Farage to abandon UK, after screwing it up for everybody else

Rats are well known for leaving sinking ships. Usually the rats themselves aren't directly responsible for sinking the vessel in question but, in this case, it's one of the rodents chiefly responsible for gnawing through the hull that's now thinking about jumping ship:

Reviled by many Britons, including those who voted to leave the European Union in the Brexit campaign that he helped spearhead when he was head of the UK Independence Party, Nigel Farage has expressed interest in moving to Maine.

Farage cites the animosity he has encountered in Britain and his fears for his family’s safety as motivating his desire to emigrate to the United States. He fails to mention that even his erstwhile supporters became angered when, shortly after urging Britons to vote to leave the U.K., Farage resigned as the UK Independence Party’s leader in a classic political cut and run.

What the good people of Maine will think about introducing this specimen of alien vermin into their native ecosystem remains to be seen, although the author of this article, Pamela Ballinger, sounds suitably unimpressed:

Why should we roll out the welcome mat for a man who sowed divisions in his own country, helped destabilize Europe and then shrugged his shoulders and decided to move on to greener pastures? We’ve got plenty of homegrown political cowards and cheats without having to import one from across the pond.

One wonders, too, what particular appeal (apart from its natural beauty) Maine holds for Farage. Perhaps it’s as simple as the promise of a “new” England in which Farage can reinvent himself.

Or maybe Farage is attracted by Maine’s demographics and nurtures a fantasy of homogeneity and whiteness, one that underwrote his Brexit messaging and led him to exploit the European refugee crisis for political gain.

Or perhaps he’s drawn to a state with a governor who tilts at windmills, given that one of Farage’s first meetings with Trump after the U.S. election involved a discussion in which the president-elect urged Farage and his associates to oppose a proposed wind farm that would affect the view at Trump’s golf course in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.

Or maybe he just thinks we’re simple rubes who won’t know enough about his brand of lies and sleaze to call him out on it. Whatever the reason, we should not normalize such behavior by making Farage feel comfortable here. 

However fast Farage runs, let's hope that his dodgy expenses fiddles still  catch up with him.

Cross-posted here.

Scandal in the wind

It looks as if Nigel Farage has lost a party but found his true calling as an actor. First he played Marilyn to Trump's Jack Kennedy...

Happy birthday Mr. President. @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/Pm649uVLrK

— Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) June 14, 2017

... now he's starring as Khrushchev denouncing Stalin (with the dead Red Tsar played by the entire European Parliament, a piece of casting which makes about as much sense as Trump playing JFK).

Because you know what was the absolute worst thing about Stalin? His woeful unpreparedness for the Nazi invasion? The mass starvation of his own people? The mass deportations? The gulags? The purges?

Nah. Stalin really sucked because he was super picky about people justifying their huge expenses claims. Apparently. The bastard:

The European Union has demanded another bill… and this time it’s £80,000 of Nigel Farage’s own money.

The MEP recently received a letter stamped by the European Parliament telling him he was being unexpectedly charged the mammoth amount.

It’s all over a quibble that one of Nigel’s staff who helps represent him as an MEP also held a post in Ukip at the same time.

The LBC presenter confirmed this was the case, but argued he had done nothing wrong as the staff member worked for Ukip on a voluntary basis.

“But they’re not happy with that,” Nigel said.

“So without any meeting. Without any request to me to provide evidence. Without any formal procedure of any kind at all, the letter tells me they’re going to take £80,000 from me.”

He continued: “And it’s now my job to prove my innocence and so what we’re actually dealing with here, these unelected people are behaving frankly like people back in Stalin’s day did.”

A sad end for the persecuted star who played Marilyn Monroe so movingly. Fortunately, we can all still share Nigel's pain when we listen to those classic Elton John ballads Candle In The Wind and Nikita. Sad songs say so much.

Squid hatchery

Just heard a BBC radio piece which handed Goldman Sachs a bit of free PR by interviewing the beneficiaries of the workplace childcare facilities in its London offices.

Wow, that just makes up for everything, rather like being shot with environmentally- friendly lead-free bullets.

The fluffy bunny propaganda was rather spoilt by the job title one of the people interviewed - she was apparently something in "Human Capital Management."

Goldman Sachs, I guess, manages its human host capital by wrapping itself round its face and relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.*





*Update - sadly, I can't now quote Matt Tabbi's masterful take-down of the worlds #1 financial parasite without the disclaimer that, although I still approve this message, I don't approve Matt Tabbi himself, who turns out to be a self-confessed rapey sleazeball.

I'm kinda getting used to this sort of thing by now - I still think that some of the Dilbert 'toons are pretty good, despite now knowing that their creator is some kind of batshit libertarian mens' rights oddball and I still have to agree with Piers Morgan that gun control is the blindingly obvious solution to America's chronic gun violence problem, even though he is ... ugh ... Piers Morgan.

The man who fell to Earth

Google News headline/image pairings - the gift that goes on giving, at least for lazy bloggers...

"Nasa forced to deny there was a long-lost 'civilisation' on Mars after questioning by Republican congressman"*

If the MC who presides over that parallel universe called Eurovision came from a habitable planet Mars which exists in a slightly alternative reality, rather than from the Dublin suburb of Clondalkin, as he's always claimed, that would explain a few otherwise inexplicable mysteries. Including, for example, 2006 Eurovision winners Lordi:

  "On May 14, 2016, Lordi appeared in the interval act for the Eurovision Song Contest 2016, in a musical number satirising Eurovision songs."

The truth is out there.



Photo: Albin Olsson
License: CC BY-SA 4.0



* If it's inadvertent hilarity you're looking for, do follow the link to Andrew Griffin's piece in the Independent:

California Republican Dana Rohrbacher asked whether the fact that Mars once had a vastly different atmosphere meant that it could also have supported an entire civilisation that was now lost.

"You have indicated that Mars was totally different thousands of years ago," he said. "Is it possible that there was a civilization on Mars thousands of years ago?"

His question was answered by Kenneth Farley, who is a project scientist on the Mars 2020 rover mission and a professor of geochemistry at California Institute of Technology and was one of the scientists answering politicians' questions.

He pointed out that the "evidence is that Mars was different billions of years ago. Not thousands of years ago".

He also said that there is "no evidence that I'm aware of", that the planet was once inhabited.

That wasn't enough for Mr Rohrabacher, who asked: "Would you rule that out? See, there's some people... Well, anyway."

Professor Farley said that such a possibility was "extremely unlikely".

It isn't clear who Mr Rohrabacher was referring to when he suggested that "some people" think there was a civilisation on the planet. But there are a limited number of people who have proposed what they believe to be proof not only of ancient civilisations but existing ones – including a guest on Alex Jones's InfoWars programme who suggested that Nasa has put child sex slaves on the red planet.

In the light of this performance, maybe they need to change the boilerplate strapline which follows American political campaign adverts ("I'm Dana Rohrbacher and I approve this message"), to something more useful, like "You can't win. If you vote me in, I shall become more stupid than you can possibly imagine."

UK lost that lovin' feelin'

The UK is totally doing just fine after its acrimonious break-up with Europe. After all, being free and single means that it will definitely be getting get a hot date with that rich hunk, Donald. In fact, that's him on the phone right now:

Donald Trump won't visit the UK until Theresa May fixes a 'better reception' for him

...Trump apparently said: "I haven’t had great coverage out there lately, Theresa."

He went on: "I still want to come, but I’m in no rush. So, if you can fix it for me, it would make things a lot easier.

"When I know I’m going to get a better reception, I’ll come and not before." 

Oh dear.

I think that's how you say "It's not you, it's me" when you're too much of a narcissist to even pretend that there could possibly be anything wrong with you.

Big blue

Yet another unfortunate pairing of headline and image, courtesy of Google News.

"Blue whale takes centre-stage at Natural History Museum"

So that's why they call high-profile politicians "big beasts." Mind you, that looks more like a picture of a white elephant than a blue whale to me.

Mar a Lago Italia

Florida boasts the perfect vacation spot for holiday makers with a major crush on an authoritarian buffoon with weird hair, but where in the world do you go on holiday if an authoritarian buffoon with no hair is more your thing?

No worries, we've got you covered...

"Behold, Donald my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man"