Height of Doctoring?

Prince Andrew is 6′. The young lady (as she then was) in this “photo” is 5’3″.

Do we smell a rat?

And anyway, just how long is Prince Andrew’s left arm supposed to be? Quite a bit longer than his other arm?

And why does ther young lady look like a cardboard cutout?

Maybe someone thought there was a bit of money to be made here?

To be fair, Grace Kelly did no great harm to the royal family of Monaco. But, overall, the value of Americanisation to

World Cup Fever – the Real Game

If anyone is in any doubt that rugby is a smarter game than football, look at Mario Itoje.

He is a second row forward for England. His job is to put his head between the sweating buttocks of a hooker and a prop, and push. And to jump in the lineout. And, if he can, to make a yard or so every time he gets the ball, before being tackled to the ground.

Mario Itoje does all of these things, excellently well, and more. He is 6 ‘ 5”, which helps. And clearly very strong indeed.

He is also a very talented athlete.  Ant yet more, he was educated at Harrow, and got 3 A grades at A level. Well, yes, I hear you say, A grades are not what they used to be. Grade inflation has devalued the brand. Even so: how many football players have A levels at all, let alone at A grade?

It is all counterintuitive, you might think. Rugby looks such a physical game. And yet, it is a game of considerable complexity. Mere muscle always loses out to muscle + a highly

Payback time

Clearly, UK politics is presently in something of a state of stalemate. It is 2-2.

On one side, we have the majority of the British people, and the British government, who want Brexit to happen. On the other side, we have the majority of Parliament and the courts, who do not want Brexit to happen. The Remainers in the House of Commons to not want to admit that they were lying through their teeth when they made their election promises to honour the result of the Brexit referendum, and so their policy is to obstruct and delay at every turn. The judges on the Supreme Court do not want to admit that they have now entered the political arena, but they will, if they possibly can, declare illegal anything the government does that gives effect to the democratic result of the 2016 referendum.

This wouldn’t be a problem, but for the Fixed Term Parliament Act. But for that ill-considered measure, there would be a general election by now, the Remainers would have been cleared out of Parliament and then it would be 3-1 for Brexit. Easy.

In the end, there will have to be a general election. Presumably, the Remainers are hoping that if they put it off long enough, the British economy will have been trashed, and the British people will have lost hope of ever gaining their freedom.

So maybe the government should chivvy things along a bit. The advantage that Parliament has is that it can, with the assistance of a conniving speaker, pass legislation to prevent any move towards Brexit. The advantage that the government has is that it has a huge number of powers, which it can exercise with machine-gun rapidity. The trick for the government will be to ramp up the fire rate. Here are some thoughts on what the government might do in the next

Les Miserables

One may safety say that Sir Oliver Letwin has brought the same world-wide regard for the dignity and respect of the UK as Sir Les Patterson brought to Australia.

Which is …

Weighting

Whilst waiting for the medical profession to provide me with a new hip in the New Year, I have been a lot less active than usual, which has unsurprisingly led to my putting on a bit of weight.

There seem to be two major drawbacks to going on a diet.  The first is that diets are unpleasant, leaving one hungry and/or having to eat ghastly food. The second is that they rarely work in the long term.

I am trying a fasting diet, of sorts. No dinner. The idea is that I can have what I like for breakfast and lunch, but then at 4 o’clock in the afternoon, the shutter comes down: nothing to eat or drink except water until the next morning.

Obviously, this is good, in that I’m not required to eat raw carrots, lettuce or fish sticks. Surprisingly, after several days on this regime, it is not nearly as annoying as one might think. Ordinarily

BritBox “Watch anywhere”

This sounds good:

But not unhappily, not that good:

Backing the Enemy

You would not need to be a political genius, or even particularly cynical, to note that the current impeachment proposals against President Trump are driven by Democrats, not Republicans, for very good reason.

The impeachment proceedings have no prospect whatsoever of removing Trump as president of the United States. Like him or loathe him, he has a majority in the Senate, and so there is really no prospect at all of the majority in the Senate, let alone a two thirds majority in the Senate voting against him, as would be necessary for any impeachment. Conversely, the impeachment process does have the effect of focusing on the narrative: Trump wants Joe Biden investigated for corruption. Unhappily, you might say, it does not much matter whether or not Joe Biden is corrupt. The constant repetition of the narrative, on the other hand, will fix into the American psyche yet more firmly the notion that Joe Biden is corrupt. And so it is hardly surprising that that narrative is very welcome to Joe Biden’s competitors for the Democratic nomination. They are whipping that bandwagon along.

There’s nothing new, of course, about political forces pulling their weight behind political moves, including support for well-meaning but naïve opponents, for political purposes. The USSR did it for decades.

An interesting question is whether Saudi Arabia, and the other major stakeholders in the oil business, are behind Extinction Rebellion. It is interesting that, until Andrew Neil’s interview of Zion Lights, the BBC had suppressed any meaningful questions about the climate change lobby’s gender, or the scientific facts behind their campaign. And yet here we have the BBC airing Andrew Neil’s somewhat gentle but nevertheless devastating interview of extension rebellions spokesperson. She was made to look like a complete idiot. Which is not wholly surprising. Since

Batting for a Foreign Power

A price that England has long paid for its openness and tolerance is that, when the country is under threat of foreign powers seeking to take over, there have been traitors who have engaged with those foreign powers.

The latest threat is of course from the EU, which is desperately seeking to retain and then expand control over the UK’s laws, waters, animals, trading arrangements etc etc.

Bizarrely, Dominic Grieve and others do not deny that they have been engaging with the EU behind the government’s back, to assist the EU in the bringing about such vassalage.  They think that is perfectly fine!

It is not clear that they have a very good grasp of history. Happily for them, hanging (with or without the drawing and the quartering) has been abolished.

Spain, under Philip	Anthony Babington, hanged, drawn and quartered 1586
France, under Napoleon	Wolfe Tone, committed suicide 1798, having been sentenced to be hanged for treason
Germany, under Kaiser Wilhelm	Michael Collins, shot in an ambush 1922
Germany, under Hitler	William Joyce, hanged for treason 1946

Battles and Wars

A really thoughtful interview with Nigel Farage.

In summary, he is modest enough to admit that he really cannot be sure. But his best guess is that Brexit will lose the battle (no Brexit on 31^st October) but will then win the war. i.e. a General Election and then a clean break Brexit will follow before long.

He is probably right. The fundamental point is, I think, this. The British people voted for Brexit in a vote that they were promised would be implemented. You might think that the EU is a corrupt neo-Nazi cabal of old-fashioned German industrialists and French farmers who mistreat their animals according to 18^th century standards. You might think the EU is lovely. Either way, the country has spoken, and the country’s voice should be respected.

In the end, the people will

Carrot, Sticks and Fish

I have noted before that the UK might discourage the EU from extending the Brexit agony by promising to veto all and any EU business it can whilst the UK is still a member. It is hard to see that it is good for the EU have a really stroppy member in its club. That is the stick.

The Telegraph leads with a story today that Hungary might veto any extension.[1] That would do the trick of avoiding another damaging extension.

The cost of an extension is huge. Not only does it cost around £1 billion a month in direct costs; it is causing massive costs in terms of economic uncertainty. And of course the country loses the advantages of cheaper non-EU imports (food, clothes, footware etc) as long as EU-imposed tariffs are keeping those imports out. We all know that, for the plotters, this is not about “no deal”; it is about “no Brexit”. And so Tony Blair et al will have been scheming with the EU for a long extension, or perhaps one extension leading to another, and another and so on until we all give up on ever winning independence. The Surrender Act is designed to give the EU the power to impose as long an extension as they like.

It is not only British humans who suffer. The Dutch have deployed a massive trawler – the FV Margiris[2] – in UK waters. It is said to be some 14 times bigger than the British trawlers which fish sustainably.[3]  This EU trawler now is seeking to extract as much fish as possible, killing many short-beaked dolphins (we like dolphins), bluefin tuna (they are endangered) and sea bass (they are overfished) on the way,  in the next few weeks. Just in case the UK does achieve freedom from the EU on