Paul,

 with reference to your:
"

MM, in LiR's video I don't see anyone oppressing physically John Bercow...
Did they in your video? Or did I miss something?"

 posted on Wednesday September 11th.

There was NO physical oppression at all . It was all about  a few MP's standing on each side of the Speakers Chair just to pretend stopping him leaving.

More than likely just a symbolical gesture.


Dirk

It was a "symbolic gesture". "Sitting on the Speaker" is what we occasionally do here. It is part of the British Constitution, a tradition dating back to 1629 when Charles I prorogued Parliament for eleven years. The MPs back then tried to stop the Speaker - I think it was Henry Pelham - from leaving his seat and processing to the House of Lords. I believe MM mentioned this upthread somewhere, but I can't find his post. You can read about what happened on Monday, including the historical precedent, here:


Sitting on the the Speaker


It was Labour MP, Lloyd Russell-Moyle, who actually tried to hurl himself across John Bercow's lap to pin him down - the other MPs were egging him on. Poor old Caroline Lucas, the very sensible and nice Green lady, got caught up in the kerfuffel. I don't think she was trying to squash the Speaker.

Russell-Moyle loves a bit of Parliamentary theatre: he once grabbed the Mace and tried to run off with it, but I don't think he clobbered anyone with this important symbol of Her Majesty's Authority. These days, though, it might be safer to remove the Mace - Health and Safety and all that.

John Bercow sent Russell-Moyle to the Naughty Pillar for that little stunt:

I have found MM's post - or the relevant bit of it. The Speaker who was sat upon in 1629 was indeed John Finch, not Henry Pelham as I said above. Pelham was a Speaker, but not in 1629.

Bercow actually got off quite lightly: he did not experience the complete indignity to which his honourable predecessor had been subjected. Finch was actually pinned down by "at least five" unruly MPs, and for some time too, as MM points out: the House passed several motions while the wretched man was maintained in his indecorous, semi-recumbent posture.

MM wrote:

In 1629 Charles I had grown tired of a parliament which would not support his disastrous and expensive foreign policy errors and ordered its dissolution. The MPs were so incensed when speaker John Finch announced the closure of the session, they promptly left their seats and sat on him. Holding him in the chair meant that he could not rise from his seat, and thus close the house. While he writhed under at least five members, the MPs passed a series of motions condemning the king’s policies. The closure of parliament in 1629 led to ten years of extra-parliamentary rule in England and Wales – known variously as Charles I’s Personal Rule or the 11 Years’ Tyranny.

Thank you very much Dirk and Temperance for the enlightenment. Now I fully understand MM's youtube.

Kind regards to both from Paul.

I don't know if the humour will appeal to others but on 29th August the satire site News Thump did a short feature about Boris Johnson commissioning George R R Martin (who wrote the source books for the "Game of Thrones" TV show).  Its all completely made up of course but I found it funny though I don't know if it will tickle other folks' funny bones (my humour doesn't always seem to do so).  I can't copy it over so a few high (or low depending on your point of view) lights "Boris Johnson is getting the world's most successful living fantasy author to write the fictional nonsense the Queen will have to read out to Parliament outlining how the new PM will make Britain a better place"

'  "Martin is an incredible writer" said Boris. ......"All that stuff about dead benefits scroungers rising up....and killing hard-working aristocracy.  It's all complete fiction and yet it somehow rings true"......

"Haha, you couldn't make this cr*p up, could you?  Well, I mean you could and he has".  '

And then about the Queen having to read it out to Parliament.  Paraphrasing the Queen says people know she doesn't actually write the stuff she reads.  Then "Mind you, if the lies are particularly toxic I'm not afraid to step in and be a disruptive force for the good of my nation.

"Yeah that's right, I can f*ck sh*t up when I want to - for example, I could wear a hat and coat that don't match"

Then again, there have been some things written on satire sites which have by some parties been interpreted as being the truth.

I'll admit I have tended to watch the main features of the news recently because it has all been so depressing.  I had an email today from Change.org (I think I originally signed something about saving (or attempting so to do) the Amazon rain forest) but I received a link today to something about the NHS possibly being included in trade deals with the USA (post-Brexit?).  I'm not sure I want that.  Can one really put a price on health.  I found this Sky clip which I had missed previously.  

LiR,

Re yours, "... Can one really put a price on health. ..."

My counter question is, ask the US insurance companies that?

Nielsen wrote:

LiR,

Re yours, "... Can one really put a price on health. ..."

My counter question is, ask the US insurance companies that?

Nielsen,

in Switzerland it is also private insurance if you want to have the same health care as over here in the EU.
https://transferwise.com/gb/blog/health-insurance-switzerland
And with that franchise system and to pay for the staying in hospital, I guess people go only to the doctor, when they are really very ill? A bit the US system?
And LiR there seems to be a price on health and it can differ from a social redistributing system to an individual insurance system.

Kind regards from Paul.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

I'll admit I have tended to watch the main features of the news recently because it has all been so depressing.  I had an email today from Change.org (I think I originally signed something about saving (or attempting so to do) the Amazon rain forest) but I received a link today to something about the NHS possibly being included in trade deals with the USA (post-Brexit?).  I'm not sure I want that.  

Lady,

"the news recently because it has all been so depressing."

And for me now even more depressing...
A smuggling route between Ireland and N.I.? And the DUP, will they continue to weigh on the negociations? No deal without the DUP? I think nobody will allow a smugling route?

I hope I have you with my depression not pushed deeper in the pit than I am already in.

Kind regards from Paul.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

Bo-Jo had had something to do with the UK obtaining the 2012 Olympics because he spoke in Greek to some of the people who had deciding power.  I can't remember all that well.  I know Bo-Jo did study the classics

Whether apocryphal or not, the story does touch on an age-old assumption that students of ancient Greek should be able to converse with modern day Greeks. It’s become something almost of a cliché that a Classics student should arrive in Greece only to find that they are cannot understand nor are they understood by the locals. There’s an episode in Louis de Bernières’s 1996 novel Captain Corelli’s Mandolin in which a British agent of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) is parachuted into a remote part of the country in the 1940s and ends up sounding to the locals like someone speaking the Greek equivalent of Chaucerian English. Needless to say this provides a comic relief device for the author.

This is perhaps itself apocryphal as de Bernières is believed to have taken inspiration from the fact that the SOE did indeed recruit former Classics and even Archaeology students for its Greek operations. Among these were Montague Woodhouse who had studied Classics at Oxford, Thomas Dunbabin a Tasmanian who had studied Classical Archaeology at Sydney and Oxford, John Pendlebury an archaeologist who had studied at Pembroke College, Cambridge and others such as Patrick Leigh Fermor and New Zealander Dudley ‘Kiwi’ Perkins who had studied ancient Greek at school. In all these cases, however, it was their ability in modern Greek which clinched it for them are far as SOE was concerned. Most of them had spent extensive periods in the 1930s in Greece blissfully unaware that their linguistic prowess would soon be called upon for more dangerous enterprise. Pendlebury and Perkins, for example, would lose their lives during the war.

One wonders from where exactly the story of classics scholars going to Greece expecting to understand modern Greek originates. One possibility would be the triumvirate of courtiers who accompanied the Bavarian prince Otto von Wittelsbach after he was elected king of Greece in the 1830s.  All 3 had received a classical education with one of them, Georg Ludwig von Maurer, being a high-flying academic at the University of Munich. But even here any evidence for ancient Greek/ modern Greek misapprehension is sketchy.

10 years before that, during the struggle for Greek independence, there is of course the character of Lord Byron. Surely the dilletante British romantic poet must fall into the aforementioned category. But no again - Byron actually applied himself to an intensive course in contemporary Greek while residing in Athens in 1811. If anything, his understanding of modern Greek was better than his ancient Greek as his studies of the latter at Harrow and Cambridge had been somewhat desultory by all accounts.
 
As someone who is proficient neither in modern Greek nor in classical Greek I’d be fascinated to know just how different they are from one another. De Bernières likened it to someone today speaking Chaucerian English but others, however, have suggested that it could even be as different from modern Greek as the Old English of Beowulf is from modern English. Does anyone know?

I had typed an answer to Vizzer but my words seem to have disappeared.  I said that Vizzer had made an interesting comment and that there would of course be the myriad various accents of contemporary Greek to consider also.  Unfortunately I can't answer the query about how much antique Greek differs from modern Greek.

Hi Vizzer - it depends on which classical Greek you're referring to, I suppose. Koine is regarded as "classical" these days, but most moderately educated modern Greeks who can converse outside their own dialect would have little difficulty understanding it - some words are very different but the grammar had already been "dumbed down" from previous versions by the time Koine came about, probably because at that point Greeks had to simultaneously make themselves understood not only amongst themselves but also with many others who had appropriated their language to a large extent and who even lived among them as their superiors in many places, especially Romans who - much as happened in English much later for similar reasons - liked to absorb useful terminology and nuanced expression from conquered languages but made them fit their own grammatical constructs and rules. And as with the British Empire later too, in many instances their presence fostered a form of local lingua franca based on a compromise between indigenous dialects, a prerequisite to effective administration in such regions. Koine seems to have grown in popularity first in Anatolia and then spread westwards to the Greek heartland, and along the way it settled into becoming the only Greek worth speaking in the entire Hellenic world (and would become the official language of the Eastern Roman empire for another millennium even as more modern dialects continued to evolve into what is spoken in the region now).

However if one goes back to Homer's stuff then the "Beowulf English" analogy definitely applies. Not only is the vocabulary radically different but grammar and syntax are almost completely alien to all dialects of Greek spoken today.

Those non-Greeks who traditionally learnt "classical Greek" as an academic discipline have tended to gravitate towards Homeric though those doing it as an extension of theological studies tend more to Koine, and the result has been a mish-mash of the two with its own rules that might be euphemistically referred to as "Academic Greek" if one is being kind. The result of this is that many highly educated and linguistically eloquent speakers of "classical" Greek not only find that they are unintelligible to modern Greeks but also that they speak a form of the lingo equally unintelligible to many indigenous Greek classical language scholars too who would have approached learning the discipline from an angle based more on contemporary use and a deeper understanding of etymology and history of their native tongue. The biggest linguistic crime these people tend to commit is adopting contradictory grammatical rules within the one framework as well as hopping between archaic and semi-archaic vocabulary without realising it.

I have heard Johnson attempt Greek and he does that particularly English academic thing - limits himself to easy to remember snippets, delivered with a posh English rather than any attempt at a Greek accent, and which still contain all the contradictions mentioned above thereby creating a challenge to intelligibility while still sounding to the layman as possibly having made sense.

Much as he speaks English, in other words.

I've had a look at Bo-Jo's Wikipedia entry and can't see anything about him being in the team that managed to get the 2012 Olympics for Britain. Wikipedia isn't always 100% correct so that doesn't mean he didn't.  I read something about him causing offence to the Chinese when he attended the Beijing Olympics - something to do with the way he dressed.  With my working (sort of) knowledge of French I have noticed that French people sometimes appreciated if I made the effort to speak French when I was in that country.  Maybe Greek people appreciated Bo-Jo making the effort to speak Greek even if it was a  quirky sort of Greek.  One thing I noted on the Wikipedia entry was that when Mr Black offered Bo-Jo the  editorship of The Spectator it was with the proviso BJ gave up any parliamentary aspirations.  BJ went back on that but Mr Black didn't dismiss him because he (BJ) had increased the circulation of the publication.  So BJ goes back on his word - blow me down with a feather.

Edit on 6.11.2019 - I'd put "Wikipedia is always 100% correct" in my original posts.  Oops.  I can't believe I only just noticed the mistake.

Viz, there's an interesting discussion with some very good contributions relating to your question here:

Quora.com - How different is the Ancient Greek language from the modern Greek language?

The Boris wasn't mayor in 2005 when the decision was taken. He did get stuck on a zip wire during the actual games.


Some might wish he had remained there.

I suspected that there was going to be a difference between ‘ancient Greek’ and ‘classical Greek’ and thank you nordmann for confirming that. Going by the link provided by Meles then it seems that if classical Greek is essentially koine (i.e. middle Greek) then ancient Greek can be further subdivided between ‘Attic Greek’ (old) and ‘Homeric Greek’ (very old).  I hope I’ve got that right. As LiR has pointed out, however, even in modern Greek there are very many dialects. John Pendlebury (mentioned earlier) was curator of the archaeological site at Knossos from 1930 and by all accounts was fluent in Cretan Greek (which itself is subdivided into several dialects) by the end of the decade. I don’t know if there is a direct link between modern Cretan and ancient Minoan but that’s perhaps for another thread.
 
P.S. Regarding Johnson and Greek then it calls to mind the Greece v Rome debate during the Classics-for-all season a while back.

And with today's announcements about non-EU tarifs [The Guardian 8/10/19 - UK tweaks tarifs before Brexit], it seems Britons are giving up EU citizenship, and all the advantages and privileges that membership entails, for lower tarifs on honey, grapes, beans, olive oil and wine. And I thought Brexit was to take the UK back to the 1950s ...  not the year 50AD. Vivat Pax Romana!  an' all that 

Green George wrote:

The Boris wasn't mayor in 2005 when the decision was taken. He did get stuck on a zip wire during the actual games.

Indeed he wasn't mayor in 2005 and so can claim no credit at all. Also the zip wire incident was no accident ... it was carefully staged as a publicity stunt on the instructions of Alexander de Piffle himself (as freely admitted by the guy who was in charge of the zip-line at the time and who arranged it).

They should realise we can't "go back".  In the early 1970s - well pre-belonging to the EEC as it was then - the UK did have some advantageous trade deals with certain commonwealth countries and those won't be in place now.

MM wrote:

... for lower tarifs on honey, grapes, beans, olive oil and wine. And I thought Brexit was to take the UK back to the 1950s ...  not the year 50AD. Vivat Pax Romana!  an' all that.

Yes, it's a great day for all alcoholic, vegan, Roman-loving Brexiteers.

This has been published in the last twelve hours by The Spectator. It is an extraordinary "leak" - what on earth are we to make of it? The style - and content - would suggest it has been written by Dominic Cummings whose wife is commissioning editor of The Spectator:


https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/10/how-number-10-view-the-state-of-the-negotiations/


"Those who pushed the Benn Act intended to sabotage a deal and they’ve probably succeeded. So the main effect of it will probably be to help us win an election by uniting the leave vote and then a no deal Brexit. History is full of such ironies and tragedies."

Bo-Jo used to edit The Spectator, did he not?  Then he managed to prorogue Parliament again - though it will be back on 14th of the month, so six days to go.

i was interested to hear what Ian Hislop said last night on "Have I Got  News For You" about the Spectator "anonymous" Downing Street leaked memo, a link to which I posted above: Hislop mentioned a certain a  "madness" (his word) in style and content that was an indication of the text's  probable/possible author.

But let the tunnel talks begin, and we should all pray that no one gets bricked up in said tunnel - a terribly distressing thing that once happened to in Thomas the Tank Engine (to Henry).

... I think it was actually Henry the Green Engine that got bricked up in the tunnel because he didn't want to come out into the rain and spoil his nice new paintwork. His ignominy was all the greater when it was little Thomas the Tank Engine who eventually helped push him out. (from 'The Sad Story of Henry'):

"Once an engine attached to a train was afraid of a few drops of rain.
He went into a tunnel, squeaked through his funnel, and wouldn't come out again."

I am horribly embarrassed that my ignorance has been thus exposed; but I humbly accept MM's timely correction. I have made a suitable amendment to my text.

Sorry, Thomas and Henry.

EDIT: Hope Boris doesn't start squeaking through his funnel.

Honestly. Temp - what a disgrace to muddle your rain shy Greens with your tunnel Tanks - and while saluting the flag, at that I think Boris is probably more of a funnel hooter - we may learn more from a Hooting Annie on that one - or with luck we may be spared

My grandson is obsessed with the Thomas books, but I still have trouble working out which one he is; presumably don't concentrate enough. I can just about manage the characters in Paw Patrol, but when my other older (8-year-old) grandson asked me who my favourite super-hero was, I could only think of Wonderwoman and he hadn't heard of her. (I barely had either.)

Off topic here, but I can't keep up with Brexit. In the past I just about could but since Boris has come to power it seems impossible.

My pair were Thomas fans in their youth - in fact, when I took them on the Severn Valley Railway, the elder one pointed out that the loco called "Gordon" had the wrong wheels (2-10-0 not 4-6-2). The name was, of course, nothing to do with the books. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LMR_600_Gordon

ps - I can no longer follow BoJo either. Not sure he can.

Temperance, 

on 6 september I wrote to you: 
"I still hope that Bo Jo will opt for the Northern Ireland only backstop  and that would be an option for the EU to make a deal too..."

In the meantime they made a deal and during the 17 years, first the BBC forum and then this forum, I am grown a bit Englishman, although one has perhaps to live there to have the right feeling about events happening there. I mean I am more and more interested in Britain and in its politics.
Even to such an extent, that I followed life the debate first on BBC Two and then on the One (with English subtitles), until the vote at quarter to four (quarter to three your time).
It was an interesting debate and I wished Boris Johnson had had his deal from the first time. And see a Theresa May, ironic with here remark of déja vu. And the deal is not that far from the Theresa May deal, not voted in the time. But perhaps he will now have his deal on Tuesday.
And as a PS: I saw a member of the Commons, speaking constantly about Europe and not the European Union of the remaining 27. Is it still in the people's mind that Britain is no part of Europe, but an entity on its own...hmm with a land border on the Irish island?

From my Belgian point of view, I see a need for that compromise. As I said to you, in such circumstances and times, people react more with emotion that with ratio and emotion is in my humble opinion a dangerous master.
Compromise, while again in my humble opinion there is no alternative solution.
As I think to have seen this afternoon, it is not only the Irish Question, which is a stumble block, but also Labour, whose party members still think to be able to alternate the Brexit with a deal.
But with what purpose? As I see the mood now in Britain, the Brexit public is mostly in agreement, while a lot of the Remain public has seen that the Brexit will come anyway. And those, who hope on a revoke, will only alter the pro and the contra to some half the population for + 2 or 3 % or the other way around, that means that what the outcome of a new referendum may be, it will always nearly half of the population in one camp or in another. That means with the passions running high, I see no solution to this quagmire.
Thus why not make  the pain short and let Boris Johnson his victory. BTW. As I said before, Boris is not a stupid, and he came rather good over this afternoon, again in my humble opinion.

Kind regards, Paul.

I think the real problem, Paul, is that half (more or less) of the population that voted in the referendum are welded to brexit, and half are implacably opposed to it, and the other third (the non-voters) have still not been convinced either way.
The dangerous belief that "getting Brexit done" will end the process fills me with dismay. Average time for a trade deal with the EU is about 8 years.
Boris is, as you say, not stupid, but neither is he trustworthy. I still wouldn't put it past him to collapse the scrum to get a no-deal scenario.l

Green George wrote:

I think the real problem, Paul, is that half (more or less) of the population that voted in the referendum are welded to brexit, and half are implacably opposed to it, and the other third (the non-voters) have still not been convinced either way.
The dangerous belief that "getting Brexit done" will end the process fills me with dismay. Average time for a trade deal with the EU is about 8 years.
Boris is, as you say, not stupid, but neither is he trustworthy. I still wouldn't put it past him to collapse the scrum to get a no-deal scenario.l

 
Gil, thank you for the reply.
I hadn't reckoned with the other third (the non-voters) as I am so used to the Belgian mandatory voting. Although I guess that these no voters are statistically not that much different in percents of the real voters? So no big changes from that part? But perhaps more change in the intentions in a second referendum by the in time changed political environment? Has one to look to the recent political polls now?

Kind regards, Paul.

No voters tend to be young voters and I would think Labour voters (at least that is what it is like here, with the result that the elections favour older people who are expected to vote conservatively. Not that we do, and I think that does a disservice to older people who after all were the 60s rebels and many still have that rebellious streak they had then).

Caro wrote:

No voters tend to be young voters and I would think Labour voters (at least that is what it is like here, with the result that the elections favour older people who are expected to vote conservatively. Not that we do, and I think that does a disservice to older people who after all were the 60s rebels and many still have that rebellious streak they had then).

 
Caro,

thanks for your comments. As we haven't "no voters" because of the mandatory voting (or it have to be blanco voters and I suppose that is the same on all age groups) I think overhere the young voters are more the green ones and those from the ultra-right (extreme-right?) and perhaps from the ultra-left. The older people are more tended to vote for the traditional parties: the Christian-Democrats/soft-right, the Socialists, the Liberals. The difficulty in Belgium is that the Dutch speaking part is mostly centre-right voting and the French speaking one is mostly centre-left voting, while the Liberals as a centre party stay in the middle and in both the Dutch speaking and French speaking part. Thus the Liberals are the true Belgians .

As for the Brexit, it becomes odder and odder, as with a convention of the commons of 1604...
I think! I still understand it all, but I would understand that the British contributors of this board, are reluctant to comment about the latest news...

Kind regards, Paul.

As I followed the discussions on the Brexit in the British parliament and there was spoken about new elections I wondered how the procedure would be.
I sought some parallels within Belgium as the Belgian government being a minority cabinet, handed in its resignation to the King last year. I suppose as it couldn't work anymore with a majority in complete opposition.
The King/Queen could accept this resignation or could ask for a governement in current affairs, where even a minority government could reign until there are new elections and after that till there is formed a new government.
As I understand it (and it was a painstaking search on the internet) a government can also fall if the opposition calls for a no-confidence vote, but then that opposition has to have 1 vote more than fifty procent.
I wonder how it is in Britain and what the role of the Queen/King is?
PS: Are there any circumstances in Britain where there is a 2/3 majority needed?

Kind regards, Paul.

The system in Britain is relatively new. Until the Conservative - Lib Dem coalition, the Prime Minister could request a general election at any time, and the monarch really had no option but to agree. That would have left the Lib Dems open to a Tory ambush, so the Fixed-Term Parliaments act resulted as part of the coalition agreement.
Basically, a Parliament lasts for 5 years from the day it is called together after a general election, and is then dissolved and a General Election is called. During the now 5-year term (which has at various times in the past been 3 and 7 years) a vote by 2/3rds of the MPs is necessary to call a General Election, as Mrs May did in 2017. Subject to correction, this is the only exception to a straight majority being required that I am aware of.
Alternatively, a vote of No Confidence can remove the current government, and, if no alternative leader can command a majority in the Commons (by getting a motion of confidence passed), a general election will be called. There is speculation that Johnson might even call for a vote of No Confidence in his government, and whip his own party to support it.
A further route would be to introduce a "one line" bill, stating that, notwithstanding the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, there will be a General Election on the Nth day of a particular month. However, this procedure runs the risk of the wording being amended as it passes through the various stages until it becomes useless for its intended purpose.

Fun here, isn't it?

Thanks for your in detail enlightenment, Gil.

Now I understand about the 2/3rds, as I heard recently something about 2/3rds among the continuous talking about the Brexit. As I wasn't aware about any 2/3rds in Britain I asked about it, among other matter. In Belgium we need only a 2/3rd for a change in constitution.

Kind regards, Paul.

A UK election on December 12th? What on earth is Dominic Cummings thinking of? Polling in English villages often takes place in church/village halls, and the Nativity Plays and Village Pantomimes will be in full swing on that date.

A Baby Jesus found lying in a ballot box rather than a manger? A donkey wandering around, and the Virgin Mary being mistaken for the Lib Dem "Led By Donkeys" candidate?  Won't mention the pantomime horse and the electoral embarrassment that could cause. 

Honestly - I thought Cummings was supposed to be a Machiavellian genius? The man has no imagination.

Temperance, are you sure that he can have elections for 12 December? 

If I understand Gil well, he can't do that because he needs a 2/3rds majority?
And if he as Gil said:
"Alternatively, a vote of No Confidence can remove the current government, and, if no alternative leader can command a majority in the Commons (by getting a motion of confidence passed), a general election will be called. There is speculation that Johnson might even call for a vote of No Confidence in his government, and whip his own party to support it."

Can't the opposition or an alternative leader then command a majority by getting a motion of confidence passed in the Commons, till the deal between Johnson and the European Union becomes law? And then up to the new elections?
Now that they have a deal with the European Union, wouldn't it be wise to wait till it is law before thinking at new elections?

Kind regards, Paul.

To be sure of anything ended in our little island a long time ago, Paul: we are living through a tragic farce here, and just about anything is possible.

Pantomime is the key word - indeed a Brexit pantomime (easy to cast, I should think) could well be a great hit, were it not for the fact that we are sick to death of it all.

November 5th would be a good new date for the EU to offer...

I sometimes watch the Sky News on YouTube (I don't actually have Sky as a TV 'bundle') and I see that they now offer two versions of the news - a B word free version and a version with the B word included.  I watch (intermittently) the B word version because even though it drives me dotty it's best to know what is going on.

Temperance wrote:

To be sure of anything ended in our little island a long time ago, Paul: we are living through a tragic farce here, and just about anything is possible.

Pantomime is the key word - indeed a Brexit pantomime (easy to cast, I should think) could well be a great hit, were it not for the fact that we are sick to death of it all.

November 5th would be a good new date for the EU to offer...

 
Yes Temperance, I too have stopped to try to guess what will be the next move. And it has all such a big impact on the economy, as for example here on the port of Zeebruges, where there will be by a deal or more by a no deal, less trafic to the UK. And that trafic to the UK is a high percentage of the revenue, hence a loss of jobs.
They speak for the entire picture of about 28,000 jobs.
With this rather pessimist news I wish you nevertheless a good weekend.

Kind regards, Paul.

Le Jour de Brexit est arrivé - but where is the chaos and anarchy? What a boring lot we Brits are.







Watch out for the rioting wheelie bins - the distressing scenes on many of the nation's streets this morning.

That green one's a remainer.

Temperance wrote:

Le Jour de Brexit est arrivé - but where is the chaos and anarchy? What a boring lot we Brits are.

Temperance I hope for the best for you and the UK. And I am still seeing a happy end to all the turmoil.
Just saw this some minutes ago in the news overhere...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2019/oct/31/corbyn-would-be-so-bad-for-your-country-trump-tells-farage-video
Is Trump now saying how it has to be in the UK? Or is that contra-productive propaganda?

Kind regards, Paul.

Thank you for your concern, Paul. We are all feeling somewhat turkeyish at the moment as we prepare to exercise our democratic rights here in the Blessed Plot.

But it will all come out in the wash - one way or the other. You'll have to look that one up!

Temperance wrote:

Thank you for your concern, Paul. We are all feeling somewhat turkeyish at the moment as we prepare to exercise our democratic rights here in the Blessed Plot.

But it will all come out in the wash - one way or the other. You'll have to look that one up!

Temperance, I looked it up:
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/it-will-all-come-out-in-the-wash
And yes, you were ever an optimist as I am.
Kind regards from Paul.

I've been watching a few clips of Sir Lindsay Hoyle the new speaker of the UK Parliament (I'm ashamed to say I didn't know much about him previously).  He seems to be a decent orator (in my opinion).

I know Temperance was joking about the green bin being a remainer but in my neck of the woods the way the system works is one week green bins are emptied (general rubbish) and the next week one puts out the blue (recyclable rubbish) and brown (garden rubbish) bins.

PaulRyckier wrote:

Temperance wrote:

But it will all come out in the wash - one way or the other. You'll have to look that one up!

Temperance, I looked it up:
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/it-will-all-come-out-in-the-wash
And yes, you were ever an optimist as I am.

That's very optimistic Paul.

King John's treasure still hasn't been found 803 years on. 3 of those years have been since the EU referendum. The way things are going it's quite likely that the treasure will be found and displayed and we'll still be nowhere nearer finding a resolution to that latter historical conundrum.

Vizzer, ever an optimist and with that optimism I am always seeking for an exit from the misery. And I have the impression, as I see it, that the UK will have its exit with a deal before the Belgians have a federal government. Today, after the rather right wing from the Flemish region failed to form a government with the rather left wing from the Francophone regions, the King appointed the left wing francophone leader as informateur (informator?) and that is in my opinion a cul-de-sac, as the Liberals or the Christian-Democrats from the Flemish region will never go with the Walloon-Brussels Socialists. And without them there is no government possible. And hence I think we will have to go again to our compulsory elections, but as Temperance I think whatever way we will solve the problem
Kind regards, Paul.

PaulRyckier wrote:

And I have the impression, as I see it, that the UK will have its exit with a deal before the Belgians have a federal government.

Ah but the 'deal' that everyone is currently haggling about is only the initial Withdrawal Agreement covering what happens immediately on the day the UK finally leaves. Negociating the real deals and managing the fallout will only start then and will go on for many years, possibly decades. While there already seems to be a lot of 'brexit fatigue' settling in, I think all those demanding "just get it done" (whatever 'it' exactly is) are going to be in for a very nasty shock as 'it' continues to drag on, dominating politics and creating turmoil in everyones lives. But Pandora's box has been opened: there's no way back now.