Boris Johnson The Liar is no longer Prime Minister?

Amid a dramatic series of resignations of government ministers over the last 48 hours, Boris Johnson has finally resigned his post as leader of the Tory party. Normally this would mean that he is also no longer Prime Minister but nothing is normal concerning Johnson! Like others before him, he intends to stay in the role until a new party leader is chosen but the chorus of voices saying that they don't trust him to fulfill the role of caretaker is loud and growing. His record is against him!

Of course we all know that Boris Johnson, in his time as the Telegraph’s Europe correspondent, made his reputation by inventing Euromyths about straight bananas and one size fits all condoms etc.; in effect creating the Big Euromyth which he used together with the big red bus "£350 million a week" lie, to narrowly win the Brexit referendum. 

As Prime Minister he has lied repeatedly and presided over probably the most corrupt and unprincipled government in UK history, but when I saw this interview with Chris Patten, in May 2016, I was surprised that he was able to call Boris Johnson a liar so directly and without any risk of legal proceedings for slander (from 1:42).

I investigated further and discovered that Johnson was sacked from the Times in 1987 following a story in which he fabricated a quote from his godfather, an Oxford academic, who was ridiculed for Boris' inaccuracies.
  

He has also been sacked from Michael Howard’s shadow ministerial team in 2004 for lying to Guy Black, (Howard’s press secretary), David MacLean (the Tory Chief Whip) and the Press about an affair that he was having with Petronella Wyatt that resulted in her having an abortion. 

But the most revealing episode of his character so far has been in a recorded telephone conversation with Darius Guppy, one of his Old Etonian chums, in which he agreed to get the address of a News of the World journalist, Stuart Collier, so that Guppy could arrange an assault intended to scare him off investigating a fraud case in which Guppy was involved. This took place in 1990 when Johnson was the Daily Telegraph's Europe correspondent. In an interview with Eddie Mair, Johnson subsequently denied that he had done anything wrong and said that he was just humouring his friend.  

Judge for yourself whether he was asking Guppy questions about how much he was going to hurt Stuart Collier in order to humour him. 

Someone has requested that this video be age restricted by Youtube even though it contains no content likely to disturb anyone, even a young child. I suspect political interference!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDJWkS2A9T0 

We are now in a period of post-truth politics in which skilled individuals, who are good at saying what people want to hear, whether it's true or not, can rise above reasonable and sensible discussion and get away with it.

Did the 92,153 Tory Party members who elected him really want a proven liar leading the country? 

I know I didn't!

Why has Putin isolated himself?

 

After the meeting with Macron it was said that the separation was necessary because Macron refused to be vaccinated by a Russian vaccine. Well,who would allow the Russians to inject them with who knows what?

But does that explain why he has separated himself from his security council like this?

Or why he is seated so far from his Minister of Defence and Head of The Armed Forces.

Is he scared of covid, or is he perhaps afraid of an assassination attempt?

In either case it offers a graphic insight into his state of mind!

Germany’s Folly

Germany is learning a hard lesson about relying on Russia as a trading partner at the same time as closing nuclear power stations and putting all your faith in wind and solar power.

In 2011, after the tsunami and the resulting release of radioactive material from the Fukushima nuclear plant, Angela Merkel and the German legislature decided to pursue an energy policy under which nuclear power would be wholly replaced with renewables, the “EnergieWende”. In 2019 they also decided to close all coal fired power stations by 2038.

Coal and nuclear plants are base load generators which reliably produce electricity 24/7 at a steady output. Apart from hydro, renewables such as solar and wind are by contrast, weather dependent, variable and can be unproductive for days. Like other countries aggressively pursuing renewables, Germany currently has no technologies which can provide energy storage on a grid scale that will be sufficient to cover for periods of low output from renewables.

So if you have abandoned coal and nuclear, and wind and solar are not productive, what other options are available.

You could import oil or Liquefied Natural Gas LNG. In 2018 Germany’s oil imports represented 34.3% of their primary energy consumption, but practically none was used for electricity generation so the infrastructure is lacking. LNG in Europe typically comes from Russia or the Middle East and has to be transported by specialized ship from its place of production to ports in Europe or on other continents, which makes it expensive. Furthermore, recent wars make one question the reliability of LNG supplies in the context of energy security.

Germany's primary energy source of choice, to fill in periods of low renewable output, is natural gas. Germany has no gas of its own and buys it from many countries but the largest share is from Russia. In December 2021 the Federal Office of Economics and Export Control showed that 34% of its total gas supply came by Russian pipeline. This is, or was, expected to increase as more renewables are brought online. So Germany was going to become more and more dependent on Russian gas.

Germany also imports coal from Russia. The coal group VDKi said 53% of hard coal received by German power generators and steelmakers came from Russia last year.

Therefore, as recent events have brought sharply into focus, Germany’s energy security is highly uncertain as a result of both the EnergieWende and over-reliance on Russia.

In January 2022 Germany closed three operational nuclear power stations thus removing 4GW of base load generation capacity. It plans to close the remaining three plants next year. This is at a time when energy prices are soaring, and at 0.24-0.30 Euros /kWh, Germany already has the highest in Europe.

Contrast this with France, which in the seventies after the oil crisis, decided to build a fleet of nuclear power stations in order to reinforce and maintain its energy security. It currently exports 3bn Euros/year of electricity to its neighbours and its energy costs are  0.13-0.15 euros/kWh.  France has just announced that it will build six more nuclear plants.

Following the violent behaviour of Russia, and its oppressive rulers, Germany is now facing the harsh reality that the largest share of their pipeline gas supplies may be cut off.

This was all totally predictable and I am astonished that Germany’s rulers could not foresee the potential dangers of their short-sighted decisions.

It seems that some Western politicians can be as deluded in their assessment of risks, and their world view, as any Russian dictator.