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You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/oct/27/dexeus-dim-and-dimmer-turn-brexit-hearing-into-surreal-art
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| Version 1 | Version 2 |
|---|---|
| DexEU’s Dim and Dimmer turn Brexit hearing into surreal art | DexEU’s Dim and Dimmer turn Brexit hearing into surreal art |
| (about 1 month later) | |
| Monday | Monday |
| In recent weeks an ever-growing number of Conservative politicians – including the dependably dim Chris Grayling – have been talking up the benefits of a no-deal Brexit. Only this afternoon, during Theresa May’s statement to the Commons on her less-than-successful visit to the European council the previous week, John Redwood was tweeting: “Mrs Merkel, the commission & elsewhere within the EU are worried how popular the WTO model is with many UK voters.” So maybe it’s time to pause and consider just how many countries do trade on WTO arrangements alone. After sending out my own Twitter appeal for information, it emerged there was just one possible candidate: Mauritania. And even this was disputed as some experts reckoned the west African country – 15% of whose population live in slavery – has signed some kind of fisheries trade deal with the EU. So it seems likely that despite the huge advantages that many Brexiters claim for trading on WTO rules alone, every other country in the world reckons they are a bit rubbish and prefer to come to more preferential arrangements. Rule Britannia. | In recent weeks an ever-growing number of Conservative politicians – including the dependably dim Chris Grayling – have been talking up the benefits of a no-deal Brexit. Only this afternoon, during Theresa May’s statement to the Commons on her less-than-successful visit to the European council the previous week, John Redwood was tweeting: “Mrs Merkel, the commission & elsewhere within the EU are worried how popular the WTO model is with many UK voters.” So maybe it’s time to pause and consider just how many countries do trade on WTO arrangements alone. After sending out my own Twitter appeal for information, it emerged there was just one possible candidate: Mauritania. And even this was disputed as some experts reckoned the west African country – 15% of whose population live in slavery – has signed some kind of fisheries trade deal with the EU. So it seems likely that despite the huge advantages that many Brexiters claim for trading on WTO rules alone, every other country in the world reckons they are a bit rubbish and prefer to come to more preferential arrangements. Rule Britannia. |
| Tuesday | Tuesday |
| The anger phase of the grief many people are feeling over the mindless felling of the much-loved Chestnut Avenue on Tooting Bec Common just got a whole lot angrier after Wandsworth council was obliged to give a detailed breakdown of the whole operation. Wandsworth originally insisted all the trees were diseased and that the £40,000 cost of their replacement with lime trees would be totally funded out of Heritage Lottery money. It now emerges that not only were the large majority of the trees perfectly healthy, the council managed to overspend its budget by more than £40,000. Such was its confidence that its proposals had the full backing of the local community – more than 6,500 residents went to the trouble of formally objecting – the council chose to allocate £21,377 for security measures to allow it to chop the trees down in peace. This included £9,100 for the erection of a 10ft metal wall, £4,274 for the provision of private security staff and guard dogs and £8,003 for parks police. It will be interesting to see how Wandsworth justifies this the next time it tries to cut spending elsewhere. | The anger phase of the grief many people are feeling over the mindless felling of the much-loved Chestnut Avenue on Tooting Bec Common just got a whole lot angrier after Wandsworth council was obliged to give a detailed breakdown of the whole operation. Wandsworth originally insisted all the trees were diseased and that the £40,000 cost of their replacement with lime trees would be totally funded out of Heritage Lottery money. It now emerges that not only were the large majority of the trees perfectly healthy, the council managed to overspend its budget by more than £40,000. Such was its confidence that its proposals had the full backing of the local community – more than 6,500 residents went to the trouble of formally objecting – the council chose to allocate £21,377 for security measures to allow it to chop the trees down in peace. This included £9,100 for the erection of a 10ft metal wall, £4,274 for the provision of private security staff and guard dogs and £8,003 for parks police. It will be interesting to see how Wandsworth justifies this the next time it tries to cut spending elsewhere. |
| Wednesday | Wednesday |
| The butter shelves in many French supermarkets are lying empty after nationwide shortages caused by a decline in production, an increase in global demand and a disagreement between manufacturers and distributors on price. One knock-on effect is that croissants are also in short supply. Not so long ago, I might have been able to help out on this. Over the course of a life not always usefully lived, I have made it my goal to find the perfect chocolate croissant. And despite having visited many French cities and regions, I’ve never yet come across anything to match the ones they used to make at my local branch of Costcutter in Streatham. I’ve no idea what the secret to these croissants was but, even when not straight out the oven, they were far superior to anything I could ever find at two or three times the price in far more glitzy delicatessens. I say “were” because my local branch of Costcutter recently decided to discontinue their morning bake and, though I have tried other Costcutter stores, their croissants aren’t nearly as good. The hunt goes on. À la recherche du croissant perdu. | The butter shelves in many French supermarkets are lying empty after nationwide shortages caused by a decline in production, an increase in global demand and a disagreement between manufacturers and distributors on price. One knock-on effect is that croissants are also in short supply. Not so long ago, I might have been able to help out on this. Over the course of a life not always usefully lived, I have made it my goal to find the perfect chocolate croissant. And despite having visited many French cities and regions, I’ve never yet come across anything to match the ones they used to make at my local branch of Costcutter in Streatham. I’ve no idea what the secret to these croissants was but, even when not straight out the oven, they were far superior to anything I could ever find at two or three times the price in far more glitzy delicatessens. I say “were” because my local branch of Costcutter recently decided to discontinue their morning bake and, though I have tried other Costcutter stores, their croissants aren’t nearly as good. The hunt goes on. À la recherche du croissant perdu. |
| Thursday | Thursday |
| Some days it feels as if Brexit is turning into a piece of surreal performance art. It was disturbing enough to hear David Davis this week say there was a chance that parliament would only get to have a vote on the terms of leaving the EU after Britain had already left. Even the Matrix might struggle with that one. But today Davis’s two junior ministers Steve Baker and Robin Walker – aka Dim and Dimmer – told the Brexit select committee that they hadn’t bothered to read any of the impact assessments their department had commissioned. Apparently, they were both far too busy to take any notice of reports that had been compiled to enable them to do their job properly. Though not too busy to know that even though they hadn’t a clue what was in the reports, there was information in them that couldn’t be divulged to anyone else in case they came to the wrong conclusions. It was the Labour MP Seema Malhotra who turned the screws on Davis, Baker and Walker. She is playing a blinder. | Some days it feels as if Brexit is turning into a piece of surreal performance art. It was disturbing enough to hear David Davis this week say there was a chance that parliament would only get to have a vote on the terms of leaving the EU after Britain had already left. Even the Matrix might struggle with that one. But today Davis’s two junior ministers Steve Baker and Robin Walker – aka Dim and Dimmer – told the Brexit select committee that they hadn’t bothered to read any of the impact assessments their department had commissioned. Apparently, they were both far too busy to take any notice of reports that had been compiled to enable them to do their job properly. Though not too busy to know that even though they hadn’t a clue what was in the reports, there was information in them that couldn’t be divulged to anyone else in case they came to the wrong conclusions. It was the Labour MP Seema Malhotra who turned the screws on Davis, Baker and Walker. She is playing a blinder. |
| Friday | Friday |
| One of the key components of any good conspiracy theory is that no amount of new information should be able to spoil the conspiracy. By this benchmark, the JFK assassination is the gift that keeps on giving. Donald Trump’s decision to release nearly 3,000 files that had been kept classified for well over 50 years has only managed to deepen the various conspiracy theories, as so far no one has been able to find anything in the new material that warrants it having been kept secret for so long. At the time of writing the key findings were that Lee Harvey Oswald spoke to a member of a KGB assassination team in 1963 and that Jack Ruby had an “in” with the Dallas police. Neither of which are exactly startling new evidence given that Oswald has always been the chief suspect for the assassination and Ruby was filmed shooting Oswald. The most surprising revelation was that a reporter on the Cambridge Evening News received a phone call 30 minutes before the shooting saying something big was about to happen in the US. And even this would have been hard to keep classified had the reporter in question remembered getting the call and thinking it was a big deal. | One of the key components of any good conspiracy theory is that no amount of new information should be able to spoil the conspiracy. By this benchmark, the JFK assassination is the gift that keeps on giving. Donald Trump’s decision to release nearly 3,000 files that had been kept classified for well over 50 years has only managed to deepen the various conspiracy theories, as so far no one has been able to find anything in the new material that warrants it having been kept secret for so long. At the time of writing the key findings were that Lee Harvey Oswald spoke to a member of a KGB assassination team in 1963 and that Jack Ruby had an “in” with the Dallas police. Neither of which are exactly startling new evidence given that Oswald has always been the chief suspect for the assassination and Ruby was filmed shooting Oswald. The most surprising revelation was that a reporter on the Cambridge Evening News received a phone call 30 minutes before the shooting saying something big was about to happen in the US. And even this would have been hard to keep classified had the reporter in question remembered getting the call and thinking it was a big deal. |
| Digested week, digested: The meaningfully meaningless Brexit vote. | Digested week, digested: The meaningfully meaningless Brexit vote. |
| Politics | Politics |
| Digested week | Digested week |
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