Skip to main content

Home/ History Readings/ Group items tagged boris

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Javier E

'Confused, dangerous, flippant': rest of world pans PM's handling of coronavirus | Worl... - 0 views

  • The international verdict on Boris Johnson and his zigzag handling of the pandemic has been damning, with responses ranging from bafflement and disbelief to anger.
  • “Boris Johnson had gone out publicly and essentially asked Britons ... to accept death,” said the Greek newspaper Ethnos. It declared him “more dangerous than coronavirus”.
  • The New York Times accused Johnson of sowing confusion. “He has seemed like a leader acting under duress ... playing catch-up to a private sector that had already acted on its own.”
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • Politicians, scientists and commentators greeted the prime minister’s U-turn on Monday night, when he ordered a UK-wide lockdown, as a belated but welcome decision to join the rest of Europe, and much of the world, in a necessary strategy.
  • The mystery is why it took so long
  • Last week Ireland, which shares a land border with the UK, struggled to understand Downing Street’s hesitation. “Boris Johnson is gambling with the health of his citizens,” said the Irish Times.
  • “The Brits were doing their own thing and it looked like we were going to have to live with it. They got there in the end.”
  • It was a variation of an observation attributed to Winston Churchill about America doing the right thing after exhausting all other options.
  • Foreign observers had become accustomed to Johnson’s breezy pronouncements on Britain steering its own course during Brexit showdowns last year but they winced at hearing the same tone in the context of a global health emergency.
  • Giorgio Gori, the mayor of Bergamo, the city hardest hit by Italy’s coronavirus outbreak, flew his two daughters out of the UK, deeming them safer at home.
  • “When I saw what the English government was thinking about this problem, I decided to bring them back, because I think that even if we are at the centre of the epidemic, probably they are more secure here than in England, because I don’t understand why the government didn’t decide in time to protect their citizens,” he told Sky News.
brickol

Boris Johnson and Matt Hancock in self-isolation with coronavirus | World news | The Gu... - 0 views

  • Boris Johnson and health secretary Matt Hancock have both tested positive for coronavirus and will have to work leading the government’s efforts to tackle the pandemic in isolation.
  • Johnson posted a video on Friday morning on Twitter saying he had a temperature and a persistent cough. “I am working from home, I’m self-isolating, and that’s entirely the right thing to do,” he said.
  • “Fortunately for me the symptoms so far have been very mild so I’ve been able to carry on with the work driving forward the UK response,” he said. “I’ll be continuing to do everything I can to get our carers the support that they need. And I’ll be doing that from here but with no less gusto.”
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • The World Health Organization has said there is no evidence that pregnant women are at higher risk of severe illness than the general population if they contract Covid-19.
  • Ian Blackford, the Scottish National party’s leader in the House of Commons, said the news showed no one was immune.
  • Earlier in the week it was announced that the Prince of Wales had “mild symptoms” of the disease. The Labour MP Angela Rayner, the favourite to become the party’s deputy leader, announced on Twitter that she was self-isolating after displaying symptoms.
  • A Downing Street spokeswoman said: “After experiencing mild symptoms yesterday, the prime minister was tested for coronavirus on the personal advice of England’s chief medical officer, Prof Chris Whitty. The test was carried out in No 10 by NHS staff and the result of the test was positive.
  • Boris Johnson and health secretary Matt Hancock have both tested positive for coronavirus and will have to work leading the government’s efforts to tackle the pandemic in isolation.
  • After the prime minister, who is 55, said he had mild symptoms and would self-isolate in Downing Street, Hancock posted a Twitter video saying that he too had mild symptoms and he would be able to continue.
  • Johnson posted a video on Friday morning on Twitter saying he had a temperature and a persistent cough. “I am working from home, I’m self-isolating, and that’s entirely the right thing to do,” he said.
  • “Fortunately for me the symptoms so far have been very mild so I’ve been able to carry on with the work driving forward the UK response,” he said. “I’ll be continuing to do everything I can to get our carers the support that they need. And I’ll be doing that from here but with no less gusto.”
  • The World Health Organization has said there is no evidence that pregnant women are at higher risk of severe illness than the general population if they contract Covid-19.
  • Earlier in the week it was announced that the Prince of Wales had “mild symptoms” of the disease. The Labour MP Angela Rayner, the favourite to become the party’s deputy leader, announced on Twitter that she was self-isolating after displaying symptoms.
  • journalism that is rooted in empirical data and science matters. It may even save lives. This administration has cleared out science and scientists across all departments. Donald Trump's daily coronavirus press briefings have become political rallies. He frequently spreads, at best, misinformation and, at worst, lies.
qkirkpatrick

Putin Says Boris Nemtsov's 'Brazen Murder' Was Politically Motivated - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said on Wednesday that the slaying of Boris Y. Nemtsov, a Kremlin critic, had a political subtext, and he called on law enforcement agencies to halt such crimes.
  • “Headline-making crimes, including politically motivated ones, require our most serious attention,
  • “We need to rid Russia of the kind of shame and tragedy that we have just witnessed,” he added. “I am referring to the brazen murder of Boris Nemtsov right in the center of Moscow
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Mr. Nemtsov, a deputy prime minister in the 1990s, was shot within sight of the Kremlin while walking home with his girlfriend on Friday night. He is the mo
  • st prominent opposition figure slain under Mr. Putin’s rule.
  • The Kremlin denies any role and called the murder a “provocation” intended specifically to discredit the president and to buttress his opponents.
Javier E

To move on, consign Boris Johnson and his vanity to spam - 0 views

  • Some voters, we should admit, enthused about Johnson because he made them laugh. I am haunted by the memory of a woman who told a BBC radio interviewer back in 2018: “I want Boris to become Tory leader because he will make politics fun!” But politics, and especially government, is not meant to be fun.
  • He is perhaps the most selfish human being I have ever met, indifferent to the welfare of anyone save himself. It is striking that he has few, if any, personal friends. He demands loyalty, but is incapable of giving it to others. He has neither principles nor personal convictions, save about his own ambitions and desires. Far from being the genial Mr Nice Guy he seeks to project, Tony Soprano would find him a tad ruthless.
  • He is a stranger to truth, a lifelong liar about big things and small.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • A decade or two ago, while many foreigners did not especially like the British, they respected us as sensible, decent people who made our society work. Today, that sentiment has vanished, swept away by Johnson and Liz Truss, his own unworthy nominee to succeed himself.
  • At the end of Act 2 of Henry IV Part 2, jesting Falstaff pleads with Prince Hal not to “banish plump Jack”. The prince coldly answered: “I do. I will.” When the crown was placed upon Henry’s brow, the comedy of the fat charlatan was indeed played out, the scoundrel banished.
  • The Conservative Party, and the British people, have been very foolish to humour their own Falstaff through these past sorry years. If they cannot banish plump Boris now, they sacrifice all hope of regaining the respect for Britain which has been sacrificed to his cavorting.
qkirkpatrick

Will Nemtsov Death Galvanize Opposition? | Opinion | The Moscow Times - 0 views

  • Thousands of Russians marched through central Moscow on Sunday to honor slain opposition politician Boris Nemtsov in Russia's largest mass political event since the 2011-12 protest campaign. The size of the somber crowd led some to comment that if Nemtsov's brazen murder in view of the Kremlin was meant to intimidate the political opposition, it had failed.
  • So, could the recent shocking assassination of Boris Nemtsov revive the political opposition in Russia? Two factors suggest that this will not be the case.
  • First, the motives of Nemtsov's killer, as well as who, if anyone, ordered the hit, remain unclear. And even — especially if — the Kremlin was behind the murder, it is highly unlikely that any proof tying President Vladimir Putin to the murder will ever surface.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Second, a nonviolent opposition movement must be in a strong position to take advantage of the backlash that violent repression can engender. To obtain this strength, an opposition movement needs to spend years building effective organizational structures, internal cohesion, bases of public support across social and geographic groups, compelling policies and a vision for tomorrow. In Russia, however, much of this is lacking, and the political opposition appears relatively weak and unorganized.
  •  
    Russians protest after death of political opposition Boris Nemstov. 
Javier E

Boris Johnson's biographer: I know too well the fire and fury lurking behind that smile... - 0 views

  • Boris Johnson can change from bonhomie to a dark fury in seconds. His normally joky demeanour flashes into a sarcastic snarl, his skin reddens and blotches, his eyes dart into an intense narrow glare and on the worst occasions his lips curl back to reveal wisps of spittle.
  • The all-out favourite to be our next prime minister has the fiercest and most uncontrollable anger I have seen. A terrifying mood change can be triggered instantly by the slightest challenge to his entitlement or self-worth.
  • he was temperamentally unsuitable to be entrusted with any position of power, let alone the highest office of all, in charge of the United Kingdom and its nuclear codes.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • This quality, combined with his casual relationship with the truth and often callous disregard of others, has caused many people who have worked closely with him to question his fitness for office
  • A senior judge raised questions about his fitness for power because of his “recklessness” about pregnancy and the feelings of others when conducting “extramarital adulterous liaisons”.
  • the wife of one of his Bullingdon Club cohorts at Oxford (a wealthy man in a powerful job) said her husband “would not speak about Boris even off the record as he is frightened of what he might do back. A lot of people are.”
  • Incredibly, the conversation was taped, and a copy anonymously sent to Hastings, then Johnson’s boss at the Telegraph. When Johnson was sent away with no more than a flea in his ear, his sense of entitlement and freedom from the normal rules of civilised life became even more acute
  • His attitude to women — endless affairs leaving a string of women and at least one pregnancy termination behind him — has long been one of entitlement and lack of respect. He has boasted to other men that he needs plenty of women on the go as he is, as he says crudely, “bursting with spunk”
  • Employees or visitors to the mayoral desk at London’s City Hall found it advisable to lose what were supposed to be enjoyable games.
  • One victim was Roger Lewis who applied in 2010 for a chair at Oxford but who had made the mistake of criticising Johnson in print four years previously. Johnson threatened to pull out all the stops to prevent Lewis from winning the chair, and indeed he came an unexpected fifth on the list.
  • That willingness to punish people who cross him was exposed after he agreed to help his criminal friend Darius Guppy track down a critical journalist to beat him up
  • When I worked as Johnson’s deputy in Brussels in an office of two, it took a long time to get used to what became known as his “four o’clock rants” in which he hurled four-letter words at an innocent yucca plant for several minutes at deadline time every day to work himself into a frenzy to write his creative tracts against the EU
  • His casual attitude to other people’s money, leading Symonds to accuse him of being “spoilt”, was notorious during his time as a motoring columnist at GQ, when he ran up huge parking ticket bills by parking anywhere he wanted and expecting the magazine to pay
brookegoodman

Trump cancels summit but says he will invite Putin to later G7 event | World news | The... - 0 views

  • Donald Trump has been forced to cancel a planned face-to-face summit of G7 leaders in June and now wants to host an expanded meeting in September dedicated to countering China, to which Vladimir Putin would be invited.
  • Reports suggest the call between Merkel and Trump on Thursday was stormy, ranging over German plans for the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, Hong Kong, and the potential health risks of a face-to-face summit.
  • Merkel and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, will also be reluctant to provide Trump with a prestigious platform to set out his China strategy weeks before the US presidential election. The Republicans see a tough approach towards China as an election-winning formula, even though his likely Democrat challenger, Joe Biden, is also sharply critical of Beijing’s modern direction.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Trump caught many capitals and White House officials by surprise on 20 May, when he tweeted: “Now that our Country is ‘Transitioning back to Greatness,’ I am considering rescheduling the G-7, on the same or similar date, in Washington, DC, at the legendary Camp David. The other members are also beginning their COMEBACK. It would be a great sign to all – normalization!”
  • Had Abe attended the summit, he would have been required either to quarantine himself for two weeks or take a Covid-19 test on his return. Officials told Japanese media they did not want Abe to be seen to be getting privileged treatment, and cited the backlash the UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, has faced for clearing his senior adviser of breaking UK quarantine rules.
  • The UK is hosting a virtual coronavirus vaccine summit on 4 June intended to establish a global alliance and raise funds for research, and will hope the US decision to withdraw from the WHO does not dominate the event.
  • The Guardian has been significantly impacted by the pandemic. Like many other news organisations, we are facing an unprecedented collapse in advertising revenues. We rely to an ever greater extent on our readers, both for the moral force to continue doing journalism at a time like this and for the financial strength to facilitate that reporting.
qkirkpatrick

Nemtsov's Murder Defines Putin's Russia - Bloomberg View - 0 views

  • The thousands who marched in Moscow on Sunday in honor of the murdered opposition politician Boris Nemtsov did so because they recognize just how much has been lost with his death. Nemtsov had been brave enough to tell the truth in Russia under President Vladimir Putin.
  • There is no evidence the Kremlin ordered Nemtsov's killing, and it would have as much to lose as to gain from such a public execution on one of the most closely surveilled sidewalks in Russia.
  • Nemtsov’s death may not change things in Russia; much of the population appears to be caught up in a nationalist fervor.
Javier E

Video reveals Steve Bannon links to Boris Johnson | US news | The Guardian - 0 views

  • On the day that article 50 was triggered, Nigel Farage was filmed with a pint of beer thanking them both. “Well done Bannon. Well done Breitbart. You helped with this. Hugely
  • Alison Klayman, the film-maker, said that Bannon had been “unequivocal” about his communications with Johnson. She also said that Bannon had met Farage, a close associate, several times during the same visit.
  • Klayman asks him if they’ve been speaking on the phone and he says: “Talked to him initially over the phone then it’s just easier to go back and forth on text. It’s just easier. I’ve been telling him one of my recommendations is that he gave one of the most important political speeches of 2016. Was his closing speech, a three-to-five-minute speech in June 2016, his closing argument on national TV for the Leave campaign ... And it was magnificent. “And all I was telling him all weekend was just to incorporate those themes. Those same themes. Basically, he was saying that June 23 was independence day for Great Britain. Their independence day being like our July 4.” Bannon adds: “This is the tee up, right. He’s back.” He then describes Johnson’s career, saying: “He wrote a really great book on Churchill. That’s one of the things I told him over the weekend.” Bannon says he got to know Johnson after the US presidential election when he was working as Donald Trump’s chief strategist. “Right after we won, Boris flew over. Because their victory was as unexpected as ours. I got to know him quite well in the transition period,” he said.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • The video is bound to raise further questions about Johnson’s openness and the extent to which he has relied on Bannon for advice at key stages in his bid for Downing Street
  • Bannon has described the far-right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon – known as Tommy Robinson – as the “backbone” of Britain.
brookegoodman

Cop26: Boris Johnson urged to resist calls to postpone climate talks | Environment | Th... - 0 views

  • Nicholas Stern, one of the most prominent global experts on the climate crisis, has urged Boris Johnson to resist calls to postpone vital UN climate talks this year, despite the coronavirus outbreak.
  • Lord Stern believes any move to postpone the talks would put paid to any hope of making real progress. “At the moment we must just get on with the preparation,” he said. “This is such an urgent challenge and there is so much to do, and so much valuable work that is being done, that we can’t afford to lose the momentum.”
  • Stern said work had become more difficult because of the virus, but not impossible. Postponing the summit now would effectively put the brakes on at a time when acceleration is needed, he said, and if needs be then a postponement could be discussed after the summer, depending on the situation then.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Some NGOs and developing country experts also view talk of postponement as counterproductive. Mohamed Adow, the director of Power Shift Africa and a close observer of the talks for many years, said: “We would rather not see it cancelled until we know more about the spread of the virus. Cancelling it immediately might mean action on climate change gets ignored this year and people on the frontlines in poorer countries can’t afford that.”
  • But some experts contacted by the Guardian believe postponing the talks would provide more time for diplomacy. John Sauven, the executive director of Greenpeace UK, has written to Alok Sharma, the business secretary and president of Cop26, urging him to delay.
  • One key issue is that the US presidential election is due to take place a week before Cop26 begins. Donald Trump is strongly opposed to the Paris agreement and his withdrawal from it will take effect the day after the election. A new president, if there is one, could be more amenable to climate action but would not take office until January, so a postponement could allow the US to participate.
  • Some pre-Cop meetings are already in doubt. The UNFCCC has cancelled all meetings for the next month but a decision will have to be taken soon on an intermediate meeting set for Bonn in June. Italy is due to co-host Cop26 with the UK but its plans have been thrown into disarray by the coronavirus pandemic.
  • The UNFCCC also said there was no immediate move to postpone the talks. Any decision would have to be taken by the Cop Bureau, made up of elected representatives from various countries, and would also involve the Chilean government, which technically will preside over the process until the UK officially takes on the presidency in November.
Javier E

When Johnson says we'll turn the tide in 12 weeks, it's just another line for the side ... - 0 views

  • hat great line from last year’s Chernobyl drama series. “When the truth offends, we lie and lie until we can no longer remember it is even there. But it is still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid.”
  • His other area of expertise is disguising rather basic points with needlessly obscure language. Once this made him a highly overrated prose stylist; now it could make him accomplice to the death of your relatives and friends. “The key message,” Johnson key-messaged on Tuesday, is that people follow the advice “sedulously”. Ah, sedulously. Sedulously. The signal for 10 million hardworking families to draw down the leather-bound thesaurus from their shelves and browse synonyms for the word “twat”.
  • Unfortunately, as indicated, Johnson is basically just a columnist. I don’t want to spaff what we might euphemise as my own area of expertise too early, but trust me on this: he is hardwired to spin that shit out for 1150 words. How to put this in terms that even a wildly overeducated prime minister can understand? JUST TELL US THE INFORMATION. It’s a public safety briefing, not a fricking ring quest.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • The government’s crisis communications strategy could not be going worse if it was being led by the last speaker of a dead language, with Typhoid Mary on bass. People are still clearly extremely confused by what the advice is. Never have bullet points been more called for, and you’d think someone as obsessed with the second world war as Johnson is would know that an effective Ministry of Information was inextricably linked to the success of the war effort.
  • Of course, we are not the only nation to be conducting an interesting social experiment to determine what happens if you elect a clinical narcissist to run a country which later turns out to be facing grave danger. At this stage, the US’s experiment appears to be going rather worse, and you certainly wouldn’t rule out Donald Trump judging November’s elections to be something that had better be suspended under the circumstances.
  • That the music should stop when Boris Johnson of all people is prime minister is the darkest of cosmic ironies. We are being asked to put our trust – our lives – in the hands of a man whose entire career, journalistic and political, has been built on a series of lies. It is the work of seconds to dredge up Johnson columns about radical population control, or Johnson buses about the NHS enjoying vast savings from the EU. Who knows which of these, if any, he ever really believed
Javier E

Pantomime clown Boris Johnson flounders as crisis deepens | John Crace | Politics | The... - 0 views

  • The model the government was using was to do nothing and just wait until everyone introduced sensible panic measures of their own. Then once the public had done its job for it it, the government would then be nudged into turning it into official policy. Ideal for the Boris with No Clothes, who couldn’t face the responsibility of decision making.
anonymous

Protesters Across Europe Clash With Police Over COVID-19 Lockdowns : NPR - 0 views

  • Anger at restrictions imposed to contain the coronavirus pandemic swept into the streets of Europe on Saturday.German police used water cannons, pepper spray and clubs on protesters rallying over the coronavirus lockdown in the town of Kassel in central Germany where demonstrators numbered some 20,000. Protests against government measures to rein in the pandemic were also reported in Austria, Britain, Finland, Romania and Switzerland.
  • Germany faces a surge of COVID-19 infections as a more contagious variant of the virus has spread. Experts say it highlights the need to accelerate vaccinations.But a botched vaccine rollout appears to have deepened distrust against the German government. The suspension of AstraZeneca vaccine was the latest hurdle in Germany's efforts to vaccinate its population of 83 million.
  • After a three-day pause in using AstraZeneca, Germany is now trying to right the course.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • But it didn't stop thousands of people attending anti-lockdown demonstrations in London on Saturday.
  • Britain's speedy vaccine rollout — it was the first in the world to administer a fully tested vaccine — has been a surprise success for the government of Boris Johnson, who has received heavy criticism for his response to the virus.
  • "at the start of the pandemic Germany was a global model for how to manage it." But a year into it, the opposite appears to the case. Just 8.5% of Germans received their first shot, as of Friday, far behind other nations including the U.S. and the U.K.
  • In Hyde Park, police were forced back into their vans as demonstrators lobbed bottles and cans at them. The BBC reported that few protesters appeared to be wearing masks. London Metropolitan Police said 36 people had been arrested during the rallies, most of them involving violations of COVID-19 regulations.
  • The protests came the same day as 60 members of parliament urged the home secretary to ease restrictions on demonstrations. Due to coronavirus restrictions, it's currently unlawful for groups to gather for the purpose of protest. But the measures came under direct assault this week.
  • The outcry over lockdowns has combined with a groundswell of rage at the abduction and death of Sarah Everard, a 33-year old woman who went missing earlier this month while walking home. Her body was found a week later, and a serving police officer has been charged with her murder. Police are under scrutiny for their alleged heavy-handed tactics in breaking up a well-attended outdoor vigil for Everard last Saturday that ignited three nights of protests.
  • Prime Minister Boris Johnson is reportedly planning to introduce a controversial new law banning protests that are noisy or cause "serious annoyance," and would carry a maximum jail term of 10 years.
clairemann

Boris Johnson Hopes Covid-19 Vaccine Success Can Inoculate Him Against Brexit Critics -... - 0 views

  • Now, Mr. Johnson’s allies hope the stark disparity between Britain’s performance and the European Union’s will do something perhaps even more challenging: vindicate their larger Brexit project.
  • Pro-Brexit politicians and commentators are casting Britain’s vaccine deployment, which ranks among the fastest in the world, as an example of risk-taking and entrepreneurial pluck that comes from not being shackled to the collective decision-making of the 27 member states of the European Union.
  • “It is the first serious test that the U.K. state has faced since Brexit,” said Matthew Goodwin, a professor of politics at the University of Kent who studies the British right. “Boris Johnson is going to have a vaccine dividend, and that will give him a who
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Now, though, the prime minister’s approval ratings have recovered, powered largely by the public’s enthusiasm about the vaccine rollout.
  • Sixty-seven percent of those surveyed said they thought Britain had performed better on vaccinations than E.U. countries
  • Significantly, a slight plurality of those surveyed — 40 percent — said they thought Brexit had helped improve Britain’s handling of the pandemic, while 14 percent said it had made it worse, and 38 percent thought it had made no difference.
  • But Mr. Goodwin said one consequence of the vaccine success is that there are few signs of significant numbers of people rethinking the wisdom of Brexit or suffering the acute regret — or as he called it, “Bregret” — that some expected.
  • The monthslong shutdown of much of Britain’s economy will also complicate the task of identifying the negative effects of Brexit, since they are likely to be lost in a sea of red ink.
  • “Brexit doesn’t solve those problems,” Mr. Frost added, “but it does give us means to solve them, to move on, to get a grip but also to reform our attitudes and become a country that can deal with problems again.”
katherineharron

Parliament's Brexit vote setback for Boris Johnson - CNN - 0 views

  • Brexit watchers are shifting their attention to 11 p.m. local time (6 p.m. ET), the deadline for Boris Johnson to request an extension to Article 50 from the European Union. He is legally obliged to do so and has previously stated that the government would comply with the law. However, today in the House of Commons he caused huge confusion, after saying that the law didn't "compel" him to "negotiate" a delay to Brexit. Government officials elected not to clear up the messy words of the Prime Minister and as things stand, we are in the dark as to exactly what is going to happen, or if we will even hear what Johnson chooses to do. 
  • They need to not break the law, but they need to not look as though they've gone back on their pledge of not delaying Brexit. 
Javier E

Andrew Sullivan: Boris Johnson's Winning Formula - 0 views

  • he moved the party sharply left on austerity, spending on public services, tax cuts for the working poor, and a higher minimum wage. He outflanked the far right on Brexit and shamelessly echoed the left on economic policy.
  • This is Trumpism without Trump. A conservative future without an ineffective and polarizing nutjob at the heart of it.
  • Unlike Trump, he will stop E.U. mass migration, and pass a new immigration system, based on the Australian model. Unlike Trump, he will focus tax cuts on the working poor, not the decadent rich.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • “One Nation Conservatism.” That was Disraeli’s reformist conservatism of the 19th century, a somewhat protectionist, supremely patriotic alliance between the conservative elites and the ordinary man and woman
Javier E

With his sudden U-turn over Christmas, Boris Johnson caps a year of debacles | Boris Jo... - 0 views

  • The coronavirus crisis could not have been more cunningly engineered to expose Mr Johnson’s flaws. He was made prime minister not because anyone thought that he was a cool and decisive head with the leadership skills and moral seriousness required to handle the gravest public health emergency in a century.
  • He was put there because he was a successful representative of the entertainer branch of populist leadership that prospered in the pre-virus era. “We elected him to be a ‘good times’ prime minister,” comments one senior Tory. “His curse is to be prime minister in bad times.”
  • The wrong criticism of his performance is to say that he has made mistakes. Confronted with a novel disease for which the country was unprepared, any prime minister would have made errors. The correct criticism is that he has failed to learn from his mistakes and egregiously repeated them.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • From supply failures of essential equipment to the summer exams debacle to the care homes scandal, another pattern of the crisis has been attempts to swerve culpability for all the things that have gone wrong by blaming anyone else but ministers.
  • One former Tory cabinet minister remarks: “There’s bound to be a public inquiry. We will be held to account for the fact that our deaths are higher and our recession is deeper.”
  • The pattern is one of resisting taking the necessary steps at the time when they would have been most effective and then being compelled to implement them late and with more damaging effect
  • Given his lack of dedication to detail and the hard grind of delivering competent government, he needed a capable cabinet. Feebly fearful of having any substantial figures around the top table who might challenge him, he instead surrounded himself with a cabinet characterised by Tory MPs as “lightweight”, “talentless”, “loyalist duds” and “nodding dogs”.
  • Another persistent pattern during this plague year has been to over-promise and under-deliver. We were going to have a “fantastic” this and a “world-beating” that and a “moon-shot” the other. We would have settled for a test, trace and isolate programme that worked.
  • Optimism can be a positive trait in a politician, but wishful thinking is a fatal characteristic in an epidemic. So is deceptive messaging to the public.
  • That misjudgment, like all the other ones, flows from his personality. Just below the surface of his performative face lurks an insecure character who trusts no one and yearns to be loved by everyone. He hates being the bearer of bad news and tough choices.
zarinastone

Britain's Boris Johnson: 'No Alternative' To Strict New Coronavirus Lockdown : Coronavi... - 0 views

  • British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday said there was "no alternative" to a new England-wide lockdown amid a spike in coronavirus cases that he warned could be "twice as bad" as anything seen in the spring.
  • In a statement to the House of Commons, Johnson sought to defend his government from sharp criticisms.
  • The prospect of a second lockdown has terrified Britons, Farage said.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Over the weekend, the prime minister announced that pubs, restaurants, gyms, nonessential shops and places of worship would be closed starting Thursday.
  • Johnson, who has received heavy criticism for his handling of the crisis, had initially refused to consider a second lockdown, despite the advice of scientists who warned the country was risking a new spike in cases and deaths.
  • The decision from No. 10 Downing St. to renew extraordinary measures to control the spread of the virus that causes COVID-19 comes as other countries in Europe are facing similar dilemmas.
  • France imposed a stricter lockdown on Friday
  • Germany also ordered the closing of restaurants, bars, gyms and theaters starting this week
  • Other European countries, such as Spain and Italy, have seen a surge in new cases as well.
Javier E

Boris Johnson's polarising statue tweets are pure Trump | Boris Johnson | The Guardian - 0 views

  • The world denounces the racism that remains the defining birth defect of the United States, pointing its collective finger at that country to shame it – and yet, by that very act of castigation, it confirms America’s power. The US is still the global arena, the place where issues that vex every nation are played out. It remains the reflecting glass in which so much of the world sees itself.
  • There is hate in every country, of course, but largely thanks to its colonisation of the global imagination through TV and movies, America’s horrors are endowed with a vivid, even epic quality that somehow renders them uniquely universal
  • The right loves a culture war, because such a battle changes the subject – almost always shifting from ground on which they would lose to ground on which they can win.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Let’s imagine the initial focus had remained instead on a demand to tackle discrimination in policing and criminal justice, expanding to include the higher death rates from Covid-19 among black Britons. Johnson and others in power would now be on the defensive, forced to promise action.
brookegoodman

Soviet Union: Stalin, Cold War & Collapse | HISTORY - HISTORY - 0 views

  • After overthrowing the centuries-old Romanov monarchy, Russia emerged from a civil war in 1921 as the newly formed Soviet Union. The world’s first Marxist-Communist state would become one of the biggest and most powerful nations in the world, occupying nearly one-sixth of Earth’s land surface, before its fall and ultimate dissolution in 1991. The United Socialist Soviet Republic, or U.S.S.R., was made up of 15 soviet republics: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.
  • A long and bloody civil war followed. The Red Army, backed by the Bolshevik government, defeated the White Army, which represented a large group of loosely allied forces including monarchists, capitalists and supporters of other forms of socialism.
  • Georgian-born revolutionary Joseph Stalin rose to power upon Lenin’s death in 1924. The dictator ruled by terror with a series of brutal policies, which left millions of his own citizens dead. During his reign—which lasted until his death in 1953—Stalin transformed the Soviet Union from an agrarian society to an industrial and military superpower.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Between 1928 and 1940, Stalin enforced the collectivization of the agricultural sector. Rural peasants were forced to join collective farms. Those that owned land or livestock were stripped of their holdings. Hundreds of thousands of higher-income farmers, called kulaks, were rounded up and executed, their property confiscated.
  • Stalin eliminated all likely opposition to his leadership by terrorizing Communist Party officials and the public through his secret police.
  • The Soviet Union by 1948 had installed communist-leaning governments in Eastern European countries that the USSR had liberated from Nazi control during the war. The Americans and British feared the spread of communism into Western Europe and worldwide.
  • During the 1960s and 1970s, the Communist Party elite rapidly gained wealth and power while millions of average Soviet citizens faced starvation. The Soviet Union’s push to industrialize at any cost resulted in frequent shortages of food and consumer goods. Bread lines were common throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Soviet citizens often did not have access to basic needs, such as clothing or shoes.
  • At home, however, Khrushchev initiated a series of political reforms that made Soviet society less repressive. During this period, later known as de-Stalinization, Khrushchev criticized Stalin for arresting and deporting opponents, took steps to raise living conditions, freed many political prisoners, loosened artistic censorship, and closed the Gulag labor camps.
  • On October 4, 1957, the USSR publicly launched Sputnik 1—the first-ever artificial satellite—into low Earth orbit. The success of Sputnik made Americans fear that the U.S. was falling behind its Cold War rival in technology.
  • Gorbachev’s glasnost plan called for political openness. It addressed personal restrictions of the Soviet people. Glasnost eliminated remaining traces of Stalinist repression, such as the banning of books (like Boris Pasternak’s Nobel Prize-winning “Dr. Zhivago”) and the much-loathed secret police (though the KGB wouldn’t fully dissolve until the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991). Newspapers could criticize the government, and parties other than the Communist Party could participate in elections.
  • The Cold War power struggle—waged on political, economic and propaganda fronts between the Eastern and Western blocs—would persist in various forms until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
  • An unsuccessful coup by Communist Party hard-liners in August 1991 sealed the Soviet Union’s fate by diminishing Gorbachev’s power and propelling democratic forces, led by Boris Yeltsin, to the forefront of Russian politics.
1 - 20 of 131 Next › Last »
Showing 20 items per page