Nope, mate. You hold all the cards.Well, you and Arlene, of course.Proud of punching above our weight in a lot of things, but clearly not kids’ poverty. Ex-communist countries like the Czech Republic, Estonia and Slovakia are doing better!I see these Britain First people speak really good British.Not sure there are a lot of people who are fit to walk in the footsteps of Mr Mandela. But Trump’s not fit to walk in the footsteps of Atilla the Hun!Oooops. Forgot, huh?What with that and apprenticeships pensioners won’t need a pension to live on……which is just as well, given that you couldn’t live on it……however, fortunately, important people don’t have to.Ring any bells as to which country they are talking about?And that’s serious stuff…Unlike this tube with his kilt on backside fore. What a wally.
Tris, I don’t often take issue with posts on Munguin’s New Republic but it’s sloppy juxtaposing the graph of National Pension with the (unattributed) comment about Sir Robert Devereux’s pension. Firstly, are we comparing like with like? Devereux’s pension, while generous indeed, is a work’s retirement pension. Is the “national” pension in the graph similar or is it the state retirement pension? It certainly isn’t clear from the context. Also, no civil servant is responsible for increasing retirement age. That is a government decision on which civil servants are legally bound to act. Unfortunately, many people do not understand the separate functions of the government and the civil service. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve no great love for what’s normally known as the “senior civil service”, but in the interests of accuracy – and accountability – people have to understand who makes the policies and whose job it is to implement them.
I don’t know if May is vindictive and vengeful. She was, until her elevation to prime ministership, pretty low profile. I’ve read that she’s awkward and demanding and bad tempered and that she has difficulty keeping staff.
The only things that stick out in her period of office at the Home Office (a lot of their functions don’t, as you know, have anything to do with Scotland) are her vans telling foreigners to go home, and what seems to be a pretty obvious attempt to bury the child abuse scandal inquiry, by nobbling it. She first appointed as chair, the sister of one of the people who had been named historically, then when forced to replace her, she appointed the best friend of a wife of another implicated character. Either that was monumental stupidity… not once but incredibly TWICE, or she thinks that we are all fools that can be duped very easily. Her third attempt was not a British establishment figure (although, I think, the woman had connections to it). She was a New Zealander. She gave up becasue of the restrictions put on her. It’s now fallen of even the middle pages of the newspapers and can probably be left to die.
So it seems that when May is determined to do something, she does it.
I daresay she will extract revenge on Foster., if she’s around for long enough. Foster made her look incredibly stupid last week in front of the world’s press. If I were Arlene I’d make sure I didn’t go hill walking and get myself some burly orangemen around the house.
I, personally, look forward to my future as apprentice fruit-picker class II. All that fresh air, all the free rainwater I can drink, and the weekly after work turnip barbecue. Tory heaven.
The smart move Conan would be to purchase shares in the Deep Heat factory. Getting in on the ground floor providing necessary services to the workers instead of doing any of the actual work seems like the way to go.
A specially modified and equipped ice cream van going round the farms during harvest selling anti inflamatories, support bandages and of course Deep Heat would clean up. An on board defibrillator linked to a coin meter would be standard equipment.
And don’t forget pay day loans. We could have their pension off em before they even collect it.
I haven’t lived in Tory Britain all these years without learning a few tricks me, no sir.
Ha!Ha! good old George, he was always good for laughing at when not being a dangerous right wing warmonger.
I think the French equivelant of that version of myself could more accurately be described as: Un dos poignardant, tory opportuniste vie faible, I think erm, or something like that, but you no doubt get my drift.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’ve no great love for what’s normally known as the “senior civil service”, but in the interests of accuracy – and accountability – people have to understand who makes the policies and whose job it is to implement them.”
Wee idiots that pick up a wage to implement policies that are just idiotic, are as evil as their political masters. I don’ t want to belabour the point, but Germans during WW2 did just that. Frankly, it was morally unacceptable then as it is now. Pretending that you are just doing what you do is morally wrong and unacceptable.
The senior civil service is utterly corrupt, in my opinion.
Really, Douglas – “Wee idiots that pick up a wage to implement policies that are just idiotic, are as evil as their political masters.” OK, by logical extension, you’ll have to include all the workers in the shipyards and aircraft industries, indeed everyone in the numerous occupations that provide and supply goods and services that are used by military forces, here and abroad – those goods and services are used to implement not only war but “evil” policies throughout the world. While we’re at it, let’s include all the members of the armed forces, including our own home-grown “heroes”: they’re only the tools who are used (often willingly) to implement government policy. Why not include the medical staff who treat (repair?) wounded service personnel – in many cases, they’re only returning them to a serviceable state so they can be used again. I also think that your equating the actions of civil servants (and that would have to include all grades) with WW2 Nazis and the Nürmberg defence (I was only following orders) is specious – they are not equivalent. Your opinion that the senior civil service is utterly corrupt may be correct, but I don’t agree and, in any case, it is what it is, an opinion. Corruption, which you do not specify, needs to be backed up with evidence. Finally, (sigh of relief all round), if you believe that policies are idiotic but, more importantly, immoral, do you withhold your taxes, take direct action of some sort, refuse to work in any capacity which serves the state in any way whatsoever? If you don’t, it can be argued that you are complicit, too – I’d have to say I’d be gobsmacked!
Agreed but ….Is this why many anti -EUers consider diktats from the EU Commission (=civil servants ?) are all bad and have nothing to do with the freely elected (including the UK) decision making MEPs (who, according to anti-EUers are unelected?), who these same anti-EUers consider also unelected – although maybe they confuse unelected Commission personnel with elected MEPs. I am sure you are as confused as I am with regard to the foregoing. God help us all that these people have a vote.
Well… yes, I am confused. As I have always been when people have talked about all these unelected people making decisions for us in Brussels.
We’d never have that here, would we.
Well apart from royals and lords and fptp and privy councils and special orders and all sorts of stuff… not to mention Henry VIII!
Civil Servants do make a lot of the decisions, as they should… after all, the politicians at the head of these departments aren’t necessarily qualified to make them.
Sometimes of course they are. Ken Clarke QC was qualifies to be Lord Chancellor. Mickey Gove, on the other hand, was not.
So presumably he took advice from legal experts who were civil servants in his department… then again, maybe he didn’t.
Oh well, as it’s all going to tumble down I’m not going to waste much time on it.
My comparison was with 1930’s bureaucrats in Germany. It is not difficult for Civil Servants to do the work of their masters, no matter how wrong it might be. It is their job, after all. Other folk have a greater distance, though equally complicit. I do indeed pay my taxes. I would be gobsmacked, and exceedingly grateful, if you could tell me how to avoid them!
You could start a movement, somewhat like those folks in Boston all these years ago!
Douglas, if I could tell you how to avoid your taxes, I suspect you wouldn’t be able to afford my fees for doing so. Actually, come to think of it, it’s really very simple – firstly, you need to have millions; secondly, you make large donations to the Tory party; thirdly, your new chums in said party tell you how to avoid paying taxes. I believe that’s how it works currently, anyway. Good point about the Boston folks. They were the ones whose war cry was, “No taxation without representation”. It would be nice if we could have no taxation without honest representation but I think there’d be a better chance of a successful Brexit – and we all know how successful that’s going to be.
Blasphemy! Tea can be enjoyed in so many ways, from Japanese chanoyu to a teabag in a cup, but the best tea for me (which I cannot enjoy much now) was such: throw loose tea and sugar into a mess tin, pour in a can of condensed milk and top up with water. Boil. Bliss.
Happy Xmas, turkey’s. Won’t be long now.
The EU are onto perfidious Albion and they will ensure that phase 1 is watertight before phase 2 is started. They will demand a binding contract as the price of moving on to stage 2. I think the idea of nothing being agreed until all is agreed will apply to each phase and NOT as David Davis thinks for all the phases as a whole.
DD et al will be spitting turkeys in the new year.
2018 looks to be fun fun fun.
When the Maybot arrived in the HoC yesterday, she was roundly praised on all sides for having done a splendid job.
As the job was NOT splendid by any stretch of the imagination, and May was humiliated by her junior partner in the coalition of utter chaos over which she presides, I can only imagine that the whips had been round encouraging the likes of Ken Clarke and Wee Govey, Michael Dodds and Anna Soubrey to sing from the same hymn sheet. No easy task.
And one which can’t possibly last for any more than a few days.
May I ask? Elsewhere on this internet thingy, someone describes themselves as Dr trispw. Are you one and the same person or what? Frankly, given your modesty hereabouts, I doubt you’d do that.
Just so’s you know, I respect trispw, and am not so impressed with Dr trispw.
In your memorable exchanges with Councillor Terry Kelly you mentioned your title to make a point. What a man. All that was bad about SLab tied up into one ugly package.
What I like about “Taking are country back” is that the printers probably saw the error but opted not to tell them. They should have added a tiny pirate in the background, “Taking rrrr country back”.
MUNGUIN'S NEW REPUBLIC 
Tris, I don’t often take issue with posts on Munguin’s New Republic but it’s sloppy juxtaposing the graph of National Pension with the (unattributed) comment about Sir Robert Devereux’s pension. Firstly, are we comparing like with like? Devereux’s pension, while generous indeed, is a work’s retirement pension. Is the “national” pension in the graph similar or is it the state retirement pension? It certainly isn’t clear from the context. Also, no civil servant is responsible for increasing retirement age. That is a government decision on which civil servants are legally bound to act. Unfortunately, many people do not understand the separate functions of the government and the civil service. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve no great love for what’s normally known as the “senior civil service”, but in the interests of accuracy – and accountability – people have to understand who makes the policies and whose job it is to implement them.
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Point taken.
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A quite entertaining cartoon of May and Foster.
Reminded me of a German Newspaper article doing psychological profiles of May and Trump.
It described May as vindictive and vengeful. If that assessment was correct, Foster had better watch out.
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I don’t know if May is vindictive and vengeful. She was, until her elevation to prime ministership, pretty low profile. I’ve read that she’s awkward and demanding and bad tempered and that she has difficulty keeping staff.
The only things that stick out in her period of office at the Home Office (a lot of their functions don’t, as you know, have anything to do with Scotland) are her vans telling foreigners to go home, and what seems to be a pretty obvious attempt to bury the child abuse scandal inquiry, by nobbling it. She first appointed as chair, the sister of one of the people who had been named historically, then when forced to replace her, she appointed the best friend of a wife of another implicated character. Either that was monumental stupidity… not once but incredibly TWICE, or she thinks that we are all fools that can be duped very easily. Her third attempt was not a British establishment figure (although, I think, the woman had connections to it). She was a New Zealander. She gave up becasue of the restrictions put on her. It’s now fallen of even the middle pages of the newspapers and can probably be left to die.
So it seems that when May is determined to do something, she does it.
I daresay she will extract revenge on Foster., if she’s around for long enough. Foster made her look incredibly stupid last week in front of the world’s press. If I were Arlene I’d make sure I didn’t go hill walking and get myself some burly orangemen around the house.
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I saw May on TV last night coming out of a church. So, I suppose “vindictive and vengeful” would fit into that profile just dandy.
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I hope she was confessing.
It’s a bloody wonder, given the sheer wickedness she and her government are responsible for, that the church didn’t collapse on her.
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I’d say she’s very much at home with like-minded familiars.
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I, personally, look forward to my future as apprentice fruit-picker class II. All that fresh air, all the free rainwater I can drink, and the weekly after work turnip barbecue. Tory heaven.
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You make it sound such fun. Maybe you’ll have Niko for company?
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With all his weight training? Nah, he’ll be an apprentice Tattie Howker class I.
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I’m jealous. I wanted to be that… but they said I wasn’t bright enough. Just becasue on the unpaid trial I howked some stones. Pffffff! Really!
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The smart move Conan would be to purchase shares in the Deep Heat factory. Getting in on the ground floor providing necessary services to the workers instead of doing any of the actual work seems like the way to go.
A specially modified and equipped ice cream van going round the farms during harvest selling anti inflamatories, support bandages and of course Deep Heat would clean up. An on board defibrillator linked to a coin meter would be standard equipment.
And don’t forget pay day loans. We could have their pension off em before they even collect it.
I haven’t lived in Tory Britain all these years without learning a few tricks me, no sir.
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You, sir, are what George W Bush would have called an entrepreneur, a word for which, you will remember, he said the French had no equivalent.
Mon dieu!
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Ha!Ha! good old George, he was always good for laughing at when not being a dangerous right wing warmonger.
I think the French equivelant of that version of myself could more accurately be described as: Un dos poignardant, tory opportuniste vie faible, I think erm, or something like that, but you no doubt get my drift.
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LOL.
You should take up diplomatic translations.
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Andimac, you leave me gobsmacked!
“Don’t get me wrong, I’ve no great love for what’s normally known as the “senior civil service”, but in the interests of accuracy – and accountability – people have to understand who makes the policies and whose job it is to implement them.”
Wee idiots that pick up a wage to implement policies that are just idiotic, are as evil as their political masters. I don’ t want to belabour the point, but Germans during WW2 did just that. Frankly, it was morally unacceptable then as it is now. Pretending that you are just doing what you do is morally wrong and unacceptable.
The senior civil service is utterly corrupt, in my opinion.
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Really, Douglas – “Wee idiots that pick up a wage to implement policies that are just idiotic, are as evil as their political masters.” OK, by logical extension, you’ll have to include all the workers in the shipyards and aircraft industries, indeed everyone in the numerous occupations that provide and supply goods and services that are used by military forces, here and abroad – those goods and services are used to implement not only war but “evil” policies throughout the world. While we’re at it, let’s include all the members of the armed forces, including our own home-grown “heroes”: they’re only the tools who are used (often willingly) to implement government policy. Why not include the medical staff who treat (repair?) wounded service personnel – in many cases, they’re only returning them to a serviceable state so they can be used again. I also think that your equating the actions of civil servants (and that would have to include all grades) with WW2 Nazis and the Nürmberg defence (I was only following orders) is specious – they are not equivalent. Your opinion that the senior civil service is utterly corrupt may be correct, but I don’t agree and, in any case, it is what it is, an opinion. Corruption, which you do not specify, needs to be backed up with evidence. Finally, (sigh of relief all round), if you believe that policies are idiotic but, more importantly, immoral, do you withhold your taxes, take direct action of some sort, refuse to work in any capacity which serves the state in any way whatsoever? If you don’t, it can be argued that you are complicit, too – I’d have to say I’d be gobsmacked!
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Let’s not make this a big thing…
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Agreed but ….Is this why many anti -EUers consider diktats from the EU Commission (=civil servants ?) are all bad and have nothing to do with the freely elected (including the UK) decision making MEPs (who, according to anti-EUers are unelected?), who these same anti-EUers consider also unelected – although maybe they confuse unelected Commission personnel with elected MEPs. I am sure you are as confused as I am with regard to the foregoing. God help us all that these people have a vote.
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Well… yes, I am confused. As I have always been when people have talked about all these unelected people making decisions for us in Brussels.
We’d never have that here, would we.
Well apart from royals and lords and fptp and privy councils and special orders and all sorts of stuff… not to mention Henry VIII!
Civil Servants do make a lot of the decisions, as they should… after all, the politicians at the head of these departments aren’t necessarily qualified to make them.
Sometimes of course they are. Ken Clarke QC was qualifies to be Lord Chancellor. Mickey Gove, on the other hand, was not.
So presumably he took advice from legal experts who were civil servants in his department… then again, maybe he didn’t.
Oh well, as it’s all going to tumble down I’m not going to waste much time on it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
My comparison was with 1930’s bureaucrats in Germany. It is not difficult for Civil Servants to do the work of their masters, no matter how wrong it might be. It is their job, after all. Other folk have a greater distance, though equally complicit. I do indeed pay my taxes. I would be gobsmacked, and exceedingly grateful, if you could tell me how to avoid them!
You could start a movement, somewhat like those folks in Boston all these years ago!
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Douglas, if I could tell you how to avoid your taxes, I suspect you wouldn’t be able to afford my fees for doing so. Actually, come to think of it, it’s really very simple – firstly, you need to have millions; secondly, you make large donations to the Tory party; thirdly, your new chums in said party tell you how to avoid paying taxes. I believe that’s how it works currently, anyway. Good point about the Boston folks. They were the ones whose war cry was, “No taxation without representation”. It would be nice if we could have no taxation without honest representation but I think there’d be a better chance of a successful Brexit – and we all know how successful that’s going to be.
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For my money you can tip all the tea you want into the sea. It’s horrible stuff.
Give me a coffee any say.
Tax evasion handbook written above.
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Blasphemy! Tea can be enjoyed in so many ways, from Japanese chanoyu to a teabag in a cup, but the best tea for me (which I cannot enjoy much now) was such: throw loose tea and sugar into a mess tin, pour in a can of condensed milk and top up with water. Boil. Bliss.
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Ewww.
Still, as they say where BleP lives “A chacun son goût!”
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The bravest I ever got about not paying tax was to stop paying for the BBC.
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Oh I don’;t doubt that it is, Douglas. I think Andi was just pointing out that my junxtapositioning was a little unfair.
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I saw May on TV last night coming out of a church, so “vindictive” and “vengeful” would fit into that profile nicely.
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I like the cut of that Simon Coveney’s jib.
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Me too.
When you think who the UK’s foreign minister is….
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I actually had to think….
My Eton year book came in handy.
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It would. Many times, I imagine.
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Happy Xmas, turkey’s. Won’t be long now.
The EU are onto perfidious Albion and they will ensure that phase 1 is watertight before phase 2 is started. They will demand a binding contract as the price of moving on to stage 2. I think the idea of nothing being agreed until all is agreed will apply to each phase and NOT as David Davis thinks for all the phases as a whole.
DD et al will be spitting turkeys in the new year.
2018 looks to be fun fun fun.
LikeLiked by 1 person
When the Maybot arrived in the HoC yesterday, she was roundly praised on all sides for having done a splendid job.
As the job was NOT splendid by any stretch of the imagination, and May was humiliated by her junior partner in the coalition of utter chaos over which she presides, I can only imagine that the whips had been round encouraging the likes of Ken Clarke and Wee Govey, Michael Dodds and Anna Soubrey to sing from the same hymn sheet. No easy task.
And one which can’t possibly last for any more than a few days.
That kind of easy
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Very clever, combining two current “obsessions” into one.
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Can’t see the photo. Bloody WordPress.
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And, as if by magic, as soon as I posted I couldn’t see it…
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More water, Conan… more water.
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Which photo Conan?
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Turkey cartoon.
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God bless the Republic of Ireland. [Testing my new avatar thingy]
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May I ask? Elsewhere on this internet thingy, someone describes themselves as Dr trispw. Are you one and the same person or what? Frankly, given your modesty hereabouts, I doubt you’d do that.
Just so’s you know, I respect trispw, and am not so impressed with Dr trispw.
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It is I.
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Actually where is it, Douglas, because I don’t actually think I do…
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In your memorable exchanges with Councillor Terry Kelly you mentioned your title to make a point. What a man. All that was bad about SLab tied up into one ugly package.
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Very unpleasant.
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What I like about “Taking are country back” is that the printers probably saw the error but opted not to tell them. They should have added a tiny pirate in the background, “Taking rrrr country back”.
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Captain Pugwash!
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I wonder if Richard Branson dresses as a yodelling Bavarian dairy farmer whenever he travels by ICE train.
Or more pertinently, does he black up à la Al Jolson when meeting politicians like Barack Ok Bama or Morgan Tsvangirai?
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Bloody autocorrect.
“Barack Obama”
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