[Andy McDandy]

"Aaaaah but if you question his integrity or impartiality you're casting aspersions on him and that's not fair!"

[Malcolm Armsteen]

So, we are to consider anyone chosen by the Prime Gammonster to be above and beyond criticism? Because the Handmaidens of the Hedge Funds are infallible?

[Bones McCoy]

What do you call somebody who throws their flag on the ground and tramples on it?

A traitor??
Or maybe just a virtue signaller.

[Cyclist]

Twat, perhaps?

[Bones McCoy]

Twat, perhaps?

It's a new sort of newspaper competition.

"Spot the twat", mark your entry with a big red X.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

"You are Cunty Mc Cuntface and I claim my five pounds"?

[Andy McDandy]

So, we are to consider anyone chosen by the Prime Gammonster to be above and beyond criticism? Because the Handmaidens of the Hedge Funds are infallible?

I think that's basically the government's position. How dare we question them?

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Yup. The subject/ruler mentality.

Sadly (see the vomit-inducing shit about the Diana statue) most people are enthusiastic subjects, not citizens. Which requires effort.

[Youngian]

What do you call somebody who throws their flag on the ground and tramples on it?

A traitor??
Or maybe just a virtue signaller.

“Doctor, I dream I’m a tiny man trapped in a cross of blood.”

[Cyclist]

Johnson's Shakespeare book is being delayed by his inability to find anyone willing to write it for him.

One of the UK’s most eminent Shakespeare scholars has revealed that they were approached by a representative of Boris Johnson to help him write his very delayed biography of the Bard...


...The Shakespeare academic, who did not wish to be named, told the Stratford-upon-Avon Herald they were contacted by an agent acting for Johnson in late 2015 and asked to attend briefing meetings with him, where the academic would “supply Mr Johnson (and a dictaphone) with answers to questions about Shakespeare”...

...The originality and brilliance, his agent assured me, would lie in Mr Johnson’s choice of questions to ask and in the inimitable way in which he would write up the expert answers he received,” said the Shakespearean, who went on to decline the opportunity.

According to a recent report in The Fence’s newsletter, historian Warren Dockter “acted as a sort of guide through the literature and evidence” for The Churchill Factor, but Johnson, a former journalist, was credited with having done “all the heavy lifting”. Johnson reportedly recorded himself “extemporising on scenes from Churchill’s life” early in the morning, sending draft chapters to Dockter by 5am for “fact-checking and review”. Dockter, who has been described as Johnson’s “research assistant” and assembled the book’s bibliography, is not credited in the book, but is thanked in the acknowledgments.

.The leading Shakespearean said they had not been tempted to take on a similar role for Johnson’s tome on the Bard. “For one thing, the agent suggested that I would need to be perpetually available at short notice to come to meet Mr Johnson at points when he found space in his diary. The fact that I already have a full-time job and that I do it a long way from Westminster didn’t seem to have occurred to them,” they said.

Johnson’s politics did not help matters. “At the time Mr Johnson hadn’t yet betrayed his continent by choosing to advocate the UK’s departure from the EU for his own personal advantage, so he wasn’t quite as politically toxic as he is now; but I assumed he would be trying to enlist Shakespeare as a Tory nationalist, so the idea didn’t much appeal,” said the academic. ..

https://amp.theguardian.com/books/2021/ ... ys-scholar

[Youngian]

Couldn’t Bozo hide behind a pen name? The Earl of Oxford. The description the agent gives of what his client does is reporting without quote marks.

[Bones McCoy]

Couldn’t Bozo hide behind a pen name? The Earl of Oxford. The description the agent gives of what his client does is reporting without quote marks.

A pen name would defeat the objective of this vanity project.

On which subject, when's Gove going to produce that book for which Uncle Rupe bugned hin a fat retainer.

On which subject II, it makes you wonder who wrote all Johnson's newspaper columns.

[Youngian]

Its refreshing how few people have forgotten about Gove’s advance. The longer it slides, the dodgier it’ll look when its put on the table.

Its likely, Bozo does write his own bollocks. Doesn’t take him long.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Bozo's columns virtually write themselves. But a book on Shakespeare wouldn't.

Wonder if this expert is scared of the media going after him? Be good if he revealed himself.

[Bones McCoy]

"A nation cursed by self-importance." Post-war Britain in five words.

You only have to watch the social media gammonopalypse on the days following Eurovision for a perfect example.
Furious, raging, livid people, angry at further proof that the conniving foreigners were against them.
No, they didn't vote.
No, they didn't watch it.
They just know.

I'm a few chapters into Fantasyland (A book recommended here a few weeks back).
Eurovision Vs British exceptionalism wouldn't be out of place in there among the preppers, the puritan enclaves, the truthers and the latter day saints.

I finished that book last week. A couple of points caught my attention where the author wasn't calling out something that'd already been debunked as just that.

One was Whitley Streiber's alien abductee narrative, which Streiber later admitted himself was made up - allegedly after a night in a bar with L. Ron Hubbard, where they made a bet with each other about who could fleece the most people by starting a movement.

The other was in the epilogue, when the author said that his own mystic side had been stoked by Black Elk Speaks as a youngster, when the Lakota have basically disowned the book as mistranslated and potentially embellished, since the translator was a non-native speaker.

Did you spot any others?

Found this video: The second main speaker is Fantasyland author Kurt Andersen providing a neat summary of his book.

Also there: Neil DeGrasse Tyson ripping modern journalism a new one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S58vlJwhwDw

[Samanfur]

[Tubby Isaacs]

[Crabcakes]

Mr. Goodtimes has just said we might soon hit 50,000 cases a day soon and that he’s ditching all restrictions in the same press conference making it personal choice. Even for him, a staggering abdication of responsibility.

[AOB]

How come he's giving a presser? I thought it was next Monday, 7 days ahead of the 19th.

Anyhow, 86.1% adult uptake of the vaccine is tremendous. Every single NHS staff member and volunteer at the centres deserves credit for the smooth running of this colossal task. Not the Government or Cabinet members (hello Hancock) but the people you see down there. Full admiration of them these last 7 months.

[Tubby Isaacs]

He's saying the decision will be made next week. The Saj gave the distinct impression it was already decided.