Observations of the UK and its Earthly neighbours
Our great leader, Honest Boris the Incorrupt and Competent has had quite a week of wriggling. The long-awaited Gray Report on 10 Downing Street parties during the Covid lockdowns was released yesterday. It wasn’t flattering to Johnson, other than as a host. Johnson’s standard explanation (standard for a while, but into overdrive in the last …
Continue reading “An Apology: Work, Party, What’s The Difference?”
In an interview with Bloomberg TV last week Saint Rishi Sunak, the now not-so-shining UK Chancellor (Minister of Finance), said that he couldn’t increase welfare spending to help with the inflation-fuelled cost-of-living crisis because the ancient computer systems won’t let him. A couple of points here: Who’s been in charge of these systems for the …
Continue reading “UK Benefits – Sunak Says Computer Says No”
Here’s democracy: The Democratic Unionist Party, recently elected as the second biggest party in the Northern Ireland Assembly, have just prohibited the same Assembly from doing any work. The Assembly, a local state government, has responsibility for a wide range of things including health, social welfare and the local economy; all things that might need …
Continue reading “Northern Ireland Assembly – Here We Don’t Go Again”
Countries, like people, often disagree. Grown-ups deal with that through negotiation and compromise. Sometimes a bit of petulant shouting is part of the negotiation. Lookatme Truss, UK Foreign Secretary and Self-Publicist has made clear the UK intends to throw its toys out of the pram over the Northern Ireland Protocol, the UK-EU deal her boss …
What a relief there’s so little in the world to worry about. No great events to distract governments. No wars, no famines, no plagues; no cost of living crises; no housing shortages; no climate emergencies. The UK Government today announced their legislative programme (we call it a “Queen’s Speech” here, although she never writes it …
Who cares?
This Scotsman has to vote tomorrow, but they won’t tell me who to vote for. Council elections here use the Single Transferable Vote method. This is the only sensible electoral system. It’s a Proportional Representation system, unlike the laughably awful First Past The Post (FPTP) used in Westminster – rant here – and lets us …
How strange the world has become when this Scotsman finds himself agreeing with Liz Truss, UK Foreign Secretary and Self-Publicist. A Tory of little judgement, akin to Johnson she’s concerned only with herself. In a speech this week she stated Russia should be pushed “out of the whole of Ukraine”, which would imply out of …
Apparently we’re to send refugees to Rwanda. What an excellent fantasy, Johnson. Disturbing for the government to play that card though. It’ll be no surprise there are sharper politicians than David Cameron. He had a problem with Tory backbench ‘Eurosceptics’, a fringe bunch of irrelevants who disguised their xenophobia as a rational dislike not of …
Continue reading “UK Government Finds Xenophobia A Reliable Distraction, Again”
Shiny Rishi seems to have lost some of his buff this week. That your wife as a foreign national holds ‘non-dom’ status and can pay some tax elsewhere is perfectly legal. There’s no laws against having a US green card while in UK office. All in all these show modern international cosmopolitanism refreshingly at odds …