OneGuyFromBarlick

Nicola Sturgeon on hearing the result of the EU summit in Salzburg: `Taking the UK off the "Brexit cliff edge" without an agreement would be the most irresponsible thing any PM has done in a very, very long time'.

!!

Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt has said -

" It is time for people in Europe to step back from the abyss of 'no deal' ".

Reminds me of a famous newspaper headline - 'Fog in the Channel - Europe cut off'.

For Europe substitute UK.

Quite right, Tripps, the same old British swagger. Only the pink bits of the globe are of any significance.

I picked up a new phrase recently from no less than Francis Bacon. Four hundred years ago he was, like us now, living in a time when truth was being threatened. He wrote that what he saw around him was `all masks and mummery'. That's a good description of what we are seeing now.

The UK is in Europe and I assume will always be in Europe. The UK is NOT leaving Europe. Europe is a continent.

But perhaps Hunt was using it in the correct sense: we all need to step back from the abyss of `no deal'.
But don't expect Hunt to know geography - he only studied studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Magdalen College, Oxford, and graduated with a first class honours Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree. He probably doesn't know his abyss from his crevasse either!

From Our Boys - The Story of a Paratrooper by Helen Parr.

Occasionally, it even provided existential insight:
Gurkha Nigel Price speaks of Tumbledown as a revelation:

It was as if I saw through — in one instant — the whole sham of civilisation and its artificial rank structures. Since then it’s been difficult to be awed by authority. You realise we are all muddling along together, pretending. Hiding behind our ranks and status, all of it a mirage.

I think I realised that a long time ago David.
Hunt.... a dangerous chancer with only one thing in mind, the leadership.

Tripps wrote: ↑23 Sep 2018, 17:14 It was as if I saw through — in one instant — the whole sham of civilisation and its artificial rank structures. ... You realise we are all muddling along together, pretending ... all of it a mirage.

Just about sums it up!
Is MP short for the Rt. Hon. Muddler of Parliament?

"When the lunatic is met with ideas incompatible with his delusion he distorts facts , , , to preserve the inner consistency of his delusions. E. Franklin Frazier, 1927."

This quote from Bob's Bits today hits the nail on the head with some of the statements we have been hearing about Brexit.

And now, South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham:

“Somebody has got to explain this to Trump, so I guess that’ll be my job.”


Perhaps he could have a word with me when he's done. . .

Current Irish Champion jockey (elect) Donacha O'Brien
- on being asked what are his main qualities that make hm so good -

"Having the Champion trainer Aidan O'Brien for my father."

It's been a busy week for me and it's not over yet. Quote from Stanley during our chinwag on Tuesday rang a bell with me, as did much he said.

"I'm solitary, but not lonely".

No time to be lonely....... too bloody busy!

I listened to Peter Hennessy and John Sargeant on the BH programme this morning talking about Brexit; they're always worth listening to. When talking about the difference in approach shown by the French and the British one of them related the following:
A British man said to a French man `Don't you agree that a monarchy works well in practice?'. The French man replied `Yes, it works well in practice....but not in theory'.

Give the French their due, they found a solution! Mind you, that turned out to be just as problematic.
Best illustration of the difference between attitudes in France and England I ever heard was the story about two motorists narrowly avoiding a collision at a road junction. The English argued with each other over who was to blame while the French congratulated each other on their driving skills.

...and the Italians went on their way without comment.

Man is a tool-using animal. Without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all.

Thomas Carlyle

"I think something's happening. Something's changing, and it'll change back again. I don't think it's a hoax, I think there's probably a difference. But I don't know that it's man-made. I will say this. I don't want to give trillions and trillions of dollars. I don't want to lose millions and millions of jobs. I don't want to be put at a disadvantage."

President Trump on CNN last night......

The FT on Hammond's Budget speech: "..littered with jokes which the Chancellor delivered with all the aplomb of a heavily sedated undertaker"...."even parliamentary privilege should be no defence for such punchlines."

Out of boredom I read the Telegraph yesterday in hospital. Similar comments in there. (And a savage pen portrait of John McDonnell which I thought biased and unfair.)

So that's why your blood sodium went awry and you got out of hospital quickly!