Politics, The Final Frontier (Politics)

[Mick Harper]

I learned yesterday that North Korea is exporting tens of thousands of its citizens to the Russian Far East to work on various projects. They are paid at the lowest Russian pay scales, work eighteen hours a day and get two days off a year.

Both the North Korean and Russian governments benefit enormously from this arrangement so presumably it will continue indefinitely. So what's new, you ask? Me. For some reason I blew a gasket. North Korea has been going for nigh on eighty years, cheek by jowl with South Korea whose citizens are among the wealthiest (and freest) people in the world, and that has been going on for nigh on eighty years as well.

How dare such a situation exist on this our world.

[Mick Harper]

Assumption One: Millions of kids grow up without undue grief
Assumption Two: A few thousand kids come to grief for unknown reasons
Assumption Three: Something big comes along, million of kids benefit
Assumption Four: The something big caused the kids to come to grief
Assumption Five: The something big will be banned

This is all part of the 'Victim Society'. Everything is judged not by how society benefits but how a small section of society suffers. There is not even a pretence at applying the felicific calculus.

Let me know if you ever hear someone on the telly say, "I accept everything you say, it's all very tragic and the cause is clear enough, but I want it to go ahead anyway." Or even, "I accept everything you say, I'd love to ban it, but it's not technically possible so that's an end to it. Sorry."

[Grant]

Funniest example of this at the moment is the campaign to ban under 16s from using social media. Funny because you know that the campaigners spend hours every day on social media.

"But we must save the kiddies!"

[Mick Harper]

I only found out yesterday that passenger planes have to pay 'overflight fees' when they cross other people's territory. Two surprises here: that they have to and that I didn't know.

[Mick Harper]

As you should know by now I have my 'Latin America model' of third world politics. Basically the right drives things modestly forward, the left redistributes the rewards, the economy crashes, there's a government of nasties, eventually a sensible government replaces them, the cycle starts again, and the country remains a basket case.

Bolivia reminds us that in actual Latin America there is a further complication whenever there is a significant indigenous population. They have a certain legitimate entitlement over and above the usual froth. And can make it stick now they have learnt how to organise.

In Bolivia the orthodox Left and the indigenes united to such effect they ruled the country for twenty years under a typically corrupt but charismatic blowhard named Evo Morales. This was no doubt all very necessary but of course they eventually ran the country into the ground to such effect that in October 2025 his party, the Movement for Socialism, could scarcely attract support from anyone and a coupla moderate rightists fought it out for the dubious privilege of getting their country going again.

As is inevitable this meant having to get rid of the more egregiously extravagant 'help the poor' programmes. As is also inevitable this meant anyone who was benefitting from the programmes -- or was just left wing -- hit the streets. They are currently blockading La Paz whose inhabitants are on starvation rations. The government appears powerless to do much about it without turning nasty.

Or being replaced by someone who will be only too pleased to do the honours. Not excluding Evo Morales holed up among his fellow Amerindians in the sticks but thirsting for a return to power in the capital. So, all you sensible types, now you know the rule:

[Wile E. Coyote]

Wiley reckons that the Whitehouse pool is close to being good, we just need to now add-in, the odd alder, birch and willow, tastefully complement this with ferns grasses reeds and mosses, and then as a final touch introduce in some herons and marsh wren.

Wiley could do this for $12.5 million, easy.

It would be beautiful and timeless.

[Mick Harper]

Skinny dipping, that's what it needs.

[Wile E. Coyote]

5 years and three, seems a bit steep, for Peter Murrell. After all he pled guilty and it was his first offence. Ok it must be admiitted the offending did go on along time, primarily it seems as he managed to get away with it, without anyone noticing.....

Still by way of comparison John Stonehouse only got 7, for theft, forgery, fraud, and deception, and that also followed a failed attempt to fake his own death. Stonehouse also pleaded not guilty, insisted on defending himself, and proceeeded to make a unsworn six day long staetement, from the dock, to avoid cross examination.

All things considered Wiley feels that Peter would have received a far better hearing and a more lenient sentence, under English justice......

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

An enduring mystery attaches to an item on the list of Peter Murrell's ill-gotten gains. Two items actually. A pair of Dyson vacuum cleaners.

Some said he liked to use both arms to save time but this was scoffed at. Was it a case of 'his and hers' in the First Family's home? Unlikely. Nicola Sturgeon does not 'do' cleaning. Did they need a spare for the celebrated campervan? There's just not the room.

No. It was because he could.

[Wile E. Coyote]

[Wile E. Coyote]

France 5 England 1.

Vladimir Putin has slammed the French interception and boarding of Russia-linked vessels as "piracy."

This is pretty humbling for Vlad, but its even more humilating for us.....

[Mick Harper]

There has been a change in the relationship.

At the outset of the War, Boris Johnson was Macron's opposite number and, I think it fair to say, it was the UK under him that put in the early hard yards. Way more than France, and streets ahead of the mysteriously absent Germans. Nor did this attitude seem an adjunct to the Special Relationship (with stridently pro-Ukraine Biden at the time, not Trump).

Britain is now, in my estimation, running third. Behind Germany and France but ahead of Trumpish America. That's not too bad all things considered, although Britain has been as nervous about provoking Russia as their fellow nuclear power, America. Atomic Macron, it seems correctly, took no notice of Putin's blood-curdling threats. Germany has got over its temporary fit of the frits and seems positively boisterous.

The truth is though that '1-5' is not so much a pitiful score for us but an indictment of all of us. We were nem con gung-ho for putting the oil shipment sanctions in place, we held all the cards, then... nothing happened. And it still hasn't. Not to speak of. It has been left to an unaided Zelensky to put dents into Russian shipping. All the way back to source.

[Mick Harper]

If American liberals are correct and the large Haitian community in Springfield, Ohio have settled down to being model citizens within a few years of arriving, why have they not managed to do it in Haiti in the two hundred years they've been empowered to do it there?

What, we must ask the liberals, is the differentiating factor in their opinion?