Tag Archives: Boris Johnson

The Worst Week of My Life

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Regular readers might have noticed that this blog is hardly topical. Most of these posts are written, or at least started weeks ago. I get an idea, scribble it down and sooner or later I finish it off. Sometimes I never finish it and a number of my blog posts have been condemned to an eternity in my drafts folder waiting for a day when I will feel inspired enough to either finish the post or hit the delete button. Anyway, I thought I’d try to do something topical for a change.

This last week three particular people have been in the news for having a bad week. let’s take a closer look.

Boris Johnson

I’ve always kind of liked Boris. Some seem to think he’s just a bumbling buffoon but at least he does have some charisma, which many politicians lack. Boris had to wait quite a while for the top job. He was the leader of the leave group during the Brexit campaigns and should have rightly become prime minister when David Cameron decided to resign. Strangely he didn’t, Theresa May became the prime minister despite being in the same remain camp as the newly departed David Cameron. Anyway, the top job clearly wasn’t for her and she was soon to give way to Boris.

Boris has tried to keep on top of the Covid 19 situation which has caused mayhem all across the globe. His government have issued lockdowns at various times but recently he has stepped back from another lockdown and just asked the populace to use common sense. The big problem for him though is more and more revelations of partying at 10 Downing St when the rest of us were staying at home and keeping away from friends and family.

He has apologised to the Queen for a drinks party at number 10 on the eve of Prince Philip’s funeral and new reports suggest that staff even went with a suitcase to buy more alcohol to continue the festivities. All of that contrasts sharply with the image the Queen presented, sitting alone at her husband’s funeral wearing a black mask.

Will Boris be able to ride out calls to resign? Only time will tell. By the time you read this, we might know a little more.

Novak Djokovic

Tennis player Novak Djokovic flew to Australia to defend his Australian Open Championship Title. He apparently had a ‘vaccine exemption’ but the Australian authorities weren’t happy about it and the Serbian player was denied entry. He and his team decided to appeal and he was forced to go into quarantine while everything was sorted out. He won his appeal but the immigration minister decided to quash the appeal and reimpose the penalty.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced that ‘Australians have made many sacrifices during this pandemic and rightly expect the result of those sacrifices to be protected.’

Djokovic has appealed again so is in further quarantine while he awaits the latest result. The whole thing must be a pain in the neck for the tennis player and I don’t understand why the Australians let him into the country in the first place. Of course, a lot of the actions of the Ozzie government have been fuelled by the feelings of the Australian people themselves. I saw quite a few interviews on TV where members of the public were deeply unhappy about Djokovic entering the country. After all, he wants to enjoy international travel but at the same time, isn’t willing to be vaccinated. Not a great week at all for Novak and as you read this he is back in his native Serbia.

Prince Andrew.

Andrew must be the most unpopular member of the Royal Family. For years I’ve been reading articles in newspapers about his bad attitude, his rudeness and his desire to go everywhere in private jets, paid for by us, the UK taxpayer.

What has happened to him now? Well, he is to face a civil case in the USA over claims he sexually assaulted a lady called Virginia Giuffre in 2001 when she was 17. Andrew’s lawyers claim the case should be dismissed citing a 2009 deal she signed with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein who apparently introduced Andrew to Giuffre but a New York judge doesn’t agree so the case is now free to come to court.

The Royal family have reacted by stripping Andrew of his HRH title and a whole list of other military titles such as Colonel of the Grenadier Guard, Colonel in Chief of the Irish Regiment, Honorary Air Commodore of RAF Lossiemouth and many more. Basically, the royals have cut him loose to protect the family and are saying, ‘Bye Andrew, you’re on your own!’ Yep, not a great week for Andrew.

Nicholas Rossi

It hasn’t been a great week for Nicholas Rossi. Mr Rossi isn’t quite as famous as the three detailed above but he has had just as bad a week as they have. He was admitted to hospital in Scotland using the nom de plume of Arthur Knight. Unfortunately, he was unmasked as Rossi and found to have an international arrest warrant waiting for him regarding an alleged rape in the USA.

Mr Rossi told US media in December 2019 that he had late-stage non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and had only weeks to live. Various media outlets reported that he had died in February 2020 and a memorial posted online declared him a “warrior that fought on the front lines for two decades” for children’s rights and said his ashes had been scattered at sea. He was arrested by Police in Glasgow on behalf of their counterparts in Utah.

Me

I really can’t imagine what the worst week of my life might have been. The engine blowing up on my first car? My Kawasaki Z500 stolen from my back garden? The death of my father?

This week hasn’t been so bad really. I haven’t done much although I went to the quiz night the other night and also went to one of my favourite Italian restaurants, Allegria in St Annes. I had the usual email from the national lottery telling me to check my account because I had some good news coming. I’m glad I did because that £6 lottery win should come in pretty handy.

One thing I did do this week was embrace the digital world even more by adding Google Pay to my mobile phone. The first time I tried to use it I was struggling a little and nothing was happening. Luckily the lady at the till had seen this sort of thing before and advised that I was pointing the wrong end of my phone towards the pay hub at the checkout. I turned the phone round and made my first payment. Of course, big downside of this is that the old tightwad’s excuse of sorry, I forgot my wallet doesn’t pass muster anymore so clearly I’ll have to bring that up at the next Tightwads’ members’ meeting.

This is the bit where I tend to link these ramblings to a film or TV show. Big ask this week, you might be thinking. However, it just so happens that back in 2004 there was a TV series called just that, The Worst Week of My Life.

The Worst Week of My Life follows publishing executive Howard Steel in the week prior to his wedding. It’s perhaps not the best-known TV series but personally I thought it was pretty funny.

That’s it from me, hope you had a good week!

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The Brexit Blues Part 2

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I’m not really sure how to start with Brexit but anyway, here goes. Way back in 2016 we, the people of the UK voted to leave the European Union. It was pretty close, 52% to 48% but the leavers won over the remainers and well, that’s democracy, those with the biggest vote win.

Now as far as I know the referendum wasn’t legally binding in any way, just an indication of public feeling but the Prime Minister, who was David Cameron at the time, decided the referendum result meant we had to leave the EU and as he couldn’t go along with that because he didn’t want to leave the EU, he had to resign.

Now to a great extent that is where all the problems began. I assumed, rightly I think, that a pro leave MP would take over at 10 Downing Street, the obvious candidate being Boris Johnson but no, Theresa May won the premiership contest despite being on the remain side, just like David Cameron. Now clearly Mrs May didn’t think in the same way as Cameron. She was at heart a remainer but wanted to deliver Brexit in a way that she wanted, a way acceptable I presume, to her and fellow remainers.

Despite personally being on the leave side I think David Cameron would have been better going back to Brussels and saying, look, my voters are not happy about the EU, we need to take a good look at our membership, after all, 52% of people actually want to leave. Of course I’m not a politician so what do I know but maybe Cameron and the Euro people could have hammered something out, a way of staying in the EU which was acceptable to the leave voters. After all, I don’t mind being in the European Union, the idea sounds good, a community or union of nations who trade together and respect each others’ borders so that for example, in a recent road trip I was able to drive from Belgium, down through France and into Spain without ever stopping at any border controls.

The reality is a bit different though as we have to accept any EU ruling on anything, not only trade but also laws, measurements, monetary issues, immigration, farming policy, car emissions and all sorts of stuff. There have even been cases where the so-called European Court of Human Rights have overruled judicial verdicts in the UK.

I remember a case a few years ago where some east european guy who had no driving licence, drove a car onto the pavement and ran over and killed an entire family. The courts rightly deported this fellow but hang on, the European Court of Human Rights stepped in and said, wait a minute, you can’t do that, it’s against the guy’s human rights. OK but what about my human rights and the human rights of all my fellow citizens? Our human right to walk on the pavement without getting some crazy driver running us down. Isn’t that a human right?

Still, for me at any rate, Cameron had plenty of room to manoeuvre and to hang on to my vote and for me to accept staying in the EU.

Not so long after that, the Government suffered the biggest defeat in the House of Commons by any Government in UK history when members of Parliament rejected Theresa May’s Brexit deal by a huge majority and later only survived a no confidence vote by 19 votes. The big problem with Brexit for me is that the majority leave vote only amounted to 52% which really means that the country is pretty much split on the issue. If the vote had been 60-70% to leave, I don’t think Brexit would be such a big issue but as we as a country are so divided then it is an issue.

Anyway after three years Theresa May had had enough, she resigned and finally Boris Johnson got the job. Aha, maybe we are getting somewhere now because shouldn’t he really have been given the job three years ago? Well, the first thing Boris decides to do is prorogue Parliament, that is shut it down for a while which wasn’t really a great idea. Supposedly it was so he could bring in a Queen’s Speech and start off a new term of Parliament with new ideas and new legislation. Of course the House itself wasn’t happy with that so various people decided to take the issue to the courts. The Scottish court decided it wasn’t right and the English court decided, sensibly in my view, that they shouldn’t meddle in politics.

The Supreme Court of the UK however wasn’t having any of that and declared the Prime Minister’s advice to the Queen to close Parliament to be illegal and so here we are again, Parliament open for business again and still arguing about something the British public voted on years ago.

What has been interesting about the closing down of Parliament is how people are calling it ‘undemocratic’. Surely the referendum was about as democratic as you can get and now as Parliament is trying to block Brexit. Doesn’t that mean that Parliament are the ‘undemocratic’ ones?

I have to say that the whole Brexit story has been fascinating from beginning to, well I was going to say end but when will it end? The only thing I have ever seen that is even comparable was when I was a teenager and President Nixon sacked the special prosecutor in the Watergate case. That was back in 1973 and Nixon ordered the Attorney General to sack Archibald Cox but the Attorney General refused and then tendered his resignation. Nixon then ordered the Deputy Attorney General to do the dirty deed but he also refused and resigned. Nixon finally got the US Solicitor General to fire Cox which was finally done although eventually, Nixon himself had to resign.

Somehow though I can’t see Boris Johnson resigning.

So, what is the answer? Another vote? Suppose the remain voters won that one, would that solve the issue? I doubt it, after all it would be one for the leavers and one for the remainers. We could have a best of 3 vote though, couldn’t we? What about an election? Well, because the Conservatives have a minority Government that means that currently the Opposition parties can club together and defeat the Government, so they don’t want an election either.

I suppose eventually the whole thing will sort itself out, in the meantime I think I’ll take a quick trip to France while I still can!

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