Horse manure
has its
outcome
WHAT a confused tangle at Westminster, the Mother of Parliaments. They don't want Theresa May's Brexit deal – which both Brexiteers and Remainers rightly suss out as a mawkish compromise, a half-exit which traps the Brits, possibly in perpetuity, into an unspoken customs union where they play no part in decision-making.
It's a kind of vassalage. It would be difficult to think of a worse option.
But the House of Commons so far can't decide what it does want, what it can accept. Meanwhile, the clocks ticks. Will there yet be the cliff-edge crash-out that parliament overwhelmingly rejects?
Enter Donald Trump. He's waiting with open arms for a trade deal with the UK should they crash out, his emissaries announce. So does a deal of European vassalage get exchanged for a kind of reverse colonisation by the US? Is this really what the Brexiteers wanted?
If there's one thing to emerge clearly from this morass, it's that plebiscite politics does not combine well with parliamentary democracy. The Brits are paying dearly for that referendum, conducted in a blizzard of horse manure, that has brought them to this pitch where reality catches up.
Meanwhile, definition of a Brexiteer: A fellow who tells everyone at the party that he's leaving, though he actually stays on.
And the Brexit calendar: For the first time ever, Britain will probably see the end of May before the end of April.
Hoo boy! Is this really a permanent member of the UN Security Council with veto powers? You couldn't make it up.
Krugerrands
INVESTMENT analyst Dr James Greener notes in his latest grumpy newsletter that Krugerrands are riding high.
"Krugerrands are back trading at over R20 000 a coin. This happened last in 2016 and is the combined result of a soggy rand and a perkier dollar gold price.
"The fascination with this investment device is its utter invisibility to the tax authorities – even when they are not on strike – and the role its price pays as an indicator of perceptions about South Africa.
"Not a lot is the current indication."
Lexophilia
SOME lexophilia comes this way – clever mixing of words to get another meaning – originating in Dubuque, Iowa, in the US, where they're serious about this kind of thing and have an annual competition:
· You can tune a piano but you can't tuna fish.
· To write with a broken pencil is pointless.
· A thief who stole as calendar got 12 months.
· The batteries were given out free of charge.
· A dentist and a manicurist married. They fought tooth and nail.
· A will is a dead give-away.
· A boiled egg is hard to beat.
· Police were called to the day care centre, where a three-year-old was resisting a rest.
· Did you hear about the fellow whose left side was cut off? He's all right now.
· A bicycle can't stand alone, it's two-tyred.
· The guy who fell into an upholstery machine is now fully re-covered.
· He had a photographic memory which was never developed.
· When she saw her first strands of grey hair she thought she'd dye.
· Acupuncture is a jab well done. That's the point of it.
Tailpiece
A Pole is at the optician's. A wall chart has the letters: C K O P V W X S C Z Y.
"Can you read that?" the optician asks.
"Read it? I know the guy."
Last word
Women want mediocre men, and men are working hard to become as mediocre as possible.
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