'Boris Johnson's "sorry" was part of the tired old lines we've heard many times'
As we enter the season of endless BBC comedy repeats, let’s hear it for Boris Johnson.
Or Del Bo Fawlty as he should now be known for the hours of mirth his dodginess provided at this week’s Covid inquiry through tired old lines we’d heard many times before.
We learned that while thousands of Britons were dying from Covid the place that could have prevented many of those fatalities, 10 Downing Street, resembled a mash-up of Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em and Men Behaving Badly.
He sat before the TV cameras saying “I promise to tell the truth,” with a Lee Mack poker expression, causing Victor Meldrew’s “I don’t believe it,” to echo through the heads of everyone watching.
His Ken Dodd hair had been given an extra ruffling to convince us that, as he spluttered 19 times “I don’t remember” and failed to account for the loss of 5,000 WhatsApp messages, it was down to him being a befuddled Private Godfrey figure.
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His apology, about as sincere as a Stanley Norman Fletcher alibi to Mr Mackay, led to bereaved relatives standing up with signs that read: “The dead can’t hear your apologies.”
If they could, they surely would have laughed. If not at Del Bo’s lies then the counsel to the inquiry reminding him that his chief adviser had called his operation “criminally incompetent” one Cabinet secretary labelled it “brutal and useless” and another declared he’d “never seen a bunch of people less equipped to run a country.”
What, you’re not laughing? Fair enough. That’s what happens with these BBC repeats. You gradually realise the joke is on you, the licence-payer. As it is with this Covid Inquiry where Johnson has spent months with taxpayer-funded lawyers perfecting the art of stonewalling, while the bereaved are denied the justice that they ache for.
Ironically, on the day Johnson sneaked into the London inquiry at dawn to evade relatives of the Covid deceased, in Liverpool relatives of the 97 killed at Hillsborough gathered in a room to watch, via video link from Westminster, the latest instalment of a near-35 year old Establishment cover-up.
As with the Covid bereaved they were given effusive apologies by Tory politicians, delivered with all the sincerity of a hangman’s handshake, but little else.
It took me back to the many courts and parliamentary rooms where, for more than half of my life, alongside Hillsborough families I have heard similar meaningless apologies from politicians and police officers, followed by the customary “sadly, we can’t do any more for you.”
It happened again this week. All they were asking for, backed up by a government-initiated report, was that laws are put in place to ensure any repetition of the lies from public servants that followed Hillsborough would result in criminal charges, and that victims could have parity of funding.
But after kicking the report down the road for six years the Tories decided they could not oblige. Giving a green light to future cover-ups.
There will be other disasters or health crises exacerbated by state incompetence or indifference, and no-one in authority will be held criminally responsible because the law in this country is not designed to work for the people.
What we saw this week was actually more a Bond movie than a sitcom. Called Lie and Let Die.
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And there but for the grace of fate go you.
I was Fonda that tape
Jane Fonda has delivered bad news to males of a certain age by saying “if I were to take a lover, he’d have to be 20, because I don’t like old skin.” Come on Jane. Sure, us older guys may have turkey necks, chicken anuses where our elbows used to be and armadillo-shell ballsacks. But why would a woman your age want to take for her lover a manchild who thinks Hanoi Jane is an Asian fusion restaurant, Barbarella is an Inter Milan striker and your Workout VHS tape is something used to wrap presents for their mum. Instead of realising, as every male living with a woman in the 1980s did, that the VHS workout video was your greatest gift to mankind. The one true browsing heir to the lingerie section of our mum’s catalogue.
EasyJet's Santa ideas won't fly
EasyJet is installing special post boxes at airports across the UK for its Letters to Lapland service, promising to deliver all kids’ written requests to Santa. A word of warning though young ‘uns. There’s a good chance your letter will remain stranded in the UK because the spelling of the name on it didn’t match the exact spelling of Santa Claus, and if it makes the flight it will be dumped at an airport 30 miles outside Lapland.
U-turns and spin will turn us all off
Keir Starmer is now doing u-turns on u-turns.
The man who, in October, derided Margaret Thatcher’s financial Big Bang because it concentrated “wealth and opportunity in the hands of the few” saluted her last weekend for creating “meaningful change.”
On Monday he rowed-back, saying all he’d meant was that she was “the sort of leader who had a mission and plan.”
You won’t be surprised to learn Starmer’s first quote was given to Labour conference, the second to a right-wing newspaper and the third when the likes of the Mirror rounded on him for praising Thatcher.
This two-faced gallery-playing must stop if he has serious ambitions of winning the next election. It is opportunism at its most cynical which fails to convert the sceptics and turns loyalists against him.
The one thing Starmer should take from the Lady he so admires, is that she was not for turning.
Currently he is doing more turns than a one-armed man on the dodgems.
No silent nights
How ironic that schoolkids will soon be singing “Oh little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie” when in reality, Bethlehem, the Palestinian town in the Occupied West Bank, is far from still.
With more than 250 Palestinians killed in the West Bank since the Israel-Hamas war began, no-one there is expecting a silent night any time soon. And with one million kids living destitute in Gaza, with nowhere to go, what an indictment that is on all of us who through our stillness, ignore it.
The week's five big questions:
- Gary Barlow’s rosé on sale at a bargain basement price in Home Bargains. Did everyone view its taste, the way Gary once viewed his earnings, as a little too taxing on the palate?
- Why do people continue to get worked up about Harry and Meghan when they are about as relevant as Edward and Mrs Simpson?
- Gen Z term rizz, shorthand for charisma, named Oxford Word of the Year. Why have they overlooked the word affecting every generation in 2023 - skint?
- The Premier League hailing the sale of a record 267 live games for £6.7 billion to TV. Will they also be hailing a record shafting of away fans forced to travel to games at even more impossible times?
- Anyone else hear the government say we need to stock up on candles, batteries and torches in case of power cuts and think “that’s the family’s Christmas presents sorted?”
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