“Sunny day snowflake Britain had a meltdown…” Daily Mail.

The front of today’s Daily Mail mixes the meteorological metaphors to show what sunburnt softies we all are nowadays.

Perhaps they are trying to cool us down by mentioning snowflakes; or maybe the editor is a climate-denying, Brexit-besotted barmpot who must have something new to whinge on about until time cracks apart at the weary stupidity of it all.

Funny, isn’t it, how many of those who helped pull the union flag-patterned woolly jumper over our eyes when selling us Brexit now try to do the same with climate change.

It strikes me that this line of thinking is mostly favoured by people who have left their heads out in the sunshine for too long. I’ve had beads of sweat that talk more sense.

An accompanying leader in the Mail criticises “apocalyptic climate change pundits” and the BBC, only to then say, “Of course we shouldn’t be complacent about intense heat…” When that’s exactly what they’re doing. Angry complacency is their thing, you see.

Yes, 1976 was hot in Britain and the heatwave lasted for two months. I was 20 and had a short holiday on a canal boat or on a boat in a canal. Not a narrowboat or anything. Just a boat big enough for two young men who kept cans of beer hanging over the side in a net.

It might have been the Macclesfield canal, or it might not. The boat belonged to a friend’s dad and progress was slow as the locks shut to save water, occasionally sabotaging our plans to moor up besides pubs. Sometimes we even had to walk to the pub, which shows how tough we were then.

Professor Hannah Cloke is a climate scientist at the University of Reading. That probably makes her woke in overheated Mail-land; it’s always overheated on that cruel continent and never mind the weather. On a fact-check report on the BBC website, Prof Cloke says: “1976 was indeed a heatwave and we have had heatwaves before, but the point is they’re happening more often and they’re becoming more intense.”

In the summer of 1976, the UK, France and a few other countries experienced a heatwave (as did that canal somewhere south of Manchester). Now many more countries are affected, with heatmaps from NASA suggesting the global climate has become much warmer since 1976.

The highest temperature in the UK then was 35.9C, whereas the temperature in York today as I foolishly tap sweaty fingers over the laptop is 40C, with another degree a possibility.

That is clearly much hotter, and should alarm us, unless you are a backwards-bending Daily Mail editor type such as Ted Verity. Or the real editor Paul Dacre, who is reportedly being lined up by Boris Johnson for a seat in the Lords, presumably for services to client journalism and the tireless writing of front-page press releases.

Life seen through a Mail lens is always braver and better in the past, whether in the Second World War or during that long summer of 1976.

With a dull clunk of predictability, that Mail leader ends by combining those favourite topics ­­– “What ever happened to keep calm and carry on?”

And guess what, proud fellow snowflakes, that wartime slogan was dreamed up by Britain’s wartime propaganda department – and was never seen by the public. Until it was rediscovered in 2001, after which it was revived to flog us anything you might care to mention, including misleading sinewy visions of the past.

A closing thought. We should all vote Green as they talk sense about climate change and the environment. Why so few of us do (me included) is a mystery that needs unravelling before life becomes even more uncomfortable.

The Conservative Party leadership contest reminds me of that Quentin Tarantino film, only now it’s called The Hateful Tory Eight. Count them – eight, and not one you’d trust to run a raffle, never mind a country.

It is only a week since Boris Johnson dragged his entitled arse into Downing Street to make that graceless and petulant resignation speech.

A bitter and self-pitying farewell (and he’s not even gone yet).

No recognition that it was all his own fault, no nod to the flaws in his character that brought him down.

Scratch that – let’s settle for fissures. Flaws doesn’t capture the deep inadequacies, the mendacity, the vanity, the egotism, the grandiloquent self-absorption, the apparent belief that no one knew better than him, alongside all that toadying to billionaires and oligarchs.

Johnson portrayed himself as the blameless victim brought down by the “relentless sledging” of his own side. Rewriting his own history in that sulky oration, he referred again to “his mandate” – as if his party, his MPs had nothing to do with it. A very Trumpian aversion to reality.

Anyway, he’s gone, or going. The worst prime minister this country has ever seen leaves behind the disastrous mess of his inglorious Brexit (hope you’re enjoying the “new golden age”). Yet even now his faithful newspapers, chiefly the Daily Mail, are recasting history to his shape, still manipulating the truth to burnish Boris.

Now we peer down from the cheap seats in the upper circle to watch the film. It’s weird this contest to choose the next Tory leader and prime minister. We have no say, for this is a private Tory matter, but one with horribly public consequences.

What a way to organise a country. Endless media coverage as if this was something we could affect, whereas the choice is whittled down by Tory MPs and the eventual decision lies with Conservative Party members in a postal vote. A tiny constituency, deciding for a party now in thrall, post-Johnson, to wealth and Brexit lies, and bearing little relation to the Conservative Party of old (and that was bad enough)

As for the contestants, anyone outside of the charmless Conservative circle will wonder what we’ve done to deserve this this shameless lot.

Only the other week, chief players in The Hateful Tory Eight were routinely sticking up for Boris Johnson, parroting untruths to shore up his lies, evasions and corruption. Now they pretend to shiny newness and difference, while Rishi Sunak pledges to fix the economy he oversaw until, oh, only last week.

Here’s who is standing at the time of writing:  Sunak, Suella Braverman, Jeremy Hunt, Penny Mordaunt, Liz Truss, Tom Tugendhat, Nadhim Zahawi and Kemi Badenoch.

All seem to be keen on cutting taxes and waging culture wars. None mentions the NHS or climate change. Sunak seems to be the favourite, although Johnson and his allies are said to be plotting against the former chancellor in revenge for what they see as his betrayal.

He had a slick video produced “almost overnight” (that’s what his side are claiming). Whenever it was knocked together, it’s a slickly terrible video that introduces his appalling slogan, Ready For Rishi. And begins with the words: “Let me tell you a story…”

Or sell you a Tory, much the same thing. The story he wants to sell is about his grandmother, his modest roots, and overlooks his vast personal wealth, the even more bottomless wealth of his wife.

Nadhim Zahawi is another multi-millionaire and you do have to wonder how people so ridiculously wealthy can have any idea about the lives of ordinary people – or the struggles many have.

Braverman is weirdly unpleasant, loves the culture wars stuff, and only the other day told ITV News: “There are too many people in this country who are of working age, who are of good health, and who are choosing to rely on benefits.”

She said this without offering proof, without acknowledging that 40 per cent of those claiming Universal Credit are in work but in jobs so badly paid they need government support.

Another vile urban myth incanted like a bad spell.

Liz Truss, that second-rate Thatcher tribute act, has good odds. Even though only the other week, in an example of her grip on things, she was heard on television referring to the Irish Taoiseach as the “Irish Tea Sock”.

I can’t run through them all; too exhausting, too depressing.

Johnson may have resigned in disgrace, but the right-wing populism he summoned up will not go away. All the candidates, however much they may squabble, are chanting the same lines: raising taxes, fighting Brexit all over again, turning on the immigration claxon, sending migrants to Rwanda, while saying nothing about what will be cut to pay for those lower taxes.

The Hateful Eight had an original ending much more violent than the one that went out. What sort of an ending will The Hateful Tory Eight Have?

Today’s headlines, courtesy of Tomorrow’s Papers Today

So where are we up to in that shoddy political drama known round here as The Liar’s Progress? We’ll get to that new plot twist in a moment, but first let’s revisit those phantom hospitals.

According to last Sunday’s Observer, the government’s own official spending watchdog is launching an inquiry into Boris Johnson’s claim that 40 new hospitals will be built by 2030.

If you ask me, those hospitals always were pulled from the over-stuffed Gladstone bag of half-baked Johnsonian aspirations. As if to confirm such a suspicion, when it emerged that some of those ‘new’ hospitals were merely extensions or upgrades (or possibly a new porch/cycle shed), the government told health trusts they must refer to all improvements as a ‘new hospital’.

Weird, really, as a new hospital in your area is the sort of thing you might notice. Do they really think people are that gullible? Are we really that deep in lies?

The National Audit Office is said to fear that Johnson’s hospitals pledge “has been greatly oversold to the public”.

No shit! Over-selling is all Johnson knows.

He treats the country like one of his abandoned wives/mistresses/latest side helping of whatever he fancied at the time of grabbing. Over sell, tell one vainglorious whopper after another, hope no one remembers the promises – that’s always been his shameless song. Plot and back-stab for years to become prime minister, and hope no one notices how terrible he is at the job – that’s the refrain we are stuck with.

Everything about Johnson has been greatly oversold to the public, while his backing vocalists in the right-wing media have sung a dutiful chorus of “He got Brexit done”, “He levelled up the North”, “He beat Covid, do-whop, whoop-whoop”.

Now even the backing vocalists are tired of singing the same old song. Today’s national newspaper headlines about the resignation of Sajid Javid as health secretary and Rishi Sunak as chancellor are almost all unfriendly, suggesting there is only so much lying even the Johnson-enabling Mail and Telegraph can stomach.

The undoing of Johnson, if that is what we are seeing (fingers crossed and all that), was always going to be a lie. Or, to misquote his hero Churchill, “a lie, wrapped in a lie, inside another lie”.

In case you are finding it all too wearingly sordid, the scandal of the moment (others will surely be along soon) concerns Chris Pincher, the deputy chief whip who resigned amid accusations that he had drunkenly groped two men in the Carlton Club.

Although this was reportedly not the first time such allegations had been aired, Downing Street stuck to the line that when Johnson made the appointment, he was not aware of specific previous allegations about Pincher. They kept this up for a few days, until Simon McDonald, the former permanent secretary at the Foreign Office, made public a letter in which he wrote that No 10 was simply not telling the truth.

This was quite the bombshell. All those ministers pushed out to say Johnson didn’t know about these allegations suddenly appeared stupid. None more sudden or stupid than Dominic Raab, who was on air attempting to defend Johnson when he was told about McDonald’s letter.

What does it feel like to be a Tory minister or MP cajoled into defending the indefensible in this manner? According to a quote in the Guardian, one MP confined to a colleague over the weekend: “I’m fucked if I’m ever doing that again.”

If that’s how his own side sees him, there is a smell of toast about Johnson now.

As for all those lies, what you must remember is that with Johnson there are grades of untruth, a bit like with sandpaper. And some are the thickest type, guaranteed to take the tip off your finger and send you to the nearest imaginary hospital.

Sherwood (BBC picture)

THERE aren’t many links between studying English Literature in the 1970s, the miners’ strike in 1984 and prevailing attitudes to the humanities in our universities, but here’s one.

After leaving Goldsmiths College, I worked on a local newspaper in south-east London. A good job for me, but finding it took longer than the six months our government now insists on.

A few years into the job, the miners’ strike happened. Our NUJ chapel extended a brotherly hand to members of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) with a meeting in a local pub.

Where the miners came from is lost to me now. Perhaps it was the small but militant coalfield in nearby Kent; also unknown to me now is what on earth the miners thought about meeting those earnest young journalists who wanted to hear about their struggle.

The memory was revived after watching Sherwood, the BBC drama inspired by the miners’ strike and set in Nottinghamshire village dominated by the breakaway Union of Democratic Mineworkers.

On one level, this is a crime drama. Alun Armstrong plays Gary Jackson, an NUM stalwart in a ‘scab’ village, to use the language of the day. When he is killed by an arrow from a bow, the bitterness of the long-ago dispute rises again. Gary was a pugnacious union bore who never let up about the strike or those who broke it, and many on the other side suffered his undying harangues.

The writer of Sherwood, James Graham, is too clever and interesting a writer to confine himself to a genre. Without wishing to give anything away, it’s safest to say that Sherwood is much better than the usual crime drama, even to those of us who love the usual crime dramas.

Sherwood is smartly written, brilliantly acted by a knockout cast (nearly every role going to a ‘name’), and the most compelling drama in years. It has a plot of many sides, not least the use of spy-cops who were suspected of having infiltrated mining communities so they could report back on union activities.

If Graham has a deeper thesis, it is that when politics divides us, we all lose. A timely thought as we contemplate the political bumper-car ride led by Boris Johnson, not so much a government as an endless, distracting self-protection racket, throwing out one stupid headline after another, with the aim of leaving us confused, worn out, and too tired to act.

James Graham then took to Twitter to complain about what he sees as the government’s assault on the humanities. A new policy insisting that arts graduates must find a good job within six months of leaving university is causing havoc in the humanities.

The latest example came with Sheffield Hallam University announcing it is to pull its English literature degree from next year, seemingly pushed in that direction by the government.

James said he would never have become a writer, would never have written Sherwood, if such a policy had been in place when he studied drama in Hull.

The writer Philip Pullman joined in, saying that the study of literature “should not be a luxury for a wealthy minority of spoilt and privileged aesthetes”. Yet here we are, with the arts becoming a minority sport, going the way of music and art in state schools.

I enjoyed studying literature and even read James Joyce’s Ulysses willingly again after leaving, so something stuck. A love of writing and words stayed with me, although in those days I could have gone into journalism without a degree, as many did, but that route has gone for would-be reporters. That is a shame and a loss, but so is insisting that arts students must find a good job in six months. Many won’t have found anything by then, or possibly their way out of the house.

You can’t measure the benefits of an arts degree with such an unfeeling ruler. While not many writers or artists become rich, their work offers great riches to society, and our arts economy is booming and respected around the world. According to the Arts Council, the arts and culture industry contributes £8.5bn to the UK economy. Shove that into your six months!

Anyway, as the writer John O’Farrell argued on Twitter, studying the use of language, the importance of story and character, and the power of words “is a profoundly civilised thing to offer young people that cannot be instantly measured by employment data. Literature expands the mind, opens up a world of imagination and possibilities…”

Although not when the cat walks over your laptop, writing the following…

y7u3-hq1we5sd3`1a5t4`1…

Chequers, minus £150,000 treehouse

Here is a conversation between the anti-Boris Johnson devil perched on one shoulder and the bored angel on the other.

Bored Angel: I see you’ve opened your laptop. Please don’t start writing about Boris Johnson again. You’re getting obsessed. Go and find something else to bang on about.

Anti-Boris Devil: But have you seen what he’s done now?

Bored Angel: No, but I’m sure you’re about to tell me.

Anti-Boris Devil: According to the Times, he asked a Tory donor to pay for a treehouse for his two-year son Wilf…

Bored Angel: What’s so bad about being a doting dad?

Anti-Boris Devil: It was at Chequers, which Johnson is only borrowing for as long as he is prime minister – and it would have cost £150,000. That’s nearly half the price of an average house in the UK. Millions of young people in this country can’t afford to buy a house, and he wanted to spend £150,000 on a treehouse for a two-year-old.

Bored Angel: Heavens, why did it cost so much?

Anti-Boris Devil: Well, it had bullet-proof glass for windows. Perhaps there was gold wallpaper, too.

Bored Angel: Sigh. OK, can I go and see if it was worth the money?

Anti-Boris Devil: No, you can’t, as the idea was vetoed by security services. And Downing Street sources have been quoted as saying Johnson was warned about the optics of spending so much on a treehouse.

Bored Angel: I really don’t need to know this, but who was lined up to pay for this treehouse?

Anti-Boris Devil: I am glad you asked. David Brownlow, life peer and the chap with deep pockets who coughed up for all the gold wallpaper and other expensive decorative fripperies Johnson and his wife inflicted on the Downing Street flat.

Bored Angel: Boris Johnson certainly knows how to annoy people like you. What else has he been up to?

Anti-Boris Devil: Well, he’s just told reporters in Rwanda, where he’s been hiding out at a Commonwealth summit after losing those two byelections, that he is “actively thinking about the third term and what could happen then”. Downing Street later said he was joking.

Bored Angel: I hate to ask this, but what does he want to do with a third term?

Anti-Boris Devil: Glad you asked. He says he wants to continue with his plans to reduce inequality across the country, all that levelling-up stuff he’s always trotting out without doing anything about it. After his party spent years levelling down the country with austerity before he came along and pretended none of that was anything do to with him. And it’s all a bit, well, rich as he belongs to a Cabinet of millionaires that is a sticky coagulation of privilege and right-wing nastiness.

Bored Angel: I hate to admit it, but “sticky coagulation of privilege and right-wing nastiness” is quite good. Think I’ll hop over and join you on that shoulder.

Anti-Boris Devil: Welcome to the proper shoulder.

Bored Angel: You mentioned a summit in Rwanda earlier.

Anti-Boris Devil: I did…

Bored Angel: Well, it occurs to me that Boris Johnson is the only person the home secretary has so far managed to send to Rwanda.

Anti-Boris Devil: Ha! Very good. I think you’re getting the hang of how things work on this shoulder.

Many things in life are too complicated to understand. Governments, particularly right-wing populist ones, like it that way.

Instead of acknowledging and explaining troublesome complications to voters, they make a distracting fuss and racket about something vaguely related to the (probably grubbily opportunistic) matter to hand.

When Boris Johnson’s government proposes abolishing the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA), it does so with a sticky bit of anti-European sentiment found at the back of the empty Brexit cupboard.

Of course, Brexit itself was a perfect example of complicated dressed up as simple: flogged to us as a matter of sovereignty (whatever that is), and battered in sentiment, alongside a vinegar sense of something lost, a weight of unspecified disgruntlement, all aimed at one target: the EU.

As we now see, there have been no advantages to Brexit at all, only disbenefits, but that won’t worry those who voted ‘yes’ with a passion. Proud foolish sentiment is not persuaded by economic fact or general sense; proud foolish sentiment has its own logic.

As a legal dunderhead, I cannot explain much about the government’s new Bill of Rights Bill, only to point out that honesty suggests it should be titled the Bill of Fewer Rights That You Had.  Oh, and doesn’t it raise an important question – what’s so wrong with human rights anyway?

Fortunately, there are people who know much more about this than a man sitting on a ledge, scratching his bald head. Among them is Mark Elliott, professor of public law at the University of Cambridge, often to be found talking sense on Twitter.

He has provided a detailed and, yes, quite long analysis of the Bill of Rights Bill, laying out what the government wants to do. It’s well worth a read and the link to his personal blog Public Law for Everyone is here:

https://publiclawforeveryone.com/2022/06/22/the-uks-new-bill-of-rights/

Professor Elliott points out that the HRA was introduced with the proclamation that it would ‘bring rights home’. It would do this by making UK courts follow rights set out in the European Convention on Human Rights. And these rights “were at least in part inspired by the common law tradition and by the work of British lawyers”.

Now the government wants to trash this the HRA because, as Justice Secretary Dominic Raab has since dribbled in a newspaper article, the new Bill “will strengthen traditional UK rights” which are “under attack” from “stifling political correctness”.

Hatred of political correctness ­is another vague sentiment that cannot be satisfied or silenced, even if the thing itself is merely a handy dog-whistle.

Professor Elliott’s analysis can’t really be encapsulated in a short blog, but he ends by making some salient general points. Not least that the aim of the Bill seems to be to send human rights back to Strasbourg and replace them with reduced rights.

Behind it all lies a political party, shaped by its leader, that brooks no interference or obstacle, whether from the European Court of Human Rights or domestic courts, or anyone really.

This Bill has long been darkly mumbled about by this government, and its arrival now follows the legal intervention of the European Court of Human Rights in stopping migrants being deported to Rwanda.

And that deeply appalling policy is, of course, another dark distraction, introduced in the knowledge – and hope – that such legal interventions would occur, allowing Johnson and co to harrumph about Europe and Brexit all over again.

One worrying interpretation of this new Bill is that it aims is to place the government above the law. And sometimes the importance of human rights laws, and of the law itself, is to give citizens protection from governments, of whatever persuasion.

Changing laws for reasons of short-term political opportunism should worry us. And please do give Professor Elliott’s properly informed analysis a go. He knows a lot more about this than I do.

The story that vanished from the Times

The irony is enough to give you a nosebleed. The Times is a ‘newspaper of record’ – and yet stories can seemingly vanish into thin air if they embarrass the prime minister.

The Mystery Of The Story About Carrie has been fully explored on Twitter. OK, hands up ­– I am going on about Twitter again and if you don’t hang out there, you may wonder at the attraction. So do I sometimes, but it is addictive, offers a different slant on the news, and can shine a light into dingy corners.

I have no inside knowledge here, but have read the theories. To upend a Sherlock Holmes reference, the dog did bark but then it was muzzled. And, to splodge another metaphor on the word palette, that story turned out to have been written in disappearing ink.

Early print editions of the Times on Saturday contained the now-vanished political scoop by Simon Walton, a veteran reporter who used to work for the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday.

The headline to Walton’s story was: “Johnson tried to give Carrie top Foreign Office job during affair.”

The story reported that in 2018 Johnson wanted to appoint Carrie Symonds (as she then was) to a £100,000-a-year government job but was eventually dissuaded from what seems to have been the usual act of outrageous nepotism.

The report was quickly withdrawn without comment or explanation, gone in an inky puff of what we can assume was cowardice. But a few copies escaped into the wild, as you can see above.

Did Johnson ask for this story to be killed because it showed him in a bad light (most stories do that anyway); did Downing Street pounce while he was away; or did their boss order the ‘hit’ from a distance?

Another possibility was that second thoughts were had, that the story didn’t stand up and… oh, let’s not go there; the story would have been researched, checked, OK’d and ‘legalled’, and Simon Walton was prepared to stand firm by his words.

Safer to assume Johnson wanted it gone. This afternoon Downing Street admitted as much, saying it had asked the Times to withdraw the story.

The official version is this request did not come from Johnson himself, and you can believe that if you wish (other possibilities are flapping in the wind).

If this was an attempt to stop another embarrassing story about Boris Johnson, it failed. For Twitter was flooded with pictures of the now vanished story, and more people were talking about the story than if it had remained in the newspaper.

Why the Times felt it had to cave into pressure from Downing Street says a lot about how things work in this country. The Tories in general, and Johnson in particular, receive endless support from the right-wing newspapers, and this in turn reflects the way the broadcasters cover stories, especially the BBC.

Outside of Twitter, the story of this disappearance was hardly covered at all, with an honourable exception being Tim Walker at the New European. Walker, a former colleague of Johnson’s at the Telegraph, is not a fan.

It took the Guardian 24 hours to follow up the story, and the BBC only covered the story on its website after Downing Street admitted it has asked for the story to be dropped.

And if you think we deserve newspapers that are prepared to probe and question everything any government does, no matter their political persuasion, you won’t hear an argument from me. But it won’t happen soon or probably ever.

As an example of blind-eyed bias, in the US the Murdoch-owned Fox News initially declined to show any coverage of the January 6 hearings into whether Donald Trump should be blamed for the mob that invaded the Capitol. The Trump-friendly news station just looked the other way, not wishing to blemish the man they had supported, at a weary guess. But then they have covered subsequent days. Some stories are too big to ignore.

As for the Times, I don’t buy that newspaper, being a Guardian/Observer type, although as a part-time hypocrite, I will read a copy if someone else has paid for it.

Will this story damage the Times more that it does Boris Johnson? That’s usually the way it works with that man.

Lord Geidt (Picture: BBC)

DID you know that Boris Johnson has an ethics adviser? That must be the toughest gig since King Herod advertised for someone to offer childcare advice.

It’s a sort of morals prefect and the second one has just jumped ship. Lord Geidt’s job was to advise on the ministerial code, a set of rules governing standards of behaviour. In his parting letter, he said the job had put him in an “impossible and odious position”.

“I can have no part in this,” Geidt wrote. He appears to have been referring to an unspecified request for advice about Johnson “deliberately breaching his own code” and Geidt said it would be “an affront” to suspend the code “to suit a political end”.

But as we know, Boris Johnson never does anything unless it suits his own political ends (his political end is something else altogether).

As far as I can tell, the prime minister’s job seems to be twofold.

One: go about the country looking a proper tit in a high-vis jacket, while watching other people work. This is intended to impress for reasons impossible to explain (“Yes, I’ll vote for Boris Johnson because he is always so busy going around the country looking like a proper tit in a high-vis jacket…”).

Two: to seek ways to stir up cultural divisions and dividing lines, causing chaos and a distracting racket.

Two stories illustrate this second job.

First up is that shameful and immoral scheme to pick desperate migrants up from the shores of Kent and send them straight to Rwanda. A policy cruelly inept enough to have united in condemnation Prince Charles and all the bishops in the Church of England.

Political rumour has it that the government would like to expel the bishops from the House of Lords in revenge.

According to a story by Harry Lambert in the New Statesman, a source close to government thinking revealed: “They never expected the flight to take off. The point of the exercise was to create dividing lines ahead of the next election, which is going to be fought, in part, on a manifesto pledge to leave the European court of human rights and repeal the Human Rights Act.”

A BBC report calculated that chartering the Boeing 767 cost an estimated £500,000. Half a million taxpayers’ pounds blown on a political stunt exploiting extremely vulnerable people.

But then, Johnson doesn’t care about migrants or anyone else, unless they are useful in saving his own sweaty skin.

It was heartening to see that Rwanda flight cancelled, although other flights will be along soon enough. And the last-minute intervention of the European Court of Human Rights probably pleased Johnson no end. It certainly allowed the usual Brexit-addled suspects to attack Europe yet again, even though the court has no direct link to the EU – and Britain was instrumental in setting it up to protect human rights.

And here is the other zombie story: Brexit revisited as Johnson tries to rewrite the Northern Ireland protocol bill, while rewriting history too by pretending poor, defenceless Britain was tricked into signing the agreement. You know, the one he boasted about as his oven-ready magic recipe for getting Brexit done (still not cooked yet).

So, whenever the next election comes, it’s likely to be fought on Brexit: The Return, and demonising traumatised migrants. Lovely.

Two final thoughts. Why don’t we set up a processing centre in France, as the French have suggested, rather than trying to ship people to Rwanda? Answer: it’s a sensible, humane solution that wouldn’t garner the right sort of outraged headlines.

Thought two: while it’s not good to see certain Labour supporters constantly laying into Sir Keir Starmer, it is depressing that Starmer has not spoken out against the Rwanda deal. Whatever you think of Tony Blair, his lawyerly wit could sting and provoke; Starmer’s merely seems to conjure an air of being mildly put-out.

“I don’t like that look, man.” “It’s the only one I got.”

This scrap of dialogue is either from the new Top Gun film or it’s my expression whenever Boris Johnson cooks up another plan to save his goose (or Goose, if you want to stick with the parallel).

Yes, we’ve been to see Top Gun: Maverick, the totally absurd and yet absurdly enjoyable sequel. There aren’t many connections between this film, arriving 36 years after the original, and our present government. But I was struck by the nicknames, with Tom Cruise’s character, Pete Mitchell, bearing the obvious macho moniker, Maverick, while other pilots have call signs such as Rooster, Hangman, Phoenix and Payback.

Meanwhile, in Downing Street…

“We have to formulate a plan to save Big Dog.”

“Who’s that?”

“Donnez-moi un break – it’s me, Bozzer, AKA Big Dog, everybody’s favourite misbehaved puppy and pretend clown.”

“Favourite? 148 of your MPs just voted that they have no confidence in you.”

“Nonsense, that was an outstanding result for Big Dog as 211 of my MPs said they did have confidence in me. Now it’s time to move on and…”

“Save your arse again, Prime Minister?”

“That’s the thing and I have a cunning plan.”

“Is it even more far-fetched that Tom Cruise swooping in low to blow up a nuclear plant, bailing out in the snow and then stealing an enemy plane?”

“Well, I am swooping in low and pinching an idea from good old Maggie ­– sell off the council houses to win people over and turn them Conservative.”

“Haven’t all the council houses already been flogged off, and about 40% are now owned by private landlords – some of them your mates.”

“Ah, good point and those mates will like me even more, or at least a little bit. Anyway, I want to sell off housing association houses, plenty of them to go around.”

“But didn’t Thatcher’s policy help create the very housing crisis you now claim you want to solve – while also leading to our over-heating housing market?”

“Who the hell are you to question me? Not sure I even recognise you. Did you hang around after one of those parties that never happened?”

“No, I just wandered here off a ledge somewhere.”

“Go back now. I don’t like that look you’re giving me.”

“It’s the only one I got.”

Big Dog likes to bite your ankles or make a mess on the floor for someone else to clean up. Or mess up this country’s housing supply even more than Thatcher did, just so that he can cling on to power for longer.

It’s quite a plot for a thriller: an unscrupulous, egotistical sociopath of a prime minister sees the end is nigh but plans to take his party and his country with him: if I can’t have this country, no-one can, etcetera.

Anyway, back to Top Gun. It’s been a while. Pete Mitchell is called back to train the new generation of pilots for one last deadly mission. And no, he doesn’t play by the rules, dropping the rulebook in the bin before our eyes (take that, rulebook).

After that, the cliches queue up like buses. You wait 36 years, and here they come, one after the other. You can pretty much write the script as it rolls out and can guess exactly what is about to happen. We’re all in this film together.

As a link to the original, Miles Teller plays Rooster, son of Anthony Edward’s Goose who, as Mark Kermode puts it in his Observer review, “got famously cooked in the first film”.

Seeing Rooster playing Great Balls Of Fire on the piano sends Maverick on an emotional flashback, and leaves him with the film’s central dilemma: should he allow Rooster to fly this dangerous mission, or will Goose’s son get cooked too?

There are oddities in the film, notably the ‘enemy’ whose nuclear must be removed before it goes live. This foe is left handily vague, presumably because you don’t want to go putting off potential markets for the film.

And, yes, this is pretty much still a recruitment advert for the US Navy ­– one that arrives just the world has been tipped into more explosive horror in Ukraine.

But the aerial acrobatics are as impressive as the story is cheesy. And however much you might want to, it’s hard to resist Tom Cruise in the end. It is, however, easy to resist the lazy lure of that big dog’s dinner of a prime minister.

Seven years have passed since I was shown the door. To mark the occasion, I have just read a book by a journalist who was made redundant by the same newspaper group.

Here is how the first of these blogs began at the end of May 2015…

“Well, that was one of the strangest days in my working life. After 27 years in the one newspaper office, that was it. Time to go, move on. At least I had company. There were ten of us leaving, or was it 11? I forget now. Gave a speech, cried and went to the pub: some of these things are what you expect of a journalist, some perhaps not…”

Roger Lytollis went through it all at the Cumberland News group in Carlisle. This family business was taken over by my old employers. Newspaper people will know this does not necessarily lead to a happy outcome.

Roger’s book is called Panic As Man Burns Crumpets, and it is subtitled The Vanishing World of the Local Journalist.

It is funny, moving and sad, as both me and Melvyn Bragg believe, although only Melvyn’s words appear on the cover.

Roger was inspired, he has said, by This Is Going To Hurt, Adam Kay’s rollercoaster diary about being a junior doctor (as recently televised for BBC1). In a similar vein, although with less blood, he recalls his time as a feature writer, sharing many good anecdotes while also exposing his own frailties: shyness, periods of depression, and a chaotic way of messing up occasionally.

There are many amusing memories, typified by the chapter headed “Nude Reporter Shares His Tip”: Roger strips off to swim with a naturist club at Wigton Baths, has an embarrassing picture taken, and somehow marks the occasion by getting his car stuck in a muddy field at the top of a dead-end country lane.

That never happened to me, but Roger captures perfectly the life of a features writer. And he summons up that disappearing inky work, the companionship, the teasing, the fun, the sparring and the witty moaning, and the endless rush of stories, all those words passing in a blur.

The end when it comes is described with deadening familiarity for those of us who’ve been through it (and what a swelling gang we are). Roger is told more than once that getting rid of journalists is the best way “to invest in quality journalism for years to come”, and we all know how well that’s working out.

I don’t have anything further to say about my old newspaper as it’s no longer my world. I hear things and know those who remain still work hard for lowish pay. Young journalists are taken on, which is good, although as Roger points out, some papers now are only staffed by inexperienced/cheaper reporters.

Being made redundant by Newsquest was a shock to Roger and me, but at least Roger turned his collapsed career into a book. As for me, I was devastated at the time, less so now.

Looking back, I wonder about those 27 years. Was that a sensible amount of time to stay in one place as as an editor, designer, writer, columnist, letters editor and more besides? Nope, but I loved that job until it no longer loved me.

Since leaving, I have lectured in journalism at two universities (rewarding but it dried up), had two spells with the Press Association, including three days a week now on the digital newswire, a non-stop sort of job. Oh, and I worked for the census in my only non-journalism job since forever.

Best fun of all, I have written more than 60 freelance features for the Yorkshire Post, starting with York panto dame Berwick Kaler talking about the Railway Children (in the event, he didn’t make the show).

After a lifetime in journalism (note to self: don’t do that again), I can say that interviewing people for a decent feature is the best part.

I used to remind students, “It’s not about you ­– it’s about them.”  True up to a point, but it is about you in a quiet way; what you bring, the skills you use to capture a person and their life and honour them with your words. All after a chat for perhaps an hour, with a digital recorder on the table between you, and don’t go embarrassing me by mentioning shorthand.

And, yes, I am still writing fiction, two novels on the go. I just need to find a new agent or another willing publisher.

As for being made redundant, every negative brings unexpected positives. I wouldn’t have written all those lovely features if I’d stayed put. Or bashed out hundreds of blogs for my own amusement, and occasionally to please/irritate others.

I plan to semi-retire at Christmas but will keep writing for as long as they’ll have me. And if they won’t, I will keep writing anyway. For there will always be words. As my Twitter profile puts it: “Usually to be found wrestling with words. Mostly the words win.” Heavens, who wrote that rubbish?

Let’s give the last word on redundancy to Roger. Here’s how he ends his book: “I’d been dumped. Get over it. Move on.”