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Andy McDandy wrote: ↑Tue Jan 11, 2022 9:34 pm "Big boys did it..."And ran away. I wish they would.
The king of bullshitters was all out of ideas. Even he could see how abject his lies were. He willed himself not to exist. To be elsewhere. Somewhere he wouldn’t be exposed to the starkness of his own self-hatred. His voice became strangely disconnected. Like an automaton. Without effect. He could only express his regret at the way events had panned out. A narcissist can’t do empathy and can only feel sorry for himself. And this was ultimately his tragedy. His fall from grace. He had never felt so exposed. Just wait for Sue Gray. Hope that she dematerialises.
Rishi Sunak had made himself scarce in Devon. “I’m right behind you, prime minister. 200 miles behind you.” The rest of the cabinet stared impassively at the floor, their expressions hidden behind their masks. They too would rather have been anywhere but the Commons. This was also their humiliation. They were the ones who had put a man transparently unfit to be prime minister into No 10. They knew what Boris was like but hadn’t cared. His incompetence and corruption was also theirs.
The Tory backbenchers were also out of sorts. No one could bring themselves to actually defend their leader; but neither did they dare attack him. His immorality cast a toxic pall over proceedings. Boris was the turd that would not flush and which no one dared mention. So instead they asked him about irrelevant details of constituency business. A county motto. It was all somewhat surreal.
It was left to Labour’s Chris Bryant to get the last word. How stupid did he think we all were?
Andy McDandy wrote: ↑Thu Jan 13, 2022 8:10 am John Crace isn't mucking about.How does that saying go?
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... -we-feared
The king of bullshitters was all out of ideas. Even he could see how abject his lies were. He willed himself not to exist. To be elsewhere. Somewhere he wouldn’t be exposed to the starkness of his own self-hatred. His voice became strangely disconnected. Like an automaton. Without effect. He could only express his regret at the way events had panned out. A narcissist can’t do empathy and can only feel sorry for himself. And this was ultimately his tragedy. His fall from grace. He had never felt so exposed. Just wait for Sue Gray. Hope that she dematerialises.
Rishi Sunak had made himself scarce in Devon. “I’m right behind you, prime minister. 200 miles behind you.” The rest of the cabinet stared impassively at the floor, their expressions hidden behind their masks. They too would rather have been anywhere but the Commons. This was also their humiliation. They were the ones who had put a man transparently unfit to be prime minister into No 10. They knew what Boris was like but hadn’t cared. His incompetence and corruption was also theirs.
The Tory backbenchers were also out of sorts. No one could bring themselves to actually defend their leader; but neither did they dare attack him. His immorality cast a toxic pall over proceedings. Boris was the turd that would not flush and which no one dared mention. So instead they asked him about irrelevant details of constituency business. A county motto. It was all somewhat surreal.
It was left to Labour’s Chris Bryant to get the last word. How stupid did he think we all were?
Speaking of Vote Leave, many of you will be rather bored of Cummings’s ongoing attempts to present himself as Downing Street’s Jiminy Cricket, a tireless conscience who was forever trying to do the good and noble thing while surrounded by liars and idiots. Take his announcement this week that he told the BYOB party organiser, Martin Reynolds, “in writing” that it should not happen. Yeah, not all heroes wear capes. Some send a single, arse-covering email to insulate themselves against any future trouble and then do jack shit else to stop the event, even though as the prime minister’s most senior adviser they could have taken a proper stand.https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... nds-failed
Reynolds has long been expected to be moved after Sue Gray’s investigation, apparently to a Middle Eastern ambassadorship. Amazing. Is this the same Martin Reynolds who was this week reported to have regretted his BYOB email as soon as he sent it, become “panicky”, but thought he couldn’t go back on it or it would somehow be worse? Because he sounds EXACTLY the sort of guy who should be an ambassador in the Middle East. Great to hear that the British establishment will keep protecting and advancing him. Come on, what’s the worst that can happen?
I am enjoying the dead look in all the ministers’ eyes as they are seconded to defend Johnson in the face of what might soon become the indefensible. Instead of calling this Form a Square Around the Shitster, Johnson’s allies have reportedly gone with Operation Save Big Dog, a name that just underscores the impression of No 10 as a stag do gone badly wrong. You know the plot: some inadequate guys mount a desperate rearguard action to escape the problem of a dead stripper/missing groom/pub crawl that has somehow made them the target of Armenian gangsters.
For more than 10 years, Conservative governments wishing to kneecap the BBC have fallen back on one question they always believe is rhetorical: why does this or that presenter get paid more than the prime minister? Weirdly, no one’s tried that line yet this time. Can’t think why.
For instance, it’s very difficult to imagine the idea of processing asylum seekers “in Rwanda or Ghana” being floated by someone other than a smirking Westminster ironist who’s just boshed a pint of prosecco and broken a swing. The last time the government tried this tack, the nation of Albania seemed oddly unwilling to play the role of “symbolic shithole”, and declined the chance to be part of the quarter-arsed plan.
Strip away Johnson’s famous boosterism, and you are left with a series of hit jobs on things. All very well for a newspaper columnist – indeed, it is the stock in trade – but he is the prime minister. Even allowing for the pandemic, it is becoming unavoidably clear: Johnson has been unable to make the leap from critic to artist.Harsh, funny, and accurate.
Destroying the BBC, forcibly repelling migrants, voter suppression when we don’t have a problem with voter fraud, a war on judges, unpicking his own Brexit deal … Johnson is really a wrecker disguised as a builder. I know he occasionally floats the idea of a sea-bridge or an estuary airport, but we all know those never happen. He knows how to break things, but not how to make things. The policies that will actually be his legacy are sunderings and squanderings and underminings, in whose ruins he has failed to make something new and positive.
Things fall apart. What followed was a police interrogation as, slowly and forensically, Rigby destroyed every alibi. Was Johnson saying that Dom was a liar? Boris didn’t dare do that. All he could do was repeat his assertion that no one had told him that the social event had been against the rules. Presumably because no one really thought they needed to spell it out that plainly, as they imagined the reasons for not having a party were blindingly obvious.
“All I can do is humbly apologise for what happened.” And repeat that no one told him it was a bad idea. Then again, no one had bothered to tell him to put on his shoes or wipe his bum that morning. Every time he said it, pulling nervously on his toddler haircut, he sounded a bit more feeble. A bit more pathetic. You could almost sense his grip on power growing looser by the minute.FINISH HIM!!!
First there was the surefire tell that Boris Johnson is about to start lying: the smirk (though these days it’s rarer to find a time when he’s telling the truth).
Then there were the desperate and petulant displays of temper, masquerading as banter, from someone who hates to be challenged. A man who consistently mistakes arrogance for genuine self-worth. Finally, there was the contempt. Not just for opposition MPs but also for his own. Especially for his own
He ran through Big Dog’s catalogue of excuses.
First there had been no parties. Then he had been sickened and furious that others in Number 10 had had parties. Then he had been at some of the parties. Then he hadn’t realised the party he had been at had actually been a party. And in any case he had spent the 25 minutes at the party in a totally dissociated state, so he hadn’t noticed there were tables laden with food and booze and people getting pissed.
Then when he had come to his senses and realised he was at a party, he had no idea such gatherings were illegal as no one had bothered to tell him what the rules were. Even though he had made them up and had spent an hour a day at press conferences telling the country what the rules were. The five stages of coming to grief.
The SNP’s Ian Blackford mentioned the record-breaking 175,000 who had died. Big Dog just sniggered, pulled faces and played with his watch. Still keeping it classy.Just read them. Seriously, ouch.
There was a small band of Boris loyalists, but most Tories were as unimpressed with their leader as the opposition MPs. None who spoke showed any flicker of support, preferring to keep things neutral. Though not David Davis. He went nuclear. Enough was enough. Quoting both Oliver Cromwell to parliament and Leo Amery to Neville Chamberlain, he said to a hushed chamber: “You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. In the name of God, go.”
This wasn’t your average Tory malcontent. It was a respected old-timer, an arch Brexiter and longtime Johnson supporter who saw through Big Dog’s pantomime theatrics. Boris tried to shrug off the attack but was visibly shaken. He even said he had no idea where such a famous quotation came from. It makes you wonder if he actually wrote – let alone read – the passages in his book about Churchill that cover the early years of the war. Johnson the Great Pretender. Who can’t even cut it as a pound-shop Churchill.
I’m not sure Boris Johnson could handle the truly hilarious self-realisation of getting to the Reichenbach Falls and discovering his worthy foe was … hang on, let me get my monocle … ah yes, Gary Sambrook.
Half the Tory party are acting like they’ve woken up after a midsummer night’s dream and can’t BELIEVE they’ve been involved in donkey porn. The other half would very much like you to know that policemen are getting younger. One report put the average age of plot leaders at 34, and many older Tories are Simply Not Having It on that basis alone. As one raged on Wednesday: “This isn’t like changing your brand of iPod, or your trainers.” Take it easy, Grandpa. Also: what’s an iPod?But Marina does, among the jokes, make some very good points as ever:
Warming to their theme, this anonymous elder fumed: “It’s not alright to have this fucked up by a lot of kids.” Quite.
And yet, Conservatives who have spent the past few years honking delightedly that there has been a political realignment have failed to understand that there may just have been a generational one too. The old guard really have internalised some ridiculously abusive behaviour.
You keep hearing allies of Boris Johnson – Boris Johnson! – lambast these youngsters for disloyalty and disrespect for political conventions. To which the only reasonable rejoinder is: “lol can I get a quote about the kettle from the pot?!”Enjoy. Ain't no implosion like a Tory implosion.
It must be said Johnson has seen “no evidence” of intimidatory behaviour. Then again, the PM saw no evidence of a party in 40 people gathering round trestle tables of food and booze. If even a quarter of the claimed threats end up being backed by documentary proof, Mark Spencer and his operation could end up looking like the least appealing whips this millennium, which is quite impressive, considering the silver medallist was played by Kevin Spacey.
This populist government can’t have it both ways. You can’t forever claim to be the voice of the people, and then claim that what the people are really worried about are Russian troop manoeuvres on the Ukraine border. I’m afraid that is just total bollocks. “The people” are not talking about that very much at all. Whether the cabinet and other serious folk reckon they should be is a separate matter – but it’s a little too late for coulda-woulda-shoulda from an administration that has spent the past two and a half years stoking every single trivial and diversionary culture war that it possibly could.
In all honesty, I can’t help feeling rather sorry for Lytle during the whole saga of the Downing Street flat refurbishment. She is simply a decorator who took a commission, clearly with no understanding that she was working for a couple of greedy chancers who didn’t have a clue how they were going to pay for it, nor particularly cared.
Johnsonism is little more than a con trick, and the jig looks increasingly close to being up. Perhaps that is beginning to dawn upon even him.
“So here’s what we do. We say very firmly that Islamophobia has no place in the Tory party even though it quite obviously does. We then say there can only be an inquiry if Ghani calls for an inquiry and as she hasn’t yet called for an inquiry then there is no point having an inquiry. That doesn’t look at all feeble or as if we’re trying to duck the issue.”
And as for Ukraine. Putin better watch out big time. Not that we would be sending troops in or anything. But we could refuse to take Russian gas and freeze to death.
Andy McDandy wrote: ↑Tue Jan 25, 2022 4:00 pm Slightly subdued Marina Hyde on the last - what is it? - 48 hours or so.The only people I know who are talking about the threat of war in Ukraine are sadly, those with mental health issues who are convinced that conflict and nuclear war are just around the corner even at the best of times.
This populist government can’t have it both ways. You can’t forever claim to be the voice of the people, and then claim that what the people are really worried about are Russian troop manoeuvres on the Ukraine border. I’m afraid that is just total bollocks. “The people” are not talking about that very much at all.
If you ever wondered what Jim Jones’s corpse would have looked like if it had spent three weeks getting bleached and bloated by a Guyana river, it floated up to the House of Commons dispatch box yesterday at 3.30pm.
As for what Johnson said to his followers last night, he is reported to have compared himself to Othello, who he seems to think was “always seeing the best in people”. Righto. To confirm: the country isn’t just being run by a guy who can’t even understand the plot of Othello, but by a guy who can’t even understand the plot of Othello and is writing a book about Shakespeare. It’s called not giving a fuck, Gary – look it up. That said, good to see the PM getting his excuses in early for shopping Desdemona to the cops for her Abba party.
And yet, for someone who normally puts the I am into iambic pentameter, Johnson will still only speak in the first person plural when it comes to “taking responsibility” for what his investigator Sue Gray found to be “failures of leadership”. What a tell. As he preferred it yesterday in his statement to the Commons: “We must look ourselves in the mirror, and we must learn.” Who’s we? Face it, Gary – he’s the least convincing man in the mirror since Michael Jackson.
Sunak’s whole speech was a catalogue of reasons to be profoundly grateful for his existence. He claimed the UK was the fastest growing economy and there were more people in work than before the pandemic, before insisting that inflation running at 6% had nothing to do with him. Er … you’re the chancellor. He then went to say the energy price cap would be going up by £693 and that he would be offsetting that with a £200 loan, to be repaid over five years, and a £150 council tax rebate...
It would be wrong to cut VAT, said Sunak, sounding most put out, as that would not target the poorest households. A bizarre line as he had moments earlier suggested cutting VAT was one of the great Brexit dividends. Presumably, another one that we will never see. As for the energy companies, they would be bankrupted by further taxes. After all, Shell had only quadrupled its profits to £14bn that very day. They were nearly on the breadline. Would no one think of the shareholders?...
https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... or-himself
He claimed the UK was the fastest growing economy
The way Dom sees it, Johnson’s problem was basically that “he got a wrong ‘un pregnant”. How revealing of Cummings that he should alight on that styling, with its hideous old-fashioned echoes of a time where men were described as being “caught” by the women they impregnated, as though all their wonderful promise had been sapped out of them by some two-bit succubus. What crap. You really don’t hear this kind of talk very much these days from people with half a brain, and no matter how often Dominic Cummings remembers he needs to mention this or that “brilliant woman” on his blog, I am not the only one to notice what a sad little relic this self-styled futurist so often resembles.
As we move into act 25 of the shitshow, then, it’s worth course-correcting to remember that the only person responsible for messing up Boris Johnson’s life and dream job is Boris Johnson. The rest are just bit parts – whatever they’d like to think.
Prime suspect turns pale as latest party photo snaps him bang to rights
https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... -to-rights
Andy McDandy wrote: ↑Tue Feb 08, 2022 4:33 pm https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... tarmer-mobLet's not forget Cummings was assembling his Incel Army, with some warped plan to become the neckbeard kingmaker.
Marina Hyde on the latest Cabinet and Tory party business. Not as laugh out loud funny as usual, but still worth a read.
The way Dom sees it, Johnson’s problem was basically that “he got a wrong ‘un pregnant”. How revealing of Cummings that he should alight on that styling, with its hideous old-fashioned echoes of a time where men were described as being “caught” by the women they impregnated, as though all their wonderful promise had been sapped out of them by some two-bit succubus. What crap. You really don’t hear this kind of talk very much these days from people with half a brain, and no matter how often Dominic Cummings remembers he needs to mention this or that “brilliant woman” on his blog, I am not the only one to notice what a sad little relic this self-styled futurist so often resembles.
As we move into act 25 of the shitshow, then, it’s worth course-correcting to remember that the only person responsible for messing up Boris Johnson’s life and dream job is Boris Johnson. The rest are just bit parts – whatever they’d like to think.
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