Flap as lost seals invade Canada

SCORES of seals have become stranded in a Canadian town after waters they used to navigate in the ocean froze over. It’s happening in Roddickton-Bide Arm, Newfoundland, according to Sky News.

Says mayor Sheila Fitzgerald: “It actually feels like we’re being inundated with seals, because there’s seals on the road, there’s seals in people’s driveways, the backyards, the parking lots, the doorways, the businesses.”

Heavens, it sounds worse than the invasion of Mexicanos on the southern border of the US.

The seals migrate south from the Arctic in December and tend to gather near shores, harbours and bays, but – with no obvious route back to where they came from – the animals are lost and are moving through the snow, going further and further inland. Will the Canadian mainland be next?

Don’t tell Donald Trump. He’s in wall-building mode.

SPEAKING of which, an item on the internet announces “Trump gets his wall.” It shows the American president sitting grim-faced on a chair in the corner while a Mexicano builds a small brick wall round him.

Meanwhile, the shut-down of the US federal government continues as Trump continues to wrestle with Congress, refusing to sign off on the budget unless it provides $5.6 billion for the building of his Great Wall of Mexico.

Some 800 000 federal government workers are going unpaid. At airports they’re still working anyway – for now. How long can it last?

Trump claims he’s getting messages of support from these unpaid workers. Eh? And now one of his economic advisers says those workers are actually better off for the shutdown.

Kevin Hassett, the White House’s chief economic adviser, is quoted by Huffington Post as saying that many of them were going to take holiday days anyway.

“Then we have a shutdown and so they can’t go to work, and so then they have the vacation, but they don’t have to use their vacation days. And then they come back, and then they get their backpay. Then, in some sense, they’re better off.”

Oh boy! And this is an economic adviser to the White House?

A glimmer of hope of a breakthrough comes with a piece in the New Yorker saying Trump is prepared to compromise on his demand for a wall, instead posting Vice-President Mike Pence on the border with a large pair of binoculars, alternately keeping an eye out for intruders and glaring menacingly into the distance.

But of course this is satirist Andy Borowitz again, and we’re back at square one. Who scripted all this? You don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Tailpiece

A COP in America watches as a little old lady drags two bulging plastic bags down the street. He notices one of the bags is slightly torn and $20 notes are coming out.

“Hey, ma’am, you’re losing money.” “Why, so I am. Thank you.” “I gotta ask you. Where’d you get that money?”

“From the golf course.”

“The golf course?”

“Yes. My garden runs next to the golf course. And at the 14th hole these critters walk across and widdle through the fence right onto my flowers. I’ve had enough. I’ve got a sharp pair of garden shears. I catch them in the act and say: “$20 fine or I snip it off!” The cop falls about laughing. “What’s in the other bag?” “Well, not all of them the fine.”

Last word

pay

CONSISTENCY is the last refuge of the unimaginative.