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The Tom Sawyer Principle (Politics)
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Mick Harper
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Butt out, Chad.
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Mick Harper
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I'd hate to be teenage girl in Britain. Imagine what it must be like living in a world that constantly pushes idealised versions of women you haven't a hope of emulating.
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Mick Harper
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I'd hate to be a black person in Britain. Imagine what it must be like living in a world that constantly pushes idealised versions of black people you haven't a hope of emulating.
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Grant



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Ever watch Countryfile? I’d hate to be a wheelchair user who is expected to go on rambles in his chair
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Mick Harper
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That is quite different. Disabled people get the occasional sop but basically they are ignored. Racial minorities are being lionised as a matter of policy. To the point where it is seriously affecting quality. I appreciate that a certain amount of positive discrimination is acceptable, and I also concede that they are making a good fist of the opportunities, but in my judgement we are approaching white backlash territory.

See here for a Countryfile episode of wheelchair imperilment
http://www.applied-epistemology.com/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=268&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=countryfile&start=525
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Mick Harper
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I have often waxed lyrical about the 'container revolution' which reduced international transport costs from 'often prohibitive' to pretty much 'functionally free'. But it has run into problems lately as per this graphic (though no doubt selectively exaggerated) account https://medium.com/@ryan79z28/im-a-twenty-year-truck-driver-i-will-tell-you-why-america-s-shipping-crisis-will-not-end-bbe0ebac6a91

Only in America of course but remember it next time somebody is droning on about how Brexit means the kiddies won't be getting their favourite cabbage patch dolls this Christmas. Or was that last year? I'm a bit out of touch now my own children have all left home. Or haven't been born yet. Some damn thing. You can keep your 'family life' if you want my opinion. Completely overrated.
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Mick Harper
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Michael Vaughan has been suspended by the BBC for saying in 2012 to three Nottinghamshire cricketers of Asian heritage, "There's too many of you lot." I'm in two minds about this one. It's towards the lower end, yes, but he does go on in that Yorkshire drone of his. There's too many of his sort, if you want my opinion.
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Mick Harper
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Employers left short-staffed as retail giant soaks up local jobs Guardian

After years of being slagged off for for mistreating their employees, Amazon is now being slagged off for 'sucking in all the labour for miles around'. Bastard multinationals, always one step ahead.
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Mick Harper
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Remember our Great Train robbers getting banged up for thirty years? They were in the wrong line of work

One of the world’s most prolific antiquities collectors has been banned for life from purchasing any other artifacts. As Tom Mashberg reports for the New York Times, billionaire hedge fund manager Michael H. Steinhardt also surrendered 180 stolen relics worth more than $70 million as part of an agreement with the Manhattan District Attorney’s (D.A.) Office.

They should have been hedge fund managers.
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Mick Harper
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Zouma's cat (now cats apparently) throws (!) an unexpected light on social workers taking children into care. There is absolutely no doubt that the cats would be happier in the Zouma household (his brother has been dropped by Dagenham & Redbridge for filming the incident!) than in an RSPCA cattery. Having two cats bespeaks of a certain basic fondness for cats in that household.

Which means there is equally no doubt the RSPCA is being cruel to the two cats. Now that might, at a stretch, be defensible if it sent a message to other cat-owners sufficient that the overall happiness of cats is enhanced. Does anyone here truly believe that such a calculation entered their minds? No, they were just doing what comes natural to them, punishing human beings for being cruel to animals. Though I doubt that the cruelty in the RSPCA's name truly encompasses the actions seen on the tape. Or rather not seen because our media are a bunch of pussy-footing ... no I can't finish that joke. Good grief, cats are designed to survive hurtling across kitchens unscathed.

Anyway there's a parallel with social workers somewhere but I haven't sufficiently thought this one through yet.
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Mick Harper
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NatWest boosts bonus pool by 44% as it returns to profit Guardian

This sums up everything I have been saying about the 2008 crash and the billion pound bailouts of the clearing banks. Despite all the wailing and gnashing of teeth from both left and right -- for opposite reasons -- at the time, I steadfastly maintained the position that this was great news.

We had acquired state banks without socialism and at rock bottom prices. In other words we (meaning the Great British public) had got banks that would be permanent cash cows for the Exchequer. I'm talking a permanent twenty billion a year -- NatWest above were reporting four billion on its own, and that is in a bad year. But we had avoided having a socialised banking sector (i.e. lumbering loss-making dinosaurs) because there were still sufficient capitalistic banks to provide competition.

We had the choice between running the rescued banks as state-owned but not state-run which would have maximised the take, or People's Banks which would have lessened the take but made them more useful and free from the grosser scandals. Alas, I had forgotten about the sheer incompetence of British governments, left and right (and centre because of five years of Lib Dem coalition).

Between them they managed -- as the headline indicates -- to interfere just sufficiently to ensure the banks barely made it into profit but did not interfere enough to prevent the scandals rolling on regardless. Just to cap it all off, the Treasury insisted on selling off tranches of any bank as soon as the share price showed a paper profit so successive poxy Chancellors could shave a smidgeon off the borrowing requirement every time they delivered a budget.

© Aesop's Fables: The Grasshopper & the Ant
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Grant



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We should have let them all go bust and then taken them over with the half a trillion pounds we printed. By bailing them out we have created a massive moral hazard because the banks have been allowed to privatise their winnings whilst socialising any future losses. This will come back and bite us on the arse again.
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Mick Harper
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This cannot be right. Allowing them to go bust would have created enormous mayhem. As for moral hazard... really? Banks?
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Mick Harper
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The year opened with good news for speakers of Irish or Gaelige. On January 1, it became one of the European Union’s (EU) 24 official languages. This means that all official EU documents need to be translated into Irish from this year onwards.

One of the more depressing bits of news. I'm all in favour of minority languages, I even like to think I've done my bit for the 'Celtic' ones, but the idea that their cause will be advanced by spending money translating dox that will never be read into a language that nobody reads (even the speakers prefer English) is about as likely as the prospect of bilingual road signs gladdening Ulster hearts, where there are no Gaelic-speakers at all.

Language correctness gone mad. But they wanna look out, I might write another book putting them in their proper place. No, wait, I just have.
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Mick Harper
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This Week's Quiz

Identify the phrase that tells you the sheer futility of left-wing campaigns about low wages in the third world

Low wage workers have paid dearly for Qatar's glittering World Cup Pete Pattinsson Guardian
In villages across south Asia and parts of Africa young men desperate for work sign up with recruitment agencies who, often in collusion with companies and brokers in Qatar illegally extract huge sums from them in return for a job. Many workers return multiple times to Qatar, a sign perhaps of a lack of opportunities at home, but also that migration can work.

That's right, it wasn't hard. The wages are too high. The demand for the jobs is so intense that an entire industry has grown up creaming off the excess. This is what happens every time. Every Single Time. Yet the penny never drops for the Angry Brigade. They just want Qatar (or whoever it is this week) to pay more. So that even more will go to the brokers.

Of course the do-gooders always argue that 'we have to crack down' on the people trading in human misery etc etc but since the practice has been going on since the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were recruiting workers in Nineveh, I doubt that the policy will work this time.

If only people were allowed to pay the going rate, we could kiss goodbye to these particular people trading in human misery. But, no, the Left always insist that supply must never meet demand so that our own hands can be seen to be cleaner than clean.
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