If only it was a comedy!

 

 

 

 

 

  

In the interests of truth and fairness I need to set the record straight.

     I thought, simpleton as I was, that Johnson might have had the good grace to let Paterson know that he was dumping him before it was generally known.  But no, the serial paid lobbyist MP, found out by telephone call from a BBC journalist while in a supermarket.  Of course, Johnson did not give him a head’s up, that would have shown concern for “a friend and colleague of mine for decades” and that is totally foreign to his narcissistic nature.

 

 

 

 

 

 

     I also thought that there might have been a little bit of negotiation to make the resignation happen smoothly with the promise of some honorific goodie some vague time in the future, but that too was crediting Johnson with a degree of strategy of which he is incapable.  Much better to just do it and the hell with the consequences – after all, that has served Johnson well in all the past fiascos.

     As a postscript to that paragraph, I have now read in the paper that No 10 does not rule out a peerage for the serial paid lobbyist ex-MP.  Who knows what that means?

     In a piece in the Guardian (4/11/21) by Kevin Rawlinson, he itemises Johnson’s U-turns writing that “a conservative count gives more than 30 often panicked policy changes since the 2019 general election.”  It makes sobering reading.  so, while urging you to read the original article in The Guardian, I'll list them:

 

 

 

'Ignore Covid' to national lockdown

Mass community testing

Bereavement scheme

Visa surcharge

Proxy voting

Rashford's free school meals campaign

NHS app

Reopening primary schools

Face coverings in shops

Huawei ban

Local contact tracers

Exam results in England

Face masks in schools

Eviction ban

England's second lockdown

Furlough scheme extension

Rashford's free school meals campaign - again

Cancelling Christmas

Lockdown a day after opening schools

Health secretary's resignation

Johnson and Sunak self-isolating

Foreign aid spending

Taking the knee

Air passenger quarantine

The Northern Ireland protocol

Critical worker pingdemic

Afghan guards

Natikonal insurance rises

Vaccine passports

Foreign lorry drivers

Sewage

Parliamentary standards and corruption

 

 

     How anyone can have faith in such a dithering incompetent like Johnson, defies belief.

     However, his abortive attempt to scrap the parliamentary standards system might point to his concern about what revelations and condemnations might result from the various financial irregularities, most pressingly in the refurbishment of his flat, issued by the very body he tried to abolish.  Junking democracy to safeguard his own selfish interests does seem a convincing explanation for the imposition of a three-line whip for something that was pretty self-evidently corrupt.

     Quite aside from party politics, the stench of corruption in the Conservative Party, is corrosive.  It taints the whole of political life, which is why it is essential that Johnson and the Conservative Party take responsibility for what the Conservative Party has done, apologise for the damage done and sack the persons responsible for the chaotic fiasco.

     The Daily Mail, in an otherwise scathing review of the despicable actions of Conservative MPs over the Paterson vote, tried to broaden the condemnation to all MPs.  That, in this instance is not fair, the only MPs who voted in favour of the abolition were Conservatives (with 1 DUP MP, quelle surprise!) they were not supported by any of the other parties.  The Conservatives own this particular piece of squalor.

     For me the viciously farcical air of the whole sordid episode is summed up in the story of Conservative MP Angela Richardson.  She was the parliamentary private secretary to Goblin Gove.  She abstained from voting in favour of the transparently corrupt motion and, on Wednesday evening she was duly sacked from her parliamentary private secretary post.  But 12 hours (sic) is a long time in politics, especially Conservative “politics”, and so by Thursday morning she had been reinstated in her job. 

     ‘Farce’ is too stable-sounding a term for what actually went on!

Just when you think . . .

 

 

 

 

 

You really don’t know whether to laugh or cry or start sharpening the knives for a major bloodletting! 

     Is it the swift volte-face or the fact that this discredited Conservative “government” even tried (with a three-line whip) to force through a sordid piece of legislation designed to defend poor little Owen Paterson MP?  One has to feel something akin to sympathy (or is it utter contempt?) for an MP struggling along on his MP’s salary in addition to more than £100,000 a year from the two companies that he lobbied on behalf of (against the rules) so assiduously. 

     And what has he done today?  Resigned, after his mate Johnson withdrew his support – as Johnson always does.  Johnson, the man who is liked by everybody except those who know him! 

     Well, I hope that poor little Paterson has managed to save something from the more than three hundred thousand a year that he “earned” to cushion his retirement.  Perhaps Johnson will make him a lord, after all our so-called Prime Minister has ennobled characters even less salubrious than Paterson. 

     Then, at least poor little Owen will have the lord’s per diem to try and encourage him forget the “cruel world of politics” (thank you poor little Paterson) that has been so unfair to him, by revealing (thank you The Guardian) his “egregious . . . paid advocacy” (thank you The Commons Standards Committee).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

      

 

 

Meanwhile the farce of this episode is still playing itself out.  Johnson has completed yet another, not U-Turn, more screeching handbrake reversal.  He forced his MPs to support the unsupportable, and to go on the record defending it and then, when the heat was raised by people accusing him of sleaze and blatant corruption, abruptly cancelling what was deemed so important it needed a three-line whip!

     There must be “decent” (they must exist) Tory MPs who reluctantly supported the government against overwhelming evidence, who will now have to explain not only their own questionable judgement in voting to support the government, but also the complete about turn by the same government within less than 24hrs!  I wish them no luck, and I urge their constituents to question them closely.

     This is yet another example of poor leadership.  This whole episode has been so catastrophically managed that heads should roll, with the first aristo into the tumbril being the person who ordered his MPs to vote: Johnson.

 

G

 

     

 

 

 

 Johnson won’t, of course, resign.  Why?  Because Paterson has.   

     I wonder exactly what incentives he was offered by Johnson to do the "decent "thing?  (See: peerage above!)

 

Enough of the tawdry Conservatives.  I can’t help feeling that some sort of adapted version of my favourite quote from Christopher Marlowe, “Get you away, and strangle the Cardinal” fits this situation!

 

On an altogether more satisfactory note, I am now double vaccinated.  Not for Covid, I had the Johnson & Johnson, Jenssen Jab (so only one needle for me), but double vaccinated in that I had my seasonal flu jab (right arm) and my Covid booster of Pfizer (left arm) in a purpose build portacabin attached to my local health centre.  My booster was given six months to the day from the first Covid injection.  Thank you, health system of Catalonia!

     The only problem I now face is tackling the Byzantine security systems that protect my medical details so that I can download a copy of the vaccination certificate for use, and I have already been informed that proof of vaccination will be needed to participate in a small poetry group in Barcelona.  A sign of things to come perhaps.

 

This evening to Terrassa to celebrate a joint Name Day, with Amazon being an integral part of the way that presents have been sent in situ as another sign of things already conventional!

 

 

 

 

Rule breaker - rule suggester!

 

 We are building up to yet another Johnsonian U-Turn, in which department he is something of an expert!  And he is being aided and abetted in his Ballet of Deception by the President of the EC who keeps to the script of “some progress” and “real differences” so that the final agreement (at the last possible moment) makes it appear as if Johnson has actually mastered his way to something real and acceptable.

     Let’s face it, any agreement will be better than none.  But when the final Johnson scrap of paper makes its appearance, I will be looking to informed commentators to explain when in the last four years we could have had something similar, or exactly the same or better! 

     In truth Johnson is no negotiator: he lacks the patience, application, wisdom, detail, ethos and everything else that a true champion of British interests needs. 

     Yes, he can trumpet meaningless three-word slogans and he can jumble metaphor and simile in a lurid word salad; but do the hard, detailed work for complex negotiations?  Not a chance. 

     And his opposite numbers in the EU know him for what he is (a lazy chancer and liar) and know that they have to act as stooges to his stand-up to get anything done.

     The professionals in the EU must shrug with weary resignation as they accept yet another session of baby minding as the nappy-wearing infant wiffles into view tousling his hair as he goes.  They can’t treat him with the contempt that he deserves because they recognize (as he can’t) that there is more at stake in the negotiations than individual reputations. 

     It is indeed sad to realize that the only people with the interests of the United Kingdom at heart are the people that the Brexiteers have caricatured and rejected!

     Ah well, I hope that the adults in the room are able to convince the baby that an agreement is there for the taking, by giving the crowd-pleaser enough belief that he has managed to achieve something of moment that will keep the rabid sections of his carnivorous party away from his all too solid flesh!

     It is obvious from the latest news broadcast that this farce of negotiation is going to be drawn out until we are all bored with it and won’t look too closely at what Johnson will actually have achieved. 

     Well, on with the comedy, I’m still waiting for my first laugh!

 

 

 

On a more positive literary note, Tim Harford’s new book now shares a place with my first Peter Gabriel record.  I heard a snatch of Jeux sans frontieres on the radio years ago and immediately went into town and bought the Gabriel LP; a couple of days ago I heard a snatch of Tim Harford reading his book and immediately went to my computer and ordered a copy from Amazon – which arrived the next day. 

     I am sure that there is an historical lesson to be learned from the different approaches of the two purchases which are 40 years apart!

     Tim Harford is the presenter of the quintessentially Radio 4 programme, More or Less, a programme that studies and discusses the statistics and other assorted mathematical claims made in the media and gives a reasoned evaluation of the value of the numbers and how they have been arrived at.  His voice has an undemonstrative yet compelling quality to it, as witness my immediate order for his book  The book I purchased is called How to Make the World Add Up and is subtitled Ten Rules for Thinking Differently About Numbers.  His style is conversational, authoritative with being preachy; it’s full of examples and reads like a novel.

     The title might suggest a top-down sort of approach, but Harford writes as if he genuinely wants to inform and facilitate.  He is fair and gently provocative and uses his considerable experience to explain and expand.

     This is a book worth buying, not just reading!  I recommend it without hesitation!

     It is, by the way, exactly the sort of book that those in government should be forced to read and then be made to sign that they have done so and promise to let the Ten Rules guide their thinking!  We would live in a much better world if they did!