The Tom Sawyer Principle (Politics)

[Mick Harper]

Is it the Silly Season already? Newsnight was stuck for something to say so ran a piece by Gabriel Gatehouse. Ol' Kirsty knew it was a dud so flagged it up big style as a special investigation. Cut to Gabriel waving a piece of paper. This, he admitted later, was a bogus printout from a 2017 document that showed German Nationalists support Russian Nationalists and vice versa. He was able to do this because he produced another piece of paper showing the same thing, but this time it was the real thing: German Nationalists really do support Russian Nationalists and vice versa. There was talk of money changing hands.

Apparently this is a big no-no. Under rules I didn't know had been introduced, you're not allowed to use state money to interfere in another country's elections. Unless you're Newsnight using the licence fee to interfere in German elections.

[Mick Harper]

Sarah Sanders is Trump's Press Secretary and therefore it can be reasonably assumed she has been telling untruths, wittingly or unwittingly, on a scale more prodigious than is normal for ordinary Presidential Press Secretaries. Finally we know exactly how many. thanks to the Muller Report and its Litany of Shame

1. She said 'countless' FBI agents wanted Comey to be sacked when it was really 'a few'.
2. She said 'countless' FBI agents wanted Comey to be sacked when it was really 'a few', the next day.
3. We're still looking for Chrissake, there's four hundred pages of it. She's a lying little minx, isn't that enough for you? What are you, Alt-Right or something?

[Mick Harper]

When negotiations are at an impasse but it looks for all the world that both sides would benefit more from agreement than continuing deadlock, eg Stormont and Brexit, always look out for the spurious sticking point.

Sinn Fein are insisting on the official recognition of the 'the Irish language' despite the fact that not a single inhabitant of Northern Ireland speaks it. On the other hand the DUP understands that having gibberish on road signs is about as small a price as there is to pay for a return to government. The Labour Party understands that agreement to a customs union now can never prevent a British government leaving it at any time in the future. But the Tories know that agreeing a temporary customs union now will mean a customs union forever -- it's too damn convenient ever to leave.

What you do when you've identified it is another matter.

[Wile E. Coyote]

This could be both the first and last time that a majority of the British public actually cast their vote on a European issue at the European elections. Whatever next? The Foreign Policy challenge of the Chinese is mentioned during the General election?

Personally I will vote for anyone that reduces the price of beer. So it has to be Labour. Say what you will with a pint at 52p in Caracas, Corbyn taking us down the Venezuelan route has to get Coyote's Euro vote.

[Mick Harper]

You jest but in terms of ideological beliefs, the McDonnell left of the Labour Party is almost exactly on a par with the Chavez left of Venezuela. That they would be left to their own devices long enough to produce similar mayhem is unlikely but why take the risk?

The queue for beer in Caracas by the way is several hours unless you want to pay an urchin to stand in line for you.

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

Speaking of which, I was once a Peckham luvvie myself. Playing the title role in George Bernard Shaw's Androcles and the Lion at the Rye Lane Tabernacle. Not a speaking part but challenging all the same.

[Mick Harper]

An AE dictum is "The poor are not important". By which is meant that they are marginal to society (not that they are unworthy of attention for other reasons). What makes it an AE dictum is that everybody believes they are important but only by carefully ignoring what is meant by 'the poor'. The chief aid to this is the use of that slippery concept "the working class". [Invoked as "the middle class" in America where Marxian terminology is outlawed.] If you browse the books in this collection

[Wile E. Coyote]

[Mick Harper]

My first (brief) encounter with somebody we have all heard vaguely about, 'shock jock' Howard Stern. Very impressive. Not at all what I was expecting. Either to look at or listen to.

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

The mad economics of the energy supply industry was exposed on Watchdog tonight though not quite in the way those nice Watchdog people supposed. The Big Six supply you with energy at cost pus a few percentage points to cover profit, investment and other capitalistic bits and bobs. Along come chancers and, by betting on energy prices going down, offer it cheaper than the Big Six. Droves switch over. While the bet works, everyone's happy. As soon as it doesn't, which is certain sooner or later because everybody is ultimately at the mercy of the world market price for energy, the chancer goes bankrupt and the droves (a million in the last few years) are put into a rescue package with one of the Big Six. And the cycle begins again.

Watchdog got upset because a tiny percentage of the million got mangled by bureaucratic mangles on the way. Which again is certain in any bureaucratic system. One should say 'serve them right' but it really isn't their fault. There are a million mugs born every few years and 'twill e'er be so.

[Mick Harper]

Let's just check for a minute how wealthy/efficient the Mafia actually was. So, the head of the mafia are the Five Families of New York. The head of the Five Families is the Gambino crime family. The head of the Gambinos is John Gotti. John Gotti dies in federal prison in Missouri. They send a plane out to bring him back to New York. The coffin is too big for the plane. They put him in a body bag and stretch him across their laps. Welcome home, John!

[Mick Harper]

Women’s Prize for Fiction

[Grant]

And the only politician for twenty years to have done anything to reduce the incarceration of blacks in America is Donald Trump. Don't suppose the Guardian mentioned that ?