
STAGGERING?

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John Major: 9/6/16. Brexit risks destabilising the complicated constitutional settlement that underpins stability.
Can someone please ask Johnson why he signed this international agreement, why he then boasted about it, why he commended it to the queen and parliament and fought a general election based on the fact he had this “oven-ready” deal to get Brexit done, and then changed his mind? Had he not read it? Did he read it and not understand it? Had he, like Raab, not read the Belfast Agreement? Did he not understand that either?
He and his ministers say that the EU is being intransigent. What is intransigent about signing an international treaty in good faith and sticking to the terms and conditions of it? Is that not what usually happens with international treaties? Help me out here, I’m a novice. And finally, does he understand the sort of reputation for untrustworthiness he is giving his country?
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Brexit, we were told, promised the possibility of £350 million a week for the NHS. Now, this, of course, would have been hard to achieve given that we only actually sent Brussels around £278 million a week there, thanks to the discount originally negotiated by Thatcher and then again by Blair. But, hey, what’s a wee white lie here and there when your name is De Pfeffel?
Clearly, it also took no regard of all the many and various grants, large and small, that the EU provided under the heading European Structural Development Funding … most obviously Farming Subsidies, Social Fund, University Science Funding, Cohesions Fund, and the Maritime and Fisheries Fund, but also smaller schemes like Erasmus. It also ignored all the savings that we have by sharing so many common tasks and the agencies that provide services.
The Bank of England is saying that Brexit has been costing us around £440 million a week for some time.
So, for those of us who expected to be £350 million a week better off, that’s a short fall of around £790 million a week that works out at £41,080,000,000 a year.
I wonder if that would fit on the side of a bus, or if you’d need a train!
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It appears that I am now very rich because I got this in the mail today:
Juan Nombo <lu0444440@naver.com>
To:tribhu@hotmail.com
Bcc:trispricewilliams@yahoo.com
Fri, 13 May at 10:19
Dear Friend
My Name is Mr.Juan nombo, I am a banker by profession. I hail from
Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, West Africa. My reason for contacting you is
to transfer abandoned sum of $10,200.000 (Ten Million Two Hundred
Thousand Dollars) to your account.
The owner of this fund died in 2003 with his Next Of Kin. I want to
present you to the bank as the Next of Kin/beneficiary of this fund.
Further details of the transaction shall be forwarded to you as soon
as I receive your return mail indicating your interest. You can reply
me with this email:mr.juannombo@gmail.com
Your Full Name…………………
Your Sex…………………………..
Your Age………………………….
Your Country………………………
Your Occupation…………………….
Your Passport /driving license…….
Your Marital Status………………….
Your Personal Mobile Number………………..
Your Personal Fax Number………………..
Best regards,
Mr.Juan Nombo
Unfortunately Munguin has refused to allow me to reply on the basis that if I were that rich I would be even richer than he is… and I wouldn’t want to work for him for next to nothing.
15.
Roses are red
Passports areblue
Please stand over there
In the laughing stock queue.
18.
“Meister Rembrandt,” said Lady Catharina. “Thank you for agreeing to paint me, but there is one thing we have not yet discussed.”
Rembrandt stopped his preparations and looked up inquiringly.
“Yes,” she continued. “I would like you to paint me in the nude.”
The old painter was about to object when she continued: “No, I insist. I will pay 1000 guilders extra. Please do not think to refuse me.”
“Well, this is a very unusual request, so please give me a moment to consult with my wife.”
He returned smiling a few minutes later. “All right, my wife says it’is fine, but you’ll have to let me keep my socks on, because of my bad chest.”
19.
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so. – Douglas Adams.
23.
THEY’RE at a dance club celebrating 20 years of marriage. A guy on the dance floor is break dancing, moon walking, doing back-flips.
She: “See that guy? He once proposed to me and I turned him down.”
He: “Looks like he’s still celebrating!”
24.
Laugh and the world laughs with you
Snore and you sleep alone.
(Anthony Burgess)
28.
Thanks to Brenda, Erik, John, Andi, Graham, John le Plume and Twitter/Facebook.
Thanks to Kay, John, Andi, Dave.
Thanks to Dave and Marcia.
This is Willie Windsor-Wales-Cambridge-Strathearn-Carrickfergus-Saxe-Coburg-Gotha on a visit to Glasgow, laughing while a homeless man gives him a hug.
I reckon, of course, that this scene was staged for the down-market papers (and you don’t get much more down-market than this lot) to make royals look cuddly and nice and show how badly Scotland is doing with homelessness.
Seriously, would Billy’s security detail allowed an unknown homeless man to rush up to his importantness and TOUCH him? Who knows what he might have had in this pocket… a knife, a gun, a bomb?
But, it will be interesting to see if His Princely Dukey Early Baronyness will do as a result of this man’s sad plight.
After all, he has at his disposal many homes, of which this castle in the grounds of Windsor Castle (where Edward VIII signed the abdication papers) is just one example. Maybe the old guy would like to lodge there?
King James Bible
In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. John 14:2.
It seems strange to me that the Tories of Dartford are celebrating the opening of a foodbank. Is it just me, or is it weird to celebrate the need, in a supposedly rich country, for charity to feed people?
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This was apparently a supermarket in Grangemouth yesterday. The person who posted the photograph said that he had been in Romania last week and the shops were full of fresh fruit and veg. That recalled to mind a trip to Romania when I was a very young Factotum, and before Romania joined the EU, where there was almost nothing in the supermarkets. Empty shelf after empty shelf.
There was some bread, some biscuits that reminded me of dog biscuits, some bottled vegetables, carrots, I think, and something in tins that had a symbol of a fish on the label.
How things have changed.
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In view of the dire state of so many people’s finances in these hard times, Hetty proposed on Twitter that, instead of spending billions on a massive party to celebrate the fact that the queen has had the same massively-paying job for 70 years, we find another way to celebrate her good fortune.
For example the government could spend the money on supplying foodbanks with more food, because heaven knows, the need for them is frighteningly high.
It seems obscene to me that, at a time when kids are going hungry and old people have to use their bus passes and sit on public transport all day just to keep warm, that we spend vast amounts on a party.
As a good Christian woman, who has “always tried to live my life according to the teachings of our lord Jesus Christ”, as she tells us every Christmas, I’m sure she, who can afford to have a lavish party every day of her life, would heartily approve of this splendid way to help her poorer people.
What d’ya think?