The Friday Joke 19/7/2013

A magician was working on a cruise ship in the Caribbean. The audience was different each week so he did same tricks over and over.
The problem was, the captain's parrot saw all the shows and began to understand how the magician did every trick.
He started shouting in the middle of the show: 'Look, it's not the same hat. Look, he's hiding the flowers under the table. Hey, why are all the cards the ace of spades?' The magician was furious but, as it was the captain's parrot, he could do nothing. Then one day the ship sank and the magician found himself floating on a piece of wood with the parrot.
They glared at each other but said nothing. Finally, after a week, the parrot said: 'OK, I give up. Where's the boat?   

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When I read the joke, I found myself in great sympathy with the Parrot. I have the feeling that when the Barnet Council project goes completely TU, I'll be sitting there like the Parrot asking "where's the Council gone". Like Humpty Dumpty, when it's smashed into a million pieces, it can't be put back together.

I once shared a train journey to Edinburgh with a senior Tory minister, as the railways were being privatised. I said that I considered the whole thing to be a commercial folly as the number of contracts would make it unworkable. He told me that it was never about making it profitable or workable, it was about cutting up the network into lots of little companies, so the rail unions couldn't hold the country to ransom. It was purely a political act, aimed at squashing the Unions. If anyone in Barnet thinks One Barnet is anything else, they are deluded. The reason Richard Cornelius is prepared to take the financial risk is because he is a Conservative and to him, the destruction of the power of the trades unions is of paramount importance.

The rest of us will have to pay and pay again for the folly. That is the biggest Friday joke of all