ml1dch

Arthur Dent: "Have you found a solution?" Ford Prefect: "No, but I've got a new name for the problem."

Although I think I'm right in saying that this is the first OD motion that they've voted on. All the others they've abstained, so they could say "we've said we're not voting on any of them, so people can't really say we've lost them" That was pretty intelligent (although very cynical) politicking, but it's going to be a much harder trick to pull in future.

All this stuff about the Government needing to decide which customs option it wants is impressively incompetent. "Which of these two impossible, unrealistic, already-rejected options shall we go for?" I'm sure these weeks could probably be used a bit more productively.

Given the title, the content must have come as quite a surprise

I remember it being relentlessly drilled into my brain for about a month that Sadiq Khan's father was also a bus driver. I believe that her father's occupation came up once or twice in Thatcher's political career as well.

If my knowledge of traffic lights is anything to go by, I expect a recall for Damien Green.

Hopefully the Rudd situation has created an embittered back bencher with an axe to grind, ready for those important votes coming up.

I know the same could be said of Corbyn - that's the point. They are equally adept at whistling for the own dogs, and their competence begins and ends there.

I wouldn't say that Rees-Mogg was any more competent. Both of their talents consist of saying whatever the politically naive want to hear, and hang the real-life consequences. Brexit made flesh, the pair of them.

About as convincing a closet as Liberace's.

It's not that logical, since Sven Mislintat, Arsenal's Head of Recruitment (and thus someone with a pretty big say over who the new manager is) had a massive falling out with Tuchel when they were both at Dortmund. Tuchel banned Mislintat from the training ground and forced him out of the club, resulting in him joining Arsenal last year. Seems unlikely that he is going to want to return to that. Tuchel is apparently replacing Emery at PSG.

I just wonder at what point they'll realise that for all the windbaggery on the subject of the Customs Union, it has slightly less than bugger all impact on whether there'll be a hard border in Ireland and that it's being part of the Single Market that is going to be needed to prevent that.

It's certainly not difficult to imagine Guy Verhofstadt standing up in the European Parliament saying "how can we take these people seriously when it comes to citizens' rights when this is how they treat people" And he'd be right.

http://the.48andbeyond.co.uk/2018/02/why-brexit-will-devastate-uk.html?m=1 A bit of a sad read. Still, I'm sure that there's a good reason to do all this. Somebody must think of one eventually.

c/o Popbitch "I'm afraid to tell you that you are suffering from auto correct syndrome" "Really? I didn't even know I was I'll"

I admit I'm not following this as forensically as I could be so may well be wrong, but I didn't think that "what the substance was" is really disputed, even amongst the wilder and more fringe theories about what happened, no?

Is it? Tony Blair wasn't at Prince Edward's wedding and I don't think anybody gave the tiniest toss. On a list of "embarrassments and PR disasters of the current Conservative government", I don't think this is going scrape into the top couple of hundred.

That's definitely the big problem with knife crime. (sorry)

He wasn't. He was a mumbling, bumbling lightweight immediately after the referendum.

The Spectator (whose podcasts are surprisingly competent and even-handed) have a half hour interview between Andrew Neil and David Davis available to download. Having listened to it, we're properly buggered. I think the man's dimwitted guffaws are probably scratched into my brain, they were so frequent when the alternative was to admit he didn't know the answer to the question.

To be fair to David Davis though, back then he didn't even know that we couldn't go and do a separate trade deal with Germany or that Ireland wouldn't automatically be leaving with us. So the chap has been on a pretty steep learning curve over the last couple of years.

I'd say that's a pretty sticky line of defence. Some Jewish people not having a problem, doesn't mean that l those that do have a problem shouldn't say so. "My Indian mate said he wasn't offended by the joke, so I don't see why all those other people are now calling me a racist"

The mechanism just isn't there for it to happen. Remember last time it took six months just for the wording of the question to be decided upon. In the next twelve months any motion for this would need to go through three readings (in both houses), committee stage and report stage (in both houses) and consideration of amendments (how placid and agreeable about this do you think Rees-Mogg, Baker et al will be?), and finally it passes. Maybe. Last time there was six months between this stage and the date of the referendum to sort out the administration and campaigning. That needs to all be put into motion by two parties who are so against all this that people get fired for saying that this is a sensible course of action. And that's before the unanswered question of whether we can even unilaterally scrap the whole thing comes back around. For the same reason that our customs infrastructure won't be ready in time, that our new trading arrangements won't be ready in time and our new immigration system won't be ready in time - there's just too much "stuff" that is needed to make it happen and not enough time to do it in. Even if they really wanted to, which they demonstrably don't.

Not really. Yes, it's an obvious scandal. But it's not something that is going to make a jot of difference to anything that's actually happening.