Tag: Economy
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Tariffic
I’m lamentably old enough to remember when our Eurochums flipped into Brexit attack mode and held that tariffs were a reasonable big stick with which the 27-state EU might threaten a solitary UK. Remember all that crud about the EU 27 acting as one in an unbreakable bond? Yes, that federal façade. Now they’ve been…
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Indian Giver
So, there we have it: Rishi Sunak is the new prime minister. He is not of course the UK’s first ethnic minority PM – that honour went to Disraeli who was top Jew before top dude. As for what the bijou berk might bring, he’s screams stability only via his personal low centre of gravity.…
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‘F*ck…’
The greatest challenge to mocking this current government is that real life has trumped satire. Even when Crazy Kwasi was being hailed back from the US to meet his fate, the airline moved him out of business into economy and performed one final U-turn before landing. Ultimately, a guy whose first national exposure was as…
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Wordsworths
It’s a rum old thing, and one that confounds linguists, but there’s an inherent paradox in language. When we communicate a message, the logic of the sentence will often have little bearing on how it will be interpreted. Audiences bring their fears, preferences, and very often their psychoses to the table, and then home in…
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Trite Said Fred
I was never a committed cheerleader of the lockdowns, but even less supportive of the fact that the decisions to enter them and then exit them have continually been based on bonkers logic. We’re now shelving 100% of restrictions after 69% of the adult population has been vaccinated. You don’t need to be a numbers…
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Skimmed Bilk
I was recently taken aback by the prevalence of round-ups for charity when making electronic payments. Just last week, it happened three times in one morning on the High Street, and even sneaky old online retailers are slipping it into their payment processes. It works like this: if your purchases cost £7.84, the screen asks…
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Porto Ball Bug
It’s the UEFA Champions’ league final today – an all-English affair, which is taking place in Porto. Fewer than three weeks ago, it had been decided to switch the event from Istanbul because Turkey is on the UK’s travel ‘red list’. So, let me get this straight. In the midst of a pandemic when this…
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Long Shot
In 1978, an episode of The Professionals concluded with an aeroplane carrying an international terrorist being diverted to a hostile Arab nation after one of the passengers had faked a coronary. We can hardly now take the moral high ground with Belarus, because this ruse was conceived by one of our own, George Cowley. It…
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Dropped Ball
Oceans of tears this weekend at the prospect of a European Football Super League, and there we were, being led to believe that Euro-integration was the future? If it is invitation-only, risk-free showboating, this isn’t a competition as such – it’s marketing content. Think Federer and Nadal hotdogging and pinging up 20-shot lob rallies with…
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Stealth Bummer
As predicted, the issue of vaccine passports is looming into view as the next hot, steaming political package. The cries centre on potential discrimination, which as an initial observation is fair comment. However, this bubbling dissent betrays that folk have been spending too long either out in the sun or at least reading it. The…
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