Pages

Wednesday 29 June 2016

The coming Chilcot report

We now know that the Chilcot report into the Iraq War will be published next week, on 6 July.  Sir John Chilcot's inquiry sat from 2009 to 2011, but it has taken until now for the report to be cleared for publication.

Saturday 25 June 2016

Some more thoughts

1.  I went to the protest in Parliament Square today with a couple of friends.  I have spent my life defending the EU and the European ideal, and I have met only with opposition.  Where were all these people for the last few decades?

2.  Roger Boyes has a good article in the Times.  A lot of people don't understand the humour of the Fawlty Towers episode "The Germans".  The butt of the joke isn't the Germans.  It is made very clear that they are the paying customers who have the money.  The butt is the blinkered prejudiced Englishman who is unwittingly alienating them.  Like the best comedy, it is slightly uncomfortable.

3.  RIP David Cameron.  He is a good and decent man, and one of only two Tory prime ministers whom I have felt I could support; but when it really, really mattered he made the wrong call.  Contrast the quintessential British icon Winston Spencer-Churchill, who was a weird and unpleasant man; but when it really, really mattered he made the right call.

4.  Boris Johnson is the first British prime minister in waiting who has needed police protection from the voters before even taking up office.

The disaster

Yesterday, we discovered what happens when you ask the British what they really think about foreigners.  The result was a disaster.  A disaster and a tragedy.  It was the worst political event of my lifetime, and I lived through the Thatcher years.