Questions Of The Day (Politics)

[Mick Harper]

Most of you got it

[Mick Harper]

This week's Guardian Insanity Competition

As with all ruling elites, the British intelligentsia like signalling to one another. The current favourite device is to remind everyone where one stands on Brexit. Obviously, since 48% of the population agreed with them, it is not sufficient to line oneself up with the hoi polloi, even the progressive hoi polloi. The trick is to work it into an argument where it is totally irrelevant.

[Wile E. Coyote]

Europe was the source of evil, forever banning curved bananas, (ooh-err) insisting that barmaids don't exhibit cleavage, (yikes) or telling fish and chip shop owners to use Latin names for their fish. (eh?)

Fast forward and Brexit has caused shrinking chocolate.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/jun/01/revealed-chocolate-and-drinks-shrink-since-brexit-vote-with-no-price-drop

There soon won't be much left to nibble on.

[Grant]

[Mick Harper]

Some interesting careful ignoral in the recent spate of programmes about the partition of India. On the whole these have been scrupulously fair about portioning out the blame between a) Muslims and Hindus and b) British and Indians. Whether you agreed with the fine verdicts or not. But try as I might I didn't hear one word uttered about Kashmir. Without Kashmir, India and Pakistan would by now be peaceable neighbours if not necessarily bosom buddies. Partition and the population movements would be no more important than, say, those on the Czech-German border which happened around the same time.

Why no mention? Well, partly it is for legal reasons since both India and Pakistan have laws about questioning Kashmir's status but mainly because it establishes pretty much conclusively that the troubles on the sub-continent are self-inflicted and nobody really wants to conjure with that. This has nothing to do with the British (though they didn't help), it is just that religious groups simply cannot co-exist. What is worse is that you cannot even blame that other great bugaboo, race, since the Indians and the Pakistanis, like the Serbs and the Croats, are one people, one language, one culture, but two religions.

[Grant]

It is received opinion that the British caused the disaster of 1947 because we pulled out too quickly (ooh er missus). The BBC have been repeating this ad nauseum. But suppose we had announced the border with one year's notice. There would have the same carnage except it would have gone on longer. Maybe even more would have died.

[Wile E. Coyote]

[Mick Harper]

No, Hindi/Urdu and Serbo-Croat respectively.

[Ishmael]

This explains the culture war in the United States! The U.S. currently has two competing religions. Secular Humanism+Cultural Marxism against Christianity. The adherents of these belief systems cannot stomach each other.

[Mick Harper]

We have just had a typically luke-warm version of this in Britain. The Labour leader in Scotland, though successful and well liked, has been forced to resign. Why? She fell in love with a Scottish Nationalist! The two parties can't stand one another viscerally despite all being utterly indistinguishable to us English. Both left wing too, you'll be interested to hear, Ishmael. Still, shows love conquers all. Trump, Clinton and a hotel room, it's all it would have taken.

[Ishmael]

He would just ask her to pee on the bed.

[Mick Harper]

You're way behind, Ishmael. She would have eaten him. Though your knowledge of how 'water sports' operate is commendably lacking.

[Mick Harper]

Trump's Mexican Wall is getting another airing thanks to the Texan floods (though the connection escapes me). A coupla AE points arise. The first is, did you realise there is a difference between US and UK attitudes to such things? I hadn't until I started thinking about garden fences. I cannot bring to my mind's eye a picture of two contiguous British gardens without a physical barrier between, whereas in America it is quite normal for suburban gardens to run the length of the street with none at all.

But of course these are mere demarcations. When we turn to The Wall, we are dealing with physical barriers to movement.. It is not an AE matter whether the wall should or should not be built but Who Pays For It? is. And especially The Mexicans Will Pay For It is. The reason it is an AE question is because, if so, it would be (unless I am put straight) the first such barrier in the whole history of the world paid for by the 'other side'. It's like the Mongols paying for the Great Wall, the Picts paying for Hadrian's Wall, NATO paying for the Berlin Wall. It makes no sense.

Which brings us on to careful ignoral. Candidate Trunp made the claim--to applause--but I cannot now remember what reasons he advanced. If it was some kind of or-else quid pro quo, it seems to have been dissipated by a phone call
President Trump: Are you going to pay for the wall?
President of Mexico: No.

But nobody has really picked up Trump on this. The anti-Trumpas were too busy expressing outrage at the very idea of a wall in the first place (though they accept all manner of less effective barriers to free movement) while Trumpas regarded it as a typically Trumpian salvo, good for a laugh, outside the box, tweaked Mexican and liberal noses and so forth but wasn't something to get aeriated about one way or the other. In fact they are now prepared, after the one phone call, to shut down the entire government to get America to pay for it!

It is all quite mysterious. So what was the original game plan?

[Ishmael]

The original proposal was to tax money that was being sent from the U.S. into Mexico by Mexicans working in the US. There are other ways of doing it too. Including import taxes if America leaves NAFTA.

All of this requires congressional approval. The current Republican Congress has no fortitude for anything innovative or unapproved by the liberal educated class.

[Mick Harper]

But sounds as if approved by you. Do not say whether you are in favour of the wall but indicate whether you think these 'innovative' ways for countries to pay for their infrastructure make sense given your overall political assumptions.