"Boris" Hitler blew his top over Brexit

There are innumerable versions of this clip to match signature headline fiascoes. Someone has made one for Boris Johnson the snake.


Good luck Boris even the bedridden now know you all lied your way to victory. God bless the Queen, a true old school leader, "I am still alive!"

SQ B777 engine on fire

This is not a car on fire which happens fairly often but usually not reported in the media. To have a B777 engine on fire is so implausible it is not suppose to happen if everything is carried out according to procedure. Therefore SQ better pray this is a Black Swan event but to be realistic expect some not so commendable reason to be the real cause.

If this gets the interest of the Air Crash Investigation program there will be no cover up because if you deny them the information they will just indulge in expert speculation which will reflect badly on SQ.

Brexit: Vulnerable voters and Scumbags

From the NYT which provided quite a good summary. I record this to remind us never to ever go down the same path the British just did. Socioeconomic conditions have created a serious wealth gap leading to widespread disenfranchised voters. They became emotionally vulnerable to exploitation and as always if prey is present, predators will appear.

Now I hope a broad sweep of the American media picks this up and compare Boris Johnson to Donald Trump. Do not lose big by voting the wrong person. Political leaders across the world do their place in history not favors if they have no plan to fix the gaps in societies. To permit the circumstances which make for emotionally vulnerable voters to persist is to destroy all the good work that had gone before.

As long as such voters exist in large numbers it is a time bomb. With mad people in power through freak elections, even the privileged should fear for their wealth. Their stupid policies will sink economies while threatening security everywhere at the same time. Rich and poor will all be worse off. By then it would be too late to blame anyone but yourselves.

Update: 6:25 pm

No great rush to leave the EU? Perhaps he never wanted to leave in the first place because unlike Donald Trump, this scumbag is smarter and knew he would have a revolt at home and be kicked out of No.10 when the daily lives of the average Briton takes a huge hit. That would surely come if he Brexit asap.

This guy was just trading and using everything to satisfy his ambition to be PM. Looks like nothing is sacred to him. Untrustworthy and lacking in integrity but can be very impressive on show. I only remember him because when he visited the Istana as London Mayor he took the MRT instead of a chauffeured limo.

This is a dangerous man and should never be allowed to be PM of the UK. Sadly his type are always among us but it is not a problem until voters become vulnerable to demagoguery. The Achilles Heel of Democracy.

Update: June 28 2:45 pm

I just saw this and since I already posted on this subject, I had to add this as well.



Very sad when the average politician you don't trust but might not have a choice and the political stars are downright criminally dishonest.

So just in case nobody has the strength to say, "Long lives the Queen" she had to say it herself. I deeply admire and respect her character and example.

ST is too bereft of talent these days. That wasn't a joke! Even me a neophyte trying to get up to speed here could tell. I have been thinking of giving up my subscription. Only the comfort of a silly habit has kept me on with them. 

Update: June 28 10:30pm

Why these "Leave" or pro Brexit pols are scumbags. CNN Money summarizes it well. The British people must be wondering with such vile characters trying to represent them, who can they trust? This is a warning to us here. If it can happen to the UK, it doesn't take a lot to manifest here. 

The very active British and US media is going to make such shots heard around the world. Liar, liar your pants are on fire! 

June 29 6:00 pm

I don't think many Singaporeans bother to follow closely what happen in the UK until they do something mad to impact all of us. Vox provided the backstory leading the the ill fated referendum which led to Brexit. 

David Cameron would be enshrined in British history as their worst PM. The man is no better than his school mate Boris Johnson. Look beyond the Tories to Labour as well. The whole political class in the UK is gutted of any moral principles except to gain and hold on to power at all costs. 

Beside making up my mind how to place my bets, the far more important reason is what is happening to the UK today could easily be our reality some day. If so, they would probably be the end of Singapore. The most evil thing about this is that most of us would be clueless we are heading down this road until it is too late.

July 4 8:30 pm

The filename I had for this picture was "Farage asshole" which is now uploaded here. But I thought scumbag was a more apt description.

Update: July 23 6:25pm

Even the considered view also think so!

Obama: Among America's Greatest Presidents

I have mentioned a couple of times before that history will be much kinder to Obama than what he has been unfairly getting as a sitting President. I am glad he is starting to sell his record and educate the American public on the issues of the future and without mentioning names or name calling explains Donald Trump is an insane idea.

The story from Businessweek summarizes his achievements. Sure there is no mention of failures and anyone doing that job will always have more than enough to regret over but any honest person would be hard put to compare his record against most of those who did the job before him, especially his immediate predecessor.

And the guy labored under the following conditions to get the job done, which in other words America could have been several times better today but it was also an inescapable result of America's founding fathers foresight to make sure the United States remain in business. See below.

Now, I’m always careful about drawing too many easy parallels there, because sometimes there are CEOs who come in and start explaining to me how I should be running the presidency. And I sometimes have to stop them and say, “All right. One, I appreciate your advice. But imagine a situation in which half your board and management were actively trying to get rid of you and prevent you from accomplishing anything. And you had 2 million employees, and you couldn’t fire a large portion of them. And your competitors weren’t simply promoting their own products, but were continually saying how your products were the worst that were ever invented and will cause a civilizational crisis. If you pull that all together, then you’ve got about half of what I’m dealing with on a daily basis.

It is more than a pity, a tragedy in fact that Britons had David Cameron and his colleagues instead of Obama and his team of rivals.

Brexit: It was all about leadership

These are the sort of stories Britons are reading beside Googling what is the EU.

Incredible isn't it? After all these years in the EU so many voters do not really know what it is? As incredible is the top story: Man who voted for Leave says he thought his vote 'wouldn't count' and is now 'worried'. This brings to mind LKY warning us never to monkey with our vote because you might live to regret it. 

To me the nub of the issue for Brexit is just one word: Leadership. 

Every member in the 27 nations union have strong internal forces seeking to leave the union. Only responsible leaders are stopping them from achieving that. The now former PM David Cameron was reckless and foolish. If there is a lesson here for the other EU nations, it is to make sure your leader isn't another Cameron waiting to be unveiled. 

One leader, Winston Churchill stood up to Hitler and refused to be defeated. Similarly one leader, David Cameron surrendered the future of Britain to the worst elements of his society. The selfish and irrational losers who could not win were prepared to take the whole country down with them believing the wishful lies of Farage and Johnson. 

Die Zeit hosting a discussion between Helmut Schmidt and Lee Kuan Yew in 2012 at the Shangri-La had this on record.

Get it? "Leadership figures". Which is what the UK lacks and is more lacking then ever. Therefore it is going to get much worse before it turn around for them.

Without risking key security and economic interests, Merkel will make an example of the UK to warn the other members of the EU. The Union is Germany's ultimate security blanket, i.e., they want it more badly than any other nation on the continent.

Update: June 26 10:00 am

Jeffrey Sachs article to Project Syndicate proposed a helpful re-framing and change of minds about how to respond to Brexit. The most important is not to add fuel to the fire which is what European leaders are already loudly hinting (how else would we know right?) The big worry is where are the leaders to pull this off? If you count on the people to lead, that for sure is taking us down the wrong path of cutting their noses to spite their faces.

These are the moments we got to see bringing people to a place which they are incapable of getting there themselves. That is the truest definition of leadership.

Update: June 27 4:50

Someone left this comment at the Guardian newspaper site. Reads like really finely crafted British treachery. Boris Johnson is getting his comeuppance. What a dishonest, slippery and deceptive person who had stooped at nothing just to be PM. At least on his way out David Cameron did something brilliantly right.

If Boris Johnson looked downbeat yesterday, that is because he realises that he has lost.

Perhaps many Brexiters do not realise it yet, but they have actually lost, and it is all down to one man: David Cameron.

With one fell swoop yesterday at 9:15 am, Cameron effectively annulled the referendum result, and simultaneously destroyed the political careers of Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and leading Brexiters who cost him so much anguish, not to mention his premiership.

How?

Throughout the campaign, Cameron had repeatedly said that a vote for leave would lead to triggering Article 50 straight away. Whether implicitly or explicitly, the image was clear: he would be giving that notice under Article 50 the morning after a vote to leave. Whether that was scaremongering or not is a bit moot now but, in the midst of the sentimental nautical references of his speech yesterday, he quietly abandoned that position and handed the responsibility over to his successor.

And as the day wore on, the enormity of that step started to sink in: the markets, Sterling, Scotland, the Irish border, the Gibraltar border, the frontier at Calais, the need to continue compliance with all EU regulations for a free market, re-issuing passports, Brits abroad, EU citizens in Britain, the mountain of legislation to be torn up and rewritten ... the list grew and grew.

The referendum result is not binding. It is advisory. Parliament is not bound to commit itself in that same direction.

The Conservative party election that Cameron triggered will now have one question looming over it: will you, if elected as party leader, trigger the notice under Article 50?

Who will want to have the responsibility of all those ramifications and consequences on his/her head and shoulders?

Boris Johnson knew this yesterday, when he emerged subdued from his home and was even more subdued at the press conference. He has been out-manoeuvred and check-mated.

If he runs for leadership of the party, and then fails to follow through on triggering Article 50, then he is finished. If he does not run and effectively abandons the field, then he is finished. If he runs, wins and pulls the UK out of the EU, then it will all be over - Scotland will break away, there will be upheaval in Ireland, a recession ... broken trade agreements. Then he is also finished. Boris Johnson knows all of this. When he acts like the dumb blond it is just that: an act.

The Brexit leaders now have a result that they cannot use. For them, leadership of the Tory party has become a poison chalice.

When Boris Johnson said there was no need to trigger Article 50 straight away, what he really meant to say was "never". When Michael Gove went on and on about "informal negotiations" ... why? why not the formal ones straight away? ... he also meant not triggering the formal departure. They both know what a formal demarche would mean: an irreversible step that neither of them is prepared to take.

All that remains is for someone to have the guts to stand up and say that Brexit is unachievable in reality without an enormous amount of pain and destruction, that cannot be borne. And David Cameron has put the onus of making that statement on the heads of the people who led the Brexit campaign.

Cooler Master for Asus VivoMini

Ordered this Cooler Master fan from eBay (USD 10.99) on the 19th and it arrived on the 23rd. This must be one of the speediest deliveries ever.

I mounted it in my 80 cents plastic basket with blue tack and sits the Asus VivoMini PC on top of it.

This is making a huge difference in heat management. The box is clearly running much cooler now. I am very pleased the fan is very quiet too.

Up PC RAM to 12 GB

Got this 8 GB RAM at SL Square today for $49. It is time to return to SL Square since Funan Centre is history. I get better prices there too but it is inconvenient to drive to and so I took the train there. With the DTL 2 it is very convenient as the station stops right next to it.

Met an ex-colleague from Shell too. I have not met him for probably twenty years. When you change your routine, you risk new experiences. I welcome it actually.