[Youngian]

This will alienate part of the readership and unlikely to attract new ones. How can he go back to being a heckler when you’ve been a really shit PM?

[Andy McDandy]

That won't be cheap. While Northcliffe has famously deep pockets and understands that you run a paper to buy influence rather than to make a profit, he'll expect to see some bang for his buck. If he gets multiple "if only/poor me" columns, Johnson may well part company. I'm guessing though that he'll have some sort of pay or play contract meaning he gets his wedge regardless.

Also will be interesting to see if anyone goes to make space for him. Platell, anyone?

[Tubby Isaacs]

I don't know if that's true of Northcliffe. The Mail has always been profitable, as far as I know. I think Bozo fits pretty well in a conventional "bums on seats" way.

[Crabcakes]

Staggering they’ve described a man who learned nothing as ‘erudite’. Still, with Johnson’s current run of solid pig-iron fuck-ups and self-inflicted wounds, hopefully him signing up for Dacre will mean he now gets short shrift from other papers - and I suspect the deal was struck on the basis he would deliver Dacre’s long-desired gong. That didn’t happen, so how long before he pisses off his new boss and/or lands them in some very costly shit by saying or doing something dubious?

[Andy McDandy]

To Mailites, erudite means "uses big words and/or occasional classical references*".

*That face it, you could pick up from any Asterix book, or Clash of the Titans. The shitty Liam Neeson version.

[Bones McCoy]

Moggy was on Channel 4 earlier smearing Harman and Jenkin whilst at the same time arguing that he didn't believe in smearing people. When asked if he was embarrassed at receiving a Knighthood from Johnson he just argued that patronage oiled the wheels of politics. Just like Michael Gove he has perfected the art of speaking utter bollox but in a way which appears to be very polite and completely reasonable.

Mogg expressed the view that, in politics, opponents should be able to say whet they like about each other.

[ Obviously not when Harriet Harman or Bernard Jenkins are concerned; but for chap like him. ]

I invite the forum to express their views.

[Bones McCoy]

Wingnut Welfare to the rescue.


Is the Mail ready for the likely slew of libel suits which will follow from these columns.

Johnson no longer enjoys Parliamentary Privilege, and his notorious loose lipped "punch down" style has skewed off-course in the past.
I fully expect to see comments disabled on "brave Boris'" columns.

[Andy McDandy]

"Modesty (and the lawyers) prevent me from saying what I really think about [person], but you can probably guess..."

Standard columnist skirting round the libel traps. Bit like Littlejohn's "At this point I am contractually bound to say that the vast majority of Muslims, religion of peace, small hard core of fundamentalists etc...". Everyone knows.

[Samanfur]

According to this chap, who works for The Guardian:

[Tubby Isaacs]

Judging by the Sue Gray affair, ACOBA are irrelevant. What you do is run it past Oliver Dowden (there never was an enquiry, was there?).

Dowden says it's OK!

[Andy McDandy]

https://uk.yahoo.com/news/tory-mps-delu ... 10879.html

Marina Hyde on Johnson. Scathing and more serious than usual, rightly so.

[Samanfur]

According to The Guardian, Johnson consulted ACOBA half an hour before the appointment was announced. And there's nothing they can do about it.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

The Acoba rules are supposed primarily to stop companies being able to benefit commercially from government insider knowledge. But the Daily Mail has hired Johnson as a celebrity politician and journalist, and not for his commercial insight, and so Johnson might argue there is no conflict of interest anyway.

As PM, Johnson did go to remarkable lengths to curry favour with the Daily Mail, even trying to get its editor-in-chief, Paul Dacre, installed as chair of Ofcom. His new job could be seen as payback for this, and Acoba says one reason for its rules is to stop ministers being “influenced by the hope or expectation of future employment with a particular firm or organisation”.

However Conservative politicians, and some Labour ones, have always tried to keep the Mail on side. It would be hard to show that the expectation of personal gain, rather than the expectation of favourable coverage, was the main explanation for Johnson’s indulgence towards Dacre and his editors.

In other words, dodgy as fuck, everybody knows it and there's nothing anyone will do about it, even if we can wake Eric Pickles up.

[Youngian]

So far no one has commented on Johnson’s debut article, a product placement for a diet drug

BORIS JOHNSON: The wonder drug I hoped would stop my 11.30pm fridge raids for cheddar and chorizo didn't work for me. But I still believe it could change the lives of millions https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... rk-me.html

[Crabcakes]

Mail group have laid off a shitload of proper staff lately. And for what - to replace them with a 6-figure salaried bullshitter whose first column, billed as required reading for Britain and internationally, is pimping a drug that he admits in the headline didn’t work.

I mean, WTF?

[kreuzberger]

Likening Sunak to a "chiselled whippet" is pretty damned funny and uncharacteristically true.

[soulboy]

So far no one has commented on Johnson’s debut article, a product placement for a diet drug

BORIS JOHNSON: The wonder drug I hoped would stop my 11.30pm fridge raids for cheddar and chorizo didn't work for me. But I still believe it could change the lives of millions https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... rk-me.html

The comments have started to appear, all incredibly sycophantic. Dacre has double cunted and the mods are complying.

[Bones McCoy]

So far no one has commented on Johnson’s debut article, a product placement for a diet drug

BORIS JOHNSON: The wonder drug I hoped would stop my 11.30pm fridge raids for cheddar and chorizo didn't work for me. But I still believe it could change the lives of millions https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... rk-me.html

All the grifters end up pushing pills. Alex Jones, Paul Joseph Watson, Donald Trump....

[Andy McDandy]

I once lost a stone and dropped 4 inches off my hips in a weekend.

It's called speed.

Meanwhile I noticed him using "talking to Ralph on the big white telephone" as an euphemism for throwing up. A phrase I last heard used by Dave Lee Travis in about 1988.

[soulboy]

I once lost a stone and dropped 4 inches off my hips in a weekend.

It's called speed.

Meanwhile I noticed him using "talking to Ralph on the big white telephone" as an euphemism for throwing up. A phrase I last heard used by Dave Lee Travis in about 1988.

Indeed. You have to be of a certain age just to remember phones that could conceivably resemble a toilet bowl.