Zombie Duck Government...

The current absurdities going on in parliament at the moment are the result of David Cameron.  Not just David Cameron’s referendum … but also the result of the absurd piece of legislation that is the Fixed Term Parliaments Act 2011.  Worried that his coalition government could collapse at any time Dave decided to rig the system by which general elections were previously called.

He agreed with Nick to take the Prime Minister’s prerogative to call an election away from the government and give it back to parliament ...

...but only if 2/3s of MPs agreed that an election needed to be called.  100 per cent undemocratic.

Previous to this governments could be caused to fall by the Prime Minister declaring any particular motion a “confidence vote” and then declaring that because it had been lost by as much as 1 vote the government was untenable.  Or the PM could just go the Queen and ask for an election and she'd give him one…

However, all this was too democratic for Dave as 50 per cent plus one sounded too much like democracy.  So while MPs are elected by a simple majority and the referendum was won by a simple majority (2 per cent – although 1 vote would theoretically have done) we are now left with the peculiarity that Parliament cannot be dissolved unless two thirds of MPs agree.  This is clearly undemocratic… 

More than that it undermines the constitution entirely.   As the constitution previously worked the Prime Minister was simply the person who could retain the most authority in the house.  As such the Queen made him the head of the executive and gave him the job of appointing other ministers and drafting legislation. 

However, due to the Fixed Term Parliament Act we now have a Prime Minister who is not able to control the legislative agenda in parliament and cannot call a General Election even if he can get a simple majority of MPs to agree with it.

The result is that the Speaker John Bercow is now the most important person not the Prime Minister.  The rotten Fixed Term Parliament Act creates a situation where we have not just a Lame Duck government that can't do much or a Dead Duck Government that can’t pass legislation at all but... 

... Well, actually what we have now is a Zombie Duck Government where the Prime Minister no longer even sets the legislative agenda in the House but Parliament takes over the running of business, votes to take over the order paper, votes to tell the Prime Minister what to do in international negotiations and has cut the Prime Minister so far out of the business of government that he is proroguing them to stop them legislating against him.

At the moment whether or not Jeremy Corbyn is in Downing Street is little more than a question of salary.  We actually have a situation where there are two competing governments within parliament.  Indeed, one might almost argue that we have a situation where Her Majesty’s Opposition is acting as a Government without being in government.  The only things they actually lack are administrative control of the government, government salaries and cars.  This is clearly not how the constitution was ever meant to work.

The Fixed Term Parliaments Act was always nonsense anyway since it only takes 50 per cent plus 1 MPs to vote for legislation to overturn the fact that it takes two thirds of them to throw out the government.  Thus the government can still be thrown out by 50 per cent plus 1 MPs …it just takes longer.

But the Tories don’t really do democracy so there Boris is - hoist with Dave’s petard

Collaborators...

Hello ...if you are wondering why I am trying to steal a whip from Lieutenant Spencer then you have not been paying attention.  

To cut a long story short ... an official document detailing a detailed plot to assassinate the British Prime Minister was thought to have been hidden in a giant knockwurst sausage.   

Naturally when the sausage was opened the document turned out to be a forgery.  This was because I had removed it from the knockwurst sausage by myself for safe keeping.  

However the resistance do not know this and therefore they wish to shoot me as a “collaborator” for destroying their plan…

And if Herr Merkel finds out that the knockwurst sausage is empty she will be very angry with me for not letting her know before that it was a forgery….  

Meanwhile somebody has stolen a whip from our local dominatrix who is reduced to trying to control everybody with a flying helmet and some wet celery.  This is why I am trying to steal a whip from Lieutenant Spencer.

To prevent this situation from escalating I must talk with Comrade Corbyn of the Communist Resistance… wish me luck...

Today I went to trade in my Vauxhall Corsa

Today I went to trade in my Vauxhall Corsa for a Rolls Royce but the wanker in the showroom wouldn't give me the trade in price I asked for.  I said that unless he changes his mind by the end of next month I will be selling my motor at rock bottom price to We Buy Any Car. Com - that'll learn him.

It takes 2 to Brexit

Well, IT has finally happened.   Boris Johnson

has prorogued parliament in an attempt to stop it passing legislation to prevent a no-deal Brexit… but beyond the hullabaloo about whether or not this is constitutional I’ve started to wonder if it really matters…

That’s not to say that the constitutional implications of Johnson’s decision to ask the Queen to scupper the parliamentary timetable aren’t important … but people seem to forget that it’s not just what Boris or Parliament wants that matters… but what the EU wants.

Article 50 was triggered by a vote in parliament that said this should happen by the 30^th of March 2017.  Theresa May wrote to the EU triggering article 50 on the 29^th of March 2017.   This set the two year clock ticking on Brexit negotiations.  

However, by 20^th of March 2019 it was clear that Parliament couldn’t agree to back Mrs May’s deal so an extension was sought.   The European Council agreed to a postponement until the 22^nd of May.   

Again Parliament, the Government and the European Council couldn’t agree so the deadline was postponed again to the 10^th of April.  This agreement required Mrs May to again grovel to the divided European Council in the most humiliating fashion ...

...but after Mrs May had chewed her way through a huge helping of humble pie Brexit was indeed delayed at the mercy of the EU leaders until 31st October 2019.  I expect by now however, their quality of mercy is becoming strained...

Now it could be that Parliament could force the Government to agree to a further extension by finding a way to pass more legislation to thwart Boris Johnson’s plans … but they can’t force the Prime Minister to negotiate a new deal with European Council and – although they say they want to avoid the UK crashing out the EU – it is by no means certain that the European Council will grant a further extension even if Parliament or the Prime Minister asks for it. 

At this point the European Council could well throw in the towel, say they don’t care and let a no-deal Brexit happen anyway.  Everyone seems to be forgetting that there are in fact two parties in the negotiations – the UK and the EU and either can walk away…

Of course one could ask why Parliament voted for a potential no deal Brexit in the first place …? presumably because they thought that Mrs May would be in a better negotiating position but … that didn’t seem to work, did it?  

All the omens are that the European Council will let the country crash out on the 31^st of October.  

At least that’s the case if legislation alone is used to solve the problem.  In my opinion there is no solution that’s workable to extend the deadline yet again that doesn’t involve removing Boris and replacing him with a caretaker administration.  Clearly there is no point in being Prime Minister if you can’t get your legislation through parliament and thus an election is very imminent.  But it is in my view a long shot that the European Council will grant another extension and sit back while the UK has yet another indecisive General Election.  They may well decide that the uncertainty has gone on too long, there’s nothing in it for them and make the decision for us by refusing to negotiate with either Boris, Jeremy, Ken or any other Prime Minister…

…and maybe that would be for the best.  Or maybe not...  We assume that if the Prime Minister asks the European Council for another extension then it will just give them one to avoid looking mean spirited in public.  But what if they don’t…?  The Council is made up of the leaders of all the EU countries and they have to answer to their domestic populations who may well think ...nah!  After all they too don’t have to do anything to avoid a no deal Brexit – it’s the default position.

As to how unconstitutional it all actually is… One remembers people saying Margaret Thatcher’s use of guillotine motions was unconstitutional.   They weren’t – they were just disrespectful and cynical - but soon New Labour took up the same tactics.  Boris isn’t breaking any rules … he’s just bending them like a clown making balloon animals for a children’s party…

Emotional brutality amongst the brutalist campus architecture...

Watched a BBC documentary on the Warwick University rape "banter" case…. Reminded me that I dislike Warwick University.   I knew someone many years ago who went there who was bullied there.  When I went for the interview for Warwick I absolutely hated the place and the few times I’ve visited I’ve disliked it too.  It’s such an ugly concrete blob.  As a stand up visiting such places in later life I’ve continued to dislike campus Universities.  Martin Coyote used to do a gag “I’ve been doing a lot of University gigs recently – I feel like somebody’s dad who’s been sent round to cheer everybody up".  Where I went to University in Leeds there is a campus but it’s very much in and still part of the town and so you don’t feel the same sense of isolation.  Listening to the men ranking women in the order they would like to rape them I wondered if the dystopian sense of isolation that the brutalist concrete architecture seems to me to represent was a factor in any of this.   

The female student who bravely gave her testimony straight to camera in the dystopian setting of a completely empty student bar explaining how these people had all been close personal friends of her’s and her friends…

...how they’d been to each other’s houses at Christmas, been on holidays together and all of that while at the same time the men had been ranking the women as potential rape victims and fantasising about pinning them down…. 

...made me wonder if the claustrophobia/agoraphobia these places engender in me is a factor in any of this...   Only I never really hung out with the cream of University society but even I can’t remember having discussions with my mates about raping women ...

....but that may be because the internet hadn't been invented and I didn’t have many friends.  I spent most of my time hanging out with older people who had left the University but still hung round the student union as like a sort of social flotsam and jetsam.   I’ve heard other people say they were bullied at University and when I look at these campus Universities they increasingly remind me of schools and it always seems that the people who say this went to one of these enclosed campus Universties - sorry "Unis".  A place to herd young people away where they won’t be bothering the grown-ups… 

Everyone came over quite well except the rape centre lady who complained that it was wrong of the University to call the complainant in for an interview the day after the allegations were made yet simultaneously complained about the University later taking two months to reach a decision which seemed a bit moaning for the sake of it.  However, she had a point that people going into these processes don't really know what they're letting themselves in for or how big it will get...  

The University got in trouble for cross-examining the victims and using a press officer to do the investigation but all this would have faded away if – having separated the internet bystanders from the actively involved – they hadn’t then done a U-turn and reduced their suspensions from 10 years to 1 year.   

What’s the point in a 1 year suspension anyway?  What happened to people getting “sent down” like in P G Wodehouse novels…?  Oddly when it came to this issue the rape centre lady didn’t really make her points very well… but I suppose she means well.  Can’t be a nice job…

Call me a graduate from the University of the Bleeding Obvious but it has to be said that there was indeed something very nasty about the whole thing.  Even the bystanders amongst the Warwick 11 leave you with a feeling that all these people were “in on it” whether actively engaged or not.  Part of me wondered were some of these men just using the word “rape” as an inflammatory substitute for “fuck” but that didn't really fly as an excuse for what they did even to my inner Horace Rumpole… it was like a kind of Lord of the Flies meets In Dubious Battle.  Anyway … let us away from this depressing subject…

It is a bank holiday...

... so single malt whisky is reduced in price by 1/3.  This is pure price fixing by the Supermarkets so should be banned.  I mean this stuff is supposed to be 12 years old so it is implausible that it has reduced in price by someone opening a previously unexpected glut of it.  When it was casked Tony Blair was in Downing Street and the financial crash hadn't happened so there can be a change in demand but not supply... Whiskey... defying economics endlessly... I mean why don't they just sell it at a sensible price all year round?  You can set your chronometer by their bank holiday reductions...

I'm not saying I'm a slob...

... But perhaps I could do the washing up just a little bit more often...