If it’s news to me, it must be news to you!
Looney Tunes
Thanks to the marvellous job we are making of Brexit, the Mother of all Parliaments made it to the front cover of The New Yorker.
Like it or loathe it
As if the country wasn’t already divided enough over Brexit, Marmite has launched the latest food hybrid – Marmite Peanut Butter.
You can call me Al
Thieves tried to steal a statue of Al Capone from outside a club in Hot Springs, Arkansas, only to succeed in damaging it.
Can I have a word?
More than 650 new words, senses, and subentries have been added to the Oxford English Dictionary, among them various rude Scottish colloquialisms.
Houseproud mouse
A man puzzled as to how mess in his garden shed kept being tidied away overnight has discovered the mystery cleaner was actually a mouse as you can see in this video.
Up the pole
An 84-year-old from Shelburne, Vermont, is on her way to the World Masters Athletics Championship in Poland where she’ll compete in events including the long jump, 60-meter hurdles, 800-meter run, pentathlon and pole vault, for which she’s the shoo-in.
Not screaming
Seems like we’ve misunderstood one of the most recognisable artworks. Edvard Munch’s The Scream. It doesn’t show a man screaming at all – he is actually covering his ears because someone else is screaming.
And finally
Brexit has become such a shitshow that it’s hard to know whether we should laugh or cry, but this image made me smile. And if anyone out there thinks that John Bercow was wrong to forbid yet another vote on May’s deal, here is the relevant page that set the Erskine May precedent.
But if you really want to know how I feel then Jonathan Pie says it all.
The Brexit debacle has certainly generated much unrest (panic?) in the country. One of the main things that has got to me has been the resentment from the Remain voters – this coupled with their ridicule of their fellow men. OK, nobody likes to be on the losing side in any competition (I’m a bad loser in a pub quiz) but sometimes you just have to admit that the other side managed to do what you failed to do. Sadly, since the referendum result was known, we have had a constant/steady stream of bile from the Remain side (I won’t waste my time going into all the details here, but you’ve seen it as much as I have) and at times it has gone beyond pathetic into the realms of almost warfare. Heaven help us if folk feel the need to take to the streets (and I don’t just mean placard wielding, “What do we want? When do we want it? Now”). I was in favour of us remaining but I am not particularly enamoured of many of my bedfellows.
I agree that insults and worse have flown from both sides (remember Jo Cox) but that really isn’t the point. What I said before the referendum has come to pass – that it was far too complicated an issue to be solved by a simplistic stay or remain. Now we know the reality of what Brexit means rather than what people thought it meant. And you must agree that saying you wanted out could mean anything you wanted it to.
Yesterday’s march of 1.8 million people and the 5 million names signing the revoke petition illustrate the strength of feeling. Ironically, I think the mess that has been made of Brexit and the inability to placate the MPs at either end of the argument makes revoke more likely than a second referendum because then at least the leavers could reset the clock.
Heaven help us if they do and heaven help if Gove grabs the reins.
PS: I do recommend that Jonathan Pie video. It may be a parody but I think it neatly sums up how our politics has become so broken.
I don’t class the death of Jo Cox as an insult – more of an atrocity. I return to my original point – the resentment being shown by Remain voters and added to this, their ridicule of their fellowmen. We need common sense and friendship at a time like this not shouting the loudest or maintaining that all Brexit voters were idiots. Shameful.
From across the pond, it seemed that so many of the pro voters DIDN’T KNOW WHAT THEY WERE VOTING FOR that the mocking actually began even before the results were announced,