 20 July, 2021 In the headlines Vaccine passports are to be made compulsory for nightclubs in September, although many believe this will have to happen much sooner. Tory MPs are worried that the PM will emulate his Dutch counterpart, Mark Rutte, who reopened nightclubs last month, saw a huge rise in Covid cases, then had to reimpose restrictions, apologising for his "error of judgement". In an interview with the BBC last night, Dominic Cummings claimed Boris Johnson told him last October: "I no longer buy all this NHS overwhelmed stuff." He reportedly said he wanted to let Covid "wash through the country" rather than ruin the economy. The Met Office has issued its first-ever "extreme heat warning". Parts of the UK could reach 33C today – hotter than Tenerife.
Comment of the day  Al Pacino in Scarface "Woke coke" is a joke Cocaine dealers are selling premium gear to the WaWs ("Woke and Wealthy"), promising that their product is "environmentally friendly" and "ethically sourced" from "well-paid farmers", says Julie Burchill in The Spectator. This is "woke coke – wokaine, if you will". Of course there's no such thing. If I could change one thing about my "long, louche life", I would go back to 1985, when I started taking cocaine and thereafter took it "pretty much every day" for 30 years. Like most users of illegal drugs, I was responsible for the untold misery, "probably even the deaths", of impoverished strangers, "just for some fleeting fun". How typical of the "virtue-signalling and vice-ignoring" WaWs that they should find a way round this. I'm far from being a supporter of the "ceaselessly failing" war on drugs. Post-pandemic, the taxable revenue on the UK's £2bn coke trade would be more than welcome. In any case, why is it illegal? Winston Churchill and Queen Victoria once shared a packet of cocaine chewing gum. When Vice magazine swabbed the surfaces in the House of Commons, one of the spots with the most cocaine residue was the loo by the Strangers' Bar, "only accessible to MPs, high-ranking public officials and their guests". But until the law changes, people who "identify as decent people" while buying cocaine are simply "vile hypocrites". Read the full article here (paywall).
No 10 can't keep breaking the rules Boris Johnson has started to treat the Cabinet to a "Soviet traffic system" of perks, says Hugo Rifkind in The Times. Just as you once got to dodge the Ladas as a member of the Politburo, now you get to dodge "the interminable Ping Cycle" if you're Rishi Sunak, Michael Gove or the PM himself. Or, at least, you did. At 8.01am on Sunday, Johnson and his chancellor were participants in a pilot scheme that meant they didn't have to isolate after sniffing Sajid Javid. By 10.38am, they had changed their minds. Compared to Jacob Zuma in South Africa, who's facing charges of embezzling an entire village, wangling a way to get into the office "doesn't seem like the worst thing in the world". But this government has now given itself a flavour, "and that flavour is one of impunity". We remember the Major government's weird sex scandals and Tony Blair confusing himself with Jesus. Eventually the wind changes and a government is stuck with a face it doesn't like. Johnsonism relies on the public not caring who paid for his holiday to Mustique, whether Priti Patel bullies her staff or if Dominic Cummings drove to Barnard's Castle. "Hey, nobody died." But this U-turn shows that voters care, and the PM knows it. We will remember the Johnson government trying to get away with things. "Over and again." Read the full article here (paywall).
Noted Reading past articles about Afghanistan is "illuminating", says investigative reporter Iain Overton on Twitter. Here's one that didn't age well: "We won the war (in Afghanistan), using high explosives and the newest technology, with almost indecent ease." That was Ben Macintyre in The Times on 31 August, 2002.
Weather  The largest wildfire in America has burnt through more than 340,000 acres of land in Oregon. Thousands of people have been evacuated and more than 2,000 are battling the blaze. This is a new style of fire, says Henry Fountain in The New York Times. It's so large and so hot that it is changing the weather, causing 140mph winds, clouds and "fire tornados". "Normally the weather predicts what the fire will do. In this case, the fire is predicting what the weather will do."
Tomorrow's world Lab-grown foie gras made from goose and duck stem cells is proving a revelation in France, says Bloomberg. Parisian start-up Gourmey grows "remarkably good" livers in stainless-steel tanks, harvested from a single fertilised egg and made in vitro. It has raised $10m in seed funding and received state backing. The game could be up for the cruel practice of stuffing feed down a bird's throat until its liver swells, known as gavage.
Snapshot 
Noted American kids watched so much Peppa Pig during the pandemic, they developed British accents and started using words such as "holiday" instead of "vacation," says The Wall Street Journal. One Californian youngster asked her mother, in a polished British accent: "Mummy, are you going to the optician?" Another in Rhode Island demanded: "Can we turn the telly on?"
Zeitgeist  Dr Daouda and the Rhodes statue at Oriel. Twitter/Carl Court/Getty Images Oxford dons should stop "throwing tantrums" over statues and focus on addressing the inequalities of today, says Dr Marie Kawthar Daouda in the Telegraph. Making a fuss over a statue of Cecil Rhodes is a "dazzling sign of western privilege", according to Oriel College's only African tutor. Patriarchy in Victorian Britain was "in many ways still better than the conditions girls and women currently endure in several African countries".
Snapshot answer It's former 007 Pierce Brosnan, who is planning an exhibition of his artwork for the first time. I started painting "one dark night in 1987", the Irish actor wrote on Instagram. Since then he has sold a portrait of Bob Dylan for £1.1m. Now he's flogging paintings of naked women, a still life of earplugs and a portrait of a man wearing a necklace made of Swiss cheese.
Quoted "Once Bezos is in space we are going to have just 11 minutes to change the locks on the entire planet. It's going to be tight; we can do it." Andrew Hunter Murray on Twitter That's it. You're done. Been forwarded this newsletter? Sign up here to receive it every day Click here to register for full access to our app and website Download our app in the App Store Follow us on Instagram
Unsubscribe from the newsletter |
July 20, 2021
“Woke coke” is a joke
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment