346. Dominic Cummings (Nosferatu / Igor / Flagg / Moriarty/ Iago / Worm Tongue etc)

(No offence Tolkien etc…)

Dominic Cummings 

Modern Nosferatu

Lost his pet eugenicist

Then travelled too far to

Visit his parents

In wild Durham county

Taking his germs

A pandemic bounty

The plebs all stopped in

As we were told

To protect the sick

The weak and the old

Ordinary folk

Who broke Dommy’s rules

Got fined or profiled

In the media as fools

How will Boris cope

If Worm Tongue is through

Bo-Jo can’t keep track

Of when babies are due

It’s now clear to all

Cummings is a berk

But 

Without Dom - Boris Johnson

Might have to do some WORK
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Something for the little ones  Crazy Clothes with Granny Amanda (there are 20 of these so fill your boots...)

Post-Covid

Governments globally scramble to re-establish 'normal' but that's not what we want!

345. NO!

…just NO.

NO – ‘back to normal’ won't do for our young people. We must do ‘better’.

NO - Boris Johnson is not king-of-the-world as per his fantasies nor does he behave like a PM of the UK. In reality he is just the Waffling Wanker of Westminster.

NO – we are not all in this together. The wealthy and the poor are ‘in this together’ in the same way that a crocodile and a wildebeest can be in a river ‘together’.

NO – it’s not ok if you were a rubbish company before the pandemic, treating customers badly, to now preface every sentence with “due to the pandemic”.

NO – its not ok for our public broadcaster still to be passing off ‘he said/she said/they said as ‘news’.

NO – we don’t have to sacrifice our brains and critical thinking and ability to analyse the truth on the altar of faux unity.

NO – covid has not shown what a fantastic ready-to-be-isolationist nation we are, it has shown that Brexit is the worst idea since the chocolate fire guard.

NO - it is no surprise if you use fear rather than sensible information and good governance to cajole people into lockdown that coming out of it is as much of a mess as going in.

NO – it's no surprise that companies have been abusing the furlough system. They have been abusing the public purse for a long, long time (remember Carillion anyone?)

NO – there is not going to be a ‘big bounce back’ of the economy because the people at the bottom have not been looked after and a lot of businesses have taken the opportunity to sack 1000s of workers rather than ride this out and will, no doubt, take cover of covid to set up elsewhere and escape the – as yet ill-considered horrors of the as yet non-existent Brexit deal (or no deal).

NO – there is no point gloating over how embarrassingly badly the US has done under Trump or Brazil has done under Bolsonaro (see blog 344) when we actually had a health service that could have/ should have coped better if it hadn’t been eviscerated for over a decade by The Conservative party that gave us the Waffling Wanker of Westminster.

NO – its not ok

Just NO

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On a VERY different note. If you have some little people in your life and you/they are a  exhausted with the psychedelic headache that passes for children's TV - here is something a little gentler. I put these up for my grandchildren and a dozen or so others  have enjoyed them too. So help yourself.

funny performed verse for young children

NB The summer festivals/events where I was performing adult stuff have obviously been cancelled but some events are already rescheduled for November. When I know about the adult stuff I will let you know...

'In this TOGETHER'

344. Lousy Leader Lottery. Does your country win?

The countries in this lottery are Britain, America and Brazil. The judging criteria are in bold and you can award points as you see fit…

Most moronic statement

Trump – ‘ingest bleach to cure coronavirus’  plus pretty much everything that comes out of his mouth.

Johnson - Libyan city could be a luxury resort if ‘investors cleared the dead bodies away'.

Bolsonaro - claiming his wife gave birth to a girl because he had a ‘moment of weakness’.

Most moronic idea

Trump -   Border wall / Space Force

Johnson – Brexit

Bolsonaro – Openly in favour of torture

Most number of children by different women (but still supported by right-wing media and/or evangelicals)

Trump [5] 

Johnson [6-ish – no one is sure – maybe even Johnson himself doesn’t know]

Bolsonaro [5]

Inability to speak coherently

Trump - seems never to have become acquainted with the English language. 

Johnson - whiffle-waffles though it is unclear if this is real or affectation.

Bolsonaro - generally talks in soundbites of macho bollocks.

Most bigoted/ignorant statement

Trump - re white supremacists ‘some of them are good people’

Johnson - using term ‘picaninnies’ about commonwealth citizens or women in burkas likened to ‘letter boxes’

Bolsonaro - said he would rather his son were killed in a crash than be gay

Insulting other (better/ more successful/more faithful) leaders

Trump – Obama

Johnson – Obama

Bolsonaro – Macron

Stupidest hair

Trump – improbable orange ‘swirled’ tufts

Johnson – spectral blonde wispy basin cut

Bolsonaro - relatively normal on this one

Most dishonest  

Johnson - Brexit Bus NHS lie (+ all his life)

Trump - ‘I’m a successful businessman’ con (+everything that comes out of his mouth)

Bolsonaro – said he would only accept election results if he won

Environment crisis denier

Trump - toady to coal and oil lobby and reversed all Obama environmental protection legislation.

Johnson – sort of supports HS2 which will devastate precious, scarce ancient woodland but as he doesn’t really ‘believe’ or not believe in anything it’s hard to judge this one.

Bolsonaro – happy with deforestation and other environmental wrecking activities.

Age disparity with latest daughter-wife/partner

Trump – 23 years

Johnson – 24 years

Bolsonaro – 27 years

Examples of corruption

Trump – open nepotism, appointment of those known to be corrupt (Flynn) and just generally and always.

Johnson - Garden Bridge / the Jennifer Arcuri scandal.

Bolsonaro - Firing judicial officials who were investigating his corrupt children.

Ignoring Democracy

Trump – filling government posts with incompetent crooks and cronies and family.

Johnson – illegally proroguing parliament.

Bolsonaro – threatening opponents and just generally.

Directly causing the misery and suffering of others in real time

Trump - babies in cages separated from parents on the Mexican border.

Johnson - directly contributed to the extension of the cruel detention of Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe in Iran when May was stupid enough to make Johnson foreign secretary.

Bolsonaro - “not one centimetre” of land to be saved for indigenous peoples

Easily create non-problems but slow to act on real ones

Trump – constantly creating international tensions to distract from his failings in office but slow to act on Coronavirus.

Johnson – happy to create the disaster of Brexit but slow to act on Coronavirus.

Bolsonaro – happy to create political tensions and discord but slow to act on Coronavirus.

Talking shit

Trump – every time he opens his mouth.

Johnson - sacked from first job (Times columnist) for obviously making shit up – and all downhill from there as lying is his habit.

Bolsonaro - like most liars he uses the accusation against others when it suits – i.e. saying deforestation data is lies.

And finally

I was going to add - a love of pointless slogans - but I think their appetite for that is about equal.

I was going to add the discomfiting mix of brat and brute but again – I think they are equal on that though Trump and Johnson are more brat than brute.

All three are big in their own minds and the media play that back to them endlessly but that illusion is matched by how incredibly small they are inside.

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So who wins?

You may say I am biased but it seems clear to me that Britain wins the lousy leader lottery. 

Johnson’s international faux pas range from low level crap like school-boy racism, embarrassing jingoism, inappropriate behaviour. You may say public money wasted on wannabe-dictator egocentric projects (e.g. water cannon he was barred from using when mayor of London) pale into insignificance when compared to Trump’s wall. Even Johnson’s buffoon bigotry feels minor league compared to that of Bolsonaro. However, Trump and Bolsonaro are as you would expect given their background, educational inadequacies and disturbing personality traits. Johnson had not only all the benefits of privilege and wealth and connections he was educated at one of the most elite schools in the world and, unlike Trump, appeared to have retained some of what was stuffed into him there. Eton School is just a stone’s throw from Buckingham Palace and you don’t get in without serious dosh to spend or the right connections. See blog 35– Eton Mess  

I argue strongly that –all things being equal but many things being relative and mostly for accelerating the process of turning a functioning developed country into basket-case Britain - bonking bonkers buffoon Boris bags it for Britain and we win the Lousy Leader Lottery

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And - my regular readers know I'm not on any social media Fb/twitter etc (and NO the recent instagram account using my blog handle is NOTHING to do with me) but if you want to share this on then please do.

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And do check out My Books

343. Boris Johnson can’t manage family planning but we put him in charge of managing Britain.

And by family planning – I don’t mean contraception – I mean he doesn’t seem to be able to keep track of his families – never mind a new pathogen.

Yes – no matter how many times you pinch yourself it’s true. The lying, cheating, racist, blithering, dithering posh twit who thinks being PM is a part time job is de facto running the country during a global crisis.

The Symonds’ baby was – we were told - due in "early summer”. So either the seasons have shifted (another effect of global warming?) and April is now early summer instead of spring or shiftless Johnson tried to fool a very gullible public – and as usual - succeeded.

Then we were told the baby was premature. But for it to be premature enough to have not been well on the way while scatty-about-his-brats Johnson was still married to the mother of (I dunno) four of this known children – said woman also having treatment for cancer – the gestation would have had to have been about three months. Glory be. A miracle.

We are used to being instructed that we mustn’t mix the private lives of high profile people with their public duties – unless, that is, they choose to thrust those private lives into our faces when it suits their purposes. But from Bolsonaro to Trump it must now be clear to all that shitty men make shit leaders. And as many have pointed out – similar behaviour from an ordinary Joe lower down the food chain would draw derision and condemnation from those newspapers slavishly supporting Boris Johnson.

No doubt Johnson assumed that there would be nothing more onerous to do in 2020 than continue the Brexit wreckage and that could happily be left to Dominic Cummings while king-of-the-world simply enjoyed the trappings of high office. Many of his supporters were more than happy to have a known liar, philanderer (wonderful old fashioned word – like the clearly out of fashion notions of duty and honesty…) as leader. During the ‘quickie’ election in December last year, I lost count of the number of guys-on-the-street who said they’d vote for him because he was a ‘good bloke’ and a ‘bit of a laugh’.

Boris Johnson cannot, obviously, take responsibility for the country being badly run down and unready for the pandemic. Like Trump, he rarely takes responsibility for anything. No, that honour must go to his whole party as they have been in charge for a decade. Johnson couldn’t even be bothered to go to the emergency government cobra meetings early in the year. But I suppose by then he was ‘double-familied’.

Britain, the first country to have universal healthcare had no functioning UK-wide pandemic strategy. Trump got rid of America’s and cancelled the contract for keeping ventilators maintained (and advised folk to drink bleach…) BUT initially the US did have a strategic unit set up by Obama to cope with a pandemic which has been predicted by anyone with more than three brain cells to rub together. I even include this blog in that latter list and I’m not in on any secret meetings with anyone.

The broadcast media continue to read out ridiculous statements cobbled together by Matt Hancock as if they are actually true. Occasionally there is comment from someone at the sharp end who makes it clear that most of what is said is wishful thinking at best and bollocks at worst.

The other Dominic - Raab ( you will remember he was Brexit secretary before resigning after admitting he didn’t understand the importance of the Dover to Calais trade route) was First Secretary while Johnson was making his heroic, miraculous  recovery from coronavirus. Another miracle. When Raab was asked about the appalling failures in the care system for the elderly he stated  – with a straight face – that the sector was poorly managed and regulated (my paraphrase – he said something akin to that but less honest). But he said it as if the failure were nothing to do with THE GOVERNMENT. Maybe he not only doesn’t understand trade he doesn’t understand what the word GOVERNMENT means. The clue is in the first two syllables – GOVERN.

The whole horrible event has been a ludicrous mishmash of catch-up, with make-do- and-mend plus make-it-up-as-you-go-along thrown in. And if we were a third world country lacking resources or wealth or established structures, that would be bad but understandable.

We are not

It is not

It needs to be spelled out clearly that – as I’ve said before on this blog - the pandemic was the problem. The disaster for many and the long-lasting dreadful effects of this, especially for those at the bottom of the social pile, are a whole lot more to do with lack of leadership.

Finally – with regard to the weekend interview referred to by a gushing BBC as ‘candid’ Johnson apparently – having described his own health experience in soap opera style – declared he was now driven to prevent others suffering. It’s a bloody shame he didn’t feel “driven” in February or early March when it might have done some good.

Boris Johnson - a new man?