A Matter Of Some Gravity

In the week that Britain requested, and was granted, a further extension of EU membership whilst attempts to construct a Parliamentary agreement on how to leave continued, the news that a black hole had been imaged for the first time made world headlines.

The first is the culmination of exhaustive efforts to manipulate the views of many disparate people; the second is the culmination of exhaustive efforts to manipulate data obtained from many disparate telescopes.

The black hole in M87	The black hole in London SW1

It would be cheap and easy to suggest that Brexit is the black hole of European politics, that hapless soon-to-be-ousted British PM Mrs May is sucking the life out of her colleagues in the same way that the gravity well of a black hole slows and bends light round it, that time stands still on the edge of the singularity at the heart of a black hole in much the same way that it grinds painfully slowly whenever Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg opens his mouth and that the picture of the utter blackness at the centre of the hole is not dissimilar to to the holes in the brains of those who have convinced themselves that

1. No deal is better than a bad deal
2. There are no good deals
3. Therefore no deal is desirable
4. Anyway it doesn't matter because it can be "managed"
5. We haven't the faintest idea what "managed" means or how it would work but hey, it sounds cool and it means we can dump the problem onto someone else because we certainly are not going to spend any time at all in doing any real work into finding a solution.

As I say, to go down this path  would be a slippage of the high standards of journalism that we have sought to maintain for some 15 years in these columns and we shall steadfastly refuse so to do.
[What about the high standard of editorial control? Ed]

Dr. Commuter helps out ... "A Tory MP"

Dr. Commuter writes:   There are some people in the world who, sadly, perceive a different kind of reality to the rest of us. We doctors call them "loonies". They are to be pitied, rather than condemned. Let us take the case of Mr. MP (real name hidden to prevent unnecessary pain and suffering to his constituents). He does not understand why his party leader is talking to the leader of the opposition in an attempt to reach an agreement on how Britain should leave the EU. "Why, oh why is this necessary?" asks Mr. MP.

The answer is that a minority administration, that, after two and a half years, has failed to negotiate a settlement for Britain leaving the EU that Parliament will accept, should either resign or find common cause from other parties in Parliament. There, that wasn't so hard to understand was it? Now take a lot of tablets, go and lie down and hopefully stay that way whilst the grown-ups make some decisions.

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If you have a pressing matter that you have procrastinated over for a ridiculous amount of time whilst knowing all along that you were getting it wrong then you are welcome to ask Dr. Commuter for advice but we warn you, you probably won't like the answer. Terms and conditions most definitely apply, subject to an indicative vote, cross-bench support and a great many points of order.