Reflections on this and that.

I've had lunch today with an old friend and we have set the world to rights between us. Here are a few of our cogitations.

 * Theresa May doesn't want Parliament to vote on whether or not to accept the referendum result. Maybe she is afraid that after so much negative talk about it, Parliament will vote to remain in the EU. What would happen if they did? Can the things that have been broken be put right? Have we let this cat so far out of the bag that there is no getting it back in?

 * And then there are the proposed lists. Employers should list their non-British employees - that is one idea. Today I read about a proposal that schools should do a kind of census on their pupils, not just what their ethnicity is but also where they were born. While this might help schools provide the absolutely correct help that some of their pupils need with improving their English, it raises fears that the information might be used for other purposes. Parents who have perhaps outstayed their work visa but whose children were born in his country might not send them to school for fear of being deported. Here's a link to the article. What a complicated situation.

 * Another bit of news that set us thinking concerns Steven Woolfe, involved in some kind of fracas in Brussels involving at the very least some violent pushing around. He has decided to leave UKIP. He says it is ungovernable and I'm pretty sure that sometime recently he said there was something rotten within it. Has he only just discovered this? It sounds as though the party is falling apart. However, UKIP has achieved Nigel Farage's stated aim of removing Britain from the EU. So he probably won't be too upset to see the demise of the party he created.

 * Meanwhile last night on the news I saw Raheem Kassam. He is standing for the leadership of UKIP, apparently. And I found myself wondering how such a man became a member of UKIP. It's like the Hispanics and Afroamericans who support Trump. How do you manage to support a party that looks down on your ethnicity? The world is strange!

 * And finally, here is something more cheerful. It's a link to an article about Suzanne Vega and how they came to make the song "Tom's Diner".

 This is what happens when two old friends get to talking about stuff.