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Politics, The Final Frontier (Politics)
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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Mick Harper wrote:
What about Boris Johnson?


They should look under the rocks and see who crawls out. It will be such fun.
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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Falling into conversation with a Corbynista I enquired what was on the list for nationalisation. We both realised it was a Greatest Hits exercise since socialism tends to suffer from having nineteenth century roots. He seemed a little surprised to hear that the railways were already publicly owned, apart from the trains themselves, though he did know we still owned the banks after the various rescues of 2008. The Post Office seemed fair enough and electricity, gas and water supply didn't seem much of a stretch. As I said with a laugh, "It'll probably be the same stuff coming out our end."

When we started to think about new horizons we agreed that Facebook probably does need to come into public ownership though what Mark Zuckerberg thinks about having to govern Britain alongside his other manifold duties was something we could only speculate about.
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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Comrade, we need to control the means of production

As a Marxist, Leninist, Bolivarian party, we must therefore nationalise high speed broadband provision.

This has the unintended consequence that then we will also eventually control what folks can see and think.
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Mick Harper
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It already is. The government set up a special BT subsidiary, with special oversight and a separate board, to make sure broadband is rolled out with the speed the nation demands rather than the speed BT would much prefer. I agree that didn't work and sterner measures will be required but it's one for Mr Zuckerberg to sort, I would think. Which reminds me, this Corbynista dude thought that the old GPO should be reconstituted and be put back in charge of all telecommunications. Finally we can have our old black telephones back and the six months eager anticipation for them to be installed.
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Mick Harper
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The thing that was particularly neato about the phones is that you paid a pound a month to rent them because they remained the property of the GPO. You'd paid for them after a year but had to carry on paying for them forever. Anyone who used non-standard equipment lost their line and had to wait six months to get reconnected. You may have been subject to prosecution as well, but I'm not sure about that.
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Mick Harper
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Nicky Morgan's thirst for office is impressive but the acid test is "Will she serve under Jeremy Corbyn?" Yes, but only if she gets one of the great offices of state or Defence. She is thoroughly fed up with being fobbed off with 'girlie' ministries.

PS The spellchecker always gives Corbyn a wiggly red line and suggests "corncob" as an alternative. I am increasingly of the opinion there is a human intelligence at work here rather than an algorithm.
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Mick Harper
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One of the principles laid out in my Unreliable History is that Great Powers can normally decide whether to go to war and since losing a war is cataclysmic, they will not normally choose to go to war if they believe they will (or even might) lose it. So ... how can two Great Powers ever go to war? The answer is ... when one of them has miscalculated.

We have reached the same position when it comes to General Elections in the era of fixed term Parliaments. Since either of the two main parties has the power to prevent an (early) general election, and one of them will lose it, how can one ever take place? One problem of course is that both parties must always pretend in public "we do not fear an election at any time" for morale reasons, so might find it difficult to say no without losing face. Better that than losing an election though.

And then there is miscalculation. Pretty difficult when you're ten points behind in the polls you would have thought...
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Grant



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The fix is on. The withdrawal agreement is now back in the frame and it's clear that Cummings and Johnson will re-present it and out of sheer ennui it will go through before 31st October. Proof is that Stephen Kinnock presented the amendment and the government forgot to send tellers so it passed by default. Even this government is not so incompetent that it could forget such a vital point as sending tellers to count a vote.
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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I concluded neither side was dumb enough/bright enough to have factored it in beforehand. So ... I concluded that it was just a bit of freak opportunism/ botchery. So ... now attention moves to how come it wasn't reversed, how come nobody made much of a fuss and how come no heads rolled. So ... I decided that it will in the end be the mechanism whereby everyone can accept the May Deal without undue loss of face. "What the hell, somebody cocked up, what can you do, not the end of the world, we can live with it, bring on the dancing bear etc etc"

As the AE (non-ratified) dictum has it: everything ends with a whimper.
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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Talking of non-ratified dicta, should we cancel this year's conference?
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Boreades


In: finity and beyond
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Yes, it's clashing with the The Megalithic Empire's AGM in Avebury.

M'Lady has already complained about organising two lots of catering. Plus the fees for the hire of Bottle Banks have gone up again.

Count yourself lucky - the Crop Circle Conference has already been cancelled. I'm told "the energies have moved on" - I wasn't told where they've moved to, but no wonder I'm feeling tired.
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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It's on!
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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I don't believe all this stuff about Rees-Mogg wanting to bring back slavery.
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Mick Harper
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Do you believe Prime Minister Netanyahu when he says the annexation of a third of the West Bank will be Israel's final territorial demand? Trick question! He made no such promise.
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Mick Harper
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In: London
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On another matter entirely, Chancellor Hitler was able to occupy (without opposition) the rest of Czechoslovakia on the grounds that the annexation of the Sudetenland had rendered Czechoslovakia unviable. Neato!
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