Inspiration from Boris
Discussion
From today's Spectator..
Diary
Boris Johnson
This election is a swindle. It is a fraud on the electorate. We are asked to vote for one man, Blair, when he has explicitly said that he will not serve a full five years, and the chances must therefore be that the Labour machine will try, at some point in the next few years, to insert Gordon Brown. That would be utterly outrageous, not just because he is a gloomadon-popping, interfering, high-taxing complicator of life, but mainly because he is a Scot, and government by a Scot is just not conceivable in the current constitutional context. Not only is Scotland full of rotten boroughs, where Labour MPs are returned by relatively tiny electorates but, as I never tire of saying, we English MPs can be overruled by Scottish MPs on very controversial questions, affecting our constituents, when we have no corresponding say over those questions in Scotland, and those Scottish MPs themselves have no say over those questions, so that John Reid, Scottish Health Secretary for the so-called UK, has no say over health questions in so far as they affect his own constituents. Some say this is just inside-beltway stuff. They are wrong. It makes English audiences roar with anger, and it explains why Gordon Brown makes so many speeches about ‘Britishness’ and ‘British values’. He’s not really interested in British values. He’s worried about his personal political disability as a Scottish MP, and so he should be.
I was baffled to find a hunk of white marble in my rucksack, and then I remembered that my friend Elfyn Llwyd MP, leader of the Welsh Nats, had looted it when we were in one of Saddam’s pulverised palaces. To be accurate, he was in the process of looting it when he was interrupted by our young Foreign Office minder. ‘I don’t think that is appropriate behaviour from an MP,’ said the youth. Elfyn thought, and I agree, that this was a touch snotty. I don’t see how the FO can approve of initiating a war that has cost the lives of 17,000 Iraqi civilians, and blown this palace and much else to kingdom come, and then baulk at the removal of one Elfyn Marble. But Elfyn instinctively passed it to me.
On the subject of marble retention, Lady Thatcher seemed in sparky form when I met her at a recent party. Only one thing was troubling her. She wasn’t quite sure what she was going to be doing in the campaign, and at which barricades she would be asked to give her rallying cry. ‘Normally they give me a timetable,’ she said wistfully. Let us hope that a battle-plan has since been devised for this biggest and most venerable of Tory guns.
I am indebted to frontpagemag.com, a neocon website, for details of the exciting touristic itinerary they are offering Britophiles in London. After the Crown Jewels and the Changing of the Guard, the party goes to the House of Lords, where ‘we will be greeted by a Lord’. OK, folks, hands up. And what’s it worth?
Like hundreds of his Balliol pupils, I was shocked and grieved by the early death of Oliver Lyne, who taught us Latin. With his moustache and droopy fedora, he had the air of some French secret policeman. But you only had to spend an hour with him, talking about Catullus, Tibullus, Propertius, Ovid or Horace, and he so brilliantly manipulated your groping opinions that you not only came out feeling quite clever, but also that there was nothing, absolutely nothing, more important and universe-unlocking than Latin love poetry. Admittedly he once tried to throw me out of his room, saying, ‘I am not going to teach you with you sitting there all drunk and crapulous.’ I dimly formed the thought that I could not logically be both drunk and crapulous at once, but somehow it wouldn’t come out.
That is the genius of the Oxford tutorial: no matter how idle, moronic or incapable you are, you are entitled to one-on-one instruction from a leader in his field. Now, as James Howard-Johnston recently reported in our pages, that system is under threat. And it gets worse. I am told that Mods — traditionally the longest exam outside the old Indian Civil Service — is to be reduced from 13 three-hour exams to a weedy ten, and the kids no longer need to have read the whole of Homer! And they want to move the classics section, all those fantastic, sebum-stained, dandruff-filled volumes, out of the Bodleian. They must be stopped.
Running round Highbury the other night I came across the sprayers. You may not know it, but while the city sleeps the council-funded sprayers are at work, scouring the gum-lichened pavements with superpowerful jets of water. They stand in sou’westers, while clouds of spray drift across the street. It seems to take about five minutes per blob. It is like restoring the Sistine Chapel. Wouldn’t it be cheaper if we all just took up smoking?
I had a dream that someone was nicking our firewood and woke to find that the neighbours had been burgled. It happens the whole time in this part of London. It’s routine. The cops are round in the morning like the milk or the post. ‘We know all the burglars in this area, but we can’t do anything about it. They just convince the powers that be that they won’t re-offend, and then they are let out almost immediately.’ How long before some lefty lawyer has had enough, and becomes the Tony Martin of Islington? The Spectator will support you.
One of the simultaneous joys and pains of parenthood is the moment of il sorpasso, when — whichever way you look at it — a child overtakes you at skiing. I find it very hard, however, to fight my competitive urge, and I was pursuing a ten-year-old through the slush when I did a complete forward somersault, landing first on my head and spraining my neck before bouncing the right way up and popping something in my ribcage and then weaving on slowly in total defeat, like a dog hit by a car. There was a cheer from the ski-lift overhead (these things always happen under ski-lifts) and appreciative shouts of ‘pee-pee head’.
Sitting next to a Chilean-Dutch banker on a freezing chairlift, I found myself rhapsodising to this stranger about England in April. It is the most beautiful country on earth, I said, while he stared impassively ahead through sleet-covered goggles. You should see it, I said: the blackest, thorniest, runtiest twigs suddenly burst into jets and sprays of bloom. Coming back, I can see how right I was. As Catullus et al pointed out meaningfully to their girls, it doesn’t last long.
There is no greater terror for a Tory candidate than to forget or scramble our ten key words, so that we reach the juddering climax of our speeches with calls for ‘more immigration’ or ‘cleaner policemen’. I have no embarrassment, therefore, in reminding you that our simple and immediate objectives are: cleaner hospitals, more policemen, controlled immigration, school discipline and LOWER TAXES.
Diary
Boris Johnson
This election is a swindle. It is a fraud on the electorate. We are asked to vote for one man, Blair, when he has explicitly said that he will not serve a full five years, and the chances must therefore be that the Labour machine will try, at some point in the next few years, to insert Gordon Brown. That would be utterly outrageous, not just because he is a gloomadon-popping, interfering, high-taxing complicator of life, but mainly because he is a Scot, and government by a Scot is just not conceivable in the current constitutional context. Not only is Scotland full of rotten boroughs, where Labour MPs are returned by relatively tiny electorates but, as I never tire of saying, we English MPs can be overruled by Scottish MPs on very controversial questions, affecting our constituents, when we have no corresponding say over those questions in Scotland, and those Scottish MPs themselves have no say over those questions, so that John Reid, Scottish Health Secretary for the so-called UK, has no say over health questions in so far as they affect his own constituents. Some say this is just inside-beltway stuff. They are wrong. It makes English audiences roar with anger, and it explains why Gordon Brown makes so many speeches about ‘Britishness’ and ‘British values’. He’s not really interested in British values. He’s worried about his personal political disability as a Scottish MP, and so he should be.
I was baffled to find a hunk of white marble in my rucksack, and then I remembered that my friend Elfyn Llwyd MP, leader of the Welsh Nats, had looted it when we were in one of Saddam’s pulverised palaces. To be accurate, he was in the process of looting it when he was interrupted by our young Foreign Office minder. ‘I don’t think that is appropriate behaviour from an MP,’ said the youth. Elfyn thought, and I agree, that this was a touch snotty. I don’t see how the FO can approve of initiating a war that has cost the lives of 17,000 Iraqi civilians, and blown this palace and much else to kingdom come, and then baulk at the removal of one Elfyn Marble. But Elfyn instinctively passed it to me.
On the subject of marble retention, Lady Thatcher seemed in sparky form when I met her at a recent party. Only one thing was troubling her. She wasn’t quite sure what she was going to be doing in the campaign, and at which barricades she would be asked to give her rallying cry. ‘Normally they give me a timetable,’ she said wistfully. Let us hope that a battle-plan has since been devised for this biggest and most venerable of Tory guns.
I am indebted to frontpagemag.com, a neocon website, for details of the exciting touristic itinerary they are offering Britophiles in London. After the Crown Jewels and the Changing of the Guard, the party goes to the House of Lords, where ‘we will be greeted by a Lord’. OK, folks, hands up. And what’s it worth?
Like hundreds of his Balliol pupils, I was shocked and grieved by the early death of Oliver Lyne, who taught us Latin. With his moustache and droopy fedora, he had the air of some French secret policeman. But you only had to spend an hour with him, talking about Catullus, Tibullus, Propertius, Ovid or Horace, and he so brilliantly manipulated your groping opinions that you not only came out feeling quite clever, but also that there was nothing, absolutely nothing, more important and universe-unlocking than Latin love poetry. Admittedly he once tried to throw me out of his room, saying, ‘I am not going to teach you with you sitting there all drunk and crapulous.’ I dimly formed the thought that I could not logically be both drunk and crapulous at once, but somehow it wouldn’t come out.
That is the genius of the Oxford tutorial: no matter how idle, moronic or incapable you are, you are entitled to one-on-one instruction from a leader in his field. Now, as James Howard-Johnston recently reported in our pages, that system is under threat. And it gets worse. I am told that Mods — traditionally the longest exam outside the old Indian Civil Service — is to be reduced from 13 three-hour exams to a weedy ten, and the kids no longer need to have read the whole of Homer! And they want to move the classics section, all those fantastic, sebum-stained, dandruff-filled volumes, out of the Bodleian. They must be stopped.
Running round Highbury the other night I came across the sprayers. You may not know it, but while the city sleeps the council-funded sprayers are at work, scouring the gum-lichened pavements with superpowerful jets of water. They stand in sou’westers, while clouds of spray drift across the street. It seems to take about five minutes per blob. It is like restoring the Sistine Chapel. Wouldn’t it be cheaper if we all just took up smoking?
I had a dream that someone was nicking our firewood and woke to find that the neighbours had been burgled. It happens the whole time in this part of London. It’s routine. The cops are round in the morning like the milk or the post. ‘We know all the burglars in this area, but we can’t do anything about it. They just convince the powers that be that they won’t re-offend, and then they are let out almost immediately.’ How long before some lefty lawyer has had enough, and becomes the Tony Martin of Islington? The Spectator will support you.
One of the simultaneous joys and pains of parenthood is the moment of il sorpasso, when — whichever way you look at it — a child overtakes you at skiing. I find it very hard, however, to fight my competitive urge, and I was pursuing a ten-year-old through the slush when I did a complete forward somersault, landing first on my head and spraining my neck before bouncing the right way up and popping something in my ribcage and then weaving on slowly in total defeat, like a dog hit by a car. There was a cheer from the ski-lift overhead (these things always happen under ski-lifts) and appreciative shouts of ‘pee-pee head’.
Sitting next to a Chilean-Dutch banker on a freezing chairlift, I found myself rhapsodising to this stranger about England in April. It is the most beautiful country on earth, I said, while he stared impassively ahead through sleet-covered goggles. You should see it, I said: the blackest, thorniest, runtiest twigs suddenly burst into jets and sprays of bloom. Coming back, I can see how right I was. As Catullus et al pointed out meaningfully to their girls, it doesn’t last long.
There is no greater terror for a Tory candidate than to forget or scramble our ten key words, so that we reach the juddering climax of our speeches with calls for ‘more immigration’ or ‘cleaner policemen’. I have no embarrassment, therefore, in reminding you that our simple and immediate objectives are: cleaner hospitals, more policemen, controlled immigration, school discipline and LOWER TAXES.
Boris is an utter tw@t.
That said, for a surprising change he actually said something remotely intelligent:
"Not only is Scotland full of rotten boroughs, where Labour MPs are returned by relatively tiny electorates but, as I never tire of saying, we English MPs can be overruled by Scottish MPs on very controversial questions, affecting our constituents, when we have no corresponding say over those questions in Scotland, and those Scottish MPs themselves have no say over those questions, so that John Reid, Scottish Health Secretary for the so-called UK, has no say over health questions in so far as they affect his own constituents."
The UK constitutionally is in an utter mess and if I were an English person I'd be more than a little pi55ed off at the current state of affairs.
That said, for a surprising change he actually said something remotely intelligent:
"Not only is Scotland full of rotten boroughs, where Labour MPs are returned by relatively tiny electorates but, as I never tire of saying, we English MPs can be overruled by Scottish MPs on very controversial questions, affecting our constituents, when we have no corresponding say over those questions in Scotland, and those Scottish MPs themselves have no say over those questions, so that John Reid, Scottish Health Secretary for the so-called UK, has no say over health questions in so far as they affect his own constituents."
The UK constitutionally is in an utter mess and if I were an English person I'd be more than a little pi55ed off at the current state of affairs.
Boris said:
Not only is Scotland full of rotten boroughs, where Labour MPs are returned by relatively tiny electorates but
That's a bit much, its just Central Scotland
But the whole West Lothian (question) situation is a bit ridiculous.
Any ideas why there are so many Scottish politicians in prominant positions?
SuckMyChrsitmas said:
My opinion is based upon what he's written and what he's said on television. Half the time when he was on Question Time he seemed to be poorly informed about current affairs. Plus he edits The Spectator. And I don't read The Mirror.
Regardless of whether you agree with his political hue or not, if you can't see that Boris Johnson is one of the most incisive commentators of our time and one of the most charismatic politicians, you must be in need of a white stick and a deaf aid.
Oh, and he's also a car fanatic and a registered PH'er who reads these pages quite regularly! www.pistonheads.com/members/showProfile.asp?memberId=38855
>> Edited by Mon Ami Mate on Thursday 7th April 17:34
"Regardless of whether you agree with his political hue or not, if you can't see that Boris Johnson is one of the most incisive commentators of our time and one of the most charismatic politicians [itallics added], you must be in need of a white stick and a deaf aid."
LMFAO
The "general public" do seem to warm to his bumbling, nice-but-dim shtick, though.
LMFAO
The "general public" do seem to warm to his bumbling, nice-but-dim shtick, though.
Perhaps I shouldn't have posted a light-hearted diary piece. Perhaps you'd like a more hard-hitting political article? This, new from his website:
ZIMBABWE / GB : FORMER BREADBASKETS?
You know I hesitate to assist the mad old tyrant Robert Mugabe, and I only mention this idea because I am sure he has thought of it already. There he is in Harare, luxuriating in another infamous violation of democracy. By force and threats his Zanu-PF thugs have kept thousands from the polls. Pro-Mugabe ballot papers have been magicked into existence, while opposition threats have been systematically destroyed.
To believe that last week's elections were free and fair, you have to believe that the people of Zimbabwe are so in love with Mugabe's policies of chronic inflation and mass starvation that they could think of nothing finer than to give him another five years. The elections were a sham and a fraud. They have been denounced around the world; and that is why, if I were Mugabe, I think I would embark on the following entirely cynical wheeze. I would make a long speech on that very subject; I would harp on about the disaster of electoral corruption, and the eating away of voter confidence in democracy. Then, with a flourish, I would announce that I was sending a team of election monitors to - you guessed it - Birmingham, England. Can you imagine the scenes? The Zanu-PF henchmen would tool around in their Mercs, pompously demanding to interrogate our returning officers, and invoking UN codes on the sanctity of ballot boxes. They would give long-faced press conferences and wring their hands on the steps of Birmingham town hall. Back in Harare, Mugabe would pick up on their findings, renew his hysterical assaults on the Blair government (which he has already denounced, you may remember, as a bunch of "homosexual gangsters"), and urge his election monitors to redouble their efforts.
And how, in the current circumstances, could we reasonably deny them? We say that there was scandalous ballot-stuffing in Zimbabwe, where opposition election officials were brutally kicked out of polling stations, and where voting was mysteriously closed down early in pro-opposition areas. For instance, in the Kariba district it was initially announced that 16,676 had cast their vote. Then the votes were counted according to party preference. Hmmm. Long pause. Sorr-eee! said the Zanu-PF election officials: actually there were 13,719 Zanu-PF votes, and 9,540 votes for the Movement for Democratic Change. In other words, an extra 7,466 new votes had somehow turned up from nowhere. We in the west say that the whole thing was a fix. At which the Zanu-PF election monitors in Birmingham would feign outrage. A fix! they would say, taking off their shades for extra sincerity. Who are you to call us corrupt? Talk about pots and kettles, they would say. This is just the kind of racist bias we expect old imperial power, they would say, and they would point to the amazing way in which the British postal ballot system has been perverted.
And we have to admit that they have plenty of evidence to back up their case. Thousands of ballot papers were nicked, amid scenes of police apathy and general official shambles that belonged, indeed, in Matabeleland. According to Richard Mawrey QC, who presided over the Birmingham inquiry, the entire system is an invitation to fraud and redolent of a "banana republic". Mr Mawrey is a brave and good man, and we must hope that his legal career is not jeopardised by his willingness to speak out. And he also, alas, provides Robert Mugabe with the perfect rhetorical opportunity. If I were Mugabe, I would hail Mawrey as a kind of martyr for truth, a lone judicial opponent of political corruption, and I would instruct my British monitoring team to stay for the whole month of the election campaign. That is because if he wants to find evidence of the outrageous pro-government bias of the electoral system, it is there in spades.
We complain that the Zimbabwean system is designed to favour Zanu-PF, not least since Mugabe can pick 30 MPs himself. But look at the way the British system currently favours Labour. We have just started a truly exciting general election campaign. We Tories believe that we deserve to win, and that we could win. We leave parliament today, and hit the campaign trail, with our danders up, our peckers up, and our tails up, if that is anatomically possible. The polls are now putting us level pegging, if not better, with Labour. But consider how the system is skewed against us. Even if we both score 34 per cent in the final shoot-out, Labour would be left with an incredible 142 MORE seats than the Tories, and Mr Blair would still have a majority of 40 over all other parties. Even if Labour and the Tories score 36 per cent apiece, Blair still has a majority of 52 seats. In order to secure a majority of just one seat in the Commons, the Tories would need a lead of about ten percentage points. I am not saying that is impossible; but it means overcoming the kind of ludicrous unfairness that is familiar to the Zimbabwean opposition. How has this happened? There are several reasons, but the most shocking is the way Labour-held seats in the north, and especially in Scotland, have been allowed to shrink and shrink in population, while Tory seats have grown ever more populous. The electorate in Tory seats averages 72,000, with fewer than 66,000 in Labour seats. If the Tories and Labour both achieved 34 per cent, the average Tory MP would have 22,000 votes, while the average Labour MP would have 16,000 votes.
This nonsense cannot go on. if Labour is re-elected, it will be with the help of one of the most gerrymandered systems in the western world. It is time for a Great Reform Act, to redraw the boundaries and clear away Labour's rotten boroughs. The more you study the position, the clearer it is why Jack Straw has been so muted - compared, say, to Washington - in his criticism of the Zimbabwe polls. The awful truth is that the difference between us is not as big as it should be.
ZIMBABWE / GB : FORMER BREADBASKETS?
You know I hesitate to assist the mad old tyrant Robert Mugabe, and I only mention this idea because I am sure he has thought of it already. There he is in Harare, luxuriating in another infamous violation of democracy. By force and threats his Zanu-PF thugs have kept thousands from the polls. Pro-Mugabe ballot papers have been magicked into existence, while opposition threats have been systematically destroyed.
To believe that last week's elections were free and fair, you have to believe that the people of Zimbabwe are so in love with Mugabe's policies of chronic inflation and mass starvation that they could think of nothing finer than to give him another five years. The elections were a sham and a fraud. They have been denounced around the world; and that is why, if I were Mugabe, I think I would embark on the following entirely cynical wheeze. I would make a long speech on that very subject; I would harp on about the disaster of electoral corruption, and the eating away of voter confidence in democracy. Then, with a flourish, I would announce that I was sending a team of election monitors to - you guessed it - Birmingham, England. Can you imagine the scenes? The Zanu-PF henchmen would tool around in their Mercs, pompously demanding to interrogate our returning officers, and invoking UN codes on the sanctity of ballot boxes. They would give long-faced press conferences and wring their hands on the steps of Birmingham town hall. Back in Harare, Mugabe would pick up on their findings, renew his hysterical assaults on the Blair government (which he has already denounced, you may remember, as a bunch of "homosexual gangsters"), and urge his election monitors to redouble their efforts.
And how, in the current circumstances, could we reasonably deny them? We say that there was scandalous ballot-stuffing in Zimbabwe, where opposition election officials were brutally kicked out of polling stations, and where voting was mysteriously closed down early in pro-opposition areas. For instance, in the Kariba district it was initially announced that 16,676 had cast their vote. Then the votes were counted according to party preference. Hmmm. Long pause. Sorr-eee! said the Zanu-PF election officials: actually there were 13,719 Zanu-PF votes, and 9,540 votes for the Movement for Democratic Change. In other words, an extra 7,466 new votes had somehow turned up from nowhere. We in the west say that the whole thing was a fix. At which the Zanu-PF election monitors in Birmingham would feign outrage. A fix! they would say, taking off their shades for extra sincerity. Who are you to call us corrupt? Talk about pots and kettles, they would say. This is just the kind of racist bias we expect old imperial power, they would say, and they would point to the amazing way in which the British postal ballot system has been perverted.
And we have to admit that they have plenty of evidence to back up their case. Thousands of ballot papers were nicked, amid scenes of police apathy and general official shambles that belonged, indeed, in Matabeleland. According to Richard Mawrey QC, who presided over the Birmingham inquiry, the entire system is an invitation to fraud and redolent of a "banana republic". Mr Mawrey is a brave and good man, and we must hope that his legal career is not jeopardised by his willingness to speak out. And he also, alas, provides Robert Mugabe with the perfect rhetorical opportunity. If I were Mugabe, I would hail Mawrey as a kind of martyr for truth, a lone judicial opponent of political corruption, and I would instruct my British monitoring team to stay for the whole month of the election campaign. That is because if he wants to find evidence of the outrageous pro-government bias of the electoral system, it is there in spades.
We complain that the Zimbabwean system is designed to favour Zanu-PF, not least since Mugabe can pick 30 MPs himself. But look at the way the British system currently favours Labour. We have just started a truly exciting general election campaign. We Tories believe that we deserve to win, and that we could win. We leave parliament today, and hit the campaign trail, with our danders up, our peckers up, and our tails up, if that is anatomically possible. The polls are now putting us level pegging, if not better, with Labour. But consider how the system is skewed against us. Even if we both score 34 per cent in the final shoot-out, Labour would be left with an incredible 142 MORE seats than the Tories, and Mr Blair would still have a majority of 40 over all other parties. Even if Labour and the Tories score 36 per cent apiece, Blair still has a majority of 52 seats. In order to secure a majority of just one seat in the Commons, the Tories would need a lead of about ten percentage points. I am not saying that is impossible; but it means overcoming the kind of ludicrous unfairness that is familiar to the Zimbabwean opposition. How has this happened? There are several reasons, but the most shocking is the way Labour-held seats in the north, and especially in Scotland, have been allowed to shrink and shrink in population, while Tory seats have grown ever more populous. The electorate in Tory seats averages 72,000, with fewer than 66,000 in Labour seats. If the Tories and Labour both achieved 34 per cent, the average Tory MP would have 22,000 votes, while the average Labour MP would have 16,000 votes.
This nonsense cannot go on. if Labour is re-elected, it will be with the help of one of the most gerrymandered systems in the western world. It is time for a Great Reform Act, to redraw the boundaries and clear away Labour's rotten boroughs. The more you study the position, the clearer it is why Jack Straw has been so muted - compared, say, to Washington - in his criticism of the Zimbabwe polls. The awful truth is that the difference between us is not as big as it should be.
Mon Ami Mate said:Mon Ami Mate, you're doing a sterling job but remember, Boris doesn't speak Grauniad. Get Polly Toynbee to translate for SMC
Perhaps I shouldn't have posted a light-hearted diary piece. Perhaps you'd like a more hard-hitting political article? This, new from his website:
JagLover said:
Good on Boris
The old West Lothian question again eh-labour still have not found a solution.
Probably because they haven't bothered looking. When the whole Scottish parliament issue was starting up a few years back, I looked on with interest and thought 'Ah! But how will they get out of this one (the West Lothian question)?'. Despite my abysmally poor opinion of politicians, especially so of the current shower, never in my wildest imagination did I think they would 'get round it' by simply ignoring the issue. Utterly, utterly shameful.
AlexH said:
Good on Boris
The old West Lothian question again eh-labour still have not found a solution.
Probably because they haven't bothered looking. When the whole Scottish parliament issue was starting up a few years back, I looked on with interest and thought 'Ah! But how will they get out of this one (the West Lothian question)?'. Despite my abysmally poor opinion of politicians, especially so of the current shower, never in my wildest imagination did I think they would 'get round it' by simply ignoring the issue. Utterly, utterly shameful.
They should be very ashamed of themselves,abondoning constitutional principle for political expediancy.
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