Wednesday, March 27

Digested Week: Peaceful Pre-Grey Limbo Shattered by ‘Happy Birthday’ | John Crace


Monday

FC Magdeburg fans clearly have a sense of humour. In 2012, when his team was in last place in the fourth division of German football and had gone five games in a row without scoring, fans gathered behind the goal with a banner reading: “Don’t worry, we’ll show you where the goal”. and hundreds of large luminous arrows, all pointing to the back of the net.

Surprisingly it worked, with Magdeburg managing to score, though unfortunately not to win as they managed to concede two goals. Still baby steps and all that. I may be impatient, but I was itching to do something similar at Stamford Bridge on Sunday when I watched Spurs lose to Chelsea for the third time in as many weeks, the fourth overall this season, without scoring a single goal in the process. Worse yet, a goal disallowed for a foul on a defender to the side, Tottenham only had three shots on goal in the entire game, two of which were scraped straight at the keeper, and never threatened to score until the 88th minute, when a Harry Kane Headbutt well kept.

It wasn’t as depressing as my previous trip to Chelsea for the Carabao Cup, in which I can’t recall us ever looking like goalscorers, but it was still tough watching Spurs constantly give up possession and having to put up with home fans. singing “It Happened Again”. What did I have? Just as we all hoped it would. I’ve been going to Stamford Bridge for decades and only once have I seen Spurs win. Even players now seem to expect to lose. The pain isn’t necessarily over for the season, either. It will be law of the field, if we manage to beat Brighton in the fourth round, we will draw Chelsea in the next round of the FA Cup.

Tuesday

At the start of the week, it felt as if all of Westminster was in a more or less peaceful state of limbo, with everyone awaiting the release of Sue Gray’s report. That lasted less than a day before all hell broke loose.

First, on Monday night, ITV broke the news of another party in Downing Street, at which Carrie Johnson and 30 members of staff had taken over the cabinet room to surprise Boris with a cake and sing “Happy Birthday”. . Come this morning, the story had moved on, with Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick announcing that there would be a police investigation into various parties that took place in Downing Street and Whitehall.

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Strangely, some Boris apologists flipped the fact that Johnson was now facing a criminal investigation as good news for him. Almost immediately it was announced that Gray’s report would not be released until the police had completed their own report. This soon changed to parts of the Gray report that the police were not interested in could be published immediately, and the rest hidden, before word spread later in the afternoon that the full report could be published after everything.

However, as of evening, Downing Street had yet to see the report or say whether it would make it public when it did. In short, Westminster was in chaos with no one knowing what the hell was going on. The night ended with Jacob Rees-Mogg on Newsnight pledging his unwavering support for the prime minister no matter what he has done. Moral relativism was alive and well.

Wednesday

For years now, I have always considered myself one of the worst financial advisors in history. Before I cleaned up my business in the late 1980s, I worked for a company whose main business was selling life insurance linked to monthly savings policies, which even I could see was hopelessly poor value for money, as mainly they seemed designed to earn the same amount of money. for the company as possible. When I brought this up with my manager, he shrugged it off and said it was better for people to save some rather than nothing. Not entirely convinced by this, I passed my doubts on to potential clients, with the result that I barely sold any policies. I even managed to undersell my own endowment for our mortgage.

But it turns out he might have been up to something good after all. Last week my friend Alex reported a pension that he thinks I should have sold him in 1986. Now, needless to say, none of us remember me selling him this pension, but the dates match and he can’t think of any other person who could have sold it to you. Anyway, he must have paid £50 a month for four months before quitting, presumably because by then he had already realized that I had no idea what I was doing and had already been fired anyway. the company.

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Mysteriously though, the £200 has since turned into a healthy £8,000. Most notably, Alex discovered that when he came to withdraw the pension, he was paying an annuity of £1,000. He didn’t ask why he was offering such a generous return. In case it was a mistake. So if he had had more faith in the pension and stayed true to it, he might have been a made man. Had he continued to contribute for another four years, he could have earned a £10,000 pension. So he just thinks what he could have gotten if he had stayed with it longer. I wish he had been dumb enough to buy one of the pensions he was selling.

I've always said that in the Tory party we believe in having our cake and eating it.
I’ve always said that in the Tory party we believe in having our cake and eating it. Photograph: Andrew Parsons/No 10 Downing St

Thursday

As everyone is still waiting for Sue Gray’s report to be published, I have filled the time by collecting some of the excuses Conservative MPs have been making for Boris Johnson’s behaviour. Less than a month ago, the standard defense of most conservatives was to say, “Let’s wait and see what Sue Gray finds.” Now, everyone who bothers to defend him in public has long since given up pretending that Boris – or The Suspect, as he should be more accurately known – has told the truth and been busy building his own realities.

Pride of honor goes to Northern Ireland minister Conor Burns, who tried to convince Channel 4 viewers that Johnson had been “ambushed with cake”. That Colin the Caterpillar can be a real bastard. Meanwhile, Andrew Rosindell said it wasn’t like The Suspect “robbed a bank”. Imagine having such low expectations of a prime minister. Edward Leigh thought it was absurd that Johnson could be knocked down for a piece of cake when we were on the verge of war. A claim that might have been more convincing had Boris been in Ukraine or spent some time negotiating a peaceful solution for the country rather than fighting a sleazy scandal at home.

Theresa Villiers thought it was okay for The Suspect to go to as many parties as he wanted because he had been prime minister while the vaccination program was going on, Mark Jenkinson thought all the parties were a media conspiracy, while Richard Bacon thought he would lie about what he wanted. What they were doing was too trivial an offense to be worth mentioning.

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Crispin Blunt had the most unusual take. He was sure that everyone else had broken the law, so there would be no problem if the prime minister did too. Well done, Crispin. Insult the vast majority of people who did comply with the law and did not see their families. Even when they were dying. Keep it classy.

boris johnson
‘I fought the law and the law won.’ Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images

Friday

Our dog, Herbie, is now older than me and my wife. In dog years, at least. In September he turned 10 years old and he is already beginning to notice his age. He still goes for a walk every morning and is an avid hunter of both squirrels and sticks. In the past, he was still quite lively when he got home, but now he just wants to curl up on the couch or in bed and nap for the rest of the day. When night comes, he perks up and runs around the garden a couple of times to see if there are any foxes, but then he’s happy to climb into bed when we do.

It’s not the first time it’s occurred to me that Herbie is showing me how to age gracefully. For starters, he’s in better shape, he has no signs of arthritis, while I have an artificial knee and a cracking back, and he doesn’t seem to moan or worry about things he can’t do anymore. He just gets on with things.

I, on the other hand, still miss not being able to go running, despite not having been able to do so for more than 10 years. Cross-training at the gym simply can’t replace the freedom of exercising outdoors. In short, I just don’t accept my limitations. I can see the future and it’s not pretty. There’s no way I’m going to have a Stannah stairlift in the house; I prefer to crawl upstairs on my hands and knees. I say it now, of course. Look at this space.

Week digested, digested: Grayja-vu


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