2017 Sep 21 - Florence and Boris
It’s been a pretty bad week again in Central America, more tropical storms, Mexico suffering a another major earthquake and the other day I turned on the 10 o’clock news and for a while it seemed as though there were now dinosaurs on the loose in Costa Rica but then I realised the clocks don’t go back until next weekend and it was actually just the last half hour of Jurassic Park. The film holds up reasonably well actually, although if I wanted to see an older bearded man introducing dinosaurs I’d turn over to BBC Parliament in the next few days and watch the Labour Party Conference.
Also in the next few days we have Theresa May travelling for Brexit talks in Italy and shortly afterwards it’s the German Election. Everyone’s predicting Angela Merkel will romp home easily, but they also said that about Theresa May and political opinion polls these days seem are about as reliable as a promise from Boris Johnson to not be “up to something.” Never one to shy away from naked political ambition in the past, the foreign secretary has spent the last week or secretly plotting a takeover of number 10 with the sort of quiet scheming subtlety normally more associated with a vagrant outside a wine shop attempting to allegedly purchase a bus ticket.
At least when Vince Cable claims that he and his dozen MPs have a good chance of assembling the next government you can see it for the piece of subversive performance art that it is. Even when Ed Miliband’s claimed he would be the next PM, his expectations equally matched by his desire to wind up his brother.
It’s hard to tell, there’s a thin line between delusions of grandeur and politicians taking the piss. Boris may well fancy himself as a modern day Churchill figure, and he may very well end up as PM but for those who’ve read their history, or who were alive at the time, the 1950s were a pretty grim time for Britain and Churchill’s post-war record isn’t terribly great in any sense of the word. Although for now, Theresa May styling herself as a female Anthony Eden ain’t too great either.
Also in the next few days we have Theresa May travelling for Brexit talks in Italy and shortly afterwards it’s the German Election. Everyone’s predicting Angela Merkel will romp home easily, but they also said that about Theresa May and political opinion polls these days seem are about as reliable as a promise from Boris Johnson to not be “up to something.” Never one to shy away from naked political ambition in the past, the foreign secretary has spent the last week or secretly plotting a takeover of number 10 with the sort of quiet scheming subtlety normally more associated with a vagrant outside a wine shop attempting to allegedly purchase a bus ticket.
At least when Vince Cable claims that he and his dozen MPs have a good chance of assembling the next government you can see it for the piece of subversive performance art that it is. Even when Ed Miliband’s claimed he would be the next PM, his expectations equally matched by his desire to wind up his brother.
It’s hard to tell, there’s a thin line between delusions of grandeur and politicians taking the piss. Boris may well fancy himself as a modern day Churchill figure, and he may very well end up as PM but for those who’ve read their history, or who were alive at the time, the 1950s were a pretty grim time for Britain and Churchill’s post-war record isn’t terribly great in any sense of the word. Although for now, Theresa May styling herself as a female Anthony Eden ain’t too great either.
It’s been a pretty bad week again in Central America, more tropical storms, Mexico suffering a another major earthquake and the other day I turned on the 10 o’clock news and for a while it seemed as though there were now dinosaurs on the loose in Costa Rica but then I realised the clocks don’t go back until next weekend and it was actually just the last half hour of Jurassic Park. The film holds up reasonably well actually, although if I wanted to see an older bearded man introducing dinos ......