Tuesday 12 October 2021

Johnson's troubles are piling up

To say things are going from bad to worse is an understatement. As if food and fuel shortages coupled with a cost of living squeeze weren't enough, there is a growing industrial crisis as energy costs soar and the government has to look for yet more money - £billions - to prop up companies in high demand energy sectors like cement and glass. Frosty is on his way to Portugal to poke the hornets nest a bit more and this morning we wake to a chorus of newspapers quoting damning words from a joint select committee report describing the UK's response to the covid pandemic as "one of the worst ever public health failures."  Meanwhile Johnson is on holiday in Spain.

We are indeed a laughing stock. The 147 page report only came out last night so I haven't read it but the BBC reports it HERE.  The Guardian describes the report as 'scathing' and says pandemic planning was “too narrowly and inflexibly” focused, lockdowns came too late, test, trace and isolate was a 'hugely serious failure' and so on.  


Both the Health and Social Care committee and the Science and Technology committee are headed by senior Tory MPs - Jeremy Hunt and Greg Clarke - which makes it even worse. And damning as it is, it is probably an extremely mild version of what is coming down the line from a public inquiry.

Whether any of it will make much difference to Johnson's popularity is debatable, he seems untouchable by any failure personal or public, but they all seem invincible until the moment they aren't. We must live in hope.

We seem to be descending into chaos with the nation leaderless and a cabinet of lightweight nincompoops that you wouldn't want doing a paper round unsupervised at the controls.

I also want to cover something else concerning our old mate Dr Richard North and his son Peter. They have worked tirelessly for years to bring about Brexit on all sorts of grounds mainly around sovereignty. They have the EU Referendum blog - widely read and even respected for the detail of it's coverage although it usually comes to the wrong conclusions, another blog Turbulent Times, and The Leave Alliance. 

It must keep them quite busy.

But yesterday I noted this extraordinary tweet:

And this:

I think this must be Peter J North who also writes this blog - all the North blogs appear to have 'donate' buttons on so I assume this is how the family earn a living.

Peter seems to be foaming at the mouth with his claims that "gangs of feral immigrants" are roaming our city streets and "raping anything they can get their hands on."  He makes The Daily Mail and The Express look like models of restraint by comparison.

One gets the sense that hiding behind all the talk of sovereignty their drive for Brexit was in fact fuelled by little more than xenophobia and racism.

What a mess we're in.

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