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Questions Of The Day (Politics)
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Mick Harper
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"The whistleblower's letter [about baby milk formula last October] apparently didn't make it to top officials at the FDA, they said a problem with the mailroom, but it did get to lower-level staffers." Al-Jazeera.

This does not seem possible. If it reached lower-level staffers, it cannot be because of the mailroom that it didn't get to top officials. External letters can get lost in mailrooms for months (indeed lost forever) but internal communications can, at best, only be delayed by a few days, unless the FDA bureaucracy is so incompetent it cannot do its job anyway irrespective of problems in its mailroom.

The Al-Jazeera reporter did not add "even though this does not seem possible" which one would think her duty. But she was presumably reporting something in good faith told to to her by the FDA, though they did not add "even though this does not seem possible". It is disappointing that government bureaucracies have reached the stage where they can make seemingly impossible excuses and, I suppose in many ways more disappointing, that journalists feel free to pass them on to us without comment even though they are.

What we are supposed to do is not clear. Perhaps the whole world has become one gigantic malfunctioning mailroom.
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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Mick Harper wrote:
Those who are worried about this year's wheat shortage should really be worrying about the year after next.


Ukraine "the bread basket of the world" supplys 4%-8% of the world export market for wheat. A lot went to China.

Both Russia and Ukraine are playing this up, as Russia wants to panic western leaders into ending sanctions on Russia and Ukraine wants long range missiles to stop Russias blockade of the Black Sea. It will result in more missiles to Ukraine. If there is starvation it won't be because of shortage, it rarely is. It will be, as always, because of higher prices. There will be plenty of bread for those that can afford it but mysteriously "a world shortage" for those that can't, "caused" by Putin.
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Mick Harper
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You're forgetting that the 'energy shortage' predates the Ukraine War. Nobody commented on it at the time -- blaming "increased demand as the world comes out of Covid" -- but I did. I said the only source big enough and ugly enough to turn off taps was Russia. Yes, people had noticed something was going on re Russia but blamed Nordstream not coming on stream and other such future events that could not possibly affect present prices.

I think the Russkies have been cuter than we gave them credit for. They know that it is not gross shortages that raises prices -- that causes panic and emergency measures -- it's marginal shortages. When there's just not enough to stop demand forever chasing supply. Of course we've been dumber than we give ourselves credit for by applying sanctions so they hurt the other guy more than they hurt ourselves.

As for wheat prices
1. Russian wheat exports are not affected by the war
2. If Ukrainian wheat is so important, it can always be trucked out or trained out to a faraway port just as Am/Can wheat exports always have been.
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Mick Harper
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I'm really pleased Arleen Foster, the ex-First Minister of Northern Ireland, has been given a damehood. I was afraid her being a total disaster might have resulted in some lesser honour. But it's what the Platinum Jubilee is all about.

Not that I like the 'platinum' designation, such a vulgar metal I always feel. As I told the Queen, more in sorrow than anger, when apologising to her for being unable to attend the celebrations on the grounds of ill health. The whole thing makes me vomit. An equerry replied that 'Her Majesty notes your communication' so no harm done to my own prospects of a gong. Preferably something even better than a damehood.
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Mick Harper
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I may have been too hasty in my condemnation.

Ladbroke Grove NHS Dentists
Hi Mr Harper,
To celebrate Her Majesty’s amazing reign we are discounting
some of our most popular treatments for the whole month of JUNE!

Some platinum fillings will set off my gold ones nicely though I shall have to remain tight-lipped. Round here, one doesn't want to become a target.
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Mick Harper
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But speaking of NHS dentists we are coming towards the end of a familiar cycle:

1. The government decides to save a bit of money by cutting payments to dentists for routine treatments
2. Dentists start withdrawing from the NHS
3. People can't get routine treatment, start flooding into dental hospital outpatients
4. Hospitals can't cope, people wandering the streets howling in pain
5. Government ups payments to NHS dentists
6. NHS dental surgeries begin sprouting across the land
7. All's well in the land of Albion
8. The government decides to save a bit of money by cutting payments to dentists for routine treatments.
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Mick Harper
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It says a lot about the triviality of our politics that The Leader may fall on a question of undue-drinkies in the home as adjudicated by a nameless functionary at Scotland Yard. Of course Tory MP's are only exercised by the question because the whole phantasmagoria is upsetting the British electorate but that only goes to show the triviality of the British mind.

Where do I stand? I can't see any pressing reason for change, so I'm in favour of no-change. What do I predict? No change.
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Wile E. Coyote


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Note on a conspiracy.

Rather than wait for inevitable defeat at the next couple of by-elections and the inevitable ousting of Boris, BJ supporters have cleverly triggered and won an election leadership at a time of his own choosing.

BJ makes his own luck.
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Mick Harper
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Funnily enough, I'm trending the other way and am now predicting firmly and unequivocally and nothing you say will change my mind, he will be gone soon. My reason for this came from the polling evidence. I had not realised he was quite so unpopular. When they've fallen out of love with you there's no winning them back.

This wouldn't matter too much if you were just a common-or-garden party leader and could coat-tail, but if you've made yourself dumpable you'll get dumped.
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Mick Harper
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As some of you know I'm a member of the panel advising Nicola Surgeon on looming problems of 'an independent Scotland within the EU'. Last night we were discussing the Stranraer to Larne implications for English lorries (Sassenach lorries, somebody predictably said) entering Scotland. We agreed there was to be

a Red Channel for lorries going to Scotland
an Orange Channel for lorries going to Ulster
and a Green Channel for lorries going to Ireland

After some heated exchanges it was agreed to call them 'traffic lights'.
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Mick Harper
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As you know I'm predicting that Boris will still be there come the next general election. The reason why was exemplified by that old buffer who advises the PM on questions of morality. He has just resigned because Johnson asked him whether it was OK to break an international agreement about steel tariffs. "How dare the Prime Minister ask me for advice on a question of morality," he told our reporter.
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Grant



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The resignation of the old buffer proves that there is a conspiracy within the Tory party to bring down Boris. There were clearly no moral problems with Boris asking him that particular question, but the conspirators are just making sure that the issue of whether we can trust Boris stays in the public eye.

There will probably be more leaks and resignations to come, but they won’t succeed in bringing him down because Priti has saved his bacon. Every time a Labour politician - or a bishop - announces that the Tories are evil to want to send refugees to Rwanda, more working class people switch to the Tories.
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Mick Harper
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I did think the same thing but concluded the old buffer was too old-bufferish to be the plaything of Tory conspirators.

I see everyone is sending their reporters over to Calais to ask the, ahem, asylum-seekers whether the prospect of Rwanda was likely to put them off. "No way," said one, "we have implicit faith in the combined powers of left wing politicians, non-rabid right-wing politicians, bishops, judges, the good sense of the British people ..." but he trailed off at this point.

When that first plane flies, the last boat is launched. However this will only mean the air starts escaping from the zeppelin somewhere else. We have, lest we forget, been here sixty-seven times before. (I'm not counting the Anglo-Saxons for obvious reasons.)
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Wile E. Coyote


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As you know I'm predicting that Boris will still be there come the next general election. The reason why was exemplified by that old buffer who advises the PM on questions of morality. He has just resigned because Johnson asked him whether it was OK to break an international agreement about steel tariffs. "How dare the Prime Minister ask me for advice on a question of morality," he told our reporter.


Thiis is bit like Gareth Southgate asking Justin Welby if it is unchristian for Harry Kane to fall over each time he is touched, and Welby resigning as he has been put in a difficult position.

Kane has to put the National Interest first.

Southgate should have known not to ask.

Welby is being precious.

Move on.
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Wile E. Coyote


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Mick Harper wrote:
When that first plane flies,


The total numbers of those who failed (ie non determined) asylum seekers, who have actually been found not to be fleeing violence and abusing immigration rules etc, and were therefore flown out, was at 113 last year. This figure has been going steadily down year on year, from the over 6000 flown out in 2010. The reality is that the Home Secretary cannot enforce even the worst immigration offenders being put on a plane, so if she thinks that she can fly out enough numbers of mainly genuine refugeees as a way to stop boat crossings she is very badly advised.
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