Ronnie

I emailed my MP when the prorogation occurred and even wrote 'No need for a reply: I know you'll be very busy.' I came home from holiday to find an envelope with my full name on it (= instant dread) and a pointless letter on the inside, which must've been sent to everyone else who mentioned the P-word. Straight in the bin.

I thought he kicked out too. I've looked back on it in slow motion and it's really hard, partially because of how blocky it is, to decide. He certainly starts the motion of lifting his arm before the count hits, although the point when his shoulder physically leaves the mat maybe perfectly coincides. Given that the act of kicking out is really the start of the motion of kicking out from the fans' perspective, it does look early. At any rate, it's far too tight for the ref to be able to confidently call it, as the reactions from all four participants plus the fans (there's the fading 'three-ooh' that you get on a false finish) suggest. The video also puts to bed any doubt about the assault, doesn't it? Samuels appears to jump the ring in temper and dump the referee into the mat.

We've always intended to move abroad by the time Ronette's 40, so within the next four years. Thankfully, her mother's Irish, so she's entitled to an Irish passport, and (by then) I would be the spouse of an EU citizen, so able to go with her. The mortgage will be paid off within the next two years (a jump of base rate to 5% will only add a further month; 10% will add only three), and the countries we're looking at are so comparatively cheap that even a collapse in the UK housing market won't prevent us from being able to afford to go. I don't say it lightly: I hate Brexit and what it will bring. But the consequences of it to us personally are relatively minor compared with so many other people. I would still far rather that the entire con be magicked away and all this misery be avoided, but I can't pretend that we'll suffer greatly compared to people who will lose their homes in the face of expected interest-rate rises or who are already struggling to make ends meet before the imposition of tariffs raise food prices substantially.

I'm sure it will be blamed on the EU. That's how the gutter press handles things around here. Do you remember a couple of years ago when the Spanish lettuce crop dwindled because of flooding and they had hardly any left to export? That was presented as the greedy Spaniards eating lettuces so the hard-working British families can't have them. We've already heard Tories speaking about how 'disgracefully' the EU has been treating us. And everybody seems to have forgotten that the backstop was a proposal made by the British government, now that it's become problematic!

Because enough people aren't interested in what's really happening. Facts and critical analysis don't come into it. They don't get the information on what's been happening because they only rely on sources which don't report it and which instead play to the prejudices of their readers and above all push for what they want to happen. If they find out about a legal verdict, it's presented to them as saboteur judges acting as their enemies. Or, in this case, biased Scottish judges, not like our good English judges (except for those who reach the wrong conclusion). When an election comes, some of these people will vote in enough numbers that the Conservative party, in spite of everything we know and how abominably they've behaved, will win a large number of seats. I suspect that they'll even return the largest number of seats, even if not a majority overall, followed by declarations that 'the people' have thus declared that they want a no-deal Brexit. Were the question of Brexit to be asked in an alternative way, say, a manner in which the result were announced as a number of votes for a position rather than seats won, the answer would be clearly different. And that's why they're trying so hard to goad the Opposition into a GE. I imagine they've got it backed up twice too: if there isn't a GE, which there won't be, then they'll get their no-deal Brexit, will be able to portray themselves as the party of the people, and then will be in a strong position for a GE down the line. I think I'm pretty much done with the whole thing. Brexit won't be terribly bad for me personally, I think. Our jobs are safe. We can absorb the rising prices without having to tighten our belts. Houses are overpriced anyway and I'm not against them crashing (it's better for people who aren't yet on the ladder); the supposed drop of one third will take us back to where we started. That's not the end of the world, even though we were hoping to sell and move abroad in about four years' time. Probably the worst way in which we'll be hit personally is longer queues in airports, a trivial affair in the grand scheme of things. Meanwhile, I see poor cousins and people who grew up near me, the typical poorly educated and struggling to make ends meet type, still bleating on about how they want their precious WTO Brexit, even though they and people like them are the ones who will be worst hit, whilst the people they get their information from make a killing on shorting the pound and escaping the new tax regulations. At some point you've got to say 'fuck it'; let them reap the consequences of what they're so fervently pushing for. I think the old thinking about voting being a civic duty should be rephrased into something like 'it's your civic duty to be informed and vote'. I'd feel bad for the people hard hit who are innocent of unleashing all this but what can you do when their friends and neighbours are powering it? Fuck me, this is a depressing post.

Who's JRC? You mean Mogg? They both show that being educated and being intelligent aren't the same thing. There's at least a bit of charm to the PM even when he's lying or out of his depth compared to the condescension of the Haunted Pencil. I think it'd be more satisfying to get a dig in on Mogg but, really, you wouldn't be upset if it missed and caught Johnson.

I'd like to see a Remain Alliance candidate in Uxbridge and Ruislip. The Tory candidate barely scraped 50% in the previous two elections and everyone knows he's a cunt now, so it'd be sweet if they sent him packing.

I think it's a fair risk. I imagine that the English shires will continue to vote for a clear Leave party, especially if their candidate is a newly installed Brexiteer replacing an ousted Remainer. I suppose there's a chance of a Tory vote being split with The Brexit Party but I don't think the realities of what leaving the EU are (with or without a deal), the lies of the Leave campaign (the bus; the being found guilty of breaking electoral law, which would've resulted in the referendum being declared void if, ironically, it weren't of the non-binding variety), and the behaviour of this new government (headed by a known liar; proroguing Parliament in the run-up to the deadline; threatening to deselect MPs who don't vote the correct way even if the local association endorses them) won't change very much. They'll still bleat on about taking back control and allow their prejudice-confirmation services to tell them all about these saboteur MPs and treachorous judges. It's depressing.

Sometimes it's impossible. I've found that you can't beat the French originals. I think my favourite instance of personal curiosity is always how they handle the Brit in Asterix in Britain. I love that the French one always starts his sentences with Je dis (I say) etc. I'm not such a fan of the earlier books. The series really picks up when Obelix develops a personality. I think he ends up being more important to the stories than Asterix. I'd love to translate at least one of them myself; it's not out of the realms of possibility either (It's just dawned on me how weird it is that I can say 'wild boar' in a dozen languages. Add that to the list of most unimpressive superpowers.)

I love Asterix and collect them. I've got all of the French ones plus pick up others as and when I spot them on my travels. I make a point of getting the first one in the series in any language I've studied. These are some of the ones I've read: I've got a few more put to one side for whenever I get around to dipping into that particular language. In preparation for a trip to Romania I did the usual formal studying but Santa Claus, knowing how I operate, also provided me with a few practice materials: We'll see how good of a job it's done within the next few days. We're currently in Bulgaria and I've popped into a couple of bookshops already with an eye on you-know-what! (The comic books are great, although I'm bored of reading the first one. The cartoons are rubbish though. I've never made it through one.)

I think it's probably a different game that he and his team are playing. They must know that Parliament won't allow this so I think that that's what they're counting on, in the belief that a general election resulting from a no-confidence vote would see moderate, rebellious Tories losing their seats, maybe to Brexit Party candidates. That would certainly make life easier for him and his cabal. I suspect that Heidi Allen, Anna Soubry and co would lose their seats to whichever Conservative candidates stand too.

There was an error message on display whilst it was down indicating server-side problems. It might be that the server isn't correctly configured but whatever the cause is, the fix should be quick if an admin were regularly using the site or contactable. Do the mods have a contact address for Moo to make him aware when the site is offline?