Partygate And Appropriate Swearing

I've read the Gray Report on what has predictably come to be known as Partygate. For those of you who may have been on another planet, or more accurately aren't British and are therefore less than interested in the machinations of our shitty political class, this is the sorry tale of the serial breaches of Covid Regulations that took place in Downing Street. I have let the dust settle for a few days and I find that my reaction has not changed. And here I have to apologise to more delicate readers because I will have to lapse into the coarsest language. My conclusion? Boris Johnson is quite clearly a complete f****** c***. He plays you and me, dear reader, for complete fools.

Let us remind ourselves that this man was educated at Eton and Oxford - now I didn't go to either of these august institutions but both sell themselves as being best in class. So let us first dispose of the most charitable interpretation of Johnson's behaviour - that is to say, that he misunderstood the tenor of the Regulations - those very Regulations he kept explaining to us at innumerable televeised press briefings. Horseshit. If he's that thick he shouldn't be in government. End of. I saw that dreadful creep Michael Fabricant pleading on Bozza'a behalf that a Prime Minister could not be expected to know the finer details of every Regulation - ok, I'll just about buy that but not of a man who had laid out to his poor old public what the rules meant. This shouln't really matter but Johnson's case is hardly helped when the man espousing it does so in a truly dreadful Boris Johnson fright-wig. Get a grip Fabricant.

So what other excuses have been paraded for the Downing Street shenanigans? Well, apparently they were all working very hard and under intolerable pressure. Oh the poor little poppets. Here's what Gray, in her fabulous civil service prose, has to say about that:     

Those challenges, however, also applied to key and frontline workers across
the country who were working under equally, if not more, demanding conditions,
often at risk to their own health. It is important to remember the stringency of
the public health regulations in force in England over the relevant periods and
that criminal sanctions were applied to many found to be in breach of them. The
hardship under which citizens across the country worked, lived and sadly even
died while observing the Government¶s regulations and guidance rigorously are
known only too well.

So what does the sober-sided civil servant  conclude about all of this?

I have already commented in my update on what I found to be failures of
leadership and judgment in No 10 and the Cabinet Office. The events that I
investigated were attended by leaders in government. Many of these events
should not have been allowed to happen. It is also the case that some of the
more junior civil servants believed that their involvement in some of these
events was permitted given the attendance of senior leaders. The senior
leadership at the centre, both political and official, must bear responsibility for
this culture.

All of this at the end of a report that also catalogues incivility towards the security and cleaning staff at No. 10. This sort of boorish behaviour upsets me even more than the odd illicit drink. Perhaps I'm old-fashioned. So there we have it - Boris you're a c***. Resign!  

Waterloo

I remember being taken to the Palace Cinema in Erdington (a fact that dates me - it's been a supermarket since 1972) with my brother to see Waterloo. It remains one of WJR's favourite films. I re-watched it last week. I can't say it would be on any list of my favourites but it is a far from bad movie. It has truly spectacular battle scenes and an anti-triumphalist atmosphere of regret about the business of war. It is also a nice oddity being Sergei Bondarchuck's directorial debut on this side of the Iron Curtain. Rod Steiger perhaps chews the scenery a little but I think Bonaparte deserves that sort of treatment. 60/100. 

Are Brilliant ... Mark XXVII

I've been awol from the blog for a few weeks. Sorry about that. Things happen - but I will tell you more once I am authorised to do so. That sounds a little portentous. Nothing to worry about but even the Big Fat Pig has to observe the rules from time to time.

I've been awol from the 'Are Brilliant' thread for even longer, so here we go. Older readers may detect some duplication (or even triplication) but, hell, I'm not a machine.

So here goes. The precious bike. I was out for a few hill-climbs yesterday. Enjoyed it. And along with the golf, this is the only exercise I am getting because my sore Achilles heel is into its fourth month of discomfort. There is no better explanation than that I am getting old (already there?) and that I have subjected this body to more battering than is good for it. That said, there is not a day goes by that I don't miss playing rugby. The ruck remains the father of the maul. 

Talking of battering, the Groupie and I had really disappointing fish and chips from the hitherto reliable Mere Green Takeaway. You must know how it is - you are really looking forward to something, you have a raging hunger, and then the food is all flabby. The disappointment is heightened because of the intensity of the anticipation. Well found the antidote only a few days later, which brings me to the second brilliant item - haddock and chips in the conservatory (one eighty degree sea views) at The Trecastell Hotel in Bull Bay. Washed down with a couple of pints of pale ale. Fish and chips redeemed.

Waitin' Around to Die, by the tragic figure of Townes Van Zandt. Search his stuff out.

Amlwch. I have a fondness for landscapes where the industrial melds with the natural. Amlwch is an old working port but if you head westwards from the port carpark you are soon met by cliffs and clear seas and, best of all, even on a beautiful Spring day, you are largely on your own. What you do after you have walked is to go to the Trecastell Hotel for fish and chips (op. cit.).

The National Trust. I put up with some of its woke inanities because of the cracking job it does in preserving places of interest. We called in at Bodnant Garden on our way home from Ynys Mon. Been there countless times before but there's always something new to observe. I do love a well-stocked garden. I'm attaching pictures of the fallen redwood and the helpful expanatory notice. In case you can't read the script (isn't age a pain) - it stood over 50m tall and was brought down in the Winter storms. 

 

Finally - the concluding episode of the awesome Derry Girls that aired last week. Even by the standards of this great show, the hour-long finale was funny, serious and, most importantly, moving. In amongst the dross of reality television, it is reassuring that such genuinely important work is still being done on television.

Wailing And Gnashing Of Teeth

Or should that be weeping and gnashing of teeth? Biblical? Probably - anyway you've got the internet or you wouldn't be reading this.

Besides which, the wailing/weeping etc is that peculiar thing - an introductory aside. Because the wailing would be about Ofsted, and that is a subject about which I am forbidden to gnash teeth. It is a process entirely (well almost) well-intentioned but it is hanging like a sword of Damocles over me in my gubernatorial guise. Bring it on I say and I can carry on with my other jobs and get on with making a great school even better. You've got to aim high.

No, today's real business is to trumpet a candidate for the accolade of greatest British film director. As you will previously have gathered I can't be having Alfred Hitchcock, good though he might be. Lindsay Anderson? Too weird. No, no, no - my suggestion is David Lean. What brought this to mind was watching a beautifully sharp reprint of 1948's Oliver Twist. I might not be alone in preferring to watch adaptations of Dickens rather than have to read him - is that a sin? I have read him but it can be a bit of a trudge. I feel the same about Tolkien - and that's not just because he went to King Edward's School. 

Anyway, the Lean Oliver Twist is terrific - a rambling novel is tamed (I believe Lean co-wrote the script) and you can scan the full library of film noir and you won't find a better casting of shadows - right up there with Touch of Evil, and that is one of the best films ever made. Oliver Twist - 86/100.

Right, back to work. Progress 8 scores anyone?    

God On Film

 

Cecil B. de Mille had two stabs at filming The Ten Commandments, both gargantauan affairs, the second (the first is a silent film) coming in at approaching four hours. Channel 5 did their bit for religiosity on the box at Easter by showing the 1956 talkie. It has its merits although the special effects seem, by modern standards, vaguely comical. Never mind, it still looks opulent and, for all its length, it fair rattles along. Nor can one criticise the scene-stealing efforts of Heston and Brynner in the two principal roles. I have a soft spot for this sort of Hollywood excess and Easter is the right time for what we might term, God - the Movie. 65/100.

I followed up my creditable efforts in the gale at Royal St. David's by assuming that I was all set to take the Royal Pype Hayes apart. Think again Pig. The usual middling golf was all I could manage and the pattern repeated itself on a visit with the QMT lads to Forest of Arden last week - we've got some vouchers we're using up. We played on the second course at F of A, the Aylesford, which I think is a tidy enough test. It was in commendable nick and I played really quite adequately on fourteen holes but allowed the others to debase my card. Back to The Royal Pype Hayes this evening - could this be time for that long-awaited breakthrough? No, would be the answer you are searching for. Old dogs and new tricks come to mind.

The war in Ukraine rages on and it is impossible to feel other than a disenfranchised observer. It is beyond my powers as commentator but its effect on domestic politics does strike me as noteworthy. In one of those horrible twists of political fate, this immoral war has come to the rescue of our own immoral Prime Minister. It is tempting to fall into the trap of saying that at such a time of international (not to mention economic) crisis we should not be indulging in squabbles about the leadership of the Conservative Party. Tempting yes, but wrong nonetheless. I watched the shameless scoundrel Johnson in parliament last week. He would have us believe that he was just too pig ignorant to understand that the parties he attended were in breach of the regulations he so consistently ordained for the rest of us. He is not that stupid. Bloody liar.  

 

God Is In His Heaven

That oft quoted line from Browning came to me the other day as I surveyed the windswept links at Harlech from the safety of the lounge bar - I am nothing if not unoriginal - probably my mean grammar school education.

I had just completed eighteen holes at Royal St. David's in the company of Big Willy Mac. The wind was severe (this is an understatement), certainly sufficient to scare more sensible souls off the course. Thus the two of us had these world-class links to ourselves. Fantastic, bloody fantastic. No day for keeping a scorecard but I can immodestly tell you that I parred the last (as I had done on my previous visit to RSD) and secured a narrow victory, BWM having come to grief in a greenside bunker. BWM took defeat in good part (our lifetime score sits well in his favour) as a man might well do when he is a member of as august a club as RSD. BWM moved to North Wales only recently and still maintains a country membership at his original club, Cavendish in Buxton, another wonderful course. To have been a member of two such great institutions might seem a tad on the lucky side but I can assure you that Willy is a sterling being and deserves whatever luck comes his way.

I am at Plas Piggy, the last of the floors having been laid yesterday - it looks brilliant and has removed pretty much the last vestige of my own DIY improvements to the place. Tempus fugit - it is closing in on quarter of a century since we bought the house. The best investment of my life, even with the extortionate penalty Council Tax. 

 When last I blogged I was lamenting the truly dreadful film, Blacklight. A happier report today of a worthy film - Animal Farm is a 1954 animation (I believe it may have been the first such British feature) which faithfully adapts George Orwell's important fable. It is understated and for the most part avoids the temptation to burnish the story with any winsome comedy - it would be difficult to imagine Disney not falling into that trap. As I say, worthy, and thereby mildly underwhelming, but nevertheless worth the effort. Better still read the book again. 63/100.  

Setting Low Bars

The Taken series of films get progressively worse but at least they have a certain panache on their side. The violence is gratuitous but stylish and the Liam Neeson character has a good strap-line what with his very particular set of skills. But don't worry I'm not going to trouble you with an evaluation of Taken - I've probably done that somewhere else. No, I must alert you to something altogether worse. Massively, egregiously, painfully worse. Ladies and gentlemen I give you Blacklight.

Somebody thought Neeson was worth another outing as gun-toting avenger notwithstanding that we are edging close to his seventieth birthday. They even give him another nice line ('You're going to need more men') but that line is deployed far more tellingly in the trailer than in the film itself. I don't blame Neeson - take the money and run mate. Bu, oh, that script. It's so full of holes it's indecent. And as for its obvious belief that it is somehow going to be the action genre's answer to All the President's Men, well grow up you idiots. This is a scandalous waste of time and effort. I would however admit that it is worth watching for a laugh. Not as bad as The Jackal but pretty bloody bad all the same. 31/100.