Around 100,000 Russian soldiers are positioned at the Ukraine border and could trigger an unpredictable, terrifying ground war.
Biden, the administration of a 79-year old incumbent with cognitive impairment, ditheres and sends mixed message about what the US will do to any invasion by Putin.
British consumers and businesses are shaken as they try to figure out their budgets for skyrocketing fuel costs, along with an ill-timed increase in national insurance.
These are titanic challenges, though you wouldn’t think so to read much of our media, or listen to the BBC.
We are instead invited to join the public outrage at the news that 30 Downing Street employees attended an informal gathering in June 2020 with a cake given to him by Carrie, his future wife.
Dominic Cummings was pictured as the person responsible for Downing Street’s worst lockdown lies
Our group was invited to participate in public outrage about the fact that, in June 2020 30 Downing Street staff members attended a low key gathering where a cake was presented by Carrie to the Prime Minster on his birthday
The event has widely been billed as a lockdown-breaching ‘party’, suggesting that guests made their way across London for a boozy session of cocktails and canapes.
It was actually a short gathering of employees already having to mix as they worked in the same place. Boris Johnson also attended the meeting for only ten seconds.
It is hard to imagine how attendees could be charged under these draconian, poorly-written Covid regulations. They were there legally.
But this didn’t stop people from reacting in hysterics to the news. Yesterday, the Metropolitan Police – who appear too busy to examine rampant misogyny and even sex crimes within their own ranks –launched their own investigation into ‘Partygate’.
Isn’t this an absurd over-reaction to what has been going on? It is understandable that people will feel offended by the breach of Downing Street rules. We must remember to keep the bigger picture in mind.
Fixed penalty notices are appropriate for public violations of Covid rules. These penalties can be similar to those given for parking or dropping litter. It is really necessary to have a Met investigator unit send to your home at what price to determine how many penalties should be issued.
Boris’s enemies are breathless with the excitement of it all. The source of many of these stories happens to be the same person that they used hate the most: the Prime Minister.
Even if the situation were less serious, it would still be funny that Dominic Cummings (ex-aide to Downing Street) was the man behind the plot against Boris Johnson.
Cummings may well be remembered for telling the worst lockdown lie: he claimed that he was driving to Barnard Castle to examine his vision.
He could not get the whole story right. First, he claimed he drove from London to North-East during Covid restrictions regarding childcare. Then he suggested he was concerned about his personal safety.
Johnson should have dismissed Cummings, a sinister and mostly absurd narcissist after Barnard Castle’s scandalous whopper.
This attack on constitutional and elected governments should concern everyone, regardless of what view we have about the Prime Minister.
He was eventually so disruptive to Downing Street that it forced him to leave.
He left behind a trail of chaos and rancour and, bent on revenge, has been masterminding Johnson’s demise with a chillingly determined zeal.
It is important to understand what’s going on. The drip release of harmful information by him is part of an orchestrated coup against an elected government.
Not hand grenades and rifles are the weapon of choice, but saved emails that can be fed to credulous journalists without disclosing their source. Emails are carefully timed so that they do the maximum amount of damage.
One hesitates to blame the messenger, but these journalists, and some of the dimmer anti-Boris backbench Tory MPs, are this coup’s ‘useful idiots’, to borrow a phrase attributed to Lenin. We all need to be concerned about this attack on our constitutional traditions and our elected government, no matter what our opinion of the Prime Minister.
Boris Johnson is certainly irresponsible and has tin-eared those who lost loved ones because they couldn’t visit them when they died.
He may not be worthy to get out of the ditch he’s driven into.
Because I have known him as a journalistic colleague for a long time – though we are not close friends – I hope he survives.
He almost died from Covid just two months prior to the birthday celebration.
In this context, it is understandable Carrie Johnson wanted to celebrate his 56th birthday when she feared that he might die.
It is really scandalous for her to choose this in front of some colleagues who were also through the Covid mill.
Sadly, people who should know better are falling in line with the coup plotters’ intentions. An obscure Tory backbencher is so distressed by his encounters with Tory whips – whose job, remember, is to protect the party and its leader whether through bullying or cajoling – that he feels the police should investigate their behaviour too.
We hope he will be able to get the proper victim support booklet after his interview with Met.
Parts of the Conservative Party behave like media studies students from a third-rate university, which is the truth.
Observers from far away are welcome to participate in the mass condemnation.
The Guardian newspaper’s front-page headline yesterday spoke of ‘outrage’ triggered by the cake presentation. They were perhaps most upset by the fact that the cake had Union flag icing.
All pretences of reporting the story or placing it in the proper context seem to have been dropped by the BBC. The presenters of Radio 4’ flagship Today programme act as Puritan enforcers, obsessively clucking away and tut-tutting at the Prime Minister’s alleged transgressions.
Yesterday morning, Grant Shapps (the Transport Secretary) appeared on Today. He spoke very pleasantly about the blessingly welcomed lifting of travel restrictions.
The BBC’s interviewer couldn’t accept the idea that some listeners may want to know if they can take their kids abroad for half-term.
Again and again Mr Shapps was forced back to speculate about what the final report of Sue Gray, a senior civil servant, might contain.
Although the coup against Downing Street was motivated by animus personal, those who want to reverse Brexit have adopted it. Remainer and Leftish media alike embrace any Downing Street offense, regardless of how small or human.
The arch anti-Brexiteer Lord Heseltine was revealing yesterday when he sought to add to the ordure being poured over the Prime Minister’s head.
He told Sky News that if Mr Johnson is shown to be a liar, that would ‘open a can of worms’ that might lead to Brexit being reversed.
It is possible for his lordship to dream about this. These comments from a man who was disappointed in his prime ministerial ambitions, however, reveal the true agenda of those who show their anger today.
Boris Johnson has made many mistakes and wasted a lot of the political capital that he gained by leading his party in a stunning victory at general election.
However, his Conservative critics need to ponder whether or not they wish to reward Boris’ destruction simply because they cannot forgive him for Brexit.