The now-enacted will of (some of) the people

[Chindie]

O'Brien is a prick (he wrote a book titled 'How to be Right) ffs. He just happens to be a prick that knows what he's talking about with Brexit and doesn't suffer fools, particularly ones he can see are dishonest. There's not a great deal wrong with his talk with the Hitler pencil imo, the guest wanted to cherry pick and hide a fuller picture, and the host knew enough to not let him.

[Chindie]

50 minutes ago, Enda said:

Yesterday a car bomb exploded outside the courthouse in Derry. It made the front page of every major Irish newspaper, but none of England's.

Today, two controlled explosions after men with guns hijack more vehicles in Derry. From RTE:

This was so bloody predictable.

Not necessarily the posters of VT but people in Britain generally don't understand Northern Ireland enough. And now the DUP, the only party not to back the Good Friday Agreement, and are in your government.

The bombs will only get worse. This is all so reckless.

It was all very predictable.

The UK doesn't care about Northern Ireland. And when bins start blowing up again, there'll be all the reasons in the world why, bar poking the bees best with abandon for no damn reason.

[bickster]

59 minutes ago, tonyh29 said:

me not agreeing with your view of the world doesn't mean I don't get it   , so  no need for the snide remarks , though it does reaffirm my "class" comment from the other day

Whatever message O'Brien was trying to put across was lost  ..you're opening  gambit was he tore JRM a new one  ...he might well have done  , but I'd imagine for the average listener they would have struggled to find his message  , it was painful listening , another one of those instances that meant I wanted to shout to the radio (PC in this instance , shut the **** up and let him answer god damn it )

poor journalism really

I'm not sure, I think the average listener would have been as frustrated asJOB at JRM deliberately not answering the question.

In pushing JRM to answer he's at least doing what 99.9% of political journalists currently don't seem capable of

 

[Xann]

49 minutes ago, tonyh29 said:

me not agreeing with your view of the world doesn't mean I don't get it , so  no need for the snide remarks , though it does reaffirm my "class" comment from the other day

Understanding what went on in that interview should be a bitter pill to the non psychopathic element of Brexit. They'll find it difficult to admit to themselves that they're gullible/deluded. Less chance still of them admitting this to others.

Enough VTers have met me now to know what scumbag I am. No secret there 

2 minutes ago, Chindie said:

... the guest wanted to cherry pick and hide a fuller picture, and the host knew enough to not let him.

You picked up on that too, eh? 

[Jon]

2 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

 

I didn't know the former England midfielder had branched out into political commentary, but good on him! 

[chrisp65]

2 hours ago, Enda said:

Not necessarily the posters of VT but people in Britain generally don't understand Northern Ireland enough.

hey, hey, I'm not sure you know much about what we know

we've got some of our top people on this

top

people

Quote

She said she was unaware that nationalists did not vote for unionists and that unionists did not vote for nationalists – the most elementary fact about Northern Ireland politics.

“I freely admit that when I started this job, I didn’t understand some of the deep-seated and deep-rooted issues that there are in Northern Ireland,” Bradley told House magazine, a weekly publication for the Houses of Parliament.

“I didn’t understand things like when elections are fought, for example, in Northern Ireland – people who are nationalists don’t vote for unionist parties and vice versa. So, the parties fight for election within their own community.

“Actually, the unionist parties fight the elections against each other in unionist communities and nationalists in nationalist communities.”

thick pillock appointed by pillock that must be on the spectrum

 

[chrisp65]

So, I had a bit of a walk around Westminster today. It felt like we're at quite an important time so i'd go and soak up some of the vibe. A bit of an 'I was there' sort of thing.

It was ok, the two rival groups appeared to have happily set themselves apart with the leave means leave weirdos congregating around the entrance to Downing Street and waving flags at the traffic. People taking photos and selfies, lots of more serious camera kit behind some barriers. Lots of police having friendly chats with loons in union flag hats. The remain contingent set up around the green where we see the staging for the tv news interviews, waving flags at the traffic. people taking photos and selfies, lots of more serious kit behind some barriers. Lots of police having fiendly chats with cat ladies in euro berets.

Glad I went. Didn't learn anything (hadn't expected to).Went to a record shop too. That was far more productive.

[mjmooney]

Quote

To  Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson AKA Bojo The Clown C.O. The Circus. Westminster. London. England. Europe.

Dear Bojo,
I hope this finds you well.

The moppet  you see here is a pretty poor model of you made of fly-tying beeswax into which I am sticking thorns. This is called “magick” and it’s supposed to give you aches and pains and stuff. The trouble is that, to work, it has to contain some of your hair or a toenail or as a last resort some belly button fluff. So far I have been unable to obtain these items. Sadly.

You won’t have heard of me because I didn’t go to Eton or Oxford, I wasn’t a member of the Bullingdon Club, I didn’t burn £50 notes under the noses of the destitute, and I didn’t smash up restaurants and then pay for the repairs with mummy and daddy’s money. You won’t know me because I am one of the “Great Unwashed” the “Plebs” who live North of your Westminster bubble. 

The reason I’m writing to you is simple. I read some of your pieces in the Telegraph recently from way back when you were their Brussels correspondent – you’ll remember those days – lots of boozy lunches followed by you hammering copy out into cyberspace. Easy peasy job, lots of perks. And to earn all that money you told lots of lies.
This is how you describe it…
“I was sort of chucking these rocks over the garden wall and I listened to this amazing crash from the greenhouse next door over in England as everything I wrote from Brussels was having this amazing, explosive ­effect  – and it really gave me this, I suppose, rather weird sense of power,” 

Ah, what japes you had Bojo, almost as funny as when you offered to procure a hit man to batter somebody who had troubled your friend Darius Guppy.

And here’s some of the lies/rocks you chucked over the garden wall:
“Brussels recruits sniffers to ensure that Euro–manure smells the same”
“Threat to British pink sausages” 
“Snails are fish, says EU”. 
You wrote total bollocks about straight bananas and conkers being banned from school playgrounds; about plans to standardise condom sizes and plans to ban prawn cocktail flavour crisps. 
In fact you got paid incredibly well, and lunched even better by sending total bollocks to London for 5 yrs. It was a drip-feed of EU hate and it eventually worm its way into the nation’s psyche.

You never once mentioned the EU’s  great achievements – cementing peace for 70 yrs, uniting the continent, creating the world’s largest single market, enabling its citizens to travel and live anywhere they choose, busting mono­polies, improving the environment, sharing research into things like cancer and dementia, sending thousands of doctors and nurses and teachers here. Not one single mention.
You allowed the lies about our laws, money and borders to fester and stink because it was more fun that way.
Laws – We voted for 95% of all EU laws. Of the other 5% we abstained on 3% and lost 2%.
Money – We never entered the Euro so always had control of our money. The money we paid the EU was returned over and again in benefits and in total amounted to less each year than we spend on Northern Ireland.
Our borders –  We could return anybody from the EU after 3 months if they had no means of subsistence or abode. We chose not to enact this ruling.
Never mentioned that did you Bojo? Not japish enough? Couldn’t get it on the clown car? But there was room for “£350 Million.”

I am surprised that there is not, in Brussels, a statue of you with the legend “Bollocksmeister” on it. The statue of course would need to be made out of solid Home Counties, Bullingdon Club Manure.

I remember you getting elected for parliament and how you said “There’s too much sense of entitlement in this country.” That made me smile. A bit rich coming from a privately educated chap who was given a job on the Times because of family connections and who (as most old Etonians do) sees himself as entitled to rule over the rest of us. The “Entitlement” you were talking about of course was entitlement to a minimum wage, sickness and unemployment benefit and a reasonable pension; the entitlement, in other words, to a decent life and some dignity towards the end. (The French state pension, BTW, is €1200 – how does that compare with ours?)

I checked up on your record as an administrator and man of ideas. Gosh! I am completely whelmed!
As Mayor of London you promised to totally eradicate rough sleeping by 2012; it doubled under your leadership. Your 2008 manifesto promised there would be manned ticket offices at every station; you closed all of London's ticket offices. You aimed to reduce transport fares; they increased by 4.2 per cent. You trashed the London Fire Service, bought water canons to subdue the population of the city you governed (they were sold for scrap at a massive loss)  and managed to spend £46 million on a bridge that was never built. Where did that money go Bojo? To funding a new clown school or into the pockets of your pals, the consultants?
But hey – what fun – what japes along the road eh?
And then May, to get you off her manor,  made you Foreign Secretary. I realised then that Satire is dead. Even Swift could not have invented such a scenario. You said that Muslim women wearing the veil look like bank robbers and letterboxes; black children are “piccaninnies” and all black people have “watermelon smiles” I thought all this was bad enough  – but then you went on to say that Libya would be a good tourist destination, “once they have cleared all the dead bodies off the streets.” 
Whilst Editor of The Spectator, you published an article which stated, “Orientals … have larger brains and higher IQ scores. Blacks are at the other pole.”
Good basic stance for a Foreign Sec. at the time of Disraeli – doesn’t quite cut it now.
And you are some writer Bojo. I remember during the Ref campaign you wrote two pieces, one saying the EU was a heap of ordure and the other saying it was le best thing aprés le pain sliced. You couldn’t make up your mind which article best served, “le project Boris” but plumped for the leave one since you thought Leave would lose but that you would be seen as its champion and would therefore get David Macaroon’s job once he’d buggered off to his shepherds’ hut.
The sight of your face and Michael Gove’s face when you found you had won that Brexit morning was something to behold. You hadn’t a feckin’ clue what to do next and, if I remember rightly buggered off  into hiding for several days.
As Mrs Gove said, “You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off.”
And how you worked at that Brexit job – the greatest con since The Trojan Horse – convincing the population that all the problems caused by the Thatcher-led, Tory destruction of our industries, and the savage cuts of Austerity were the fault of the EU. Pure brilliant I must admit. And the way you sold those sunlit uplands  that would lead us to Empire2 – Majestic.
So here we are now Bojo, in the Brexit circus ring, you in your clown car racing round still throwing rocks over the wall telling people they can have their cake and eat it, and that the Irish tail is wagging the UK dog. Ah Bojo, did you ever read the stories of the Irish Famine? How food was leaving Ireland under armed guard as starving people died in the ditches, the green foam of the grass that was their last meal flecking their mouths? One million dead - England's own Holocaust? Did you ever count the dead of The Troubles? Do you even know that the first murder of those terrible years was that of an official at a border post? No I thought not. Not enough of a jape for you.
I awoke last night in a bit of a lather because I’d had a nightmare in which I was trying to describe you to a visitor from Mars. Assuming the Martian had read the Greyfriar’s books the closest I came was, “Flashman in the shape of the Fat Owl of the Remove.” all the bumble and chortle of Billy Bunter but behind the mask, an all-devouring ego on legs, what William Golding in his novel, Pincher Martin describes thus… “This painted bastard here takes anything he can lay his hands on.... He was born with his mouth and his flies open and both hands out to grab. He’s a cosmic case of the bugger who gets his penny and someone else’s bun.”
Or in your case, “cake and eat it.”
So Bojo, you bumble malevolently on, always on the look out for Number One and quite prepared to destroy the country in the process – because, well, you know, it’s all a bit of a jape isn’t it? 
I’ve just got an email from your barber. He’s prepared to send me some of your hair in exchange for tickets to my next show. It’s a deal. The hair is in a jiffy bag on its way North. So, as from tomorrow, you may notice a few twinges and niggly pains, then after a few days….well…… “Lorks! Crikey! Lumme!  I say you chaps! Looks like my tadger’s fallen orf!”

Yours
Michael Christopher Damien Makepiece Harding.
Yorkshire
England 
Europe
The World
The Cosmos
Wherever.

Mike Harding

Edited January 21, 2019 by mjmooney

[Designer1]

15 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

Mike Harding

Coincidentally I was only listening to the vinyl of 'Old Four Eyes is Back' the other day. A staple of my childhood listening and still very funny (quite poignant at times too).

[jackbauer24]

Me and my fiancee have been talking about our honeymoon...

 

Two years ago I asked her where she'd like to go. I said we could stay in the UK or go abroad. A few things were said about the plus and negatives about each option (near a beach or miles away from a beach if going abroad) but basically it was just whether we should holiday in the UK or abroad and she, narrowly, decided holidaying abroad was preferable.
 

Fast forward to today and my hopes of going to the Maldives have been impossible to achieve so I've settled on Iraq instead. She's refused to go to Iraq. Completely and utterly against it! Now I know we can't do the Maldives so really it's Iraq or no honeymoon at all. She says I should give her some other choices as she didn't realise that was a possibility and, at the very least, she wants to decide whether the risks of Iraq outweigh not having a honeymoon at all. I don't think that's right, why should I ask her again?! She said holiday abroad so it doesn't matter if it's not what she wanted, she OBVIOUSLY would prefer Iraq to no holiday at all as she said so two years ago by choosing 'abroad'. Giving her another chance to decide on where to holiday would make me question our whole relationship...

[chrisp65]

Have you considered Syria plus plus?

That's closer to home and you can see Cyprus on a good day.

[Amsterdam_Neil_D]

7 hours ago, jackbauer24 said:

Giving her another chance to decide on where to holiday would make me question our whole relationship...

Just tell her the "Headstop" you have negotiated will probably almost never be used in Syria whilst on Honeymoon.  

(As in your head stops being attached to your body)

[peterms]

8 hours ago, jackbauer24 said:

Me and my fiancee have been talking about our honeymoon...

 

Two years ago I asked her where she'd like to go. I said we could stay in the UK or go abroad. A few things were said about the plus and negatives about each option (near a beach or miles away from a beach if going abroad) but basically it was just whether we should holiday in the UK or abroad and she, narrowly, decided holidaying abroad was preferable.
 

Fast forward to today and my hopes of going to the Maldives have been impossible to achieve so I've settled on Iraq instead. She's refused to go to Iraq. Completely and utterly against it! Now I know we can't do the Maldives so really it's Iraq or no honeymoon at all. She says I should give her some other choices as she didn't realise that was a possibility and, at the very least, she wants to decide whether the risks of Iraq outweigh not having a honeymoon at all. I don't think that's right, why should I ask her again?! She said holiday abroad so it doesn't matter if it's not what she wanted, she OBVIOUSLY would prefer Iraq to no holiday at all as she said so two years ago by choosing 'abroad'. Giving her another chance to decide on where to holiday would make me question our whole relationship...

Your mistake is to expect certainty before departure.

What you should do is sell your house, and go somewhere from where you can choose many destinations.  Schipol airport transit lounge, perhaps.  When you get there, you can approach a wide variety of airlines, requesting tickets and visas to wherever you want to go.  If they tell you there are no tickets available, or they don't process visas, this is no more than typical foreign pettifogging bureaucracy, and you should repeat your demand, in a louder voice, until you get your way.

There are so many possible destinations.  I'm sure you will find many that attract you.  When you get there, your phone and credit cards are likely to work, and they will definitely accept your currency; sterling is much in demand, the recent depreciation being no more than a temporary blip.

You need to remember the adventurous spirit of our forefathers, who ventured forth to conquer the world equipped with nothing more than a stout cudgel, a handful of ship's biscuits, and a few strips of dried otter.

Our national character was forged in adversity, and tempered by challenge.  You must throw off the shackles of your tedious, quotidian existence.  Do not fear change, embrace it.

If you want me, I'll be in the VIP lounge, having lunch.  I'm afraid they won't let you in.  But you'll be fine.

[bickster]

Just putting this out there 

 

[Amsterdam_Neil_D]

The "Don't know's"   If they only knew it could all change.

[Amsterdam_Neil_D]

3 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

Syria plus plus?

Rhyl Minus Minus.

Syria or Rhyl for a honeymoon,  what a conversation that would be.  

A pros and cons list would be needed for sure.  The weather plays a part in January for example.

[bickster]

44 minutes ago, Amsterdam_Neil_D said:

Rhyl Minus Minus.

Syria or Rhyl for a honeymoon,  what a conversation that would be.  

A pros and cons list would be needed for sure.  The weather plays a part in January for example.

I've been to Rhyl, I'd choose Syria every time! (Far less of the wrong type of Scousers)

[bickster]

[bickster]

I'm fairly sure most of the leavers voted to replace poor white Europeans with poor brown people from outside Europe

[blandy]

Nasty Corbyn henchman. Where left loops back round to meet right.