Author: Max Frances
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Dodgy Motifs
Mr Jarel Robinson-Brown, a trainee man of the cloth, has landed himself in hot holy water after adding his mites to the opinion collection in the wake of Captain Tom’s earthly departure: ‘The cult of Captain Tom is a cult of White British Nationalism. I will offer prayers for the repose of his kind and…
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Switch-Hitters
It’s LGBT History Month in February, which affords all our cringe-inducing, professional ‘allies’ a gilt-edged opportunity to fling their sagging corpses onto the bandwagon of gay rights and suck up some of that warm spotlight. Corpses? Well, they’re dead to me. Back in the summer, they had appropriated race equality as their vehicle of choice…
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Faking Like the Clappers
What better way to whistle up a distraction than to reintroduce the dreaded ‘clap’? An opportunity to draw out all the vacant virtue-signallers who will kick-start an orgy of sneerful shaming that swells the sycophantic masses. It’s transparent and ultimately brings fatigue, but it is one that remains in the corona-charlatan toolbox. And there is…
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Commission Impossible
Scientists have worked out a way to teach spinach to send emails. They now need to get it logged on pronto to send some urgent missives to the cabbages in Brussels. Following on from the reverse-ferret spectaculaire of last week’s Article 16 miscue, the EU Commission has now withdrawn its border staff in Northern Ireland…
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Dropped Boule
For those who are writing off the current EU vaccines debacle as a one-off, think again. What happened with the short-lived invocation of Article 16 was simply a more blunderingly spectacular demonstration of the bullying, self-serving, tosh that spawned a solid, broad generation of Brexiters out of 2016’s floating-voter middle ground. Five years on, and…
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Jab Well Done
Interesting that when the UK approved the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine, EU honchos scoffed that the approval process had been rushed. Well, they’re not scoffing now, are they? In fact, as of this morning (28 January 2021), they had still not formally approved it. On the commercial front, the UK signed its contract three months before the…
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Inevitabubble
Queues, higher costs, dissatisfied populations, and aggravation. Looks like post-transition Brexit has followed its inexorable path to misery. Or has it? The specific logic arguably suggests otherwise. Millions of EU citizens losing their rights in the UK was not a certainty of Brexit. Additional customs checks at the border with Continental Europe were not set…
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Chapter and Verse
In the hours following the US Inauguration pomp and ceremony, CNN triumphally announced that Amanda Gorman had ‘… reminded America of what poetry can do’. Well, indirectly at least. Absolutely nothing. We had just watched the world’s most powerful nation saved from the brink of implosion, and once again, aspirations masquerading as values had heralded…
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Not the Point
I have long been aggravated by comma abuse in writing, and that goes for both the scattergunners and the stinges. However, rules are not straightforward, and when you have a flow between linguistic registers sometimes within the same piece, commas are infinitely tricky and controversial. Even that last sentence was, for several reasons. That one,…
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Sky’s the Limit
While COVID might be debilitating ever-increasing numbers of the population, Sky is following up with its own assault on the nation’s mental health, not to mention insulting its intelligence. The TV/Broadband company is now spitting out renewal letters with a twist. Headed, ‘We’re now giving you another 12 months of savings’, it all seems a…
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