We've been thinking a lot about when ministers should and shouldn't return from holiday recently, and the consequences of their decisions. But the tragic and appalling events in Afghanistan weren't the first time senior ministers have been away when something big has kicked off and their junior ministers have had to deal with it. Today Lynne Featherstone tells My London about her experience 10 years ago when the Tottenham Riots broke out. Boris Johnson, then Mayor of London, was off sunning himself somewhere and didn't come back, David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Theresa May were all away, so, for a ...
This educational but fun video from CGP Grey explains the virtues of the Single Transferable Vote (STV), the version of electoral reform most favoured by Liberal Democrats.
We made it back from Norn Iron OK on Sunday, flying home from Belfast via Amsterdam, which is the cheapest and quickest route these days. A good break.>View this post on InstagramA post shared by Nicholas Whyte (@nwbrux) I diligently went for my return-to-Belgium COVID test on Monday, and was offered three for the (already modest) price of one as they were doing tests for a new procedure. In for a cent, in for a euro, and they gave me €35 of shopping vouchers as a reward (which meant I almost came out ahead on the deal). I was actually ...
I have just got back from spending a sunny morning in Liverpool wandering around most of the Heritage Trail which marks the role that Liverpool played during the Irish Famines and the role that the Irish have played in our ... Continue reading →
Jo Swinson was right about many things. Just after she became leader in 2019, she told Iain Dale that the worst thing about Boris Johnson is that he just doesn't care about anything other than himself. Nowhere has that been more obvious than in the way he has behaved over the evacuation from Afghanistan. The way you act when you are in a leadership position is a powerful signal to those below you about how important you think something is. If you are passionate about getting something done, it's very clear. There's a reasonable expectation that, at times of crisis, ...
Sat, 12:56: RT @neilhimself: Of course it's the Virgin Mary. What else could it possibly be? https://t.co/Udbh4GFFEE Sat, 14:48: Ripon Cathedral's Space Age Chapel https://t.co/DcGqHVk4Wt Groovy. Sat, 15:47: Fish Tails, by Sheri S. Tepper https://t.co/VfXfEkzwhx
Yesterday a Facebook memory threw up a blogpost I wrote in 2009. It quoted a rather prescient passage about Afghanistan from Paddy Ashdown's 2009 Autobiography in which he quotes a confidential minute he submitted a few years earlier when he was being considered as the UN Special Representative in the country. It is worth reproducing again in light of recent events: 1. We do not have enough troops, aid or international will to make Afghanistan much different from what it has been for the last 1,000 years - a society built around guns, drugs and tribalism. And even if we ...
A passing mention in the latest edition of The Word Podcast led me to Principal Edwards Magic Theatre and this song. The band, a favourite of John Peel's, was formed at Essex University in 1968. Its members soon abandoned their studies to form a commune. That commune was in a farmhouse near Kettering. I'd love to know exactly where the farmhouse was, but its general location explains this song. The tone is mocking, or at least ironically celebrating, but I won't hear a word against Sainsbury's in Kettering. Back in the 1980s I used to catch the bus and shop ...
Afghanistan As Kabul descends into chaos it is becoming painfully clear that this is largely due to poor political leadership in the West. America – Trump and Biden – bear the lion's share of the blame. Trump for laying the groundwork and Biden for failing to jettison Trump's work and the serious miscalculation that the government of Ashraf Ghani could hold back the Taliban tide. But the Europeans also have to accept a big share of the blame, especially British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The British were the lead European partner in Afghanistan. They have (or had) the second largest ...
Leader of the Liberal Democrats Ed Davey has called out Prime Minister Johnson on his "flippant remarks" at UK's Afghanistan crisis centre. Ed said: "These flippant remarks show Boris Johnson in his true light, uncaring and unable to master the detail during this awful crisis."The emails he refers to are from desperate family and friends worried that the Taliban will kill their loved ones. "Perhaps if Boris Johnson had understood and planned for the dangers of the Kabul evacuation, thousands of people would not be at crisis point."
I recently received complaints from residents about potholes in parts of Corso Street's road surface. I raised this with the City Council's Roads Maintenance Partnership and received the following helpful response : "The Road Inspector has raised a works order for pothole repairs in this street."
A letter from Gregory Klyve in the 17 June issue of the London Review of Books discusses Boris Johnson's claim to know the beginning of the Iliad off by heart: There's a clip online of him attempting a demonstration at the Melbourne Writers Festival. He recites the first 42 lines in just two and a half minutes. He achieves this by omitting lines 8, 15-16, 18-19, 21-22, 32 and 39-41. He misquotes lines 14, 17, 20, 23, 24, 35, 36, 37 and 38. The remaining lines are present and correct. Boris Johnson is a barbarian's idea of a speaker of ...
