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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I'm older than most Americans, so I can remember quite a few of these "debt default" crises. We are promised another one in 2025 when this current last-minute deal runs out. It makes no difference which party is in power when a 'debt ceiling' is reached. The governing party always wants the ceiling to be raised, the opposition party always holds out for concessions before allowing it to be raised. Failing to do so would mean America defaulting on its debts to the vast detriment of America (and the world) so they are always eventually raised.
What fascinates me is that American budgetary policy is built on the assumption that the national debt will be ever-rising. I'm not a hard and fast 'sound money man' but I was brought up on the assumption that you shouldn't spend money you haven't got and rely on your children and your children's children picking up the tab. In an emergency, fair enough, but not as a matter of everyday policy.
Although, thinking about it, I certainly would if I could find people to lend me money on such an assumption. Anyone?
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| We discuss the long-term implications of this episode for ITV whose bosses have been summoned by MP's over the scandal. Victoria Derbyshire on Newsnight. |
I almost never share the outrages of my fellow countryfolk but I pride myself on understanding why they're outraged. This Schofield business has got me stumped. I keep listening for what everybody is outraged by but they won't say. Not even coded trigger words. It's as if there's some deathly secret out there that I haven't been let in on. He had a gay relationship with someone at work. He lied about it to his bosses and his family. Ho-hum, he couldn't have had the relationship if he didn't.
OK, sack the bum. He looks as though he's ready for the knacker's yard anyway. He should do OK on the talk show/daytime confessional circuit if I'm any judge. So, please, no messing about, tell me what I'm missing. You don't have to share the outrage but you can surely share what the outrage is all about.
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Grant
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The suspicion is that Schofield groomed the lad when he was under-age. Other rumours are that a succession of very young men visited him at his pad in London.
I have no idea if any of this is true, but he's roundly disliked by the public, especially after jumping the queue at the lying-in-state of whassername.
One of the reasons that Mel Gibson still works despite his anti-semitism and calling a policewoman "sugar tits" is that, by all accounts, he's a nice guy. Schofield isn't a nice guy. Not one of the production team have stood up for him, possibly on account of him never remembering their names.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| The suspicion is that Schofield groomed the lad when he was under-age. Other rumours are that a succession of very young men visited him at his pad in London. |
The furore erupted long before any of that. And what's wrong with 'a succession of very young men'? If we're serious about gay equality and ages of maturity (which generally I've been impressed by) the geezer should have been cut the normal slack..
| I have no idea if any of this is true |
He's been quite convincing about the very very young aspect.
| but he's roundly disliked by the public, especially after jumping the queue at the lying-in-state of whassername. |
This I didn't know. How can a breakfast TV icon be roundly disliked.? I thought that was the point. You can be a Piers Morgan figure and make it your schtick but that still doesn't account for it becoming a cause celebre. Will it go before the Security Council?
| One of the reasons that Mel Gibson still works despite his anti-semitism and calling a policewoman "sugar tits" is that, by all accounts, he's a nice guy. Schofield isn't a nice guy. Not one of the production team have stood up for him, possibly on account of him never remembering their names. |
How does the public judge these things when they only have the public persona to go on? Being horrible to minions and colleagues seems counter-productive but they all seem to go in for it. Good point about the non-rallying-round. It's an important factor when politicians are caught doing something unsavoury. Boris Johnson has been trading on it for years until suddenly it all changed.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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"This Morning" is a feel good day time prog. As an advertiser this is the vibe you are paying for.
Holly Golightly was genius casting, fragile, turned-up nose, irrepressible, a cheerful tease with a dollop of naughty. She was the perfecly complement to innocent Peter Pan Schofield. He was the boy TV presenter, you know the one, he never grew up. What great escapist adventures they had together!
Not any more.
Who in their right minds is going to pay mega bucks for a 30 second slot to adveritise their tampons, before switching back to Holly and a swivel eyed Prince Andrew?
Get real.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Wiley, I understand all this. He had to go. It's a Frank Bough situation. But I don't understand why ITV has to go. Why the House of Commons has to be called back from its pre-Summer hols for the first time since the Long Parliament. Why Newsnight is leading with it.
If it had been Prince Andrew then maybe. But for Prince Philip? Get real.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Trade Union leaders are notoriously polemical-with-the-truth but it is not often that they flat out lie. So when an ASLEF spokesman (justified if it's ASLEF) says it was sheer coincidence that they chose the busiest Saturday in the year to go on strike, one is obliged to believe him.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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It's not often our Justice Cocklecarrot gets involved in politics but he was on the blower to me about this ruckus re Boris Johnson's phone. "Dame Hallett," he told me, "is justified in demanding access to Johnson's phone in pursuit of her enquiries but if Mr Johnson sends it to to her, as he is threatening to do, she may not listen to it. The phone is his, the contents may not be Johnson's to give -- the matter is presently before the courts -- so she would be essentially a common fence if they find in the government's favour. Whether she should return the phone to Johnson or to the government pertains to the matter that is before the courts, so to do either would be prejudicial. She must therefore keep the phone but do nothing with it."
I told him to send in his bill in the usual way and we will deal with it in the usual way.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | Wiley, I understand all this. He had to go. It's a Frank Bough situation. But I don't understand why ITV has to go. Why the House of Commons has to be called back from its pre-Summer hols for the first time since the Long Parliament. Why Newsnight is leading with it. |
They have to go, as Peter Pan and Holly Golightly had promised Genial Dave the normal soft This Morning interview, and then ambushed him with a list of alleged Tory paedophiles. Bad move. When you dig a grave for others, then you should always avoid slipping and falling in......as those others will come and heap earth upon you.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Yes, I understand the Catholic Church has announced it's closing down.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I now read that Schofield 'came out' in 2021 so it can't be that aspect.
PS What's the opposite of 'coming out'?
"Mum, I've got something to tell you. I'm not gay after all."
"That's nice, dear, I'll tell your father you're....[what?]"
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Sorry to go on about it, but this Schofield business just gets weirder and weirder. His brother has been convicted of -- as far I can make out -- masturbating on a sofa with a sixteen year old boy while watching porn films. On eleven different occasions. Which appears to show a fair amount of consent. How serious is this? I didn't even know it was illegal, that's how serious. But okay, apparently it is. He got twelve years. That should be illegal.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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The comicality of Euro-migrant policy was revealed (yet again) in their latest conflab about what to do about a million uninvited migrants arriving on Euroshores last year, and the numbers rising exponentially. Here are the briefing notes from the meeting
(a) twenty-seven countries have signed solomon binding agreements of impeccable liberalness about what to do with illegal migrants
(b) half a dozen countries have acquired populist right-wing governments because their electorates are not very liberal
(c) one country, Italy, actually has a problem since currently the migrants are making a beeline for Italy
(d) twenty-six countries are refusing to help Italy solve the problem by taking their fair share of migrants
(e) twenty-seven countries keep holding conferences to wring their collective hands
(f) one county, Belgium, made a breakthrough at the latest one by announcing, "We all hate the current agreement equally, let's scrap it equally."
(g) one country, Italy, said cautiously, "Do go on..."
(h) twenty-six countries said, "We'll give a twenty thousand euro bounty for every migrant anyone takes."
(i) one country, Italy, said, "You've got a deal."
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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In Britain, Rishi Sunak strikes a faintly comical note. He may not be able to help it but he's just too corner-shop Asian to our eyes. But once he arrived in America things were quite different. I felt rather proud that a dark-skinned sharpie was giving it to the Yanks in our name.
There was one uncomfortable moment. 'Irish Joe' Biden had arranged for one of their conflabs to be held in a room festooned with portraits of the Founding Fathers, an excellent venue for talk of the Special Relationship. The American president fitted right in. The British prime minister less so.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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One has to say politics is highly entertaining at the moment. For an ex-prime minister to be effectively thrown out of Parliament for ... what exactly? No, it's not even for allegedly breaking twopenny ha'penny Covid regulations years ago, it's for... wait for it... misleading the Commons about whether he thought he might have. The Privileges Committee offered him essentially
| "We'll let you off if you admit to being reckless rather than deliberate" |
when he wasn't even admitting he'd done anything wrong! It's like offering an innocent man the choice between pleading to manslaughter rather than murder. Of course he may have done something wrong (between ourselves we might agree he did in spades) but I'd prefer to be governed by people who lie occasionally than those who think being reckless is par for the course.
As for Johnson's future. I don't think he's got one. He'll eventually persuade some tame constituency to get him back into parliament where he'll sink into a tourist exhibit. He doesn't, after all, represent any strand of political thought other than "I'm Boris, vote for me." Even the chronic malcontents have better lightning rods than that.
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