Skip to main content

Don't Be Fooled: Boris and the Great Distraction

We are now into day five of the nonsense about whatever Boris has or hasn’t said about women wearing burkas. Older white man makes derogatory, ill informed comments about what women wear. That’s not news. That’s every day. 

I am not belittling the impact- but there is some mischief going on here. 

I just finished reading Hillary Clinton’s “What Happened”. It’s not for the feint hearted- analysing loss is an ugly business. But in the midst of the pain she makes a really wise comment about the way the media covered the more outlandish things that Donald Trump said during the campaign. Her view is that it did no further damage to Trump as everyone knew he was a buffoon (my word), but it dominated the news cycle and stopped people talking about real issues for days at a time. 

Over the weekend senior economic types (like the head of the Bank of England) talked about the danger of a no deal Brexit. The pound continues to tank. And the media is dominated- not even by a serious piece about how women are judged for what they wear or not- but about the inner machinations of a club with 124,000 members. It is entirely in the interests of our ineffective government that we waste time talking about Boris rather than calling them (and by them I mean the group of bullying men who are paralysing the PM in negotiations but are to feckless to stand up and lead) to account. Boris will happily provide an endless stream of such distractions so that his failing nostalgia project doesn’t get held up to the public roasting it requires. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Week Today

A week today, when all the furore has ebbed and the markets have bottomed out, our nation will awake to the sounds of bugles and church bells as we commemorate 100 years from the start of the Battle of The Somme.  I am an historian by background, and the Somme for me is emblematic of a human tragedy that need never have happened. My reading of it is this: we began a war from a variety of odd alliances and murky motivations, capped off finally by a sense that no-one had the will to stop it.  In order to give the war effort impetus, posters, propaganda began to be bandied around about the enemy, about what they would do to children and how they needed to be stopped. It worked as a recruiting effort- young men, boys, and women all joined the war effort. They joined as an act of patriotism, tinged yes with fear, but also a sense that it might be the right thing to do. They joined from across the country- but at the heart of the front line forces were thousands and ten of thousands...
1 comment
Read more

Remembering What I Enjoy..

Occasionally I forget things. Some stuff like birthdays, names and stuff is a normal human thing, and I don't sweat it so much. But I also forget some other stuff which is not so good. I forget what I enjoy. I don't know how it happens but it does from time to time. And its at these moments that I need a bit of help remembering. So- this is a request for help. What do I enjoy doing? What gives me joy? Leave me a comment.
12 comments
Read more

What is your gospel?

So I'm meeting the DDO again tomorrow, where we will look criteria G: faith. One of the questions is; 'what is your gospel?'. Its a really interesting question; one that I have probably answered in many ways through the last 16 years. Today I think it is.. 'God made humanity to live in relationship with him, we chose to wander away from that and so the world has ended up essentially still good but just a shadow of what its meant to be. Thats true both of us individually and humanity in general. God has made a way for us to restore our relationship with him, and to become agents in restoring how things were always supposed to be. That way: is Jesus. As part of God, he lived on earth modelling the way that God chooses to change things. He kicked out demons, healed the sick, dignified the poor, and chose to subject himself to a world that hated him. He invites us to live like him- and gives us hope of doing just that through the Holy Spirit. The Bible uses the im...
9 comments
Read more