Dear James,
Each of us, in our own small ways, are judges of each other. We all think we know a good person from a bad person, a right action from a wrong action, acceptable behaviour from unacceptable behaviour. Judgment is wired into our very genes and probably comes from our original fight-or-flight response to danger in the wilderness. I see someone and I react instantly - positively or negatively - to age, gende
Read MoreDear James,
Once upon a time there was a person called Grigory Potemkin, a minister and lover of the Russian Empress, Catherine the Great (1762-1796). Potemkin is alleged to have set up artificial "mobile villages" on the banks of the Dnieper River in order to impress his Empress that ‘things were better than they were’. Potemkin's men, dressed as peasants,
Read MoreDear James,
Following Boris’s on-air censoring of his scientific and medical advisers last week, something most interesting has just happened. Firstly, the two gagged advisers, Professors Vallance and Whitty, members of SAGE, the government’s committee of 50 expert advisors, seem to have refused to reappear at the press conferences. Then, at Saturday’s conference, Professor Van-Tam,
Read MoreDear James,
At yesterday’s press conference, Boris’s message was ‘Move on - the Cummings matter is ‘closed’. When journalists questioned his two senior scientific advisers about whether Cummings had stuck to the rules at Castle Barnard, he intervened to stop the questions. Boris
Read MoreDear James,
So, at long last, the man became flesh. Yesterday Dominic Cummings came out of the long grass and faced the nation to explain his recent exploits in Durham and Castle Barnard. Here was Svengali, Rasputin, Mephistopheles or even the devil himself throwing himself before his accusers. And the result? Bit of a let down really. He
Read MoreDear James,
Words fail me and, yet they are all I have and so here goes! Yesterday I witnessed one of the most craven acts of political desperation and cowardice in my life time. Boris Johnson, that self-promoting, ‘paragon of strength and leadership’, was revealed in all his weakness. Commanded by his ‘chief adviser’ to shape up and back him, he fronted yesterday’s daily coronavirus press conference, looking seriously discomfited, huffing and puffing,
Read MoreDear James,
The time of the Great Reckoning is upon us. Until now, it has been easy for Mr Sunak to flick and flicker his boyish smile across our screens as he spends huge sums on this, that and the other. However, when it comes to working out how to finance the massive debt that such spending incurs, Mr Sunak will be aware that he will be doing what no peacetime Chancellor has ever had to do.
Where are they all? Unprecedented times, require unprecedented leadership but with Covid-19, all we have is an unprecedented parade of sub-standard, Tory ministers tramping across our tv screens like characters in search of an ultimate tragedy. Ultimate tragedy? Yes. But unprecedented leadership? You’re not kidding!
So who is in charge?
Read MoreDear James,
What a week! From the confusion of Boris’s sorry attempt on Sunday evening to do a presidential address to the nation, to the ridiculous follow-up attempts by various ministers to explain ‘Stay alert’ - and to the gradual revelation of your appalling neglect of the care homes - this has been a week to forget for your government. Except that
Read MoreDear James,
What a pig’s breakfast! Last night Boris made his latest feeble attempt at statesmanship when he announced his ‘first sketch for a road map of the way ahead’. Fists clenched together in grim purpose upon the desk before him, he did his best at self-control only to lose out when his arms escaped skywards to the security and beauty of the downward curve of all the bad news. Beware Boris’s waving arms.
Read MoreDear James,
It sometimes takes friends outside the family to tell us the truth. Yesterday it became clear that more than 32,000 of our fellow citizens had so far died ‘before their time’ and that the UK now has the worst record for Coronavirus deaths in Europe. And the rest of the world knows it. Yesterday
Read MoreDear James,
We all like good news and, let’s face it, there isn’t much of it about these days. But when bad news is covered up as good news the blood boils. And that is what we’ve been getting this week, courtesy of the latest outbreak of the ‘booster virus’ that has plagued our land in the last three or more years.
The first example came on Wednesday when a much diminished Boris Johnson come to the daily coronavirus podium
Read MoreDear James,
So he’s back. Booster Boris, pneumatically reconfigured to reventilate his sorry parade of jaded ministers, is back amongst us, eager for the natural sympathy we have all allowed him following his recent near death experience. Welcome back Boris for your second electoral honeymoon. Don’t get carried away though. It won’t last.
Read MoreDear James,
One stark winter’s day in January 1943, a highly decorated German officer was chosen by the encircled Sixth Army at Stalingrad to fly to Hitler and deliver the bad news. The officer was warned by his fellow officers to be wary of Hitler’s ‘Sunray Cure’. The ‘Sunray Cure’ has been described by historians as ‘the mesmerizing optimism’ with which
Read MoreDear James,
Three bombs have just gone off under Boris Johnson. The first to explode was the Care Home bomb. That went off two days ago when it was found that the number of deaths in care homes throughout the UK have been consistently and massively understated. Government statistics admit to 217 cases so far but a specialist ‘Care Home Forum’ says that the real figure is probably in the region of 4000.
Read MoreDear James,
They troop in, they troop out. Every day at 5pm, the sad triumvirate of politician and two advisers walks out stage left, 2 meters apart, and departs, stage left, in the same way. Between arrival and departure we listen to the halting explanation of statistics and plans and then watch as selected journalists are called forth from their bedrooms
Read MoreDear James,
Statistics? Who’s interested in statistics? Well, if we’re not already, we soon will be. The Coronavirus pandemic is continuing to be one of the most minutely recorded crises in world history. Every detail of the Covid 19 outbreak has been recorded statistically from the moment it first reared its head in Wuhan last November to today’s breakouts in the UK and the USA.
Read MoreDear James,
The graphs are beginning to go in the right direction. Road transport is down by 95%, deaths are levelling off and new hospital admissions are flattening. Medically speaking, there are signs that the great lockdown is beginning to succeed. However, each day of falling graphs, is one more day when the economy is stalled. Eventually the
Read MoreDear James,
First of all, let me add my name to the list of well wishers to Boris Johnson who last night was admitted into the Intensive Care Unit of St. Thomas’s hospital. Despite my severe reservations of him as a leader, I would wish no one to be faced with what he is facing. Get well soon Boris!
Read MoreDear James,
You have to feel sorry for any politician who puts their head above the parapet in this era of Coronavirus. Especially if that politician is ambitious, as without a doubt, Matt Hancock is. Yesterday, after the Sharma disaster of the day before, he appeared at the daily conference rostrum looking as if he had just been whipped and beaten by a gang of
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