WHILE reading (I can’t abide listening to) yet more of the excremental garbage that comes so easily to the “PM”, it occurred that he might not be a liar after all. Not, that is, if you consider that he’s only speaking to his own narrow exceptionalist group.
“Brexit’s working well!”, “Bright future!”, “No crises!”, “Doing a great job!” and “Blah, blah, blah!” (as Greta so eloquently put it), works perfectly if you consider he’s only addressing his Cabinet, his cronies and chums and the very well-off. Those, that is, who seem so keen to offload vast sums of their ill-gotten wealth into Tory coffers and pick up honours and governmental posts as if bought at the corner shop.
READ MORE: Kirsty Strickland: Boris Johnson's speech was trivial, vague and utterly lacking in policy
We plainly have a two-tier society. One is the obscenely rich and two is the rest. The rest don’t count and the Tories don’t care. Survival of the fittest. He’s not speaking to, or about, you, stupid! Brexit has been a huge success if you wanted to avoid legislation finally catching up on your offshore wealth or if you didn’t want “the rest” to enjoy a better state pension in line with European requirement. You con the rest into giving you Brexit and an obscene 80-seat majority and you can play with “the constitution” to your heart’s content. The rest can die of cancer. So what if they don’t have enough to exist? Too bad they were born into poverty.
“Pile the bodies high!” would be a great epitaph on Johnson’s gold-encrusted headstone. Next time you think he’s lying, try imagining him only addressing his narrow, over-fed and over-privileged cabal.
Jim Finnie
Pitlochry
AS Boris Johnson feebly responds to each new crisis, increasingly it is becoming clear that he is a hollow man. He is a triumph of vanity and ambition over ability and integrity, a mediocre talent promoted way above his level of competence. A fact even Johnson himself acknowledges, describing himself being prime minister as “ludicrous“
His former boss, Max Hastings, previously editor of The Daily Telegraph, stated that Johnson was “manically disorganised about everything except his image management”
The recent re-shuffling of the Cabinet was like re-arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic after the iceberg has hit. The Cabinet’s rotten core, the Prime Minister’s weak performance, was not addressed. Sub-standard judgement and major gaffes by ministers are ignored, unless mysteriously a security camera is secretly installed in their office. Who authorised that?
READ MORE: FACT CHECK: Boris Johnson's claim that wages are rising
Boris Johnson’s inexperience and lack of political understanding lets him down time after time. His conference speech where he spoke of the plan to let all the low-paid workers leave, so employers would be forced to pay higher wages, shows him to be “economically illiterate” according to the Adam Smith Institute, a major force behind Margaret Thatcher’s premiership. Business leaders just wonder what planet is he is on?
Consumers just worry who will end up paying for all this.
Basically he is still a journalist, and he wasn’t even a very good journalist, he was sacked by The Times for making up facts. This is why he is obsessed with the next day’s headlines, instead of what really matters.
His university background was poor preparation – Classics, not economics or politics. However, the decline and fall of Ancient Rome might be relevant – as the government seeks to undermine any remaining influence this country once had in the world!
The corruption of Ancient Rome is perhaps seen by Johnson as guidance for the present government’s outsourcing procurement programmes.
Bluster and quips are no substitute for good judgement.
Andrew Milroy
Trowbridge
IN Wednesday’s otherwise relevant column, Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh states that “the Scottish Government is almost as guilty as the gang of Brexiteers who created the fuel and Christmas crisis” when talking about using older people to help out (The lesson for policy-makers in mobilising retirees is clear, Oct 6).
What an absolutely disgraceful statement from an so-called supporter of independence! She offers no evidence for her glib claim, but just had to get an anti-SNP jibe into her column.
If the views of this prominent Alba member, who chaired their recent conference, are representative of the wider Alba Party, it is hardly a surprise that they barely register in the polls.
Suggesting that the Scottish Government is as culpable for problems caused by Brexit as the most right-wing, British nationalist government in living memory either displays a complete lack of political understanding and analysis or blind hatred of the SNP or both.
Either way, she contributes nothing to the cause of Scottish independence.
David Howie
Dunblane
THANKS for comprehensive comment on proposed action on racism in Scottish football. This is welcome and overdue but will only address completely the problems of abuse when sectarianism is included with racism, sexism and homophobia as unacceptable.
Archie Drummond
Tillicoultry
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