Apologies for my absence from this area: I took my two boys away for an uplifting week of cycling on a windswept and pretty Dutch island. I suppose they might have burned off a few more calories if I’d let them loose in the Rossebuurt for a few hours, but I’m getting respectable and middle class in old age.
We flew back into Southend Airport, which was was an absolute joy: four minutes from disembarking we were out of the airport building. This may be the best use yet that anyone has thought of for Essex. A few questions about puzzling news stories which occurred whilst I was away:
1.) Why is Boris Johnson getting stick over his tax arrangements? (I know he has now declared all and is squeaky clean). Boris using tax avoidance methods is not the same as Ken Livingstone using tax avoidance methods. Ken believes the rich should pay more tax and rails against tax avoidance. Boris believes the rich should pay much less tax. Why has nobody made this simple point: the issue is about hypocrisy?
2.) Why aren’t we supporting the coup in Mali? Are we worried we might upset our new allies, Al Qaeda? Our naïve support for the various “Arab Springs” have led to pro-Al Qaeda Islamist factions gaining an increasingly strong hand from the Maghreb to the Sinai. Egypt will soon be an Islamist country. The only people fighting this tide of medieval mentalists are the coup leaders in Mali. Good luck to them, deranged though they may well be.
3.) I thought the tanker drivers were supposed to be on strike, or something? I expected to return home by horse and trap to a house lit by candlelight. Was that all a confected crisis? And if so, confected by who? Cameron?
4.) When will the London establishment’s obsession with racism end? Does the presence of ten racist coppers mean the entire Met is racist?
More considered stuff tomorrow…
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