You couldn’t make it up. The Egyptian President started his visit to London yesterday, only hours after Britain had angered his government by cancelling all flights to Sharm-Al-Sheik. The resort’s bookings were already well done, with some hotels almost empty. This move will almost guarantee that few British holidaymakers will want to go there in future.
I think it’s rather appalling that President Sisi is having the red carpet rolled out for him. He ousted a democratically elected president and his regime has committed some terrible human rights abuses. I completely understand that ‘realpolitik’ dictates that we have to deal with regimes we don’t much like, but does that really have to involve inviting their leaders to Number 10 Downing Street? I’m not naïve enough to think we can run what Robin Cook used to call an ethical foreign policy, but this visit is surely something which could have been avoided.
*
What a shame it is that yet again the British establishment snubs Margaret Thatcher. The V&A obviously can’t look a gift horse in the mouth. It has snubbed the chance to host a collection of Margaret Thatcher’s clothes, and it seems as though the whole lot will now be auctioned off to individual buyers. This is the same museum that thought it relevant to host a collection of Kylie Minogue outfits, so I’m told.
However, it’s not just clothes that will be auctioned. There are some very interesting artefacts including one her red boxes. I might just try to bid for that if I can scrape together the £3-5,000 which is being estimated to sell for. Best not tell my partner, though. Shhhhh.
*
Margaret Thatcher used the phrase ‘the enemy within’ to describe the extremists who carried out picket line violence during the miners’ strike. I used the phrase to describe one of my LBC callers this week. His name was Khan from Ilford, and he rang in to accuse me of ‘demonising’ ISIS. I could hardly believe what I was hearing, so I took him on good and proper. The thing with people like this is that they will rarely answer a question you put to them. They always deflect it onto America or Israel, as if they’re somehow to blame for the fact that ISIS commit such terrible atrocities. Have a listen to the call, as you’ll be horrified. I had huge numbers of texts and tweets afterwards urging us to report him to the security services as an ISIS sympathiser. The big question is how many other people in this country would sympathise with his abhorrent views and how many of those would act on them. This growing view that everything that’s wrong in the world is down to America and Israel has to be countered, and so far no one is doing it very well. Even perfectly sane, rational people think there’s something in it.
*
I get some astonishing press releases from PR people who seem to think I’ll be remotely interested in putting them on the radio. Today’s missive came from someone who was keen to publicise their research which shows that most of won’t poo at work in case someone hears or smells us. I ask you. I suppose the Today Programme wouldn’t exist without one of their presenters saying every five minutes “a new report out today says…” or “new research shows that…”. Most of it is conducted by left leaning pressure groups or quangos who want to slag off the government or throw some shit at a right leaning politician. See what I did there?
*
So Nicola Sturgeon says that changes to the Scotland Bill will give the Scottish government the power to restore changes to tax credits. Fair enough. Just don’t expect English taxpayers to foot the bill, as we usually do.
*
The behaviour of the left wing trade union, the British Medical Association, becomes more disgraceful by the day. Jeremy Hunt offers their members an 11% raise on their basic pay and they accuse him of going over their heads directly to their members. Well you can hardly blame him, when the BMA consistently refuses to even talk to him. They accuse him of indulging in “megaphone diplomacy”, which is a bit rich coming from them. The BMA consistently lie about the Health Secretary’s position and it’s about time they were called out on it. If they won’t sit down and talk to him, is it any wonder Hunt is left with little option but to impose a settlement. There is an increasing number of junior doctors who are fed up with the extremists who are running the BMA. Hopefully they will have the courage to make their voices heard.
