Trebarwith Strand to Port Isaac. A thigh-bursting walk

"Strenuous", "the most difficult stretch on the Cornish Coastal Footpath" and "not for the faint hearted" are just a few comments others have made about the Trebarthwith Strand to Port Isaac leg of our footpath saga. In the event, it was all of these - but we did it. In my case, not with much style. With this one under our boots, we've just got two more segments to complete and we'll have done the entire circuit.

Not a very inspiring photograph as it was taken on the car park at Port Isaac. But it has the merit of showing our walk in its entirety. From this distance, it looks relatively flat. What was the fuss about?  How hard could it be?

Take a look at the elevation profile and the fuss is obvious. It's one of those walks when, if you are not going up, you must be going down. We clocked 7.2 miles which was very gratifying - after the event. The weather was good all the way along and the visibility gave us some excellent views.

We joined the walk at the back of the Prince William Hotel in Trebarwith Strand and were immediately faced with a near vertical climb up 203 steps. No, I didn't count them, the figure comes from a footpath guide. This was a taste of what was to come. It has to be said that Mrs P shows commendable ability at scaling these ascents, me far less so.

Looking back along Trebarwith Strand. At lower tides, there's quite a good beach. It's also got an excellent reputation amongst the surfing fraternity.

Gull Rock, just off Trebarwith Strand.

Looking due west. Unusually, as the tops of some of the waves show, the wind was coming off the land rather from the sea.

All walkers need sustenance. On the left is a chunk of homemade egg, ham, chicken and sausage meat pie and, on the right, a piece of Mrs P's reknowned fruit cake. Food of the gods.

Looking due east, with Gull Rock in the distance. Some surf but there was not enough wind to whip large waves.

The lump in front is aptly named 'The Mountain'. The route up is clearly visible and it was as steep as it looks. Mrs P was way ahead of me at this point and can be seen on the footbridge.

The predominant mineral along this part of the coast is slate and it has been quarried for centuries. Today, the only working quarry is the world famous one at Delabole. There are very few traces of the quarries left and what there are, are not that easy to make out. Slate had many uses and this fence is a good example of that.

Daylight came to an end just after we'd finished the walk. We were glad that we were off the path before darkness fell.

General Election 2019:: Post #11: Call me a poor loser but........................

Martin Rowson: Guardian: 14th December 2019

Well, that didn't turn out quite the way I would have liked. We’ve lost. Brexit is going to happen and we'll have to live with it. We are now in for a long period of uncertainty and, as we can’t escape from that, we must do the best we can. As Jezza said, it's a time for reflection and I'll be doing just that before giving my views on the Labour position. In the meantime a few words(based on a 'round robin' that someone sent me) to those who voted Tory.

Congratulations on getting your chosen party into power, despite all the damage they have done to this country over the past nine years. Of course, it's your right to vote as you did and I support that. But, exercising that freedom comes with responsibilities and consequences. Even more, it makes you culpable in what comes next. Just to let you know that I hold you – individually and collectively – responsible:

•  For every failure to take meaningful action to protect the climate and tackle the climate emergency;

•  For every fracking licence granted and wind turbine refused;

•  For every overworked doctor and nurse;

•  For every patient – child or adult – forced to lie on a hospital floor awaiting treatment;

•  For every patient denied treatment due to cuts;

•  For every delayed operation;

•  For every piece of the NHS and public asset sold to the private sector;

•  For every overworked, overstressed teacher and every overcrowded classroom;

•  For every person and family forced into the humiliation of using a food bank;

•  For every person that goes cold or hungry because they cannot afford both food and heating;

•  For every sick or disabled person deemed fit for work and denied the support and benefits they need;

•  For every mentally ill person unable to access the treatment and support they need;

•  For every homeless person;

•  For every redundancy that comes through Brexit;

•  For every job seeker viciously sanctioned;

•  For the loss of each and every right and freedom the Government revokes as we leave the EU;

•  For yet more children, growing up without opportunity or hope;

•  For every pound lost to the public purse in tax avoidance and tax cuts for the richest;

•  For turning tolerant, outward-looking Great Britain into squalid, xenophobic Little England.

I couldn't care a toss about the reasons you had for voting as you did. Do not dare try to blame the opposition for not being ‘good enough’. Do not dare claim that you were misled or did know what would happen. The precedent and the information were there, had you had chosen to look and listen to more than the right-wing press, Tory propaganda and the crap that came through your social media feeds. You have the right to vote and with that comes the duty to inform yourselves and to think about your choice. Only you are responsible for the X you placed. Accept that responsibility for it leads to.

I sincerely hope that I’m wrong. Perhaps the Great Tousled Leader will undergo some Damascene moment of conversion and really will govern for the good of the country as a whole, caring for the poorest and most needy, rather than just his wealthy friends and backers. Perhaps, perhaps. But I am not hopeful.

However, if in twelve months we have a well-funded NHS and public services, action on climate change, our rights and economy protected, a Brexit deal that does not wreck the economy and fracture the country, then I will humbly offer my heartfelt apology for my criticism of your voting choice. Watch this space for my Xmas 2020 post.

I'll end with a quote that seems very apposite. It was made by Richard Tuck and comes from his concession speech following his loss in the 1966 California State Senate election: “The people have spoken, the bastards.” 

General Election 2019:: Post #10: Almost there and this is what I'm going to do tomorrow.

I support Labour. I support Labour because even if I lie in bed at night fretting about that lump in my groin, that twinge of pain in my leg or that constant urge to pee, I don’t have to worry that, if there is something wrong and I do need medical treatment, then I will not have to face financial ruin as well as the trauma of illness. I support Labour because I know that I can rely on them to fight until the last breath in their body for the right of the NHS to remain free from privatisation and safe from the rapacious depredations of American health corporations.

I support Labour because I know that they will never cease in their efforts to ensure that prescriptions remain affordable. I support a party that works to make sure that no one in my family will ever know the stress of some of my American friends, who constantly have to worry whether they can afford their medications. I support Labour because they will strive ceaselessly to prevent medicine poverty, where people have to choose whether they eat or warm their homes, or whether they buy the medications that they depend upon to remain well or to get better.

I support Labour because they want a UK that is open to the world. They seek a UK of tolerance, of kindness, a UK that welcomes people from Europe and the rest of the world and tells them that they’ve come home. I support Labour because they campaign to support our EU citizen friends, relatives, neighbours and colleagues.  I support Labour because they fight against an oppressive Home Office that demonises and criminalises our neighbours, our workmates, our friends, our family, and rips them away from their UK home to cart them off to detention centres before deporting them to far off lands. I support Labour because they stand in solidarity with migrants, with asylum seekers, with the vulnerable. I support Labour because they understand that the best thing, the only thing, that we should tell someone fleeing war or oppression is “Welcome to the UK. Welcome home". I support Labour because they  support those values which mark the best of us.

I support Labour because they fight for our human and civil rights against an uncaring Conservative government that demonises the poor and blames the sick and disabled for their own poverty. I support Labour because they share my disgust and horror at a Westminster that casually tosses our young onto the streets. I support Labour because they understand that a society can only function as a cohesive whole when it looks after those who are least able to look after themselves, that it treats them with compassion and love. Walk past that young woman begging on the street and remember, there but for the grace of a pay cheque go I. I support Labour because she knows that if we do not support those who are unable to support themselves, there will be no one to look after us when we suffer the same problems. I support Labour because they oppose and condemns austerity.

I support Labour because they will fight tooth and nail to defend my human and employment rights. The Tories seek to remove us from the EU in order to trash those rights, to make the UK a paradise for corporations offering zero hours contracts, with no workers’ rights, no holiday or sick pay. I support Labour because they stand against that and resist it with every fibre of their being.

I support Labour because they oppose the obscenity of weapons of mass destruction. I support Labour because they have no truck with the nuclear viagra of a faded empire, because they support a UK that walks in peace.

I support Labour because they are pro-peace and anti-privatisation.

I support Labour because their values and social aspirations reflect mine.

I am a tribal, visceral Labourite. And, in all bar a couple of elections when I've voted tactically, I have always voted Labour. However, this General Election is different. The imperative is to reduce the numbers of Tory MPs wherever possible. With this in mind, and notwithstanding my Labour roots, I'll be going into the polling booth tomorrow to vote with my head rather than my heart. In our constituency (North Cornwall), Labour, and how I wish it were otherwise as the candidate, Joy Bassett, is really good, will not come anywhere near mounting a serious challenge on the Tory incumbent. The Liberal Democrat candidate, Danny Chambers, stands a reasonable chance. I've heard him speak and, putting his first-time election naivety to one side, his heart and world experiences are in the right place. Luckily I am able to assuage my conscience by swapping my vote with a Lib Dem friend in a Labour marginal seat up north and so, holding my nose at the time, I will be putting a X against Danny Chamber's name on Thursday.

And what about Jeremy Corbyn? Leadership matters. Leadership is essential. The Labour Party needs a leader with energy, authority and imagination. Jezza isn't the one and my opinion of him (see my post of 22nd August 2018) has remained unchanged over the run-up to this election. Given the Tories abysmal record and the prospect of another Boris administration, a Labour victory was there for the taking, but not with Jezza at the helm. The policies are right but the 'leader' isn't. But if not Jezza, who? And that's where it becomes very difficult: who indeed? Watch this space as Labour implodes over the next few months.

General Election 2019:: Post #9: A few reasons for voting Conservative

In the interests of maintaining a resemblance of political balance, here are a few reasons that you might like to take into consideration if you lean to the right. You should....

Vote Conservative if you don’t care about the truth.

Vote Conservative if you are OK with public services being chronically underfunded while the rich get tax cuts.

Vote Conservative if you don’t mind stepping over a teenager sleeping rough in a shop doorway.

Vote Conservative if you’re fine with disabled people suffering cuts to their already meagre incomes.

Vote Conservative if you think it’s a good thing that people have to go hungry and trudge to foodbanks in the cold in order that a charity can give them food for their children.

Vote Conservative if you are happy to see more children living in poverty.

Vote Conservative if you have no social conscience.

Vote Conservative to enable the cruelty and lack of compassion of the entitled posh boy who lies to you and refuses to be held to account.

Vote Conservative if you want to reward a lack of empathy, compassion and humanity.

Vote Conservative if you’re a turkey voting for Christmas.

Vote Conservative for a lie that will consume you.

General Election 2019:: Post #8: You might be guessing that I'm not a Boris fan

Hooray, Boris Johnson finally did an interview today. To be fair, although he’s still in hiding from Andrew Neil, he has done other challenging interviews. Why, just the other day he appeared alongside Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby on This Morning for some rigorous questioning about who his favourite contestant was on Dancing on Ice. He took some selfies with them. Who says that he’s not being held to account.

Today the bloated one and his artifice of a hairdo appeared on the Sophy Ridge Show on Sky News. It was twenty minutes of harrumphing, recycling lies, talking over the top of a woman and smirking. When asked what was the worst thing he’d ever done, he didn’t say that it was colluding with his criminal pal Darius Guppy who wanted to have a journalist beaten up. He didn’t say that it was cheating on his wife and fathering an unknown number of children that he refused to take responsibility for while castigating single mothers in a press article. He didn’t say that it was making racist, homophobic, or misogynist comments that would shame anyone who possessed a functioning moral compass. He didn’t say that it was ensuring that the British-Iranian journalist Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe received a longer prison sentence because he couldn’t be arsed to speak with care and forethought in the Commons. He didn’t say that it was lying to the Queen. He didn’t say that it was lying constantly and repeatedly every single day of his miserable humming and hawing, cheating, privileged and entitled life. Oh no. He took quite some time to answer. He turned to look for assistance from his policy wonks just off camera. And then, roll of drums, he told us. The worst thing that he has ever done is to ride his bicycle on the pavement. Quite possibly he did so as he was on his way to see Theresa May running through a wheatfield. He smirked as he said it. Whenever Boris Johnson smirks, he’s lying. He can’t help himself. He is convinced of his own cleverness. But riding on pavements is wrong, and if some EU migrant does it, they will be deported forthwith.

It’s not so much that he thinks that we believe him. It’s just that he doesn’t care. Boris Johnson isn’t just amoral, he’s not merely immoral, he’s transmoral. There’s nothing that Boris Johnson believes sincerely and holds dear as a point of principle, other than an unshakeable conviction that he is beyond the rules of morality and decency that the rest of us should live by.

He sat there with his deliberately tousled hair, lying with every breath that he uttered, promising that he’d do Brexit, claiming that there would be no checks on goods passing into Northern Ireland, despite a leaked document produced by his own government which says that there will indeed be checks. Those experts eh? What are they like. What do they know anyway? Boris Johnson is right and everyone else is wrong, including his own civil servants and his own Brexit secretary.

He talked over the top of Sophy Ridge constantly. That’s just how he treats women. That’s just how he treats everyone who he considers to be beneath him. Which is everyone on the planet. And now I’ve noticed his deeply irritating pronounciation of oo as ew, I can’t unnotice it. It’s been added to the long and ever growing list of things to loathe Boris Johnson for. I fear that is a list which is only going to grow ever longer in the months to come. It’s going to be a much longer list than the list of things I disliked about Margaret Thatcher, and that’s a list that fills many tear stained volumes.

How can we trust you, asked Sophy Ridge, how can we believe your promise about extra nurses? Boris Johnson still kept trying to explain how in his universe keeping 19,000 nurses who might otherwise leave the NHS actually counts as extra new nurses. He muttered about seed funding and architects. There was a lot of fnaughing. This is a man who can’t be trusted to complete a coherent sentence. He always comes back to get Brexit done, his favourite lie. Brexit will not get done if the Tories win a majority. It will continue to dominate British politics for many years to come as there are negotiations about the future relationship of the UK with the EU. And make no mistake, the Conservatives will sell out whoever necessary in their pursuit of deals which favour their pals in the City of London.

In his few short months as Prime Minister heading a minority government, Boris Johnson has already trashed what passes for a British constitution. He unlawfully prorogued Parliament, lied to the Head of State, and threatened to ignore votes in the Commons. Just imagine the damage that he can cause if he commands a majority. Doing all that we can to ensure that this deceitful creature and his party of liars, chancers, opportunists, zealots, bigots, and extremists are deprived of a majority is a moral imperative. Never have the stakes in a UK General Election been clearer. The Conservatives represent a direct threat to decency, and to democracy itself.

In England and Wales defeating the Tories means voting for whoever is best placed to defeat the Conservatives. We are better than the Conservatives. We can do better. We can aspire to a country that isn’t characterised by their narrow lipped bigotry, their destruction of public services, their contempt for anyone who disagrees with them. On Thursday, vote for empowerment. Vote for a voice. Vote for decency. Vote for compassion.

General Election 2019:: Post #7: I'm seriously underwhelmed by it all

Here we go again, this time it's the BBC election debate. Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson are going head to head, at least that is if Johnson can be bothered to turn up. Expect more of what we’ve seen from Boris Johnson for the past few weeks, a lot of hooray-henrying, not answering questions, deflections, lies, turning everything into an attack on Corbyn, saying ' oven ready', 'get Brexit done', some more harrumphing and a lot more lies.

I’m only watching in the hope that the BBC goes with a last minute change of plans and the presenter of the debate Nick Robinson says, “So let’s take our first question from a member of the audience … Mr Andrew Neil, what would you like to ask the Prime Minister?” And then Andrew Neil walks on to interrogate the prime ministerial liar with the deliberately tousled hair. That would be worth it just for the look on Johnson’s face. But we’re unlikely to witness any such drama and certainly nothing dramatic from Jeremy Corbyn. Corbyn was sold to us as the man who was going to reinvigorate and reanimate British politics. It turned out to be a bit like hooking up on a dating app with someone who promised you a groovy kind of love and then discovering that you’re stuck on a night out with someone with a fetish for train timeables.

The time has come and Boris Johnson has actually been arsed to turn up. The audience in the studio in Maidstone, Kent is supposedly balanced, you know, in that special BBC kind of way that makes us all think that its biased against our particular views . Jeremy Corbyn’s starts with his opening statement. At least his glasses aren’t squinty this time. He talks about poverty and the need to rebuild our public services. He says yes, that does mean making those who can bear the burden pay more in taxes. Boris Johnson says get Brexit done. Let's play Borisbingo and take a drink every time he says it during the evening. There’s no prize, just an internal scream. And then he goes going on about the nightmare of another referendum on Europe and one on Scottish independence. guy is terrified of voting. What do you call a politician who doesn’t like it when the electorate gets to vote? Oh yeah, a dictator.

The first question isn’t from Andrew Neil. It’s from a man in the audience who wants to know why previous Tory leaders and statespersons don’t want people to vote for Boris Johnson. Get Brexit done, have a drink. Oven ready. Have another drink. At this rate the entire UK will be steaming drunk within the next five minutes, which may explain why so many people in the UK still want to vote for this liar.

There’s now a question from a leave voter who wants to know if Johnson can guarantee that Brexit will happen next year. Then a remain voter who wants to know if either leader can demonstrate that we’ll be better off because of Brexit. Get Brexit done. Get Brexit done. Please, please, make him stop. Is it politically incorrect to say that I am longing to ram something up him? Probably. But I am past the point of caring already. Get Brexit done. OH SHUT UP!

Now Johnson is trying to mislead people about the nature of the leave agreement with the EU, and trying to conflate it with a trade deal. There he goes again with the done thing. It’s his version of strong and stable from the last Conservative general election campaign, and we saw how that one turned out. Corbyn talks about how the document which he released today proves that there will be a customs border down the Irish sea, treating Northern Ireland differently from the rest of the UK. There’s a lot of fnaughing from Johnson, who can’t explain why it is that the DUP don’t agree with him. So he tries to smear Corbyn with support for the IRA. Deflection is not an answer. Corbyn points out that it was a Labour government which negotiated the peace agreement which brought about an end to the violence in Northern Ireland.

In other news, Britain’s top Brexit envoy in the US has resigned with a massive tirade against UK political leaders, saying she was fed up “peddling half-truths” and is leaving her post after 33 years in the foreign service. There's a turn up for the books, not even the people paid to sell Brexit believe in it.

Corbyn says that the problem is that 52/48 means a divided country, and there has to be a deal that brings people together. Johnson goes on the attack again, saying that Corbyn can’t get a deal if he doesn’t believe in it. The problem is that no one believes a word that Johnson says.

A question about the NHS now, how to deal with the shortage of nurses and how to ensure that the NHS retains them. Johnson lies about how he loves the NHS. Here come the 50,000 imaginary nurses. Tries to deflect by talking about Labour’s plans for a four day week. Corbyn says it was the Tories and Lib Dems who introduced student fees and axed the nurse bursary. He details Johnson’s lies about the number of hospitals that are going to be built. There’s quite a bit of fnaughing and waffle from the tousled one. Waffle waffle, planning, architects, plans, seed funding – forty new hospitals! He announces triumphantly as though he’d explained himself. Still, at least he didn’t say get Brexit done. Be grateful for small mercies. The reality is that it’s just the refurbishing of six hospitals. 6 is not 40. Get Brexit done will not get Brexit done. There he goes again.

Corbyn says that he’ll end privatisation in the NHS. He warns about the risk of a deal with Trump about the price of medicines. Fnaugh fnaugh retorts Boris. There’s something deeply zen about watching a habitual liar accuse others of lying. But he doesn’t actually dispute that US health corporations want greater access to the NHS. Then he blames the problems on the previous Labour government’s fixation on PFI. We managed to go a whole 25 minutes without Johnson blaming a Labour government that hasn’t been in power for almost a decade. I suppose that counts as improvement. There’s some clapping from his acolytes in the audience. Corbyn points out that it’s a fact that the Conservatives have presided over an NHS that is in crisis. If you don’t believe what Corbyn has to say about the NHS, take it from a former Conservative Prime Minister. John Major said, “The NHS would be as safe as a pet hamster in the presence of a hungry python if Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Iain Duncan-Smith rose to power following Brexit.”

LBJ is now banging on about One Nation Conservatism after he’s kicked all the One Nation Tories out of the party. Nick Robinson is letting him get away with all this. They used to be at university together. Just saying.

Taxation now. Johnson hasn’t explained how he’ll pay for all these improved public services that he’s promising while at the same time promising to cut taxes. He says he’s going to get Brexit done. Kill me now, please.

Corbyn says that the Tories always look after the rich, and do so by penalising the poor. He says that his proposals will raise taxes on the rich and big business, and their proposed new corporation tax will still be lower than it is in France or the UK. Johnson says that Corbyn is saying that people who earn £20,000 a year are amongst the rich. I'll admit that I’m scarcely paying attention at this point, but I know he’s not said any such thing. That’s just not true, Boris. You can’t win an argument on the economy when your policy includes Brexit, so just throw in some random lies, that’ll sort it.

On to sentencing now. Johnson wants prisoners to serve their full sentences. Corbyn quite sensibly points out that all prisoners who are on fixed term sentences will come out eventually, so you can’t get away without addressing the huge problems of rehabilitation and monitoring. Cutting the number of police officer, and trashing the probation service as the Conservatives have done is what causes these problems with released prisoners. Johnson ignores all that and waffles on about making prisoners serve their full sentences. Yet suppose the London Bridge terrorist did indeed serve his full sentence, without proper rehabilitation, supervision, and monitoring that merely delays a terror attack for a few years. But then by that time it won’t be Boris Johnson’s problem. Just ours. And that in a nutshell is Boris Johnson’s approach to everything.

Now they’re being asked what they’d do to get the hate out of politics. That’s going to be a hard one. I dislike Boris Johnson. It’s wrong to dislike people, and Boris Johnson makes me dislike him. Every time he opens his mouth and says get Brexit done, I dislike him even more. And then I dislike him even more still for making me a bad person. He even manages to squeeze get Brexit done into his answer to this question. God, I really dislike him now.

We get onto anti-Semitism, inevitably. Corbyn says that he has no tolerance for racism in any form and has always condemned it. He says that he’s never used racist language to describe another human being, unlike Johnson. Johnson wants-to-get-Brexit-done says that Corbyn is a failure. Failure, says Corbyn, is when you use racist language to describe other people and other countries. You could talk about the mating habits of Galapagos tortoises and Johnson would bring it back to Brexit.

A woman in the audience wants to know what punishment is appropriate for politicians who lie in election campaigns. Johnson says they should be forced to go down on their knees and whip themselves with a copy of their manifesto. We’re waiting, Boris. Oh, how we are waiting.

Nick Robinson asks Johnson about the diplomat who has resigned saying that she no longer wants to peddle half truths. Johnson says he doesn’t know who Robinson is referring to. Credit where credit is due, that’s not a half truth. It’s a complete lie. And one that channels the behaviour of the orange one across the water.
 
Are we done yet? 30 seconds for a closing statement and that's it. Hooray.

Corbyn says that politics can change things. The future is ours to make together. He mentions the climate emergency, the first time it’s figured this evening. Johnson says we can have two chaotic referendums and then reels off a load of lies. Oh, and he says get Brexit done, the biggest lie of all. Boris Johnson sounds like a broken record. No he doesn't. He sounds like a lying shit.

Who won? No one. Everyone in the UK is a loser in this election for a number of reasons. Reason one: are these two really the best that their parties can offer us? Reason two: conflating two really important issues (Brexit and policies for the next 5 years) is never going to end well. It makes me want to weep.

General Election 2019:: Post #6: British politics - the gift that keeps giving

On the Andrew Marr Show last Sunday, LB Johnson uttered what was quite possibly one of the worst lies that the lying liar has ever lied about in his miserable mendacious life. Johnson tried to blame the Labour Party for the early release of Usman Khan, the convicted terrorist responsible for Friday’s knife attack at London Bridge. Johnson tried to make out that last week’s atrocity was entirely the fault of the Labour Party because Labour introduced legislation allowing for the early release of prisoners who were deemed to have been rehabilitated. He absolutely refused to take any responsibility at all for the actions of the Conservative Party who, in the past nine years that they’ve been in office, have taken an axe to funding for rehabilitation efforts within prisons, and who have ruined the probation service which is tasked with the supervision of released prisoners with a botched privatisation attempt and who have slashed its funding.

Nothing to do with me, said LBJ, I’ve only been Prime Minister for a few months. Yet when the artfully tousled pants-on-firer was running for the Conservative leadership in 2016, he had a meeting with the prominent lawyer and Chief Prosecutor for the North West of England, Nazir Afzal, who warned him that the justice system was desperately in need for funding. Afzal informed Johnson that he was concerned that cuts to funding for probation and rehabilitation services meant that convicted terrorists, who were due to be released, would not be adequately supervised and that he feared some of them would go on to reoffend. However, it seems that during this encounter, Johnson was only interested in changes to the justice system that don’t cost any money, and was not interested in what an expert with direct professional experience had to tell him. Experts, eh? Who needs them? It’s only what Michael Gove said during the EU referendum after all.

Yet even with an interviewer as weak as Marr, Johnson was still unable to give a proper account of himself. No wonder he’s terrified of Andrew Neil, and steers well clear of the leaders’ debates that have been organised by the broadcasters. Cowardice is born in selfishness and ends in shame. Or it would, if Johnson was capable of feeling shame. Since he’s not, his cowardice will end in disaster for everyone else. Johnson is a coward, but those who vote for him, even though they are well aware of his shortcomings, are guilty of moral cowardice too. The shame that he is incapable of feeling becomes theirs. And, yes, I do include you, Scott Mann, of the North Cornwall constituency. Much to my shame, at one time I thought you were merely misguided.

There’s another election debate this evening but there’s as much chance of Boris Johnson showing up as there is of Prince Andrew showing some remorse, or indeed his sweat glands. Instead the Tories will be represented by Rishi Sunak, the nonentity who’s the Minister of State for Prime Ministerial Bullshit.  Boris Johnson can’t come because he drew the short straw and has to visit the cage where Jacob Rees Mogg is locked up for the duration of the election campaign in order to feed him a peasant and the tears of a crocodile. All the other parties are represented. Johnson and Corbyn want to lead the country but neither can be arsed to turn up for a debate. But we can’t say that Johnson isn’t represented, as he’s sent Nigel Farage.

Nicola Sturgeon is appearing for the SNP. Farage is barnstorming for the Brexit Party. Jo Swinson will be torturing innocent vowels for the Lib Dems. Adam Price is standing up for Plaid and Siân Berry for the Greens. Labour is sending [checks notes], Richard Burgon. Richard is the deputy shadow Secretary of State for Futile Gestures.

Now this bit is written after the said debate. Because of my inner masochist, I watched edited highlights on catch-up. What? It’s going to go on for two hours? Doesn’t that count as a crime against humanity? And, here's a thing, why do the sets for these events always look like the set for one of the crappier daytime TV quizzes? This is more pointless than Pointless.

The Tory nonentity starts his speil by telling us that we’re all fed up. This is correct Rishi, we’re fed up of your boss not answering questions. We’re fed up with being patronised. And we’re fed up being told what we think by former hedge fund managers who are married to the daughter of a billionaire. That would be you, Rishi. He sort of reminds me of one of those synthetic humanoids from that Channel 4 Sci Fi show, Humans. Only not as convincingly human.

The Labour guy emotes like a plank of wood left out in the rain for six months. You know that you should go out there and pick it up and put it out of its misery, but then if you ignore it long enough it will disappear all by itself. So pretty much like the Labour party. There’s all the passion of a wet half day closing in Callington.

They start off by answering a question about the recent terrorist attack. Nigel Farage blames political correctness gone mad. Which is just showing his age really. If he was down with the youth he’d know it’s wokeness that he ought to be railing against. Political correctness is so ’80s, Nigel, a bit like you. He’s even wearing a tie that’s straight out of the Burton’s 1983 catalogue. And then in a surprise twist, the Tory nonentity blames the Labour party. You’d never know from listening to this guy that the Tories had been in power for the past nine years and if they had wanted tougher sentencing powers they could have done it already. Instead they slashed police numbers and destroyed the probation service.

Nigel Farage leapt in to demand that people convicted of terrorism offences be locked up for life and never allowed out again. These people want to destroy our civilisation! He harrumphed. Which the rest of us kinda thought was Nigel’s USP all this time. Then having made his nakedly populist point he was surprised that no one in the audience applauded him. That would be because they recognise a cheap opportunist when they see one, Nige.

Callington isn’t that bad really, you know.

Rishi guy is channelling Boris Johnson and refusing to answer Nicola Sturgeon’s question about ruling out no deal at the end of next year if the British government has failed to negotiate a trade deal with the EU. Nigel Farage bangs on about how Nicola Sturgeon is supposed to love independence and the UK will be independent once it’s out of the EU. Labour’s plank of wood guy wakes up and remarks that Nigel wasn’t very independent when he was taking instructions from Donald Trump when he called into Nigel’s show on LBC. That gets the round of applause that Nigel has been desperately seeking but failing to get all evening. Now we have actually learned something new. A wet plank of wood can deliver a nasty burn.

We get on to the question about keeping the UK together. Plank of wood guy rules out any backroom deals with the SNP over another indyref. Sturgeon says that if the union is as strong as people say then how come we’re in a position where Scotland is being dragged out of the EU against its will and Boris Johnson is deciding its future. She insists that the other parties respect Scotland’s right to choose. That gets applause. Jo Swinson wades in and blames the Labour party for allowing another indyref, and the Tory party for putting a customs border down the Irish sea. Tory guy says that it’s divisive to spend the next few years going on about referendums. It’s even more divisive for a supposedly democratic party to ignore a mandate delivered by the people of Scotland about the right to decide Scotland’s future. But Tory nonentity is fine with that. None of them are called on to defend the proposition that it’s fine for parties in Westminster to ignore the democratic will of the people of Scotland.

And then it’s on to immigration. Nigel Farage starts getting animated. I was losing the will to live by this time and was tempted to hit 'fast forward' but I didn't. Sian Berry points out that she’s lived with an Australian style immigration system and it’s nothing to be proud of.

Next up it’s a question about the special relationship and Trump’s visit next week. Farage seems to think that we need Donald Trump to protect us from the EU. Which is a bit like asking a vampire to protect you from a blood transfusion. Nicola Sturgeon asks for an Act of P arliament to protect the NHS from US corporations. That gets a round of applause. Farage tries to defend Trump’s misogyny by shouting over the top of the women in the room. He’s trying to brush it off by saying that all men say such things when they’ve had a few to drink. The problem with this line of argument is that Trump is teetotal. Maybe someone should explain to Nigel that sexual abuse doesn’t become OK just because it’s perpetrated by a drunk.

Sturgeon asks if we want to allow the future of the UK to be decided by the Trump-Johnson-Farage axis or whether we can choose something better. She’s getting the most rounds of applause from an otherwise pretty comatose audience. And that probably includes most of those watching at home. Adam Price says it’s never acceptable to refer to grabbing women by the pussy like Trump did, or referring to gay men like himself as bumboys, as Boris Johnson did. Big cheer. Tory nonentity tries to defend Johnson’s record on gay rights. Everyone else except Nigel Farage laughs. Tory nonentity comes across as someone who’d cheerfully scoff a plateful of dog crap if Boris Johnson told him to.

They move on to nukes. At least talking about them. While I am opposed to nuclear weapons I must admit that the notion of dropping one on Nigel Farage and the Conservative leadership does have a certain appeal. Wet plank guy ties himself in knots trying to defend Labour’s support of nuclear weapons with Jeremy Corbyn’s previous opposition to them. We’ve now all learned that Richard Burgon doesn’t have a high public profile, and is extremely unlikely ever to attain one. Adam Price points out that this is a moral issue. We unilaterally gave up chemical weapons, we should do the same with nuclear ones. Tory nonentity talks about how the Conservatives are all about peace and love and manages to avoid mentioning that under his party the UK has sold arms to 22 of the countries in the world with the worst records on human rights.

Nigel Farage goes on about the other parties lying about spending, which as Nicola Sturgeon points out is pretty rich from a man whose beloved Brexit only won the referendum because of a £350 million lie written on the side of a bus. Nigel gets annoyed at this. Hooray for Nicola. Tory nonentity lies about the strength of the UK economy.  The Tories inherited a UK credit rating of AAA stable from Labour in 2010. It is now Aa2 negative. He says that the route out of poverty is well paid jobs, neglecting to explain why so many working families are reliant on foodbanks.

They’re on to the NHS now. Nigel Farage says how much he values the NHS. He values it so much that he’d like to move towards a US style private health insurance model. At least that’s what he wanted in 2012. He’s very quiet about that now. Labour guy points out Farage’s previous support for a US style insurance system. Farage shouts back “more lies”. But he’s on record as having said so. There’s some random shouting. However we can all agree that the NHS is a very good thing, that the Tories are trashing it, but that Tory nonentity doesn’t need to worry about that because he’s extremely wealthy, and besides they don’t actually have provision for androids in health centres just yet. He just needs one of those Tesla power points where he can plug himself in.

We’re onto the final stretch now. Thank goodness as I'd lost the plot 45 minutes previously. Plank of wood guy says Labour will introduce free personal care for the elderly but he can’t answer Adam Price when he asks why Labour hasn’t introduced that in Wales already. It’s a devolved issue and the SNP has already introduced it in Scotland. Tory android manages to shoehorn get Brexit done into the discussion. Sturgeon points out that free personal care has existed in Scotland for over a decade and has recently been extended in scope. It can be done she says, stop talking about it and just do it.

Time for the closing statements. Farage says it’s been a competition about who is the most politically correct. And then the man who’s spent the evening channelling the 1980s complains that there’s no desire to change anything. Tory robot waffles about getting Brexit done and slagging off Corbyn. Labour plank of wood talks about the need for hope, a speech he delivers with all the passion of a souffle that has failed to rise. Adam Price demonstrates what passion is really about. Education is the route out of poverty, but children in Wales are going to school hungry. Give children the best Christmas present ever, the gift of a better future. Sian Berry warns of climate chaos, but says Greens don’t fear the future. Her party won’t allow the others to escape their responsibility. Jo Swinson murders some vowels and lays into Boris Johnson’s lies. Nicola Sturgeon says that Johnson’s Tories are unfit for office, they’ll damage our public services and our NHS. It’s vital to vote against them, and to vote for a better future. A vote for the SNP is a vote to provide an escape route out of Brexit, a vote to put Scotland’s future in Scotland’s hands.

Nicola Sturgeon has definitely had the most positive response from the audience. Adam Price has been passionate and has spoken well. Sian Berry came across well too. Plank of wood guy from Labour managed to get a couple of good lines in at Farage’s expense. The less said about the animatronic Tory nonentity the better, and Nigel Farage deserves to have a special level of hell all to himself for his shameful attempt to defend Trump’s “pussy grabbing” comments. Oh, and Jo Swinson was there too.

General Election 2019:: Post #5: Not a good week for British politics.

Neither Boris Johnson nor Nigel Farage could be arsed turning up to the Channel 4 Climate Debate on Thursday, and since Johnson had sent some nonentity that no one had heard of to represent him at the debate on the BBC on Friday night, Labour responded by sending a nonentity of its own instead of Jeremy Corbyn. We also discovered this week that Boris Johnson has not, in fact, agreed to be cajoled by Andrew Neil in his infamous “wrong foot a politician” technique which he likes to call interviewing, despite the fact that the other party leaders had only agreed to participate because they’d been assured that the Artfully Tousled Wick Dipper had already signed up to it. Johnson even had the nerve to assert that it wasn’t up to him to decide whether to be interviewed by Andrew Neil, claiming that this was a decision to be made by other people. The leader of the Conservative party wants us to believe that he’s not actually the leader of his own campaign. Aye. Right. Uh-huh. He can’t even be arsed making his lies halfway believable any more.
 
Then the BBC announced that they would refuse to allow Johnson on the Andrew Marr Show today until he agreed to do the Andrew Neil Inquistion. However this didn’t last long as the corporation backtracked after the London Bridge attack on Friday, saying that it was important for viewers that we get to hear Johnson’s waffling on about being hardline on terrorism. This is despite the fact that it was the Tories who cut 20,000 police in the first place. Now we have the BBC using the deaths of two innocent passers by as a justification for giving LBJ a preferential platform during this general election campaign. That’s pretty low, even by the standards of the BBC’s behaviour.

It doesn’t say much for Andrew Marr’s interviewing skills and his ability to hold politicians to account that Johnson has agreed to do an interview with him but not with Andrew Neil. And it says even less about the BBC’s ability to stand up to a governing party which pulls cheap tricks in its attempts to avoid being held to account. Right now the only chance that the BBC has of regaining even a modicum of the public trust that it has squandered would be for Andrew Marr to develop a strategic illness on Sunday just as he sits down with Johnson, and then Andrew Neil can walk on to replace him. That would be worth it just for the look on Boris Johnson’s lying scheming face. But it didn't happen.

None of the UK parties is having a good election here, but we can already be quite sure that the biggest losers are the BBC. You don’t change that perception by allowing Boris Johnson and his team to get away with avoiding proper scrutiny and indulging in behaviour which cheats the public and deceives the BBC. The BBC’s coverage of this election campaign is an absolute horror show.


Despite it being a leaders’ debate, Michael Gove turned up at the Channel 4 studio with Boris Johnson’s dad and a film crew in tow, demanding to be allowed to take part in the debate instead of Johnson. The son, not the father. Perhaps Michael was struggling with the concept of “leader of the Conservative party”. Which is not surprising given that not so long ago he described Boris Johnson as not being up to the job of leading the Conservative party. Maybe in his imagination he thinks it’s really himself. Channel 4 quite rightly held their ground and refused to allow Gove to take Johnson’s place. Cue much harrumphage from the human goldfish. What part of leader don’t you understand, Michael? All of it, as it turns out. Channel 4 were not going to be enablers of Boris Johnson’s shamelessness. Take note BBC. They had a melting block of ice instead of the Tories, which was a perfect metaphor for public trust in British politics. Nigel Farage wasn’t there either, but everyone agreed that this was a huge relief and so no one cared. After all, this wasn’t BBC Question Time.

We then had the spectacle of the Conservatives complaining to Ofcom about Channel 4’s refusal to allow them to participate in a debate that they themselves had refused to participate in. Worse, the Tories are now threatening Channel 4 over the renewal of its broadcasting licence over the episode. We are now actually living in a state where the party which aspires to government is threatening a TV station with closure because it refused to collude in the moral bankruptcy of Boris Johnson. This is where we actually are in the UK now. This is the crazy that passes for normal.

On Friday we had another debate, this time on the BBC. All seven party leaders were invited, as well as the Conservatives, Labour, the Lib Dems, and the SNP, there were also representatives from Plaid Cymru, the Greens, and the Brexit party. Yet again Boris Johnson was a no show, but unlike Channel 4, the BBC didn’t have the moral backbone to no-platform him or to replace him on the podium with a melting block of lard. Instead they allowed the Conservatives to substitute Rishi Sunak. No, I’d never heard of him either, but apparently he is the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. Before going into politics he was a public schoolboy who went on to become a hedge fund manager and his wife is the daughter of a billionaire. So you know, totally in touch with working class voters and not elitish at all. Oh no.

Labour said that since the Tories are substituting someone that no one has heard of, it’s only fair that they do the same, so instead of Jeremy Corbyn we got Rebecca Long-Bailey. Meanwhile the Brexit party was represented by Richard Tice, who looks as though he should have been a 1970s catalogue model, artfully posing in bri-nylon and acrylic cardigans. Which to be fair is the era where the Brexit party’s social attitudes remain fixed. This debate was marked mostly by the divide between the Brextremists and everyone else, with some particular bad blood between Richard Tice and Nicola Sturgeon. She certainly managed to get under his perfectly groomed skin, which is why the Scots like her. However I must confess that I didn’t actually watch the whole debate, since I was otherwise engaged.

So what have we learned this week? We have learned that British politics are morally bankrupt, and that the BBC is unfit for purpose. Neither of which comes as news to anyone who has been paying attention. We also learned that the only way that politics can be civilised again is when Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage aren’t in it. What have we come to?

General Election 2019:: Post #4: In which Nigel throws a googly.

Poor old Nigel Farage, obviously still tired from all that walking he didn’t do earlier this year on his much touted march on London. Only as far as Nigel was concerned it turned out not to be a long hard slog all the way from the north of England but more of a short stroll to the first pub en route. This, however, is probably not the reason why he has decided that he’s not after all going to put up candidates for his Vanity Party – sorry, Brexit Party – in every constituency. Although even Nigel would struggle to visit 650 pubs across the entire UK over the next four weeks or so.

The reason has rather more to do with the same reason that the millionaire stockbroker enemy of the elite has decided not to stand for election himself. It’s because he knows that he’s going to get screwed. Gone are the big words and even bigger demands of just a few days ago, when he called on Boris Johnson to abandon any deal with the EU and go for a no-deal disaster capitalist fantasy of a Brexit. Nigel fancied himself as the great king-maker of Brexit, but instead he discovered that his polling ratings were in a right royal mess.

So he’s climbed down and has attempted to rescue what influence he can, and secure himself publicity and future invites to Question Time in the process, by announcing that he’s only going to stand Brexit Party candidates in seats which don’t have a Tory MP. This is, he proudly announced, the great leaver alliance. He told a press conference that he’d reflected on the chances of allowing Lib Dem MPs win in constituencies in the South West of England, and reflected on Boris Johnson’s commitment to keep his word on leaving the EU, and then decided to believe LBJ – entirely coincidentally guaranteeing his place on the honours list in the not too distant future. Arise Lord Farage of Arse Covering. The real question here is will those mugs who gave Nigel £100 each in order to stand as Brexit party candidates get their money back? That's a rhetorical question, by the way.

What this development tells us is that the Conservative Party has now completed its transformation into Ukip. They’re the party of choice of Donald Trump, and it’s reasonable to wonder whether this move by Farage is because of any pressure that he’s come under from the American President. It’s now going to be harder for the opposition parties to dislodge sitting Conservative MPs, particularly for the Lib Dems in the south of England.

Meanwhile the Labour Party has completed its transformation into Unelectablity. Labour’s chances, slim as they are, are not being helped by Jo Swinson, who goes about saying that her party is the only party of remain (conveniently ignoring the SNP) but seems to spend more of her time and energy attacking the Labour party than attacking the Tories. It’s all very well claiming to be the party of remain, but the Lib Dems are giving a very good impression of preferring to be a bunch of self-righteous I-told-you-soers in a Tory Brexit Britain than allowing even the slightest chance of letting the Labour party or the SNP get within a sniffing distance of victory.

Naturally Boris Johnson is delighted. This move gives him everything he wanted and costs him nothing. The chances of a Conservative majority government in the UK have increased. A nakedly populist right wing English nationalist party is set to dominate UK politics. British politics have realigned, and in a way that makes the UK unsustainable as a union. I wonder how that will play out north of the border, Like a leaden haggis, I would guess.

It’s a UK ruled by Boris Johnson propped up by Nigel Farage. It’s a UK which is determined to destroy those tattered remnants of the post-war social settlement that the Conservatives haven’t yet ripped up. It’s a UK which is not just headed out of the EU, but a UK which is headed for the hardest most right wing kind of Brexit imaginable. It’s a UK which apes the policies and politics of Donald Trump. It’s a UK whose governing party is funded by Russian money. It's a UK that won't be elected in by me.

General Election 2019:: Post #3: Vote, vote vote....but not for Boris Johnson

I was chatting with someone recently and they were telling me that some of the people in their work loathe and detest Boris Johnson – don’t we all – but that they’re not motivated to vote because they think that all politicians are crap. Sadly that’s quite a widespread sentiment amongst many people, particularly those who would regard themselves as working class . They are cynical and disenchanted. For generations they’ve seen all sorts of politicians make all sorts of promises. The politicians come and go, but the problems they promise to resolve remain.

A lot of people just don’t vote. Maybe they think that voting only encourages the politicians. But that’s not true. Not voting encourages them even more, or at least, it encourages some of them. Not voting isn’t the equal opportunities plague on all your houses message that some people think it is. The fact is that certain political parties benefit more from people not turning out to vote than others do, because the decision not to vote isn’t spread evenly across the population as a whole. Certain groups within the larger population are less likely to vote than others, and when members of those groups decide that they’re not going to vote because they’re unhappy with the entire political system, they’re only assisting those parties which benefit from the system as it is.

If you’re of the cynical persuasion and you believe that all political parties are rubbish, just ask yourself one question. Why do you think that the Conservatives have been introducing measures which make it harder to vote? Over recent years the Conservatives have introduced measures which mean that you can only register to vote if you supply a National Insurance number or if you provide some form of recognised ID. It’s well known that such measures have the effect of decreasing the voter registration and turn out of working class people, young people, ethnic minorities and migrant communities and people who depend on social security. Surprise, surprise - all of these groups are those which are less likely to vote Tory.

The Conservatives are quite happy when working class people don’t vote. Boris Johnson doesn’t lose any sleep over working class people who don’t bother to vote. He’s delighted when working class people don’t bother to vote. Him and his Tory pals are quite happy to encourage working class people not to vote, which is precisely why the Conservatives have been at the forefront of introducing measures which make it more difficult to vote.

The reason is because it’s the Tories who benefit when working class people don’t vote. Their own supporters with their upper middle class comfortable privileges will get out and vote to defend those privileges. Middle class older people, richer people, and the comfortable middle classes in rural constituencies are the groups within the population who are most likely to vote. They’re the groups who are most likely to vote Tory, the groups who will support Brexit. They’re going to vote anyway, because they’re not as disenchanted with a political system that benefits the Conservative party. They don’t share your cynicism, because they know that the existing political system works to their advantage.

Now it has to be said right away, and in the interests of fairness, that just because you’re an older person with a good pension it doesn’t automatically mean that you’re a right wing Daily Mail reader who hates immigrants and the Welfare State in equal measure. There are many older people who are committed to social democratic politics and social inclusion. However it remains a statistical fact that the older you are and the better off you are, then it becomes more likely that you will be right wing rather than left wing, and that you will support rather than oppose Brexit. It also becomes more likely that you will be registered to vote and that you will actually vote.

When the young, the working class, and the poor don’t register to vote, then the effect is that the influence of those right wing voters who are more likely to vote becomes greater. It means that those right wing voters, those Tory supporting smug people who do very well out of the existing system, will find it more likely that there’s enough of them to ensure that they can get a Conservative MP who represents their interests. Because the left wing, the working class, the young, and the poor haven’t bothered to vote. If there is a constituency with 10,000 voters, 4000 of them comfortable well off right wing Tories, and the other 6000 are low paid working class people, or people who rely on social security, and all of them hate the Tories, the Tories are not going to win if everyone bothers to vote. But if half of the Tory haters don’t bother to turn out, then the Tories are going to win 4000 to 3000. It’s simple arithmetic. Then everyone in that constituency will have a Tory MP imposing Tory policies.

If you lose yourself in a comforting cynicism, telling yourself that you’re opting for the clever choice by not bothering to vote at all – you’re only doing the Tories’ job for them. Boris Johnson is going to take that as a sign that you’re quite happy for him to decide it for you. If you don’t vote, it’s not just that you don’t count. It’s not interpreted as a sign that you are so fed up that the political system needs to change. Your silence is taken as a sign that you’re quite happy with the way things are. The only way to change a political system that you think is rubbish is to vote for a party that’s going to allow you to change it. Do not disengage and decide not to vote or lose yourself in a comforting cynicism, because then you’re only making it less likely that things will ever change. You’re helping Boris Johnson to screw you over.

Vote, and make a difference. Vote, because if you don’t Boris Johnson will take your silence as consent.