With the greatest regret, I felt I had no reasonable option but to vote Tory today. I live in a Labour super-marginal (Kensington) & as BXP has zero chance here, I had to vote against the anti-Semitic Marxist party.
I am going to drown my sorrows.
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Nobody here in Samizdata agreed with me when I claimed that Theresa May had an ulterior motive (read: to prevent Brexit) when she called the snap general election in 2017.
Nobody here in Samizdata agreed with me when I claimed that by running his Brexit Party in the EU MEP elections earlier this year Nigel Farage was hurting the chances for Brexit and doing exactly what the EU and UK Remain Establishment wanted him to do to keep Brexit from happening.
Brexit is not happening. I’ve known this for years because I knew and know what democracy actually is.
Brexiteers still fighting for Brexit would be funny if it weren’t so sad.
“Do you not know death when you see it?” said Nazgûl once.
I understand your feelings. Here in Scotland, I had the choice of the uninspiring Tory, the Green, The LibDem (named Rehman, which is, I assume, pronounced like ‘Remain’), the Labour and the Nat.
I don’t know if it will cheer you up to think of people in Eastern Europe in WWII who had the choice of fighting for Hitler or for Stalin or for a partisan group who had zero chance in a sense that brought more serious immediate consequences. We are far happier than they.
Shlomo Maistre (December 12, 2019 at 7:44 pm), IIRC Staghounds was telling us that May was about preventing Brexit before May was elected leader. And people, disagreed with you about the Brexit party in the EU elections because you were wrong about that.
Literally everyone knew that Theresa May was against Brexit prior to being elected leader. Prior to June 2016 Theresa May campaigned for Remain, for christ’s sake! My point was entirely different. I claimed that she was calling snap general elections in the UK after becoming Leader of the Tories and the UK PM partly to make Brexit less likely. Nobody agreed with me. Everyone made some version of the argument that Theresa May really was advancing Brexit by calling snap elections and that the snap general elections were necessary to secure a mandate for Brexit. How do we know that everyone was wrong about that? Because Brexit still has not happened almost three years later.
This parody writes itself. Yes thank the Brexit Gods that Nigel Farage is in Brussels delivering speeches instead of delivering Brexit! Boris Johnson is doing a magnificent job of delivering Brexit!!
I already made a nice amount of money betting against Brexit happening in 2019. I’m going to make a lot more money betting against Brexit happening in 2020.
And I was overjoyed on the night of June 23, 2016 – I wanted Brexit to happen. I still want Brexit to happen. Unfortunately, Brexit is not going to happen. Smell the coffee, bud.
And then Sauron died and the Nazgul faded away.
Concretely, specifically, suggest what you would have in place of democracy, how you would have the decision-maker selected or empowered. I don’t think you’ve ever done that on Samizdata. Does it all truly just come down to the luck of the draw of a hereditary owner?
Commiserations. In my constituency, we didnt even have BXP standing, nor any other independent or Raving Loony standing.
Nothing but a choice between 4 lying remainers. Even the Con candidate had been expelled (and then let back in).
Perry,
I think that you did the right thing.
Stopping Magic Grandpa and his Trotskyite associates has to take priority over everything else.
With regard to Brexit, a semi-Brexit does have some value, because it changes the psychology of the country and even to some extent of its political class. eg The ironically named ‘Liberal Democrats’ thought that rejecting the people’s vote in the referendum would shoot their vote upwards. They are about to find that it doesn’t. While they won’t be converted to Brexit, reversing it will drift somewhat down their priorities.
Well they won so that is something.
Perry, you’re gonna hate me for saying this, but having just seen the exit poll, you needn’t have done it.
But of course you couldn’t have known that.
I have a brief post up at the Great Realignment in which I express pity for John McDonnell. Strange days.
I don’t drink ethanol, but I sympathize with the sentiment.
I sympathise. The same was true here in Perth. I held my nose and voted Tory for the first time in my life (and hopefully last). I did it purely to get BREXIT.
Their is a bad taste in my mouth…
It was only through lots and lots of people holding their noses just as PdH did that this happened. So, yeah, they DID need to have done it.
Y’all gave up the perfect – at which you had no shot anyway – and you got the good. It was a good day.
Perry,
My commiserations, but you did the right thing.
That anti-semitic bar steward should never, ever be let near the reins of power and Johnson will do something that progresses towards Brexit, even if it isn’t enough.
According to the exit polls, it looks like you’ll have a Good Thursday and a Good Friday, not a Black Friday the 13th! With a working majority, you might celebrate Brexit Day on 31st January. (The one downside for Australia is that we won’t be a target for immigrants fleeing from a Left-Behind Britain if Corbyn had been PM.)
re bad tastes in the mouth.
There are no perfect candidates. They all taste at least slightly off. It’s always a question of which tastes worse, why and by how much.
I can take a bit of the taste of a womanizing, smug, liar but none at all of a racist, murderous, terrorist sympathizing commie – who’s also a liar, and a bad one at that.
Jo Swinson ousted by the SNP!
Bye bye anti-democratic cow.
Boris will exit Britain. He has to. He can’t have it sitting there forever, because it is never going to go away. Labour voters who voted Tory this time in order to Leave will never do so again if they don’t. Tory voters who want Brexit will defect forever if the UK doesn’t go.
He needs to get it done quick though — before the opponents have time to regroup. It will be interesting to see whether that means accepting bad terms,like the May deal, or just pulling the plug without terms to get it done. He could ram almost anything through in the next three months.
Hope he powers up the ram then.
Will Bojo be a Thatcher or a Cameron.
Will Tony Blair come on TV and cry?
Brexit is the story of the night for sure. But it looks like the SNP took nearly every seat in Scotland, like 55/59. So that is certainly the second story. IndRef I think is definitely back on the agenda, and BoJo I think will have a hard time resisting it. (FWIW, this time I think it will pass. So you will have the weird sight of Scotland exiting one union to join another.)
But will it be that easy? Will Scotland automatically be a part of Europe, or will the Eu make it very hard, so they can’t leave later? Or will the EU break up? What is Italy doing?
N(UJ)G: that would have to be the atomic weight 150 isotope of Europium, with a half-life of 36.9 years. Maastricht 1993 + 37 = 2030. We should expect the Eu to have lost half its vigor in the next 10 years or so.
Nicola Sturgeon is already hinting at yet another final for the last time we really mean it (if we win) independence referendum.
Mr. de Havilland: Cheer up. Imagine what Sir John Major feels like. When he awakens tomorrow, he’ll think he has your hangover…
Well, I stood for the SDP, which was on a hiding to nothing. But I am mightily relieved that the anti-Semites got kicked in the knackers.
There’s a message here: British people generally can smell it when it gets bad.
You made a difference: the truly awful Emma Dent Coad out by just 20 votes.
I genuinely do not think that Scotland and the Scottish Nazi … err I mean NATIONAL Party want to leave the UK.
If they really, really, actually did want to leave, then if they put it in terms of “This means the break up of the United Kingdom so everyone gets a vote” then the vast majority of English voters would vote leave. This would ensure that the Scots would still whinge about the English for the next 2,000 years but at least we would not be paying via the Barnett formula, be saddled with the West Lothian question etc. As a “new” country, they would have to apply to join the EU like any other country.
They don’t realise the effect this will have but to paraphrase Henry II, who will rid me of this troublesome country? and the solution to that problem needs to be the same – drastic surgery to part Scotland from the rest of the UK.
Another nose-holding voter here – although we stayed with the anti-semite supporting candidate, so the wrong Lizard got in anyway.
In the next few weeks, if Boris reverses the “No No-Deal” amendment (Letwin-Cooper IIRC?) which originally passed by one vote from a criminal with a tag, then we will know things are serious.
Meanwhile the stench of anti-semitism remains, whilst Boris can get on with his job what is left is to root out these nasty people before they cause any more damage, Labour have gone back to 1935 in more ways than one.
Fraser Orr: “IndRef I think is definitely back on the agenda, and BoJo I think will have a hard time resisting it.”
Should be a UK wide poll, that way English voters can tell the whining SNP Scots what they think of their longest whinge in history.
Runcie Balspune: “Meanwhile the stench of anti-semitism remains,”
I don’t understand this, Labour has spent 30 years recruiting from pakistan, and everyone is surprised the party is now ‘anti-Semetic’. Gobsmacked!
Perry first congratulations on the election result in Kensington.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you and your household.
It was strange night for me – I was at the local count and was thanked, in his speech, by the successful Conservative candidate for my work as, unpaid, Election Agent – but I was not wearing a rosette as I am no longer a member of the Conservative Party.
“What does that matter Paul” – it has been my life for 40 years and I have no family (the Conservative Party was my family). So yes, I must confess, it does matter to me.
It was a good result for the Conservative Party – so now we will see if Prime Minister Boris Johnson (who does have pro freedom instincts – he really does) can turn an election victory into a successful government – I simply DO NOT KNOW (there is no evidence to go on – either way).
A bad night in Northern Ireland – the “wall down the Irish Sea” has cost the DUP badly, and in the perception of the voters unnecessary move by the Prime Minister (a mistake that I sincerely hope he will correct – and Mr Johnson does say that, in practice, his agreement with the E.U. will NOT mean a wall down the Irish Sea and I hope he turns out to be correct).
Scotland has reacted to the horrible damage that the falsely named Scottish “National” Party (which wants rule by Brussels – Brussels is not in Scotland so the claim that the SNP stands for Scottish Independence is as LIE – a LIE) has done to Scots Law and Scots education – by INCREASING support for the SNP (although still only a minority of Scots support the SNP).
I do not fully understand Scottish politics (but then, I remember as I sit here, that in 40 years I have never campaigned in Scotland – unlike everywhere else in the United Kingdom) – the SNP has done great harm to the Scots, but the Scots have voted for them in increased numbers, although they still only represent a MINORITY of Scots.
The position in Northern Ireland can be restored – if a real effort is made. The position in Scotland may be rather different. The situation in Scotland may, may, be an ideological one – one of just hatred for “the English” (by which the SNP seems to include the Welsh – who also voted for British independence from the E.U.), the SNP has no positive message, I repeat it has done great harm to Scots Law, Scots Education, and to everything else in Scotland – but the basic SNP message of Down-With-The-English seems to be more important than practical matters. Bizarrely the media (specifically the television stations) talk about “English Nationalism” – but it is not the English who hate the Scots, not at all. The problem does seem to be the other way round – the SNP people hate the English and for no reason. We have done nothing to them.
If hatred is for an actual reason then one can work to change it – one can look at what has done to inspire the hatred and work to change one’s behaviour. But if the hatred is for NO REASON, as is the hatred that SNP voters have for “the English”, there is nothing one can really do. With the SNP it really does seem to be the case that “they hate us because they hate us” – there is no reason for their hatred, so there is nothing we can do to stop them hating us.
HOWEVER it must be remembered (as I have pointed out twice above) it is still the case that only a MINORITY of Scots support the politics-of-hatred (the SNP and its hatred of the English – hatred-without-a-reason) – but it is a very large minority. And, I repeat, this is nothing to do with wanting Scottish Independence – the SNP does NOT want an independent Scotland (it has no positive message – none), it is just based on hatred of “the English”. Rule by the European Union is fine, according to the SNP, because the E.U. is not “the English”. The Scottish “National” Party does NOT want independence, it does NOT want an independent Scotland.
“… and everyone is surprised the party is now ‘anti-Semetic’.”
That is not surprising, but what is worrying is the number of people still willing to vote for it, that is the stench that remains.
Yet another nose-holder here. I was, in small part, responsible for the demise of Jenny Chapman.
I have the luxury of living in a safe Tory seat, so I spoiled the ballot paper, so did Mrs. Stonyground. Had I lived in a marginal, I would have been forced to vote Conservative too. The fact that they no longer represent me would have had to take second place to keeping Corbyn out. I have a feeling that Corbyn only did well last time because he was seen as a no-hoper who was a good bet for a protest vote. So actually being seen as credible worked against him this time around.
Runcie Balspune: “but what is worrying is the number of people still willing to vote for it,”
The client state. NGO’s, ‘charities’, civil service, NHS employees etc.
So Labour got 10,295,000+ votes, I am heartened by the fall of around 12,870,000+ of 2017, losing 1 in 5 or 2,500,000 votes. The Golgafrinchan question is how to avoid sharing a jurisdiction with people who voted for this Labour Party? The only possible things are a) emigrate or b) to make it uneconomic to support Labour, by reducing the client state, the quangos, the government jobs, the education sector, the numbers employed by the NHS, have a time and/or cost welfare cap barring demonstrable impairment with fakery severely penalised.
It isn’t going to happen, is it?
Perry should take comfort from the thought that it would have been arguably inconsistent for him NOT to vote against Corbyn.
Perry wrote on Samizdata (iirc) that he was happy about Corbyn’s leadership because it would keep Labour out of power. Having written that, it would seem inconsistent for Perry NOT to vote to keep Corbyn out of power.
BTW Kensington is quite a nice neighborhood, but i am surprised to learn that it is a marginal seat. No wonder the working class are deserting Labour!
Paul Marks postulated above that much of the SNP support may be predicated on a hatred of the English. Well, as an Englishman who’s lived in Scotland for nigh on forty years I can only say that, in my experience, this is largely so. However, it wasn’t always thus: when I moved to Scotland in the early 80s I was barely aware of animus against the English. There was plenty of anti-Thatcher sentiment, but that didn’t extend to the English as a whole. There was, of course, plenty of banter (much of it football-oriented), but that’s all it was – banter. It would often take the form of “Will you English ever stop going on about 1966?”, to which the appropriate response was “Will you Scots ever stop going on about the Battle of Stirling Bridge…?”. Harmless fun.
But then, slowly, a genuine hatred of the English began to grow in the Scottish body politic. I think it dates from around the time that well known anti-Semite Mr Gibson released his film about some bloke with a blue-painted face. And now I think it’ll be hard to eradicate, if that’s even possible. The SNP has quite a Brownshirt faction within its ranks – witness the physical assaults on Jim Murphy and Eddie Izzard (two gentlemen for whom I have no affection, but who should be allowed to campaign unmolested) in Glasgow during the 2015 election campaign. La Sturgeon’s ‘condemnation’ of this episode was mealy-mouthed to say the least. (Photos subsequently surfaced showing the assailants being very pally with Sturgeon at some SNP event, something not dissimilar to Magic Grandpa being best buddies with Hamas).
I have no fear of Scottish independence *in the abstract* – I firmly believe all peoples have the right to seek self-determination, hence my support for Brexit – but an independent Scotland under an SNP government would concern me greatly, and I’d be making plans to move back to England. I’d be interested in the thoughts of other Scotland-domiciled Samizdatistas on this.
Well, North Kensington is not so nice, and I doubt many nice English people can afford to live in S.Ken these days.
The media are talking up Scotland today because it’s the only variant topic to saying things are going well for Boris – which they dislike having to do any of and are having to do a lot of.
It is reported Boris will send Sturgeon a Christmas card intimating that the he was elected to enforce the results of referenda, not rerun them. In May 2021 (barring extraordinary events – and the devolved Scottish assembly is also subject to the FTPA, which it might amuse Boris to leave in place for them when he abolishes it for Westminster) the Scottish elections will be held – under PR, not FPTP (which is why Boris has a stonking majority but Sturgeon leads a minority government). 🙂 It will then be a question not of stopping Brexit but what of what Brexit looks like after a year and a half – and what politics looks like after reversing the Brexit referendum result is no longer the battle.
Meanwhile a lot of this ‘Scotland’ talk is the media serving their own immediate agenda of trying to pour just a bit of cold water in Boris’ soup, lest it be too tasty for him – and too hot for them. A gaggle of SNP MPs in Westminster would have been very useful to Sturgeon if a Corbyn government had depended on them, but are no use to her today.
Echoing Niall Kilmartin’s comment about the media talking up Scotland.
The media are all comparing the results of the 2019 General Election (SNP 48 seats, 1,242,372 votes, 3.9% share) to the results of the 2017 General Election (SNP 35 seats, 977,569 votes, 3.0% share).
On that basis, a huge gain for the SNP, which is great for the headlines (and the bash boris memes)
But here’s the 2015 General Election results (SNP 56 seats, 1,454,436 votes, 4.7% share) – and this was 9 months after IndyRef.
Much better, to counter the SNP “mandate” position, to compare 2019 to 2015.
But it doesn’t fit the media narrative of Sturgeon v Johnson.
Perry: it’s not often that one’s individual vote matters as much as it did yesterday – the margin was only 150 votes. So good on you.
djc:
I wasn’t aware of a divide between North and South Kensington — which just goes to show how little i know about London.
Well, i am pretty sure that not many nasty English people can afford to live in South Kensington, either!
(I’d like to make it clear that neither this nor my previous comment are meant to be snarky. Just ironic.)
So let me get this straight. Going by the Foot of All Knowledge, I gather that Mr. Johnson is now officially the duly-elected next P.M. of the U.K., and that technically he will be sworn in on Tuesday (IIUC) and will take office as the official P.M. Is that correct?
If so, let me congratulate you, our elder brothers and sisters, twice: For having delivered the kayo to Mr. Corbyn (thank the Great Frog, and may he do us the same favor next year), and for keeping alive the hope of some noteworthy forward movement on British Independence, a.k.a. Brexit.
YA-A-AY!!!! GO BRITS !!!! 😀 😀 😀
..
P.S. Perry, let me thank you for your vote. (And everyone else too, of course, who voted Rightly.)
.
Rich, vote margin = 150 in Perry’s constituency, you mean?
Correct.
Good job! You get an ice-cream. 😀
You may recall the comic scene in Yes Prime Minister’s first episode when Sir Humphrey tells Hacker the palace called to ask if he would be free to kiss hands at 5 o’ clock. As Boris is already the PM, his appointment with her majesty to kiss hands as her PM for the new session as being arranged with less haste than would likely be the case if it were a change.
Where the US has a long interregnum (that was even longer before the 1930s change), the UK allows for the removers’ vans to arrive at number 10 the day after the vote – which is useful in preventing prior administrations from burning papers, reformatting disks, issuing pardons and all that stuff that the US interregnum is so usefully evil for.
Niall, surely the u.s. would never take advantage of the ~ 3-month final period of the outgoing Administration to play footsie with important records. I am shocked that you would imply such a thing! 😯
However, it is certainly convenient, at least for P.M. Johnson and his Government, that there will be no change in No. 10. I am only uncertain as to whether at the start of his second term (the first having been a fill-in after Mrs. May’s resignation, so not a full term) it’s proper to refer to this as “the new Goverment” or “Mr. Johnson’s second term” or what.
Anyway, I think I have it right: Business as usual until the new swearing-in ceremony, which is when he may take up official duties as the duly-elected “in-coming” P.M., which will be followed by pretty much a continuance of business as usual. I guess we here always sidestep the issue somehow. “President Trump’s second term will begin Jan. 20, 2021 — God willing and the crick don’t rise.”
.
By the bye, I just ran across today some complaint that Pres. Bush 43 did a terrible dreadful treasonous thing by firing 9 (nine!) Obama personnel from whatever — the FBI, the NSA, one of ’em anyway. This was despicable because the firings were political.
That was a bit of a show -stopper for me, as I have been given to understand that a new President has traditionally let the previous Administration’s loyalists go, for obvious reasons, and that Pres. Bush is often faulted for hanging on to so many Obama appointees and hires. And I too have had that impression.
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Niall, I say again, thanks for all the information you share with all of us. I still don’t feel qualified to write the CIA Factbook entry on the UK, but at least I’ve learned a little about Britain from you. (Not to mention American history!) :>)
Julie
Others may correct me, but I’m pretty sure that any “swearing-in ceremony” took place at Buckingham Palace on Friday (oh to have been a fly on the wall for that!!)
Your musings on the subject caused me to think.
I suspect there is a bit of a “Schrodinger’s Prime Minister” aspect to the UK constitution. From the close of the polls on election night, past the point of no return of the count, up until the visit to the Palace, do we actually have a Prime Minister?
Yes, because Prime Minister is an office. Gordon Brown didn’t stop being PM when he lost the 2010 election until the Coalition was formed some days later. Only then could Brown submit his resignation and Cameron go to the Queen.
“I suspect there is a bit of a “Schrodinger’s Prime Minister” aspect to the UK constitution. From the close of the polls on election night, past the point of no return of the count, up until the visit to the Palace, do we actually have a Prime Minister?”
Yes. Boris Johnson remains Prime Minister up until the point he actually resigns. If after an election the current government wins, the Prime Minister simply continues in office. If the current government loses and some other party has a majority, the convention is that the Prime Minister and Cabinet resign immediately and the new leader is invited by the Queen to form a new government. If there is no overall majority, the current PM stays on until it is clear who leads a coalition able to run the next government.
See paras 2.8, 2.11, and 2.12 of the Cabinet Manual.
Quentin & NiV
Thank you both.
Julie – here’s the relevant bit from NiV’s link to answer your question.
2.11 After an election, if an incumbent government retains an overall majority – that is, where the number of seats won by the largest party in an election exceeds the combined number of seats for all the other parties in the new Parliament – it will normally continue in office and resume normal business. There is no need for the Sovereign to ask the Prime Minister to continue.
Perry, as bobby b notes, there were probably quite a few who resorted to ‘holding their noses’ as you did. In your case defenestrating the odious Dent Coad is entirely praiseworthy.
My wife and I had decided not to vote at all as there was no Brexit Party (BP) candidate in our constituency, Chipping Barnet. Then on Wednesday I got an email from Alex Matthews of the BP explaining that he had been nominated by the BP to stand in Chipping Barnet but though Barnet born and raised, had declined. His reasoning was that Theresa Villiers had been a good constituency MP and a high-profile Brexiteer and he could not in all conscience split the Leaver vote and allow the Labour candidate, an avowed Remainer, in. (He stood in Bermondsey instead.) He urged us to vote for Theresa Villiers, and on that basis my wife and I had a last minute change of mind and did so. She increased her majority from about 500 to about 1500.
Julie, Duncan S (December 14, 2019 at 1:04 pm) is quite right that Boris did talk with her majesty after breakfast Friday. My (vague) understanding is that a more formal meeting will occur next week, and I saw news commentary that these things were being done more relaxedly than on other occasions. IIUC he will need to ask her to deliver another Queen’s Speech a very short time after she just gave one for him (probably a ‘heads-up’ on that was chatted about on Friday).
It is very much the case that elections do not technically appoint and disappoint prime ministers, though they have a lot to do with it – the queen does that. She appointed Boris PM on 24th July 2019 and merely continues him.
Thank you all — Duncan, Quentin, Nullius, and Niall. 🙂
I think this clarifies things somewhat. So, Niall, IIUC, the Queen does not re-appoint him, but there is some sort of ceremonial speech (the Queen’s Speech).
Julie near Chicago (December 14, 2019 at 10:47 pm), the speech is not just ceremonial (though there is a good deal of ceremony). It is the way in which the commons is formally informed of what the government intends to do during the coming parliamentary session – especially those aspects that will require the legislature’s explicit approval of bills to be brought in. IIRC the ceremony also is, or is mixed in with, the formal opening of the new session (in this case, a new parliament, not the return of an existing parliament that the queen prorogued).
(When I lived in Edinburgh I almost never went to see the sights, unlike the tourists, and similarly, like most Britons, I know how our constitution works through growing up with it. I am better read on it than most – Burke, Bagehot and all between – but invite commenters to correct any slovenly, incomplete or incorrect points in the above.)
Julie near Chicago: “but there is some sort of ceremonial speech (the Queen’s Speech).”
The Queen’s speech marks the ceremonial opening of the first session of the new Parliament. It is essentially, the order of business Her Majesties ‘new’ government intends to implement.
Since the last Parliament ended, we ‘British citizens’ had no MPs. They were all technically unemployed. The executive, which these days is a large fraction of the governing party were still organising their staff Christmas parties or whatever and were quite put out to find themselves trudging around in the wet dark and cold campaigning for the general election.
What everyone else said about the transition between governments. Even though on this occasion it was the same government.
“There was, of course, plenty of banter (much of it football-oriented), but that’s all it was – banter.”
I fondly remember the time when the nationalists were parodied, now they are in government.
I’d like to ask Niall if “all between” is meant chronologically or ideologically.
Once again, thank you all.
Julie, a history lesson, please. Weren’t the Bushes in power BEFORE Obama, who was succeeded by Trump? So how could any President Bush fire an Obama appointment? This is some clever test, to see if we read all of your articles, isn’t it?
Nicholas,
😳
It’s not nice to catch me out on that sort of error!
There is a short, succinct 4-letter Anglo-Saxon word that a sweet, refined, innocent, tender, fragile young thing such as I could not possibly know. There is a way of putting it among the Vulgar that uses this word that I certainly don’t know. They say something like “Oops, brain fart.” *blush*
I’m so p.o.’ed at the Sith and Dems generally that I’m obsessed. You are right, of course. Papa bush (41), Clinton (42), Junior (Bush 43).
It’s the Clinton appointees and hires that Bush 43 s/have hosed right out of the barn and didn’t. And I never thought I’d get to the point where the more recent Dem “president” would make Slick Willie look like the soul of respectability and fair play, to the point that I seem to have wrapped him in a shroud and thumped him into the ground without even a Plain Stone Marker, and erased him from my memory. (That wife of his, on the other hand….)
Well, youse is a good boy, did your homework (reading my comments *g*), and reported on the results. So I will pretend to be grown up for a moment, and say, quite sincerely, thanks for catching my error. 😀
Ed Turnbull – yes you have confirmed what I have been told. This is not a long standing hatred of the English – it is a manufactured hatred.
I do not think one can really blame that drunk Mel Gibson – I think the SNP and their allies worked long and hard to create this hatred of the English.