Questions Of The Day (Politics)

[Grant]

Interesting that even Trump is trying to distance himself from Netanyahu.

I wonder if pro-Israel politicians are starting to realise that the evidence from Gaza is going to be so appalling they have to engage in damage limitation.

[Mick Harper]

As I pointed out at the time, the winter fuel payment was never very important. However its cancellation for everybody except those on pension credit (comme moi) became a stick to beat an overly right-wing Labour government. Oh how they suffered! (The Labour government, I mean.)

So now they've caved in the most mealy-mouthed way possible (you should have heard Dianne Abbott!) and now they are going to get a whole bunch of new sticks for (a) caving to pressure (b) being meal-mouthed about it and (c) being financially imprudent.

[Mick Harper]

All this help-the-poor is garbage anyway. They're being helped, that's all you need to know. There's only three things that need paying for by the government right now (and can be)

1. Children in care
2. The prisons
3. People who have been shafted by government-induced scandals.

[Mick Harper]

I am highly conflicted when it comes to this war between The Department of Homeland Security and Harvard University. While I can just about work out that the idea of Jewish students at Harvard being afeared for their lives by pro-Palestinian Harvard students waving placards is a crock, I also think Harvard University is a crock.

Although I am a foreign neutral in this epic battle I suppose I ought to inform the Department of Homeland Security they stand no chance with this one. Harvard has got a lot more money than they have.

[Mick Harper]

I am just about to settle down to a Newsnight discussion on the subject. The two people on the sofa are

1. Sir Richard Dearlove, ex-head MI6 and Chair of the Trustees of London University
2. Gillian Tett of the Financial Times and Head of King's College, Cambridge.

I am on the edge of my sofa wondering whose side they will take.

[Wile E. Coyote]

[Wile E. Coyote]

There appears one difference across the pond, in that the brighter international students go off and create trillion dollar companies whereas ours go into the NHS.

I suppose, in both cases it's a win. Although we could do with a few more of the trillion dollar company types.

The problem appears that in the UK we are also encouraging the, err, less gifted onto social science courses just to get their wonga.

[Mick Harper]

I suppose, looked at purely as sources of hard currency, I am in favour of British universities. However, they should be like casinos in various continental countries: 'entry only by showing a foreign passport'. Apart of course for cleaning staff, bouncers, lecturers and low life of that sort. A few 'shills' would be permitted as well.

I noted from Newsnight graphics that 800,000 inward migration for 2023 was cut in half during 2024 by the simple expedient of banning dependents. As I pointed out previously, there weren't many of us who had brought our mums, wives, children etc in my day. Blimey, that would have cramped our style.

[Wile E. Coyote]

It seems to Wiley that our Academia is the safe flipside of the coin for all these profitable think tanks, this is the stuff the Universities really should be doing, the innovative more original stuff.

[Mick Harper]

Well jiss hold on there, pardner. They're total opposites. One is a career ladder, with a specified job and a regular year-after-year end-product. The other is a collection of creatifs. Universities can spin off 'think tanks' in the form of research institutes but that's about it.

How on earth would you be able to call in some assistant lecturer and say, "Now look, Tomlinson, we want you to come up with something innovative and original."
"You mean like the papers I send off to peer-reviewed journals?"
"No, Tomlinson, that's not what I mean."

I agree that think tanks are grotesquely overrated but that is because there are so many of them. (Which is true of universities as well of course, so you may have a point.)

[Wile E. Coyote]

Trump 4th term.....

The US Service sector is going the way of manufacturing. They are now in a trade deficit on Services as well.

" I don't know who negotiated these rotten deals, but we now have no students at our once great Universties, whole buildings now stand empty."

[Mick Harper]

He set up Trump University, don't forget. So he's done his bit.

[Mick Harper]

I had to nod in agreement when the dude on Newsnight was being sarcastic about Trump's plan 'to bring Apple iPhone manufacture home by June'.

[Wile E. Coyote]

Trump is relocating Trump Turnberry to Chicago just to ensure American greenkeepers will be fully employed.

Scotland weeps.

[Mick Harper]