[Andy McDandy]

Slightly subdued Marina Hyde today, on racism in sport.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... -yorkshire

Yorkshire whistleblower Azeem Rafiq has now himself been found to have sent racist messages. Logically, this feels questionable. Presumably the fact that former England batsman Alex Hales was pictured in blackface in 2009 is further evidence that there is nothing to see here. If, in the coming days, some player is found to have had a passion for monkey chants or white hoods, then I think we could safely say there is absolutely no point discussing the subject of racism in cricket and beyond for one second more. If “they’re all at it”, then we don’t have a problem with “it” at all.

[Andy McDandy]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ld-ant-dec

What else but Peppa Pig World?

You may have heard the odd lie fall from the lips of Boris Johnson, but few are more solidly outrageous than Monday’s claim that he “loved” Peppa Pig World. Sorry, but no. I refuse to believe any adult human has attended this attraction and not spent a significant time in the queue for Miss Rabbit’s Helicopter Flight Googling “Mirena coil” or “vasectomies near me”.

Tory diagnosis is that “the prime minister desperately needs a big moment where everyone says, ‘boom, he’s back’”.

That is really the absolute last thing the country needs. The entire Johnson premiership has consisted of people veering between suggesting he’s unassailable for 10 years, to suggesting he’s had his worst week ever and is on his uppers.

Again, right on the nail.

[Cyclist]

I don't think Mr Crace was very impressed with Nad's appearance before the culture committee

Asked to explain the fiasco over Paul Dacre’s withdrawal from the Ofcom job, despite the rules having been changed to allow him a second go at applying for the job, Dorries merely shrugged.
She couldn’t possibly comment as the process was ongoing. All she would say was that the rules had been changed to allow for a more diverse range of applicants. There just hadn’t been enough 70-year-old white men with extreme right-wing views applying first time round. But when she had made up her mind on the new person for the job, the committee would be first to know. Though she would like to remind everyone that the committee had no power of veto so it could effectively just do one if it wasn’t happy. Or words to that effect. Dorries smiled politely. Classic passive aggression.

Dorries would have loved to inform the committee who was in line to become the next chair of the Charity Commission but again the process was ongoing and it wouldn’t be fair on those on the shortlist. If indeed there was a shortlist. She couldn’t even confirm that. Nor could she say that she was looking for someone with an anti-woke agenda. The very idea! She had no idea why it had been reported that she had a vested interested in someone anti-woke. All she wanted was someone who was going to take a common-sense approach.

While it was true the BBC had problems with impartiality, she said, she had nothing to say about this particular interview because she hadn’t heard it. After all, why would a culture secretary bother to listen to the prime minister’s showpiece interview on the day of his speech to the party conference? Or even listen to it on catch-up once she had heard there was a fuss going on about it? And she definitely had never said a bad word about the BBC, because that just wasn’t her style.

https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... censorship

[Andy McDandy]

TFI Marina:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... n-trickett

TWA and others will enjoy this:

Oh dear. Please, not the “dead cat”. I don’t know if you can technically kill a dead cat, but if this phrase were to be robbed of the ability to appear in British political discourse ever again, it would be of great benefit.

Alas, among a certain breed of political watchers, the mention of dead cats has become almost reflexive. Everything is a dead cat for something else, and there must always be an unseen play at work. The dead cat is a close ally of other conspiracist assumptions that bolster those simply unable to accept that the political upheavals of the last few years were not largely the work of the Russians, or Cambridge Analytica, or any other hidden master villains manipulating the poor, stupid voters. These things might have made a small amount of difference. But the alternative, and in my view accurate, reading is that the UK basically cocked everything up/liberated itself on its own. With some low-level assistance, yes, but all the elements were already there. And yet in many political tribes this is regarded as unthinkably simplistic, probably out of a self-regarding inability to confront the fact.

In the vast, vast majority of cases, dead cats are just a story people like to tell themselves – perhaps to sound cleverer, but more probably just to feel better. As a long-term Jeremy Corbyn supporter, you can quite see why Trickett needs to think some kind of fiendish mastery was underpinning Johnson’s Peppa meltdown: the alternative is facing up to the bald reality that people actually preferred THIS GUY to his guy. Which, let’s face it, is quite telling enough.

[Andy McDandy]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ublic-good

Nice Marina hits at the heart of the matter:

Yet somehow there does seem to be a large intersection between the Venn diagram sets “People who bang on endlessly about WW2” and “People who cannot cope with having to take a relatively minor public health measure for the greater good”.

A good one, best read it in full.

[Boiler]

One of the best MH articles I've read in a while.

A key phrase in her piece is "for the greater good". Many seem to have lost sight of that.

[Boiler]

Apparently, 23 Conservative backbenchers voted against the new measures. I suspect they'll be members of some "research group"....

Via Chris Mason of the BBC:

After three hours of debate in the Commons, MPs have overwhelmingly endorsed the new regulations in England that make it compulsory to wear a face mask on public transport and in shops.

Among MPs, 434 voted in favour, 23 were against.

Those Conservative backbenchers opposed to the measures were vociferous and passionate throughout the debate, but the quieter majority, including Labour, endorsed the government's new rules, which came into force in England at 04:00 GMT.

[Boiler]

The people who voted against the new and minor Covid measures?

[MisterMuncher]

I see Sammy Wilson wasn't at work today, then.



Edit: sorry, he was. Didn't realize there was a further tweet of twats

[Abernathy]

Jeez, it’s a fucking Who’s Who of swivel-eyed fuckwits.

[MisterMuncher]

A contraception billboard if ever there was one, Abers.

[Andy McDandy]

No Nice Marina Hyde today, but John Crace fills in admirably.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... n-on-drugs

Malthouse was asked about whether No 10 had decided to fess up and come quietly or go down with all guns blazing. As ever, Malthouse took a psychotropic compromise.

He had known he was going to be asked about this, he said, so he had asked No 10 directly if any such party had taken place. And No 10 had assured him it hadn’t, which was more than good enough for him. How most criminals must wish that the police and courts just took their word when they said they hadn’t done anything wrong either.

Within minutes, Kit had lost all credibility. As well as consciousness. He didn’t know if an event had taken place or not, but if it had then all guidelines had been followed. Especially the guideline that no such events should take place.

[Boiler]

It was interesting listening to Joshua Rozenberg last night on PM advancing possible defences in court - of which there were many.

[Bones McCoy]

It was interesting listening to Joshua Rozenberg last night on PM advancing possible defences in court - of which there were many.

Poor Josh, hasn't he suffered enough?

[Cyclist]

John Crace pulls no punches

Some of the Tory backbenchers looked furious. The others just appeared bewildered to have been fooled for so long. Taken for mugs, like the rest of the country. But they needn’t have been. After all, Boris Johnson was always going to be Boris Johnson. A liar is gonna lie. He speaks, he lies. He’s a man without moral authority who degrades and poisons everything with which he comes in contact. A sociopath whose main pleasures are self-preservation and laughing at those to whom he has a duty of care.

There had been a few boos from the opposition benches and a silence from his own that Johnson tried to style out as he took his place for PMQs. But his eyes gave the game away. Bloodshot, furtive pinpricks. The telltale signs of the chancer who feels his world beginning to close in on him. Boris started with the non-apology.


Let me get this straight,” he said. A sure sign he was about to start lying. There again, breathing is also a sure sign Johnson is about to start lying...

https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... -to-rights

[Cyclist]

The most excellent Mr Crace turns his attention to parties that never happened (no spoilers as they would only spoil things)

https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... o-convince

[Andy McDandy]

Here she is:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... e-minister

There was simply no other place a Johnson government would ever end up but mired in rampant lies, chaos, negligence, financial sponging and the live evisceration of public service. To the Conservatives and media outriders somehow only now discovering this about their guy, I think we have to say: you ordered this. Now eat it.

The sheer clusterfuckery of it this week means we’ve barely time to even discuss Johnson or Johnsons’ intervention in that ex-Marine’s Kabul pet evacuation – a saga on which we’ll slap the title The Animals Give Farthing Wood. I’m kidding, of course. A lot of people anthropomorphise their animals. You know the sort of thing. “My dog loves Homes Under the Hammer.” “My guinea pig is sulking.” “My cats are high-value Taliban targets.”

We’ll play out with a reminder that in a pandemic that has so far killed 146,000 of the Britons who these people are supposed to be in politics to serve, the absolutely vital public health message has now TWICE been most fatally undermined by people who worked at the very heart of No 10 with Boris Johnson. That is absolutely a disgrace, and absolutely not a coincidence.

Amen.

[Boiler]

The line about Farthing and his bloody animals would have had me smiling but for learning that fur babies are more important than humans to our government.

[Nigredo]

That final extract Andy picked out is superb.

[Andy McDandy]

In comes Marina Hyde with a flurry of well-aimed blows.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... e-minister

Johnson is such a noted liar about absolutely everything else that being asked to believe him on matters of life and death seems bizarre. No one could be more miscast; it’s like watching a rice pudding play King Lear. Unsurprisingly, fewer and fewer people seem to be taking him seriously each time – not least, his own backbenchers.

Perhaps it’s fitting that someone who was such a nakedly self-interested and irresponsible MP himself is now at the mercy of so many similarly single-minded underlings. In the Conservative parliamentary party, an anything-goes atmosphere certainly seems to be taking hold.