Brexit is the true test of Boris: God knows - and He's not too sure! - what Boris will get up to now that he has disposed of his two leading advisors. However, we 'the great unwashed' have one litmus test by which we may judge him - BREXIT! Either it happens, boldly and clearly, or it does not and ends up as a hopeless Euro fudge in which, as we have learned over the years, we always come off worse!
Nazi Germany: I stumbled upon a TV programme last night which touched on the early days of Nazi Germany. Good God, those Germans were stupid beyond belief! Exactly how evil they were is another question. Even so, surely they did not need a degree in Political Philosophy to see 'the bleedin' obvious', that Adolph Hitler was a charlatan with galloping megalomania who would bring down disaster on their nation. We were right to bomb them to bits and then invade them and thereby humiliate them. The only ones I feel sorry for were the children!
And still 'The Ginger Ninja' continues with his clown act! Alas, it was only ever funny for a few days but now, as the flecks of spittle fly from his little gooseberry lips, it has become tiresome and, given the high political temperature that pervades America, it is positively dangerous! Just go!
Alas, this is all too true: Nick Cohen, at The Spectator site, has Downing Street summed up in his first paragraph:
For all his Falstaffian swagger, Boris Johnson resembles no Shakespearian character so much as Henry VI. He is a weak and vacillating king at the mercy of palace factions. He thinks whatever the last adviser he spoke to told him to think. He has no policies that cannot be changed under pressure or principles that cannot be abandoned if the loudest voice in the room says they must go. He does not know his own mind. At times it appears he has no mind worth knowing.
And whilst we have two clowns operating in Washington and London, the Chinese quietly get on with their malicious business!
No more Rumbles
"Just go!". Not so fast. We are to believe all those 4 Dem governed states as well as 4 Dem run big cities have for once in decades run "clean elections"? Magic ballots appearing and all that and no R poll watchers allowed? Our Constitution has provisions to address all these sorts of problems which are not new, by the way. Joe Biden?? eclipsed the popular vote count of the sainted B. Hussein Obama by several million votes? Right. Trump's popular vote total also eclipsed Obama's vote total as well with no "funny ballots". The conclusion of this "election" must run through the courts for the sake of the next election in four years. The 72 million Trump voters are the people who need good reason to let it go in the end. The courts are the only chance. Not the media and swamp dwellers. We don't have to like it and won't, but will. If we are defrauded by the courts and the 'powers that be', we are also the 72 million that are the wrong people to cross this badly.
Posted by: Whitewall | Sunday, 15 November 2020 at 17:46
Even with a deal, Brexit is guaranteed to be a hyper-shambles ...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/11/15/cummings-gone-biden-brexit-trade-deal-beckons/
"Even with a deal, things therefore threaten to be bad enough; if customs agents have to cope with EU tariffs and quotas on top, there is every possibility of complete meltdown."
Without a deal is even worse, because BoJo wouldn't dare do a "Singapore-on-Thames" for fear of the political backlash ...
"Nor is the UK about to become Singapore on Europe’s doorstep. Domestic political forces are a much bigger safeguard against that than any rules the EU might attempt to impose to ensure a level playing field."
And BoJo's a Blue Socialist anyway, so Singapore-on-Thames, the only Brexit that's better than being in the EU, is never going to happen - as I forecast, and why I was pro-Remain.
SoD
Posted by: Loz | Sunday, 15 November 2020 at 18:57
Good 'un from Pollard, how "the Blob", that is, the public sector, "welfare" state, and civil service, being un-reformable, can only be dealt with by what might be called "a state bypass". That is, a parallel independent sector solution rendering the state irrelevant ...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/11/14/fall-dominic-cummings-triumph-blob/
But even without a global pandemic, it was clear that resistance to reform was institutionalised in the very machinery of government that Mr Cummings was set on reforming.
Nothing new or surprising there; the greatest post-War reformer of them all, Baroness Thatcher, faced internal opposition, both political and administrative, that could well have defeated her. It took her years to push the supposed Rolls-Royce Whitehall machinery in even vaguely the same direction in which she was travelling. And Tony Blair famously spoke after just two years in office of “the scars on my back” from trying to reform the public sector.
As Education Secretary, Michael Gove used to speak of ‘The Blob’, from a 1950s film in which an amoeba-like alien lump runs amok and which no one can halt. He was referring to the education establishment, but The Blob is spread far wider.
Education is a fascinating example of how to halt The Blob, and even defeat it. The education establishment has never gone away. Mr Gove’s insight – shared under Labour earlier by Andrew Adonis – was that you have to create an alternative establishment and try to render the Blob irrelevant. So Labour set up Academies and Mr Gove set up Free Schools, both of which were free of local political and union control and had their own separate machinery.
Even VI Lenin struggled to reform the failed state in Soviet Russia with his "New Economic Policy", a return to Market Capitalism under state supervision. He got there for a couple of years, and Soviet Russia picked up again ...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Economic_Policy
But sadly he croaked, and Stalin obliterated the NEP and went full forward with state collectivisation in 1928, destroying all hope of prosperity and keeping pace with the West.
These state people stick like shit to a blanket, don't they?
SoD
Posted by: Loz | Sunday, 15 November 2020 at 19:23
Blighty's Speccie this time: the EU poops through Sleepy Joe's letterbox, not once, but twice! ...
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.spectator.co.uk/article/brexit-britain-will-be-the-winner-in-the-eu-s-war-on-joe-biden/amp
In the very same week that the veteran politician finally made it to the presidency, the European Union has, oddly, made two extraordinarily aggressive moves against the US.
First, it launched a range of retaliatory tariffs on American goods over subsidies it alleges the American government gives to Boeing. American exporters of stuff as diverse as tomato ketchup and sweet potatoes will now face 25 per cent tariffs in Europe. A day later, the EU’s increasingly deranged competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager launched a huge anti-trust action against Amazon with a potential fine of £15 billion, serious money even for Jeff Bezos, if it is successful.
A "Let us hold your coats while you knock six bells out of each other" stance by Blighty when it comes to the US and EU, perhaps?
"Bait and bleed", while we crack on with Brexit for the next 4 years in the distraction and await the return of the Don, maybe?
Mmm, possibly something positive for Blighty in the wind for a change.
SoD
Posted by: Loz | Sunday, 15 November 2020 at 20:25
SoD, the facts re the US are more complicated:
"After Trump also imposed tariffs on EU steel and aluminum and threatened punitive duties on cars, the Europeans had hoped that he would hold fire on the tariffs related to the Airbus-Boeing dispute. But having repeatedly failed to achieve a negotiated solution, the EU decided to announce punishment of its own."
Though that doesn't sum them up either:
https://apnews.com/article/valdis-dombrovskis-global-trade-europe-united-states-8a9c8a48047ce656e853e40162596318
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David,
Thanks for your concern, but our institutions and a majority of Americans have done what was needed. We'll probably be OK, just less exceptional.
Posted by: Bob | Monday, 16 November 2020 at 00:32
"I stumbled upon a TV programme last night which touched on the early days of Nazi Germany."
What was the programme, and on which channel, please?
Posted by: Ted Treen | Wednesday, 18 November 2020 at 22:45