Pre Christmas quiz

Your challenge, dear reader, is to guess which of these are fake news 😉 There will be prizes (but, see 2* below)

A radical change for the Catholic Church

Pope Francis, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, has made a number of surprising announcements, while on tour in the Myanmar (Burma to you and  me), that will take the Catholic Church in a very progressive and liberal direction. The ministry of the 266th pontiff, it appears, will henceforward, be founded in reason and rationality.

• Sadly, he could not mention the Rohingya by name
• But, he has vowed to dismantle the financial privilege, excess and extravagance of the Vatican and the leaders of the Church by liquidating assets to the value of millions of dollars to pass over to the poor and vulnerable throughout the world.
• And, for the first time in 2,000 years women will be welcomed into the Church on an equal status with the men and will be allowed to become clergy, and perhaps even Pope in the future.

(Source: *3)

Brexit: Irish Border issues resolved in secret
Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, has just argued, albeit in a leaked memo, that we should simply give Northern Ireland back to the Republic of Ireland, taking the opportunity while there is no functioning devolved parliament in Northern Ireland. This resolves the Brexit border issue in one fell swoop, and corrects the dreadful mistake we made mistake made in partitioning Ireland last century. (Ed: What about the Isle of Wight?)

Mugabe honoured yet again
Zimbabwe has officially declared 21st February to be Robert Gabriel Mugabe National Youth Day, thereby making the former president’s birthday a public holiday, the Herald newspaper reports. (Ed: that can’t really be true?) Reports that Mr Mugabe was granted $10m (£7.5m) to ease him out of office have not been confirmed. (Ed: you are joking?)

Brexit deal sorted
Theresa May has told Jean Claude Juncker that we are leaving the EU on the 31st January 2018 and they can have as many of our bankers as they want in return, completely free of charge.

It is estimated that this will save the United Kingdom of Great Britain around £67 billion in the next twelve months alone and cost the EU £89 billion in lost taxes, because they will still be using the Cayman Islands – He he  (Ed: should that not be Ho ho ho?)

What if a second referendum says Remain?

This question was raised today by a retired Foreign Office source (Grade A6), who was overheard to say “Let us imagine, for the sake of argument, that a second referendum result was 52% in favour of remaining in and 48% was for leaving the EU. Would the Remainers be happy to support calls for a third referendum?” and so ad infinitum…What implications are there here for the validity of referenda as currently defined?

NB: Two of these five are true and the other three may be fake

Sources and acknowledgements:

*2 No there won’t

*3 National Secular Society quoting Atheism Today)

*4 Where was *1?