A roundup of the latest news.
Amber Rudd.
The Home Office has been illegally deporting British citizens who arrived from abroad; most particularly West Indians from the so-called "Windrush" generation who were persuaded by the then government health minister Enoch Powell to come and live and work in Britain. Those who have not already been deported have suffered harassment by various authorities; losing their jobs, being refused benefits and even being refused health care and medical treatment.
Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary responsible for this shameful episode is trying to wriggle out of it by a series of shifting denials that hopefully (once all the other Tory ministers who don't think that she has done anything wrong finally give up and desert her) will result in her swift departure.
First - there weren't any targets, then there were targets but they had only been set at local level and she hadn't been told about them, then there were targets and they had been set at national level and she had been told about them but hadn't read the memo.
The question is then, is Amber Rudd a liar, incompetent or both?
To be clear, the targets were to deport a specific number of immigrants, this had nothing to do with the number who were here illegally; it was simply, "find some people who were not born in the UK and deport them". In this case, it didn't even matter if the immigrants were already British citizens as they had been born in countries that were still regarded as British colonies or dependencies when they arrived here.
This policy will have been set at the highest level and would have most certainly involved government ministers and senior civil servants at the Home Office.
I am all too well aware of policies like this as I encountered them while working for the DWP. Front line advisers were instructed to set jobseekers job seeking conditions that were impossible to comply with so as to be able to meet targets for sanctioning claims for benefits. None of this was ever put in writing so managers could invoke the "plausible deniability" scam if the facts ever became public. Junior staff were made aware that failure to meet these targets would affect their performance assessments at the end of the year and so, also affect their pay and bonuses.
I have no doubt at all that exactly the same regime operated at the Home Office. Hopefully, we will find out.
Art is whatever you can get away with.
(Andy Warhol)
"Half of French museum's art was fake" quotes this article on the BBC news website.
According to this BBC, the Êtienne Terrus museum in Elne, France has discovered that half the pictures in it's gallery are fake
Why does this not surprise me and why do I find the whole thing entertaining?
The trouble with almost the entire art world is that it is so up it's own backside that it rarely sees the light of day. Time and time again, the whole charade is made to look a fool and the joy is, they never seem to learn.
If it isn't exhibitions featuring the doodlings of a class of 5 year olds being "critically" acclaimed by so-called art experts, then it's the same bunch of self opinionated idiots being fooled by the likes of John Myatt. He would produce fake pictures supposedly by famous artists and sell them to the art world who were entirely taken in by them. He didn't even try very hard; he would buy a modern canvas blank and use paint bought from his local branch of B&Q.
Apparently, many of his paintings still hang in famous galleries around the world and are visited by the most celebrated art experts who are still completely taken in by them.
The Royal Baby
It will be interesting to see whether Donald Trump will want to pay his respects to the new prince, named after Lord Louis Mountbatten who was murdered by his IRA chums in 1979 when he visits the UK this Summer.
The Queen, being the supreme diplomat she is, will no doubt not want to raise the subject but that doesn't stop the rest of us from doing so.
I shall watch this story unfold with interest.
Above, you can see Donald Trump shaking hands with Gerry Adams at an IRA benefit fundraising dinner at the Essex House hotel, New York in 1995 just a few months before they bombed Canary Wharf, killing 2 people.
And now for something completely different.
For what it's worth, my anteater night picture was also disqualified on similar grounds.
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