Attacking the Defence

A significant issue, of course, in the run-up to the U.K.’s EU referendum is the prospect of Turkey joining the EU. This would be of concern to many voters, not only because Turkey is an Islamic state, but also because its relative poverty, compared with the UK, and its very substantial population. The principle of free movement of people is absolutely fundamental to the EU, and so the prospect of many tens of millions of Turkish people having the absolute right to move to the UK is, for many voters, and alarming one. Personally, I have found the Turks that I have met in the UK, and who I now occasionally meet on the international stage, absolutely charming, and I would not myself put this issue centre stage. There is no denying, however, that it is a political “hot potato”, and the Prime Minister David Cameron steamed in, claiming that one of his own ministers, Penny Mordaunt, was “absolutely wrong” on the topic. She is alleged to have said on the Andrew Marr Show that the UK would have no veto on Turkey joining the EU.

So I decided to look up the transcript. There was initially

The Huffington iPost

 

The Editor of The Huffington Post (HuffPo as Delingpole calls it) has posted this image of an editor’s meeting there:

 

The text for the post was:

Notice anything about this @HuffingtonPost editors meeting?

Well, obviously, apart from the observation that an all-female team is no more balanced than an all-male team (so no room for smugness), many have noticed the absence of any black people.  And all pretty much the same age. So a bad score for diversity there.

What strikes me is the ubiquity of those girly iPads.

I bumped into some American

Cows in the Rain

The cattle on the hill opposite my house are a regular and welcome sight.

Today, it is is pouring with rain. And windy. I am fine, because I am inside, and there is a nice big wood stove I can fire up whenever I like.

But what about the beasts opposite? Are they discomforted by the rain? Some of them are lying down? Is that like a sort of protest, like a bovine sit-in?

And why is there no single noun in the English language for these animals? We have a collective noun, of course – cattle. But what about just one of them? We have subsets – cow, bull, steer, ox, etc

We Want Paxo!

There is not much I miss about living in England these days. Most of the good things – Marmite, The Times Crossword Puzzle, The News Quiz etc – can be had here in Australia, where it is warm and sunny.

But not BBC iPlayer.  I want to watch the Paxo Doco on the EU, but it is blocked for ip addresses outside the UK.  The BBC has even shut down VPN access.

Like many expatriates, I have paid a shedload of UK tax, not to mention many years of paying the BBC licence fee. Surely, there could be some sort of system whereby holders of a UK passport around the world could subscribe for a fee to BBC iPlayer?  There are some millions of us, and the income lost

U Suck?

This image has been doing the rounds this week.  Perhaps I am being thick, but I do not understand it.

It is obviously an old fake from a decade ago, as others have noted. But this one is fake loaded onto fake, in that the name IG@davie_dave has been added. Why would anyone want to claim responsibility for such a lame old canard?

Why didn’t whoever did the photoshopping remove the shadow of the cord (as seen in the original image) from Bush’s tie?

Why put replace the original framed photograph with one of Tony Blair? Not

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