The Rambler

Givega didn't run at Fontwell today, having been well backed, and so we'll be looking out for when he is entered next. But, although Pop Music Theory isn't either scientific or proven, You Wear It Well was impressive and saved the day.

Meanwhile, reporting from the frontline of Comparative Tory Studies. Good Grief, one can hardly take an evening out without coming back to more horror stories. It seems to me they've lost something since the 1750's when Dr. Johnson was a most amenable and considered commentator on humanity. One of several epithets one gladly applies to his thought and writing is integrity. He sees through the trivia of fame, fortune and glamour in passages that conjure up some recent eminent Tories to who such scepticism has obviously not occurred. Always prefaced by a translation from Horace or other Classical source by the likes of Dryden or Pope, it is like long-standing wisdom that was self-evident but not, it seems, to the desperados intimidating reluctant members through the lobbies this evening to shore up, for one more day at least, this most ramshackle of governments.

It is hugely enjoyable to read Dr. Johnson, bringing forward from Socrates,

casting his eyes over the shops and customers, 'how many things are here', says he, 'I do not want!'

and he finds himself, or someone like him, beholding,

a thousands shops crouded with goods, of which he can scarcely tell the use, and which, therefore, he is apt to consider of no value.

I'd know. I was so forlorn of suitable paid employment at one time that I worked in retail jewellery, selling the gross untruth that gold and silver, rings, bracelets and other such adornments meant something. It wasn't my job to tell the bedazzled customers that it was all rubbish. Once in a while one might sell a Seiko watch and think that although they've paid twice as much as it's really worth for it, at least it's a well-made thing.

Dr. Johnson did also consider that,

A voyage to the moon, however romantic and absurd the scheme may now appear, since the properties of air have been better understood, seemed highly probable to many of the aspiring wits in the last century,

 

but I don't entirely blame him for that because out of all the conspiracy theories put about by outlandish fringe thinkers, often socially distanced, male and geeky, the idea that we never did put a man on the moon seems one of the more reasonable. That we are expected to believe that Wilbur and Orville Wright first made an aeroplane fly for 12 seconds in 1903 but, by 1969, Apollo 11 had landed Neil Armstrong in the Sea of Tranquility is much more astonishing than the progress made from Rock Around the Clock in 1954 to Hunky Dory in 1971 or from The Lake Isle of Innisfree to Byzantium.

However, on balance and having no more than a poor 'O' level in Physics to argue with, if Brian Cox and Stephen Hawking believed it, so will I.

I'm more dubious about Economics as a subject, though. I entirely understand how prices shift according to demand at the racetrack. That is free market supply and demand and one doesn't have to play if one doesn't want to. Liz Truss and her ferocious back bench supporters have proven once and for all, though, that a theory can't be applied to the world in the hope that the world will comply with it.

If only it would.

She is surely a record-breaker in waiting as the briefest term any Prime Minister ever served and the record she breaks is that of the recently more famous than he had been, George Canning, in 1827, who died.   

Liz Truss, thus, is likely to go down as the worst Prime Minister we ever had, which would have been inconceivable in the last days of the Boris chaos but lest we forget, lest we somehow come to regard the Boris years as an idyll, a missed opportunity or a Golden Age and suffer any remorse, let us remember. I had twelve of these reasons last night without trying very hard-

His default position was that of a barefaced liar. He preferred the challenge of obfuscation to any admission of the truth.

He lied to Mrs. Queen in order to suspend Parliament, which was illegal and quickly overturned.

He didn't believe in Brexit. He didn't believe in anything apart from him being Prime Minister. It was only a career move to get the job he wanted which it soon was to prove he couldn't do.

He first said Covid was 'only bird flu', then he said 'let the bodies pile up', then he nearly died of it but only offered the NHS nurses that saved him a 1% pay rise while inflation shot up to 10%.

He hid in a fridge to avoid an interview with a journalist as well as avoiding as much scrutiny as he could while being the 'front-runner' in the leadership election.

The neighbours in the flat next to where he lived with Carrie heard shouts that suggested he was assaulting her before she decided to be his third wife and mother of yet more of his children.

It wasn't Partygate, the events in Downing Street at which juniors were sent out with suitcases to the off licence to fetch more booze during lockdown that did for him,

it was Pinchergate, in which he stood by one of his allies when he was accused of sexual assault, 

stories not unlike those in recordings made of Donald Trump boasting of his own such behaviour who endorsed Boris as 'a good guy'.

He attempted to dismiss female MPs in the House of Commons as 'hysterical' and referred to homosexuals and 'bum boys'.

He never answered a question at Prime Minister's Question Time but came back with spurious claims such as that he had 'got Brexit done' but Northern Ireland remains unresolved, he signed agreements only to later renege on them and promised 'levelling up', selling places like Workington and Bolsover down the river, spending money he would never have to or be able to repay- which is what it was feared Jeremy Corbyn would do, including the gaudy redecoration of no.10 Downing Street to his taste which was, as far as we know, paid for by somebody else.

As Foreign Secretary, his intervention in the detention of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe in Iran resulted in her sentence being extended.

Boris the Third is a play by Adam Meggido based on the time at Eton when he played Richard III but didn't bother to learn his lines and previewed his polotical career, and his appearances on Have I Got News For You, by showing he couldn't do anything properly or get it right but needed to have the starring role.

 

I haven't done any research beyond confirming some detail. There's plenty more than that. I haven't even started trying yet and that's betting without all the stuff that nobody knows about yet, or ever will.

Jennifer Arcuri. Throwing out those respectable, remainer Conservative grandees, like Ken Clarke. Accusing his rivals in the leadership campaign of being 'vanity projects' ( !!! ). The book would take too long to read, never mind write, and you wouldn't want the story contaminating your bookshelves.

So, please, let's not him back. He's currently between 8/1 and 10/1 to be the next Prime Minister and only 11/1 after the next General Election. 

That is conspiracy theorists for you. I can forgive Dr. Johnson everything but I'm not having that.