The sheer madness of British life is perfectly encapsulated in this story about two WAGs involved in a libel suit. We are at the preliminary stage at which money is being burned relatively slowly. There has been an interim hearing ..
.. to determine the meaning of the offending words, with judgment to be given this afternoon. We’re still a long way from the trial itself, of course, with hundreds of thousands to be spaffed on settling whether Rebekah Vardy leaked to the press a story about Colleen’s ..
.. flooded basement.
The drama, the excitement, the wigs & gowns, the spiralling cost, all the fun of the fair is here.
And the result of the interim hearing is in. Colleen’s attempt to argue her alleged libel was aimed at Rebekah’s online account & not her personally has failed. That will make the defence of justification a bit more difficult. And Colleen got socked with a £23,000 costs order ..
which, given she must pay her own lawyers & the way costs work, means this little skirmish will have cost her at least £50K & probably nearer £60K.
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The Pennsylvania judgment dismissing the Trump campaign’s lawsuit is quite interesting. The Trump campaign was joined by 2 republican co-plaintiffs each of whom had posted mail in ballots which had been rejected. One had failed to put his ballot paper in the ‘secrecy’ ..
.. envelope as required while the reason for rejection of the other was unknown.
Their gripe was that they should have been told of the rejection & given a chance to cure the defect (‘notice & cure’ in the American parlance). Pennsylvania’s electoral code (each state has ..
.. its own) does not provide for notice & cure but a senior state official had apparently emailed some but not all state counties suggesting it be used. The criticism was that by not telling ALL counties to adopt the procedure, an arbitrary & unequal system resulted with ..
Mark Francois - management trainee, Lloyds bank
Ann Widdecombe - admin. University of London
Iain Duncan Smith - failed management trainee GEC Marconi
Nadine Dorries - nurse, formed co. providing day care services
I’m not researching all 370 of them (& I know Widdecombe is ..
.. an outlier) but I just picked these 4 at random to check something. None of them have the kind of background you would think might equip them to understand the real impact of Brexit. We know the likes of Bozo, Mogg & Gove don’t. Raab was a solicitor I think.
Where are ..
.. the farmers, car workers, fishermen, port & customs people, trade experts etc?
Widdecombe when told of some Brexit related closure (maybe Honda, Swindon) just shrugged it off ‘oh, businesses fold all the time’ she said, or words to that effect.
• we are going to square the circle of leaving the EU while preserving the GFA
• we will secure our fish & find a way across EU tariff barriers to sell them
• we will switch from sheep farming to dairy
• we will train 50,000 customs officers ..
.. (takes 18 months & we didn’t start 18 months ago)
• we will clear Felixstowe of 30+ years’ supply of PPE so stuff can be unloaded there
• we will not piss off the EU or the USA with the IMB but we won’t withdraw it either
• we will detect incoming criminals by asking ..
.. them whether they are criminals
• there will be ‘adequate food’ (Raab)
• we will finish building all the lorry parks & they won’t flood
• issuing permits to enter Kent will not clog up roads
• everyone will be happy paying more for imported goods
• everyone will be ..
UK - we would like frictionless trade.
EU - fine but that means your regulatory system must harmonise with ours & if we amend our regs. you must amend yours. Also, if there is a dispute about the meaning of a regulation, only the ECJ can deal ..
.. with it because, otherwise, two parallel bodies of inconsistent case law will develop leading, in effect, to regulatory divergence.
UK - but we are a sovereign country. We can’t agree to that.
EU - then there cannot be frictionless trade.
UK - now see here, you sell us more ..
.. than we sell you so you’ll have to crumble in the end.
EU - not by undermining the SM & CU. Those are fundamental to our prosperity & part of the process of ever closer union.
UK - you’re acting in bad faith! You promised a FTA! You did, you weally weally did! You pwomised!
In 1588 the Armada set sail from Spain to make war on Elizabeth I. The plan was simple: sail up the channel, pick up a Spanish army from The Netherlands & ferry it across to England. There was just one problem. The seagoing fleet could not navigate the shallow inland waters ..
.. of the Low Countries & those waters were controlled by the Dutch, then fighting their own war of resistance against Spain.
In other words, the entire enterprise was impossible ab initio. So is Brexit. There are too many circles to square, of which fish is the least ..
.. difficult. LPF is impossible without accepting EU rule making. If LPF is agreed, the ECJ must be the sole arbiter of EU laws & regs. which makes leaving utterly pointless. And Ireland is & always was insoluble, a fact which comes into sharp relief now Biden has won.
Billions for Serco, but penny pinching for Manchester. Hundreds of millions on lorry parks, but a drastic cut to universal credit in the offing & no free meals for schoolchildren (estimated to cost £115M). How to reconcile incontinent govt. spending here with heartless cuts..
.. & penny pinching there?
It’s simple really, although unpleasant. You must look inside the Tory mind 🤢. The poor deserve their fate. If they couldn’t afford their children they shouldn’t have had them (a rule that doesn’t apply to 🤡). Money spent on them is money ..
.. wasted.
Entirely different rules apply to the private sector, a totemic place of thrusting entrepreneurs climbing over each other to achieve ever greater efficiencies. At least in principle. In practise, the real effort is focussed on looting the bottomless public ..