Politics, The Final Frontier (Politics)

[Mick Harper]

China is threatening dire consequences because President Biden referred to President Xi as a dictator. We can expect further ructions when the leader of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat accuses Biden of being a 'leader of the democracies'. It's a black day all round when kettles start calling kettles 'kettles'.

[Mick Harper]

Hands up anyone who threw up when Modi showed up at the White House. India and America are entwined as the two greatest democracies in a world of dictatorships. "Sorry about buying Russian wheat and oil at cheap rates, won't happen again."

And both standing firm against religious intolerance. The skirted one actually said, "I stand for religious plurality not just in India but throughout the world." Except when you were banned from entering America for ten years because of your Hindu supremacy views and which you have been energetically putting into practice since you became prime minister.

I don't mind Biden having to grin-and-bear it, that's part of his job as President. But why are the newshounds (including Al-Jazeera who have got a Muslim brief) falling over one another puffing the leader of the world's largest democracy? When you're a Hindu nationalist in a country that's three-quarters Hindu and the main opposition party is a holdover from the British raj, winning elections ain't that hard. And look out Indian democracy if it ever becomes so.

[Mick Harper]

On election nights you get a flash "CNN predicts Trump will win Illinois" when they believe they have enough information to be all but sure, even though only a percentage of the votes are in. Prompted by news that the insurgents have just captured the Police HQ in Khartoum, I think I have reached this position re the Sudanese Civil War, though this is just the last in a wider series of straws in the wind

[Mick Harper]

I was startled to hear on the telly that thirteen people have been killed by French policemen during routine traffic stops. This year and it's only flaming June. This hardly ever happens in dear old Blighty. Since we're not that different to the slimy toads, this can only be because their police are armed and ours aren't. Long may this reign.

[Mick Harper]

The thing about the Rule of Law is that you have to obey it whether you want to or not. You don't need a rule of law to prevent you doing things you don't want to do, only things that you do want to do but others might not want you to do. Clear? Good.

So who chooses the Rule of Law? You do. You all do. It's to stop everybody doing things they might want to do as individuals but that everybody has decided, in their collective wisdom, they shouldn't. Clear? Good.

But time marches on. It may be that you find everyone wants to do whatever it is. Or you may find you can't stop people doing whatever it is. You may even decide you want people to do whatever it is. So what do you do? You change the Rule of Law. Clear? Good.

But suppose you can't. What do you then? I mean you, collectively. I honestly do not know but we're about to find out because there's a bunch of people called 'the British' who find themselves living under a Rule of Law called The European Convention on Human Rights, which they helped to conjure into existence some seventy years ago but now find is completely out of date. And they can't change it because a bunch of people called 'the Europeans' won't change it. But the supreme irony is that 'the Europeans' are going through the exact same trials and tribulations as 'the British' and are just as desperate to change the Rule of Law but can't because 'the Europeans' (and that includes 'the British') don't know how.

Sounds like one for the 'Applied Epistemologists' to me. Yes, that's right, lads and lassies, we're off to Strasbourg for our annual conference.

[Wile E. Coyote]

I don't get it, why are Non European folks able to use the Rule of Law and the ECHR?

If you are an Iraqi national that arrives on a boat wanting to claim Asylum, we have obligations under the Refugee convention, fair enough, I don't think we meet our obligations by flying said Iraqi to Rwanda but, err, that is just me.......

Still, it's nothing to do with ECHR is it, as he or she is an Iraqi national until his asylum application is determined and, until he has also claimed citizenship or nationality, there is nothing British/ European about him, so how can he have European Human Rights?

Don't know, would folks be happy for tourists to have equal rights with British nationals?

[Mick Harper]

Brazil has just brought out a dating app that expressly excludes anybody who supports Bolsonaro, the right-wing populist ex-Prez. This opens up enormous possibilities for AE-tinged apps of the same kind. I myself sought love and happiness via Guardian Soulmates but discovered this brought only a succession of wealthy women. Who showed me the door when they discovered I wasn't. But only after I had got my wicked w... I'm not going into that, the point is politics hardly seemed to come into it.

But imagine if you could specify your perfect intellectual partner. Someone who refuses to be left or right but is definitely not in the centre, who despises academia, overthrows paradigms for a living, is a polymathic genius but modest with it. Found him!

[Mick Harper]

Both Labour and Tories are busy purging their dissidents, of left and and right respectively. Whether this a good thing or a bad thing is something that can be argued over. What can't be argued is that one set of dissidents has the tacit support of half the British people, the other one has no following in the country at all. Whether this will make any difference is something we'll just have to find out. It's a Rishi v Starmer world.

[Mick Harper]

A list of the IQ scores of Nuremburg defendants

[Wile E. Coyote]

I have never done an IQ test, so can't compare, my rorschach answer was identical to that of Hermann Goering.

[Mick Harper]

I doubt that you'd have qualified to take an IQ test, Wiley, they're not for everyone.

[Mick Harper]

It ought to be borne in mind, but never is, that no illegal migrants have ever migrated to Britain. What they have done is to leave their country of origin and ended up in Britain. [You cannot fly direct to Britain if you are an illegal migrant.] Britain is like a handful of other countries, but unlike all other countries, in being somewhere migrants end up in rather than transiting through (or getting stuck in). What is the difference? Essentially there are two sets of desiderata facing migrants

* to do with economic prospects. There is no point in migrating to a country little better than your country of origin
* to do with being allowed to stay. There is no point in finishing up in a country that either won't let you work or won't let you stay.

There are remarkably few countries in the world that satisfy both criteria. UK, US, Germany, Scandinavia, Turkey and that's about it. And Turkey is a special case. If there is a world migrancy problem, it's their fault.

[Mick Harper]

But the transit countries have some part in it too. They have every incentive to be transit countries in that it will be someone else's problem and mud rarely sticks to countries that do not impede the flow by not allowing them in in the first place. There may be technical problems to do with onward progress -- as Tunisia and Libya are currently experiencing -- but the 'migrancy industry' is always equal to these difficulties.

A thousand people a day are currently crossing from France to Britain in small boats. Why? France is an all-round better place to live and work in than Britain and it is signed up to all the same rules and regulations about migrants. The French could of course post a gendarme on every beach in the Pas de Calais area (or allow the Brits to do so) and solve the problem at source but then it would be their problem.

Britain's problem is that it has to pretend that migrants are good people seeking a better life for themselves and their families rather than bad people seeking a better life for themselves and their families. That's what makes us better (or worse) than everybody else.

[Wile E. Coyote]

[Mick Harper]