Update 41
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No medical interventions were deemed necessary this week. I spoke to Michelle and we agreed that the current stability felt good.
We enjoyed two nights in Kent with daughter Joanna and family. On Monday, her husband Steve drove over to Cheltenham and took us to Badgers Mount near Sevenoaks, then on Wednesday he returned us to Cheltenham. A meal at Gianni was followed by an overnight stay to enable his business meeting in Glastonbury on Thursday. At Jo’s we were joined by grandson Danny, granddaughter Holly and her boyfriend Sam.
Wednesday was Boris Johnson’s day as the main attraction. The day he reminded us just how much reassurance he’d received that none of his rules had been broken - the extent to which guidance had been followed was less clear but everyone had been working very hard and needed their morale boosting by some work essential periods tacked on the end sometimes of a very long day. I couldn’t help reflecting upon how much morale boosting the average nurse received at the end of each back breaking shift? He was very clear that on occasion some such sessions may have gone on for longer than was wise - of course any such excessive partying only occurred after his departure. One of his challenges seemed to be that he was totally unclear from whom he may have received his reassurances - certainly no senior civil servant or law officers had been involved. This was just one of the areas that puzzled Sir Bernard Jenkin who felt that perhaps Johnson had been excessively blazé/reckless about the level of authority behind those reassurances. This was a crucial point because had he in any way been “reckless” in his actions, then the House vote would have to go against his claims.
Johnson has made clear that he will reject the committee’s verdict if it goes against him, siding with his supporters’ claim that the House Privileges Committee is nothing more than a Kangaroo court. It is an attitude that matches his usual disparagement of conventions generally accepted by the rest of us. One calls to mind that letter from a teacher at Eton who highlighted the young Johnson’s expectation that he should not be subject to the same constraints applied to his contemporaries.
“Once a liar, always a liar” has very much been one of his guiding principles, and his attitude to his fellow parliamentarians does not appear to have been spared. In a change of attitude he now appears to be taking the job of constituency MP more seriously. After all, if the House votes for a suspension of ten days or more, BJ may have to face a by-election in Uxbridge where he currently has a majority of just 7,000.
This is 1 City Square in Leeds which I visited back in November. I’ll be staggered if you don’t recognise its similarity to a very famous edifice of the radio industry - I notice that it even has an aerial In a similar position.
Whilst with Joanna I picked up one of grandson JJ’s books entitled ‘House of Trump, House of Putin’ by Craig Unger, it’s a terrific read linking Trump’s business life with Russian finance especially through the Russian Mafia. At one point it looks as though Trump was in debt to Russian Banks for around $4billion - what the current figure is, I have no idea. It took just 1.5 days to read and opened my eyes to so much. Highly recommended.
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