AT THE time of writing, the votes hadn’t been counted yet and I could cling to the vain hope that the cloud of stupidity that has enveloped large swathes of the UK since the referendum in 2016 may have miraculously blown away. Then I woke up.
The people have spoken. And since this is a family newspaper I won’t finish that quote.
Now all those who bought the Get Brexit Done slogan will also find there’s no return on their deal, like a duff bargain in a Black Friday sale. It’s taken the DUP a while to realise they bought a dodgy motor from Boris “No Border Down the Irish Sea” Johnson. The man who lied to his wife, his former party leader, the queen and indeed the whole country seems to have got away with it, so far.
Yet he had the brass neck to tell an incredulous Sky journo the naughtiest thing he ever did was to cycle on the pavement. Yeah, right.
I’ve never known a time when so many people decided to vote against their own interests. Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s former spin doctor, spoke despairingly of the man getting groceries from a food bank who told a reporter he would be supporting Boris.
Incidentally, there are now more food banks in the UK than branches of McDonald’s. What does that tell you about a decade of Conservatives in power?
A friend attended a Spanish language course in England with a couple who’d recently retired to Spain. They voted for Brexit and didn’t see any contradiction. “What if you need health care over there?” my friend asked. “We’ll just pop home,” came the reply.
Has there ever been an election so mired in lies, distortion and dirty tricks? This week we saw the PM pocket a TV reporter’s phone so that he didn’t have to see a picture of a four-year-old boy lying on the floor of a hospital in Leeds because there were no beds.
Immediately a fake story was passed via twitter to top news correspondents claiming a Labour activist had punched Health Minister Matt Hancock’s aide. A video later showed it didn’t happen but this dishonesty was then swiftly followed by new false claims that the picture of the child had also been faked.
And over here a bogus begging letter purporting to seek funds for Colum Eastwood’s campaign showed we aren’t beyond chicanery either.
Good luck to Plaid Cymru leader Alan Price’s crusade to have lying in politics made a criminal offence. He’s right to say that the current absence of trust in politics is a threat to democracy. Let’s hope the collective madness ends and we find that, despite what Michael Gove said, we do need more experts.
The Republic rejected the Nice Treaty but instead of saying that’s it, the government worked to address people’s concerns about the EU so that next time they knew what they were voting for.
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AS A bus pass holder myself, I’m aware of people in glass houses and all that, but it was hard not to laugh out loud reading that Peter Purves was complaining about not having his contract renewed for presenting Crufts on Channel Four after holding the job for 41 years. The former Blue Peter presenter is 80.
I rather prefer the attitude of actress Maggie Smith who had expressed some reluctance in continuing to play the Dowager Duchess of Grantham in a movie of Downton Abbey as she thought it was getting rather tired. Asked on set if there was anything she wanted, she replied. “A death scene.”
Meanwhile, Richard E Grant has said he thinks gay actors should be preferred to play gay roles such as Elton John in Rocketman. This is despite the fact that, as a straight man, he has played many gay roles himself and is currently appearing onstage as a drag queen.
Scarlett Johansson said art should be immune to political correctness after she was accused of “whitewashing” when she played a character in the movie Ghost In The Shell who was originally Japanese. But there are limits. A group of studio executives were discussing a proposal to make a film about the life of Harriet Tubman, the former slave in 19th century America who led hundreds of fellow captives to freedom.
“Great,” said one. “Julia Roberts would be perfect as her.”
When it was pointed out that she was not black, he replied: “It was a long time ago, nobody will remember. Julia Roberts is box office.”
