What Do You Think Today?

[peter]

She's never been regarded as one of the sharpest pencils in the box, but what is it that Foreign Secretary Liz Truss cannot get about the Northern Ireland Protocol?. It's purpose (watch my mouth, Liz) is to stop the re-emergence of the troubles in Northern Ireland, not to restart them. 'Ripping it up' (as the press are enthusiastically calling what you are suggesting) is not going to help.

Because (and again, listen closely) if you do so, thereby making the DUP and unionists more generally in the province happy, then you will have to - like it or not - replace it with a border down the middle of Ireland itself, between the North and the South. Since this was a chief reason for the troubles in the first place (or certainty a focal point of them, though not the only one) the resumption of border checks on the island itself is hardly going to settle the matter is it? Why would you have to reinstitute the border - because if you don't then the EU will have an open backdoor for goods to flow into it and the integrity of their single market is blown out of the water, and we have an open backdoor for any and every manjack and his mother who wants to come into the UK illegally or otherwise (no - scratch that - it wouldn't be illegal: we would simply have no record of who was coming in, who was going out) and we couldn't tolerate that. So ergo, border infrastructure between the North and the South would have to be reintroduced and we'd be back at pre Good Friday Agreement square one.

This is what the Northern Ireland Protocol prevents. This is why it was drawn up. If you tear it up, while you might appease the Unionist part of the province, you will piss off the nationalist party in equal measure and thus be not one jot or tittle further forward. If the protocol isn't working, it's because you fucked it up in the drafting of it, not because the EU are implementing it. In what fucking dream did you ever imagine that you could sign an agreement with the EU that they would perform certain checks on goods going across the Irish Sea - and then they wouldn't? What kind of bollocks is that? Trying to make yourself look like Margret Thatcher, talking tough to the EU is just going to give the resumption of the troubles a kickstart, not put them back in the box. Be honest, your boss screwed around with the Good Friday Agreement because it suited him to do so - he needed that Protocol to get his promised withdrawal agreement for public consumption of the mainland UK - and now it's come around to bite him in the arse. He doesn't give a shit about the province - he'd see it hived off back to the motherland at the drop of a hat if those pesky Unionists would just shut the fuck up - and isn't really bothered if the killing starts again, just as long as he remains Prime Minister. Northern Ireland is, and has always been, a problem that successive UK Prime Minister's could well do without. That's the bald truth, and you know it. Meanwhile the Americans are finally getting pissed at the goings on and are sending a man over to see what the fuck we are up to. The idea of a US-UK trade deal slips further and further into the realms of fantasy (remember that - one of the key advantages we were told about by the Leave campaign) and we have to start talking to India about doing one instead.

Nice work Tories. Screw up Ireland and screw up brexit all in the same shit-show. Only you lot could achieve it!

[peter]

There cannot be many things that Boris Johnson and I agree on, but I wholeheartedly approved of his comments yesterday that "working from home doesn't work''.

He made telling points when he said that to often the work process was interrupted by a slow walk to the fridge, a checking up on the washing on the line, a break to get another coffee - that the benefits of the community aspect of the workplace and the bouncing back and forth of ideas simply couldn't be achieved in the home environment. Of course the people who have enjoyed the privilege of being able to do this (not least the huge army of civil servants whose levels of productivity are already way below that which would be tolerated by any private sector employer) will buck like bronco's at this observation - but in the famous words of Mandy Rice-Davies, they would wouldn't they. No, people will by nature opt for this easier way of working, but for the best in the long term they must be driven, bellowing and howling, back into the office. It's the only way.

But anyway, onto the Sunday papers and we have a few stories of interest (if nothing world shattering). The Telegraph runs a story that Tory MPs are blaming the Bank of England for allowing inflation to take hold, some even going so far as to suggest that it should be brought back under Government control (as opposed to operating free of treasury influence as it has been for years now).

What is it that these MPs do not get. Their Government has been printing money that doesn't exist by the tanker load, run up the highest national debt in the history of the country and throwing money around like it was confetti at an EastEnders Gypsy wedding - at what point was inflation not going to be through the roof?

And as to "dealing with it" - am I not right in thinking that in essence the only tool that the B of E has to do this with are interest rates? And at what level would they have to be set in order to deal with the Government's fiscal inefficiency over the past two and a half years? Fifteen percent, twenty - higher still? I notice that the Telegraph does not go into exactly what these MPs claim that the Bank of England should do, but I'm damn sure that interest rates of ten plus times higher than they had ever been used to would soon have people squeaking like bats in a belfry, and ain't that a fact! No, these MPs know that their Government have screwed up big time, and are seeking to attribute blame elsewhere before the shit hits the fan and the truth of what they have done really comes home to roost. I'd be very surprised if the Government itself were not behind these MPs and their distracting placard waving. What they are saying is bollocks; they know it and so do we.


Now I'm not exactly sure what was going on at the start of the FA cup game yesterday, but it appears that Prince William was subjected to catcalls, booing and obscene gestures by Liverpool fans when he was introduced to players before the match got underway. Why the Prince, who is president of the Football Association, should have been greeted in this way I don't understand, but I'm betting that he will be majorly pissed off by it.

Having cultivated a whiter than white image with his wife Catherine, the darling of the press will in no way be used to this kind of treatment. Until his recent disastrous trip to the West-Indies, during which he and his wife were accused of perpetuating a colonial mindset in the manner and style of the visit, the Prince had never received a less than adoring report in his life. To make matters even worse at the game, the booing was carried on even as the national anthem was played, indicating that the sentiments it expressed were not simply directed at the Prince, but at the royal family more generally.

It's difficult to nail down exactly what was going on here, but the suggestion has been made that this type of thing is not entirely without precedent at Liverpool matches. The city is absolutely under the hammer; rising costs are crippling a people already suffering with depravation at levels far worse than elsewhere and the use of food-bank services and other charitable support schemes are at an all-time high. This was, in all probability, the public expression of a city saying to one that it considers to be part of an untouchable elite, "Don't come here and patronise us you ****, and then dissapear off in your fancy car to your fancy palace - not while we who have nothing carry the burden of supporting you and your parasitic brood." If this is indeed the case (and Liverpool is a very political city so it could well be) then it doesn't bode well for the future, if this level of anger and distain is fomenting away beneath the surface. Such emotions will out, like it or not, and often in highly destructive manner. Needless to say, the fans have been roundly criticized by the political classes and the establishment more generally, but I say go to a food-bank in Merseyside, take a tour of the inner city sink estates, visit the decaying periphery of the city before you judge. All very well to be disgusted from the comfort of your suburban idyll; get out amongst it and you might feel different.

And finally Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (what the fuck is that?) Michael Gove has announced that he will end the property racket that allows criminal money (most specifically of Russian origin) to buy up huge swathes of London property in order to launder and hide it's origins. He says, "We want to shut down the racket of illicit money that has flooded through the British property market once and for all. Our property market will no longer be open to corrupt individuals and regimes laundering their money and hiding their identity."

Well, good luck with that! Seeing as it was your party that formed the Governments that allowed, no - encouraged - such practices to be put into operation, and have been the chief beneficiaries of the backhanders and political donations from the "corrupt individuals and regimes" concerned. But in fairness, this is Gove we're talking about. He couldn't tell a straight story if he tried to and any non-slippery comment that he tried to make would physically hurt him as it came out. We have to make allowances don't we.



(Edit: I've just come from watching the Sunday morning political shows and interestingly the FA Cup story (which featured on the front cover of the Mail) was studiously ignored by both of the main shows on Sky and the BBC.

I'm not surprised. In this year of the Queen's platinum jubilee it cannot but have been a tricky story to cover, boiling with disrespect for the monarchy as it was, and I can well see why the producers of the programs would not want to draw attention to it for fear of having to get into difficult ground in order to do it justice. I've been giving it some thought and though I don't know the actual figures, would I not be correct in thinking that Liverpool has a pretty high Catholic population whose republican leaning would be considerably higher than perhaps you would find in other major cities of the UK. At these very difficult times it would not be surprising to find such feelings coming more to the fore than would otherwise be the case. Perhaps there was an element of this (alongside more general political dissatisfaction) and certainly no program producer would want to get embroiled in talk going down this path, in this of all years. Not in any way conclusive I grant, but an interesting speculation nevertheless.)

[peter]

Hate is an odd one isn't it?

There's plenty of it about at the moment, and in much of it we are encouraged to indulge. But by an odd bit of logic, much of the 'right kind' of hate is directed at those we deem guilty of the crime of hate itself. We hate misogynists because they hate women, we hate racists because of the hate they display toward people not like themselves, we hate anti-Semites because of their hatred of the Semitic peoples. (I guess that we should really be hating the 'isms' themselves - misogynism, racism anti-Semitism - rather than the people who display them, but it becomes hard to separate the two at times.)

Then there are the other good hatreds - the ones that our media - maybe even our state itself - gives the thumbs up to. Vladimir Putin. It's good to hate him isn't it? (Not so sure about the entire Russian people, but at times it seems to almost veer that way.) And pedophiles - they can be hated with impunity as well. Anything (anyone?) else? Rapists? Murderers? Certainly the former, but is the rationale starting to wear thin with the latter - that's odd when you think about it..... the actual taking of life seemingly some way, in our thinking, not as bad as the abusing of it (torturers would fall in here somewhere as well).

But anyway, it's the headline in the Times (You Are Not the Thought Police, Top Officers Told) that got me to thinking. Apparently the new chief inspector of constabulary has told the paper that the focus of the police should be on solving crimes (of which only a shockingly low level ever get solved or the perpetrators brought to book) rather than on the thought-crime of hatred (ie instances of misogynistic thinking, or racism, homophobia etc, which are not crimes in and of themselves).

I have to say that I agree. When you start to try to apply law to the murky areas of what it is right or not right for people to think, it's never going to be long before you finish up in deep waters indeed. Before long the rationale of what you are basing your judgement upon will start to break down and the rigidity, the objective nature of the law and how it is applied, will be lost. You will finish up in a swamp of your own making.

Hate of any kind is a pretty damaging emotion to be experiencing. There isn't really any good hate - only bad. But it's here, part of what we are. We just have to accept it and keep the lid on it as far as possible. Not make a fetish of it, start quantifying it and putting it into compartments of culpability.


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Glad to hear that the dear old Queen was sufficiently restored to put in a couple of brief appearances at the Windsor Horse Show (where her own horse won the top prize for the show) over the weekend. Couldn't help but smile as the Sun described how she stepped "nimbly and unaided" from the car. She's 96 fer Christ's sake, not a thirty year old ballet dancer entering stage left for a performance of Swan Lake.

But on the issue of her horse winning - okay, she certainly has the facilities at her disposal to breed from only the best animals and could well produce the winner without there being a 'nudge in the right direction' from the judges. But given that it is her show after all - in her back garden as it were - I'm guessing that a win for her was not perhaps as surprising as if Joe the Milkman had won with his dray-horse. So, given this, can she ever really be sure, that her horse was the best? And I'm betting that this would be what she wanted, not an honourary win because of her title, or her age, or because she owns the show. A fair and square win - that's the only one worth having.

Which brings me onto the weekend's other big contest (no - not the FA Cup) - the Eurovision Song Contest.

It was taken as read that Ukraine would win this contest: before it went out on Saturday night every commentator was telling us that it was likely. That the judge's would award top marks to the Ukrainian entrants out of respect for what their country was going through, for the 'heroic struggle' they were mounting in order to expell the Russian invaders.

Not to in any way take anything from that struggle, I really don't think that this was a good thing. And not just because our guy came second and should, by any fair reckoning have won - but because it simply was not in the spirit of the competition that this should have been so.

The contest is always seen as a bit of fun, but that doesn't mean that the contestants have not put their all into their entries. Each and every one of them deserved the right to be able to win. To have this denied to them in a political gesture of solidarity with the Ukrainians, while done with the best of intentions, still remains deeply unfair. Unfair not only to the second placer who this time happened to be from the UK, but to every entrant on the card and not least to the Ukrainian entrants themselves.

Unlike the Queen, they can be in little doubt that they did not deserve to win: that their winning was a symbolic gesture of solidarity, not pertinent to the effort that they will have put into their performance as well.

This was no more fair to them than it was to any other of the contestants and I repudiate it.

[I'm Murrin]

I dunno, I kind of think it is in the spirit of Eurovision, given that the contest exists not really for pure artistic expression but as a venue for peaceful connection between the many nations of Europe after a long history of conflict.

[peter]

Fair play; that argument is not beyond me Murrin. Still feel sorry for the other contestants though (although I expect they can get behind the decision nevertheless).

[peter]

Here are the to date solutions that we have from Tory MPs for dealing with the cost of living crisis. Learn to cook and get in the habit of making meals for thirty pence. Buy value range foods. Get a job that pays more. Work more hours. Make the "necessary hard choices" (the PM's advice - that one). Put on extra clothing. "Skill up" and get a better job. The list probably goes on but off the top of my head that's all I can remember.

And today, the independent quango set up to ensure that the customer was given a fair crack of the whip following privatisation of the energy industry, passed a range of measures actively designed to protect the profits of the energy companies (already hugely inflated as a result of high energy prices and low expenses and taxes) and to penalize the public. Economics guru Martin Lewis was incandescent with rage following a meeting with Ofgem (the said quango) calling them "a fucking disgrace" and accusing them of "selling consumers down the river". Lewis went on to say that you should either have a system where competition between companies was totally free and in a manner that maximised the incentive to provide energy as cheaply as possible to the consumer, or energy supply and distribution should be nationalised. Now, he said, we have the worst of both worlds.

Cue Boris Johnson or some other Government Minister in tomorrow's press saying that they are disgusted by Ofgem having done this - and then doing absolutely nothing about it. Meanwhile of course, they will continue to refuse to levy a windfall tax on the energy companies (who have made so much money they are almost embarrassed about it) saying that the companies must be left with the money in order to invest it in development of new technologies etc to meet future energy needs (which of course, they show not the slightest inclination to do).

And so the merry-go-round goes around. Nothing changes. Nothing ever will. And as Lewis said in an explosive outburst on the James O'Brien show, "people will die because of these decisions!" - and make no mistake, they will.

[peter]

Many and many times have I been accused of being a right pessimistic **** with my pronouncements of doom (much of it in my mind self-inflicted) but it appears that I might not be alone in my fears.

Andrew Bailey, Governor of the Bank of England is reported in this morning's papers as being not exactly optimistic about our future either. In fact he says that he has "run out of horsemen" when he attempts to list all of the shocks Britain faces in the near future. Chief amongst his worries is the effect of the war in Ukraine on world food security and the "apocalyptic price rises" we will face in the near future.

Put this in the same basket as the increased energy costs that households are already beginning to experience (and that there is every indication that will get much worse before they get better) and the outlook for most households in this country is pretty bleak to put it mildly.

Now, skirt around with mumbled comments about "world conditions" and "external economic factors" as the PM and his cohort will, I blame the Government. I blame them for a disproportionate response to the Covid virus that time and mounting evidence is demonstrating was damaging and unnecessary in the extreme, and has brought us to our knees when we should have been perfectly well positioned to face the forthcoming challenges. I blame them for hoodwinking the British public into committing the biggest single act of self-harm of any nation in recent world history, and now refusing to accept the carnage they have wrought, even as the nation they lead crumbles around them as we speak. I blame them for singlehandedly doing more damage to the reputation of the esteemed body they inherited, the mother of all Parliaments, with their mendacity and complete lack of moral compass, their brazen contempt for 'the little people' whose lives they so readily and without thought, turn to ashes. I blame them for their brazen self interest in the manner in which they occupy the positions they hold, the grift which they seem to believe that, as members of our political elite, it is their bounden right to exploit. And especially I blame their perpetrator-in-chief, the 'Nero of Number 10', who will fiddle and dissemble his way to the final day, when he will forever dessert the smoking ruin of a country that he will leave behind, and swan off to pastures new, to enjoy the millions that his rancid tenure of the most respected position in our country have afforded him.

And at what point are we going to see some accountability levied for this? I see none to date. The media is so focused on heaving cats onto the table, both living and dead, that it allows no time for reflection as to what has been done - for what this Government has 'achieved', the destruction it has brought down, in the short but infinitely long period we have known it.

And not just this one - although as could have been - and indeed was - predicted - Johnson's version turns out to be by far the worst iteration of the type, earlier Conservative Governments must also take their share of the blame. From the moment that David Cameron made his Faustian pact that if the people re-elected him, he would give them the chance to express their will over membership of the EU, from this day forward the die was cast and all our plans have turned to dust. The country was cleft in two in a cataclysm that has not healed to this day and the consequences of which have followed as surely as night follows day, until we arrive punch-drunk and reeling, in the place where we find ourselves today.

The country is destroyed, broken, disabled beyond either compression or cure. The societal and political elites know this and are doing what such elites have done under similar circumstances for ever and a day - looking to themselves. The damage that has been done (and it has been developing over many decades - it is simply the Johnson administration that is finishing the job) is irreversible. The people will be, by current events, cannoned forward into a future that would have overtaken them at a later point anyway - that of a third world level of existence where inequality is a simply accepted fact and not to be fretted about. There is no point in trying to protect the people from what is coming and the Government have no interest in doing so. It is inevitable and to attempt to assuage it would be to throw good money after bad. Best simply to allow the 'new normal' (that's the one where you and I are reduced to the level of street betters in the old post-communist countries of the East) to establish itself. As this new state of affairs develops it will be necessary to keep up the distractions, keep heaping the cats on the table, keep mumbling the emollient but meaningless phrases, but most importantly, keep doing nothing.

Because the only way that this could be fixed would be a complete overturning of the establishment elite and the system that supports and maintains them. The adoption of radical new policies that would threaten the status quo, the interests of the few being put aside for the benefit of the many. And choose how many millions go to the wall by virtue of neglecting to adopt such policies, we can never allow that to happen can we?

Suddenly the proposed but rejected policies of the much reviled 'Member for Islington North' begin to look more palatable: in fact they begin to look rather good!

[Avatar]

Well, the real assumption here is that Johnson will care about looking like a blackguard. It's the same with Stamer's offer to "do the right thing" (which is what he said Johnson should do at the time iirc).

In no way whatsoever would him resigning or offering to resign motivate Johnson to do the same thing under any circumstances, so it's all a bit pointless what?

--A

[peter]

Pointless it is Av! The nub of the thing is whether either have lied to parliament. This is beyond the pale for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that it is the place where the laws are made which affect the lives of everyone in the country. As such it is beyond important that the information that is provided in that place, from the dispatch box down, is true. For this reason, to be demonstrated to have deliberately lied to the house is, and always has been, a resigning offence. Only the Gray Report and the police investigations can really take this thing forward now, the one being prevented from being released by the other (with behind the scenes encouragement from Downing Street, it is virtually certain).

But the whole thing has become a circus that has done irreparable damage to the standing of Parliament in the public conscious. This is where the real damage is done, the consequences of which are not easily gauged but are likely to be severe and long-term.

But suddenly, given that Stamer is now also under investigation, politicians on both sides have become uncharacteristically coy about criticising eachother. Suddenly calling the pot black when it is apparent that you are the kettle doesn't seem like such a great idea. And the media is of course playing ball and allowing the story to wither on the vine.

The way that the police have been coopted for political ends, that information critical to proper judgement has been deliberately kept from the public domain, the way that the media have avoided asking the crucial questions and concentrated on the 'theatre' rather than speaking truth to power, holding the feet of our public servants to the fire of their scrutiny - these are the crucial things that provide the 'tells' as to the state of our democracy. And it isn't hard to come to the conclusion that it is lying bloodied in the gutter.


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On the media, yesterday I spent an hour watching the recent episode of Novara Media's 'TyskieSour' show on YouTube, in which they covered, in full, the Ofgem debacle and the Martin Lewis response to it, the recent right wing shootings in America and how the 'replacement' theory which motivated it is prevalent in the mainstream media on both sides of the Atlantic, the FA Cup booing incident in which anti-royal sentiment was displayed by the Liverpool fans prior to the big match, and the recent coming out of the brave young lad as the only openly gay professional footballer in the profession. These were covered in a manner that put both the BBC and Sky to shame and as a taste of what properly functioning media should be like, I cannot recommend it highly enough. Go check it out!



(The episode was entitled "Tyskysour: Ash Sarkar on White Nationalist Shooting: Martin Lewis Looses It: Royals Get Booed." Sorry I can't provide a link, but the coverage is well worth the effort of finding it.)


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Yesterday evening a guy who runs a takeaway close to where I work came into the shop. He told me that his gas bill (and he uses a lot in his business) had gone up from five hundred pounds to fifteen hundred. It would ruin his operation he said. I looked up and down the aisles of my own place of work. The small retail shops do not run on high profit margins, and seeing the banks of large and high energy consuming chillers that line the shop walls, I could not but help wonder how such price hikes would effect our business in turn.

Up and down the length and breadth of the country, this same conversation must be taking place and it is anybody's guess as to how many retail and hospitality businesses will go to the wall in the coming months. Tens of thousands of small businesses will suddenly find that their operations are no longer viable and will simply put up the shutters to prevent throwing good money after bad. Those who loose their jobs will be pushed onto unemployment benefits and the burden on the state will increase yet further. Energy is so key to the running of a country, so central to our very existences, that shocks of the type we are currently experiencing shake our system to its very core. It is at times such as these, the rare but incredibly significant points when the entire future of the country hangs in the balance, that the failings of the free-market model become glaringly apparent. Suddenly, as we have seen in the recent Ofgem scandal, the system ceases to operate and begins to crumble.

Privatised energy is, in other words, a fair-weather policy. It's one of those central utilities the importance of which is simply too great to be allowed to rest in the vagaries of the market. A country that does this allows the risk of collapse to be briefly papered over by the thin veneer of immediate profit. But in time of stress, the underlying fault, the friable sand upon which the model rests, will always out. And at this point, sooner or later, the all important role of ensuring uninterrupted affordable energy will have to pass back into the hands of the state. It happens in war. It happens in time of economic shock. The sooner our Government realize the inevitability of this and get on with reversal of their disastrous privatisation of the energy utilities the better.

[peter]

How is it that I was better able to predict some months ago, that the forthcoming inflation would be far worse than that predicted by the governor of the Bank of England. I didn't mention him specifically, and in fairness I didn't have to put figures on my estimations, but I knew it was going to be horrendous and life changing for the less well off of our country.

The governor, on the contrary, thought that it would be short term and limited to about half of the ten or so percent it currently stands at. What world was he living in? You'd have had to be operating at kindergarten levels of optimism in order to not see what was coming.

This morning Chancellor Rishi Sunak is quoted from a speech he gave last night as saying that we "are in for a rough few months" as a result of inflation and subsequent cost of living rises.

Well, not really Rishi. Leaving aside the fact that the cost of living crisis is being disproportionately spread even at the level of inflation (poor households are suffering at around two percent higher inflation than wealthy ones), the crisis will not be 'rough' (as you so smoothly describe it) for the people at the bottom end of our society - it will be devastating. And it won't be for a few months - it will be forever. For the already least well off in our society, this will not be a case of wondering how their pension pot might be affected, or groaning when they discover that their disposable income decrease means that they have to trim back on a weekend away a few times a year, or miss out on a few shows or a holiday. It will be a case of wondering how you are going to feed yourself, your family, keep yourself warm or stop your landlord evicting you as he prepares to find a more reliable and affluent tenant to buy his second, or third, or fourth house for him.

So why is it that these people, these Chancellors and Governors cannot be straight, be honest about what is happening under their eyes? You already know the answer to this, though likely you are also too afraid to lift the bedcovers from over your head, to look at the demon that is slavering its way across the bedroom toward you. The reason is that the truth is simply too harsh to be said. That this isn't going to go away in "a few months". This isn't going to be the one where you feel the sharp pinch, then bounce back as if it never happened. This isn't going to be okay. This is the one where everything changes, where the country becomes the cold hard place that previously you have only seen on the television. Where the poor live in an alternative reality to the affluent. Where you condition yourself not to notice that children look thinner than they did before. Where you pass the starving beggar in the street by, because you have to pretend that he isn't there, because how, otherwise can you live with yourself. Because it's dog-eat-dog and if it's you or him, then it had better be him.

The Chancellor and the Governor know this, but they also know that to say it would be to likely unleash the anger that people have yet to display. That the terrible questions of "how did we get to this place" and (worse) "who is responsible" would be asked, and that the answers would unleash the fury and retribution at the hands of a people brutally failed - even deliberately so - by the very individuals who had purported to served them. This is the stuff of which revolutions are made and our leaders know it. So if you want the hard, brutal facts, not the soft playschool version of our future life, it would seem that you'd be better to listen to what I have to say, than waste your time listening to the Chancellor.

[peter]

Think if you will, of someone you have loved who has died. Then think how it would have been if you had been denied the right to be with that person, to spend those last few cherished moments with them, before they passed.

Now imagine the anger and disgust that you would be feeling this morning as you read that our Prime Minister and the cohort of entitled individuals who surround him in Downing Street, have been sent away with no more than a slapped wrist, a few fifty pound fines dished out here and there, for their egregious breaches of the lockdown regulations - the regulations that you obeyed and that denied you your right to be with your loved one in their final moments.

Think of the mother denied the right to be with her eleven year old son, the man who wailed in his car in the carpark as his wife lay dying in hospital (just two of the hundreds or even thousands of instances that will have occurred, the ones we know of), and imagine what they must be feeling as we speak.

That the metropolitan police were going to chart the course of least possible damage to the miscreants of Number 10 and Whitehall was never in doubt; they only began the investigation under intense pressure to do so brought about by the accumulation of evidence by Sue Gray that serious breaches of Covid regulations had been occurring over an extended period during lockdown, and they were never happy performing their responsibilities in this regard. But in our worst imagining, we never thought that they would be so derelict in their duties, so clearly influenced by the political pressures brought to bear on them, as to trounce their manifest responsibility to upheld one of the major pillars upon which our democracy rests, that the Law applies equally and impartially to all, high and low alike.

But it is what it is. As I say, there was never any doubt that they would take the path of least resistance in their dealings with the affair and would bend the Law to within an inch of it's screaming life in their efforts to protect their political masters, and so it was.

So Boris Johnson, his wife and Chancellor, receive fifty quid fines for the least offensive of the misdemeanours, the one involving the birthday cake (forget the ABBA party in the Number 10 flat, forget the party where the PM himself rallied his staff around the table and served the drinks) while other members of the public, students and party organisers get hammered with ten thousand pounds. Johnson gets to dust himself down and carry on with 'business as usual' while justice and probity lies in a smoking ruin behind him.

A two fingered salute to every person who missed the passing of a loved one, the funeral or wedding of a relative or friend, the birth or christening of a grandchild. Screw the lot of you, because you matter not a jot.

And so the police investigation ends, not with a bang but a whimper. The metropolitan police slink away in their shame to lick the suppurating wound of their complicity, their credibility damaged beyond redemption, and no doubt to await the honours and recognition of the service that they have provided to the incumbents of Number 10 at the expense of our democracy, of the entire foundation of our society.

Pressure will now mount on the Government to release the Gray Report (possibly as early as next week), and word has it that pressure is already being applied to water it down, to not name names and to remove incriminating photographic evidence, prior to its release. It will probably be done (although Gray has a reputation for being as straight as a die so we shall see).

But in all likelihood Johnson will get away with this. Our society is damaged, the credibility of, and faith in the Law, so fundamental to our system, is shot to pieces and we move inexorably, thin salami slice by thin salami slice, ever closer to the kind of state that we have read of in the history books. The ones built on lies fear, where political survival trumps every other consideration and the truth of the day is whatever the particular despot that happens to be in charge says it is. If you don't believe me, listen to the chilling words on the subject spoken by Scottish MP Mhairi Black in the House of Commons chamber but a few days ago. You'll find it on YouTube.

[peter]

A few months ago, over a very short period of time, people suddenly started coming into the shop I work in asking if we stocked "elf bars". They were mostly young adults and I, never having heard of the product, assumed that they were some kind of confectionery or something. It turns out that they are a kind of vaping stick, produced in a variety of flavours - pink melon, ice coke, green apple and the like - mostly sweet, and very much aimed at the young end of the vaping market.

We duly began to stock the brand a few weeks later, and immediately they became the biggest selling vaping product we stocked. As I say, the purchasers were chiefly young adults, late teens or twenties, and on asking I found that large numbers had never even smoked cigarettes, but were using the bars as their first introduction (as it were) to nicotine products.

Now this is clearly absolutely counterproductive; vaping products are meant to be a way of weaning people off tobacco, not bringing new victims into the sphere of addiction, but these things were clearly flying out as a result of some kind of explosive 'meme' flying around the young population of the country.

How can this be? Tobacco and vaping product advertisement is illegal in the UK. How did this sales phenomenon come about? There was design somewhere behind this, and it behoves those whose responsibility is the health of our people in this area, to find out how it was done and to nip it in the bud (too late in this case, but at least for the future).

----------------------------------0--------------------------

Well, expostulate as much as they like about how much they dislike windfall taxes, shout from the rafters about how taxing the energy giants on their whimsy of fortune based profits will stifle investment in future energy provision, it's a done deal that the Government will change its position, do a U-turn on the decision (not to levy one) and introduce one in short order, claiming that this was their intention all of the time.

How do I know this? Easy - because it says that they must on the front cover of the Mail today. For a Government, a Prime Minister, whose whole raison-d'etra is the continued holding of power, what the vox-populi say's goes. As Peter Hitchens once said, the Conservative Party would behead the Queen in Trafalgar Square if it would keep them in power. So the question will not now be if, but when.

And of course how.

Having spent so much time and energy on trying to convince us why the energy companies should not be taxed on their good fortune (built on the back of ruinous price rises for the rest of us), the Government must now work out how to do a volta-face and tell us the exact opposite. Tricky or what?

Well - not really. We are after all talking about the Nero of Number 10, and if he can't pull the wool over the eyes of sixty seven million people from the dispatch box then he doesn't know what! And let's face it - if he could get out of the partygate affair and still be in position then this should be chicken-feed. (On the partygate scandal, if anyone crows to me about his having got away with it, my answer will be to ask if that is what we want - a Prime Minister, a Government, that "gets away with it"? Doesn't seem to me that any of us, Tories or otherwise, are winners as a result of this debacle.)

So the windfall tax will be introduced; it won't do anything to help the people - a hundred and fifty quid per household will be like pissing into the wind in the face of what we have got coming - and it will piss off the big party donors from the energy sector who will wonder what the purpose of all those backhanders are if they still get shafted for taxes for no other reason than they got lucky - but hey, you can't make an omelette without breaking an egg.

And maybe, just maybe, if Johnson is lucky, it will hold off those with greedy eyes on the prize of the top job - the Truss's and the Hunt's of the Party, whose avaricious nature's will sooner or later encourage them to make their play - for a week or two more. He may have survived partygate, but Johnson is a lame-duck and he knows it. And around him, the wolves are ever circling, circling. Waiting for the moment to pounce, scenting the blood. Waiting for the kill.

[peter]

Not that you'd know it from this morning's press, but a little storm in a tea-cup happened yesterday that could have big ramifications following the release, widely anticipated to be around Wednesday of next week, of Sue Gray's report into Partygate.

Sky News' deputy political editor Sam Coates revealed on Friday night that there had been a meeting between Boris Johnson and Gray to discuss the forthcoming report - an occurrence that would naturally tend to inflame suspicion (and complaints) that there had been a 'stitch-up' in order to save Johnson's political bacon. Downing Street hinted that Gray herself had called the meeting, a suggestion that Gray's team were quick to reject the following (ie yesterday) morning. They also rejected the suggestion that the question of naming names and inclusion of photographs in the report was discussed (Downing Street had suggested that it was for 'advice' on these issues that Gray had instigated the meeting.

Clearly who asked for the meeting to be held is of key significance. If it were Johnson then the inference would be that he was seeking to influence the contents and revelations contained in the report to his own advantage. He, needless to say, would be anxious to allay such suspicion, hence the implication that it was Gray, seeking advice on the report, who had done so. Gray from her side, has her reputation to consider, which to date has been of a high level, but would take a considerable knock if it were to seem that she were working hand in glove with the PM to his advantage.

The Labour Party immediately called for an investigation into the matter - why was such an inappropriate meeting held (that has obvious inferences of political collusion if not overt corruption about it), what was discussed and did it influence the contents of the report when it was released, will be the questions that such an investigation would be called upon to answer.

I find this strange, but Gray is apparently still putting the final report together. Why, I ask, was this not completed long ago? It's like she was waiting for the metropolitan police investigation to finish first before she decided what was going to go into hers, when the two things should have been entirely separate. But, this aside, she is apparently going to wrap it up this weekend, and without question, the spat between Downing Street and her office over the meeting that Coates revealed (and I bet he's as popular as snake-shit with both offices) will influence her not to pull any punches. If her report does not now name names or contain photographs, it will look like she has been 'got to', and her reputation for being a straight dealer built up over her entire career will be in tatters. She has the reputation of being a formidable woman and somehow one cannot see her allowing her career to be trashed by a here today, gone tomorrow, politician. There is a feeling at the top of the civil service that it is they who keep the country running, who maintain the stable ship of state - remember Sir Humphrey of 'Yes Prime Minister' fame - and that politicians are just the come and go faces that they perforce have to deal with, to tolerate almost, while they get on with the job. (There is another interesting discussion to be had here about how the organisation of our polity is an eggshell thin skin executive sitting atop a thick multilayered banding of civil service administrative machinery, and how this acts to dilute the will of Government and water down much of their intent as motions percolate through it - but that is for another day.) It is unlikely that Gray will be absent of such feeling, given her high ranking mandarin status, and Johnson will to her seem to be a low-grade cause to sacrifice her reputation over, particularly when it is the views of her peers in the civil service, that will for her, be the important ones in all of this. Set against this, Johnson's survival or otherwise will be as nothing.

So, given all of the above, it is likely that the Downing Street response to Coates revelation will push her toward a full and frank revelation of all of her findings, rather than cause her to be reticent in her writings. And as such, the Observer headline today, the report is going to be far more damaging to Johnson than he might have expected (well, the day before yesterday at least) should come as no surprise.

The paper speculates that Johnson is going to 'sacrifice' top civil servant Simon Case in order to save his own skin (Case is the Cabinet Secretary in Number 10 Downing Street - the top civil servant in the country) - a move which will not endear him to the service for sure. There is also mounting anger in the service about how the lower level civil servants of Downing Street have been made to carry the can by the metropolitan police investigation; many have been fined - some multiple times - for attendance of the parties that Johnson was present at, even in a higher level of involvement, such as acting as 'barman' and serving up the booze, while Johnson himself has gotten away scot free. This also is a simmering pot of resentment that could at any time boil over.

So for all Johnson's smug "I've got away with it" demeanor (he said how grateful he was to the metropolitan police for "all their hard work" - I'll bet he was!) he may well be luxuriating in a false sense of security. He has stirred up formidable enmities against himself in his treatment of his top aides and even Gray herself, with her reputation for inflexible straightness, will not be immune to influence by her colleagues.

Could be interesting.

[peter]

Poor Nadhim Zahawi, wheeled out onto the Sunday morning political slots yesterday, he was like a fish on the slab as he tried to defend the indefensible in respect of his political master's latest gaff - that of trying to 'steer' the direction of the Sue Gray report due out (it is reported) as early as tomorrow.

Somehow the Nero of Number 10 has managed to snatch potential defeat from the jaws of victory, by simply being incapable of doing anything - anything - without resorting to slippery tactics to achieve his desired end. Consider this. In the face of his recent (effective) clearing by the dodgy metropolitan police investigation, Johnson could have ridden out the Gray report findings, no matter the furore they elicited, by simply keeping saying, "this has been investigated by the police and I've been cleared". Now that the fact that a meeting between Gray and Johnson took place has emerged, the questions over the impartiality of the report and over Johnson's probity once again skyrocket. (And one wonders "why now - this meeting happened weeks ago? Who's behind its rather timely emergence into the public sphere..... Gove - where are you, you slippery bastard!")

But whatever the case, Zahawi looked weak and on the back-foot as he was pounded by demands as to who caused the meeting to happen, what was discussed and how, if as he claimed, he knew nothing as to what went on in it, he could simultaneously claim that the PM had not attempted to influence Gray on the contents of said report when it was finally released. In one spectacular bit of imagining he actually suggested that they might have met to discuss the PM's "levelling up program", seemingly unaware of the fact that this is nothing to do with Gray who's sole remit at present is her partygate investigation.

This morning the brouhaha has escalated into a more vicious confrontation between the Gray and Downing Street camps, with both sides digging in on their respective positions as to the fact that it was not they who initiated the meeting and the PM's allies accusing Gray of "playing politics" with what is supposed to be her impartial report. This is of course just standard tactics to discredit her prior to the release of what is now guaranteed to be a serious blow to the Prime Minister's credibility as leader (as if he still has any credibility), and the said "allies" (think the PM's office) pour scorn on her for the suggestion going around that she was "surprised" by the fact of his only receiving one fine for his attendance of multiple parties during lockdown. It is suggested that she is "enjoying the limelight a little too much" and is taking full advantage of the situation while it lasts.

Meanwhile Cabinet Secretary Simon Case is being set up for the role of fall-guy. Case, a long serving and highly respected civil servant is about to have his career trashed in order to save Johnson's. He will, despite having received no fine for party attendance, be sacked by Johnson for "allowing the party-culture to develop", ending a career of unstinting service in ignominy simply so that Johnson may survive. So be it - it's tough at the top - but to any that think that the PM will get away with this without cost, be assured, there will be a price to pay. These are the people upon whom a politician, particularly a PM, depend. And they have power. They will not like the scapegoating of one of their member, they will not like the treatment meted out to their junior members by the met (some fined up to five times for attendance at parties for which the PM received nothing), they will not like that their names have been dragged into the spotlight by a PM that most will consider unfit to clean their boots.

For this, there will be a price to pay somewhere down the line and hence my suspicion that despite his likely survival in the short-term, in the bigger game Johnson has fluffed it.

[peter]

Just in case anybody else is with me on this (and God knows, I'm tired of it too) there have been developments over the course of the day that are worth recording.

Firstly, this morning Downing Street acknowledged that it was them who requested the PM's meeting with Sue Gray, after having been denying that this was the case for days. I can only assume that in some way they became aware that proof of their 'guilt' had been given to the opposite side, or that they (Gray's team in the Cabinet Office) were threatening to release proof that they already held, that this was the case. There is no other explanation for their sudden volta face than that they were about to be exposed. Suffice to say that it doesn't make the PM and his team at Downing Street look good.

The second significant development is the release by ITN, of four photographs of the PM drinking wine in a gathering in Downing Street on one of the dates that he specifically told the Commons (in response to a Labour MP's question) that there had been no party. There is wine and food on the table and the PM is seen holding up a glass in a toast. This is a party at which some of the other people present are believed to have been fined by the metropolitan police, but not the PM himself. On being asked why the PM was not fined for this attendance, the met have declined to answer, saying that they have nothing to add to the statement they made at the time of the partygate investigation's conclusion.

I'm particularly interested in where ITN are sourcing these photographs, which seem to be coming into their possession in a drip-feed manner at significant points of this data. Certainly Dominic Cummings is in there somewhere, but who is supplying him remains a mystery. It could be a disgruntled civil servant, it could be a rival politician trying to unseat Johnson, but either way, there is most definitely a behind the scenes battle going on between the PM's team and some other closely involved faction.

While the next few days are going to be rocky for Johnson, he's probably got just about enough Parliamentary privilege (in terms of his kudos with his MPs) left to survive them. But the actual investigation of the Parliamentary Privileges Committee into whether he knowingly misled the House or not, might be another thing altogether. The photos of him released today in conjunction with his claim to the House do not make for pretty viewing, but he might reasonably say that the police have already investigated this and cleared him of wrongdoing. This might wash once, but if more and more photographs keep on coming out, then it might be like the 'death of a thousand cuts' for him. Parliament will only have so much patience with this argument and he's using up his brownie points pretty fast.

Let's see what tomorrow brings.

[peter]

Pressure is building on the metropolitan police to explain the logic behind the fining of at least one person for their presence at the event in which Boris Johnson is seen toasting departing civil servant Lee Cain, but not the fining of the PM himself. Accusations of motivations displaying political bias abound and the Lib-Dem leadership has now requested the police watchdog to investigate the investigators themselves.

Tory MP Sir Desmond Swayne said on last night's Newsnight that this was clearly a works do; well, yes - I don't think anyone could dispute that, but it is entirely beside the point, this argument based on semantics, when clearly the event was in breach of the spirit of the regulations in place at the time. The argument that the police have already cleared the PM in respect of this gathering (as employed by Downing Street yesterday) failss on the grounds that the police have clearly decided that holding a leaving bash for a team member involving the drinking of wine and bubbly and the eating of food constitutes a breach of the regulations, because a person or persons have been fined for their attendance of it.

Like a person struggling in quicksand, it's almost as if any movement on the part of the PM, any attempt to justify him by himself or others, simply causes him to become further enmeshed, to sink deeper into the medium that will ultimately engulf him.

When the scandal broke and the PM was under intense scrutiny in the House by the opposition over the allegations, Labour MP Catherine West asked the PM, "Will the prime minister tell the House whether there was a party in Downing Street on the 13th december.''

He replied, "No. But I'm sure that whatever happened, the guidance was followed, and the rules were followed at all times."

Now this is important because upon it could rest the decision as to whether he deliberately misled the House or otherwise. Firstly, it was apparently Johnson himself who had instigated this event - call it a party, works do, whatever you will - (even serving the drinks at it) which was not by any stretch, within the constraints imposed by the regulations in place at the time. Now in his answer to the Labour MP's question in the House, Johnson says "No." Does he mean, "No " as in there was no party/work do, a clear lie to the House, or "No", as in, I will not tell the House, which cannot be construed as a lie.

Giving him the benefit of the doubt on this, we then have to look at the next part of his answer, that the rules and guidance were followed at all times. This, from the photographs, is clearly not true. The table in front of the PM is littered with bottles, spirit, fizzy and wine. There are curry containers and various detritus consistent with a social gathering in view and no evidence of social distancing from any of those present, with perhaps the exception of the PM himself, who does seem a bit distanced, even as he raises his glass in the toast. Clearly then his statement that he's sure that all the rules and guidance were/was followed is untrue. He instigated the do, he went to it, he served the drinks at it, he witnessed the other people at it. The only thing he didn't do was to be fined for being at it. Any Parliamentary Privileges Committee investigation would have to bury it's head in the sand to an unimaginable degree not to see the inconsistencies in what the PM told the House and what is shown by the photographic evidence.

In another tricky development, it has been suggested that in the meeting between Gray and Johnson (which Downing Street now concede was held at their instigation), Gray was put under pressure to drop her intention to publish her report on the basis that "all the information is out there already, so what's the point?" Clearly this wasn't going to wash with Gray and nothing came of it, but the revelations in today's Times will add yet further pressure on Johnson's position, before the report has even been published.

As a by the by, it is now being pretty much taken as read that the source behind the photograph emergence is Dominic Cummings - no surprise there - but what I'm more interested in is the source behind the source? Gove? A disgruntled civil servant? Who knows?

But anyway, that is the overnight development taken care of, the hors d'oeuvres as it were. Now let's wait for the main course to be delivered. It is speculated that the Gray Report may come out today, but I'd guess later in the week. Parliament goes into recess I believe shortly, and if Johnson can avoid having to do a PM's Questions on the report before the break, then I'm guessing he will. Does he get to say when the report is released or is that entirely in Gray's hands. It occurs to me that Downing Street might have given the admittance of their having instigated the meeting with Gray in return for a quid-pro-quo in terms of the content of the report, but from her generally acknowledged reputation, I can't see Gray wearing this. But either way, to a degree, the Cummings' released photographs have superceded the report by providing the visual evidence of the PM's guilt in a way that a thousand words never could. The report may now be no more than the icing on the cake that has already been delivered.

Or it may be that the Houdini of Downing Street may escape once again. Who knows. As MP Charles Walker recently said, the PM has an ability to survive what would bring lesser politicians down beyond question. You cannot argue with that and only time will tell how this one is going to play out.

[peter]

On the morning that the long awaited Sue Gray report is tabled (though not guaranteed) to land, it is a time for reflection of the events that have led us to this place.

James O'Brien, who I'm not a massive fan of, summed it all up yesterday, with a video-post from his morning show, in which he explained how we who care, we few who still beat on about this, have been beaten down. Beaten into submission by the persuasive and successful campaign prosecuted by Johnson's 'team' (both political and media) into just that - into persuading us that we shouldn't care anymore. That we should 'move on', that it isn't important anymore in the face of Ukraine, and the cost of living, of bracing ourselves for the stormy weather ahead.

And that you are also beaten by the indifference of the response you get. Because if the people you bounce of off do exactly that, just bounce you off with that wall of disinterest, of indifference, of the not caring that has been successfully implanted within them, well - you just sound 'shrill' and like a loon. And that's how Johnson wins. He wins by people not caring, by his cabinet not caring, by the public not caring, and of course by not caring himself. Because there is no beating that. Your waves of anger chuckle around his ankles like warm waters on the beach at Brighton on a summers day. He doesn't care, those around him don't care and the people themselves - the victims of this corruption, this rot, in the soul of our very existence, the edifice we call our nation, our beating heart - they no longer care either.

Because as O'Brien said, that's how it goes. First the corruption is normalised and it spreads, first through the Government and then percolating down into the society itself (the only true trickle-down the Tories have ever achieved), and then it is followed by the spread of not caring, following the same path, charting the same rotten course as the corruption.

And here we are.

The Gray report will land. There will be a furore (because it is expected)............ and then nothing. Because the people around Johnson - people like Nadine Dorries and Grant Schapps, who without their sycophantic support of Johnson, and in the case of any other leader who could ever, who would ever lead the country, would not come within a million miles of high office - because these people, and fistfuls of Tory MPs who care only about securing their ongoing positions on the green seats - because of these people and their indisposition to care, the putrid rot will be allowed to continue. And we who shout on, who shrill on, from our place on the fast diminishing stands reserved for those who still care, look ever more swivel eyed, ever more out on a limb, ever more the ones who can be justifiably ridiculed - and thus we are beaten, and thus Johnson and his cohort win.

What is it they say - a fish rots from the head down. So be it. Gray will land. There will be a kerfuffle. And nothing will happen. But there is a limit to all of this. There is an endpoint. Because despite all appearance and evidence to the contrary, there is disquiet amongst the ranks. Because contrary to what our media would lead us to believe, there are still MPs on both sides of the House, who do what they do not for personal gain, not for reasons of self-interest, but out of loyalty and love of their country, because under it all they also, deep down, still care. Because what they appear on the surface, what they are forced to say and do and seemingly support, is not who they truly are. And a time will come, assuredly late in the day, but it will come - when they realise that they can go no further. That they have reached the end of their ability to lie to themselves, or to justify what is happening, or to sit silently while the Nero of Number 10 fiddles, as the edifice of our beliefs, our souls, our honour, burns. Like Billy Bunter of old (and there are great analogies with the 'Owl of the Remove and his 'famous five' cohort of mates in all of this - "I say you fellows, Party down in Skinner's room", squeaked the Owl) they will discover, sooner or later, that at their core, remains an incorruptible nugget that will, when backed into the final corner, come to the fore. Until then it's up to us, the ones who still care, to continue.

And as O'Brien said, just hang on to that single thought, that you still know, still care about the truth. And while you wait for those still honourable members in the House to find their limit, to reach that point where even they will stand up and say enough is enough, hold on to this thought and you will not go mad.

[peter]

Red wine spattered up the walls, people being sick and a fight breaking out, drunken individuals 'sleeping it off' in the Number 10 garden. Cleaners and security staff who complained laughed at, the head of operations at Downing Street messaging "we got away with it" and the news that Sue Gray abandoned her investigation into the notorious ABBA party in the Number 10 flat because it was not "appropriate".

Andrew Marr, speaking yesterday shortly after the release of the Gray Report said that in his forty years of reportage on political affairs in this country there had been nothing to match it. He described the behaviour as "stinking" and said that it would have been inconceivable under any other Prime Minister that he had ever known.

And none of it put so much as a dint in our Prime Minister's thick carapace, caused him barely a slowing of stride, as he simply ploughed through it.

Sir Kier Stamer, presumably some kind of lawyer in the past (head of the Crown Prosecution Service fer Christ's sake) was so weak, so flimsy in his response to the report, that in the debate in the Commons following Johnson's statement it was him that was recieving the mauling, not the other way around. The debate was so laughably one-sided that the opposition benches were virtually empty within a short period of its starting. Few were the punches landed, with the notable exception of Tory MP Tobias Ellwood who called the PM and his own colleagues out in no uncertain terms. Other significant blows were landed when the PM was asked whether he had tried to get Gray to refrain from releasing her report - a question that he slithered around to the clear disgust of the Tory MP who asked it.

But all in all it was a damp squib. A chicken that wouldn't fight. So the Nero of Number 10 will get away with it once again, fiddling his way along as the country burns. And in truth, it doesn't really matter, it's all academic. There is nothing that a new PM, even a new Government could do to fix the country. It's broken - damaged beyond repair. The cumulative cost of brexit, followed by the pandemic, followed by the inevitable aftermath of these events: the division and inequality that has been hardwired into our country's very DNA by successive years of pea-in-a-whistle battering and an industrial scale mendacity and credulous admixture - these things have reduced us to a point where there is no effective coming back from this, no return to 'life as we knew it' in my lifetime, or in yours either.

The country will go on - of course it will - but it will be a poor shadow of what it has been in the past. There will be no bright future, no sunlit uplands for the majority of us. There are no winners for any of us in what has transpired here. Tories and Labour alike, as the man says at the end of Romeo and Juliet, "all are punished, all are punished".

So be it.


-----------------------------------0-----------------------------


Where I live it's 5.45 in the morning. I've just dropped my Mrs off at her work place, the local hospital which serves as the main hospital for Cornwall. There were at least fifteen ambulances queued up outside A&E (with patients waiting for admission inside them), possibly twenty plus. I asked my wife if the hospital was still working at reduced capacity due to Covid and she said no. Asked why there were so many ambulances waiting (it's becoming a more and more common occurrence) she said she didn't know, but thought it was probably due to the backlog of patients, the build up of illness if you like, that two years of not treating people in a timely fashion for their developing conditions over the Covid pandemic, has caused.

Not to beat an over-beaten drum, but this is exactly what I was carping on about during the pandemic, how we would reap the fruit of allowing the virus to sweep aside our consideration of all other conditions in a harvest of increased death and serious illness at a later point. I agree with my wife. That line of ambulances is probably the front-line manifestation of what will at a later point appear as a grim statistic in our national media.

[peter]

I want to talk briefly about the mechanics of how Boris Johnson's escape act has been pulled off.

It's been a masterclass in political chicanery, certainly unrivalled in recent history, and one that political students will be arguing over in academic semesters for decades to come.

What he in essence has done, is to create a 'fog' between the Gray Report and the police investigation, in which he is able to elide between the two in seamless fashion, in his arguments and explanations as to what he did, why and when, and why he doesn't have to answer questions about it.

Take for example, the notorious wine and cheese party which he attended in the garden of Number 10 amongst a group of people who were later considered to have broken Covid regulations. The invitations sent out to those who attended numbered around two hundred (at a time when gatherings of more than two people of different households were forbidden) and the PM was in attendance for around half an hour. He has stated that he knew nothing of any rule breaking, all of it occuring when he had 'left the (metaphorical) building', but the rule breaking here clearly began at the point where the invitations were sent out. When questioned about this gathering he simply replied that he has been cleared by the metropolitan police investigation and had nothing further to add. When asked about the infamous ABBA party that Gray had not even completed her investigation into (and the police had not investigated at all), he slipped seamlessly into being satisfied that Sue Gray had covered this ground and again, did not think he could improve upon her findings. It would however, have been difficult not to - she didn't have any findings.

By the construction of this sort of parallel reality between the two investigations, Johnson has been able to slip-slide past all questions in a manner that, if it doesn't leave his guilt in little doubt, at least enables him to elude being nailed in the lie by appearing and disappearing eel-like in the murky waters of his creation, the damning evidence of the one being simultaneously neutralised by the antithesis of the other.

It has, as I say, been a masterclass, and were the consequences to our country, to our democracy, our polity not so devastating, one would have to take one's hat off to him.

In a telling comment made by one Tory MP today (three of whom, incidentally have today, spoken of their dissatisfaction with him), he said that many Conservative MPs had reconciled themselves to having won the partygate affair but at the cost of the next election. If this indeed turns out to be the case, then by gosh, that would be a result indeed!

[peter]

So Chancellor Sunak has finally seen the light and turned to socialism in response to the crisis that twelve years of Tory mismanagement have brought us to.

In one swift swirl of his cape, one flash of powder and kaboom, the white rabbit of his economic legerdemain appears in his hand - money for all, taxes for all, high spending for all! He's done more socialism in pursuit of the Tories remaining in power in the face of the Gray Report (and in the hope of reviving his future political prospects one assumes), than Jeremy Corbyn could have achieved in his best manhole cover filled wet-dream.

That's not to say that I don't like it - people absolutely need help, and Sunak's give away has been described as the biggest take from the rich - give to the poor policy that has been carried out in this country for decades. But I can't help but wonder where it all leads. Is it the beginning of a basic universal income? I ask because surely it can't simply be a one-time thing. This crisis isn't going away next year, or the year after that. So where does this largesse end - this kicking the can of our brexit/pandemic aftermath down the road? Because once having started down this road, there is no ending to it. It's a plate-spinning act that has no quick snatching back of the plates into a neat pile for the conclusion of the show. With this one, you just keep spinning, more and more plates going up, more and more money being printed, more and more borrowing from the IMF, until it all crashes down or a war intervenes in order to get things moving again (speaking of which........).

Peter Hitchens once said that the Tories would behead the Queen in Trafalgar Square if it meant that they could remain in power, and this move (absolutely choreographed in it's timing as it undeniably is) can n only serve to prove the point. In order to save their skins, the Tories have morphed into the Labour Party in front of our eyes. A shape-shifting turnaround that would have Margret Thatcher rolling in her grave, as the non-interventionist party of her dreams, the small-state paradise of her neo-liberalist utopia morphs into the big-state, high-interventionist socialist collective of her worst nightmare.

Oh what a strange topsy-turvey world we find ourselves in; the Labour Party turns away from the proletariat that gave it life in the first place in order to kow-tow to business and corporate sponsorship (thereby making it electable in the eyes of the establishment). And the Tories turn into the Labour Party, forced by their own policies of brexit and pandemic disproportionateness, to embrace an interventionist socialism that would have most of them vomiting into a Downing Street wastebin under normal circumstances. And the Mail and the Express cheer them for it.

All I can say is, "Keep going Rishi - I think they're beginning to like yer!"