What Has Made You Laugh Today ?

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mattheus
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Joined: 29 Dec 2008, 12:57pm
Location: Western Europe

Re: What Has Made You Laugh Today ?

Post by mattheus »

Mike Sales wrote: 7 Dec 2021, 9:47am
Posts in this sub-forum often provoke replies.
Is that your excuse for any behaviour you feel like? It's certainly vague enough, well done!
thirdcrank
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Joined: 9 Jan 2007, 2:44pm

Re: What Has Made You Laugh Today ?

Post by thirdcrank »

mattheus wrote: 7 Dec 2021, 8:59am
thirdcrank wrote: 6 Dec 2021, 6:12pm I'm not sure this is laughable.

When I first saw the images of the prime minister dressed up in police togs I assumed it was some sort of publicity coup. A few years ago, there was a stunt when he addressed a group of police trainees at the West Yorkshire Police training centre and at a suitable moment turned to face a camera which snapped him apparently in front of a wall of supporting police officers. Now, I assumed this time he - or a runner - had blagged the police togs and he had posed beside the van.

I was wrong. On the pretext of seeing how things are "on the ground" we have a publicity stunt.
Why didn't you post this in a politics thread?

(and same question to other posters crowbarring this story in here)
The short answer is that I was replying to a post on here. (On this occasion, I'm not sure I have a longer answer.)

FWIW, I did post about this media opportunity in the thread about DVLA renewing over 70 driving licences. (Without trying too hard to check, I thought my post there preceded what's on here.) At a superficial level, it may seem odd to have posted on there, but it was a whimsical note in reply to an earlier post about ascertaining the identity of purported police officers.

viewtopic.php?p=1658033#p1658033

(I nearly lost this when I didn't notice the review post thingy.)
reohn2
Posts: 45143
Joined: 26 Jun 2009, 8:21pm

Re: What Has Made You Laugh Today ?

Post by reohn2 »

thirdcrank wrote: 6 Dec 2021, 6:12pm .........On the pretext of seeing how things are "on the ground" we have a publicity stunt.
Quite!

Johnson is a stunt(sp?)
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"All we are not stares back at what we are"
W H Auden
Mike Sales
Posts: 7860
Joined: 7 Mar 2009, 3:31pm

Re: What Has Made You Laugh Today ?

Post by Mike Sales »

I see John Crace in The Guardian has pinched our joke.
There are few things that Boris Johnson enjoys more than a bit of cosplay. Usually something that involves a hi-vis jacket or a white overall. But on Monday morning he had gone the whole hog – even down to wearing a black mask – and was impersonating a police officer. An activity that is usually an arrestable offence. Though no more so than being nabbed red-handed for impersonating a prime minister.
It's the same the whole world over
It's the poor what gets the blame
It's the rich what gets the pleasure
Isn't it a blooming shame?
reohn2
Posts: 45143
Joined: 26 Jun 2009, 8:21pm

Re: What Has Made You Laugh Today ?

Post by reohn2 »

"We shouldn't call Boris Johnson or any other minister a liar when they're telling lies as it degrades our democracy"
Nikki Aiken Tory MP

:lol: :lol: :lol:

PS,sorry for the political joke but I couldn't help it :roll:
-----------------------------------------------------------
"All we are not stares back at what we are"
W H Auden
mattheus
Posts: 5031
Joined: 29 Dec 2008, 12:57pm
Location: Western Europe

Re: What Has Made You Laugh Today ?

Post by mattheus »

thirdcrank wrote: 7 Dec 2021, 10:10am <snip>...
At a superficial level, it may seem odd to have posted on there, but it was a whimsical note in reply to an earlier post about ascertaining the identity of purported police officers.
I like a bit of whimsy, and it seems to fit this thread.

There are plenty of other places for political posturing and point-scoring - couldn't this place be kept for good-natured humour (and whimsy)?
Mike Sales
Posts: 7860
Joined: 7 Mar 2009, 3:31pm

Re: What Has Made You Laugh Today ?

Post by Mike Sales »

Satire rarely makes you laugh aloud I suppose, but it does have a place here, in this sub-forum, perhaps?
satire
/ˈsatʌɪə/

the use of humour, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.
My italics.
It's the same the whole world over
It's the poor what gets the blame
It's the rich what gets the pleasure
Isn't it a blooming shame?
Mike Sales
Posts: 7860
Joined: 7 Mar 2009, 3:31pm

Re: What Has Made You Laugh Today ?

Post by Mike Sales »

Satire rarely makes you laugh aloud I suppose, but it does have a place here, in this sub-forum, perhaps?
satire
/ˈsatʌɪə/

the use of humour, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.
My italics.
It's the same the whole world over
It's the poor what gets the blame
It's the rich what gets the pleasure
Isn't it a blooming shame?
thirdcrank
Posts: 36764
Joined: 9 Jan 2007, 2:44pm

Re: What Has Made You Laugh Today ?

Post by thirdcrank »

I've posted a lot - probably too much - over the years and I can imagine I've inadvertently upset some people during that time. I generally try to explain or edit anything if people are upset. On this issue - commenting about Boris Johnson in fancy dress - I feel comfortable with what I've posted. The options, therefore, may be:-
  • Raise it with the moderators either about this instance specifically or to suggest a rule about politics on humour threads more generally
  • Use the "foe" facility
  • Move on
Jdsk
Posts: 24486
Joined: 5 Mar 2019, 5:42pm

Re: What Has Made You Laugh Today ?

Post by Jdsk »

thirdcrank wrote: 7 Dec 2021, 11:06am I've posted a lot - probably too much - over the years and I can imagine I've inadvertently upset some people during that time.
Not too much for me. Please keep posting.

Jonathan
mattheus
Posts: 5031
Joined: 29 Dec 2008, 12:57pm
Location: Western Europe

Re: What Has Made You Laugh Today ?

Post by mattheus »

thirdcrank wrote: 7 Dec 2021, 11:06am I've posted a lot - probably too much - over the years and I can imagine I've inadvertently upset some people during that time. I generally try to explain or edit anything if people are upset. On this issue - commenting about Boris Johnson in fancy dress - I feel comfortable with what I've posted. The options, therefore, may be:-
  • Raise it with the moderators either about this instance specifically or to suggest a rule about politics on humour threads more generally
  • Use the "foe" facility
  • Move on
So you're giving me your own set of directives on how I should behave on this thread?
If that is satire, well-played Sir!

p.s. I've commented on the limitations of the "foe" feature before. Seems unique to the CUK forum software ...
pp.s. I can't see any upset here - your conscience should be clear, IMO.
reohn2
Posts: 45143
Joined: 26 Jun 2009, 8:21pm

Re: What Has Made You Laugh Today ?

Post by reohn2 »

Jdsk wrote: 7 Dec 2021, 11:18am
thirdcrank wrote: 7 Dec 2021, 11:06am I've posted a lot - probably too much - over the years and I can imagine I've inadvertently upset some people during that time.
Not too much for me. Please keep posting.

Jonathan
+1
-----------------------------------------------------------
"All we are not stares back at what we are"
W H Auden
mattheus
Posts: 5031
Joined: 29 Dec 2008, 12:57pm
Location: Western Europe

Re: What Has Made You Laugh Today ?

Post by mattheus »

Mike Sales wrote: 7 Dec 2021, 10:56am Satire rarely makes you laugh aloud I suppose, but it does have a place here, in this sub-forum, perhaps?
satire
/ˈsatʌɪə/

the use of humour, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.
My italics.
Uniting for a Great Brexit: Foreign Secretary's speech
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson today (14 February 2018) set out the path for an outward-facing, liberal and global Britain following our exit from the EU.

From:
Foreign & Commonwealth Office, Department for Exiting the European Union, and The Rt Hon Boris Johnson MP
Published
14 February 2018
Location:
Policy Exchange, London
Delivered on:
14 February 2018 (Transcript of the speech, exactly as it was delivered)
The Tiger Lillies
The other day a woman pitched up in my surgery in a state of indignation. The ostensible cause was broadband trouble but it was soon clear – as so often in a constituency surgery – that the real problem was something else.

No one was trying to understand her feelings about Brexit. No one was trying to bring her along. She felt so downcast, she said, that she was thinking of leaving the country – to Canada. It wasn’t so much that she wanted to be in the EU; she just didn’t want to be in a Britain that was not in the EU.

And I recognised that feeling of grief, and alienation, because in the last 18 months I have heard the same sentiments so often – from friends, from family, from people hailing me abusively in the street – as is their right.

In many cases I believe the feelings are abating with time, as some of the fears about Brexit do not materialise. In some cases, alas, I detect a hardening of the mood, a deepening of the anger.

I fear that some people are becoming ever more determined to stop Brexit, to reverse the referendum vote of June 23 2016, and to frustrate the will of the people. I believe that would be a disastrous mistake that would lead to permanent and ineradicable feelings of betrayal. We cannot and will not let it happen.

But if we are to carry this project through to national success – as we must – then we must also reach out to those who still have anxieties.

I want to today to anatomise at least some of the fears and to show to the best of my ability that these fears can be allayed, and that the very opposite is true: that Brexit can be grounds for much more hope than fear.

There are essentially 3 types of concern about the momentous choice the nation has made.
mattheus
Posts: 5031
Joined: 29 Dec 2008, 12:57pm
Location: Western Europe

Re: What Has Made You Laugh Today ?

Post by mattheus »

reohn2 wrote: 7 Dec 2021, 11:56am
Jdsk wrote: 7 Dec 2021, 11:18am
thirdcrank wrote: 7 Dec 2021, 11:06am I've posted a lot - probably too much - over the years and I can imagine I've inadvertently upset some people during that time.
Not too much for me. Please keep posting.

Jonathan
+1
Strategic
The first is that this is simply a strategic or geo-strategic mistake. On this view Britain is an offshore island comprising fewer than 1% of humanity, and we need to be bound up in the European Union for protection – partly for our protection, and partly so that Britain can fulfil its historic role of providing protection for the other countries of the European continent. I come across quite a few people who think that Brexit has cast us adrift – made our geostrategic position somehow more vulnerable, while weakening the security of the whole of Europe.

Spiritual
The second anxiety is essentially spiritual and aesthetic – that by voting to leave the EU we have sundered ourselves from the glories of European civilisation. People believe that we have thrown up a figurative drawbridge, made it less easy to live, study, work abroad; and decided to sacrifice the Europeanness in our identities. They fear that the Brexit vote was a vote for nationalism and small-mindedness and xenophobia. They think it was illiberal, reactionary and the British have shown the worst of their character to the world; indeed that it was in some sense un-British.

Economic
And the third objection is the one that occupies most of the debate – the economic fear that we have voted to make ourselves less prosperous; that membership of the EU is vital for UK business and investment, and that the panoply of EU legislation has helped to make life easier for companies and for citizens. People fear the disruption they associate with change, and that our friends and partners in the EU may make life difficult for us. Sometimes these economic anxieties are intensified by the other fears – about identity or security – so that hitherto recondite concepts like the single market or the customs union acquire unexpected emotive power.

Well I believe that whatever the superficial attractions of these points, they can be turned on their head.

I want to show you today that Brexit need not be nationalist but can be internationalist; not an economic threat but a considerable opportunity; not un-British but a manifestation of this country’s historic national genius.

And I can see obviously that I’m running the risk in making this case of simply causing further irritation. But I must take that risk because it is this government’s duty to advocate and explain the mission on which we are now engaged; and it has become absolutely clear to me that we cannot take the argument for granted.

We cannot expect the case to make itself. That was the mistake of the pro-EU elite in this country when they won the last referendum in 1975.

As the Guardian journalist the late Hugo Young points out in his book, This Blessed Plot:

The most corrupted trait I kept encountering was the sense – so prevalent among the Euro-elite, that having won the decision they had won the argument. Many exhibited the unmistakable opinion not only that the battle was over but that the other side, however loud it shouted, had simply lost and should now shut up.

And he went on to say:

The noisier the contest became during the early 1990s, the heavier the silent gloating that accompanied it, from the class that knew it commanded every operational forum from the ante-chambers of Whitehall to the boardrooms of big business, from Brussels committee rooms where a thousand lobbyists thronged, to the outposts of the Commission.

Well the boot is now on the other foot, at least in theory. For all their power and influence – every major political party, the CBI, Barack Obama and so on – those voices did not prevail.

But is this the time now for the referendum winners to gloat? Should we sit back in silent self-satisfaction? I don’t think we should.

It is not good enough to say to remainers – you lost, get over it; because we must accept that the vast majority are actuated by entirely noble sentiments, a real sense of solidarity with our European neighbours and a desire for the UK to succeed.

All I am saying is that by going for Brexit we can gratify those sentiments – and more.
mattheus
Posts: 5031
Joined: 29 Dec 2008, 12:57pm
Location: Western Europe

Re: What Has Made You Laugh Today ?

Post by mattheus »

Mick F wrote: 6 Dec 2021, 10:43am Going on from that regarding "losing your driving licence" statement ...............

You don't need a driving licence to be licenced to drive. If you have passed your test and you are still in date, they can't stop you driving ......... unless they ban you from driving. Probably by court order?

They never said that they would ban people from driving, just remove their driving licence.
Sloppy BBC reporting and sloppy statements.
So let me take the 3 anxieties in turn.

Security: a strong Britain and a strong EU
To all who worry about our strategic position and the supposed loss of Britain to European security I can offer this same vital reassurance that the Prime Minister has made so many times and that I believe is welcomed by our partners.

Our commitment to the defence of Europe is unconditional and immoveable. It is made real by the 800 British troops from 5th Battalion The Rifles I saw recently at Tapa in Estonia, who have since been relieved by 1st Battalion The Royal Welsh.

Already this country is the single biggest spender in the EU both on aid and defence. Although we represent only 13% of the EU’s population, we contribute 20% of defence spending - and the RAF’s giant C17 transport aircraft represent 100% of the heavy lift capacity of the whole of Europe - as well as 25% of the overseas aid budget.

It makes sense for us to continue to be intimately involved in European foreign and security policy. It would be illogical not to discuss such matters as sanctions together, bearing in mind that the UK expertise provides more than half of all EU sanctions listings.

We will continue to be Europeans both practically and psychologically, because our status as one of the great contributors to European culture and civilisation – and our status as one of the great guarantors of the security of Europe - is simply not dependent on the Treaty of Rome as amended at Maastricht or Amsterdam or Lisbon.

Spiritually British, European and global
So let us next tackle the suggestion that we are somehow going to become more insular. It just flies in the face of the evidence. It was my Labour predecessor Ernie Bevin who said, “my foreign policy is to go down to Victoria station and go anywhere I damn well please.”

That is pretty much what the British people already do. We have a bigger diaspora than any other rich nation – 6 million points of light scattered across an intermittently darkening globe.

There are more British people living in Australia than in the whole of the EU, more in the US and Canada. As I have just discovered we have more than a million people who go to Thailand every year, where our superb consular services deal with some of the things that they get up to there.

The statistical trajectory suggests that this wanderlust is most unlikely to abate. In 2016 the British people paid 71 million visits to other countries – and that is a 70% increase since the mid-1990s, and now more than one foreign trip per person per year.

If we get the right deal on aviation and on visa-free travel – both of which are in our mutual interest – this expansion of UK tourism will continue, not just beyond the EU, but within the EU itself; and we will continue to go on cheapo flights to stag parties in ancient cities where we will, I’m sure, receive a warm welcome and meet interesting people, fall in love, struggle amiably to learn the European languages - knowledge of which, by the way, has suffered a paradoxical decline during our membership of the EU.

There is no sensible reason why we should not be able to retire to Spain or indeed anywhere else (as indeed we did long before Spain joined what was then called the common market). We can continue the whirl of academic exchanges that have been a feature of European cultural life since the middle ages, and whose speed of cross-pollination has been accelerated by the internet as well as by schemes like Horizon or Erasmus – all of which we can continue to support, and whose participating scholars are certainly not confined to the EU.

For those who really want to make Britain less insular, and we all want to make Britain less insular don’t we – the answer is not to submit forever to the EU legal order, but to think about how we can undo the physical separation that took place at the end of the Ice Age.

Fly over the Channel at Dover and you see how narrow it is, the ferries plying back and forth like buses in Oxford street, and as you measure the blue straits with your fingers you can see that this moat is really an overgrown prehistoric river that once flowed down from the mountains of Norway and was fed by its tributaries, the Thames and the Seine and the Rhine. Indeed Britain and Holland used to be joined in the old days by a territory known as Doggerland.

In 1986 Margaret Thatcher and Francois Mitterrand had the vision to heal the rupture with a first dry crossing; and it is notable that Eurotunnel is now calling for both sides of the Channel to prepare for a second fixed link. It does indeed seem incredible to me that the fifth and sixth most powerful economies in the world, separated by barely 21 miles of water, should be connected by only one railway line.

I accept that the solution is still a few years off – though the need will be upon us fast – but I say all this to signal something about the attitudes that should inform Brexit.

It’s not about shutting ourselves off; it’s about going global.

It’s not about returning to some autarkic 1950s menu of spam and cabbage and liver. It’s about continuing the astonishing revolution in tastes and styles – in the arts, music, restaurants, sports – that has taken place in this country, in my lifetime, not so much because of our EU membership (that is to commit the fallacy known in the FCO as post hoc ergo propter hoc) but as a result of our history and global links, our openness to people and ideas that has brought 300 languages on to the streets of London, probably the most diverse capital on earth.

In that sense Brexit is about re-engaging this country with its global identity, and all the energy that can flow from that.

And I absolutely refuse to accept the suggestion that it is some un-British spasm of bad manners. It’s not some great V-sign from the cliffs of Dover.

It is the expression of a legitimate and natural desire for self-government of the people, by the people, for the people.

[political content removed]

It is to fulfil the liberal idealism of John Stuart Mill himself, who recognised that it is only the nation – as he put it, “united among themselves by common sympathies which do not exist between themselves and others”. Only the nation could legitimate the activities of the state.

It was only if people had this common sympathy that they would consent to be governed as a unit, because this feeling of national solidarity would “make them cooperate more willingly than with other people, desire to be under the same government, and desire it should be government by themselves or a portion of themselves exclusively.”

And there is good reason for insisting on this national solidarity, or common sympathy, because government involves tremendous impositions, by which we collectively agree to taxation that pre-empts half our income, and obedience to laws not all of which we think are necessarily sensible.

If we are going to accept laws, then we need to know who is making them, and with what motives, and we need to be able to interrogate them in our own language, and we must know how they came to be in authority over us and how we can remove them.

And the trouble with the EU is that for all its idealism, which I acknowledge, and for all the good intentions of those who run the EU institutions, there is no demos – or at least we have never felt part of such a demos – however others in the EU may feel.

The British people have plenty of common sympathies with the people of France, of course we do - but it is hard to deny that they also share common sympathies with plenty of non-EU people – the Americans, the Swiss, the Canadians, the Pakistanis; Thais, and that is one of the reasons why we in the UK have had such difficulty in adapting to the whole concept of EU integration.

To understand why EU regulation is not always suited to the economic needs of the UK, it is vital to understand that EU law is a special type of law, unlike anything else on earth. It is not just about business convenience. It is expressly teleological. It is there to achieve a political goal.

The aim is to create an overarching European state as the basis for a new sense of European political identity. British politicians, Labour and Tory, have always found that ambition very difficult. It is hard to make it cohere with our particular traditions of independent parliamentary and legal systems that go back centuries.

And in spite of many sheep-like coughs of protest from the UK, the process of integration has deepened, and the corpus of EU law has grown ever vaster and more intricate, and ever more powers and competences were handed to EU institutions, culminating in the Treaty of Lisbon.

We now have arrangements of such complexity and obscurity that I ask even my most diehard of remainer friends if they can explain their Spitzenkandidaten process – which has genuinely delighted the MEPs in Strasbourg but has mystified us in the UK; or the exact relationship between the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights, justiciable in Luxembourg, and the European Convention on Human Rights whose court sits in Strasbourg. Starter for ten: how many people in this room actually know the answer to those questions – I think very few. I think the answer to the second one is unknowable. How many know the name of their Euro-MPs?

And that is the point I sometimes make when I get the chance to throw the ball back over the net, to those who hail me in the street with cheery 4-letter epithets.

That’s the point, isn’t it. At least they know roughly who I am and roughly what I do, generally speaking.

If we wanted to find the person responsible for drafting the next phase of EU integration – in which Tony Blair and others would presumably like us to take part – we wouldn’t know where to find them, who they are, let alone how to remove them from office.

That is why people voted Leave – not because they were hostile to European culture and civilisation, but because they wanted to take back control.

That is why it is so vital that we don’t treat Brexit as a plague of boils or a murrain on our cattle, but as an opportunity, and above all as an economic opportunity.
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