Unnecessary Legislation: the Coronavirus Bill

This was first posted on Facebook on 23rd March 2020, with support from my Ko-Fi network.

Look, imagine an afternoon when you settle down to listen to Parliamentary debate for eight hours (with breaks for tea and food and actually a glass of wine about 8pm because OMG) and it is interrupted by:

The Alex Salmond verdict (at least 8 out of the 13 jurors decided Not Guilty for most of the charges, Not Proven for the attempted rape charge, and a horde of sexist gits all over Scotland rose up to cheer, including, unfortunately, SNP MPs Angus MacNeil and Joanna Cherry).

The Tokyo 2020 Olympics have been postponed by the IOC to 2021.

Boris Johnson announced at 8:30pm that from tomorrow the UK is in lockdown.

And all the while, in the Commons, the Coronavirus Bill is passing at a gallop through the Second Reading debate, the Committee of the Full House debate, and he Third Reading vote. It’s now off to the House of Lords.

Brexit, the four directions: part 2

There are four ways the UK can go from here with regard to Brexit, and all of them are bad. Read the first direction: hard Brexit, or no deal.

Second: soft Brexit, the EU’s deal

Hard Brexit will be unthinkable catastrophe for the UK, and cause some damage to each of the EU-27 countries. EU-27 are prepared and ready to offer a deal to the UK, but as EU-27 are better-prepared to negotiate, have better negotiators, and are in a stronger position (they can survive the damage done by no-deal Brexit; it is uncertain whether the UK can or not) the deal for the UK on leaving the EU will be set in terms that will favour the EU.

Cameron, Clarkson, and gross misconduct

Hitting one of your co-workers at work is gross misconduct; an offense for which you can be summarily dismissed.

If it is true that Jeremy Clarkson hit a Top Gear producer, then the BBC have no option but to sack him. (Clarkson was, reputedly, on his final-final warning, though presumably the BBC were thinking more of something along the lines of a “joke” about sexual abuse at the BBC, such as Clarkson tweeted in May 2013, or some other racist or sexist jibe on the show, rather than a clear-cut case of gross misconduct.)

Two eyewitnesses are reported in the Mirror to have told journalists that Jeremy Clarkson’s bad temper was kicked off by his getting back to the hotel and discovering that as the kitchens were closed, he would get only only “soup and a cold meat platter” instead of the steak dinner he’d wanted.

An onlooker said the star, who had been drinking rosé wine, launched into an expletive-filled tirade using “every bad word you could think of” and ranted “so there’s no food” when he was told he would not get the steak he wanted.

Wow, That Took Off Quickly

On Friday 13th December, Lauren Bishop Vranch found a little lost bear, obviously much loved, on an East Coast Train at King’s Cross, and tweeted a photo of it: “Found this well loved little dude on an East Coast train at Kings Cross – let’s find the owner, Twitter!”

Found this well loved little dude on an East Coast train at Kings Cross – let's find the owner, Twitter! pic.twitter.com/nKB5CMkApM

— Lauren Bishop Vranch (@laurenannbishop) December 13, 2013

By Sunday evening, that original tweet had been RT’d 6192 times. Lauren went on posting pics of the toy to Twitter, which got reposted on other social media including several Facebook groups, and at last, the father of the child who’d lost the bear contacted her.

‘WOW the power of the internet and kind folk – that’s my daughter Phoebes bear – she has been in tears all weekend and I’ve just shown her the picture and she is over the moon. Thank you all so much!