Fun Online Polls: North Korea; The French presidential election

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

How would you prefer Donald Trump to deal with North Korea?

Stop ramping up the rhetoric and just ignore them - 28%
Try and persuade PR China to withdraw support - 44%
Continue with gunboat diplomacy - 6%
Drop a nuke on Pyongyang - 13%
Launch a full-on invasion - 2%
Other, please specify - 7%

Good, I voted for one of the first two (I think the second one), having read around, that does seem like the most sensible option.
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This week's Fun Online Poll, before it's superseded by events:

If you were voting in the French presidential election:

Macron - the Europhile former Rothschilds banker and Socialist minister, whose campaign was apparently funded by Goldman Sachs.

LePen - the other one..

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Fun Online Polls: Russia/Syria & North Korea

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

Should the G7 impose further sanctions on Russia because of Assad's nerve gas attack in Syria?

Yes - 7%
No - 93%

Good, I was with the majority on that.

There was some scepticism in the comments as to whether Assad's regime was behind the attack and whether there was actually a nerve gas attack. I would add, even if there was and Assad's forces were behind it, how are the Russians to blame (the people as opposed to Putin) and even if Putin were somehow to blame, what difference would it make, apart from pushing up our domestic gas prices and making Putin even more delusional?

Thanks to all 81 who took part.
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This week, let's stick with the big issues.

"How would you prefer Donald Trump to deal with North Korea?"

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

"Alex Salmond is behaving like Kim Jong-il, says Alistair Darling"

From The Guardian:

Alistair Darling has compared the behaviour of Alex Salmond to the North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and said thousands of "No" campaigners have been incarcerated without trial.

In an interview in the New Statesman, the leader of the pro-UK Better Together campaign argues: "[Salmond] said on the BBC that under his great and glorious leadership Scotland will overcome any English military attempts to undermine the Revolution started by his father, Salmond Il-Sung.

"This was a North Korean response, as was anointing his son Salmond Jong-Un as his successor. This is something that Kim Jong-il would do."

Mr Darling is currently unavailable for comment. A spokesman for the SNP explained that he and his family had been taken into protective custody.

"North Korean missile crisis: Swansea newspaper not to blame"

From the BBC and the BBC:

The anticipated missile launch by North Korea cannot be blamed on a Swansea newspaper's coverage of concerns about infectious childhood diseases in the divided country in the 1990s, US Secretary of State John Kerry has said.

The South Wales Evening Post reported on worries following a now discredited report which stated that the North had moved two missiles to its east coast because of the link between the MMR vaccine and autism in the South. Many experts described the move as a "provocative act" and "huge mistake" and blamed the research and media coverage of it for the outbreak.

Speaking in Seoul, Mr Kerry reconfirmed the US's commitment to protecting itself and its allies against epidemics of missiles.

Nearly two countries have been diagnosed with missiles since the outbreak started in November, mainly affecting the Korean peninsula. Health experts have said the epidemic is a result of a 10 to 15 year "legacy" of concern about nuclear attacks, but added that Pyongyang had "not demonstrated the capability to deploy a nuclear-armed missile.

"Or indeed to vaccinate its children against MMR."

Killer heels

From The Evening Standard:Why the lass in front chose to balance her hat on her head instead of wearing it was unexplained at time of going to press.

[The Heir To Blair] Oh no, here we go again...

6 February 2003:

Tony Blair: The danger is that if we allow Iraq to develop chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons they will threaten their own region, there is no way that we would be able to exclude ourselves from any regional conflict there was there as indeed we had to become involved last time they committed acts of external aggression against Kuwait...

North Korea is a country, its people are starving, that is virtually living on the export of ballistic missile technology. Their nuclear scientists are people who are working for other countries as well as North Korea and I'm simply saying to people, if you allow this stuff to proliferate, if you allow it to be traded in, and there are companies so-called supposedly respectable companies in the world trading in this stuff, the terrorists are trying to get hold of it - they will succeed at some point unless we deal with it.

4 April 2003:

David Cameron provoked surprise today when he claimed that North Korea now possessed the capability to launch a nuclear strike against Britain. The Prime Minister pointed to the escalating threats from the regime in Pyongyang as evidence of the need for the United Kingdom to retain the Trident nuclear deterrent.

Speaking to defence workers in Scotland, he said he was "very concerned" about North Korea as it had "extremely dangerous technologies in terms of nuclear and its weapons". He said: "North Korea does now have missile technology that is able to reach, as they put it, the whole of the United States and if they are able to reach the whole of the United States they can reach Europe too. They can reach us too, so that is a real concern."

Like any sane person, I didn't believe that crap about Saddam being able to launch WMDs within 45 minutes for one second. If that really had been the case, then we wouldn't have given him an ultimatum and several weeks' warning that his country was going to be invaded, would we?

And I find my intelligence further insulted by Cameron's claim that the North Koreans have got a spare couple of very long-range missiles which they intend to fire at the UK. Even if they did (which they don't), the chances of them scoring a direct hit are virtually zero.

"Kim Jong Un warns USA against missile test launch"

From the BBC:

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has warned the USA that it will "achieve nothing by threats or by provocations".

The warning comes as America prepares to launch a long-range missile which Washington says will put a satellite in orbit. Mr Kim was speaking in Ottawa with Canadian PM Stephen Harper ahead of global nuclear security talks. The two leaders said the USA risked further sanctions and isolation if it did not cancel its launch plans.

"America knows its obligations and it must take irreversible steps to meet those obligations," said Mr Kim, adding that Pyongyang and Ottawa were "absolutely united" on the issue.

Mr Harper said he and his North Korean counterpart had "agreed to respond sternly to any provocations and threats by the United States and to continually enhance the firm Canadian-North Korean defence readiness". But he said the international community stood ready to help the USA improve the lives of its citizens if it chose a path of peace.

The launch of the missile is scheduled for 4 July, to coincide with the 236th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. On Sunday, Canadian defence officials said the main body of the rocket had been moved to the launch site in preparation.

Fun Online Polls: War on Scotland, Jessica Ennis

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll are as follows:

Which country would David Cameron most like to declare war on?

Scotland - 36%
Iran - 20%
Argentina - 11%
Syria - 10%
North Korea - 1%
None, he's a peace loving bloke - 7%
Other, please specify - 15%

Seems fair enough, Scotland is about the only country on that list against whom we'd stand a reasonably good chance, provided we remembered to ask them for our nuclear submarines back first.

Suggestions for "other" included Britain (two votes), England, The Falklands (easy!), Brussels (and then promptly surrender), poverty, the workers and Tunbridge Wells. Most of those aren't even countries...
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And lo, as Britain finally catches Olympics fever (good excuse for falling house prices), let's have a Fun Online Poll on who is Team GB's cutest athlete.

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Fun Online Polls: The Sun, Iran etc.

The responses to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

The Sun on Sunday: did you buy a copy?

I don't buy a Sunday newspaper - 83 votes
I boycott every part of the Murdoch empire - 61 votes
I stuck to my regular newspaper - 22 votes
Yes - 19 votes
No, but I read a copy - 3 votes
Other, please specify 11 votes

There was a very high turnout of 190 voters, thanks to everybody for taking part.

PS, it appears that some people still don't quite grasp the concept of "Other, please specify" (which is there because I sometimes miss something obvious when I set up the poll). Eleven people chose that option but only seven left comments, how am I supposed to guess what the other four thought?
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One thing which politicians like to do to take people's minds off bad news is attacking other countries, verbally or literally. There has been a lot of blustering recently, so that's this week's Fun Online Poll, which country do you think David Cameron would most like to declare war on?

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Ah ha ha ha ha (etc).

Much cause for mirth over at Peter Risdon.

Life copies satire

The Onion, 19 November 2003:

Kenyan President Emilio Mwai Kibaki said Monday that his country continues to enjoy excellent diplomatic relations with former U.S. President Bill Clinton.

"I have always enjoyed working with Mr. Clinton, and the recent international Agricultural Development Conference was no exception," Kibaki said. "And I know that [Democratic Republic of the Congo President] Joseph Kabila enjoyed meeting with him to secure an American commitment for humanitarian aid, as well." Kibaki said that none of the leaders have anything in particular against President Bush, but added that all the same, they'd rather stick with Clinton.

The BBC, 4 August 2009:

Former US President Bill Clinton has met North Korean leader Kim Jong-il during an unannounced visit to the country, state media have reported.

Mr Clinton is in Pyongyang to discuss the fate of jailed US journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee. He is the highest-profile American to visit since his secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, in 2000. US media are reporting that Mr Clinton has met the journalists and hopes are high for their release. Analysts say Mr Clinton may also be trying to ease the deadlock over the North's nuclear ambitions.

North Korea Detonates 40 Years Of GDP

I'd like to commemorate this weekend's nuclear(?) tomfoolery by referring to the article published by The Onion the last time they did this back in 2006.

In economic terms, they must be back to the 1930's at least.

Doctor Who: The Poison Sky

Did anybody else notice the really stupid mistake in the plot of today's episode?

They got all the nuclear powers to link up to blast the Sontaran spaceship, and listed them one-by-one "USA, Great Britain, France, India, Pakistan, Russia, China, North Korea"

Woah!

What's North Korea doing on the list? Why did they miss out Israel?

If they can't get basic stuff like this straight, how are we supposed to take the rest of it seriously?
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Update, re Dearieme's comment, I watched the relevant bit, starting at 17 m 20 s in (that BBC online player is really smooth!) the list is actually "North America, United Kingdom, France, India, Pakistan, China, North Korea". So they got UK correct, as it happens, but there's no such country as 'North America', they missed off Russia and got India and Pakistan in the wrong order (all the other countries are listed west-to-east).