Questions Of The Day (Politics)

[Mick Harper]

Are the wildfires concentrating minds at last?

This year's crop in Europe are really getting home. Nobody can pretend the problem is 'containable' any more. It's a question of battening down the hatches and looking anxiously westward for the next anti-cyclone to arrive. But... will it make any difference?

* Europe is warming up at twice the rate of anywhere else.
* Europe is doing more in the pursuit of 'carbon-zero' than anyone else.
* Europe is too weak to influence anyone else.
* Europe is too small to have the least effect on world weather.
* Sorry, guys, you have to reap what you sowed, even if it was a long time ago.

Good luck! You'll be needing it.

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

A fascinating illustration of the total idiocy of western migrancy policies was on offer in Ceuta, the Spanish exclave next to Morocco. On the rumour of a Spanish court ruling, fifty thousand Moroccans swam round the breakwater separating the two countries (Ceuta is considered a part of metropolitan Spain). Fifty-seven of them drowned but we can ignore them.

There wasn't any doubt about who these people were: they were young, fit, male economic migrants, with nary a refugee or an asylum-seeker in sight. So what happened?

First off, Ceuta's eighty thousand inhabitants were somewhat alarmed by having their population almost doubled overnight. Plenty of ructions there. The Spanish mainland was put into further ructions having to deal with the situation. Not to mention the wider EU, for instance Italy suspending Schengen.

Why can't the fifty thousand simply be bussed back to Morocco without further ado? Because there might be a refugee or an asylum-seeker among the fifty thousand. In fact there will be! Asked why all these people simultaneously embarked on what seemed to be a forlorn (and not a little perilous) quest, a migrant expert said:

[Mick Harper]

The Case of The Reflecting Pool Liner

For those uninterested in trivia, a Washington ceremonial water feature was being given a hasty brush-up because of the looming 250th Fourth-of-July and bits of the newly-laid liner were seen to have parted from their moorings. There were two possibilities:

1. It had been an over-hasty brush-up
2. Vandals were at work.

It didn't require Las Vegas to put the odds of the two-horse race as a 100-1 on and a 100-1 against respectively. Nevertheless, first President Trump, then the combined forces of Washingtonian law'n'order, opted for the latter and were soon rounding up some very unusual suspects.

But the inevitable had to happen eventually, this being the land of the separation-of-powers, and one of the miscreants had his day in court. "Er...," said the prosecutor, "we have a document dated from a coupla days after the lining was finished, that it was going pear-shaped all of its own accord." But declined to end proceedings there and then and the court adjourned.

President Trump has not commented but, since he has never gone back on anything, he would have said, "It made the vandals' job easier." The American public are watching where it all will end. 'Sooner rather than later,' according to the latest Las Vegas odds (though only available to its dark web patrons).