[Andy McDandy]

Stewart Lee on the ESL fiasco. Possibly breaking a world record for the use of "buccaneering" in one article.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... per-league

Boris Johnson’s spineless intervention in the Great 48 Hour Town Crier Sell-Off of 2021 is a spaff in the face for the millions of Britons who voted for Brexit because they believed we should be free-market buccaneers; and it is a spaff in the face of the betrayed pole-dancing entrepreneur Jennifer Arcuri, who gave Boris Johnson her love on a family sofa, because she believed in his belief in buccaneering.

[Andy McDandy]

Two for one today, as Marina Hyde tackles Sofagate:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... lat-refurb

I keep reading that Dominic Cummings “knows where the bodies are buried”. Unfortunately, so do 127,000 families.

Ouch!

[Andy McDandy]

https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... ssion=true

Thirdly, the turn of John Crace on Mrs Trunchbull cosplayer Therese Coffey.

[Boiler]

Rafael Behr on Johnson:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... r-politics

The prime minister approaches truth the way a toddler handles broccoli. He understands the idea that it contains some goodness, but it will touch his lips only if a higher authority compels it there. Everyone who has worked with him in journalism and politics describes a pattern of selfishness and unreliability. He craves affection and demands loyalty, but lacks the qualities that would cultivate proper friendship. The public bonhomie hides a private streak of brooding paranoia. Being incapable of faithfulness, he presumes others are just as ready to betray him, which they duly do, provoked by his duplicity.

The court of King Boris combines the zealotry of a revolution with the conceit of an empire and the probity of gangsters.

[Andy McDandy]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... ir-starmer

John Crace o today's shenanigans.

[The Red Arrow]

The one I'd been waiting for.

See also
The ‘John Lewis nightmare’ shows just how out of touch Boris Johnson is
To the majority of voters, snobbery is the headline offence of the prime minister’s flat refurbishment
Zoe Williams
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... urbishment

[Andy McDandy]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ise-church

Marina takes aim at Gwyneth Paltrow. Fish and barrels come to mind.

[Bones McCoy]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ise-church

Marina takes aim at Gwyneth Paltrow. Fish and barrels come to mind.

I don't wist to think about the cruise ship's fragrance.

[Andy McDandy]

Couple of items from Marina Hyde. First off, Starmer's image issues:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... di-starmer

On civil liberties and ending lockdown:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... aud-tories

Of course, in Johnson’s published oeuvre, freeborn Englishmen are forever being admired for doing exuberantly freeborn things like “beating the hedgerows with staves” – even as Johnson’s government seeks to ban any protest that is too noisy or somehow “annoying”. In Johnson’s canon, the praises are forever being sung of “peasants blind drunk on non-EU approved scrumpy” – and yet, the author’s very first act as London mayor was to immediately outlaw drinking on the Tube. I sometimes wonder if Boris Johnson is a committed civil libertarian in the same way I’m a peerless opening batsman for England.

[Andy McDandy]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ellchecker

Marina Hyde on blistering form re. Cameron.

It does seem genuinely incredible that such a professed opponent of the nanny state should believe it is the state’s job to provide some kind of aftercare facility to assist former prime ministers on their financial trolley-dashes. Politicians who are permanently telling ordinary people that they need to take personal responsibility are so often appalling at doing it themselves.

[Lardboy]

Maybe I'm childish but I enjoyed the end of her first paragraph:

Hauled before two select committees to answer for his Greensill lobbying role, David Cameron yesterday claimed his text to the Treasury mentioning a “rate cut” might in fact have meant to say “VAT cut”. As the former prime minister put it: “I think I’m a victim of spellcheck here.” A what now? Still, you’ll have nothing but respect for this excuse, which is basically: “I fear that I, a standup guy, have been autocorrected into a complete chancer.” And yet … on which phone software does VAT autocorrect to rate? I’m afraid I found it rather difficult to watch this section of the hearings and not think: can you ducking believe this aunt?

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Killer.

[Boiler]

Nothing will come of it though.

[Andy McDandy]

Stew, can you do a piece on the Tories' confected culture war and the failure of the BBC and media in general to hold them to account?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... e-wreckers

Also Stew, can you cover the way the Tories are running rampant over people's rights, again not held to account by the pliant media?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... leptocracy

[Andy McDandy]

Marina Hyde on the easing of regulations and the possibility of a new variant:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... tt-hancock

Yesterday, a minister briefed Politico’s Playbook: “The risk is that a small number of idiots ruin it for everyone else.” Well quite. It IS only a small number of idiots – but unfortunately, they all work in Downing Street.

John Crace on Matt Hancock's latest bullshit:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... ia-variant

Unsurprisingly, Hancock’s explanations didn’t really satisfy anyone on both benches and by the time he had given the same unsatisfactory answer four or five times, he was sounding tetchy and looking increasingly flustered. Matt talks a great deal about levelling with the country but he can’t even level with himself. The reality is that the government doesn’t learn from its own mistakes as it is unable to admit it has made them. So it is destined to endlessly repeat them. The dead are just collateral damage.

[Andy McDandy]

https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... ssion=true

2 doses of Crace today, here on Angela Rayner and urgent questions about Tory procurement issues. Lovely description of Gove as a mixture of overconfidence and cowardice.

[Andy McDandy]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... -scapegoat

Marina Hyde on the BBC, Bashir and hypocrisy.

I think we can live without today’s preposterous moralising from much of Fleet Street, who know very well the terrible things they and others did on countless occasions to get stories relating to Diana or her wider family. “Defund the BBC,” was last night’s pontification from former Sun editor Kelvin Mackenzie, who once put Diana’s covertly recorded private phone calls on a premium-rate line so readers could ring in and have a listen. And those were the good years. Half the stuff these guys did in pursuit of Diana stories is, mercifully for them, completely unprintable.

Alas, we will spend the next few days hearing of the BBC’s shame from some of the most shameless hypocrites in human history. The tabloids may not like Prince Harry’s reincarnation as a super-rich Californian wellness bore, but it does have the moral edge over pulling people’s medical records and hacking the phones of murdered 13-year-old girls.

[Andy McDandy]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... ut-the-bbc

John Crace on the Bashir fallout, and the BBC's endless enquiry into its own behaviour.

[Youngian]

John Redwood merely lamented there weren’t enough programmes for people who loved Brexit, the union and England.

Redwood's Routes: Follow John on his bizarre twisted Brexit highway from free market dingbat to unhinged Bennite Twitter pundit.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Will he wear pastel Edwardian suits?