NEW: The planned Chequers wedding party is being moved to a different location at the end of this month. Source says the idea this has had any bearing on why the PM is staying on as caretaker is “frankly absurd” and where it happens doesn’t matter to them.
Boris will not earn his much-needed money through sales of his personal memoir. He may get a mildly decent advance but the actual books won't sell. No one wants to read a serial liar's spin and self-justification these days. Biographies about this turbulent time might do better but non-fiction generally struggles these days. The internet is such a great, and terrible, resource for finding out information, as are endless tv shows, that there are very few rabbits left for a non-fiction author to pull out of the hat.
As I mentioned, I doubt he will fill halls for talks either. No one wants to listen to a failure and liar, and he's a poor public speaker. As chaotic as in everything else. His best hope will be after-dinner speeches when everyone is too drunk to mind incoherent ramblings about Peppa Pig world.
Leon got very personal with us all over this but, of course, the reason he's so irate is his own fear. Boris Johnson was a serial philanderer, a man approaching sixty whose attitude to sexual predation belonged to an era from which most of society has moved on. Boris Johnson got the top job for one reason and one reason only: to deliver Brexit. And that was on the back of the Remainer Parliament and an unelectable anti-Semitic Trotskyite Labour leader. As a person Boris was manifestly unsuited to the top job and the page on the chapter has already been turned. The flowers fade and the grass withers. It happens to all of us and some deserve it more than others.
The country is leaving Boris and his type of politics and personal behaviour behind. Whether that's under a reboot of the Conservative brand, or a completely new broom under Labour-LibDems, we will wait to see. But move on it has, and is.
You’re not the first PB-er to fall in love with me
Shhhh, secret, but I'm not into men. You may have noticed.
My partner is a gorgeous female.
Is she not worried that you’re clearly obsessed with me?
As for Bozza’s earnings, here’s the Independent:
“Mr Johnson, who is famously at home with deploying incendiary turns of phrase, would without doubt be in receipt of handsome offers from publishers for his Downing Street memoirs. Mr Blair received a reported £4.6m advance for his tome, with the sum being donated to charity.”
And here’s the Mail;
“Mr Johnson could become 'Billion Dollar Boris' if he plays his cards right with book deals, broadcast slots and speech circuits.
Experts say he will 'eclipse Tony Blair' and could net double the estimated £10million a year the former Labour leader made from speeches after office.
Mr Johnson, who once moaned his £250,000 Daily Telegraph column salary was 'chicken feed', is estimated to 'easily' earn £400,000 per speech while his memoirs could sell for 'at least' £1million
PR guru Mark Borkowski said: 'Boris is fairly wise and over the next 25 years if he can continue to grow it's going to be Billion Dollar Boris. He's a global brand, and with the right management, this is beyond speech-making.'“
Johnson certainly has a fanbase, but not one that pays £400 000 to hear of Peppa Pig.
In the UK no one wants or has a role for an ex-PM, they either sulk on the back benches (Heath, May) or lock themselves away, pretending that they still have significance (Blair, Brown, Thatcher), or completely disappear (Cameron). Major seems to be the only one enjoying himself.
What are you waffling about? Theresa May makes £2m a year from speeches. And she’s duller than @heathener
She does these speeches all over the world, and makes £120k PER SPEECH
If people are willing to pay £120k to hear the dronings of Theresa “fields of wheat” May how much will they pay Boris the Blonde Brexiteer with his 29 children?
I’m not even sure why we’re having this argument. It’s daft. For the next few years - barring asteroid strike - Boris will mint it
I've hired a lot of speakers for events I have organised (For the last 20 years of my working life my business organised pressure groups for large organisations). I have never got the fees ex-pms can earn, but it is clearly a fact. It has been suggested to me that it down to 'contacts' they can introduce at the sessions, but I have never had a customer request one of these speakers and my customers were often very major companies, charities, unions, NGOs, etc. Not once did they want a political speaker. Clearly there is demand though.
A lot of it - most of it - is surely star quality. Box office branding
Anyone who attends a speech like this can airily say their friends next day,
“Oh I heard a fascinating speech last night, talking about trade with the USA, and what the president’s really like”
“Really? Who??”
“Oh, the ex prime minister. Yep. Him. That’s right. ;We all had a drink with him after”
Cue: massively impressed friends
It gives you huge bragging rights. This is why South Koreans will pay £120k to Theresa May, FFS. For Boris you can surely multiply that
Still struggling with it. I could get a much better speaker than May for a tenth of the price. Why didn't my customers ask for these speakers? Many of the organisations I represented were as big as they get and it was at board level. Not one requested a top politician and each event would have an audience of about 100 organisations.
By the way if the price was right I would book Boris in a heartbeat. He would be a hoot. My audience either wanted entertainment or to be challenged. I wouldn't book May. My only reservation would be if there were any reservations from my customers, but I could find that out beforehand.
Because you're not getting the speaker for the speech alone.
I've mentioned before that when I was a student I was an NUS delegate for my Uni at NUS Conference and we had a former Israeli politician come to speak, invited by the Jewish society there, former Prime Minister Shimon Peres. That was exceptionally memorable due to the security and protests which were both immense but listening to him speak was truly incredible and is something that stayed with me forever - but the same speech given by someone who wasn't a former Prime Minister would not have been remotely the same thing. It was a "fringe" event there, but the entire Conference shut down for that fringe either to listen to him, or protest outside, the main hall was empty while he was speaking.
I feel very privileged I got to see and listen to Peres in person while he was alive.
Leon is right, simply the virtue of the speaker being a former PM adds a certain magic and aura to everything the speaker does and whoever is connected with that, even to the most ordinary speaker (and Peres was no ordinary speaker).
Its a bit like going to see a famous musician who is past it. I went to see Meat Loaf in his last tour of the UK, he was decades past it, but that wasn't the point. People still go to see the Stones in concert, they're past it, they're not the best musically anymore, but that's not the point either.
Boris will not earn his much-needed money through sales of his personal memoir. He may get a mildly decent advance but the actual books won't sell. No one wants to read a serial liar's spin and self-justification these days. Biographies about this turbulent time might do better but non-fiction generally struggles these days. The internet is such a great, and terrible, resource for finding out information, as are endless tv shows, that there are very few rabbits left for a non-fiction author to pull out of the hat.
As I mentioned, I doubt he will fill halls for talks either. No one wants to listen to a failure and liar, and he's a poor public speaker. As chaotic as in everything else. His best hope will be after-dinner speeches when everyone is too drunk to mind incoherent ramblings about Peppa Pig world.
Leon got very personal with us all over this but, of course, the reason he's so irate is his own fear. Boris Johnson was a serial philanderer, a man approaching sixty whose attitude to sexual predation belonged to an era from which most of society has moved on. Boris Johnson got the top job for one reason and one reason only: to deliver Brexit. And that was on the back of the Remainer Parliament and an unelectable anti-Semitic Trotskyite Labour leader. As a person Boris was manifestly unsuited to the top job and the page on the chapter has already been turned. The flowers fade and the grass withers. It happens to all of us and some deserve it more than others.
The country is leaving Boris and his type of politics and personal behaviour behind. Whether that's under a reboot of the Conservative brand, or a completely new broom under Labour-LibDems, we will wait to see. But move on it has, and is.
You’re not the first PB-er to fall in love with me
Shhhh, secret, but I'm not into men. You may have noticed.
My partner is a gorgeous female.
Is she not worried that you’re clearly obsessed with me?
As for Bozza’s earnings, here’s the Independent:
“Mr Johnson, who is famously at home with deploying incendiary turns of phrase, would without doubt be in receipt of handsome offers from publishers for his Downing Street memoirs. Mr Blair received a reported £4.6m advance for his tome, with the sum being donated to charity.”
And here’s the Mail;
“Mr Johnson could become 'Billion Dollar Boris' if he plays his cards right with book deals, broadcast slots and speech circuits.
Experts say he will 'eclipse Tony Blair' and could net double the estimated £10million a year the former Labour leader made from speeches after office.
Mr Johnson, who once moaned his £250,000 Daily Telegraph column salary was 'chicken feed', is estimated to 'easily' earn £400,000 per speech while his memoirs could sell for 'at least' £1million
PR guru Mark Borkowski said: 'Boris is fairly wise and over the next 25 years if he can continue to grow it's going to be Billion Dollar Boris. He's a global brand, and with the right management, this is beyond speech-making.'“
Johnson certainly has a fanbase, but not one that pays £400 000 to hear of Peppa Pig.
In the UK no one wants or has a role for an ex-PM, they either sulk on the back benches (Heath, May) or lock themselves away, pretending that they still have significance (Blair, Brown, Thatcher), or completely disappear (Cameron). Major seems to be the only one enjoying himself.
I know you will claim that as a joke but you, of course, won't see that it's the kind of vindictive personal comment that drags this place and the people who post here, down.
When you don't like someone else's point of view you always resort to ad hominem. You sneer at a person for some trait you think you have a right to expose.
I hope everyone else on here has a nice day xx
You’ve done it again. You’ve started an argument with personal abuse, and then, when it is returned, you can’t cope and you cry foul
[...]
@Leon 'Leon' I was merely suggesting that the reason you are so upset and irate about Boris' decline is that it plays into your own fears. You wrote a book about sexual predation - we all know that - and you're now in your 60's and no longer the young stud you told the world about. Boris was in many ways your kind of man. You wrote an entire book about how to win women. You have frequently boasted about your sexual conquests with 'much' younger women, girls, teenagers.
You have spent a LOT of time attacking those who have campaigned for Boris to go. And you have totemised Boris. This after a Damascene conversion on the way to the ballot box.
I am suggesting that the reason for this may well be that when much of the country is turning its back on the kind of attitudes that you and Boris share, you are upset and irate about it. It's not rocket science. The market for your kind of male sexual predation has receded and the country has moved on from your book, just as it has now from Boris. Hence why you have had to reinvent yourself at least twice with pseudonymns as an author. Your particular brand under your real name (which I shall not mention) has had its day.
Instead of raging against the dying light, try to be kind to people and especially to yourself in your older guise. It will make the world, and here, a better place.
If I am some ageing man crazed with existential angst (hint: I’m not)
You are a bit. Everyone is. Great art can often be produced upon that realisation.
Oh sure there is truth there. I admitted it earlier on, in a reply to @Heathener
“Clearly suggesting that I am - like Boris - some ageing and fearful sexual predator raging against the light, and, for added spite, you suggested that my approaching anonymity and decline is a deserved fate
All good fun. I don’t mind at all. Some of it might be true.”
Like the majority of PB-ers I am confronting mortality. I am of an age when I look back and see the patterns in my life, sometimes ruefully sometimes happily. But the idea this fills me with angst is simply not true, and the idea that this drives my passionate support for Boris - when I actually wanted him gone - is surreal and says more about @Heathener’s projections, perhaps, than about me
And personally I am probably happier now than I have been in years. Yesterday was particularly blissful. The swim in that magnificent river. The dinner of eel under the mountains. Then I got fucking shit faced with my landlord, Ratko, and we talked about his lethal fighting in the Balkans war, as the bats flew overhead, in his garden. Brilliant
I am delighted for you, genuinely (even if there is a touch of Winnie about this relentless activity).
But don't get too happy; no one ever wrote The Waste Land on a full stomach and feeling everything was well with the world.
Boris will not earn his much-needed money through sales of his personal memoir. He may get a mildly decent advance but the actual books won't sell. No one wants to read a serial liar's spin and self-justification these days. Biographies about this turbulent time might do better but non-fiction generally struggles these days. The internet is such a great, and terrible, resource for finding out information, as are endless tv shows, that there are very few rabbits left for a non-fiction author to pull out of the hat.
As I mentioned, I doubt he will fill halls for talks either. No one wants to listen to a failure and liar, and he's a poor public speaker. As chaotic as in everything else. His best hope will be after-dinner speeches when everyone is too drunk to mind incoherent ramblings about Peppa Pig world.
Leon got very personal with us all over this but, of course, the reason he's so irate is his own fear. Boris Johnson was a serial philanderer, a man approaching sixty whose attitude to sexual predation belonged to an era from which most of society has moved on. Boris Johnson got the top job for one reason and one reason only: to deliver Brexit. And that was on the back of the Remainer Parliament and an unelectable anti-Semitic Trotskyite Labour leader. As a person Boris was manifestly unsuited to the top job and the page on the chapter has already been turned. The flowers fade and the grass withers. It happens to all of us and some deserve it more than others.
The country is leaving Boris and his type of politics and personal behaviour behind. Whether that's under a reboot of the Conservative brand, or a completely new broom under Labour-LibDems, we will wait to see. But move on it has, and is.
You’re not the first PB-er to fall in love with me
Shhhh, secret, but I'm not into men. You may have noticed.
My partner is a gorgeous female.
Is she not worried that you’re clearly obsessed with me?
As for Bozza’s earnings, here’s the Independent:
“Mr Johnson, who is famously at home with deploying incendiary turns of phrase, would without doubt be in receipt of handsome offers from publishers for his Downing Street memoirs. Mr Blair received a reported £4.6m advance for his tome, with the sum being donated to charity.”
And here’s the Mail;
“Mr Johnson could become 'Billion Dollar Boris' if he plays his cards right with book deals, broadcast slots and speech circuits.
Experts say he will 'eclipse Tony Blair' and could net double the estimated £10million a year the former Labour leader made from speeches after office.
Mr Johnson, who once moaned his £250,000 Daily Telegraph column salary was 'chicken feed', is estimated to 'easily' earn £400,000 per speech while his memoirs could sell for 'at least' £1million
PR guru Mark Borkowski said: 'Boris is fairly wise and over the next 25 years if he can continue to grow it's going to be Billion Dollar Boris. He's a global brand, and with the right management, this is beyond speech-making.'“
Johnson certainly has a fanbase, but not one that pays £400 000 to hear of Peppa Pig.
In the UK no one wants or has a role for an ex-PM, they either sulk on the back benches (Heath, May) or lock themselves away, pretending that they still have significance (Blair, Brown, Thatcher), or completely disappear (Cameron). Major seems to be the only one enjoying himself.
What are you waffling about? Theresa May makes £2m a year from speeches. And she’s duller than @heathener
She does these speeches all over the world, and makes £120k PER SPEECH
If people are willing to pay £120k to hear the dronings of Theresa “fields of wheat” May how much will they pay Boris the Blonde Brexiteer with his 29 children?
I’m not even sure why we’re having this argument. It’s daft. For the next few years - barring asteroid strike - Boris will mint it
I've hired a lot of speakers for events I have organised (For the last 20 years of my working life my business organised pressure groups for large organisations). I have never got the fees ex-pms can earn, but it is clearly a fact. It has been suggested to me that it down to 'contacts' they can introduce at the sessions, but I have never had a customer request one of these speakers and my customers were often very major companies, charities, unions, NGOs, etc. Not once did they want a political speaker. Clearly there is demand though.
A lot of it - most of it - is surely star quality. Box office branding
Anyone who attends a speech like this can airily say their friends next day,
“Oh I heard a fascinating speech last night, talking about trade with the USA, and what the president’s really like”
“Really? Who??”
“Oh, the ex prime minister. Yep. Him. That’s right. ;We all had a drink with him after”
Cue: massively impressed friends
It gives you huge bragging rights. This is why South Koreans will pay £120k to Theresa May, FFS. For Boris you can surely multiply that
Still struggling with it. I could get a much better speaker than May for a tenth of the price. Why didn't my customers ask for these speakers? Many of the organisations I represented were as big as they get and it was at board level. Not one requested a top politician and each event would have an audience of about 100 organisations.
By the way if the price was right I would book Boris in a heartbeat. He would be a hoot. My audience either wanted entertainment or to be challenged. I wouldn't book May. My only reservation would be if there were any reservations from my customers, but I could find that out beforehand.
I struggle with it. Theresa bloody May? £125,000, for a single speech??
I’ve also thought about it and I am sure my answer is part of the solution to this puzzle. Star quality. This must be particularly true for those organising the speeches. They get to meet the ex PM one-on-one, negotiate a deal, that’s a LOT of impressive anecdotes to share with others. That must drive the price
I’ve heard that this is one reason political memoirs by major political figures get such huge deals. The publishers want to hang out with ex prime ministers, get him to their parties, look big and powerful, and the top editors want it in their CVs - “edited Tony Blair’s memoirs”
Again: it all drives the price up. And Boris’ price will be notably bigger than Theresa’s
You may have a point. I'm not star struck, but I have met many that are. What a waste of money. I only got a one to one just before and a short thank you after. Rest of the time you are dealing with an agent. Most of the before was briefing them on the audience.
Boris will not earn his much-needed money through sales of his personal memoir. He may get a mildly decent advance but the actual books won't sell. No one wants to read a serial liar's spin and self-justification these days. Biographies about this turbulent time might do better but non-fiction generally struggles these days. The internet is such a great, and terrible, resource for finding out information, as are endless tv shows, that there are very few rabbits left for a non-fiction author to pull out of the hat.
As I mentioned, I doubt he will fill halls for talks either. No one wants to listen to a failure and liar, and he's a poor public speaker. As chaotic as in everything else. His best hope will be after-dinner speeches when everyone is too drunk to mind incoherent ramblings about Peppa Pig world.
Leon got very personal with us all over this but, of course, the reason he's so irate is his own fear. Boris Johnson was a serial philanderer, a man approaching sixty whose attitude to sexual predation belonged to an era from which most of society has moved on. Boris Johnson got the top job for one reason and one reason only: to deliver Brexit. And that was on the back of the Remainer Parliament and an unelectable anti-Semitic Trotskyite Labour leader. As a person Boris was manifestly unsuited to the top job and the page on the chapter has already been turned. The flowers fade and the grass withers. It happens to all of us and some deserve it more than others.
The country is leaving Boris and his type of politics and personal behaviour behind. Whether that's under a reboot of the Conservative brand, or a completely new broom under Labour-LibDems, we will wait to see. But move on it has, and is.
You’re not the first PB-er to fall in love with me
Shhhh, secret, but I'm not into men. You may have noticed.
My partner is a gorgeous female.
Is she not worried that you’re clearly obsessed with me?
As for Bozza’s earnings, here’s the Independent:
“Mr Johnson, who is famously at home with deploying incendiary turns of phrase, would without doubt be in receipt of handsome offers from publishers for his Downing Street memoirs. Mr Blair received a reported £4.6m advance for his tome, with the sum being donated to charity.”
And here’s the Mail;
“Mr Johnson could become 'Billion Dollar Boris' if he plays his cards right with book deals, broadcast slots and speech circuits.
Experts say he will 'eclipse Tony Blair' and could net double the estimated £10million a year the former Labour leader made from speeches after office.
Mr Johnson, who once moaned his £250,000 Daily Telegraph column salary was 'chicken feed', is estimated to 'easily' earn £400,000 per speech while his memoirs could sell for 'at least' £1million
PR guru Mark Borkowski said: 'Boris is fairly wise and over the next 25 years if he can continue to grow it's going to be Billion Dollar Boris. He's a global brand, and with the right management, this is beyond speech-making.'“
Johnson certainly has a fanbase, but not one that pays £400 000 to hear of Peppa Pig.
In the UK no one wants or has a role for an ex-PM, they either sulk on the back benches (Heath, May) or lock themselves away, pretending that they still have significance (Blair, Brown, Thatcher), or completely disappear (Cameron). Major seems to be the only one enjoying himself.
What are you waffling about? Theresa May makes £2m a year from speeches. And she’s duller than @heathener
She does these speeches all over the world, and makes £120k PER SPEECH
If people are willing to pay £120k to hear the dronings of Theresa “fields of wheat” May how much will they pay Boris the Blonde Brexiteer with his 29 children?
I’m not even sure why we’re having this argument. It’s daft. For the next few years - barring asteroid strike - Boris will mint it
I've hired a lot of speakers for events I have organised (For the last 20 years of my working life my business organised pressure groups for large organisations). I have never got the fees ex-pms can earn, but it is clearly a fact. It has been suggested to me that it down to 'contacts' they can introduce at the sessions, but I have never had a customer request one of these speakers and my customers were often very major companies, charities, unions, NGOs, etc. Not once did they want a political speaker. Clearly there is demand though.
A lot of it - most of it - is surely star quality. Box office branding
Anyone who attends a speech like this can airily say their friends next day,
“Oh I heard a fascinating speech last night, talking about trade with the USA, and what the president’s really like”
“Really? Who??”
“Oh, the ex prime minister. Yep. Him. That’s right. ;We all had a drink with him after”
Cue: massively impressed friends
It gives you huge bragging rights. This is why South Koreans will pay £120k to Theresa May, FFS. For Boris you can surely multiply that
Still struggling with it. I could get a much better speaker than May for a tenth of the price. Why didn't my customers ask for these speakers? Many of the organisations I represented were as big as they get and it was at board level. Not one requested a top politician and each event would have an audience of about 100 organisations.
By the way if the price was right I would book Boris in a heartbeat. He would be a hoot. My audience either wanted entertainment or to be challenged. I wouldn't book May. My only reservation would be if there were any reservations from my customers, but I could find that out beforehand.
I struggle with it. Theresa bloody May? £125,000, for a single speech??
I’ve also thought about it and I am sure my answer is part of the solution to this puzzle. Star quality. This must be particularly true for those organising the speeches. They get to meet the ex PM one-on-one, negotiate a deal, that’s a LOT of impressive anecdotes to share with others. That must drive the price
I’ve heard that this is one reason political memoirs by major political figures get such huge deals. The publishers want to hang out with ex prime ministers, get him to their parties, look big and powerful, and the top editors want it in their CVs - “edited Tony Blair’s memoirs”
Again: it all drives the price up. And Boris’ price will be notably bigger than Theresa’s
There have always been folk with more money than sense, and the rich are such social climbers that I am sure that they boast like you do.
It won't be a great look though while Britons freeze through a cost of living crisis and Winter of Discontent.
At least we’ve got beyond your preposterous assertion that Boris won’t get anything for his speeches
That isn't what I said. I said he will mint it in the short term, then drink himself slowly to death. Perhaps in exile.
Rishi Sunak will pitch himself as the 'serious candidate for a serious time', arguing he is the only candidate with integrity to salvage Tory brand and experience to handle the economic crisis
I’ve just realised that Boris is going to haunt the nightmares of the Left (and some on the right, too) for years and years, the same way Thatcher did. Even when he’s long gone his name will provoke a weird reflexive mix of fear, loathing, anger and nameless dread
Boris will not earn his much-needed money through sales of his personal memoir. He may get a mildly decent advance but the actual books won't sell. No one wants to read a serial liar's spin and self-justification these days. Biographies about this turbulent time might do better but non-fiction generally struggles these days. The internet is such a great, and terrible, resource for finding out information, as are endless tv shows, that there are very few rabbits left for a non-fiction author to pull out of the hat.
As I mentioned, I doubt he will fill halls for talks either. No one wants to listen to a failure and liar, and he's a poor public speaker. As chaotic as in everything else. His best hope will be after-dinner speeches when everyone is too drunk to mind incoherent ramblings about Peppa Pig world.
Leon got very personal with us all over this but, of course, the reason he's so irate is his own fear. Boris Johnson was a serial philanderer, a man approaching sixty whose attitude to sexual predation belonged to an era from which most of society has moved on. Boris Johnson got the top job for one reason and one reason only: to deliver Brexit. And that was on the back of the Remainer Parliament and an unelectable anti-Semitic Trotskyite Labour leader. As a person Boris was manifestly unsuited to the top job and the page on the chapter has already been turned. The flowers fade and the grass withers. It happens to all of us and some deserve it more than others.
The country is leaving Boris and his type of politics and personal behaviour behind. Whether that's under a reboot of the Conservative brand, or a completely new broom under Labour-LibDems, we will wait to see. But move on it has, and is.
You’re not the first PB-er to fall in love with me
Shhhh, secret, but I'm not into men. You may have noticed.
My partner is a gorgeous female.
Is she not worried that you’re clearly obsessed with me?
As for Bozza’s earnings, here’s the Independent:
“Mr Johnson, who is famously at home with deploying incendiary turns of phrase, would without doubt be in receipt of handsome offers from publishers for his Downing Street memoirs. Mr Blair received a reported £4.6m advance for his tome, with the sum being donated to charity.”
And here’s the Mail;
“Mr Johnson could become 'Billion Dollar Boris' if he plays his cards right with book deals, broadcast slots and speech circuits.
Experts say he will 'eclipse Tony Blair' and could net double the estimated £10million a year the former Labour leader made from speeches after office.
Mr Johnson, who once moaned his £250,000 Daily Telegraph column salary was 'chicken feed', is estimated to 'easily' earn £400,000 per speech while his memoirs could sell for 'at least' £1million
PR guru Mark Borkowski said: 'Boris is fairly wise and over the next 25 years if he can continue to grow it's going to be Billion Dollar Boris. He's a global brand, and with the right management, this is beyond speech-making.'“
Johnson certainly has a fanbase, but not one that pays £400 000 to hear of Peppa Pig.
In the UK no one wants or has a role for an ex-PM, they either sulk on the back benches (Heath, May) or lock themselves away, pretending that they still have significance (Blair, Brown, Thatcher), or completely disappear (Cameron). Major seems to be the only one enjoying himself.
What are you waffling about? Theresa May makes £2m a year from speeches. And she’s duller than @heathener
She does these speeches all over the world, and makes £120k PER SPEECH
If people are willing to pay £120k to hear the dronings of Theresa “fields of wheat” May how much will they pay Boris the Blonde Brexiteer with his 29 children?
I’m not even sure why we’re having this argument. It’s daft. For the next few years - barring asteroid strike - Boris will mint it
A near apocalypse is perfect for Boris to make money.
In the event of an apocalyptic-size asteroid hurtling toward Earth, Boris will be pictured trying to blow it to smithereens. Saving the planet with a couple of megaton bombs is exactly the opportunity Boris was made for.
I too don't understand why we are having this argument. If the market pays Theresa May £120k per speech, then Boris is on at least 10 times that.
I wish it weren't so -- but Boris is about to become as rich as creosote. His life is actually just beginning.
It is we who have been left with tonnes of problems to sort out.
As rich as creosote? Fair enough.
I am reminded of George Best, and the hotel porter delivering Champagne to a room festooned with bank notes and a naked Mary Stavin on the bed, and sighing "where did it all go wrong Mr Best?"
Well it did go wrong, he "spent his money on birds, booze and fast cars, and the rest he just squandered". A life of over indulgence and excess. This is the blueprint for Johnson.
I’ve just realised that Boris is going to haunt the nightmares of the Left (and some on the right, too) for years and years, the same way Thatcher did. Even when he’s long gone his name will provoke a weird reflexive mix of fear, loathing, anger and nameless dread
HAHAHAHAHA
He wants to haunt the Tory party that betrayed him, their greatest ever leader (sic)
I’ve just realised that Boris is going to haunt the nightmares of the Left (and some on the right, too) for years and years, the same way Thatcher did. Even when he’s long gone his name will provoke a weird reflexive mix of fear, loathing, anger and nameless dread
HAHAHAHAHA
Because he was a demonstrable liar who lied and lied and lied. Before during and (no doubt) after he was Prime Minister of the UK. Which latter of course he did much to dismantle.
It won't only be those on the Left and the Right; it will be historians for decades to come.
Rishi Sunak will pitch himself as the 'serious candidate for a serious time', arguing he is the only candidate with integrity to salvage Tory brand and experience to handle the economic crisis
LOL! His wife was a nom-dom while he as Chancellor was taxing everyone left, right and center. Don't think much else needs to be said...
If @Scott_xP is anything to go by, the Departure of the Boris has done nothing to cure or even soothe The Brexit Psychosis, and the madness will continue forever
Great
This has political implications. I am still convinced Starmer will yield to pressure from the Labour versions of Scott, and tack towards the Single Market, if and when he becomes PM
I’m not quite a serious a case as psychosis - not yet anyway, I hope - but I am certainly still smouldering with resentment at losing my EU citizenship, which I don’t think will ever go away. And there are tens of millions like me. And I think a lot of younger people reaching maturity now and in the coming years probably feel the same.
I also think that the Red Wall, and working class people generally all over the country, were conned by right wingers who just wanted to be free of the moderating, redistributive hand of the EU. I think that is gradually becoming realised.
I don’t think it will ever go away. I think it will get worse. It will be like a boil, oozing pus, on the arse of our politics for years.
If Starmer doesn’t yield to pressure to at least rejoin the SM, a successor will. Personally I’d love to see a Lab/Lib Dem, maybe even SNP for shits and gigs, coalition. Starmer would, regretfully as part of the grubby politicking of securing a coalition deal, tack back towards the EU. Fantastic.
Boris will not earn his much-needed money through sales of his personal memoir. He may get a mildly decent advance but the actual books won't sell. No one wants to read a serial liar's spin and self-justification these days. Biographies about this turbulent time might do better but non-fiction generally struggles these days. The internet is such a great, and terrible, resource for finding out information, as are endless tv shows, that there are very few rabbits left for a non-fiction author to pull out of the hat.
As I mentioned, I doubt he will fill halls for talks either. No one wants to listen to a failure and liar, and he's a poor public speaker. As chaotic as in everything else. His best hope will be after-dinner speeches when everyone is too drunk to mind incoherent ramblings about Peppa Pig world.
Leon got very personal with us all over this but, of course, the reason he's so irate is his own fear. Boris Johnson was a serial philanderer, a man approaching sixty whose attitude to sexual predation belonged to an era from which most of society has moved on. Boris Johnson got the top job for one reason and one reason only: to deliver Brexit. And that was on the back of the Remainer Parliament and an unelectable anti-Semitic Trotskyite Labour leader. As a person Boris was manifestly unsuited to the top job and the page on the chapter has already been turned. The flowers fade and the grass withers. It happens to all of us and some deserve it more than others.
The country is leaving Boris and his type of politics and personal behaviour behind. Whether that's under a reboot of the Conservative brand, or a completely new broom under Labour-LibDems, we will wait to see. But move on it has, and is.
You’re not the first PB-er to fall in love with me
Shhhh, secret, but I'm not into men. You may have noticed.
My partner is a gorgeous female.
Is she not worried that you’re clearly obsessed with me?
As for Bozza’s earnings, here’s the Independent:
“Mr Johnson, who is famously at home with deploying incendiary turns of phrase, would without doubt be in receipt of handsome offers from publishers for his Downing Street memoirs. Mr Blair received a reported £4.6m advance for his tome, with the sum being donated to charity.”
And here’s the Mail;
“Mr Johnson could become 'Billion Dollar Boris' if he plays his cards right with book deals, broadcast slots and speech circuits.
Experts say he will 'eclipse Tony Blair' and could net double the estimated £10million a year the former Labour leader made from speeches after office.
Mr Johnson, who once moaned his £250,000 Daily Telegraph column salary was 'chicken feed', is estimated to 'easily' earn £400,000 per speech while his memoirs could sell for 'at least' £1million
PR guru Mark Borkowski said: 'Boris is fairly wise and over the next 25 years if he can continue to grow it's going to be Billion Dollar Boris. He's a global brand, and with the right management, this is beyond speech-making.'“
Johnson certainly has a fanbase, but not one that pays £400 000 to hear of Peppa Pig.
In the UK no one wants or has a role for an ex-PM, they either sulk on the back benches (Heath, May) or lock themselves away, pretending that they still have significance (Blair, Brown, Thatcher), or completely disappear (Cameron). Major seems to be the only one enjoying himself.
What are you waffling about? Theresa May makes £2m a year from speeches. And she’s duller than @heathener
She does these speeches all over the world, and makes £120k PER SPEECH
If people are willing to pay £120k to hear the dronings of Theresa “fields of wheat” May how much will they pay Boris the Blonde Brexiteer with his 29 children?
I’m not even sure why we’re having this argument. It’s daft. For the next few years - barring asteroid strike - Boris will mint it
A near apocalypse is perfect for Boris to make money.
In the event of an apocalyptic-size asteroid hurtling toward Earth, Boris will be pictured trying to blow it to smithereens. Saving the planet with a couple of megaton bombs is exactly the opportunity Boris was made for.
I too don't understand why we are having this argument. If the market pays Theresa May £120k per speech, then Boris is on at least 10 times that.
I wish it weren't so -- but Boris is about to become as rich as creosote. His life is actually just beginning.
It is we who have been left with tonnes of problems to sort out.
Boris will not earn his much-needed money through sales of his personal memoir. He may get a mildly decent advance but the actual books won't sell. No one wants to read a serial liar's spin and self-justification these days. Biographies about this turbulent time might do better but non-fiction generally struggles these days. The internet is such a great, and terrible, resource for finding out information, as are endless tv shows, that there are very few rabbits left for a non-fiction author to pull out of the hat.
As I mentioned, I doubt he will fill halls for talks either. No one wants to listen to a failure and liar, and he's a poor public speaker. As chaotic as in everything else. His best hope will be after-dinner speeches when everyone is too drunk to mind incoherent ramblings about Peppa Pig world.
Leon got very personal with us all over this but, of course, the reason he's so irate is his own fear. Boris Johnson was a serial philanderer, a man approaching sixty whose attitude to sexual predation belonged to an era from which most of society has moved on. Boris Johnson got the top job for one reason and one reason only: to deliver Brexit. And that was on the back of the Remainer Parliament and an unelectable anti-Semitic Trotskyite Labour leader. As a person Boris was manifestly unsuited to the top job and the page on the chapter has already been turned. The flowers fade and the grass withers. It happens to all of us and some deserve it more than others.
The country is leaving Boris and his type of politics and personal behaviour behind. Whether that's under a reboot of the Conservative brand, or a completely new broom under Labour-LibDems, we will wait to see. But move on it has, and is.
You’re not the first PB-er to fall in love with me
Shhhh, secret, but I'm not into men. You may have noticed.
My partner is a gorgeous female.
Is she not worried that you’re clearly obsessed with me?
As for Bozza’s earnings, here’s the Independent:
“Mr Johnson, who is famously at home with deploying incendiary turns of phrase, would without doubt be in receipt of handsome offers from publishers for his Downing Street memoirs. Mr Blair received a reported £4.6m advance for his tome, with the sum being donated to charity.”
And here’s the Mail;
“Mr Johnson could become 'Billion Dollar Boris' if he plays his cards right with book deals, broadcast slots and speech circuits.
Experts say he will 'eclipse Tony Blair' and could net double the estimated £10million a year the former Labour leader made from speeches after office.
Mr Johnson, who once moaned his £250,000 Daily Telegraph column salary was 'chicken feed', is estimated to 'easily' earn £400,000 per speech while his memoirs could sell for 'at least' £1million
PR guru Mark Borkowski said: 'Boris is fairly wise and over the next 25 years if he can continue to grow it's going to be Billion Dollar Boris. He's a global brand, and with the right management, this is beyond speech-making.'“
Johnson certainly has a fanbase, but not one that pays £400 000 to hear of Peppa Pig.
In the UK no one wants or has a role for an ex-PM, they either sulk on the back benches (Heath, May) or lock themselves away, pretending that they still have significance (Blair, Brown, Thatcher), or completely disappear (Cameron). Major seems to be the only one enjoying himself.
What are you waffling about? Theresa May makes £2m a year from speeches. And she’s duller than @heathener
She does these speeches all over the world, and makes £120k PER SPEECH
If people are willing to pay £120k to hear the dronings of Theresa “fields of wheat” May how much will they pay Boris the Blonde Brexiteer with his 29 children?
I’m not even sure why we’re having this argument. It’s daft. For the next few years - barring asteroid strike - Boris will mint it
I've hired a lot of speakers for events I have organised (For the last 20 years of my working life my business organised pressure groups for large organisations). I have never got the fees ex-pms can earn, but it is clearly a fact. It has been suggested to me that it down to 'contacts' they can introduce at the sessions, but I have never had a customer request one of these speakers and my customers were often very major companies, charities, unions, NGOs, etc. Not once did they want a political speaker. Clearly there is demand though.
A lot of it - most of it - is surely star quality. Box office branding
Anyone who attends a speech like this can airily say their friends next day,
“Oh I heard a fascinating speech last night, talking about trade with the USA, and what the president’s really like”
“Really? Who??”
“Oh, the ex prime minister. Yep. Him. That’s right. ;We all had a drink with him after”
Cue: massively impressed friends
It gives you huge bragging rights. This is why South Koreans will pay £120k to Theresa May, FFS. For Boris you can surely multiply that
Still struggling with it. I could get a much better speaker than May for a tenth of the price. Why didn't my customers ask for these speakers? Many of the organisations I represented were as big as they get and it was at board level. Not one requested a top politician and each event would have an audience of about 100 organisations.
By the way if the price was right I would book Boris in a heartbeat. He would be a hoot. My audience either wanted entertainment or to be challenged. I wouldn't book May. My only reservation would be if there were any reservations from my customers, but I could find that out beforehand.
I struggle with it. Theresa bloody May? £125,000, for a single speech??
I’ve also thought about it and I am sure my answer is part of the solution to this puzzle. Star quality. This must be particularly true for those organising the speeches. They get to meet the ex PM one-on-one, negotiate a deal, that’s a LOT of impressive anecdotes to share with others. That must drive the price
I’ve heard that this is one reason political memoirs by major political figures get such huge deals. The publishers want to hang out with ex prime ministers, get him to their parties, look big and powerful, and the top editors want it in their CVs - “edited Tony Blair’s memoirs”
Again: it all drives the price up. And Boris’ price will be notably bigger than Theresa’s
There have always been folk with more money than sense, and the rich are such social climbers that I am sure that they boast like you do.
It won't be a great look though while Britons freeze through a cost of living crisis and Winter of Discontent.
At least we’ve got beyond your preposterous assertion that Boris won’t get anything for his speeches
I think he will get loads. He is a clown. It is the only thing he is meant to be good at. I mean, who will forget his back of the fag packet Peppa Pig speech!
It is a wonderful day. We will soon hopefully have a serious PM instead of a clown. Just rejoice at that news!
The generally excellent Chris Mason said several times on #R4today that a Vote of No Confidence would mean a gen election. That's incorrect. A PM who loses a VONC must *either* resign *or* request an election. The former allows a new govt to be formed that can command confidence. https://twitter.com/redhistorian/status/1545312197970116609
Rishi Sunak will pitch himself as the 'serious candidate for a serious time', arguing he is the only candidate with integrity to salvage Tory brand and experience to handle the economic crisis
LOL! His wife was a nom-dom while he as Chancellor was taxing everyone left, right and center. Don't think much else needs to be said...
That's true, but will nobody think of the more serious and pressing issues of our time?
I’ve just realised that Boris is going to haunt the nightmares of the Left (and some on the right, too) for years and years, the same way Thatcher did. Even when he’s long gone his name will provoke a weird reflexive mix of fear, loathing, anger and nameless dread
HAHAHAHAHA
Because he was a demonstrable liar who lied and lied and lied. Before during and (no doubt) after he was Prime Minister of the UK. Which latter of course he did much to dismantle.
It won't only be those on the Left and the Right; it will be historians for decades to come.
Writing future histories contemporaneously is always problematic, but I reckon Boris will probably be seen more as a comedic figure; a vainglorious fool who kidded people into voting for him. The ultimate lightweight.
On top, your regular reminder that the newspapers follow the prejudices of their readers; they don't lead them. They are a product selling to a customer base like any other.
Think who buys the Daily Mail and Daily Express these days, and you have your answer.
From what I've been seeing on VOX POPS I'd say the Mail have got their readers wrong. The pro Boris people SEEM to be mainly male and generally what appear to be SUN readers.
The 'Disgusted of Cheam' seem to be the most anti Boris and they're the ones I would guess to be Mail readers
We’ve not really seen a lot of rumours on the various runners and riders yet (aside from no hopers like Suella). Feels very calm before the storm. I am assuming they are waiting for a big beast to declare to get the whole thing moving.
We are at the stage of making deals between potential contenders stage. Sunak will be talking to Javid to persuade him not to run, but support him from the outset. If Sunak can also persuade some others who are considering a run, like Shapps and Wallace to come out in support then he can make a big immediate impact. Better to spend a few hours organising that before declaring, than to declare as a Billy-no-mates and try to persuade people to join your friendless campaign.
If @Scott_xP is anything to go by, the Departure of the Boris has done nothing to cure or even soothe The Brexit Psychosis, and the madness will continue forever
Great
This has political implications. I am still convinced Starmer will yield to pressure from the Labour versions of Scott, and tack towards the Single Market, if and when he becomes PM
I’m not quite a serious a case as psychosis - not yet anyway, I hope - but I am certainly still smouldering with resentment at losing my EU citizenship, which I don’t think will ever go away. And there are tens of millions like me. And I think a lot of younger people reaching maturity now and in the coming years probably feel the same.
I also think that the Red Wall, and working class people generally all over the country, were conned by right wingers who just wanted to be free of the moderating, redistributive hand of the EU. I think that is gradually becoming realised.
I don’t think it will ever go away. I think it will get worse. It will be like a boil, oozing pus, on the arse of our politics for years.
If Starmer doesn’t yield to pressure to at least rejoin the SM, a successor will. Personally I’d love to see a Lab/Lib Dem, maybe even SNP for shits and gigs, coalition. Starmer would, regretfully as part of the grubby politicking of securing a coalition deal, tack back towards the EU. Fantastic.
I think that the Labour leader after the next election will take a more positive approach to Europe. Starmer's policy is just for the next Parliament, and I think that one won't run for a full term.
Boris will not earn his much-needed money through sales of his personal memoir. He may get a mildly decent advance but the actual books won't sell. No one wants to read a serial liar's spin and self-justification these days. Biographies about this turbulent time might do better but non-fiction generally struggles these days. The internet is such a great, and terrible, resource for finding out information, as are endless tv shows, that there are very few rabbits left for a non-fiction author to pull out of the hat.
As I mentioned, I doubt he will fill halls for talks either. No one wants to listen to a failure and liar, and he's a poor public speaker. As chaotic as in everything else. His best hope will be after-dinner speeches when everyone is too drunk to mind incoherent ramblings about Peppa Pig world.
Leon got very personal with us all over this but, of course, the reason he's so irate is his own fear. Boris Johnson was a serial philanderer, a man approaching sixty whose attitude to sexual predation belonged to an era from which most of society has moved on. Boris Johnson got the top job for one reason and one reason only: to deliver Brexit. And that was on the back of the Remainer Parliament and an unelectable anti-Semitic Trotskyite Labour leader. As a person Boris was manifestly unsuited to the top job and the page on the chapter has already been turned. The flowers fade and the grass withers. It happens to all of us and some deserve it more than others.
The country is leaving Boris and his type of politics and personal behaviour behind. Whether that's under a reboot of the Conservative brand, or a completely new broom under Labour-LibDems, we will wait to see. But move on it has, and is.
You’re not the first PB-er to fall in love with me
Shhhh, secret, but I'm not into men. You may have noticed.
My partner is a gorgeous female.
Is she not worried that you’re clearly obsessed with me?
As for Bozza’s earnings, here’s the Independent:
“Mr Johnson, who is famously at home with deploying incendiary turns of phrase, would without doubt be in receipt of handsome offers from publishers for his Downing Street memoirs. Mr Blair received a reported £4.6m advance for his tome, with the sum being donated to charity.”
And here’s the Mail;
“Mr Johnson could become 'Billion Dollar Boris' if he plays his cards right with book deals, broadcast slots and speech circuits.
Experts say he will 'eclipse Tony Blair' and could net double the estimated £10million a year the former Labour leader made from speeches after office.
Mr Johnson, who once moaned his £250,000 Daily Telegraph column salary was 'chicken feed', is estimated to 'easily' earn £400,000 per speech while his memoirs could sell for 'at least' £1million
PR guru Mark Borkowski said: 'Boris is fairly wise and over the next 25 years if he can continue to grow it's going to be Billion Dollar Boris. He's a global brand, and with the right management, this is beyond speech-making.'“
Johnson certainly has a fanbase, but not one that pays £400 000 to hear of Peppa Pig.
In the UK no one wants or has a role for an ex-PM, they either sulk on the back benches (Heath, May) or lock themselves away, pretending that they still have significance (Blair, Brown, Thatcher), or completely disappear (Cameron). Major seems to be the only one enjoying himself.
I know you will claim that as a joke but you, of course, won't see that it's the kind of vindictive personal comment that drags this place and the people who post here, down.
When you don't like someone else's point of view you always resort to ad hominem. You sneer at a person for some trait you think you have a right to expose.
I hope everyone else on here has a nice day xx
You’ve done it again. You’ve started an argument with personal abuse, and then, when it is returned, you can’t cope and you cry foul
[...]
@Leon 'Leon' I was merely suggesting that the reason you are so upset and irate about Boris' decline is that it plays into your own fears. You wrote a book about sexual predation - we all know that - and you're now in your 60's and no longer the young stud you told the world about. Boris was in many ways your kind of man. You wrote an entire book about how to win women. You have frequently boasted about your sexual conquests with 'much' younger women, girls, teenagers.
You have spent a LOT of time attacking those who have campaigned for Boris to go. And you have totemised Boris. This after a Damascene conversion on the way to the ballot box.
I am suggesting that the reason for this may well be that when much of the country is turning its back on the kind of attitudes that you and Boris share, you are upset and irate about it. It's not rocket science. The market for your kind of male sexual predation has receded and the country has moved on from your book, just as it has now from Boris. Hence why you have had to reinvent yourself at least twice with pseudonymns as an author. Your particular brand under your real name (which I shall not mention) has had its day.
Instead of raging against the dying light, try to be kind to people and especially to yourself in your older guise. It will make the world, and here, a better place.
If I am some ageing man crazed with existential angst (hint: I’m not)
You are a bit. Everyone is. Great art can often be produced upon that realisation.
Oh sure there is truth there. I admitted it earlier on, in a reply to @Heathener
“Clearly suggesting that I am - like Boris - some ageing and fearful sexual predator raging against the light, and, for added spite, you suggested that my approaching anonymity and decline is a deserved fate
All good fun. I don’t mind at all. Some of it might be true.”
Like the majority of PB-ers I am confronting mortality. I am of an age when I look back and see the patterns in my life, sometimes ruefully sometimes happily. But the idea this fills me with angst is simply not true, and the idea that this drives my passionate support for Boris - when I actually wanted him gone - is surreal and says more about @Heathener’s projections, perhaps, than about me
And personally I am probably happier now than I have been in years. Yesterday was particularly blissful. The swim in that magnificent river. The dinner of eel under the mountains. Then I got fucking shit faced with my landlord, Ratko, and we talked about his lethal fighting in the Balkans war, as the bats flew overhead, in his garden. Brilliant
I am delighted for you, genuinely (even if there is a touch of Winnie about this relentless activity).
But don't get too happy; no one ever wrote The Waste Land on a full stomach and feeling everything was well with the world.
I’ve no doubt Fate has something nasty planned for me, possibly quite soon, it’s what she does, isn’t it? Always. That’s why I am enjoying the moment
A wise friend told me the other day that I am “in the Bardo”. I had to google it
I’ve just realised that Boris is going to haunt the nightmares of the Left (and some on the right, too) for years and years, the same way Thatcher did. Even when he’s long gone his name will provoke a weird reflexive mix of fear, loathing, anger and nameless dread
HAHAHAHAHA
Because he was a demonstrable liar who lied and lied and lied. Before during and (no doubt) after he was Prime Minister of the UK. Which latter of course he did much to dismantle.
It won't only be those on the Left and the Right; it will be historians for decades to come.
Writing future histories contemporaneously is always problematic, but I reckon Boris will probably be seen more as a comedic figure; a vainglorious fool who kidded people into voting for him. The ultimate lightweight.
Yep I think that is probably right - of a piece with populist politicians all over that this age has thrown up (as voters have wanted them).
Kay Burley is a moron. There is no such thing as a caretaker PM. James Cleverly offering to lay a bet on Johnson not going very amusing.
There is such a thing. We have one every General Election.
That's bollocks. We have a Prime Minister. We might not have a parliament, but that's another matter.
It's not formal, but there's a convention, an understanding, that although the PM has all the normal powers if they need them, that they're in some sense only minding the shop.
Obviously this is only informal, so it's something where the boundary is a bit fuzzy, which is why people have pointed to May passing Net Zero (but that's not really a contradiction as it had Opposition support, so it wasn't controversial). Another interesting example was the consultation during the Eurozone crisis in 2010.
People are only making a thing of this now because they don't trust Johnson to act reasonably during this period with only convention to restrain him.
The thing is, though, that those people are the same people who said Boris would never resign and would only be forced out by a VONC.
A reminder that Margaret Thatcher used multiple VONC's, as a tactic whilst LOTO. The point isn't whether they are successful or not. It is to force the government to defend itself for a change, rather then setting its own timetable of issues. And to put support on record. I really do think there hasn't been a more appropriate time recently. And it can hardly be "a waste of time" when the government has explicitly said it won't be doing anything for months anyways.
Rishi Sunak will pitch himself as the 'serious candidate for a serious time', arguing he is the only candidate with integrity to salvage Tory brand and experience to handle the economic crisis
LOL! His wife was a nom-dom while he as Chancellor was taxing everyone left, right and center. Don't think much else needs to be said...
That's true, but will nobody think of the more serious and pressing issues of our time?
Like my betting slip.
If Rishi wins the crown what on earth will @HYUFD do as he is implacable against him
The generally excellent Chris Mason said several times on #R4today that a Vote of No Confidence would mean a gen election. That's incorrect. A PM who loses a VONC must *either* resign *or* request an election. The former allows a new govt to be formed that can command confidence. https://twitter.com/redhistorian/status/1545312197970116609
"Generally excellent"? He wouldn't hold his own on here. Just admitted the Lebedev story has "passed him by".
We’ve not really seen a lot of rumours on the various runners and riders yet (aside from no hopers like Suella). Feels very calm before the storm. I am assuming they are waiting for a big beast to declare to get the whole thing moving.
We are at the stage of making deals between potential contenders stage. Sunak will be talking to Javid to persuade him not to run, but support him from the outset. If Sunak can also persuade some others who are considering a run, like Shapps and Wallace to come out in support then he can make a big immediate impact. Better to spend a few hours organising that before declaring, than to declare as a Billy-no-mates and try to persuade people to join your friendless campaign.
That's the bit I can't get about Truss running home. Surely all the discussions you need to make can be done via FaceTime or WhatsApp during the conference off times.
It's as if she has no supporters who can organise anything for her..
If @Scott_xP is anything to go by, the Departure of the Boris has done nothing to cure or even soothe The Brexit Psychosis, and the madness will continue forever
Great
This has political implications. I am still convinced Starmer will yield to pressure from the Labour versions of Scott, and tack towards the Single Market, if and when he becomes PM
I’m not quite a serious a case as psychosis - not yet anyway, I hope - but I am certainly still smouldering with resentment at losing my EU citizenship, which I don’t think will ever go away. And there are tens of millions like me. And I think a lot of younger people reaching maturity now and in the coming years probably feel the same.
I also think that the Red Wall, and working class people generally all over the country, were conned by right wingers who just wanted to be free of the moderating, redistributive hand of the EU. I think that is gradually becoming realised.
I don’t think it will ever go away. I think it will get worse. It will be like a boil, oozing pus, on the arse of our politics for years.
If Starmer doesn’t yield to pressure to at least rejoin the SM, a successor will. Personally I’d love to see a Lab/Lib Dem, maybe even SNP for shits and gigs, coalition. Starmer would, regretfully as part of the grubby politicking of securing a coalition deal, tack back towards the EU. Fantastic.
Your last paragraph rings true to me. I’ve said it myself. Something like this could easily - probably? - happen. Korma is unlikely to get an overall majority. How convenient for him if he is forced by the nature of Coalitions to do something - rejoin the SM in some form - which he secretly wants to do anyway
Rishi Sunak will pitch himself as the 'serious candidate for a serious time', arguing he is the only candidate with integrity to salvage Tory brand and experience to handle the economic crisis
LOL! His wife was a nom-dom while he as Chancellor was taxing everyone left, right and center. Don't think much else needs to be said...
That's true, but will nobody think of the more serious and pressing issues of our time?
Like my betting slip.
If Rishi wins the crown what on earth will @HYUFD do as he is implacable against him
Rishi Sunak will pitch himself as the 'serious candidate for a serious time', arguing he is the only candidate with integrity to salvage Tory brand and experience to handle the economic crisis
LOL! His wife was a nom-dom while he as Chancellor was taxing everyone left, right and center. Don't think much else needs to be said...
That's true, but will nobody think of the more serious and pressing issues of our time?
Like my betting slip.
If Rishi wins the crown what on earth will @HYUFD do as he is implacable against him
If @Scott_xP is anything to go by, the Departure of the Boris has done nothing to cure or even soothe The Brexit Psychosis, and the madness will continue forever
Great
This has political implications. I am still convinced Starmer will yield to pressure from the Labour versions of Scott, and tack towards the Single Market, if and when he becomes PM
I’m not quite a serious a case as psychosis - not yet anyway, I hope - but I am certainly still smouldering with resentment at losing my EU citizenship, which I don’t think will ever go away. And there are tens of millions like me. And I think a lot of younger people reaching maturity now and in the coming years probably feel the same.
I also think that the Red Wall, and working class people generally all over the country, were conned by right wingers who just wanted to be free of the moderating, redistributive hand of the EU. I think that is gradually becoming realised.
I don’t think it will ever go away. I think it will get worse. It will be like a boil, oozing pus, on the arse of our politics for years.
If Starmer doesn’t yield to pressure to at least rejoin the SM, a successor will. Personally I’d love to see a Lab/Lib Dem, maybe even SNP for shits and gigs, coalition. Starmer would, regretfully as part of the grubby politicking of securing a coalition deal, tack back towards the EU. Fantastic.
Your last paragraph rings true to me. I’ve said it myself. Something like this could easily - probably? - happen. Korma is unlikely to get an overall majority. How convenient for him if he is forced by the nature of Coalitions to do something - rejoin the SM in some form - which he secretly wants to do anyway
With the added advantage of clearly being the best answer foe the country.
The generally excellent Chris Mason said several times on #R4today that a Vote of No Confidence would mean a gen election. That's incorrect. A PM who loses a VONC must *either* resign *or* request an election. The former allows a new govt to be formed that can command confidence. https://twitter.com/redhistorian/status/1545312197970116609
Yep all a VONC results in is the creation of a 2 week window during which a new Government has to be formed (at which point it is a general election).
Which means the ideal solution for the Tories (who probably don't want the Right Wing loonier candidate winning) is to ensure there is a VONC as that would allow their MPs to make a decision but wouldn't give the members a chance to make a decision.
And, even better, the loss of the membership vote was forced on them by that evil Labour party..
In other news, this week it was revealed that Elon Musk has had twins with a female executive at one of his companies.
Seeing the Musk fans try to spin this is quite hilarious.
Why do they have to spin it? He hasn’t done anything illegal. It might be a sackable offence in some companies (is it?) but then he’s not going to sack himself, he owns the company
Rishi Sunak will pitch himself as the 'serious candidate for a serious time', arguing he is the only candidate with integrity to salvage Tory brand and experience to handle the economic crisis
LOL! His wife was a nom-dom while he as Chancellor was taxing everyone left, right and center. Don't think much else needs to be said...
That's true, but will nobody think of the more serious and pressing issues of our time?
Like my betting slip.
If Rishi wins the crown what on earth will @HYUFD do as he is implacable against him
He'll be sending tanks up to Richmond...
They are already there - Richmond contains Catterick Garrison..
Heck it's even got decent facilities there now - if we are going to the cinema we go to Catterick rather than in town...
Interestingly (and worryingly), it appears that the gun used to shoot Shinzo Abe in Japan might have been home-made. From the piccies, it certainly looks unusual (but as ever, IANAE).
If @Scott_xP is anything to go by, the Departure of the Boris has done nothing to cure or even soothe The Brexit Psychosis, and the madness will continue forever
Great
This has political implications. I am still convinced Starmer will yield to pressure from the Labour versions of Scott, and tack towards the Single Market, if and when he becomes PM
I’m not quite a serious a case as psychosis - not yet anyway, I hope - but I am certainly still smouldering with resentment at losing my EU citizenship, which I don’t think will ever go away. And there are tens of millions like me. And I think a lot of younger people reaching maturity now and in the coming years probably feel the same.
I also think that the Red Wall, and working class people generally all over the country, were conned by right wingers who just wanted to be free of the moderating, redistributive hand of the EU. I think that is gradually becoming realised.
I don’t think it will ever go away. I think it will get worse. It will be like a boil, oozing pus, on the arse of our politics for years.
If Starmer doesn’t yield to pressure to at least rejoin the SM, a successor will. Personally I’d love to see a Lab/Lib Dem, maybe even SNP for shits and gigs, coalition. Starmer would, regretfully as part of the grubby politicking of securing a coalition deal, tack back towards the EU. Fantastic.
Your last paragraph rings true to me. I’ve said it myself. Something like this could easily - probably? - happen. Korma is unlikely to get an overall majority. How convenient for him if he is forced by the nature of Coalitions to do something - rejoin the SM in some form - which he secretly wants to do anyway
With the added advantage of clearly being the best answer foe the country.
I’m not sure, but I am willing to be convinced. This is of course the debate we should have had, as a nation, around the time of the referendum
It should have been two stages: Remain/Leave, then, if Leave, what kind of Leave: EFTA/EEA or hard
He will want his legacy to be cemented; and that means having a successor who will not dismantle the little he has achieved (although to be fair, Covid and Ukraine got in the way). And that little is Brexit.
He will therefore want a hard Brexiteer in charge. And his track record indicates he will interfere to get one.
Brexit will be dismantled by reality, whoever is the next Tory PM
Maybe you need to listen to the official opposition, maybe the next government whose policy is identical to the conservatives and rejects rejoining even the single market let alone the EU
Looks as if you will be tweeting for years to come
And I'll still be agreeing with Scott's Brexit analysis.
The LOTO hasn't covered himself with glory in the last week. He was abysmal yesterday and his Brexit policy is failed Johnsonianism.
The FPN can't come soon enough.
As I have just said he and his wife were enjoying the Royal Box at Wimbledon while this was unfolding
Why shouldn't he go to Wimbledon? There was nothing he could do whilst Johnson hanged himself and the Conservative Party as he watched tennis. It suggested an air of confidence.
I was alluding to his statement and questions session in the morning which was tongue tied and lacklustre.
I agree. It was like the classic scene from 'The Godfather' when Michael and Kate were at his son's baptism while all his enemies were shot to pieces.
Boris will not earn his much-needed money through sales of his personal memoir. He may get a mildly decent advance but the actual books won't sell. No one wants to read a serial liar's spin and self-justification these days. Biographies about this turbulent time might do better but non-fiction generally struggles these days. The internet is such a great, and terrible, resource for finding out information, as are endless tv shows, that there are very few rabbits left for a non-fiction author to pull out of the hat.
As I mentioned, I doubt he will fill halls for talks either. No one wants to listen to a failure and liar, and he's a poor public speaker. As chaotic as in everything else. His best hope will be after-dinner speeches when everyone is too drunk to mind incoherent ramblings about Peppa Pig world.
Leon got very personal with us all over this but, of course, the reason he's so irate is his own fear. Boris Johnson was a serial philanderer, a man approaching sixty whose attitude to sexual predation belonged to an era from which most of society has moved on. Boris Johnson got the top job for one reason and one reason only: to deliver Brexit. And that was on the back of the Remainer Parliament and an unelectable anti-Semitic Trotskyite Labour leader. As a person Boris was manifestly unsuited to the top job and the page on the chapter has already been turned. The flowers fade and the grass withers. It happens to all of us and some deserve it more than others.
The country is leaving Boris and his type of politics and personal behaviour behind. Whether that's under a reboot of the Conservative brand, or a completely new broom under Labour-LibDems, we will wait to see. But move on it has, and is.
You’re not the first PB-er to fall in love with me
Shhhh, secret, but I'm not into men. You may have noticed.
My partner is a gorgeous female.
Is she not worried that you’re clearly obsessed with me?
As for Bozza’s earnings, here’s the Independent:
“Mr Johnson, who is famously at home with deploying incendiary turns of phrase, would without doubt be in receipt of handsome offers from publishers for his Downing Street memoirs. Mr Blair received a reported £4.6m advance for his tome, with the sum being donated to charity.”
And here’s the Mail;
“Mr Johnson could become 'Billion Dollar Boris' if he plays his cards right with book deals, broadcast slots and speech circuits.
Experts say he will 'eclipse Tony Blair' and could net double the estimated £10million a year the former Labour leader made from speeches after office.
Mr Johnson, who once moaned his £250,000 Daily Telegraph column salary was 'chicken feed', is estimated to 'easily' earn £400,000 per speech while his memoirs could sell for 'at least' £1million
PR guru Mark Borkowski said: 'Boris is fairly wise and over the next 25 years if he can continue to grow it's going to be Billion Dollar Boris. He's a global brand, and with the right management, this is beyond speech-making.'“
Johnson certainly has a fanbase, but not one that pays £400 000 to hear of Peppa Pig.
In the UK no one wants or has a role for an ex-PM, they either sulk on the back benches (Heath, May) or lock themselves away, pretending that they still have significance (Blair, Brown, Thatcher), or completely disappear (Cameron). Major seems to be the only one enjoying himself.
What are you waffling about? Theresa May makes £2m a year from speeches. And she’s duller than @heathener
She does these speeches all over the world, and makes £120k PER SPEECH
If people are willing to pay £120k to hear the dronings of Theresa “fields of wheat” May how much will they pay Boris the Blonde Brexiteer with his 29 children?
I’m not even sure why we’re having this argument. It’s daft. For the next few years - barring asteroid strike - Boris will mint it
A near apocalypse is perfect for Boris to make money.
In the event of an apocalyptic-size asteroid hurtling toward Earth, Boris will be pictured trying to blow it to smithereens. Saving the planet with a couple of megaton bombs is exactly the opportunity Boris was made for.
I too don't understand why we are having this argument. If the market pays Theresa May £120k per speech, then Boris is on at least 10 times that.
I wish it weren't so -- but Boris is about to become as rich as creosote. His life is actually just beginning.
It is we who have been left with tonnes of problems to sort out.
As rich as creosote? Fair enough.
I am reminded of George Best, and the hotel porter delivering Champagne to a room festooned with bank notes and a naked Mary Stavin on the bed, and sighing "where did it all go wrong Mr Best?"
Well it did go wrong, he "spent his money on birds, booze and fast cars, and the rest he just squandered". A life of over indulgence and excess. This is the blueprint for Johnson.
Cheers Boris!
'As rich as creosote' is an old PB meme stretching back several generations. Someone tried to type 'rich as Croesus' but it came out as 'rich as creases'. Everyone found this amusing and continued to do so for several years. Nowadays we'd just say 'as rich as Richie'.
Rishi Sunak will pitch himself as the 'serious candidate for a serious time', arguing he is the only candidate with integrity to salvage Tory brand and experience to handle the economic crisis
LOL! His wife was a nom-dom while he as Chancellor was taxing everyone left, right and center. Don't think much else needs to be said...
That's true, but will nobody think of the more serious and pressing issues of our time?
Like my betting slip.
If Rishi wins the crown what on earth will @HYUFD do as he is implacable against him
I want it to happen just to see JRM go into a monumental meltdown.
Those same perhaps council house tenants with brand spanking new Range Rovers parked outside also happily spend £20-30,000 on their weddings.
What the damn hell will Boris have to pay to replicate the Chequers event. Better get that book deal done pronto.
From conversations I've had with some in the motor retail trade - the increase in interest rates is going to destroy that part of the leasing market...
Boris will not earn his much-needed money through sales of his personal memoir. He may get a mildly decent advance but the actual books won't sell. No one wants to read a serial liar's spin and self-justification these days. Biographies about this turbulent time might do better but non-fiction generally struggles these days. The internet is such a great, and terrible, resource for finding out information, as are endless tv shows, that there are very few rabbits left for a non-fiction author to pull out of the hat.
As I mentioned, I doubt he will fill halls for talks either. No one wants to listen to a failure and liar, and he's a poor public speaker. As chaotic as in everything else. His best hope will be after-dinner speeches when everyone is too drunk to mind incoherent ramblings about Peppa Pig world.
Leon got very personal with us all over this but, of course, the reason he's so irate is his own fear. Boris Johnson was a serial philanderer, a man approaching sixty whose attitude to sexual predation belonged to an era from which most of society has moved on. Boris Johnson got the top job for one reason and one reason only: to deliver Brexit. And that was on the back of the Remainer Parliament and an unelectable anti-Semitic Trotskyite Labour leader. As a person Boris was manifestly unsuited to the top job and the page on the chapter has already been turned. The flowers fade and the grass withers. It happens to all of us and some deserve it more than others.
The country is leaving Boris and his type of politics and personal behaviour behind. Whether that's under a reboot of the Conservative brand, or a completely new broom under Labour-LibDems, we will wait to see. But move on it has, and is.
You’re not the first PB-er to fall in love with me
Shhhh, secret, but I'm not into men. You may have noticed.
My partner is a gorgeous female.
Is she not worried that you’re clearly obsessed with me?
As for Bozza’s earnings, here’s the Independent:
“Mr Johnson, who is famously at home with deploying incendiary turns of phrase, would without doubt be in receipt of handsome offers from publishers for his Downing Street memoirs. Mr Blair received a reported £4.6m advance for his tome, with the sum being donated to charity.”
And here’s the Mail;
“Mr Johnson could become 'Billion Dollar Boris' if he plays his cards right with book deals, broadcast slots and speech circuits.
Experts say he will 'eclipse Tony Blair' and could net double the estimated £10million a year the former Labour leader made from speeches after office.
Mr Johnson, who once moaned his £250,000 Daily Telegraph column salary was 'chicken feed', is estimated to 'easily' earn £400,000 per speech while his memoirs could sell for 'at least' £1million
PR guru Mark Borkowski said: 'Boris is fairly wise and over the next 25 years if he can continue to grow it's going to be Billion Dollar Boris. He's a global brand, and with the right management, this is beyond speech-making.'“
Johnson certainly has a fanbase, but not one that pays £400 000 to hear of Peppa Pig.
In the UK no one wants or has a role for an ex-PM, they either sulk on the back benches (Heath, May) or lock themselves away, pretending that they still have significance (Blair, Brown, Thatcher), or completely disappear (Cameron). Major seems to be the only one enjoying himself.
I know you will claim that as a joke but you, of course, won't see that it's the kind of vindictive personal comment that drags this place and the people who post here, down.
When you don't like someone else's point of view you always resort to ad hominem. You sneer at a person for some trait you think you have a right to expose.
I hope everyone else on here has a nice day xx
You’ve done it again. You’ve started an argument with personal abuse, and then, when it is returned, you can’t cope and you cry foul
[...]
@Leon 'Leon' I was merely suggesting that the reason you are so upset and irate about Boris' decline is that it plays into your own fears. You wrote a book about sexual predation - we all know that - and you're now in your 60's and no longer the young stud you told the world about. Boris was in many ways your kind of man. You wrote an entire book about how to win women. You have frequently boasted about your sexual conquests with 'much' younger women, girls, teenagers.
You have spent a LOT of time attacking those who have campaigned for Boris to go. And you have totemised Boris. This after a Damascene conversion on the way to the ballot box.
I am suggesting that the reason for this may well be that when much of the country is turning its back on the kind of attitudes that you and Boris share, you are upset and irate about it. It's not rocket science. The market for your kind of male sexual predation has receded and the country has moved on from your book, just as it has now from Boris. Hence why you have had to reinvent yourself at least twice with pseudonymns as an author. Your particular brand under your real name (which I shall not mention) has had its day.
Instead of raging against the dying light, try to be kind to people and especially to yourself in your older guise. It will make the world, and here, a better place.
If I am some ageing man crazed with existential angst (hint: I’m not)
You are a bit. Everyone is. Great art can often be produced upon that realisation.
Oh sure there is truth there. I admitted it earlier on, in a reply to @Heathener
“Clearly suggesting that I am - like Boris - some ageing and fearful sexual predator raging against the light, and, for added spite, you suggested that my approaching anonymity and decline is a deserved fate
All good fun. I don’t mind at all. Some of it might be true.”
Like the majority of PB-ers I am confronting mortality. I am of an age when I look back and see the patterns in my life, sometimes ruefully sometimes happily. But the idea this fills me with angst is simply not true, and the idea that this drives my passionate support for Boris - when I actually wanted him gone - is surreal and says more about @Heathener’s projections, perhaps, than about me
And personally I am probably happier now than I have been in years. Yesterday was particularly blissful. The swim in that magnificent river. The dinner of eel under the mountains. Then I got fucking shit faced with my landlord, Ratko, and we talked about his lethal fighting in the Balkans war, as the bats flew overhead, in his garden. Brilliant
I am delighted for you, genuinely (even if there is a touch of Winnie about this relentless activity).
But don't get too happy; no one ever wrote The Waste Land on a full stomach and feeling everything was well with the world.
I’ve no doubt Fate has something nasty planned for me, possibly quite soon, it’s what she does, isn’t it? Always. That’s why I am enjoying the moment
A wise friend told me the other day that I am “in the Bardo”. I had to google it
Much of the country is in the Bardo. It's a response to the trauma of the past 2 1/2 years. Which was a little death. Many are embracing their happy place waiting to see where we are reborn. Yours is extensive travel. The vast churn in employment is the most obvious symptom. We've got a Bardo government now to match. Which fits.
Boris will not earn his much-needed money through sales of his personal memoir. He may get a mildly decent advance but the actual books won't sell. No one wants to read a serial liar's spin and self-justification these days. Biographies about this turbulent time might do better but non-fiction generally struggles these days. The internet is such a great, and terrible, resource for finding out information, as are endless tv shows, that there are very few rabbits left for a non-fiction author to pull out of the hat.
As I mentioned, I doubt he will fill halls for talks either. No one wants to listen to a failure and liar, and he's a poor public speaker. As chaotic as in everything else. His best hope will be after-dinner speeches when everyone is too drunk to mind incoherent ramblings about Peppa Pig world.
Leon got very personal with us all over this but, of course, the reason he's so irate is his own fear. Boris Johnson was a serial philanderer, a man approaching sixty whose attitude to sexual predation belonged to an era from which most of society has moved on. Boris Johnson got the top job for one reason and one reason only: to deliver Brexit. And that was on the back of the Remainer Parliament and an unelectable anti-Semitic Trotskyite Labour leader. As a person Boris was manifestly unsuited to the top job and the page on the chapter has already been turned. The flowers fade and the grass withers. It happens to all of us and some deserve it more than others.
The country is leaving Boris and his type of politics and personal behaviour behind. Whether that's under a reboot of the Conservative brand, or a completely new broom under Labour-LibDems, we will wait to see. But move on it has, and is.
You’re not the first PB-er to fall in love with me
Shhhh, secret, but I'm not into men. You may have noticed.
My partner is a gorgeous female.
Is she not worried that you’re clearly obsessed with me?
As for Bozza’s earnings, here’s the Independent:
“Mr Johnson, who is famously at home with deploying incendiary turns of phrase, would without doubt be in receipt of handsome offers from publishers for his Downing Street memoirs. Mr Blair received a reported £4.6m advance for his tome, with the sum being donated to charity.”
And here’s the Mail;
“Mr Johnson could become 'Billion Dollar Boris' if he plays his cards right with book deals, broadcast slots and speech circuits.
Experts say he will 'eclipse Tony Blair' and could net double the estimated £10million a year the former Labour leader made from speeches after office.
Mr Johnson, who once moaned his £250,000 Daily Telegraph column salary was 'chicken feed', is estimated to 'easily' earn £400,000 per speech while his memoirs could sell for 'at least' £1million
PR guru Mark Borkowski said: 'Boris is fairly wise and over the next 25 years if he can continue to grow it's going to be Billion Dollar Boris. He's a global brand, and with the right management, this is beyond speech-making.'“
Johnson certainly has a fanbase, but not one that pays £400 000 to hear of Peppa Pig.
In the UK no one wants or has a role for an ex-PM, they either sulk on the back benches (Heath, May) or lock themselves away, pretending that they still have significance (Blair, Brown, Thatcher), or completely disappear (Cameron). Major seems to be the only one enjoying himself.
I know you will claim that as a joke but you, of course, won't see that it's the kind of vindictive personal comment that drags this place and the people who post here, down.
When you don't like someone else's point of view you always resort to ad hominem. You sneer at a person for some trait you think you have a right to expose.
In other news, this week it was revealed that Elon Musk has had twins with a female executive at one of his companies.
Seeing the Musk fans try to spin this is quite hilarious.
Why do they have to spin it? He hasn’t done anything illegal. It might be a sackable offence in some companies (is it?) but then he’s not going to sack himself, he owns the company
That's the point. You don't shag around with the staff, even consensually: especially when you are the top boss.
It should be noted that Musk's companies are facing numerous race and sexual discrimination lawsuits.
The remarkable thing about this Tory leadership election is quite how open it is right now. Having heard various vox pops in the media last night and this morning, at least 6 candidates have been mentioned with no one standing out.
Boris will not earn his much-needed money through sales of his personal memoir. He may get a mildly decent advance but the actual books won't sell. No one wants to read a serial liar's spin and self-justification these days. Biographies about this turbulent time might do better but non-fiction generally struggles these days. The internet is such a great, and terrible, resource for finding out information, as are endless tv shows, that there are very few rabbits left for a non-fiction author to pull out of the hat.
As I mentioned, I doubt he will fill halls for talks either. No one wants to listen to a failure and liar, and he's a poor public speaker. As chaotic as in everything else. His best hope will be after-dinner speeches when everyone is too drunk to mind incoherent ramblings about Peppa Pig world.
Leon got very personal with us all over this but, of course, the reason he's so irate is his own fear. Boris Johnson was a serial philanderer, a man approaching sixty whose attitude to sexual predation belonged to an era from which most of society has moved on. Boris Johnson got the top job for one reason and one reason only: to deliver Brexit. And that was on the back of the Remainer Parliament and an unelectable anti-Semitic Trotskyite Labour leader. As a person Boris was manifestly unsuited to the top job and the page on the chapter has already been turned. The flowers fade and the grass withers. It happens to all of us and some deserve it more than others.
The country is leaving Boris and his type of politics and personal behaviour behind. Whether that's under a reboot of the Conservative brand, or a completely new broom under Labour-LibDems, we will wait to see. But move on it has, and is.
You’re not the first PB-er to fall in love with me
Shhhh, secret, but I'm not into men. You may have noticed.
My partner is a gorgeous female.
Is she not worried that you’re clearly obsessed with me?
As for Bozza’s earnings, here’s the Independent:
“Mr Johnson, who is famously at home with deploying incendiary turns of phrase, would without doubt be in receipt of handsome offers from publishers for his Downing Street memoirs. Mr Blair received a reported £4.6m advance for his tome, with the sum being donated to charity.”
And here’s the Mail;
“Mr Johnson could become 'Billion Dollar Boris' if he plays his cards right with book deals, broadcast slots and speech circuits.
Experts say he will 'eclipse Tony Blair' and could net double the estimated £10million a year the former Labour leader made from speeches after office.
Mr Johnson, who once moaned his £250,000 Daily Telegraph column salary was 'chicken feed', is estimated to 'easily' earn £400,000 per speech while his memoirs could sell for 'at least' £1million
PR guru Mark Borkowski said: 'Boris is fairly wise and over the next 25 years if he can continue to grow it's going to be Billion Dollar Boris. He's a global brand, and with the right management, this is beyond speech-making.'“
Johnson certainly has a fanbase, but not one that pays £400 000 to hear of Peppa Pig.
In the UK no one wants or has a role for an ex-PM, they either sulk on the back benches (Heath, May) or lock themselves away, pretending that they still have significance (Blair, Brown, Thatcher), or completely disappear (Cameron). Major seems to be the only one enjoying himself.
What are you waffling about? Theresa May makes £2m a year from speeches. And she’s duller than @heathener
She does these speeches all over the world, and makes £120k PER SPEECH
If people are willing to pay £120k to hear the dronings of Theresa “fields of wheat” May how much will they pay Boris the Blonde Brexiteer with his 29 children?
I’m not even sure why we’re having this argument. It’s daft. For the next few years - barring asteroid strike - Boris will mint it
A near apocalypse is perfect for Boris to make money.
In the event of an apocalyptic-size asteroid hurtling toward Earth, Boris will be pictured trying to blow it to smithereens. Saving the planet with a couple of megaton bombs is exactly the opportunity Boris was made for.
I too don't understand why we are having this argument. If the market pays Theresa May £120k per speech, then Boris is on at least 10 times that.
I wish it weren't so -- but Boris is about to become as rich as creosote. His life is actually just beginning.
It is we who have been left with tonnes of problems to sort out.
As rich as creosote? Fair enough.
I am reminded of George Best, and the hotel porter delivering Champagne to a room festooned with bank notes and a naked Mary Stavin on the bed, and sighing "where did it all go wrong Mr Best?"
Well it did go wrong, he "spent his money on birds, booze and fast cars, and the rest he just squandered". A life of over indulgence and excess. This is the blueprint for Johnson.
Cheers Boris!
'As rich as creosote' is an old PB meme stretching back several generations. Someone tried to type 'rich as Croesus' but it came out as 'rich as creases'. Everyone found this amusing and continued to do so for several years. Nowadays we'd just say 'as rich as Richie'.
The meme got more fantastically elaborate than that. Creases became our nickname for the famously wealthy Lib Dem MP Chris Huhne, who was known for putting his trousers in a Corby trouser press, thereby achieving a good crease; a fact which we all found deliciously amusing
So it was “Rich as Creases” - ie as rich as Chris Huhne
In other news, this week it was revealed that Elon Musk has had twins with a female executive at one of his companies.
Seeing the Musk fans try to spin this is quite hilarious.
Why do they have to spin it? He hasn’t done anything illegal. It might be a sackable offence in some companies (is it?) but then he’s not going to sack himself, he owns the company
That's the point. You don't shag around with the staff, even consensually: especially when you are the top boss.
It should be noted that Musk's companies are facing numerous race and sexual discrimination lawsuits.
A fish rots from its head.
What puritanical bullshit!
What consensual adults do in their own beds is between them and nobody else.
A significant proportion of the married people I know met their spouses through work, when you're spending all day at work and the only people you meet most of the time are at work, its entirely natural and normal for intimate relations to happen.
People need to grow up and stop puritanically staring at other people in judgement.
If @Scott_xP is anything to go by, the Departure of the Boris has done nothing to cure or even soothe The Brexit Psychosis, and the madness will continue forever
Great
This has political implications. I am still convinced Starmer will yield to pressure from the Labour versions of Scott, and tack towards the Single Market, if and when he becomes PM
I’m not quite a serious a case as psychosis - not yet anyway, I hope - but I am certainly still smouldering with resentment at losing my EU citizenship, which I don’t think will ever go away. And there are tens of millions like me. And I think a lot of younger people reaching maturity now and in the coming years probably feel the same.
I also think that the Red Wall, and working class people generally all over the country, were conned by right wingers who just wanted to be free of the moderating, redistributive hand of the EU. I think that is gradually becoming realised.
I don’t think it will ever go away. I think it will get worse. It will be like a boil, oozing pus, on the arse of our politics for years.
If Starmer doesn’t yield to pressure to at least rejoin the SM, a successor will. Personally I’d love to see a Lab/Lib Dem, maybe even SNP for shits and gigs, coalition. Starmer would, regretfully as part of the grubby politicking of securing a coalition deal, tack back towards the EU. Fantastic.
Your last paragraph rings true to me. I’ve said it myself. Something like this could easily - probably? - happen. Korma is unlikely to get an overall majority. How convenient for him if he is forced by the nature of Coalitions to do something - rejoin the SM in some form - which he secretly wants to do anyway
With the added advantage of clearly being the best answer foe the country.
I’m not sure, but I am willing to be convinced. This is of course the debate we should have had, as a nation, around the time of the referendum
It should have been two stages: Remain/Leave, then, if Leave, what kind of Leave: EFTA/EEA or hard
I don’t know about EFTA/EEA but the country’s opinion on EU membership needs to move out of MOE territory, either way, before Labour can make any radical pronouncements.
Boris will not earn his much-needed money through sales of his personal memoir. He may get a mildly decent advance but the actual books won't sell. No one wants to read a serial liar's spin and self-justification these days. Biographies about this turbulent time might do better but non-fiction generally struggles these days. The internet is such a great, and terrible, resource for finding out information, as are endless tv shows, that there are very few rabbits left for a non-fiction author to pull out of the hat.
As I mentioned, I doubt he will fill halls for talks either. No one wants to listen to a failure and liar, and he's a poor public speaker. As chaotic as in everything else. His best hope will be after-dinner speeches when everyone is too drunk to mind incoherent ramblings about Peppa Pig world.
Leon got very personal with us all over this but, of course, the reason he's so irate is his own fear. Boris Johnson was a serial philanderer, a man approaching sixty whose attitude to sexual predation belonged to an era from which most of society has moved on. Boris Johnson got the top job for one reason and one reason only: to deliver Brexit. And that was on the back of the Remainer Parliament and an unelectable anti-Semitic Trotskyite Labour leader. As a person Boris was manifestly unsuited to the top job and the page on the chapter has already been turned. The flowers fade and the grass withers. It happens to all of us and some deserve it more than others.
The country is leaving Boris and his type of politics and personal behaviour behind. Whether that's under a reboot of the Conservative brand, or a completely new broom under Labour-LibDems, we will wait to see. But move on it has, and is.
You’re not the first PB-er to fall in love with me
Shhhh, secret, but I'm not into men. You may have noticed.
My partner is a gorgeous female.
Is she not worried that you’re clearly obsessed with me?
As for Bozza’s earnings, here’s the Independent:
“Mr Johnson, who is famously at home with deploying incendiary turns of phrase, would without doubt be in receipt of handsome offers from publishers for his Downing Street memoirs. Mr Blair received a reported £4.6m advance for his tome, with the sum being donated to charity.”
And here’s the Mail;
“Mr Johnson could become 'Billion Dollar Boris' if he plays his cards right with book deals, broadcast slots and speech circuits.
Experts say he will 'eclipse Tony Blair' and could net double the estimated £10million a year the former Labour leader made from speeches after office.
Mr Johnson, who once moaned his £250,000 Daily Telegraph column salary was 'chicken feed', is estimated to 'easily' earn £400,000 per speech while his memoirs could sell for 'at least' £1million
PR guru Mark Borkowski said: 'Boris is fairly wise and over the next 25 years if he can continue to grow it's going to be Billion Dollar Boris. He's a global brand, and with the right management, this is beyond speech-making.'“
Johnson certainly has a fanbase, but not one that pays £400 000 to hear of Peppa Pig.
In the UK no one wants or has a role for an ex-PM, they either sulk on the back benches (Heath, May) or lock themselves away, pretending that they still have significance (Blair, Brown, Thatcher), or completely disappear (Cameron). Major seems to be the only one enjoying himself.
I know you will claim that as a joke but you, of course, won't see that it's the kind of vindictive personal comment that drags this place and the people who post here, down.
When you don't like someone else's point of view you always resort to ad hominem. You sneer at a person for some trait you think you have a right to expose.
I hope everyone else on here has a nice day xx
You’ve done it again. You’ve started an argument with personal abuse, and then, when it is returned, you can’t cope and you cry foul
[...]
@Leon 'Leon' I was merely suggesting that the reason you are so upset and irate about Boris' decline is that it plays into your own fears. You wrote a book about sexual predation - we all know that - and you're now in your 60's and no longer the young stud you told the world about. Boris was in many ways your kind of man. You wrote an entire book about how to win women. You have frequently boasted about your sexual conquests with 'much' younger women, girls, teenagers.
You have spent a LOT of time attacking those who have campaigned for Boris to go. And you have totemised Boris. This after a Damascene conversion on the way to the ballot box.
I am suggesting that the reason for this may well be that when much of the country is turning its back on the kind of attitudes that you and Boris share, you are upset and irate about it. It's not rocket science. The market for your kind of male sexual predation has receded and the country has moved on from your book, just as it has now from Boris. Hence why you have had to reinvent yourself at least twice with pseudonymns as an author. Your particular brand under your real name (which I shall not mention) has had its day.
Instead of raging against the dying light, try to be kind to people and especially to yourself in your older guise. It will make the world, and here, a better place.
If I am some ageing man crazed with existential angst (hint: I’m not)
You are a bit. Everyone is. Great art can often be produced upon that realisation.
Oh sure there is truth there. I admitted it earlier on, in a reply to @Heathener
“Clearly suggesting that I am - like Boris - some ageing and fearful sexual predator raging against the light, and, for added spite, you suggested that my approaching anonymity and decline is a deserved fate
All good fun. I don’t mind at all. Some of it might be true.”
Like the majority of PB-ers I am confronting mortality. I am of an age when I look back and see the patterns in my life, sometimes ruefully sometimes happily. But the idea this fills me with angst is simply not true, and the idea that this drives my passionate support for Boris - when I actually wanted him gone - is surreal and says more about @Heathener’s projections, perhaps, than about me
And personally I am probably happier now than I have been in years. Yesterday was particularly blissful. The swim in that magnificent river. The dinner of eel under the mountains. Then I got fucking shit faced with my landlord, Ratko, and we talked about his lethal fighting in the Balkans war, as the bats flew overhead, in his garden. Brilliant
I am delighted for you, genuinely (even if there is a touch of Winnie about this relentless activity).
But don't get too happy; no one ever wrote The Waste Land on a full stomach and feeling everything was well with the world.
I’ve no doubt Fate has something nasty planned for me, possibly quite soon, it’s what she does, isn’t it? Always. That’s why I am enjoying the moment
A wise friend told me the other day that I am “in the Bardo”. I had to google it
Much of the country is in the Bardo. It's a response to the trauma of the past 2 1/2 years. Which was a little death. Many are embracing their happy place waiting to see where we are reborn. Yours is extensive travel. The vast churn in employment is the most obvious symptom. We've got a Bardo government now to match. Which fits.
Astute. Yes. The whole world, perhaps, is with me in the Bardo. Hello world
If @Scott_xP is anything to go by, the Departure of the Boris has done nothing to cure or even soothe The Brexit Psychosis, and the madness will continue forever
Great
This has political implications. I am still convinced Starmer will yield to pressure from the Labour versions of Scott, and tack towards the Single Market, if and when he becomes PM
But Starmer stands for honesty and integrity ?
I think even in the light of the FPN, he does. It is his poor judgement and lacklustre performances that concern me.
If when the absolute imperative had arisen and the only two chaperones available to escort your daughter were Johnson or Starmer with no other alternative action available, which one would you have selected for your own peace of mind?
NEW: The planned Chequers wedding party is being moved to a different location at the end of this month. Source says the idea this has had any bearing on why the PM is staying on as caretaker is “frankly absurd” and where it happens doesn’t matter to them.
Boris will not earn his much-needed money through sales of his personal memoir. He may get a mildly decent advance but the actual books won't sell. No one wants to read a serial liar's spin and self-justification these days. Biographies about this turbulent time might do better but non-fiction generally struggles these days. The internet is such a great, and terrible, resource for finding out information, as are endless tv shows, that there are very few rabbits left for a non-fiction author to pull out of the hat.
As I mentioned, I doubt he will fill halls for talks either. No one wants to listen to a failure and liar, and he's a poor public speaker. As chaotic as in everything else. His best hope will be after-dinner speeches when everyone is too drunk to mind incoherent ramblings about Peppa Pig world.
Leon got very personal with us all over this but, of course, the reason he's so irate is his own fear. Boris Johnson was a serial philanderer, a man approaching sixty whose attitude to sexual predation belonged to an era from which most of society has moved on. Boris Johnson got the top job for one reason and one reason only: to deliver Brexit. And that was on the back of the Remainer Parliament and an unelectable anti-Semitic Trotskyite Labour leader. As a person Boris was manifestly unsuited to the top job and the page on the chapter has already been turned. The flowers fade and the grass withers. It happens to all of us and some deserve it more than others.
The country is leaving Boris and his type of politics and personal behaviour behind. Whether that's under a reboot of the Conservative brand, or a completely new broom under Labour-LibDems, we will wait to see. But move on it has, and is.
You’re not the first PB-er to fall in love with me
Shhhh, secret, but I'm not into men. You may have noticed.
My partner is a gorgeous female.
Is she not worried that you’re clearly obsessed with me?
As for Bozza’s earnings, here’s the Independent:
“Mr Johnson, who is famously at home with deploying incendiary turns of phrase, would without doubt be in receipt of handsome offers from publishers for his Downing Street memoirs. Mr Blair received a reported £4.6m advance for his tome, with the sum being donated to charity.”
And here’s the Mail;
“Mr Johnson could become 'Billion Dollar Boris' if he plays his cards right with book deals, broadcast slots and speech circuits.
Experts say he will 'eclipse Tony Blair' and could net double the estimated £10million a year the former Labour leader made from speeches after office.
Mr Johnson, who once moaned his £250,000 Daily Telegraph column salary was 'chicken feed', is estimated to 'easily' earn £400,000 per speech while his memoirs could sell for 'at least' £1million
PR guru Mark Borkowski said: 'Boris is fairly wise and over the next 25 years if he can continue to grow it's going to be Billion Dollar Boris. He's a global brand, and with the right management, this is beyond speech-making.'“
Johnson certainly has a fanbase, but not one that pays £400 000 to hear of Peppa Pig.
In the UK no one wants or has a role for an ex-PM, they either sulk on the back benches (Heath, May) or lock themselves away, pretending that they still have significance (Blair, Brown, Thatcher), or completely disappear (Cameron). Major seems to be the only one enjoying himself.
What are you waffling about? Theresa May makes £2m a year from speeches. And she’s duller than @heathener
She does these speeches all over the world, and makes £120k PER SPEECH
If people are willing to pay £120k to hear the dronings of Theresa “fields of wheat” May how much will they pay Boris the Blonde Brexiteer with his 29 children?
I’m not even sure why we’re having this argument. It’s daft. For the next few years - barring asteroid strike - Boris will mint it
A near apocalypse is perfect for Boris to make money.
In the event of an apocalyptic-size asteroid hurtling toward Earth, Boris will be pictured trying to blow it to smithereens. Saving the planet with a couple of megaton bombs is exactly the opportunity Boris was made for.
I too don't understand why we are having this argument. If the market pays Theresa May £120k per speech, then Boris is on at least 10 times that.
I wish it weren't so -- but Boris is about to become as rich as creosote. His life is actually just beginning.
It is we who have been left with tonnes of problems to sort out.
As rich as creosote? Fair enough.
I am reminded of George Best, and the hotel porter delivering Champagne to a room festooned with bank notes and a naked Mary Stavin on the bed, and sighing "where did it all go wrong Mr Best?"
Well it did go wrong, he "spent his money on birds, booze and fast cars, and the rest he just squandered". A life of over indulgence and excess. This is the blueprint for Johnson.
Cheers Boris!
'As rich as creosote' is an old PB meme stretching back several generations. Someone tried to type 'rich as Croesus' but it came out as 'rich as creases'. Everyone found this amusing and continued to do so for several years. Nowadays we'd just say 'as rich as Richie'.
The meme got more fantastically elaborate than that. Creases became our nickname for the famously wealthy Lib Dem MP Chris Huhne, who was known for putting his trousers in a Corby trouser press, thereby achieving a good crease; a fact which we all found deliciously amusing
So it was “Rich as Creases” - ie as rich as Chris Huhne
It's strange how someone who has only been around 18 months knows about things that happened 18 years ago? 😜
In other news, this week it was revealed that Elon Musk has had twins with a female executive at one of his companies.
Seeing the Musk fans try to spin this is quite hilarious.
Why do they have to spin it? He hasn’t done anything illegal. It might be a sackable offence in some companies (is it?) but then he’s not going to sack himself, he owns the company
That's the point. You don't shag around with the staff, even consensually: especially when you are the top boss.
It should be noted that Musk's companies are facing numerous race and sexual discrimination lawsuits.
A fish rots from its head.
What puritanical bullshit!
What consensual adults do in their own beds is between them and nobody else.
A significant proportion of the married people I know met their spouses through work, when you're spending all day at work and the only people you meet most of the time are at work, its entirely natural and normal for intimate relations to happen.
People need to grow up and stop puritanically staring at other people in judgement.
It isn't 'puritanical'; it's common sense. There have been too many cases of bosses abusing their positions in various ways. Just look at the movie industry for one example.
I met my wife through work, when I was project managing her. That was difficult enough, and I'd like to think we handled it well (and were both relatively junior).
But if you're one of the top bods, it really isn't rocket science to say that you don't shag the staff. And Musk has massive opportunities to meet people outside his various companies. Grimes, for example ...
Terrible news. Japanese wires report Shinzo Abe has died after shooting.
In normal times Zahawi should be fired for breaking protocol and breaking the news before the Japanese did. Crosby has backed the wrong horse for sure.
1922 announce the new executive will meet on Monday evening and will timetable the process to offer the two candidates to the membership by 21st July
I would just say that in view of this announcement Labour vonc is a waste of time as conservative mps will just back the party
An hour ago you were asking why SKS was at Wimbledon rather at Westminster trying to get a VONC called (when it wouldn't even have been yesterday).
And now you say there is no point. You can't have it both ways...
I didn't mention him and a vonc - the photos of him and his wife in the Royal Box at Wimbledon as this was unfolding are not a good look
And let him put down a vonc as it is upto him
The look is fine, or are you just averse to seeing these former council house peasants enjoying the finer things in life like Wimbledon and Glyndebourne?
Should these events be the exclusive domain of true working class heroes like Boris Johnson?
If @Scott_xP is anything to go by, the Departure of the Boris has done nothing to cure or even soothe The Brexit Psychosis, and the madness will continue forever
Great
This has political implications. I am still convinced Starmer will yield to pressure from the Labour versions of Scott, and tack towards the Single Market, if and when he becomes PM
I’m not quite a serious a case as psychosis - not yet anyway, I hope - but I am certainly still smouldering with resentment at losing my EU citizenship, which I don’t think will ever go away. And there are tens of millions like me. And I think a lot of younger people reaching maturity now and in the coming years probably feel the same.
I also think that the Red Wall, and working class people generally all over the country, were conned by right wingers who just wanted to be free of the moderating, redistributive hand of the EU. I think that is gradually becoming realised.
I don’t think it will ever go away. I think it will get worse. It will be like a boil, oozing pus, on the arse of our politics for years.
If Starmer doesn’t yield to pressure to at least rejoin the SM, a successor will. Personally I’d love to see a Lab/Lib Dem, maybe even SNP for shits and gigs, coalition. Starmer would, regretfully as part of the grubby politicking of securing a coalition deal, tack back towards the EU. Fantastic.
Your last paragraph rings true to me. I’ve said it myself. Something like this could easily - probably? - happen. Korma is unlikely to get an overall majority. How convenient for him if he is forced by the nature of Coalitions to do something - rejoin the SM in some form - which he secretly wants to do anyway
With the added advantage of clearly being the best answer foe the country.
I’m not sure, but I am willing to be convinced. This is of course the debate we should have had, as a nation, around the time of the referendum
It should have been two stages: Remain/Leave, then, if Leave, what kind of Leave: EFTA/EEA or hard
I don’t know about EFTA/EEA but the country’s opinion on EU membership needs to move out of MOE territory, either way, before Labour can make any radical pronouncements.
It would be more interesting to see polling on the Single Market (which comes with Freedom of Movement)
My guess is something like 65/35 in favour: all the Remainers plus a chunk of Soft Leavers - but this will even out as time goes by and we get used to being outside the EU
Remainers therefore need to act quickly. Another reason Starmer will move on this
We’ve not really seen a lot of rumours on the various runners and riders yet (aside from no hopers like Suella). Feels very calm before the storm. I am assuming they are waiting for a big beast to declare to get the whole thing moving.
We are at the stage of making deals between potential contenders stage. Sunak will be talking to Javid to persuade him not to run, but support him from the outset. If Sunak can also persuade some others who are considering a run, like Shapps and Wallace to come out in support then he can make a big immediate impact. Better to spend a few hours organising that before declaring, than to declare as a Billy-no-mates and try to persuade people to join your friendless campaign.
imo the one to tie up is Jeremy Hunt, who was runner-up last time but probably cannot win. Offer him whatever he wants.
In other news, this week it was revealed that Elon Musk has had twins with a female executive at one of his companies.
Seeing the Musk fans try to spin this is quite hilarious.
Why do they have to spin it? He hasn’t done anything illegal. It might be a sackable offence in some companies (is it?) but then he’s not going to sack himself, he owns the company
That's the point. You don't shag around with the staff, even consensually: especially when you are the top boss.
It should be noted that Musk's companies are facing numerous race and sexual discrimination lawsuits.
A fish rots from its head.
What puritanical bullshit!
What consensual adults do in their own beds is between them and nobody else.
A significant proportion of the married people I know met their spouses through work, when you're spending all day at work and the only people you meet most of the time are at work, its entirely natural and normal for intimate relations to happen.
People need to grow up and stop puritanically staring at other people in judgement.
It isn't 'puritanical'; it's common sense. There have been too many cases of bosses abusing their positions in various ways. Just look at the movie industry for one example.
I met my wife through work, when I was project managing her. That was difficult enough, and I'd like to think we handled it well (and were both relatively junior).
But if you're one of the top bods, it really isn't rocket science to say that you don't shag the staff. And Musk has massive opportunities to meet people outside his various companies. Grimes, for example ...
You're right its not rocket science to say that, its puritanical bullshit to say it.
If Musk and the executive are attracted to each other and get intimate that's between them and there is nothing wrong with that any more than you and your then-future wife doing the same.
Abuse is wrong, consensual is not. So long as it is consensual, it is OK.
1922 announce the new executive will meet on Monday evening and will timetable the process to offer the two candidates to the membership by 21st July
I would just say that in view of this announcement Labour vonc is a waste of time as conservative mps will just back the party
They can vonc the Government, and replace Johnson with a short term PM within 14 days. The Conservative Government doesn't have to fall even if the Johnson Government does.
Boris will not earn his much-needed money through sales of his personal memoir. He may get a mildly decent advance but the actual books won't sell. No one wants to read a serial liar's spin and self-justification these days. Biographies about this turbulent time might do better but non-fiction generally struggles these days. The internet is such a great, and terrible, resource for finding out information, as are endless tv shows, that there are very few rabbits left for a non-fiction author to pull out of the hat.
As I mentioned, I doubt he will fill halls for talks either. No one wants to listen to a failure and liar, and he's a poor public speaker. As chaotic as in everything else. His best hope will be after-dinner speeches when everyone is too drunk to mind incoherent ramblings about Peppa Pig world.
Leon got very personal with us all over this but, of course, the reason he's so irate is his own fear. Boris Johnson was a serial philanderer, a man approaching sixty whose attitude to sexual predation belonged to an era from which most of society has moved on. Boris Johnson got the top job for one reason and one reason only: to deliver Brexit. And that was on the back of the Remainer Parliament and an unelectable anti-Semitic Trotskyite Labour leader. As a person Boris was manifestly unsuited to the top job and the page on the chapter has already been turned. The flowers fade and the grass withers. It happens to all of us and some deserve it more than others.
The country is leaving Boris and his type of politics and personal behaviour behind. Whether that's under a reboot of the Conservative brand, or a completely new broom under Labour-LibDems, we will wait to see. But move on it has, and is.
You’re not the first PB-er to fall in love with me
Shhhh, secret, but I'm not into men. You may have noticed.
My partner is a gorgeous female.
Is she not worried that you’re clearly obsessed with me?
As for Bozza’s earnings, here’s the Independent:
“Mr Johnson, who is famously at home with deploying incendiary turns of phrase, would without doubt be in receipt of handsome offers from publishers for his Downing Street memoirs. Mr Blair received a reported £4.6m advance for his tome, with the sum being donated to charity.”
And here’s the Mail;
“Mr Johnson could become 'Billion Dollar Boris' if he plays his cards right with book deals, broadcast slots and speech circuits.
Experts say he will 'eclipse Tony Blair' and could net double the estimated £10million a year the former Labour leader made from speeches after office.
Mr Johnson, who once moaned his £250,000 Daily Telegraph column salary was 'chicken feed', is estimated to 'easily' earn £400,000 per speech while his memoirs could sell for 'at least' £1million
PR guru Mark Borkowski said: 'Boris is fairly wise and over the next 25 years if he can continue to grow it's going to be Billion Dollar Boris. He's a global brand, and with the right management, this is beyond speech-making.'“
Johnson certainly has a fanbase, but not one that pays £400 000 to hear of Peppa Pig.
In the UK no one wants or has a role for an ex-PM, they either sulk on the back benches (Heath, May) or lock themselves away, pretending that they still have significance (Blair, Brown, Thatcher), or completely disappear (Cameron). Major seems to be the only one enjoying himself.
What are you waffling about? Theresa May makes £2m a year from speeches. And she’s duller than @heathener
She does these speeches all over the world, and makes £120k PER SPEECH
If people are willing to pay £120k to hear the dronings of Theresa “fields of wheat” May how much will they pay Boris the Blonde Brexiteer with his 29 children?
I’m not even sure why we’re having this argument. It’s daft. For the next few years - barring asteroid strike - Boris will mint it
A near apocalypse is perfect for Boris to make money.
In the event of an apocalyptic-size asteroid hurtling toward Earth, Boris will be pictured trying to blow it to smithereens. Saving the planet with a couple of megaton bombs is exactly the opportunity Boris was made for.
I too don't understand why we are having this argument. If the market pays Theresa May £120k per speech, then Boris is on at least 10 times that.
I wish it weren't so -- but Boris is about to become as rich as creosote. His life is actually just beginning.
It is we who have been left with tonnes of problems to sort out.
As rich as creosote? Fair enough.
I am reminded of George Best, and the hotel porter delivering Champagne to a room festooned with bank notes and a naked Mary Stavin on the bed, and sighing "where did it all go wrong Mr Best?"
Well it did go wrong, he "spent his money on birds, booze and fast cars, and the rest he just squandered". A life of over indulgence and excess. This is the blueprint for Johnson.
Cheers Boris!
'As rich as creosote' is an old PB meme stretching back several generations. Someone tried to type 'rich as Croesus' but it came out as 'rich as creases'. Everyone found this amusing and continued to do so for several years. Nowadays we'd just say 'as rich as Richie'.
The meme got more fantastically elaborate than that. Creases became our nickname for the famously wealthy Lib Dem MP Chris Huhne, who was known for putting his trousers in a Corby trouser press, thereby achieving a good crease; a fact which we all found deliciously amusing
So it was “Rich as Creases” - ie as rich as Chris Huhne
It's strange how someone who has only been around 18 months knows about things that happened 18 years ago? 😜
You should be glad there are long term lurkers like me, willing to act as repositories of ancient PB knowledge. Like the elders of an oracular tribe
If @Scott_xP is anything to go by, the Departure of the Boris has done nothing to cure or even soothe The Brexit Psychosis, and the madness will continue forever
Great
This has political implications. I am still convinced Starmer will yield to pressure from the Labour versions of Scott, and tack towards the Single Market, if and when he becomes PM
I’m not quite a serious a case as psychosis - not yet anyway, I hope - but I am certainly still smouldering with resentment at losing my EU citizenship, which I don’t think will ever go away. And there are tens of millions like me. And I think a lot of younger people reaching maturity now and in the coming years probably feel the same.
I also think that the Red Wall, and working class people generally all over the country, were conned by right wingers who just wanted to be free of the moderating, redistributive hand of the EU. I think that is gradually becoming realised.
I don’t think it will ever go away. I think it will get worse. It will be like a boil, oozing pus, on the arse of our politics for years.
If Starmer doesn’t yield to pressure to at least rejoin the SM, a successor will. Personally I’d love to see a Lab/Lib Dem, maybe even SNP for shits and gigs, coalition. Starmer would, regretfully as part of the grubby politicking of securing a coalition deal, tack back towards the EU. Fantastic.
Your last paragraph rings true to me. I’ve said it myself. Something like this could easily - probably? - happen. Korma is unlikely to get an overall majority. How convenient for him if he is forced by the nature of Coalitions to do something - rejoin the SM in some form - which he secretly wants to do anyway
With the added advantage of clearly being the best answer foe the country.
I’m not sure, but I am willing to be convinced. This is of course the debate we should have had, as a nation, around the time of the referendum
It should have been two stages: Remain/Leave, then, if Leave, what kind of Leave: EFTA/EEA or hard
Yes, looking back, regardless of your views on Leave/Remain, the referendum was half-cooked and botched. The main players behind it have all left the stage, and it's left to others to clear up their mess. It's ironic that the issue that will dominate British politics throughout the tenure of Boris's successor, and probably beyond that, will be 'Get Brexit Done'.
The remarkable thing about this Tory leadership election is quite how open it is right now. Having heard various vox pops in the media last night and this morning, at least 6 candidates have been mentioned with no one standing out.
I think that was the reason Boris was able to stay so long - no obvious standout successor.
BBC analysis showed many of the top liked comments on Weibo, one of China's biggest social media platforms, gloated at the former PM's shooting, while the state-backed broadcaster CCTV's TikTok account videos also posted mocking videos.
In other news, this week it was revealed that Elon Musk has had twins with a female executive at one of his companies.
Seeing the Musk fans try to spin this is quite hilarious.
Why do they have to spin it? He hasn’t done anything illegal. It might be a sackable offence in some companies (is it?) but then he’s not going to sack himself, he owns the company
That's the point. You don't shag around with the staff, even consensually: especially when you are the top boss.
It should be noted that Musk's companies are facing numerous race and sexual discrimination lawsuits.
A fish rots from its head.
What puritanical bullshit!
What consensual adults do in their own beds is between them and nobody else.
A significant proportion of the married people I know met their spouses through work, when you're spending all day at work and the only people you meet most of the time are at work, its entirely natural and normal for intimate relations to happen.
People need to grow up and stop puritanically staring at other people in judgement.
It isn't 'puritanical'; it's common sense. There have been too many cases of bosses abusing their positions in various ways. Just look at the movie industry for one example.
I met my wife through work, when I was project managing her. That was difficult enough, and I'd like to think we handled it well (and were both relatively junior).
But if you're one of the top bods, it really isn't rocket science to say that you don't shag the staff. And Musk has massive opportunities to meet people outside his various companies. Grimes, for example ...
You're right its not rocket science to say that, its puritanical bullshit to say it.
If Musk and the executive are attracted to each other and get intimate that's between them and there is nothing wrong with that any more than you and your then-future wife doing the same.
Abuse is wrong, consensual is not. So long as it is consensual, it is OK.
It really is not puritanical. It's safeguarding the company and its staff.
And there's a vast difference between our situation and theirs, in virtually every way. I can go into details if you want: but if you are one of the top guys or gals, you do not have a relationship with the staff. And if you must, make sure it's open, don't get them pregnant, and especially don't do it if you're having a surrogate child with your girlfriend at the same time.
If @Scott_xP is anything to go by, the Departure of the Boris has done nothing to cure or even soothe The Brexit Psychosis, and the madness will continue forever
Great
This has political implications. I am still convinced Starmer will yield to pressure from the Labour versions of Scott, and tack towards the Single Market, if and when he becomes PM
I’m not quite a serious a case as psychosis - not yet anyway, I hope - but I am certainly still smouldering with resentment at losing my EU citizenship, which I don’t think will ever go away. And there are tens of millions like me. And I think a lot of younger people reaching maturity now and in the coming years probably feel the same.
I also think that the Red Wall, and working class people generally all over the country, were conned by right wingers who just wanted to be free of the moderating, redistributive hand of the EU. I think that is gradually becoming realised.
I don’t think it will ever go away. I think it will get worse. It will be like a boil, oozing pus, on the arse of our politics for years.
If Starmer doesn’t yield to pressure to at least rejoin the SM, a successor will. Personally I’d love to see a Lab/Lib Dem, maybe even SNP for shits and gigs, coalition. Starmer would, regretfully as part of the grubby politicking of securing a coalition deal, tack back towards the EU. Fantastic.
Your last paragraph rings true to me. I’ve said it myself. Something like this could easily - probably? - happen. Korma is unlikely to get an overall majority. How convenient for him if he is forced by the nature of Coalitions to do something - rejoin the SM in some form - which he secretly wants to do anyway
With the added advantage of clearly being the best answer foe the country.
I’m not sure, but I am willing to be convinced. This is of course the debate we should have had, as a nation, around the time of the referendum
It should have been two stages: Remain/Leave, then, if Leave, what kind of Leave: EFTA/EEA or hard
I don’t know about EFTA/EEA but the country’s opinion on EU membership needs to move out of MOE territory, either way, before Labour can make any radical pronouncements.
It would be more interesting to see polling on the Single Market (which comes with Freedom of Movement)
My guess is something like 65/35 in favour: all the Remainers plus a chunk of Soft Leavers - but this will even out as time goes by and we get used to being outside the EU
Remainers therefore need to act quickly. Another reason Starmer will move on this
This polling looks the opposite. The question polled is specifically join/rejoin. It doesn't look as if we are getting to like being out of the EU. It won't be 2024, but with that polling it cannot be politically ignored forever.
If @Scott_xP is anything to go by, the Departure of the Boris has done nothing to cure or even soothe The Brexit Psychosis, and the madness will continue forever
Great
This has political implications. I am still convinced Starmer will yield to pressure from the Labour versions of Scott, and tack towards the Single Market, if and when he becomes PM
I’m not quite a serious a case as psychosis - not yet anyway, I hope - but I am certainly still smouldering with resentment at losing my EU citizenship, which I don’t think will ever go away. And there are tens of millions like me. And I think a lot of younger people reaching maturity now and in the coming years probably feel the same.
I also think that the Red Wall, and working class people generally all over the country, were conned by right wingers who just wanted to be free of the moderating, redistributive hand of the EU. I think that is gradually becoming realised.
I don’t think it will ever go away. I think it will get worse. It will be like a boil, oozing pus, on the arse of our politics for years.
If Starmer doesn’t yield to pressure to at least rejoin the SM, a successor will. Personally I’d love to see a Lab/Lib Dem, maybe even SNP for shits and gigs, coalition. Starmer would, regretfully as part of the grubby politicking of securing a coalition deal, tack back towards the EU. Fantastic.
Your last paragraph rings true to me. I’ve said it myself. Something like this could easily - probably? - happen. Korma is unlikely to get an overall majority. How convenient for him if he is forced by the nature of Coalitions to do something - rejoin the SM in some form - which he secretly wants to do anyway
With the added advantage of clearly being the best answer foe the country.
I’m not sure, but I am willing to be convinced. This is of course the debate we should have had, as a nation, around the time of the referendum
It should have been two stages: Remain/Leave, then, if Leave, what kind of Leave: EFTA/EEA or hard
I don’t know about EFTA/EEA but the country’s opinion on EU membership needs to move out of MOE territory, either way, before Labour can make any radical pronouncements.
It would be more interesting to see polling on the Single Market (which comes with Freedom of Movement)
My guess is something like 65/35 in favour: all the Remainers plus a chunk of Soft Leavers - but this will even out as time goes by and we get used to being outside the EU
Remainers therefore need to act quickly. Another reason Starmer will move on this
The UK shouldn’t rejoin the CU or SM . These questions really need to be left for future generations to decide . The UK needs to just get on and try and make the best of it . There are some smaller changes that can be made re trade arrangements , and more co-operation with the EU in a range of areas .
I say this as a staunch Remainer and many of my friends think the same . There’s a big difference between those hindsight questions and actually re-joining either the EU or SM or CU .
I think Brexit is a disaster but the UK needs to move on .
In other news, this week it was revealed that Elon Musk has had twins with a female executive at one of his companies.
Seeing the Musk fans try to spin this is quite hilarious.
Why do they have to spin it? He hasn’t done anything illegal. It might be a sackable offence in some companies (is it?) but then he’s not going to sack himself, he owns the company
That's the point. You don't shag around with the staff, even consensually: especially when you are the top boss.
It should be noted that Musk's companies are facing numerous race and sexual discrimination lawsuits.
A fish rots from its head.
What puritanical bullshit!
What consensual adults do in their own beds is between them and nobody else.
A significant proportion of the married people I know met their spouses through work, when you're spending all day at work and the only people you meet most of the time are at work, its entirely natural and normal for intimate relations to happen.
People need to grow up and stop puritanically staring at other people in judgement.
It isn't 'puritanical'; it's common sense. There have been too many cases of bosses abusing their positions in various ways. Just look at the movie industry for one example.
I met my wife through work, when I was project managing her. That was difficult enough, and I'd like to think we handled it well (and were both relatively junior).
But if you're one of the top bods, it really isn't rocket science to say that you don't shag the staff. And Musk has massive opportunities to meet people outside his various companies. Grimes, for example ...
You're right its not rocket science to say that, its puritanical bullshit to say it.
If Musk and the executive are attracted to each other and get intimate that's between them and there is nothing wrong with that any more than you and your then-future wife doing the same.
Abuse is wrong, consensual is not. So long as it is consensual, it is OK.
It really is not puritanical. It's safeguarding the company and its staff.
And there's a vast difference between our situation and theirs, in virtually every way. I can go into details if you want: but if you are one of the top guys or gals, you do not have a relationship with the staff. And if you must, make sure it's open, don't get them pregnant, and especially don't do it if you're having a surrogate child with your girlfriend at the same time.
Bollocks, bollocks and more bollocks.
Keeping your private life private is entirely appropriate, so long as its consensual.
Them having a child is between them, and his then-girlfriend perhaps, not anyone else or the firm.
What consensual adults do is between them. You're acting like people who object to gays having sex because men sleeping with men is immoral supposedly. So long as they're genuinely consenting, its between them, whether it be man with woman, man with man, or employer with employee.
BBC analysis showed many of the top liked comments on Weibo, one of China's biggest social media platforms, gloated at the former PM's shooting, while the state-backed broadcaster CCTV's TikTok account videos also posted mocking videos.
There is a visceral dislike of the Japanese which unites the Chinese people. It isn't nice, but it is perhaps understandable.
situation now at the G20 media center: loud chatter, particularly from Japanese reporters. One sitting next to me said that "G20 [news] is fading away" in Japan, and prolly in the rest of the world as the news of Shinzo Abe passing away is a much, much bigger story right now.
Boris will not earn his much-needed money through sales of his personal memoir. He may get a mildly decent advance but the actual books won't sell. No one wants to read a serial liar's spin and self-justification these days. Biographies about this turbulent time might do better but non-fiction generally struggles these days. The internet is such a great, and terrible, resource for finding out information, as are endless tv shows, that there are very few rabbits left for a non-fiction author to pull out of the hat.
As I mentioned, I doubt he will fill halls for talks either. No one wants to listen to a failure and liar, and he's a poor public speaker. As chaotic as in everything else. His best hope will be after-dinner speeches when everyone is too drunk to mind incoherent ramblings about Peppa Pig world.
Leon got very personal with us all over this but, of course, the reason he's so irate is his own fear. Boris Johnson was a serial philanderer, a man approaching sixty whose attitude to sexual predation belonged to an era from which most of society has moved on. Boris Johnson got the top job for one reason and one reason only: to deliver Brexit. And that was on the back of the Remainer Parliament and an unelectable anti-Semitic Trotskyite Labour leader. As a person Boris was manifestly unsuited to the top job and the page on the chapter has already been turned. The flowers fade and the grass withers. It happens to all of us and some deserve it more than others.
The country is leaving Boris and his type of politics and personal behaviour behind. Whether that's under a reboot of the Conservative brand, or a completely new broom under Labour-LibDems, we will wait to see. But move on it has, and is.
You’re not the first PB-er to fall in love with me
Shhhh, secret, but I'm not into men. You may have noticed.
My partner is a gorgeous female.
Is she not worried that you’re clearly obsessed with me?
As for Bozza’s earnings, here’s the Independent:
“Mr Johnson, who is famously at home with deploying incendiary turns of phrase, would without doubt be in receipt of handsome offers from publishers for his Downing Street memoirs. Mr Blair received a reported £4.6m advance for his tome, with the sum being donated to charity.”
And here’s the Mail;
“Mr Johnson could become 'Billion Dollar Boris' if he plays his cards right with book deals, broadcast slots and speech circuits.
Experts say he will 'eclipse Tony Blair' and could net double the estimated £10million a year the former Labour leader made from speeches after office.
Mr Johnson, who once moaned his £250,000 Daily Telegraph column salary was 'chicken feed', is estimated to 'easily' earn £400,000 per speech while his memoirs could sell for 'at least' £1million
PR guru Mark Borkowski said: 'Boris is fairly wise and over the next 25 years if he can continue to grow it's going to be Billion Dollar Boris. He's a global brand, and with the right management, this is beyond speech-making.'“
Johnson certainly has a fanbase, but not one that pays £400 000 to hear of Peppa Pig.
In the UK no one wants or has a role for an ex-PM, they either sulk on the back benches (Heath, May) or lock themselves away, pretending that they still have significance (Blair, Brown, Thatcher), or completely disappear (Cameron). Major seems to be the only one enjoying himself.
What are you waffling about? Theresa May makes £2m a year from speeches. And she’s duller than @heathener
She does these speeches all over the world, and makes £120k PER SPEECH
If people are willing to pay £120k to hear the dronings of Theresa “fields of wheat” May how much will they pay Boris the Blonde Brexiteer with his 29 children?
I’m not even sure why we’re having this argument. It’s daft. For the next few years - barring asteroid strike - Boris will mint it
Yeah, he'll make a fortune from speaking and probably a fair wadge from the book and any associated rights. Expect a column too (Mail? Telegraph seems to have turned on him a bit) in due course.
Boris's memoirs, if honestly written and with a good editor (or ghost) could be a great book. As you've said, fascinating times while he was PM. I suspect though that he'll lie and bluster and it will be a bit shit, but it will still sell. There is a possibility that he can't be arsed and just gets a good ghost in to do it for him, with interviews and access to his files (if any exist!) and if so, that could be very good. A Boris-written memoir I'm unlikely to buy, unless the reviews were good. But I'd read an well-written insider account of the period. Carrie's book, after the inevitable(?) divorce could be a corker, if she can write.
The remarkable thing about this Tory leadership election is quite how open it is right now. Having heard various vox pops in the media last night and this morning, at least 6 candidates have been mentioned with no one standing out.
I think that was the reason Boris was able to stay so long - no obvious standout successor.
I think an open contest is a positive for both the Tories and the country. The last contest was simply dominated by Boris, and look how that ended up. The timetable of "To the membership" by the 21st looks fine. Membership ballot should take less than 2 months though. A few Tory members missing the ballot due to being on holiday won't kill the party or change the result.
Kay Burley is a moron. There is no such thing as a caretaker PM. James Cleverly offering to lay a bet on Johnson not going very amusing.
There is such a thing. We have one every General Election.
That's bollocks. We have a Prime Minister. We might not have a parliament, but that's another matter.
It's not formal, but there's a convention, an understanding, that although the PM has all the normal powers if they need them, that they're in some sense only minding the shop.
Obviously this is only informal, so it's something where the boundary is a bit fuzzy, which is why people have pointed to May passing Net Zero (but that's not really a contradiction as it had Opposition support, so it wasn't controversial). Another interesting example was the consultation during the Eurozone crisis in 2010.
People are only making a thing of this now because they don't trust Johnson to act reasonably during this period with only convention to restrain him.
The thing is, though, that those people are the same people who said Boris would never resign and would only be forced out by a VONC.
Yes. I think there is an element of overreaction created by Johnson's delay in accepting the inevitable, and what was seen as a threat to call a GE. And then of course there's a basic lack of trust given the number of times he's lied so brazenly.
So while the statement at cabinet yesterday that no major fiscal policy decisions could be taken before there was a new PM is on the face of it Johnson playing the situation with a straight bat, in line with convention, there's an understandable reluctance to take him at his word.
BBC analysis showed many of the top liked comments on Weibo, one of China's biggest social media platforms, gloated at the former PM's shooting, while the state-backed broadcaster CCTV's TikTok account videos also posted mocking videos.
There is a visceral dislike of the Japanese which unites the Chinese people. It isn't nice, but it is perhaps understandable.
That hatred stems from 75+ years ago. Everyone involved is now dead....
BBC analysis showed many of the top liked comments on Weibo, one of China's biggest social media platforms, gloated at the former PM's shooting, while the state-backed broadcaster CCTV's TikTok account videos also posted mocking videos.
There is a visceral dislike of the Japanese which unites the Chinese people. It isn't nice, but it is perhaps understandable.
Taking it to the point of cheering on a political assassination, is perhaps just a little too far.
In other news, this week it was revealed that Elon Musk has had twins with a female executive at one of his companies.
Seeing the Musk fans try to spin this is quite hilarious.
Why do they have to spin it? He hasn’t done anything illegal. It might be a sackable offence in some companies (is it?) but then he’s not going to sack himself, he owns the company
That's the point. You don't shag around with the staff, even consensually: especially when you are the top boss.
It should be noted that Musk's companies are facing numerous race and sexual discrimination lawsuits.
A fish rots from its head.
What puritanical bullshit!
What consensual adults do in their own beds is between them and nobody else.
A significant proportion of the married people I know met their spouses through work, when you're spending all day at work and the only people you meet most of the time are at work, its entirely natural and normal for intimate relations to happen.
People need to grow up and stop puritanically staring at other people in judgement.
It isn't 'puritanical'; it's common sense. There have been too many cases of bosses abusing their positions in various ways. Just look at the movie industry for one example.
I met my wife through work, when I was project managing her. That was difficult enough, and I'd like to think we handled it well (and were both relatively junior).
But if you're one of the top bods, it really isn't rocket science to say that you don't shag the staff. And Musk has massive opportunities to meet people outside his various companies. Grimes, for example ...
You're right its not rocket science to say that, its puritanical bullshit to say it.
If Musk and the executive are attracted to each other and get intimate that's between them and there is nothing wrong with that any more than you and your then-future wife doing the same.
Abuse is wrong, consensual is not. So long as it is consensual, it is OK.
It really is not puritanical. It's safeguarding the company and its staff.
And there's a vast difference between our situation and theirs, in virtually every way. I can go into details if you want: but if you are one of the top guys or gals, you do not have a relationship with the staff. And if you must, make sure it's open, don't get them pregnant, and especially don't do it if you're having a surrogate child with your girlfriend at the same time.
Bollocks, bollocks and more bollocks.
Keeping your private life private is entirely appropriate, so long as its consensual.
Them having a child is between them, and his then-girlfriend perhaps, not anyone else or the firm.
What consensual adults do is between them. You're acting like people who object to gays having sex because men sleeping with men is immoral supposedly. So long as they're genuinely consenting, its between them, whether it be man with woman, man with man, or employer with employee.
It really is not bollocks. Look at the vast number of abuses that have turned up over the years in all areas.
And your comment about gays is wrong, laughable and crass.
The point is that the boss has massive power over the individual - in the same way a university lecturer has over an adult student (in fact, bosses often have more power). It's not about the relationship: it's about the potential for abuse of power.
(In our case, that did not really exist. We were essentially at the same level, and I was just project managing her on a couple of projects: she was just as likely to have pm'ed me if circs had been different. And as we told our bosses, and they ensured there could be no abuses.)
In other news, this week it was revealed that Elon Musk has had twins with a female executive at one of his companies.
Seeing the Musk fans try to spin this is quite hilarious.
The argument appears to be that only Musk (and Boris Johnson) stand between the world and a disastrous future of a declining population.
I did rather hope and expect to have more than one child myself, but I appear to be running out of time on that, sadly, so I suppose I should be glad others are making up the numbers.
In other news, this week it was revealed that Elon Musk has had twins with a female executive at one of his companies.
Seeing the Musk fans try to spin this is quite hilarious.
Why do they have to spin it? He hasn’t done anything illegal. It might be a sackable offence in some companies (is it?) but then he’s not going to sack himself, he owns the company
That's the point. You don't shag around with the staff, even consensually: especially when you are the top boss.
It should be noted that Musk's companies are facing numerous race and sexual discrimination lawsuits.
A fish rots from its head.
What puritanical bullshit!
What consensual adults do in their own beds is between them and nobody else.
A significant proportion of the married people I know met their spouses through work, when you're spending all day at work and the only people you meet most of the time are at work, its entirely natural and normal for intimate relations to happen.
People need to grow up and stop puritanically staring at other people in judgement.
It isn't 'puritanical'; it's common sense. There have been too many cases of bosses abusing their positions in various ways. Just look at the movie industry for one example.
I met my wife through work, when I was project managing her. That was difficult enough, and I'd like to think we handled it well (and were both relatively junior).
But if you're one of the top bods, it really isn't rocket science to say that you don't shag the staff. And Musk has massive opportunities to meet people outside his various companies. Grimes, for example ...
You're right its not rocket science to say that, its puritanical bullshit to say it.
If Musk and the executive are attracted to each other and get intimate that's between them and there is nothing wrong with that any more than you and your then-future wife doing the same.
Abuse is wrong, consensual is not. So long as it is consensual, it is OK.
It really is not puritanical. It's safeguarding the company and its staff.
And there's a vast difference between our situation and theirs, in virtually every way. I can go into details if you want: but if you are one of the top guys or gals, you do not have a relationship with the staff. And if you must, make sure it's open, don't get them pregnant, and especially don't do it if you're having a surrogate child with your girlfriend at the same time.
Bollocks, bollocks and more bollocks.
Keeping your private life private is entirely appropriate, so long as its consensual.
Them having a child is between them, and his then-girlfriend perhaps, not anyone else or the firm.
What consensual adults do is between them. You're acting like people who object to gays having sex because men sleeping with men is immoral supposedly. So long as they're genuinely consenting, its between them, whether it be man with woman, man with man, or employer with employee.
It really is not bollocks. Look at the vast number of abuses that have turned up over the years in all areas.
And your comment about gays is wrong, laughable and crass.
The point is that the boss has massive power over the individual - in the same way a university lecturer has over an adult student (in fact, bosses often have more power). It's not about the relationship: it's about the potential for abuse of power.
(In our case, that did not really exist. We were essentially at the same level, and I was just project managing her on a couple of projects: she was just as likely to have pm'ed me if circs had been different. And as we told our bosses, and they ensured there could be no abuses.)
If power is abused, deal with the abuse.
If its consensual, there's no abuse, just puritanism.
The generally excellent Chris Mason said several times on #R4today that a Vote of No Confidence would mean a gen election. That's incorrect. A PM who loses a VONC must *either* resign *or* request an election. The former allows a new govt to be formed that can command confidence. https://twitter.com/redhistorian/status/1545312197970116609
Yep all a VONC results in is the creation of a 2 week window during which a new Government has to be formed (at which point it is a general election).
Which means the ideal solution for the Tories (who probably don't want the Right Wing loonier candidate winning) is to ensure there is a VONC as that would allow their MPs to make a decision but wouldn't give the members a chance to make a decision.
And, even better, the loss of the membership vote was forced on them by that evil Labour party..
No, the two week window doesn't apply since DACOP repealed FTPA.
A successful Commons vote would see Boris going to see the Queen and saying "my successor as elected by the party in the election which is already under way will be able to command a majority" and HMQ saying "well, as there's only a couple of weeks of parliament left before the recess, there's no point appointing an interim PM and you can stay as caretaker". Utterly pointless.
Rushing Sunak is going to be the serious candidate. Which is a good play except he’s now going to have to defend 13 years of Government.
Per Mail: Liz Truss will pitch herself as the female Boris Johnson in Tory leadership race
A candidate who can win seats both in the South and Red Wall, her supporters claim
Penny Morduant also staying quiet. As I’ve said it is her I most fear.
I don’t think any of them really strike me as Labour destroyers. Labour is now 11 points head in another poll, hoe does the new leader intend to undo that? What is their plan?
At some point “time for a change” becomes the priority for people. I feel like we are rapidly approaching that point. Hung Parliament for me.
Comments
And now you say there is no point. You can't have it both ways...
I've mentioned before that when I was a student I was an NUS delegate for my Uni at NUS Conference and we had a former Israeli politician come to speak, invited by the Jewish society there, former Prime Minister Shimon Peres. That was exceptionally memorable due to the security and protests which were both immense but listening to him speak was truly incredible and is something that stayed with me forever - but the same speech given by someone who wasn't a former Prime Minister would not have been remotely the same thing. It was a "fringe" event there, but the entire Conference shut down for that fringe either to listen to him, or protest outside, the main hall was empty while he was speaking.
I feel very privileged I got to see and listen to Peres in person while he was alive.
Leon is right, simply the virtue of the speaker being a former PM adds a certain magic and aura to everything the speaker does and whoever is connected with that, even to the most ordinary speaker (and Peres was no ordinary speaker).
Its a bit like going to see a famous musician who is past it. I went to see Meat Loaf in his last tour of the UK, he was decades past it, but that wasn't the point. People still go to see the Stones in concert, they're past it, they're not the best musically anymore, but that's not the point either.
But don't get too happy; no one ever wrote The Waste Land on a full stomach and feeling everything was well with the world.
Supporters to include Oliver Dowden and Robert Jenrick
https://twitter.com/Steven_Swinford/status/1545323301773377537
HAHAHAHAHA
I am reminded of George Best, and the hotel porter delivering Champagne to a room festooned with bank notes and a naked Mary Stavin on the bed, and sighing "where did it all go wrong Mr Best?"
Well it did go wrong, he "spent his money on birds, booze and fast cars, and the rest he just squandered". A life of over indulgence and excess. This is the blueprint for Johnson.
Cheers Boris!
Not actually complaining, but it feels a bit odd, and probably just announced to stop people moaning over the weekend.
It won't only be those on the Left and the Right; it will be historians for decades to come.
And let him put down a vonc as it is upto him
I also think that the Red Wall, and working class people generally all over the country, were conned by right wingers who just wanted to be free of the moderating, redistributive hand of the EU. I think that is gradually becoming realised.
I don’t think it will ever go away. I think it will get worse. It will be like a boil, oozing pus, on the arse of our politics for years.
If Starmer doesn’t yield to pressure to at least rejoin the SM, a successor will. Personally I’d love to see a Lab/Lib Dem, maybe even SNP for shits and gigs, coalition. Starmer would, regretfully as part of the grubby politicking of securing a coalition deal, tack back towards the EU. Fantastic.
It is a wonderful day. We will soon hopefully have a serious PM instead of a clown. Just rejoice at that news!
https://twitter.com/redhistorian/status/1545312197970116609
https://twitter.com/gabyhinsliff/status/1545324498899144705
Like my betting slip.
The 'Disgusted of Cheam' seem to be the most anti Boris and they're the ones I would guess to be Mail readers
A wise friend told me the other day that I am “in the Bardo”. I had to google it
What the damn hell will Boris have to pay to replicate the Chequers event. Better get that book deal done pronto.
The point isn't whether they are successful or not. It is to force the government to defend itself for a change, rather then setting its own timetable of issues.
And to put support on record.
I really do think there hasn't been a more appropriate time recently.
And it can hardly be "a waste of time" when the government has explicitly said it won't be doing anything for months anyways.
Which is why Labour are talking about tabling a VONC
He wouldn't hold his own on here. Just admitted the Lebedev story has "passed him by".
It's as if she has no supporters who can organise anything for her..
Seeing the Musk fans try to spin this is quite hilarious.
Which means the ideal solution for the Tories (who probably don't want the Right Wing loonier candidate winning) is to ensure there is a VONC as that would allow their MPs to make a decision but wouldn't give the members a chance to make a decision.
And, even better, the loss of the membership vote was forced on them by that evil Labour party..
Heck it's even got decent facilities there now - if we are going to the cinema we go to Catterick rather than in town...
Isn't that the usual response when a parent has a baby?
It should have been two stages: Remain/Leave, then, if Leave, what kind of Leave: EFTA/EEA or hard
We've got a Bardo government now to match. Which fits.
It should be noted that Musk's companies are facing numerous race and sexual discrimination lawsuits.
A fish rots from its head.
So it was “Rich as Creases” - ie as rich as Chris Huhne
What consensual adults do in their own beds is between them and nobody else.
A significant proportion of the married people I know met their spouses through work, when you're spending all day at work and the only people you meet most of the time are at work, its entirely natural and normal for intimate relations to happen.
People need to grow up and stop puritanically staring at other people in judgement.
Con voters
Should - 28%
Shouldn't - 60%
Lab voters
Should - 78%
Shouldn't - 15%
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2022/07/08/41460/2?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=daily_question&utm_content=boris_as_mp https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1545329068144566273/photo/1
I'd love it if SLS flies successfully before Starship. And even more if New Glenn reaches orbit before Starship (though that's unlikely).
In other news, ArianeSpace's Vega C is due for its first launch in a few days.
I met my wife through work, when I was project managing her. That was difficult enough, and I'd like to think we handled it well (and were both relatively junior).
But if you're one of the top bods, it really isn't rocket science to say that you don't shag the staff. And Musk has massive opportunities to meet people outside his various companies. Grimes, for example ...
Should these events be the exclusive domain of true working class heroes like Boris Johnson?
My guess is something like 65/35 in favour: all the Remainers plus a chunk of Soft Leavers - but this will even out as time goes by and we get used to being outside the EU
Remainers therefore need to act quickly. Another reason Starmer will move on this
https://twitter.com/spectatorindex/status/1545329386140090369
If Musk and the executive are attracted to each other and get intimate that's between them and there is nothing wrong with that any more than you and your then-future wife doing the same.
Abuse is wrong, consensual is not. So long as it is consensual, it is OK.
Analysis by @robpowellnews
https://twitter.com/RaynerSkyNews/status/1545330237650702336
And there's a vast difference between our situation and theirs, in virtually every way. I can go into details if you want: but if you are one of the top guys or gals, you do not have a relationship with the staff. And if you must, make sure it's open, don't get them pregnant, and especially don't do it if you're having a surrogate child with your girlfriend at the same time.
I say this as a staunch Remainer and many of my friends think the same . There’s a big difference between those hindsight questions and actually re-joining either the EU or SM or CU .
I think Brexit is a disaster but the UK needs to move on .
Keeping your private life private is entirely appropriate, so long as its consensual.
Them having a child is between them, and his then-girlfriend perhaps, not anyone else or the firm.
What consensual adults do is between them. You're acting like people who object to gays having sex because men sleeping with men is immoral supposedly. So long as they're genuinely consenting, its between them, whether it be man with woman, man with man, or employer with employee.
It isn't nice, but it is perhaps understandable.
https://twitter.com/restyworo/status/1545330548247502848
Boris's memoirs, if honestly written and with a good editor (or ghost) could be a great book. As you've said, fascinating times while he was PM. I suspect though that he'll lie and bluster and it will be a bit shit, but it will still sell. There is a possibility that he can't be arsed and just gets a good ghost in to do it for him, with interviews and access to his files (if any exist!) and if so, that could be very good. A Boris-written memoir I'm unlikely to buy, unless the reviews were good. But I'd read an well-written insider account of the period. Carrie's book, after the inevitable(?) divorce could be a corker, if she can write.
The timetable of "To the membership" by the 21st looks fine. Membership ballot should take less than 2 months though. A few Tory members missing the ballot due to being on holiday won't kill the party or change the result.
Who would be abroad when England is like this?
So while the statement at cabinet yesterday that no major fiscal policy decisions could be taken before there was a new PM is on the face of it Johnson playing the situation with a straight bat, in line with convention, there's an understandable reluctance to take him at his word.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-wallpaper-gold-flat-carrie-invoice-b2118185.html
Cheapest item was a £500 table cloth
Keir Starmer takes a break from politics to watch tennis after being invited by a friend. Poster here doesn’t like it.
I’m starting to think they just hate Starmer and Labour.
Given that the said leadership election will inevitablty being replaced as PM, what's the point in the VONC?
Sad news.
And your comment about gays is wrong, laughable and crass.
The point is that the boss has massive power over the individual - in the same way a university lecturer has over an adult student (in fact, bosses often have more power). It's not about the relationship: it's about the potential for abuse of power.
(In our case, that did not really exist. We were essentially at the same level, and I was just project managing her on a couple of projects: she was just as likely to have pm'ed me if circs had been different. And as we told our bosses, and they ensured there could be no abuses.)
I did rather hope and expect to have more than one child myself, but I appear to be running out of time on that, sadly, so I suppose I should be glad others are making up the numbers.
If its consensual, there's no abuse, just puritanism.
A successful Commons vote would see Boris going to see the Queen and saying "my successor as elected by the party in the election which is already under way will be able to command a majority" and HMQ saying "well, as there's only a couple of weeks of parliament left before the recess, there's no point appointing an interim PM and you can stay as caretaker". Utterly pointless.
Rushing Sunak is going to be the serious candidate. Which is a good play except he’s now going to have to defend 13 years of Government.
Per Mail: Liz Truss will pitch herself as the female Boris Johnson in Tory leadership race
A candidate who can win seats both in the South and Red Wall, her supporters claim
Penny Morduant also staying quiet. As I’ve said it is her I most fear.
I don’t think any of them really strike me as Labour destroyers. Labour is now 11 points head in another poll, hoe does the new leader intend to undo that? What is their plan?
At some point “time for a change” becomes the priority for people. I feel like we are rapidly approaching that point. Hung Parliament for me.