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1. Can I be bothered to write anything to add to the ocean of drivel (notable exceptions apply) already coughed up? Can I? can I? Hell, yes. To live is to comment. Otherwise what’s the point.
THREAD
THREAD
2. Much of the coverage has been profoundly depressing. The first draft of history as soap opera and cliché with the longer term implications consigned to banality. It’s a ‘reset’. Apparently. Great. Reset to what? There’s nowhere to reset, is there, obviously?
3. The absolute low has been the penchant to use a sort of battle of the sexes framing. The women vs the men, centered around Carrie Symonds. The women vs the ‘macho lads’. Please. Everyone should consider their intelligence insulted.
4. And everyone is surprised! So surprised. Examples abound of dastardly behaviour. I am shocked. SHOCKED. Everyone has know about the conduct issues for months and months. None of this is news. Except it is, because the pile on has now been permissioned.
5. And all of this played out against the second wave of the pandemic and Brexit, the looming and now clearly visible iceberg. Does anyone seem to much care about the implications of the Downing Street implosion to these seismic events. Not so much.
6. Except of course for the breathless reporting of the great man’s unswerving commitment to a rock hard Brexit. He will save our fish (though not our bacon). Oh, come on. I’m old enough to remember Theresa May’s adamantine belief that no deal was better than a bad deal.
7. All of that said, the almost complete lack of substantive context (beyond culture war will he won’t he) may be, well accurate. Because, beyond the day to day pandemic fire fighting there is literally nothing going on in the government’s head. Bueller?
8. Which brings us back to the actual story. Now the scales have been apparently lifted from our eyes, lo & behold, miracles & revelations, we see a government riven by infighting, replete with cronyism, awful at decision making, incompetent at administration and ethically toxic.
9. In this amorality play, the protagonists splashed across the newspaper pages are bit part players. The antihero of the piece seems to float serenely unscathed far above. But it is in his character the bloody stage is set.
Nothing has changed, as someone once said.
/the end
Nothing has changed, as someone once said.
/the end
cc @NickCohen4
