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recent bookmarks from jmMarina Hyde on the UK's Covid Inquiry2023-11-01T12:29:21+00:00
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/01/boris-johnson-dominic-cummings-covid-inquiry-no-10?CMP=share_btn_tw
jmFor me, the most depressing thing about the revelations at the inquiry this week – and no doubt for many weeks and months to come – is that they are not really revelations. The government was horrendously incompetent, didn’t have a plan, yet still wasted a huge amount of time – and a tragic number of lives – on mad posturing, pointless turf wars or buck-passing and catastrophic infighting. The sad fact is that all of this was said AT THE TIME, and all of it was denied repeatedly by those in charge. And it was denied not just in insidery lobby briefings or to individual journalists – but live on air, to the nation, in those wretched press conferences every night.
They lied about everything, all the time, and the lies they told backstage were just the obverse of the ones they spouted front of house. Seeing inquiry witnesses feted for punchy WhatsApps now is a bit like congratulating a serial killer for switching to an energy-efficient chest freezer. I’m sure half of them will be reflecting amiably on the period on their inevitable podcasts in due course – but the British public deserve so much more, as they did at the time.
]]>uk politics covid-19 boris-johnson dominic-cummings marina-hyde funny grimhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:87e408965eab/Covid inquiry: UK's top pandemic scientist gives damning verdict on Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak2023-10-03T16:06:08+00:00
https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/covid-inquiry-uk-top-pandemic-scientist-verdict-boris-johnson-rishi-sunak-2660155
jmThe inquiry also heard that in October 2020, Mr Johnson wrote “bollocks” in capital letters across a Department of Health guidance document on Long Covid, from which it is estimated more than a million people are suffering. Anthony Metzer KC, representing Long Covid sufferers, said the former PM has admitted in his own witness statement that he did not believe the condition “truly existed”
]]>long-covid boris-johnson politics uk covid-19 patrick-vallancehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:8c1efebb0d84/WhatsApp screenshots of Boris Johnson's innumeracy2023-03-03T10:39:27+00:00
https://mas.to/@kityates/109958429104381225
jmboris-johnson fail covid-19 uk uk-politics whatsapphttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:ddd1832b7712/"Grievance Mining"2021-10-17T14:08:47+00:00
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/17/facing-chaos-and-needing-a-scapegoat-the-tories-seek-endless-fight-with-europe#comment-152562075
jmFrost is well aware of the futility of his demands – indeed, it is the whole point of his Lisbon performance. Instead of declaring victory, accepting the EU’s munificent offers and turning down the heat in Northern Ireland, he and Johnson prefer to make an impossible demand so that they can blame the EU for rejecting it.
They are, as the South Belfast MP, Claire Hanna, has put it, “mining for grievance”.
]]>grievances neologisms phrases boris-johnson uk brexit politics northern-ireland euhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:ba5d9adc89f5/The Center Blows Itself Up: Care and Spite in the ‘Brexit Election’2020-01-14T22:13:09+00:00
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/01/13/the-center-blows-itself-up-care-and-spite-in-the-brexit-election/
jmThe center of British politics has become a smoldering pit. The country is now being governed by a hard-right government placed in power by its oldest citizens, in the face of the active hatred of its increasingly socialist-inclined youth. It’s fairly clear that for the Johnson team, Brexit was never anything but an electoral strategy, and that they don’t have the slightest idea how to translate it into economic prosperity. (It is an unacknowledged irony of the current situation that the people most likely to profit from the Brexit process are, precisely, lawyers—and, probably secondarily, accountants. For everyone else, it’s hard to imagine a scenario where they will improve their current situation, and quite easy to imagine Johnson being remembered as one of the most disastrous prime ministers in British history.)
]]>labour brexit uk politics tories boris-johnson jeremy-corbyn centrismhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:1729cca0291d/There are liars and then there’s Boris Johnson and Michael Gove2016-06-26T13:19:47+00:00
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/25/boris-johnson-michael-gove-eu-liars
jmThe Vote Leave campaign followed the tactics of the sleazy columnist to the letter. First, it came out with the big, bold solution: leave. Then it dismissed all who raised well-founded worries with “the country is sick of experts”. Then, like Johnson the journalist, it lied.
]]>eu politics uk brexit boris-johnson michael-govehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:c6a63dfe1ed9/