Saturday, April 16, 2011

Displacement activity

Have these buffoons nothing better to do, asked a friend in a rhetorical mood. No, I said, they don't. They have no political ideas and if one comes their way they run and hide in terror. We were discussing (on line) this idiotic announcement.
The British government has accepted that laws surrounding succession to the throne could be "discriminatory" and that "discussions have started" to change them, CNN has learned.
Whatever CNN may have learnt, it is not the government that change legislation but Parliament.

Furthermore, there is hardly a huge demand for those changes or, even, any interest in them. If William and Kate have a daughter to start with, we can think about it all. It is not of any great importance at the moment. But I can just see some idiot in the Commons (the oleaginous Keith Vaz springs go mind) deciding to tie up parliamentary time with this rubbish.

While we are on the subject of displacement activity let me make a quick comment about the row that is going on about Cameron's immigration speech. I rarely comment on the subject because it is too complicated to discuss and rouses the sort of passions I find despicable.

While I am delighted to see the Prime Minister and his Deputy, the noted skier Clegg, falling out with each other yet again, I cannot help thinking that this scatter shot attack on all those who were not born in this country is immensely helpful to the political establishment. People hare off in all directions, swoon in horror because allegedly one in eight was born abroad (unspecified) and once again we leave the real subjects alone.

What are they? Well how about these for starters: the real problems with the European Union;our bloated, centralized, inefficient and corrupt welfare and social security system; above all, our education system. Too difficult, I suppose. So much easier to scream abuse about foreigners of all description.

5 comments:

  1. I was wondering whether to pit a PQ in about this, does the 1701 Act of Settlement breach EU anti discrimination legislation. I just wonder if HMG is jumping before she is pushed.

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  2. Sounds like a good idea. Then we can get all sorts of people worked up about yet another displacement activity.

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  3. When pretty much everything is done by the EU, you have to give the poor dears something to do with their time and our money.

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  4. '...above all, our education system...'

    There is no willingness in the education establishment to improve things. There may (just possibly) be the desire, but the will is absent.

    Talking recently to the writers and evaluators of A-level examination papers, I was told that some sentences were too long: candidates' attention spans were too short to be engaged by long, complex sentences. Then why don't we try to stretch them? I asked. If we lament the fact of short attention spans, why don't we make some small attempt to combat the problem by challenging the candidates instead of pandering to them? The response was just a lot of defeatist shrugging. And these, please note, are the good guys. They hate and regret this sort of thing, but being in a position to resist and reverse it, they do nothing.

    And that is a tiny example of a tiny proportion of the problems. The best are resigned to defeat, capitulation and appeasement.

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  5. Gawain has a curious point. Surely an earlier law, such as one dated 1701, cannot breach a later law?
    Surely the later law breaches the earlier?

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