The Tom Sawyer Principle (Politics)

[Mick Harper]

Hence, only a root-and-branch measure will work. Say

[Mick Harper]

It is the nature of disability that needs looking at. Root-and-branch AE-style.

[Mick Harper]

As you may know, the EU is very hot on member states who break the accepted rules of the club e.g. Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Italy with their right wing populist governments forever salami-slicing away at the norms of the Rule of Law, democracy, human rights and whatnot.

[Boreades]

This is all part of the important job of "Protecting Democracy".

By, err, preventing people we don't like from being democratically elected.

Add Marine Le Pen to the list.

[Boreades]

This should not be confused with the UK governments announcement about Norfolk.

[Wile E. Coyote]

The Turkish guy is banned from running as his university diploma has now been revoked.

As we are generally in favour of all University qualifications being revoked, we might now need a special dispensation for those AEL members wishing to stand as Turkish President.

[Mick Harper]

I keep looking but I can't discover why the diploma was revoked. Whatever it was it was lucky they found it the day before he was arrested. Twenty odd years after his beaming parents watched him receive it.

Nor can I discover what the bribery and corruption is all about. At the time Al-Jazeera hinted the charges were genuine but have been backpedalling ever since.

Any details gratefully received.

[Mick Harper]

A Washington law firm has agreed to do a hundred million dollar's worth of pro bono (i.e. unpaid) work to get back into President Trump's good books after omitting to do so when it was safe to be just a plain old law firm.

It is often remarked how litigious American society is compared to ours and I doubt there are many (any?) British law firms with a turnover in the hundred million dollar class, much less being able to pay that much to curry favour with HMG. But curiously governmental ire could have operated to great effect lower down the legal food chain.

You will recall that a lot of our (alleged) ligational ills are down to human rights lawyers stopping the government of the day doing something about it. Migrants are not in a position to pay for these services so it is all pro bono work. But the lawyers themselves cannot live by pro bono alone so they tend to work not for 'plain old law firms' but for outfits kept afloat by a combination of charitable and public money, of one sort or another.

If Donald Trump had been heading up HMG he would have made sure they weren't in receipt of either charitable money (a word to the Charity Commissioners about charity being barred if for 'political purposes') or public money (another word to the Treasury about turning the various spigots off). And Rwanda would be a British colony by now.

[Mick Harper]

All my life I've been hearing about 'people struggling to live'. Everyone was going on about them constantly last night when discussing (if opposing) Trump's tariffs. The problem is I've never met any such people.

Growing up I was never aware of them. My parents never let on to me--except in generalities about why I wasn't going to have x or any more of y--if they were. The same seemed to be true of all my school friends and their domestic circumstances.

Then I was a student and/or a single person living with other single people in London. None of us were struggling to live. Though we were all spending everything we earned and finding it was never enough to do everything we wanted, and groused about it, we weren't in way 'struggling to live'. The same appeared equally true of others--friends, girlfriends, work colleagues.

From then on I was a member of the ordinary middle class. I was always the poorest individual around but that was from choice, and I have never been aware of any 'struggle to live' for my own part. Others moaned from time to time but only in a 'let them eat cake' sort of way.

So who are these people 'struggling to live'? I know all about 'the poor' but I want to know who all these people struggling to live the talking heads on the box were referring to. The politicians and the commentators all seem to be just like me but somehow they have access to a vast stratum of the population that I haven't ever come into contact with.

[Mick Harper]

The grooming scandal is reaching epic heights, and not in a good way. The lah-di-dahs suppose that, as town after town is added to The List, this is proof positive of how widespread the depredations are and how necessary it is to Do Something About It With Maximum Uproar.

But we here understand, to the contrary, it is more and more evidence that nothing at all is happening. It's just ye olde human condition viz

In all these forlorn northern outposts there are
(a) Pakistani men with (i) fast food outlets but (ii) no Pakistani women and
(b) English female teenagers with (i) nothing much to do and (ii) no money.

So this is either
(a) grooming gangs preying on vulnerable young women in every northern town or
(b) nature taking its course.

And could be solved by either
(a) sending zillions of Pakistanis to prison for zillions of years or
(b) providing a few youth clubs.

Given the choice between (a) and (b), we know what the British prefer.

[Boreades]

If it's anything to do with this ...

[Mick Harper]

Actually I do. I welcome anybody who takes an interest in my thinking.

[Boreades]

In a completely unrelated matter, I might note a passing recollection. Of a story told to me by a friend who was (at the time) a magistrate in a city in Yorkshire. Serving the community on the Juvenile Offenders bench.

A fifteen year old girl was up before my magistrate friend for some petty offence. The girl was clearly in an advanced stage of pregnancy. Somehow why this girl was pregnant became relevant.

The girl was adamant she had deliberately got pregnant. So that she could become a Social Housing Priority and get a place of her own, thereby leaving the parental council house that she did not like.

This should, in no way, imply that any English female teenagers with (i) nothing much to do and (ii) no money and (iii) on benefits, are of low moral standards. Especially in Yorkshire.

[Boreades]

[Mick Harper]