Saturday, November 9, 2019

The Idler, Friday, November 8, 2019

Yippee!

the Boks are

in town

THE Springboks will be in town today for their victory parade. Judging by the hubbub in the CBD after the final last Saturday, it should not lack in celebratory spirit.

Durban can be expected not to hold back. The scheduled bus tour will be from the city hall and about the CBD, but why not take the lads for a ricksha ride along the beachfront promenade as well?

The damsels of the Street Shelter for the Over-Forties are in a lather of excitement at the outside possibility of actually encountering their rugby heroes and are making all kinds of extravagant – nay, sometimes alarming –suggestions as to how they would welcome the boytjies should they drop in.

They will, in any event, provide knicker elastic for a fashioning of catapults for the traditional celebratory feu de joie in which the streetlights are shot out.

'Erewego, 'erewego, 'erewego!

 

 

Hounds let loose

THE election hounds are let loose in Blighty. Prime minister Boris Johnson compares Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn with Josef Stalin and accuses him of supporting current Russian president Vladimir Putin, who sends poisoners into Britain.

Corbyn accuses Johnson of preparing to sell out the national health service to Donald Trump.

Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage describes the Brexit deal negotiated by Theresa May as an abject surrender – membership in perpetuity of the European customs union – the kind of arrangement you agree to after you've been defeated in war.

He compares Johnson and his revised deal with a dodgy used car salesman enthusing on the car's beautifully polished bonnet but not wanting the purchaser to open the bonnet and look at the engine. That was why he tried to rush the deal through parliament in a matter of days.

Farage's argument seems strangely effective. Could this be a torpedo below the waterline for both the Tories and Labour?

Yet can he – or Johnson – explain exactly what the material benefits would be of leaving the world's largest and most sophisticated trading bloc, with a reach and influence that no single country can achieve?

Don't expect too much. This is an election, and in an election there are other priorities.

Ding dong merrily on high. Ho, ho, ho!

 

 

Whistle-blower

ANOTHER angle on the impeachment inquiry in the US. Donald Trump has accused the whistle-blower of working for the United States, according to the New Yorker.

Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump said he had evidence "directly linking" the whistle-blower to the United States government.

Trump also accused his principal congressional nemeses, Representative Adam Schiff and Representative Nancy Pelosi, of being "card-carrying employees of the United States."

 "What it comes down to is, who are you going to trust: somebody who is working for the United States, or me?"

Yes, this is satirist Andy Borowitz again.

 

Tailpiece

A PASSENGER on the northbound Night Caledonian sleeping car train in Scotland asks one of the attendants to wake him early and put him off at Perth.

"I'm a very heavy sleeper but I have to get off there. Please put me off the train, whatever I say."

Next morning he wakes at Inverness. He gets dressed, finds the attendant and gives him a piece of his mind. Then he stomps off angrily.

"That fellow's really upset," says another passenger who's witnessed the scene.

"Upset? You should've seen the man I put off at Perth."

Last word

Don't accept rides from strange men, and remember that all men are strange. - Robin Morgan
 

 

No comments:

Post a Comment