(With apologies to René Magritte for the joke, and to the French for the potentially bad auto-translated French)
Feb 052022
Mike Meredith
Jan 172022
So it appears that the Tory idiots in government have been partying hard all the way through the Covid pandemic including those periods of time when the law prohibited such events. They’re trying to masquerade them as “work events” but even those were prohibited during the height of the pandemic. And you do have to wonder just what they were doing that required physical in person meetings – almost everything that occurs during such meetings can take place virtually.
Idiots? Yes – drunken antics in Number 10 carry a substantial risk of leakage, and anyone with half a brain would be worried about the backlash on leaks that the government was busy partying whilst the public were prohibited from meeting other people for purposes far more serious than getting sloshed.
But the big mystery is why the delay in the news coming out. Anyone could be forgiven for suspecting that the story has been “held” until certain people have decided that it is time for Boris to go.
Dec 272021
In honour of the traditional family argument about whether Christmas Day is a bank holiday or not, I shall be wittering on about it for a while. The UK government web site on Bank Holidays, lists it as a bank holiday. Incorrectly, although it’s understandable why it does.
The Act of Parliament currently in force establishing “bank holidays” is the Banking and Financial Dealings Act 1971, which lists the following as bank holidays :-
The following are to be bank holidays in England and Wales :-
Easter Monday
The last Monday in May.
The last Monday in August.
26th December, if it not be a Sunday.
27th December in a year in which 25th or 26th December is a Sunday.
Note how the 25th doesn’t appear! Within the text of the Act, it also states :-
No person shall be compellable to make any payment or to do any act on a bank holiday under this Act which he would not be compellable to make or do on Christmas Day or Good Friday
There are of course other missing bank holidays which are proclaimed on a yearly basis by the queen, but Christmas Day and Good Friday are special – they’re Common Law holidays that have been taken as public holidays since time immemorial (6 July 1189) as traditional customary holidays.
Those two days appear many times in legislation dealing with restrictions on what can be carried out on those days, but nowhere is it declared that they are public holidays – it is just assumed.
There used to be a good deal more customary holidays – in 1833 the Bank of England shut for 33 days a year but in 1834 shut for just 4. When bank holidays were first established in 1871, they were intended as public holidays but were expressed in financial terms – specifically so banks couldn’t be declared bankrupt for not being able to process a promissory note or a bill of exchange.
Which is why we call them “Bank” holidays. And why they aren’t strictly speaking “holidays” for workers – they are really just holidays for banks as there is no guarantee that you can take a bank holiday off work.
Dec 182021
A while back something popped up on my Facebook stream claiming that Pushkin (Alexander Pushkin – the Russian poet) was black as a way of saying “look at all these incredible things blacks have done”. I don’t have a problem with that. I might just question the logic of classifying Pushkin as black.
Of course I also question the use of the colour of the dead stuff that keeps the squishy bits on the inside, to divide people into arbitrary categories. But we’ll gloss over that for now.
Pushkin was at least partially black because his great-grandfather (Abram Petrovich Gannibal) was black; that’s one sixteenth. So he was also 15/16ths white. Can someone be both black and white (presumably without stripes)? Of course the racists amongst us were the ones who set the standard for excluding people from the privilege of calling themselves “white”. And just to irritated the bigots, it pleases me to declare that Pushkin was white; and to avoid making those who look to trumpet the accomplishments of black people foolish., it also pleases me to declare that Pushkin was black.
Which is ridiculous of course, but that’s kind of what I feel about the whole obsession with skin colour anyway.
And finally, take a look at Abram’s bio – he’s probably more accomplished than his descendant Puskin.
Nov 282021
In the middle of this week’s tragedy regarding refugees drowning in the channel, various really nasty specimens of humanity were all over the word “illegal”. Which really gets up my fucking nose, because it’s bollocks.
Under the terms of the 1951 Refugee Convention (to which the UK is a signatory) those seeking asylum have a right to enter any country (not the first safe country) and apply for refugee status. Of those asylum seekers who enter the UK nearly 70% are eventually granted refugee status and whilst they are waiting are held in appalling conditions which any decent country should feel ashamed of.