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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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This brilliant piece has managed to acquire nil reads
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It�s A Race Against Time!
The thing that�s really distressing the good people of Britain � and there are no other sort � is foreigners storming their shores in small boats. It�s worse than ever: five thousand just in the last three months, the slack season. Come the summer there�ll be so many of them, people-smugglers will be chartering cruise liners. �Those intending to disembark at Southampton please make your way to C-Deck. Ensure you have no travel documents with you.�
Everyone agrees, something must be done.
A single gendarme placed strategically on every beach in the Pas de Calais area of France would certainly stop it. Assembling a hundred polyglots and a large rubber dingy on flat featureless terrain is something of a public spectacle. Not possible unfortunately. As President Macron explained to anyone who enquired at the �lys�e Palace, �Monsieur/Madame Prime Minister, do you really think we�re going to solve your migrant crisis by making it ours?�
With one avenue closed and a general election in the offing, the British have been offered a choice of solutions:
The Conservative Plan
As soon as the boat people land � or as soon as is practically possible thereafter � they are taken to an RAF airfield, loaded onto a plane and unloaded in Kigali, the capital of the central African state of Rwanda. Those who were illegal migrants can make the best of it and those who were genuine asylum-seekers have found it in Rwanda. This sounds alarming and cruel but it has one thing going for it. Nobody, but nobody, is going to spend several thousand pounds risking life and limb to be whisked off to Rwanda.
The Labour Plan
Labour Candidate (on doorstep): Stopping the boats? We are going to use counter-terrorism legislation to go after the people smugglers and our intelligence capabilities to track down the people making the boats.
Red Wall Housewife: How many people smugglers have been brought to book so far?
Labour Candidate: Well, none, but that was under the Tories.
Housewife: Could you tell the security services rubber dinghies are available from Exchange & Mart?
Labour Candidate: I want you to listen to my voice. David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak�
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Guess where the British postal services take over:
27 Apr 2024
12:25 Item received at India
27 Apr 2024
15:38 INDIA POST
27 Apr 2024
16:55 Item Booked Sahar P & T Colony S.O
27 Apr 2024
19:17 Item presented to export Customs/Security
27 Apr 2024
19:17 Arrived at location
MUMBAI AIR INDIA POST
27 Apr 2024
19:17 Sent to Export Customs
27 Apr 2024
19:22 Arrived at international sorting center in country of origin
27 Apr 2024
20:08 Dispatched to Destination
MUMBAI AIR INDIA POST
27 Apr 2024
20:08 Departed country of origin
MUMBAI APSO
UNIVERSAL POSTAL UNION
Item Leaving overseas. This item is now leaving the originating country. More information will be available when it arrives in the UK ROYAL MAIL Estimated date of arrival at the post office 10 May 2024 - 14 May 2024, 12 - 16 days remaining The forecast is not 100% certain, and is based on 14 packages delivered in the last 60 days
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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It passed my door! (But didn't stop)
02 May 2024 01:48
Received Receptacle from abroad Royal Mail GB
02 May 2024 12:27
Item Received LANGLEY HWDC, United Kingdom
02 May 2024 12:27
Item Received Heathrow International LC
02 May 2024 14:44
Item has left our International Processing Centre LANGLEY HWDC
02 May 2024 18:28 Item arrived
02 May2024 19:53 Send item to domestic location (Inb)
03 May 2024 02:04 Arrived at. Your item has reached Romford MC. |
More information will be available as it travels through our network
Estimated date of arrival at the post office
06 May 2024 - 12 May 2024, 3 - 9 days remaining
The forecast is not 100% certain, and is based on
19 packages delivered in the last 60 days | |
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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When it did arrive, there was no ring of the bell, no note through the letter box, no email. I found it propped against the front door when I sallied forth to Tesco. If I was the king I would demand my name be taken off Royal Mail.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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The most useful purchase I ever made has finally run out. A box of toothpicks. And yet I have never picked a single tooth.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| I'm like a concert pianist who never gets the Nobel Prize for Music. |
I'm just putting this here to remind myself to use it some time.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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A new wrinkle for me today. I turned on the computer and instead of pressing the start dubry I pressed the turn the computer off dubry.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Prizes You Don't Want To Win No 338
Win a trip to the Paralympic Games
thanks to Visa |
This was from Barclays and joins the one from Virgin I mentioned a bit ago that waxed lyrical about winning a trip to the Olympics without telling you it was a train ride away. Though neither touches the competition to win a year's supply of Branston pickle or writing an essay for Notting Hill Housing Trust that guaranteed entry into the draw for a fifty pound prize.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Something worth knowing which is obvious, but new to me, was in a medium story about strategy.
| He refused to ever deviate from the published price list because he wanted each farmer to be confident that no other farmer would get a better deal from his company. | |
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I beat my record for views'n'claps for a response of mine to this story https://medium.com/picture-palace/why-you-should-never-date-a-filmmaker-b456445a38db
| Mick Harper wrote: | | The glamour of it all though means that putative actors, cinematographers, directors, editors and screenwriters are being churned out by the thousand every year from colleges that purport to teach these things. I suppose the rough ratio is ten graduates to every vacancy. The other nine joined us sensible types who studied classical history and Old Church Slavonic. |
It was good, but not that good.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I have great difficulty getting my point across. Unless it's the other person't fault. You be the judge.
All about a Writer Who Enjoys Righting Wrongs Frances A. Chiu, Ph.D.
https://medium.com/the-challenged/all-about-a-writer-who-enjoys-righting-wrongs-579f63dee9b5
I�m an academic so any academic book that is self-published is the kiss of death. You might as well not publish � according to the powers that be. Even less famous presses can be the kiss of death. I�m happy I have a book from Routledge and an upcoming one from Manchester University press: I was very fortunate to be invited. For my next, I�m aiming for Cambridge or Oxford University Press. A girl can dream, right? |
| Mick wrote: | | You're dreaming of the OUP? Blimey O'Reilly, Frances, you must try to be a teensy bit ambitious. |
I was trying to be friendly and waspish at the same time. I fell between stools, I think, because it led to this rat-a-tat (I'm talking every five minutes)
Frances: I�ve seen worse scholars get published there so why not me?
Mick: And where are they now? Teaching teenagers the same thing every year, that's where.
Frances: Actually, the ones I know are teaching at the most prestigious universities. Obviously, not everyone who publishes with OUP or CUP is going to have an illustrious career� but it�s a nice feather in one�s cap.
Mick: You mean prestigious universities don't require academics to teach teenagers the same thing every year?
Frances: When you�re at a prestigious university, who cares? But that�s beside the point. It�s still great to have a book from one of those presses.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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I think a better way to go is to ignore prestige and just go for the six figure deal arising from a bidding war, auction.
We are still waiting for Lost Voices, The Languages of Britain by Kate Wiles.
How long does it take?
I know it's quality, (not like Wiley, scribbling it down after it came to me on the way to work...) but surely she must have had more than a few ideas or a chapter to get six figures?
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Since there aren't any lost languages of Britain, maybe it's taking her time to find any. I quite miss my spats with that crowd. I think of them as backnumbers but presumably they are still all there, large as life, slapping one another on the back.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| Julia A Kierns wrote: | | The prompt for May 21 — Words: What is the most annoying word to you? I asked Google what the most annoying word in the world was, and the results listed moist, like, whatever, and woke. But what is the most annoying word to me? “Chill!” |
| Mick Harper wrote: | | I hated the word 'trope' so much I posted up a diatribe about it on a website. From that moment on I have been using it compulsively. |
| Julia A Kierns wrote: | | I don’t think I have ever heard the word ‘trope’ before. I think I will have to look it up. Thanks Mick. |
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I'm always being assailed by circulars from Chesterton's, our local upscale estate agents. Imagine my surprise to learn they were founded by G K Chesterton's parents. His first book was The Napoleon of Notting Hill.
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