FlyTheNest

Morning all.

Good morning.

Oh dear...

Good morning, more Oh dear while the Committee is in full swing --

" The Division Bell will go and he'll walk down the corridor and kick Rishi Sunak in the goolies" "

( Chris Mason on R4 Today .)

The Times --



Opposite the cartoon there is Danny Finkelstein on Lying and Hypocrisy .

Goes well with @Sky's post last night .

"Well, I didn't mean Simon Case...I was talking about the other ones...whose names I forget now"

RogerOThornhill wrote: ↑Wed 22 Mar, 2023 9:14 am Good morning.

Oh dear...

Sunak loyalists calling on him to do what Johnson did before the last GE and withdraw the whip from any Tory MP voting against.

He probably won't end up needing Labour votes to pass this, but if that does happen it will be seriously embarrassing.

AK " Sunak loyalists calling on him to do what Johnson did before the last GE and withdraw the whip from any Tory MP voting against. "

Now that would be fun !!

Good morfternoon.

£200,00, minimum, for a defence (and NB it's not even a court of law) that Boris Johnson has reduced to the assertion that, "you can't get the staff these days".

Already getting very bad tempered after less than an hour of questioning, apparently.

Johnson looking shifty already, so far his defence is that somehow No 10 was a unique work environment and that the guidance said that you could ignore the guidance if it didn't suit you.

I can't see this going down well with the public. People couldn't go to funerals never mind leaving dos yet Johnson appears to think he and his staff were a special case and because that's how they saw themselves it meant they could ignore the guidance he was telling everyone else to follow.

I understand that he's sticking to his only narrow line of defence but it makes he and his staff look like absolute arseholes.

Around 30 Tory MPs have voted against Sunak's NI deal, plus a few abstentions.

He's now gone for the 'because I was too stupid to understand what I was doing was illegal it means I'm innocent' defence.

Ha ha, this is not going well for him.

Sky'sGoneOut wrote: ↑Wed 22 Mar, 2023 3:32 pm Johnson looking shifty already, so far his defence is that somehow No 10 was a unique work environment and that the guidance said that you could ignore the guidance if it didn't suit you.
I can't see this going down well with the public. People couldn't go to funerals never mind leaving dos yet Johnson appears to think he and his staff were a special case and because that's how they saw themselves it meant they could ignore the guidance he was telling everyone else to follow.
I understand that he's sticking to his only narrow line of defence but it makes he and his staff look like absolute arseholes.

GOOD, thanks for watching !



Where was Nads ???????????

Johnson's defence.

No 10 was a unique and special work environment. All the 'gatherings' were work events. The Covid guidance allowed for that guidance to be ignored for vital reasons of work. Leaving dos and birthday parties were vital for work. Garden parties were vital for work. Having his wife and her decorator friend present was vital for work. He knew all the guidance was being followed because he had assurances from his 'trusted advisors'. These were his own political appointees Jack Doyle and James Slack. He asked for no advice on the Covid guidance from any senior civil servants or government lawyers. Despite their appearances in pictures 'In his head' every 'gathering' he attended followed the guidance and therefore every statement he made in parliament was true. Apart from the one he did get a penalty notice for all the other gatherings must have been within the guidance because he wasn't fined even if other people were. Even the one he was fined for he doesn't accept broke the guidance. He's done nothing wrong and it would be an insane, monstrous injustice if he were to be held to account for his actions.

The reality.

Johnson lied through his teeth repeatedly in parliament, constantly firefighting for months as pictures and accounts were drip fed through the media of constant piss ups that were revealed to have occurred in No 10 under his watch while the rest of the country was either locked down or under severe restrictions. As far as we are aware no other business or institution interpreted Covid guidance to mean it could be ignored if you had the flimsiest of excuse to get drunk with your colleagues. Nobody else was smuggling in suitcases full of wine past the police. Nobody else thought standing in front of a table covered in bottles of booze in a packed room toasting your mates on a Friday was a work meeting. No other business or institution received over a hundred fixed penalty notices. And yet what Johnson wants us to believe is that in that environment, and with everything he knows now, he still thinks he did nothing wrong. Which either means he's staggeringly stupid, or he thinks we are.

Never mind what he did, even his defence is so offensive I hope the committee throw him to the wolves.

I think there is a good chance they will

After watching it I have to agree. Sadly it won't be the endless lies they'll get him on, it will be that he only took advice from people employed to tell him what he wanted to hear, so the assurances he offered to parliament were worthless.

Sky'sGoneOut wrote: ↑Wed 22 Mar, 2023 3:32 pm
I understand that he's sticking to his only narrow line of defence but it makes he and his staff look like absolute arseholes.

Because they are.

Was Bernard Jenkin a Johnson supporter at one point?

Genuine question, if I was asked to guess which tory MP would be making BJ squirm, Jenkin wouldn't have been a name that sprung to mind.

gilsey wrote: ↑Wed 22 Mar, 2023 6:53 pm Was Bernard Jenkin a Johnson supporter at one point?

Jenkin has certainly defended some of Johnson's most egregious offences in the past, I remember him on Newsnight claiming it was fine for Johnson to say the best way to honour the memory of Jo Cox was to get Brexit done.

However Johnson's defence was so full of holes today even Jenkin couldn't resist poking at them. When it came to the worthless assurances Johnson claimed he had been given half the committee pointed out their flaws, including the other two Tory questioners, which is why I suspect that's what they'll use to find him guilty. It handily means they can rebuke him for recklessly accepting poor advice without coming out and calling him a liar.

Well, I'm convinced

Sky'sGoneOut wrote: ↑Wed 22 Mar, 2023 7:45 pm I suspect that's what they'll use to find him guilty. It handily means they can rebuke him for recklessly accepting poor advice without coming out and calling him a liar.

Or explaining why he needed advice.
In the serious circumstances at the time, surely not unreasonable to expect the PM to be au fait with the rules.

I don't expect the committee to come straight out and say what everyone knows, which is that he didn't care much about the rules because it never occurred to him that they applied to him.

His govts rules, he should have been explaining them to his team, not vice versa !

All is well with the world, profits are up !

refitman wrote: ↑Wed 22 Mar, 2023 9:35 pm Well, I'm convinced

Hah! I notice he's failed to post any follow ups after seeing the rest of Johnson's performance.

Even Christopher Hope, Johnson's biggest cheerleader at the Telegraph, thinks he's done for. They're deserting him in what tiny droves he had left. Apart from some hideous lump called Lord Greenhouse who's just made an absolute c*nt of himself on Newsnight.

Are you looking for more Cage cheese, Sky?

I mean there's obviously no question that has to be watched.