Fullerene

I have had that opinion for ages. Nobody needs to campaign against it and we don't need a second EU referendum just now. Let it run its course. I think the negotiations will result in something unappealing that nobody will want it - or it will incredible close to what we have already got. The UK voting to leave the EU was supposed to be followed by the Netherlands and France but those stupid continentals didn't vote correctly in their elections. I think the DUP are asking for something impossible (to the EU at least). No hard border in Ireland - i.e. no customs checks and no customs checks between Northern Ireland and here. You could transport whatever you like to Dublin and on to Larne and on to Scotland and there would be no checks at all. Yeah - that will work.

Excluding Finland, Portugal and Spain, all the countries doing better than average are from Central Europe. I accept they might all be starting from a low point but in would be interesting to see if this trend continues. One of the objections that some people had to the EU is that it now includes a number of poorer countries. Ironically we encouraged them to join.

Apparently the EU did not care much for Ian Paisley and his megaphone diplomacy. A good ally to have in the Brexit negotiations. Only one small problem.

I can see your point. I don't think Corbyn and others were so much apologists as simply being contrary. In fact, Jeremy Corbyn has spent his whole career being contrary - challenging whatever is regarded as "accepted wisdom". It is important to have people like this - but there are doubts that somebody like that can change tack, be less contrary, accept the role of party leader and become a future prime minister. I suspect that is a big part of the hostility towards him - that he was quite happy to stay the same and never be prime minister. I think his campaign has indicated that he actually does want to win - and hopes to do so without changing tack either and that has surprised a lot of people.

You know I just this vision of the EU negotiators sitting at a table twiddling their thumbs - saying "Right - that's almost 3 months now - who do you think is going to show up and talk to us?"

Maybe. The peace process in Northern Ireland meant talking to the IRA. John Major and Tony Blair both knew that - as did the unionists, I suspect. The question was how to do that tactfully without causing offence to a lot of people - especially those that have suffered. Corbyn, McDonnell and others are guilty of clumsiness but I hardly think that means they should be locked up.

By the same token, I imagine there were several UK politicians who supported the US effort to fund Al-Qaeda when they were trying to get the Soviets out of Afghanistan,

Ah. I got it. The Good Friday Agreement! I was wondering why anyone thought the Gaelic Football Association had a lot of say in Northern Ireland!

John Major and Tony Blair both realized that talking to the IRA was necessary to achieve peace in Northern Ireland. I suspect the unionists did too. When Corbyn and McDonnell suggested much the same, they were more clumsy about (such as describing the IRA as brave) and this caused offence.

.. and not much keen on it from Monday through to Saturday either.

"Only fools and horses" the movie is currently in development. It will be directed Ridley Scott and involve Del Roy, Rodney, Trigger and maybe others on board an intergalactic space craft being awoken from their hyper sleep to answer a mysterious distress signal from an uninhabited planet. Still at a very preliminary stage.

Oh dear - the Arabs being blamed for acts of terrorism even way back then.

Okay, Okay. Drama out. Comedy in.

Basically it keeps the fanatical Brexiter quiet. If, for example, we reached a deal on teabags - there would be howls of protest. "What - this is outrageous. We voted out, and that means out - and that includes teabags. How dare they impose rules and regulations on us drinking tea. We have been drinking tea for centuries and don't need them to tell us what for about teabags. This is the thin edge of the wedge and before you know it we will be right back where we started. It's time the UK government stood up for the British people and told those interfering EU people to f*** off." Similarly for everything else.

Theresa May will accuse the EU of anything if it will get her more votes. However, that is a long way from the secret police taking you away in the middle of the night because you have the wrong opinion on Brexit or Scottish independence or anything else. Nor are you likely to lose your job, or miss out on promotion because you laughed at her attempt to eat chips. That would be commonplace in communist countries. In North Korea, the secret police would take your entire family because of guilt through association. People are even born in prison camps and must remain there because their grandfather or grandmother did something wrong. North Korea is threatened by the mere existence of South Korea, a country that speaks the same language - and seems to be a nicer place (even if that was not always so). In any case, a South Korean can travel to other parts of the world whereas a North Korean cannot. 200,000 people have defected from North Korea. You should really ask the question "Why is North Korea developing nuclear weapons?" Would China ever sit back if North Korea was attacked?

Not so much one book but two. I was reading "Hiroshima Nagasaki" by Paul Ham. No prizes for guessing what that was about. Anyway, the book keeps mentioning "Yoko's Diary" by Yoko Moriwaki. She is a 13 year old girl who on 6th August 1945 was less than 1 kilometre from the hypocentre of the Hiroshima bomb blast. Obviously she did not survive. So I got her book as well. Some compare it to Anne Franks but only as far as young people being exposed to a savage war. The book contains lots of historical notes, by Paul Ham and others, in addition to her diary. (For example it mentions that Hiroshima was very smelly due to night-soil being the main fertilizer used for growing things - similar to North Korea today. FYI: Nightsoil = human waste) It is difficult to know how to feel about it. I guess it adds a human element to a historic event. However cruel the Japanese were in that war (and I know they were) and however inevitable the bombing was - there is a tinge of sadness to this story.

You forgot to mention Kim Jong Un's half-brother. Too much of a threat. He had to go. North Korea is an old fashioned communist country that feels threatened by everyone and everything. You just have to read any book about Joseph Stalin or Enver Hoxha (to name just two) to realize that communist leaders are paranoid. If we ignored them, they would do more to attract our attention. They seek nuclear weapons as protection (from regime change) but also as a means to blackmail other countries into providing aid.

Yeah. York voted Remain. I was travelling around England last year just before the vote and everywhere I went voted Remain. Didn't realise I could be so influential without even trying - or maybe it was just a coincidence.

Sometimes I really miss Top of the Pops. With some catchy lyrics - this would surely go straight to Number 1 in the charts.

In Togo, there are no takeaway restaurants. Confusing!

The soap opera Dallas was originally set in Dallas in Moray and involved two feuding distillery owners called the Barnes and the Ewings. However the US producers decided to move the whole thing over to Texas and basically changed everything apart from the names of the two families and the occasional mention of Elgin City Football Club.

.. and the M8 was so named to indicate the friendship between Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Trump is simply pointing out that a good sales model is to sell dairy products to everybody within a 100 mile radius. Sounds like a great plan but then suddenly this other country just appears from nowhere and that kind of complicates everything.

It means they want a PHOP image but they don't know how to spell.

An astrologer in Christchurch accurately predicted the last 5 election results in Canada, New Zealand, the USA, the UK and Australia. He claimed he read it in the stars. He was later convicted for fraud when they discovered he had a time machine.