Questions Of The Day (Politics)

[Mick Harper]

That grin from the Queen was not the usual duty smile. She's a Trumpette! Rhymes with ...er ... Brexit.

[Wile E. Coyote]

Rumour has it the 1922 are meeting as they want to change the rules of the Leadership Contest.

I don't see anything wrong in principle with a cull of no hopers. I mean let us be frank, it is terribly nice of the midget with a limp from Burkina Faso to turn up to the Olympics and hobble barefoot through his 200 metres' but he has zero chance of winning....

[Mick Harper]

Only In America

Parkland school shooting, seventeen killed. School Resources Officer doesn't go in when he hears shots and he's now on trial for child endangerment (maximum sentence: life imprisonment). Anywhere else he would be sacked and maybe lose his pension. Presumably this is because America thinks of itself at war with school shooters -- after all it employs school guards with guns which, as far as I know, no other country does.

But would he be punished if this were a war situation? Is he merely not being brave? This is not a punishable offence anywhere except maybe in really warped societies like Second World War Japan. He didn't run away -- which would make him culpable; he stood his ground, you could argue, since he might come face to face with a fleeing gunman; but he did not advance. Is he maybe disobeying an order to advance (implicit in his job description)? If so, we're going to have some fascinating case law as the USA works out the pigeon steps between not being very good at your job and getting a medal.

[Wile E. Coyote]

Do the Monster Raving Loony Party candidates serve as a type of King's Jester?

BTW How do they bankroll their candidates?

Surely this is some type of conspiracy? To keep the prols happy?

Follow the money.

[Mick Harper]

I have mentioned it before but I shall have to mention it again now they are back among us. The MRLP actually did once have an effect on national politics when their candidate got more votes than a Social Democrat at a by-election. This finally convinced David "The Doctor" Owen it was time to fold the SDP into the Liberal party thus forming the SDLP and then the Liberal Democrat Party which now leads the national polls for the first time since ... er ... the heyday of the Social Democrats.

How the wheel turns and how the Monster Raving Loony Party is required to keep it turning. That's your answer, Wiley, it's financed by COBRA to keep us all safe from one-party government. Two-party government.

[Mick Harper]

Nancy Pelosi wants to jail Trump rather than impeach him. She obviously hasn't been watching the same Netflix series as the rest of us. Trump won't miss a beat as he continues to run the Free World from his prison cell using mobile phones smuggled in by White Nationalists who run most of the federal penitentiaries. If Black Muslims or Mexican cartels should be in control he may have to use his own money but I would think, in the circumstances, either the GOP or President Putin would foot the bill. Not the US taxpayer, as many people fondly imagine, because that would be a breach of the separation of powers doctrine.

[Wile E. Coyote]

The big two parties are buggered. Err in Germany.

The Greens with a 27% approval rating, in a latest poll, are now in front of the grand coalition Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the allied Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) who are at 26% .The SPD is now at 12%.

It is a good job the Gerries are not in a Gerexit type mess. Nobody would be considering voting for those old favourites' the Christian and Social democrat types at all.

[Mick Harper]

If Esther ("Timothy") McVey becomes our next prime minister I will be emigrating. Even though news of this will increase her support.

[Mick Harper]

According to a Channel 4 poll, ninety-five per cent of Tory party members, who will be choosing our next PM, think people who break the law should be given stiffer sentences. Not stiff sentences, not appropriate sentences, not for violent offenders, not for non-nutters in the hope of somehow keeping the prisons from bursting asunder, not even just for lying gits who snort cocaine every time they go into the lavvy (not only you, Boris, there are others), just stiffer. Across the board...ooh, that reminds me, we can bring back corporal punishment as well.

[Wile E. Coyote]

These Tory Party members are elderly, middle or upper class. They mainly inhabit bowling clubs and historic old, newly refashioned village pubs, drink traditional ale or sherry and are very right wing....

It don't seem fair to the commentariat that the name of the next PM will be for them only.

The members are in fact treating their interviewers with respect, humour and can laugh at Brexit, the leadership contest, leadership contenders and themselves.

Mysteriously they seem much better informed about many issues than the political commentators.

[Mick Harper]

Aren't you forgetting the factor I alluded to earlier? When the interviewers are dispatched to find out 'what is being said on the doorstop' they are given strict instructions to return with interviews that highlight whatever the programme makers deem to be the story of the week. It sounds (I have to rely on Newsnight and Channel 4 News) that they have been asked to seek out Tory members who make sense, or at any rate don't frighten the horses too much. Even so, you should see the ones that got left in the can.

[Wile E. Coyote]

The Labour Party boffins have learnt nothing from the last few years. So it's another motion to frustrate a No Deal in the event that the Tories elect a candidate who will countenance us, err, "crashing out of Europe"

JC was once a leftie that believed that "real change" could only be achieved by popular movements "outside" of parliament. Now he wants us to believe that MPs passing clever motions is key.

He appears not to have noticed that the only realistic options are May's Deal, (he pulled out of negotiations), Revocation, or No Deal.

JC would have been fantastic as radical leader of a students union leading a sit-in. Unfortunately the normal length of a degree course is 3 years, and after that leftie folks then need to get a "proper" job, like an MP researcher, Oxfam worker, journalist, councillor.

[Mick Harper]

One of the Tory candidates (I cannot say which, the ones that aren't either blond(e) or Rory Stewart tend to blur) stumbled on my original advice: to simply use prerogative powers, sign the wretched Agreement, and say yah boo sucks to Parliament. The way we've always done it. The way we did it with the Belfast Agreement which got us into this mess in the first place.

His version of my plan was to prorogue Parliament and thus slip out on Walpurgisnacht willy-nilly, nem com and by default. I think this is what the Labour apparat are hurrying to catch up with and close down in their usual ineffectual but still alarming way.

Not Walpurgisnacht. I think you northern hemisphere muggles call it Halloween.

[Mick Harper]

Breaking News

After discussions with Vince Cable, Chuka Umunna has decided to join the Conservative Party.

[Wile E. Coyote]

Just as I have always maintained, random sampling is the best way to go.

Well done Chuka.