The Diary of Boris Wimp

Boris Johnson, Lord of House Starkers, continues his now back-bench revolt.
Undermining the cowardly, craven, psychologically Stockholm Syndromed and thoroughly emasculated Theonsa GreyJoyless while pretending he is supporting her.

 Meanwhile  'Govey' LittleFinger continues his similar, incessant, granting and withdrawing of support to all sides, in his attempts to seize the Iron Throne for himself.

The Tory 'Red Wedding Conference' is just weeks away and..

What? C@W readers have no idea who or what is Game Of Thrones. Most popular television series in the world? Multi  million selling 10 novel series ?


Please yourselves
Here's some early 80's ELO encouraging Boris to get on with it!

Weekend Reading - A Corker

Reed:  read

An America writer well worth checking out from time to time is Adolph Reed, professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania.  He's an honest leftie with a genuine, well-considered ideology; and as such is highly illuminating, indeed scathing, on identity politics - in particular, that highly significant segment that is the US 'race' industry - as a malign and ego-driven diversion from the proper lefty business of pursuing the wellbeing of the working class as a whole.

My recommendation for the weekend is this essay:  The Trouble With Uplift - How black politics succumbed to the siren song of the racial voice.

Uncomfortable stuff for many on the empty-headed, virtue-signalling, gesture-politicking left.  His own focus is of course clear and specific, but it's easy to extend his arguments to (e.g.) the 'feminist' obsession over whether Jo Brand gets paid as much as Paul Merton.  Some choice extracts:

... projections of successes for the rich and famous as generic racial victories depend on a sleight-of-hand that treats benefits for any black person as benefits for all black people ... In addition to the annual contretemps over whether blacks win enough of the most prestigious Oscars, recent racial controversies in the art world illustrate how easily the narrowest guild concerns can masquerade as burning matters of racial justice

... “racial rent-seeking” - a curiously inflexible brand of race-first neoliberalism has taken root in American political discourse, proposing a trickle-down model of racial progress, anchored in the mysticism of organic black community ... neoliberal race leaders stage the beguiling fantasy that individual “entrepreneurialism” is the key path to rising above one’s circumstances—i.e., the standard American social myth that obscures the deeper need to combat systemic inequalities

... we never reckon with the truly disturbing presumption that any black person who can gain access to the public microphone and performs familiar rituals of “blackness” should be recognized as expressing significant racial truths and deserves our attention. This presumption rests on the unexamined premise that blacks share a common, singular mind that is at once radically unknowable to non-blacks and readily downloaded by any random individual setting up shop as a racial voice. And despite what all of our age’s many heroic narratives of individualist race-first triumph may suggest to the casual viewer, that premise is the essence of racism 

ND

Tourism in Salisbury and Saxony

Shouldn't laugh about so serious a matter; but, really.

Many years ago, when dinosaurs roamed the earth (Brezhnev, Chernenko, Andropov) I spent some time in East Germany.  Naturally, one was followed around almost everywhere, by tag-teams of Stasi operatives.  They came in two flavours:  superannuated coppers in grey trenchcoats and trilbys - and guys who looked exactly like this.  (Some of them, incidentally, were gay honey-traps.  So we were told.)

Tall story ...

Anecdote.  One day I was out and about in Wittenberg, looking for a suitable present for Master Drew - then a pre-school kiddie.  I saw a bookshop and popped in to scan the children's section.  There, in the shelves marked Für 4-6 Jährige, was the following attractive offering.
 
I had a quick scan, and it turned out to be ... an anti-NATO propaganda tract!  Well, obviously I bagged it right away and joined the check-out queue.

At the time, my follower was the ageing Herr Trenchcoat, who desperately wanted to see what it was that had seized my interest.  So he grabbed the nearest book to hand, and joined the queue behind me, straining over my shoulder to see what I'd got.  I turned to look, and there he was, carrying a copy of - Windsurfing for Beginners!

I forebore to ask him if he had a trip planned to Warnemunde.  GSOH was not a requirement for his employ.

PS, I also bought my lad a really fine die-cast model of a BTR-60PB, as good as any Dinky-toy, if not better ...  One day I'll turn it up and post a pic. 

ND

Will May and Barnier really dance?

Poor Prime Minister May, forever trapped by Brexit. She never wanted to do anything other than a very small, Brexit In Name Only deal. Yet the suave Monsieur Barnier could see through only his francophone goggles, a way to smash the UK.

So, after nearly 2 years of negotiation we have actually done precisely nothing towards Brexit. A deal is on the table that will be rejected and there are not enough back-up options to fallback too The rock is rolled up the hill, only for it to come tumbling down again.

No side is covered in glory, the Remainers acting like a fifth column in the UK help egg on the EU to do their worst deal with the UK in the hope of forcing a second referendum. The Leavers in the Conservative party have hung around, unsure of their own position and too lazy to come up with a workable alternative to the BINO proposed by May. The EU themselves have sat in their smug utopia casually shrugging at what is actually an existential crisis for the Union.

But I can't see Chequers, as much as it is in reality a better deal for the UK than the EU would like to do, really working. The EU will insist it is watered down and that will mean it won't keep May in power if the Leaver Conservatives can manage to topple her.

Where this would leave the UK is in a bad place, the basics of an exit deal need to be completed to prevent economic and social dislocation next year. Perhaps Barnier will see sense, but I think this is hard as the current UK offer is not great from the other side of the channel - it is exactly the pick and mix they have said they want to avoid and so whilst is still BINO will create an itch for the EU.

After months of hiatus, Brexit is going to be sorted in the next two months at last - in terms of whether the UK falls into political chaos or a BINO deal is done. I reckon it is still 50-50 at best for May.

Tinfoil Times

Around these parts we do not tend to encourage tinfoil-hat conspiracy theories, but I'm putting down a marker here for future reference.

Having been in Paris myself on Sunday I couldn't fail to notice that a fairly prominent mass stabbing took place there - with two British tourists hurt - apparently perpetrated by an Afghan nutter run amok.  It promptly featured in UK news outlets, as you'd expect.

Then, radio silence on the Beeb and in the Grauniad.  No updates on Tues or this morning, notwithstanding the clear British interest, and even though more details became available elsewhere.

What price a *liberal meejah* resolution, post-Swedish-election, to minimise such stories? 

ND