Yeeeehah! It’s this month it happens!

Sounds like the same mistake as the morning after the Referendum vote. If I were you Tim, I’d read what you wrote. “never ask a question if you’re not sure what the answer will be.” Your politicians have been lying to you since Heath & Wilson. The smart money would be on them lying now. There’s no reason to believe the Tory scum are any different from the Tory scum of December 11. Just a few of the names have changed. Save your huzzas for a year or three & see what happens.

Well, I’m celebrating. There ain’t no party like a Brexit party.

Movie trope: it’s just when they think they’ve killed the monster and they’re all having a breather that the fucker pops up again.

TG,

Talking of Verhofstadt, did you see the Marr interview? The only interuptions were to help Verhofstadt make his anti-Brexit points, otherwise he was allowed to make his stump speech, something Marr wasn’t prepared to let Boris get away with he claimed in his Spectator Notepad article.

The cheer on Question Time that will terrify Corbyn’s Labour

How brilliant was that cheer on Question Time, Derby, last night [January 2019]? Isabel Oakeshott said Theresa May should just walk away from the EU.

Fiona Bruce asked her if she meant we should pursue ‘No Deal’. ‘Yes’, said Oakeshott and there it was, instantly, contagiously, the loudest cheer I can remember hearing from a Question Time audience. This was no polite applause or murmur of approval. It was a statement — a noisy, rebellious statement of the people’s continuing and profound attachment to the idea of leaving the European Union, deal or no deal.

It was a cheer that should echo through the nation. That will chill the bones of the political establishment. Which will rattle a commentariat that ceaselessly pumps out columns on how awful No Deal would be. For this cheer — from an audience in the largely working-class, Labour-leaning city of Derby — was a stark reminder that there are people out there, a great many people, who do not share the political class’s fear of No Deal. Who haven’t been won over by the non-stop fearmongering about No Deal. Who flat-out refuse to buy the media’s horror stories about how No Deal will lead to medicine shortages, and food riots, and chaos in Dover, and plagues of locusts. So much for Leave voters being ‘low information’, easily misled idiots who can be brainwashed by adverts on buses and Facebook memes — this cheer was proof that these people are more than capable of thinking for themselves and resisting the establishment’s ideology of fear around No Deal.

The cheer will have horrified the political class. All wings of it. For the past few days, political bigwigs, loads of MPs, business leaders and supposedly radical Corbynistas — what a bizarre mix! — have been imploring Theresa May to take No Deal off the table. And yet here was a section of working-class Britain actively cheering No Deal. There could be no clearer illustration of the gaping chasm — the chasm in values, beliefs, political ideals — that now separates the political set from the public. The cheer will have especially devastated Corbyn’s Labour. They have made opposing No Deal their big thing, their chief aim. No Deal will ruin Britain, they cry. And yet here were working-class people whooping for a No Deal with a vigour that is too often lacking in modern politics. Behold one of the most important divides in British politics today — that between the woke bourgeois agitators of Corbyn’s inner circle and the ordinary people who used to make up the backbone of the Labour movement. Maybe Corbynistas will brand these cheerers as ‘gammon’.

Some will say — they already are, in fact — that this cheer proves how self-destructive the Brexit outlook is. These poor, not very well-educated people don’t realise how much harm No Deal will cause, apparently, including in their own lives and communities and on their economic opportunities. Such foul paternalism! This boils down to saying that the plebs don’t know what they are doing; they’re killing themselves with their own stupidity and it is down to us, the enlightened folk, to save them from themselves. Stop this. The support for No Deal is actually entirely rational. People know what ‘taking No Deal off the table’ really means — it means taking Brexit off the table. People feel that No Deal is now code for Brexit itself, and that anything that restricts the UK’s ability to walk away from the EU will threaten Brexit in its entirety. They are dead right to feel this.

That cheer told us so much about the state of the nation. Jonathan Swift said:

‘It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house for the voice of a Kingdom.’

This is our establishment today. They think their chatter, their fearmongering, their tweeting is the view of the nation, but in many cases it is the precise opposite. Last night, in that cheer, they heard the voice of the kingdom, and it will have terrified them. I hope it did anyway.
(c) The Spectator

No Deal Cheered on Question Time
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iwk3YMSoMI8

There’s got to be a weak joke about Nigel Farage being a racist but I lack the wit to write it. The Brexit Party has the most melanin variation of any grouping in the EP, and the UK contingent on a country basis and this is why racist Sir Nigel is looking forward to our MEPs all being out of work on 1st Feb.
We’ll be out of the CAP – the perfect outcome would be that every one in Europe is out of the CAP – but still, one more country is not in the CAP = hooray massively.

Deafen the Remainiacs with the popping of champagne (or Nyetimber!) corks!
The Co-op have a very acceptable pink English fizz for £18 in their ‘Irresistible’ range (from Eight Acres).

Pcar, watched all of those over Christmas, had to save a couple to celebrate 🙂

Pcar

That’s interesting – re hitting Argentina – but, despite the raids themselves mostly being militarily ineffective and rather than anything nuclear, I thought that strategically it forced Galtieri to understand that mainland targets in the north of the country, including Buenos Aires itself (much closer to Ascension than the Falklands), could easily be targeted separately by the RAF? Hence, persuading him to move significant numbers of Mirage fighter jets further north as a protective measure, in practical terms relieving the pressure on the task force in the south as a result?

But then who re-fueled the refueling planes that fueled the refuelling planes that fueled the Vulcans?

More tankers. Took about a dozen tanker aircraft to get one Vulcan on target.

@PF

The largest gain, even if unintentional, from Op Blackbuck was scaring the Argie military & public who thought they were safe as UK so far away. The nuke capability escalated the fear and Mrs T had not ruled it out (unlike No no-deal May)

An early Op Shock & Awe

@Gamecock: tankers flying back to Ascension, refuelling, then back up to refuel other tankers. If wind had veered North or South during op, all would probably have run-out and ditched. Listen to the radio docu-drama

A truly B of B and Dambusters style well planned and brave operation using whatever available. I salute all who took part