotely similar?

Just say ‘get lost’

The government also needs to tell anyone who claims that the British territories which were wiped out by Hurricane Irma are too rich to get a share of the foreign aid budget to go take a jump. If the likes of China and India qualify, so do the Caribbean islands.

It was YOUR fault

The government needs to be robust in its response to the holiday-makers who had a bad time at the hands of Hurricane Irma. If they were stupid enough to put themselves somewhere noted for extreme weather at this time of year, they have no automatic right to expect everyone else to rush to save them from their own recklessness.

Consumer Confusion

If you shell out £600 for a set of trainers designed to look scruffy and clapped out, how do you know when they’re worn out and you need new ones?

National Mistrust

Is there any point in supporting charities like the National Trust if you know you can’t trust the bloated quangocrats in charge not to waste your donation on surveys asking the volunteers if they know which sex they are and how often they change sex?

Safety Protocol

The environmental pressure group Greene Pease is calling for a total ban on the erection of new wind farms and the demolition of all existing ones. The turbines, the campaigners insist, disrupt the natural circulation patterns in the atmosphere; what the people on Earth experience as wind; in ways which create major adverse weather effects thousands of miles away – hurricanes Katrina and Irma to name but two.
    Hurricanes of such destructive force, the campaigners point out, were never experienced until the current wind farm explosion began.

Xmas for everyone?

Christmas advertising on TV is here, and one of the hopefuls is offering deals on LadyBoy sofas (at least, that’s what it sounds like). Must be something to do with diversity.

Land of Bremoan & Quislings

Why did the BBC not broadcast the whole of the last night of the Promenade Concerts to the whole of the UK? Why did Scotland and Wales get a twee substitute for the traditional final pieces of patriotic music? Because there is nothing the waxworks running the Beeb hate more than Britishness and British values. Sad but true.

They call it Stormy Monday . . .

With Hurricane Irma attacking the United States, and Hurricane J waiting in the wings for its turn, we got some sympathy weather yesterday; bright spells of sun interspersed with absolute deluges of rain.
    Have the North Koreans found some way to move weather round the planet via wormholes, perhaps using stargate technology, to give all of their enemies a taste of anything nasty which happens to be going?

A fair question

Things to ask J. McDonnell, J. Corbyn’s hunchman: “When you’ve overthrown capitalism, Quasimodo, who’s going to pay your wages? And who would give you a job?”

Not fit for porpoise

It’s unanimous: CBS graphics are crap. The on-screen display during last night’s NFL match between the Cleavage Browns and the Pittsburgh Stealers had the ‘down and distance’ area in what CBS imagined to be the team colours. But white on yellow is not legible, and white on red pretending to be brown isn’t much better.
    CBS could learn a lot by watching TSN or Fox, who both have a vastly superior on-screen display, which is much crisper and completely legible at all times.

From the beginning

People have tried to argue with me over my “20 years of a Scottish Parliament”, pointing out that the chattering shop didn’t open for business until 1999. Yes, but the referendum on a devolved parliament went the way of the nationalists in 1997 and they did have to spend a small fortune on designing and building the carbuncle, which is currently occupied by the Parliament in Scotland, before the inmates could be allowed to infest it. At HUGE expense to the English taxpayer. So my 20 years of shelling out cash to the Scots still stands, despite all the shot and shell.

No right to know?

One thing we’re not being told, as the Scottish Parliament gets ready to celebrate its 20 years of existence with another junket courtesy of the taxpayer, is how many millions – or billions – of pounds this talking shop has cost the long-suffering taxpayer.
    I wonder why?

Downgrading overdue

The Royal Society for Public Health is getting a lot of well-deserved stick for saying that obesity should be blamed on the firms which sell large portions. But nobody holds a gun to their head to make fatties over-eat. Maybe that Royal should be amputated from the society’s name until it puts some sensible people in charge.

It’s never enough

What do you get when you open a new road bridge across the river Forth? Six-mile tail-backs on both sides of the river.

The world’s best lube job

We’re invited to believe that the US authorities failed to stop the terrorist attacks on 2001/09/11 as an act of deliberate policy. Worse, that they lubricated the plot to give President Dubya Bush a better excuse to declare jihad on the world’s jihadis.
    Piling previously unspotted ‘evidence’ on the conspiracy theories seems to have become an absorbing hobby for all sorts of people, and some are even making a lot of money out of it; if only because if you can say one definitive thing about the human race, it’s that we are always going to be suckers for a good silly story.

Dream on

The authorities in Frankfurt and Paris are bragging that they will hoover up the bankers now based in Britain post-Brexit. Which ignores a couple of obvious issues. Setting aside the lack of suitable office space in Frankfurt, the city is a cultural desert and has nothing to compare with London’s plentiful places for rich banksters to blow their ill-gotten gains.
    And let us not forget that bankers moved here from France to get away from the punitive taxes imposed to allow public sector workers to retire nearly as early as the ones in Greece.

Pay-back for what?

One of the biggest storms in the Mexican Gulf in recorded history plus the biggest earthquake in Mexico for 80 years – Richer 8.1 – in the same week. What have the Mexicans done to upset the Universe?

Unbalanced opinion

Juncker, J.C., the appointed rather than elected European Commission president, who is reported to see the world through an alcoholic haze, has accused D. Davis, Britain’s Brexit Secretary, of lacking stability. But maybe it isn’t Mr. Davis who is doing the wobbling, maybe it’s the man who objects to being called J.C. Druncker.

Not fit for service

It would appear that the police in Norfolk have been forced to recognize that the people who pay their wages are not idiots. When a gang of Irish travellers staged a rampage involving theft and violence in Cromer, the police just watched and did nothing. Afterwards, they tried to dismiss the assault on the town as ‘low-level disturbances’.
    It has taken the chief constable three weeks to apologize to his customers for a pathetic attempt to spin away a near riot. Naturally, there is a chief superintendent investigating the police failings. No doubt, with a big bucket of whitewash at the ready.
    The plain fact of the matter is that the police failed to do the job they are paid to do. But, of course, no one will get the sack for misconduct in a public office.

What you’d expect from hypocrites: hypocrisy

The Venerable Rees-Mogg, MP, the archetypal Tory gent, is accused of being out of touch for daring to express his personal views on abortion, which are entirely consistent with his Catholic beliefs.
    In fact, those who are out of touch are his fascist condemners, who preach diversity in all things but throw a wobbly when someone dares to voice an opinion which conflicts with their opinions. Among the most contemptible of the moaners has to be Pixie Balls-Cooper, who is still far too busy jerking knees to fulfil her promise to throw open one of her residences to Syrian refugees.

‘Not me, Gov’ in spades

Rotherham has run out of whitewash and the town is urgently seeking new supplies. Incredible amounts have been poured on the council’s staff to ensure that no one got any blame for letting Asian paedophile gangs prey on white girls and make Rotherham the kiddie-fiddling capital of England.

Political Geography

People are asking why the Queensferry Bridge, the new roadway over the river Forth, is toll-free but a new bridge over the river Mersey ain’t. Simple! One is in Scotland and subsidized by English taxpayers, the other is in England and has to raise cash to pay for the bridge in Scotland.

Genetically Perverse?

The Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority is standing by to dish out thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ cash to people who claimed they were abused by former prime minister Sir E. Heath even though the Wiltshire police farce spent millions on an inquiry which turned up nothing in the way of credible evidence.
    The CICA seems to be making a gesture in support of the police, who were 120% convinced that the allegations were true. This reinforces the fear that there is a stupidity gene, for which candidates for places on public bodies like the CICA have to test positive in their pre-appointment screening.

Academic sophist

How old is the vice-chancellor of Oxford University? She claims she’s underpaid compared to footballers, most of whom are busted flushes in their mid-30s. And how many people would pay good money to watch her at work? Not enough to raise her £410,000/year, that’s for sure.
    About the only good thing that can be said about her is that she’s not above taking a swipe at the precious snowflakes at her university by pointing out that they are there to be challenged, not coddled. What’s the betting that the next thing you know, she’ll have a strike of overworked student counsellor-nannies on her hands!

On your side

Nothing like being all things to all people. Labour supremo pro tem, J. Corbyn, is pretending to have vegan leanings to endear himself to that tribe but he also has to back strikers at McDonald’s, a vegan abomination. But then, he’s a politician and he’d happily sit on the Vegan Council and the Meat Marketing Board – if they paid him enough.

A helpless saint

Nobel prize-winner Aung San Suu Kyi is effectively prime minister of Burma and the darling of luvvie politicians all over the world. But she cannot control her country’s army. As a result, when the army starts a massacre of Burma’s minority Moslems, as she can manage is to default to the standard position of the powerless politician: denial. It’s fake news, nothing is happening; that’s all she can say as she lets the Burmese army drive the Moslems in to Bangladesh to make them someone else’s problem.

Feeling threatened

President for as long as he wants to be Vlad the Putin is warning us that there could be a global catastrophe if North Korea is allowed to replace Russia as the world’s No. 1 bad-guy nation. “Kim just isn’t up to the job,” is the Russian leader’s message.

Frankenstein unchained

China is not going to be much help in solving the problem of North Korea’s world domination (or destruction) ambitions. The regime propped up N. Korea to annoy the Americans in the same way that Russia propped up the Castro regime in Cuba. But the monster has grown too big for the Chinese to control.
    One false step on their part and they will have a million Korean migrants pounding across their border and demanding lunch, in the same way that Africans are flooding in to the EU. Which is not something the Chinese economy could stand.

If ever a U-turn was needed, it’s here

Letting local councils apply anti-social behaviour laws to infringements of bin codes was an act of pure insanity on the part of the government. It is well known that town halls are full of tossers who will abuse their powers without a second thought. And there can be no doubt that those in government do know that when it comes to sheer stupidity, you cannot match petty burrocrats in government; local and national alike.

Tell us something we don’t know

Attention M. Barnier, the EU’s ransom stooge: We know that the Leave clock is ticking. It was the UK which wound it up and set the alarm for March 2019.

Still the Silly Season

Labour has suddenly become the party of Bremoan, according to its repellent deputy führer. Which means that either the repellent führer and arch Brexiteer Kim Jong-Corbyn is on holiday in Venezuela and incommunicado, or Comrade Watson is flying a kite, which can be allowed to blow away like all the other flops if not enough people buy it.

Yah, booo! to the demoters?

Valentino Rossi is described as ‘the nine-world champion’ in reports that he fell off a motorcross bike in training and broke his right leg. Does that mean that Pluto has been reinstated as our ninth proper planet in his honour?

Category Six

There are only five personality types, according to this week’s experts, each with a list of mandatory characteristics. My personal score was one each from four of the lists and a big zero for the fifth. What does that prove? That there is no limit to the daftness which experts can invent.

Wither Yellow Pages II

As predicted earlier (August 22nd), Yellow Pages is planning to ditch the printed edition before it becomes uneconomical. The last printed booklets will be issued in Brighton, where the concern was founded in 1966, during 2019. After that, there will be just the website.

A case for another exit referendum?

Membership of the EU costs the British taxpayer £350 million/week. Incompetence and blunders by people on the government’s public sector payroll costs us a further £32 million/week in cash wasted on botched projects, accounting errors (especially by HMRC and the DWP), compensation for losses arising from the failings of public sector staff, etc.
    Any chance of ditching Whitehall as well as the EU?

Price alert

Hurricane Harvey is being blamed for the closure of one-quarter of the oil refining capacity in the region of the US Gulf of Mexico coast. Retailers are seeing this as an opportunity to raise fuel prices by up to 4p/litre for as long as they can get away with it. Where there’s a weather event, there’s a spiv.

More or less what you expect

Good news: The government came up with a free childcare scheme for working parents.
Bad news: HMRC was allowed to get involved, local councils won’t pay an economical rate for the service and up to one-third of all nurseries will have to close before they go bust.
    It has been suggested that the scam should be renamed ‘subsidized childcare’ with parents required to make up the gap, but that sounds too sensible to be acceptable to the official administrators.
    Cynics are saying that it’s all a plot to drive staff out of the childcare sector to fill gaps in the adult care sector.

Anything for a scrap of attention

“All whites are racist.” Sez who? A black bloke got up to look like a woman to get a job at the diversity end of the fashion industry. Well, there’s a voice of authority and someone to take notice of. Not.

Nothing has changed

There’s some surprise that the French Charlie Hebdo magazine has been celebrating the floods in the USA as proof that god exists because she has drowned a lot Nazis in Texas. But let us not forget that CH is published by a bunch of cynical, nasty bastards with pens, who won a measure of public sympathy when they were massacred after upsetting a bunch of homicidal nasty bastards with guns.