Truth and lies

A lie may fool someone else but it tells you the truth, you're weak.

Tom Wolfe


Metternich told lies all the time, and never deceived any one; Talleyrand never told a lie and deceived the whole world.

Lord Macaulay


Fame is the sum of all the misunderstandings that grow up around a name.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Semites [he is referring to Arabs] had no half-tones in their register of vision. They were a
people of primary colours, or rather of black and white, who saw the world always in contour. They were a dogmatic people, despising doubt, our modern crown of thorns.

Quotations

An online friendship does not feel, to me, like friendship. It feels like an ever-receding touch.

Tanya Gold, Guardian October 14 2018 

If Facebook is for lying about being happy, Twitter is for lying about being right. It is exhausting.

Ibid.

It is my (admittedly mildly eccentric) belief that Brexit is not just about sovereignty; on a subconscious level, some of us are trying to claw our way out of a much more serious existential abyss. The companies of the future, like FaceApp and Neural Link, as well as Brussels, are trying to impose on us a disturbingly unchecked, unaccountable definition of human ‘progress’.

Brexit negotiations

The cardinal sin was that David Cameron told civil servants not to make a contingency plan in case Leave won the referendum. 

Had they made one it might have been the Norway option and everything would be very different now. 

We'd have left for one thing and on good terms with the EU - and with  no economic problems.

Michel Barnier said yesterday that Theresa May never threatened leaving the EU with no deal during the negotiations.

Martin Selmayr said yesterday that no-one took the possibility of the UK leaving with no deal seriously because they knew no preparations had been made by the UK. This was a

Quotations

1.  Eccles Retweeted

   Eccles‏ @BruvverEccles 15 hours ago

   Eccles Retweeted Catholic Herald

   From St Augustine's Confessions: "In my youth I spake out against sin and evil, and was rightly accused of hate speech. Now, in my old age, I condemn only the climate that changeth and the transphobia of our people."

   Eccles added,

   Catholic HeraldVerified account @CatholicHerald

   Facebook labels St Augustine quote as 'hate speech' http://ow.ly/A0gJ50v1IcR 

“America solves problems, Europe manages them...”
John Bolton

"Trump is dangerous because he's not a politician. He may be a fool, but his saving grace may be that his vision is not clouded by an investment in the survival of the political species. He is not of their tribe."
Philip Patrick

"Even Obama in 2014 said asylum claims are not justified for economic reasons. If people are truly in fear for their life, they should apply for asylum in the first country they go to."
Congresswoman Debbie Lesko

Sean Gabb‏ @GabbSean More

I voted to leave the European Union because I wanted to live in an independent country. If required to choose between Brussels and Washington, I will choose Brussels every time.

Transports of delight

“…Formerly, it was the practice for the Boyars, like their ancestors the Scythians, to ride on horseback, from which they seldom were seen dismounted in the streets. It was only about thirty years ago that they adopted the more effeminate habit of riding in carriages; and this practice is congenial to their vain and indolent disposition, that now they would not cross to the opposite side of a street without entering into them. But the circumstance which most distinguishes Bucharest is melancholic dissoluteness of manners among all classes. The town abounds with wine-houses; and, to attract customers, a number of women are kept in each house, who are ready at a call to dance and sing for the guests. To these houses the Boyars repair from their own families and pass their evenings among the most shameless class of females that ever disgraced the sex. In this way it is that Bucharest is rendered infamous for profligacy beyond any other city in Europe. The number of this unfortunate class is so great, that it was proposed to lay a capitation tax to them, as the most profitable source of revenue that could be resorted to and it is expected that the proposal will be carried into effect."

The Reverend Robert Walsh, Narrative of a Journey from Constantinople to England, London, 1828, talking about Bucharest. The whole book is here.

“The beauty of cycling is that you are a part of the world around you — and yet you move through it untouched.”

Boris Johnson


I think that if I could un-invent one feature of modern life, it would be the car. How

Let us hope Boris knows how to dance - as Mr Blair did and Mrs May did not

Politics is not chess, or even poker, but dancing. Tony Blair danced beautifully but was never faced with a challenge like this. Boris has to do something terribly hard, to dance us out of the EU.

The boss of Aston Martin that makes the cars that James Bond drives, Andy Palmer, says he prefers Great Britain leaving the EU without a deal to continued uncertainty, even though the car industry will be very badly affected by leaving the Single Market.

“Every time we have to prepare to leave it ties up working capital and brains on something that may or may not happen. First and foremost, I think we now need certainty. I think business was pretty clear that it would prefer a deal with free trade with Europe, and it is true we are looking at a cliff edge without one but at this stage a decision is better than no decision.”

Unfortunately uncertainty will continue for many years whatever the UK does.


Still a decision of some sort has to be taken. 

It has been three years since the referendum, the event that an Independent writer said

Ship without sailors

On 7 May, customs officers in Ostend in Belgium received a box of oysters from West Mersea in the Essex marshes, in England, in case you don't know where my native county is. It came to them across the North Sea, delivered in a 39 foot (12 metre) boat with an aluminium hull and nobody on board. This was the world's first unmanned commercial voyage.

'Yes, we could have a bright no-deal future, but not with this Parliament'

Everything changed in the developed world when the 2008 financial crisis happened and everything will change in the UK again after Brexit.

In his weekly Telegraph article, William Hague argues that a no-deal Brexit, which is a very real possibility, would have to be followed by a general election. It's worth reading. He always is.

'This is actually the biggest problem with a no-deal Brexit: that it would not be possible, without a new and very different parliament, to do what was desperately needed afterwards.'

A no deal Brexit looks more likely today since Boris said yesterday that the backstop had to go completely, not just be limited duration.

Boris and the Donald are very masculine - Mrs May is sexless, lacks not just colour but vitality

Freddie Gray writes in this week's Spectator:

 “Unlike Theresa May, Boris has long appreciated the possible upsides of a Trump presidency. He once told a Cabinet minister that he saw Trump as a ‘lifeboat’ that could rescue Brexit. He has also apparently been receptive to the idea — put about by some of Trump’s circle — that after leaving the EU, Britain might join NAFTA. Boris’s ideal scenario would be to persuade the EU that, unless it offers Britain a reasonable deal, Britain stands ready to form an alliance with America.”

Whatever you think of him and whatever you think of Brexit, you have to admit that Great Britain was remarkably lucky that Donald Trump became president of the USA. Mr. Obama said we would be "at the back of the queue" for a trade deal (albeit because David Cameron asked him to, whence the word "queue" not "line") whereas his successor wants one urgently and thinks Brexit a great idea. 

Since Brexit is going to happen this is our great good luck. And yet Theresa May showed no sign of recognising this. Boris will not be such a fool.

Is Boris King Charles I or II?

S

ir John Major spoke on the Today programme last week about the evils of proroguing parliament. It would be, he said, the first time since Charles I that such an abomination was perpetrated, with civil war the outcome. Those who make eager use of historical analogies are rarely exact in their grasp of the past. The last time parliament was prorogued to get a government measure through was in 1948, during the premiership of the sainted Clement Attlee – a less spine-chilling example, if Sir John had been aware of it.

At various moments in our history, parliament has been treated rather – shall we say, cavalierly? – by governments when it tried to obstruct change. The

Quotations

Asked on television by Sir Robin Day, after her 1983 election victory and cabinet reshuffle, whether she was a “good butcher”, Margaret Thatcher replied, 

“No, but I have had to learn to carve the joint”.

Chris Arnade, 'Dignity: seeking respect in back row America':

“We have said that education is the way out of pain and the way to success, implying that those who don’t make it are dumb, or lazy, or stupid. This has ensured that all those at the bottom, black, white, gay, straight, men and women, are guaranteed to feel excluded, rejected, and most of all, humiliated.” 

Giles Fraser‏ @giles_fraser Jul 13

We need someone with the temperament to drive full speed towards No Deal without any thought of using the break. The person most suited to this is Boris.

The Great Stalin‏ @stalin_great 33m33 minutes ago

I see that Bergoglio is having a go at seafarers and fishermen now.

Pope Urban II on Muslims in 1095

"They [the enemies of God] inhabit Asia, the third portion of the world, as their native soil... They hold Africa also, another quarter of the world, already possessed by their arms for more than two hundred years; which, on this account, I pronounce derogatory to Christian honour, because that country was anciently the nurse of celebrated geniuses, who by their divine writings, will mock the rust of antiquity as long as there shall be a person who can relish Roman literature; the learned know the truth of what I say. Europe, the third portion of the world, remains, of which how small a part do we Christians inhabit, for who can call all those barbarians who dwell in remote islands of the frozen ocean Christians, since they live after a savage manner? Even this small portion of the world, belonging to us, the Turks and Saracens oppress. Thus for three hundred years, Spain and the Balearic isles being subjugated to them..."

Say not the struggle naught availeth

"" ‘Britain not ready for no-deal crash-out, claim experts.’ That was a newspaper headline I saw a couple of weeks ago. It unconsciously encapsulates the Remain mindset. You cannot, by definition, be ready for a crash-out: if you were, no crash would be involved."

Charles Moore in today's Spectator.

So far Boris who should have saved us from Mrs May and a world of pain three years ago seems to be clear sighted. We need to stick close to Donald Trump, of whom she so clearly strongly disapproved. 

We also need close friendships with Italy, Poland, Austria, Czechia and Hungary.

Sir Kim Darroch resigns, which reminds me of two jokes

In the past few minutes, Sir Kim Darroch resigned as British Ambassador to what Michael Wharton would have called the American rebels.

Of course, he did nothing wrong. Of course, it is very unfair. Of course, he did the right thing by resigning. Of course, Boris Johnson was right not to make a foolish promise not to move him. Relations with Mr Trump are far too important. Of course, journalists who know little and who hate Boris and Donald Trump are humbugs. Of course, television debates are an awful idea at a moment as perilous as this for Great Britain or England or whatever you call my country. 

Four times during last night’s televised debate Johnson was asked to confirm that Sir Kim would keep his job until he was due to leave it in six months' time. Why do TV presenters think it acceptable to badger privy counsellors in this way?

Remember this?

By the way, Boris Johnson whose opinions on all sorts of things are on record going back decades, once accused Mr Trump of a “stupefying ignorance” that makes him “frankly

Boris and the great cause of cheering us up

If he succeeds, there will never have been a party leader who has expressed an opinion on so many things over such a long period of time as Boris Johnson. Except, interestingly, Jeremy Corbyn.

Lord Finkelstein in The Times

"Do you believe in anything? Do you, in fact, have any convictions at all, Boris?"
“Only one — for speeding, but a very long time ago”.

Sonia Purnell in her biography, Just Boris, quoted by Lord Finkelstein


“However ludicrous it may seem, religion sets boundaries, it suggests to bad and loveless people that they are loved. It provides a framework.

"My own faith is a very feeble tinsel object. I sometimes think there might be some kind of celestial radio signal but it is about as intelligible as Radio Tirana.” 

Boris Johnson, November 2006

R.I.P. Christopher Booker

I was saddened by the death of the great contrarian Christopher Booker, the puppeteer who pulled Dave Spart's strings, the first British journalist who argued for leaving the EU and the most uncompromising of climate change sceptics. 

As an undergraduate at Cambridge, Christopher Booker said his ambitions were to edit a magazine, be on television and marry a duke's daughter. On graduating he became the first editor of Private Eye, a writer and occasional performer on the iconic 1960s satire programme That Was The Week That Was and married the Honourable Emma Tennant, the daughter of Lord Glenconner. None of these things lasted. He wrote a very interesting book called The Neophiliacs.

He thought ‘climate change’ was the biggest scam in the history of the world. James

'Who whom?'

Lenin is supposed to have said at the second All-Russian Congress of Political Education Departments on 17 October 1921, 

"The whole question is—who will overtake whom?"

It was Trotksy and later Stalin who shortened his question to two words 

'Who whom?'

but it is the important question.

Carl Benjamin, blogger (Sargon of Akkad) and UKIP candidate, was visited by the police
during the Euro-elections this year for having in 2016 said of a woman that he “wouldn't even rape” her and then thinking aloud that there again he might. Jo Brand, one of a number of left-wing comics who have never been funny in their careers, said she wanted acid thrown at Nigel Farage instead of milkshakes. Some people complained, but she was

Fiona Hill returns

Theresa May is a weak person who, like most weak people (such as Tsar Nicholas II, for example) is very stubborn. She came completely under the control of two advisers, Nick Timothy and Fiona Hall as Home Secretary and then as Prime Minister, until she lost her majority in the election they egged her on to call and was required by her MPs to fire them.

They were much more powerful than cabinet ministers, whom they addressed with four letter words. Referring to Theresa May's continual talk about eradicating slavery and looking at her and her two advisers Boris Johnson said "That's modern slavery right there." 

They were doubly disastrous. 

The Eccentricities of Cardinal Parolin and Archbishop Peña Parra

Matteo Salvini, the Italian Deputy Prime Minister, is the European statesman who gives me most hope, but the Pope and the Catholic hierarchy loathe him, despite his disapproval of single sex marriage and abortion, because he does not want Italy to take in people from the Maghreb who claim asylum. 

An article in the New York Times headlined 'How the Catholic Church Lost Italy to the Far Right', talks about him and mentions that Cardinal Parolin, the Cardinal Secretary of State, has rebuked him for 'invoking God for his own sake'.

This is the same Cardinal Parolin whom, we learnt yesterday from a scoop by Lifesitenews, Archbishop Vigano has condemned for not questioning the appointment of Archbishop Peña Parra as his deputy, despite the existence of a file of very serious allegations against the latter involving boys.

"In Britain Pope Francis would face questioning by the police"

Damian Thompson, one of my favourite journalists, resigned yesterday as editor of the Catholic Herald, the leading and until he went there very dull British Catholic weekly newspaper, which he turned into a must-read. He left voluntarily, he said, after  disagreements with the owner. 

Last night, a free man after a long time, he tweeted

"The list of suspected sex abusers and their accomplices whom Francis has protected or promoted is growing by the day. In Britain he would face questioning by police."

He was referring to a hitherto unpublished section of the recent interview given by Archbishop Viganò to the Washington Post, which yesterday was published by LifeSiteNews, in which the Archbishop said that Pope Francis ignored a file created in 2002, detailing allegations against Archbishop Peña of interference with boys, when he recently appointed him to the position of Deputy Secretary of State. 

The media have not mentioned this story. Imagine if it concerned not a liberal pope but Pope Benedict XVI. Or Donald Trump or - save the mark- Boris Johnson.

In this interview a week ago Damian Thompson criticises a lot of things that liberal Catholic bishops are doing and eviscerates the English bishops for their very muted reaction to a court decision to force a girl to have an abortion against her and her mother's wishes.