Weekend Update 26/03/2016 – When Dodgy Dave Met The Queen.

Brexit Countdown Clock.

http://www.timeanddate.com/countdown/generic?iso=20160623T22&p0=302&msg=Brexit+referendum+voting+closes&ud=1&font=cursive

Brexit Quote of the Day.

Dodgy Dave Cameron: My duty is clear.
 

Juncker: Only the EU authorities can decide when your duty is clear. Wild guesses by persons like yourself can only cause confusion.

With apologies to Joe Orton and Loot.

While we await tomorrow’s most important day, this weekend’s update is an episode from the Dodgy Dave and Chancellor Boy George tales. Dodgy Dave and Boy George from Blunders R Us, are Cabinet makers to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, “Hammers” of the UK’s disabled, leaders of the REMAIN-serfs-of-the-EUSSR campaign, and the fastest U-turn merchants on planet earth. It was not good week for the UK’s version of Batman and Robin. After delivering his 2016 budget on Wednesday March 16, by Saturday March 19^th it was all in ruins and under Robin’s fastest budget U-turn on record. The past week was so bad in fact, that Dodgy Dave has decamped Great Britain and its normal Easter forecast of rain, for sunny Spain and gallons of Rigol Brut Cava, £3.05 per bottle.

From Wednesday's Telegraph.

Dodgy  Dave meets with Her Majesty The Queen.

Dave asked her, "Your Majesty, how do you run Buckingham Palace so efficiently? Is there any advice you can give to me now that my government is falling to pieces?"

"Well," said the Queen, "the most important thing is to surround yourself with intelligent people." Dave frowned, and asked, "But how do I know the people around me are really intelligent?"

The Queen took a sip of tea. "Oh, that's easy; you just ask them to prove their intelligence by answering a simple riddle." She pushed a button on her intercom. "Please find Nigel Farage and send him here, would you?"

After a little while Nigel walked into the room and said, "Yes, Your Majesty?"

The Queen smiled and said, "Answer me this please Nigel, your mother and father have a child. It's not your brother and it's not your sister. Who is it?" 

Without pausing for a moment, Nigel replied, "That would be me." "Yes! Very good," said the Queen.

When Dave went home that evening, he called George, his number 2, and asked him the same question. "George, answer this for me.

'Your mother and your father have a child. It's not your brother and it's not your sister. Who is it?"

"I'm not sure," said George "Let me get back to you on that one...."

He went to his advisors and asked every one, but nobody could give him an answer.

Finally, he ran into Donald Trump in a restaurant one evening. George said to him, "Donald, can you answer this for me? Your mother and father have a child and it's not your brother or your sister. Who is it?"

Donald answered back immediately, "That's easy, it's me!"

George smiled, and said, Hey thanks, Don!"

Then, he went back to speak with Dave. "Hey, I did some research and I have the answer to that riddle and do you know what? It's Donald Trump!"

Dave got up, walked over to George, and angrily yelled at him, "No, you fool, can't you answer even the simplest questions?'

'It's Nigel Farage.'

In the cause of Brexit.

Trade patterns are generally slow to develop and alter, except when a country joins a trade pact like NAFTA or the EU.  But businessmen generally seek to maximise their profit. If a trade makes sense, it has to do so for each side. GB is not seeking favours from anywhere. Our export trade has been creeping up with India and China, but GB is not hard export orientated like Germany, where China's slowdown is now making an impact.  GB is a well educated, hard working, inventive, entrepreneurial nation, which will continue, in or out of the EUSSR. Go getters will go get, in or out of the sclerotic EU. But out open up far more opportunity.

In the end though, Brexit is more than just about trade. Rather like the Trump-Sanders effect in the USA. It's more about taking back control from Brussels, from City fat cats and banksters. Putting Parliament back in control, since they can be voted out. Controlling our borders too, since Merkel unilaterally invited all economic migrants to Germany last year without consulting anyone. GB Plc runs a big deficit with Europe, the continentals are still going to want to sell their cars, foods and wines, etc to GB. To do otherwise hurts them more than GB Plc. GB continental tourism in Europe is second only to Germany. My guess is that the continentals will want that to continue too, now that they lost all the Russians.

An EU that's broken, heading towards a major banking crisis and just as much at the mercy of a rapidly deteriorating global economy as the UK, is not going to do anything foolish after a Brexit vote that might trigger a financial crisis and a new depression.

You tried your best at EU renegotiation and you failed miserably, Cameron. The lesson is just leave.

Homer Simpson

Brexit Thought of the Week.

“Hello, Juncker,' Cameron said, 'is that you?'
 

'Let's pretend it isn't,' growled Juncker, 'and see what happens.”

With apologies to A.A. Milne, and Winnie-the-Pooh

Finally, be very careful what you believe in. Some very bad agencies have some very dirty tricks.                         

Why you should be skeptical that any video is real

By Matt McFarland March 23 at 2:24 PM

Be careful about believing what your eyes are telling you. Researchers have shown how a video of a person talking can be altered in real time to change what a speaker appears to be saying.

In a new video, the scientists show how they edited YouTube clips to change mouth movements. The system uses a webcam to track one person’s facial expressions, and then applies them to the face of the person in the target video. 

The software creates a 3D representation of a subject’s face, which can then be swapped with the 3D representation of another face. The process works even if one subject has facial hair or a different skin tone. But it won’t work if a person’s long hair blocks his or her mouth.

Matthias Niessner, a Stanford University professor who contributed to the collaboration between the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and the Max Planck Institute, warned that because of such technology we should be more careful about believing what we see in videos.

Niessner wants the work to raise awareness that video fraud is another hazard for consumers.

“People get that an email could be fraud,” Niessner said. “This is a very similar thing. Now the only difference is people should know about it.”

Niessner recommends that viewers who suspect manipulated videos look closely for disparities and inconsistencies in the lighting in a video. These hints are tough to sniff out on grainy videos, but more obvious on a high-resolution video. Niessner expects we’ll eventually have smartphone apps that help users figure out if a given video is real or not.
More + video.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2016/03/23/why-you-should-be-skeptical-that-any-video-is-real/

Have a great Easter everyone.