The Sunday Rumble: 15.10.17

Worse than hooligans, those church-goers!   As some of you know, I live adjacent to a church but usually, on Sunday mornings, I hide indoors behind closed doors and double-glazing.  This morning I forgot and set off on my mini-walk round the village during which I feed a couple of donkeys with chopped up apples.  Just as I shut my front door behind me and set off those bloody bells went off on a riff!  By the time I returned I had a major headache.  Truly, the Lord works in mysterious ways!

 

'Junck the Drunk' is a skunk!   Was anyone else nauseated by the speech given by 'Junck the Drunk' this week in which he patronised us Brits by saying, in effect, thank you for all you did in the war but now you must pay!  What he failed to clarify was that a goodly chunk of what we must pay consists of his huge pay, pension and perks, to say nothing of his Bar bill!

 

Dan Hodges tells it the way it is:   Mainly because he tells it the way I tell it, of course, which is that the EU has no intention of negotiating an orderly Brexit, only a deep desire to punish us recalcitrant Brits.

Despite his patrician air, Barnier is no honest broker. He may not be ‘the enemy’, as Hammond dubbed him.  But he is a hard-nosed bureaucrat attempting to strong-arm Britain to the European exit door in a way that sends the message: ‘Cross us, and there’s a price to be paid.’ 

[...] 

British people hate blackmailers and bullies. Yes, there is a wariness in many quarters about where Brexit is heading. But there is also growing suspicion of the motivation of our erstwhile ‘allies’.  The core of the Eurosceptic case was always that we were prisoners of the European project, rather than willing partners.  And the way the negotiations are being handled – with the EU seeking to issue a punishment beating rather than an amicable separation – risks cementing that argument far more effectively than any number of dodgy bus adverts.

So bring it on, Barnier, the more you slap the truncheon into the palm of your hand the more we will be convinced to get out of your rotten, corrupt conglomeration.

 

Thank God for books:   I have been a cinema fan since I was a nipper, and after I took 'SoD' to see a production at Stratford decades ago, I became entranced with theatre ... but ... but ... gradually it has left me.  There are now very few films that will shift my lazy arse into a car and a 30-minute drive to a cinema complex where I know that my eardrums will be blasted out of my skull by endless adverts played at 'max+' volume.  Similarly, I still read the reviews for the latest play productions but they are either King Lear played as a space odyssey and with one of his daughters being black when everyone else is white, or, they are the latest drone-fest from some right-on, Leftie bore of the first order.  Meanwhile, the TV has increased exponentially the number of channels but, alas, the end result is that you just waste even more time trying to find anything worth watching.  So I say again, thank God for books!

 

The face of collateral damage:   

Whilst I remain happy, nay, delighted, to put the boot into the Clintons, pere et mere, I do draw the line at Chelsea.  The fact is that I know next to nothing about her except that she started life with two huge burdens not of her own making!  Alas, I read stories that she has been 'nominated'(!) to carry the Clinton torch into the political future - even though it is by now more like a guttering candle!  Anyway, it was our very own Daily Mail who cornered her at a Clinton Global Initiative University event and asked her if the Clinton family were going to return the $100,000 they had received from Mr. Harvey Weinstein.  Answer came there none but she did not look happy.  Give it up, Chelsea, just have babies, look after your husband and tell Mum and Dad to get stuffed!   Hat tip to Thomas Lifson at The American Thinker. 

 

They better not ask me!   According to the 'prints', the NHS ('The envy of the world-not!) has instructed its staff to ask anyone seeking a consultation with a doctor as to whether they are hetero, homo or bi-sexual.  My reply, irrespective of whether the questioner is male or female, will be, "Give us a kiss and I'll tell you!"

 

 

No more rumbles 

 

 

Comments

[backofanenvelope]

The Luxembourgers resisted the Germans to the death in 1940. One of them was wounded!

[Whyaxye]

"my mini-walk round the village during which I feed a couple of donkeys with chopped up apples."

As opposed to the blogging, when you feed a couple of donkeys with strawberries.

[Loz]

The un-make-up-able pickle that Blighty has got itself into in trying to do Brexit should be warning enough of the incompetence to the point of negligence of the governance to which we are heading, namely, that of HMG.

I was already persuaded that Blighty was a third rate political constitution for the modern world - a bunch of Wright brothers fanatics flying around in a string bag in a world of modern Dreamliner's, crying "Look how brilliant we are, we thought of this parliamentary democracy thing!" - together with the worst political class and voter-base of the developed world.

I concluded that it was prudent to stay in the harbour of a better governance, more professional political class, and savvier voter-base for the time being - which might have meant forever.

But when one considers the observable factual outcomes of the "Seasoned Ostfront SS veterans vs. the Toms" confrontation up to now, you'd have to say there's nothing thus far to discredit my pre-hindsight assessment.

There was only one way to do Brexit: -

(1) Leave off pressing the article 50 button and let the Euros sweat rather than us. Meanwhile prepare for a WTO rules and regs, de-regulated, low tax haven, "Singapore of Europe", with supply-side (instead of state-side) social provisions.

The virtuous irony being it was the one negotiating stance that would have shit the Euros up enough to do a trade deal to avoid!

Why did it not happen?

Two reasons: -

(1) The Brexiteer fraternity, to a man, were too stupid and hasty to think it out. Incompetence to the point of negligence.

(2) Even if they had, it would have taken an almighty political battle against the statist, authoritarian, protectionist, mercantilist nature of the majority of the Brit hoi-polio and elites. In other words, probably unwinnable anyway.

So now there are two outcomes: -

(1) Blighty exits on chaotic, disputed terms with the EU, shored up by a Corbynite government that takes the opportunity to nationalize everything that moves and deliver a socialist state that will equal or exceed Venezuela for failure and abuse.

(2) Blighty pays through the nose to exit, and then pays through the nose again to effectively remain, but with no political mandate.

The only hope comes not from any efforts of "our" own, but from the possibility that Merkel's weakening and Macron's plans for a "concentric circles" political and economic EU - which it already is ...

http://hssph.net/legalrm/Supranational_European_Bodies.jpg

... but he wants to reform - attracts Blighty into orbit close enough to regain some political involvement in shaping the new "concentric circles".

Macron might be keen to engage on that now his Merkel hope has receded.

And there are now enough political and legal hurdles and blockers to Brexit at home such that all roads appear to lead to a second referendum. That gives us a glimmer of hope at home too.

Join the two together and there is more than a hint of whiff of napalm in the morning air for the Remainers.

Yessiree, the fat lady is deafeningly quiet.

SoD

[David Duff]

I will leave it to the first two splendid paragraphs from Janet Daley today in the DT:

"Once again, the Remain camp has overplayed its hand. First, it lost the referendum – which it just might have won – by insulting the intelligence of the people with a scare campaign so hysterical that it became, to the splendidly laconic British voter, risible. Apparently having learnt nothing from this searing experience, it now gleefully circulates stories of planes having to circle endlessly in the air like the Flying Dutchman because they are unable to land and lorries trapped in an endless purgatory at Dover.
Message to Remainers: nobody will believe a word you say. Either they will recall your bloodcurdling warnings of the economic Armageddon which was to follow immediately after a vote to Leave and think “yeah, yeah” – or else you will have made them aware, with your endless shrieking about the complications and difficulties of extricating ourselves, of the shocking truth that the consequences of EU membership were much worse than we were led to believe."

Finally, SoD, might I ask why, if you find your own country so despicable, you don't just 'eff off' to live in your paradise across the Channel?

[Richard]

Regardless of whether you are in the Brexit or Remain camp, you will agree that Juncker and Barnier's current stance has little to do with negotiation. What they are saying falls squarely into the category of demands with menaces, and for us to accede to these would have equally little to do with negotiation. It would be capitulation.

As usual, Rudyard Kipling sums up the situation much better than I ever could:

It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray;
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say: --

"We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!"

[David Duff]

Nice one, Richard!

[TheBigHenry]

David,

"Finally, SoD, might I ask why, if you find your own country so despicable, you don't just 'eff off' to live in your paradise across the Channel?"

You might also ask Bob, "Why, if you find your own country so despicable, you don't just 'eff off' to live in your paradise -- Venezuela."

[backofanenvelope]

I assume that SoD doesn't move to Bohemia or wherever for the same reasons Whoopsi Goldberg didn't flee to Canada last year. It's nice here - and we speak English!

What is, I wonder, with Americans. We had that black chap telling us how to vote last year and now we the OAP of the year telling us how to negotiate with the Frogs. We have been "negotiating" with the Frogs for over a thousand years.

[Loz]

@Gaffer,

There are three reasons in Zummerzet and one reason that sleeps next to me at night why I'm not away already.

Ref the one next to me: She needs to get a Brit passport before leaving Blighty would be advisable. The 20 years tax and NI she's paid into pensions and benefit obligations of the Brit state I don't trust the Brit country-bumpkins of either persuasion to pay in the event she were to relocate without a Brit passport.

If the work dries up in the UK before all of the above resolves out, i.e. the three Zummerzet reasons pop their clogs and Fluffbun gets a Brit passport (or I pop my clogs, which sometimes I wonder might make things a bit easier; what was it Woody Allen said? "The key here, I think, is to not think of death as an end, but think of it more as a very effective way of cutting down on your expenses."), then I might have to relocate for work while travelling back to Blighty on a regular basis. Two weeks abroad, one week in Blighty, type pattern. I can serve all obligations on that modus operandi. It's practically how it works now with me working "Ooop North". I have just bought a return ticket to Brno for £40 including luggage. It costs the same in petrol to get to Coventry and back, and Coventry's only half way "Ooop North".

When Fluffbun gets her Brit passport and we relocate to Czech Rep and rent our gaff out here in Surrey, then you can shift your butt out of the top floor garret - I'll have that when I stay the one week out of three in the UK looking after the three Zummerzet reasons - and you can garretize the spare room on the middle floor.

And so it goes, until whoever "cuts down on their expenses" first.

Ref Daley, someone should remind her we haven't done Brexit yet. And even on the prospect of Brexit, growth has dropped to see Blighty go from the top of the developed countries at 3.2% pa to the bottom, the pound has devalued by 15% wiping billions off Brit assets, inflation has jumped to 2.9% pa from trace, well above wage growth. None of that particularly impinges on that wizened old hag, of course, but rather on the hoi-poloi. They'll tire of it soon enough.

@Richard,

That ghastly Victorian fascist is half the reason for the distorted, malignant worldview of Blighty's country-bumpkin brigade. His utterances still reverberate today, causing Blighty's pols to make tits of themselves in our name to a worldwide audience ...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-41453375/boris-johnson-reciting-kipling-in-myanmar-temple-not-appropriate

SoD

[Loz]

Look, even this muppet is starting to see the penny drop ...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/10/14/free-trade-will-always-enrich-country/

If Dan wasn't so blinkered by free trade wet dreams he might have noticed that free trade is not possible by Blighty given its mercantilism, protectionism, and statism endemic in hoi-poloi and pol alike.

Then he wouldn't have voted for Brexit because, in his own words, "It was pointless".

SoD

[Bob]

For a few years I lived across a street from a church that had electronic bells. The management liked to turn the volume up until the sound was distorted. One well placed lightning bolt could have fixed the situation. Why is there never a good smiting around when needed?

[Richard]

Lawrence,

I am disappointed by your reply because I would have expected much more from you. Shooting the messenger (by adding the suffix 'ist' to a word, and hanging it round his neck like a badge, is very much the current lefty/lib way of closing down debate.

I am guessing that (like so many before you) to have taken just one excerpt from Kipling's huge volume of work and using it as a metonym for all of it. This is a bad mistake, for Kipling is the hardest writer to pin down that I have ever encountered, and I have a degree in Eng. Lit. However, the principle: "That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld you never get rid of the Dane." is one of those arguments of his that is both historically proven and set in stone.

If you disagree, fine - however, I expect you to justify your viewpoint giving reasons. I can only say here that your comments on Kipling are completely unsupported and you completely ignore the argument in question. If I was a schoolmaster marking this, I would have given you a mark of 0/10 plus a note to see me after class!

[TheBigHenry]

Loz,

"There are three reasons in Zummerzet ..."

I am guessing that two of those are your parents. What is the third?

Just curious ...

[Loz]

"You could have a gilts strike. The risk for a small open economy like ours is that the Bank of England may ultimately have to raise rates to defend sterling. We have been here before when Britain had to go the IMF in 1976."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/10/15/britains-missing-billions-revised-figures-reveal-uk-490bn-poorer/

And so soon. Thought Blighty might have had a few years before the end game. Well, per the same Woody Allen quote applied to Blighty, it'll be a "very effective way to cut down on our expenses".

@BigHen - The elderly relative referred to from time to time.

SoD

[TheBigHenry]

Thanx, Loz.

[JK]

Prob'ly not, whatever you've heard David:

https://www.axios.com/the-next-cia-director-after-pompeo-could-be-tom-cotton-2497135822.html

[Andra]

Henry - I was wondering who the third person might be. Thanks for clearing that up.
Nice to know.

[David Duff]

Thanks, JK, that will be an interesting appointment - if it happens!