Category: Politics

…and thicker

Squeeze the facts to fit the goal – and yes, your bum does look big when you do!

There’s a self-styled voice of reason in the Olde Countrie called the committee for the protection of rural England or CPRE for short. Its latest protest concludes that the major road projects over the past few decades have failed to the extent that they have increased the traffic on the roads affected!

I’m tempted to write ‘d’oh!’ But Backside is otherwise imprisoned today so here’s a more reasonable response.

They cite the Newbury bypass as evidence. Now I remember it from before it was installed – a legendary bottle-neck in Newbury town which held up north/south traffic every day. Of course the CPRE is correct, the traffic was diverted and the town recovered. And the traffic entered rural Emgland’s holy portals. But more traffic? Unlikely. Why suddenly drive around remote villages? Maybe a few white vanmen enjoyed careering along ‘short cuts’ but they’ve always done that.

I must consign the CPRE to its fate as a special interest group we cannot rely on!

 

Cheer up!

The prophets of doom need a cause. The flavour this year is Brexit failing and the downfall of civilisation as we know it. Every hack has an informed source to prove the point; conspiracies, rebellions and incompetence abound in every corner of the Tory camp. Allegedly.

So may I respectfully aver that the Eurolands have no interest in a dead Brexit, whatever their unelected prats may say. In the next two years the wobbly wilderness aka the EU will be struggling to avoid further flounces, bankruptcies and distractions;  never mind scoring a famous own-goal by upsetting its almost-former member, their trusted trading partner.

So come on Ms May, do it on Tuesday and stick it to those self-satisfied Europrats.

 

And the winner is…….

oscar

 

 

 

It’s an annual occasion tailored out of extravagance, excessive emotion, self-congratulation and self-deception; strangely appropriate to the state of the nation itself, if its new President is a bellwether. Perhaps unsurprisingly the man himself is reputed to abhor the whole business, owing to Hollywood’s leftish leanings, or perhaps in reality because he is a luvvie himself but can never win the coveted statue. The winners will speak as if with authority – just like him and spare no tears for anyone, if it makes good copy.