The Tom Sawyer Principle (Politics)

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

This Week's Mass Transit Quiz Question

[Mick Harper]

The West Riding as a whole is a place-that-time-forgot. Leeds/ Bradford is practically a megalopolis though you'd never know it. Sheffield was in vogue not so long ago but returned to vapidity when Nick 'Clog' Clegg forsook it for Facebook. Barnsley, Halifax, Huddersfield, Rotherham and Doncaster are now better known as centres of sexual abuse.

The frequent absence of a Premier League team says it all. Though, now I come to think of it, all of Yorkshire is in sore need of a radical uplift. Hull? Middlesbrough? Give me a break. Give them a break. It is only Yorkshire people's feelings of innate superiority that's holding them back.

[Mick Harper]

Clockwork Orange Has Arrived

It's the start of the Easter hols and somebody on Tick Tock says, 'It's Clapham Common, folks.' So a hundred disaffected youth gather, light some bonfires, mess around a bit. Then they storm down Clapham High Street and start looting M & S, fast food joints etc. Police finally arrive, mob disperses, one arrest.

Then they do it all over again three days later!

[Mick Harper]

This Week's Airline Quiz

Question 1: You want to get to Berlin, Sydney, New York, some damn place. Do you fly (a) BA from Heathrow or (b) KLM from Schiphol?
Quite right, it's (a). Fly the flag, you know it makes sense.

Question 2: You want to get to Berlin, Sydney, New York, some damn place. You live in Bristol, Cardiff, Norwich, Birmingham, Leeds (o.n.o.). Do you fly (a) BA from Heathrow or (b) KLM from Schiphol?
Quite right, it's (b). Schiphol is top hole.

Question 3: Why is this?
Because it takes these provincial drongoes several hours and piles of dosh to get to Heathrow, while they can hop aboard a KLM plane at their local airport and get to Schiphol in no time at all and at hardly any cost.

Question 4: Why doesn't BA do the same thing then?
Because Heathrow has two runways and Schiphol has six. So if BA uses up its precious slots flying people from Bristol, Cardiff etc to Heathrow, it wouldn't be able to fly enough people to Berlin, Sydney etc.

[Mick Harper]

This Week's Bank Holiday Quiz

Question 1: How can you tell it's a Bank Holiday?
Newsnight isn't on.

Question 2: Which is the silliest Bank Holiday?
Either Good Friday or Easter Monday. One is right and proper, two together is a London buses situation.

Question 3: Give an example of the sort of thing that happens.
I had to do my weekly shop late on Monday afternoon. This meant my weekly Meal Deal would be pretty much all sold out. Not in the least, the shelves were groaning. Tesco had forgotten it was a Bank Holiday.

Question 4: Will this glaring but easily correctable anomaly ever be addressed?
You must be joking. We invented Bank Holidays so they are sacrosanct. (Unless you're adding one.)

[Wile E. Coyote]

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

Whenever something adverse happens to a large group of employees, e.g. their employer is having to shed thousands of jobs, the MSM sends a posse of reporters to report on the situation. Every single one of them reports that morale is at an all time low.

As evidence of this, they interview employees driving out of the place of employment until one of them winds down the window and says, "Morale is at an all-time low."

Here's my problem. I've been sloping around this world of ours for more years than I care to remember and in all that time I've never once been able to tell when anyone's morale is at an all-time low. What is the matter with me?

[Mick Harper]

You've heard of Swiss Tony but have you heard of the 'Swiss model'? Not his girlfriend, Heidi, but a system of integrated, local, rural, public transport that goes like this:

* if you live in a place above a given size
* you are guaranteed to have a bus turn up every hour
* at the same time past the hour
* which will deliver you to a train station
* five minutes before the arrival of a train
* that will take you to a town
* and all this back again in time for tea.

Though this sounds riotously expensive -- and it certainly does require substantial subsidies -- it has been found that, over time, people start using public transport on a scale that keeps the subsidies down and helps with a variety of other social problems.

[Mick Harper]

This Week's Fares Quiz

[Mick Harper]

I cannot get used to Germany being inefficient. Not just me either. Germany has been a byword for efficiency since Frederick the Great. Now it's going to pot like Britain after 1913. Deutsche Bahn, the German railway, has reached the point when Berlin hotels always keep your room if they know you're coming by train, so they are unfazed by you arriving in the middle of the night.

The car industry can't compete with China. But then what manufacturing sector can? It has no aerospace to speak of. Computers? Nein. Hardware or software. The chemical industry is too noxious. They've given up on most forms of energy. The arts and tourism have always been non-starters unless you're German. There's always beer, I suppose. Sounds like they'll need it.

Why is it? Maybe it's the Iron Law that says everyone has their time and when it's over, it's over. But when did it start? Was it when East and West got unified? It's true the DDR was the most efficient communist state until Deng Xiaoping's China came along but it was still a drag on the whole.

Or maybe it's when Saint Angela decided Turkish gastarbeiters were not enough to sustain the economic miracle and invited anyone who wanted could come along and help out. Or help themselves, as the neo-Nazis put it. That's another sign of the times, I suppose.

Maybe it was foisting the Euro on Europe and then discovering they would have to have to pay for it because nobody else could. Which reminds me, Italy seems to be on the up and up, that must stick in the German craw more than somewhat.

A nice illustration of who's up and who's down appeared on the telly the other night when they were discussing how Germany was going to be helping Ukraine via a gigantic programme of co-production. There was a map! There were arrows! I couldn't help noticing that Ukraine is actually bigger than Germany and has a population not too far short. You mark my words, there'll be gastarbeiters heading east any time soon. That wheat won't harvest itself, Hans.

[Mick Harper]

Talking of gastarbeiters, I just heard there are ten million Indians working in the Gulf states. Since there must be even more Pakistanis and Filipinos, and all the locals are living on the Edgware Road, who exactly is minding the shop?

[Mick Harper]

Talking of etc etc, all countries are entitled to forbid foreign aircraft from overflying their territory so if Iran decides to charge Gulf states' ships for going through the Hormuz Strait, they can always charge Iranian planes for flying over them.

Could be a finder's fee for me with this one.