Opinion

Mary Kelly: Is the writing finally on the wall for shameless Boris Johnson?

Prime Minister Boris Johnson spent Monday visiting a hospital in Northumberland, where he milled around pointlessly, elbow-bumping staff until he was reminded to put on a face mask. Picture by Peter Summers/PA Wire
Prime Minister Boris Johnson spent Monday visiting a hospital in Northumberland, where he milled around pointlessly, elbow-bumping staff until he was reminded to put on a face mask. Picture by Peter Summers/PA Wire Prime Minister Boris Johnson spent Monday visiting a hospital in Northumberland, where he milled around pointlessly, elbow-bumping staff until he was reminded to put on a face mask. Picture by Peter Summers/PA Wire

WHEN even a Conservative MP says Boris Johnson was wrong to dodge turning up for Monday's debate on the débâcle over Owen Paterson's well-paid extra curricular activities, the writing must surely be on the wall.

The MP and former Tory chief whip Mark Harper said Johnson was captain of the team, and should have been the one showing leadership by apologising to the House.

Instead, shameless BoJo took himself off to a hospital photo-op where he milled around pointlessly, elbow-bumping health staff until he was reminded he should be wearing a mask.

Even the Tory press is belatedly outraged at the behaviour of this government, which has become a by-word for corruption. Hammered by the Daily Mail and Daily Express, a panicked Number 10 quickly backtracked on its support for Paterson, who was bragging that he would do it all again, so adding incompetence to the charges of cronyism.

The Sunday Times revealed that 16 of their main treasurers who had donated £3m or more to party coffers were rewarded with seats in the Lords.

After months of shelling out Covid related contracts without tenders to companies who've also made donations, the Tories are starting to make medieval popes flogging indulgences look like models of probity.

After MP Geoffrey Cox was revealed to have trousered a staggering £1m a year for legal advice to the British Virgin Islands government facing corruption charges, it emerged that a total of 90 Tory MPs have lucrative second jobs because they can't survive on a paltry £82k a year salary.

And these are the same MPs who voted for austerity, removal of the triple-lock for pensions, and free TV for the over 75s which they shoved on to the BBC.

Iain Duncan Smith is facing questions about his £25k a year second job advising a hand sanitiser firm after he chaired a government taskforce that recommended new rules to benefit such companies. Nice work if you can get it, eh?

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I wish the SDLP hadn't got embroiled in the gender debate by referring to "persons" instead of women or girls in their otherwise very laudable bill on period poverty. It might be trendy or "woke" but it's definitely not a vote-winner.

I doubt the few trans men, who were born female, will really be offended at the use of the word "women" in areas that refer to female biology. This has led to the insanity of the Scottish government referring to "chest feeding" and banning the word "mother" from maternity policies.

The rush by officialdom these days to avoid potential offence to a tiny minority allows it instead to offend many of the 51pc of the population who call themselves women.

A young woman caller to the Nolan Show said she didn't mind being referred to as a "person" and suggested it was "older people" who don't really understand that they're being transphobic by wanting to use language that's now considered not inclusive.

I'll be equally patronising when I suggest younger people perhaps don't understand how hard women had to fight to win their rights over the years, so we don't fancy being erased from the language.

And yes, the object of the bill is more important than the use of pronouns. But language still matters.

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Just back from a trip with the siblings to our brother in Stratford-upon-Avon and the impact of Brexit was hard to miss. There were unfilled job ads in many shop and café windows and in one restaurant we visited, they had to reduce the number of tables because they had only one chef and he couldn't cope with more.

Maybe some of those double-jobbing MPs could be earning extra income waiting tables, or maybe training as a HGV driver?

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Republican Senator Ted Cruz has been giving off about Big Bird from Sesame Street being used for "propaganda" by advocating for kids to get the Covid jab.

It won't be the first time the makers of the programme have been targeted by right-wingers. It was banned in Mississippi in 1970 because of its racially diverse cast. The state didn't feel "ready" for such a show.

The ban only lasted 22 days as the state's legislators found it hard to defend when studies found that children who watched the programme for six weeks made two-and-a-half times better progress than children who had not.

It's baffling that Ted Cruz and Fox News should have criticised Big Bird. After all, they enthusiastically supported a Muppet in the White House for four years.