Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson

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  • Thanks @alienfromzog - a chilling article, and not from my usual source of *government* criticism...

    I was beginning to wonder what had happened to our Great And Dear Leader, but I suppose that, now Covid-19 has been defeated by his Most Glorious Leadership (apart from in a few remote villages north of the M25), he's gone off to spend some quality holiday time with one or more of his families.
    :naughty:

  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    This should help get the thread back on track:
    https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/coronavirus-face-masks-ppe-covid-nhs-boris-johnson-a9657201.html

    I am hoping for the day when historians are baffled that Johnson had any support at all...
    I already am. I was even before I read that article. I have been since 2016 or earlier.
  • TelfordTelford Shipmate
    This should help get the thread back on track:
    https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/coronavirus-face-masks-ppe-covid-nhs-boris-johnson-a9657201.html

    I am hoping for the day when historians are baffled that Johnson had any support at all...

    AFZ
    The historians will have the election statistics to help them.
  • RossweisseRossweisse Hell Host, 8th Day Host
    edited August 2020
    I'm an American who follows a lot of international news, especially that for Britain. ABdPJ's appeal has puzzled me since he was elected mayor of London. Of course, I cannot fathom the appeal of Trump, either. When I was growing up conservative, such considerations as honesty, truthfulness, faithfulness, and exhibiting genuine leadership qualities were all considered imperative. Today, they have gone by the wayside - at least so far as the majority of those who claim to be conservatives are concerned.

    [Edited to exclude @Lamb Chopped from that company.]


  • Telford wrote: »
    This should help get the thread back on track:
    https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/coronavirus-face-masks-ppe-covid-nhs-boris-johnson-a9657201.html

    I am hoping for the day when historians are baffled that Johnson had any support at all...

    AFZ
    The historians will have the election statistics to help them.

    Which show that Johnson had support. They won't help in answering the question why people supported him...

    AFZ
  • BoogieBoogie Shipmate
    He promises quick fixes to complex problems. People like that 😢
  • HugalHugal Shipmate
    But you then have to fix them quickly. I have never seen what charm Boris has either. There is a lethargy in the British public. If is bad government then we tut and sigh and carry on. If it is sport particularly football (soccer) then there will be a proper outcry.
  • Boogie wrote: »
    He promises quick fixes to complex problems. People like that 😢

    Indeed. In that sense, he is a classic popularist. That has always been an effective political strategy. Whilst I think he's clearly a cheap hack, I do get why his shtick works.

    The part I struggle with is that is abject failure to deliver anything doesn't seem to cut through to the public consciousness. I think part of the answer is the complete failure of our media to deliver even basic journalism (with a few noble and noteworthy exceptions) but I don't think it the whole answer.

    AFZ
  • He is a kind of huckster/charlatan, and he always has a new shiny object to present, which is world-beating. See also second hand car salesman, with his spiel. Of course, Johnson's big shiny object was Brexit, oven-ready.

    As to why people are seduced by this, I suppose they want to be, and he offers a kind of retro nostalgic view of Britain's greatness. Failure is kind of built-in, but look, here is my new updated model with heated seats and a walnut cocktail cabinet, you know you want one. Pay later.
  • here is my new updated model with heated seats and a walnut cocktail cabinet, you know you want one. Pay later.
    More correctly, he's convinced a lot of people that he should have what he wants and everyone else will pay for it later. And, it's going to be a doozy of a bill.
  • EnochEnoch Shipmate
    And this morning the fat slob is reported telling us how 'we' are under a "moral duty" to keep the schools open.

    In what context and in what universe does this man have any title to lecture anyone, individually or collectively, on what is or isn't a moral duty?

  • Because he's CrimePrime Minister, by The Will Of The People™ (as a certain egregious New Town keeps monotonously reminding us...)

  • The part I struggle with is that is abject failure to deliver anything doesn't seem to cut through to the public consciousness. I think part of the answer is the complete failure of our media to deliver even basic journalism (with a few noble and noteworthy exceptions) but I don't think it the whole answer.

    AFZ

    That's the bit that baffles me. He campaigned for Brexit on a ticket of
    'it'll be the easiest deal ever'. He promised he'd ring-fence the UK's high animal and food welfare standards and never sell out the NHS to trade deals, eg, with the US. He promised Northern Ireland would have no problem in terms of borders; etc. Well, the 'easiest deal ever' has yet to be accomplished; legislation compromising our high food standards has already been nodded through Parliament, the NHS is clearly not in a safe place going forward, quite apart from the effects of the pandemic, and NI was thrown under the bus a long time ago. To name but a tiny handful of predictably-broken promises.

    How many ways does a leadership have to lie, deceive, and outright fail for its support-base to catch on? Mind you, as a 70's child of the Troubles in Ulster, I really shouldn't be that surprised that shite politicians manage to float to the top occasionally. The recently deceased John Hume was one of the good ones, but, boy, there were some wretched floaters around, too! Maybe it's just time for Westminster to go through its Mickey Mouse politics phase. Heaven knows, the world could do with the laugh! Out of the four member-nations of the UK voting for Brexit, two very clearly said 'fuck off'. If ever there was an obvious recipe for division, conflict and wasteful stupidity this Referendum was it.
  • No, NO! It was The Will Of The People™...

    (Well, an overall minority, anyway, but They will never admit to that).

    @Anselmina's succinct summary of the Lord Protector II's career is, however, masterly...

  • Faced with a choice between a Holy Fool and a clown, the GreatBritish Public chose tobe governed by a clown. Well, he's good for a laugh, isn't he?
  • HugalHugal Shipmate
    Anselmina wrote: »

    The part I struggle with is that is abject failure to deliver anything doesn't seem to cut through to the public consciousness. I think part of the answer is the complete failure of our media to deliver even basic journalism (with a few noble and noteworthy exceptions) but I don't think it the whole answer.

    AFZ

    That's the bit that baffles me. He campaigned for Brexit on a ticket of
    'it'll be the easiest deal ever'. He promised he'd ring-fence the UK's high animal and food welfare standards and never sell out the NHS to trade deals, eg, with the US. He promised Northern Ireland would have no problem in terms of borders; etc. Well, the 'easiest deal ever' has yet to be accomplished; legislation compromising our high food standards has already been nodded through Parliament, the NHS is clearly not in a safe place going forward, quite apart from the effects of the pandemic, and NI was thrown under the bus a long time ago. To name but a tiny handful of predictably-broken promises.

    How many ways does a leadership have to lie, deceive, and outright fail for its support-base to catch on? Mind you, as a 70's child of the Troubles in Ulster, I really shouldn't be that surprised that shite politicians manage to float to the top occasionally. The recently deceased John Hume was one of the good ones, but, boy, there were some wretched floaters around, too! Maybe it's just time for Westminster to go through its Mickey Mouse politics phase. Heaven knows, the world could do with the laugh! Out of the four member-nations of the UK voting for Brexit, two very clearly said 'fuck off'. If ever there was an obvious recipe for division, conflict and wasteful stupidity this Referendum was it.

    No Mickey is sensible. I think of our leader as more like Goofy. Incompetent and liable to fall on his face at any minute. Of course Goofy has charm a certain lovable quality which Boris is missing
  • A hollow laugh, certainly...
    :grimace:
  • TelfordTelford Shipmate
    Telford wrote: »
    This should help get the thread back on track:
    https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/coronavirus-face-masks-ppe-covid-nhs-boris-johnson-a9657201.html

    I am hoping for the day when historians are baffled that Johnson had any support at all...

    AFZ
    The historians will have the election statistics to help them.

    Which show that Johnson had support. They won't help in answering the question why people supported him...

    AFZ

    The competition was very poor.
  • Anyone else getting a feeling of deja-vu ?
    :disappointed:
  • Anyone else getting a feeling of deja-vu ?
    :disappointed:

    Again.
  • Groundhog Day...
    :scream:
  • DooneDoone Shipmate
    Around and around and ...
  • RossweisseRossweisse Hell Host, 8th Day Host
    Anyone else getting a feeling of deja-vu ?
    :disappointed:
    Ohhhh yeah...

  • Meanwhile, Covid-19 cases in England are rising (more than 1000 per day), so where is our Lord Protector, to comfort and encourage us?

    OTOH, the pleasure of NOT seeing his ugly mug grinning maniacally at us on screen or newspaper is slightly refreshing...
  • HugalHugal Shipmate
    Telford wrote: »
    Telford wrote: »
    This should help get the thread back on track:
    https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/coronavirus-face-masks-ppe-covid-nhs-boris-johnson-a9657201.html

    I am hoping for the day when historians are baffled that Johnson had any support at all...

    AFZ
    The historians will have the election statistics to help them.

    Which show that Johnson had support. They won't help in answering the question why people supported him...

    AFZ

    The competition was very poor.

    No it was Brexit. Can we move on now
  • I'd prefer, in a way, to move back - to a time before BoJo, before Brexshit, before any number of other egregious and horrible things happened...

    Yes, yes - I know. There would still be horrible things happening, but...
  • PigletPiglet All Saints Host, Circus Host
    edited August 2020
    ... where is our Lord Protector, to comfort and encourage us?
    Apparently he's come to Scotland to combine a "staycation" with a charm offensive.

    Rather more offensive than charming ... :rage:

  • I thought the charm offensive occurred a few weeks ago, when He honoured Orkney with His Presence?

    I shall offer up special prayers this week for the safety and well-being of all in whatever part of Scotland He is parking His big fat Bum.
  • Piglet wrote: »
    ... where is our Lord Protector, to comfort and encourage us?
    Apparently he's come to Scotland to combine a "staycation" with a charm offensive.

    Rather more offensive than charming ... :rage:

    Apparently he's coming with "his family" which is somewhat vague. I assume that means he's bring his current bidie and the latest sprog.

  • Piglet wrote: »
    ... where is our Lord Protector, to comfort and encourage us?
    Apparently he's come to Scotland to combine a "staycation" with a charm offensive.

    Rather more offensive than charming ... :rage:

    Quite.

    As a - kind of - disinterested observer in the Scottish Independence debate, I can think of few things more likely to drive the Scots out of the Union than Johnson's repeated appearances in this country. Almost all the pro-unionists I know despise him and think he damages their cause every time he opens his mouth on the subject.

  • It's a pity Ms Sturgeon can't close the border to the apology for a scarecrow that passes for her opposite number.
    :disappointed:

    I suppose various beauty spots will be sullied by His Presence, thus making their economic problems even worse.
  • Anyone else getting a feeling of deja-vu ?
    :disappointed:

    If you keep asking the same questions you have to be prepared to get the same answers.
  • la vie en rougela vie en rouge Circus Host, 8th Day Host
    Fuck you, fuck you very much the most incompetent government in Europe :rage:

    There was I, thinking I was finally about to see my parents for the first time in eight months, and the UK imposes a fucking quarantine. Despite France still handling Coronavirus better than the UK. I mean, let's face it, everywhere has handled Coronavirus better than the UK.

    I want to cry. :bawling:
  • Bishops FingerBishops Finger Shipmate
    edited August 2020
    My sister (who lives in France) was hoping to come across to England soon, but...
    :rage:

    I haven't seen her for nearly a year.
    :cry:

    I disagree with your penultimate sentence, though. The US is taking the prize for Sheer Incompetence, with England very close behind...

    I wonder if that has anything to with the fact that both countries have *leaders* with Weird Hair?
  • There was I, thinking I was finally about to see my parents for the first time in eight months, and the UK imposes a fucking quarantine. Despite France still handling Coronavirus better than the UK.

    Except that cases in France have risen fivefold since the minimum in May/June, and are currently double what's in the UK, per my brief google.

    It doesn't matter how the French government is handling it - it matters how many people in France have the virus.
  • Could it be that coronavirus is resurging in France because of all the British tourists descending on the country from somewhere that France could have justifiably imposed a quarantine requirement because of the almost unparalleled clusterfuck of a response by the UK so-called government?
  • Could it be that coronavirus is resurging in France because of all the British tourists descending on the country from somewhere that France could have justifiably imposed a quarantine requirement because of the almost unparalleled clusterfuck of a response by the UK so-called government?

    It could. Which means that France fucked up by not imposing quarantine on UK visitors. But it doesn't really matter why there's a resurgence of Covid-19 in France, so much as it matters that there is one. You don't get bonus points for sending the virus back where it came from.
  • Whatever the rights and wrongs of it all are, at least Merrie England is easing yet more lockdown restrictions as of tomorrow - so all is well on this side of that horridly-narrow stretch of sea...

  • HugalHugal Shipmate
    For many it is not the fact of quarantine it is the short time span given. It was not enough. There are not enough spaces on planes, Eurostar, the shuttle or ferries to get everyone back before the time stated. Some will have to quarantine because the government did not organise it well.
  • True - and even the Transport Secretary, one Shapps, got it wrong, at first saying that it was starting on Sunday rather than 4am tomorrow (Saturday)!

    No wonder people are cross...
  • BoogieBoogie Shipmate
    Whatever the rights and wrongs of it all are, at least Merrie England is easing yet more lockdown restrictions as of tomorrow - so all is well on this side of that horridly-narrow stretch of sea...

    Not in this part of Merrie England :cry:

    I was enjoying my visits to friend’s gardens with picnic and flask too. Ah well, hopefully not too much longer ...

  • la vie en rougela vie en rouge Circus Host, 8th Day Host
    @Leorning Cniht I don't think the difference between British and French rates of infection is that great. It looks to me like it's about 2/3 or 3/4, but given the complete omnishambles that is British testing*, I suspect they're pretty similar. This is grandstanding by the British government to deflect attention from how abysmally they've handled the crisis.

    Oh, and given that Brittany is a hotspot, I suspect @Alan Cresswell is right.

    *My aunt was in hospital in North Wales for something completely unrelated when a case of Covid was picked up in the hospital. They administered supposedly urgent tests to all the patients, and sent everyone home to self-isolate if their condition allowed it. It took a full ten days for my aunt to get her results. British testing at its finest. She had indeed contracted Covid in hospital, but fortunately has recovered since.
  • We were supposed to be visiting my parents in Kent this weekend but as Mr Dragon doesn't want to break the law on distancing inside, we're not.

    If we are back in lockdown in October, it could end up being over a year before I see them in person which is somewhat depressing.
  • For what it's worth, my Hospital Trust is doing brilliantly at testing for staff.

    We are expected to self-test every week and then drop off the sample.

    3 weeks in, each time I've got a text with my results within 24hrs.

    AFZ
  • @Leorning Cniht I don't think the difference between British and French rates of infection is that great. It looks to me like it's about 2/3 or 3/4,
    I see France as currently something over 2,000 daily cases, and rising steeply, as compared to 300 or so new daily cases in May/June. The UK is at about 1,000 new daily cases, as compared to around 600 in early July. The rate of increase in France is particularly concerning, as tests tend to lag infections by about a week.

    I, personally, based on nothing more than looking at that data, would instruct the people who work for me to self-isolate for 2 weeks and get a Covid test, if they had just returned from France. Especially so because the nature of being a tourist / visitor to a country tends to expose you to more risks and more people than those who live there (tourists have to eat out all the time, and tend to be out in public with groups of people doing touristy things. People who live there have their own homes they can remain in.)

    One can easily argue that the efficiency of testing could be different in different countries (so the absolute number of new cases might not be directly comparable), but unless there was something drastically different about French testing three weeks ago compared to French testing now, the rate of increase is real.

    I'm quite prepared to believe Alan's story about Covid hotspots caused by British tourists. I'm also not defending the shambolic response of the UK government. I don't know enough about how the French government has handled it to pass comment on that. But none of that changes my assessment that people coming back to the UK from France would look like a risk at the moment.

    (If the hotspots are correlated in the tourist areas, then that makes the figures even worse than they appear, because the tourist areas are where the tourists are returning from. )
  • Everybody here has been praising the New Zealand response to coronavirus. That response involved controlling the influx of virus from overseas sources. Now that the UK is finally doing something to control the influx of virus from overseas sources, it’s the wrong thing to do?

    Kinda feels like there’s an attitude of “whatever the UK government decides to do, that’s the wrong thing” around here.
  • The issue is one of consistency.

    The NZ government set out from day one to bring coronavirus rates down to practically zero as soon as possible, and hold them there - a policy that has always included quarantine requirements for anyone coming into the country, and an efficient and effective tracing programme to rapidly isolate outbreaks as they occur.

    The UK government never sought to follow that example, instead deciding that it was acceptable to extend the period we would face the virus as part of our lives suppressing economic activity and social restrictions (even if officially lifted, no one who cares about their health and the health of their family would visit a pub, for example, until infection rates are much lower). For most of the time of the pandemic there has been no quarantine requirement for anyone coming into the country (albeit it that being a very small number of people during the height of the pandemic). As the government reduced restrictions, there was justification for allowing more overseas travel, but with quarantine requirements. They decided that it was more important to allow Brits to holiday overseas than doing all possible to avoid a resurgence of the virus, and not having a quarantine requirement makes that much easier. The Scottish government warned that quarantine could be imposed at short notice, I never heard similar statements from the UK government (it helps to have daily briefings where ministers can let everyone know what's happening).

    There is a justification for no quarantine requirements for people coming from locations without the virus in circulation. That could be pushed for locations with a relatively low incidence (eg: <50% the UK rate). I think the quarantine requirements for higher rate areas are good - though, it may be more sensible to define the areas affected at regional rather than national level.

    The faults of the UK government in this regard include:
    1. Not requiring quarantine earlier in the crisis
    2. Setting the no quarantine "air bridge" areas for locations where the rates of the virus circulating were still relatively high
    3. Not communicating clearly that changing circumstances might result in rapid reintroduction of quarantine requirements so that people could plan knowing that they may need the extra time after their overseas holiday to quarantine and consider that before booking a holiday
    4. Making decisions on the basis of whole nations rather then regions (especially when regions are geographically isolated), and not being clear about what the basis of those decisions is - if that basis was known then anyone planning on going to France could have been watching the virus rates in France over the last couple of weeks and being able to follow the trend to make an educated guess when the quarantine requirement would be introduced.

    Putting in a requirement to quarantine is not, in itself, something the government has done wrong.
  • The government is also being strongly criticized for giving people about a day's notice, starting very late at night local time, to try and scramble back home on the limited number of trains and ferries that could physically make the channel crossing in that time, especially as we get so close to school return dates: there will be a lot of people who for the sake of being a couple of hours too far from Calais now have to quarantine.

    We hadn't planned a foreign trip to but I don't envy people who had to make a choice between risking it and losing a lot of money by cancelling.
  • Exactly.

    It's not the fact of the quarantine restrictions which may well be the right call.

    It's the typically but shockingly shambolic way it's been handled.

    One piece of advice for all British people: spend December gently stockpiling food and essentials....

    AFZ
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