Grombles

So President Trump wants to sue the BBC for damages related to 'harm' he believes he experienced as a result of some biased editing by the BBC around his speeches before and during the Jan 6th 2021 attack on the US Capitol. The law suit is being raised in Florida since the statute of limitation for libel in the UK is 12 months but up to 2 years in Florida. Apparently Trump wants to sue our Beeb for over $1bn. This is typical of the widely ambitious law suits he's filed many times before, but if he wins, which he rarely does, courts tend to settle for far less. It's all part of his tactics to scare the opposition into settling out of court rather than drag out very expensive 'lawfare', as it's known. Far from being able to afford $1bn if he's successful, the BBC probably can't even afford to defend itself using American lawyers, let alone the best of them. But the BBC is much loved by the British people, who own it. Attacking our precious institution,...

In case you haven't noticed, Trumpy's got a plan. It's probably not a great one and it's probably not going to be too well thought through, but it seems to be a plan nonetheless. He's using 'expendable' Islamic militants to send messages to Fatty. His military point man, Mad Dog, is advising him to use his reputation for nuttiness (unpredictability and outright lunacy) to scare the crap out of the biggest danger facing the world today. A fat finger on the nuclear button (reference to financial sector keyboard inputting errors causing meltdowns, not being fattist). The supreme leader (Big Un) knows the US is awash with nukes. So Trumpy doesn't have to prove he's got the potential to make S Korea an island. But what he does have to do is demonstrate he's prepared to use them at the slightest (or not even the slightest) provocation - and he's demonstrating this on universally recognised baddies who can't retaliate - at least no more than...

Huge agonising about how and why he won, but very little mention of the influence his name might have played. There can be little doubt that perceptions are formed on hearing a name before meeting the person. A Rupert in the UK is an upper class twit. I know a few Ruperts and none of them are either upper class or twits, but when you're going to meet a Rupert, you prepare for cravats, limp handshakes and a lack of chin. Likewise Sharons are loose blondes from Essex. Not very bright, but a vodka and orange can end up a cheap and energetic date - if not one you'd want to repeat. But every Sharon I know is charming and, as far as I can tell, far from loose. I'm sure every Rupert and every Sharon in the UK suffers from jokes about the stereotypes their names suggest. I don't know why we form impressions about people because of their names (other than clues about nationality, age and gender perhaps), but we do. And I suspect it has a far greater effect than we a...

Never thought I'd be writing anything positive about a man I've called a moron, with apologies to all morons, a lying, ignorant, arrogant, misogynistic bully. But having slept on yet another massive defeat for electoral common sense within just 6 months of our own Brexit shock, I'm starting to come to terms with what just happened. And I think I can begin to see this in a positive or at least hopeful light. I'm still not happy about the nuclear thing, racism or climate change, but I think I might on reflection start to feel reasonably positive nonetheless. Has Grombler finally gone mad? Read on... My first difficulty was trying to understand why so many millions of ordinary people could possibly believe that a man with no admirable character traits could possibly lead a country. Amazingly the stats show many of his voters are women, and even more oddly perhaps, many are immigrants. I was also surprised at how many EU citizens living in the UK supported Brexit. Turkeys...

Here we go again. The polls unanimously predicted a victory for Clinton, and we all know what happened. The polls also unanimously predicted that Britain would remain in the EU, but they were wrong there too. Only months earlier the UK polls predicted every sort of party combination to form a government, except for the one that won. Why do polls get it completely wrong, especially when they're unanimously predicting a close result? Perhaps it's because of the Observer Effect (sometimes confused with the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle). Simply put, it states that by measuring something, you can affect it. In the case of opinion polls, this is what happens: The polls all predict a close result If the person or party you like is losing , you become more likely to vote because you can make difference If the person or party you like is winning , you become less likely to vote because you don't need to There's a sweet spot for this effect. If the polls are predicti...

In a recent interview, loudmouth Trump made headlines again by calling for the USA to "kill their families" in reference to Islamic terrorists. Whilst we're all naturally incensed by senseless horrors on our streets, this is clearly evil thinking. Such vile threats would have been worthy of the likes of Pol Pot and Hitler, not a candidate to become the 'leader of the land of the free'. But it's not just evil, it also demonstrates appallingly bad judgement if he believes that killing jihadist loved ones will stop them committing acts of revenge or prevent more enraged people from joining their ranks. But whether we agree with Trump or not, the dreadful reality is that killing their families is precisely what we are doing by bombing their towns and homes. And the problem is that it makes terror attacks more likely, not less. By destroying whatever stability used to exist in the middle east, we've created dozens of desperate crazed jihadist groups all eager...