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Just how representative is Boris of the average UK citizen?

(41 Posts)
mcem Mon 07-May-18 18:41:35

Boris now announces his support for Trump to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize! Not in my name!

varian Sun 24-Jun-18 15:40:57

Alastair Carmicheal was vindicated by the court who concluded that when he was told by the person who had overheard Nichola Sturgeon tell the French diplomat that she would prefer Cameron to win the election rather Milliband, he believed it to be true. When he repeated it he may not have got it exactly verbatim, but the gist of it was correct. Many others in Scotland and elsewhere also believed that when, perhaps not realising she might be overheard, Nichola Sturgeon said this, she was for once telling the truth.

paddyann Sun 24-Jun-18 14:15:41

Alistair Carmichael of the Lib Dems stood up in court and said that ALL politicians lie .This after Mr Carmichael fabricated a story and then supposedly it "leaked" to the press.Despite the court finding him guilty of the offence he walked free and THEN had the Joseph Rowantree foundation pay his legal expenses.Couldn't make it up could you .Either the fact he happily admits to being a liar and the foundation PAYING legal fees FOR a liar .
Lying apparently is the thing to do if you want to get on in Politics as Boris has also proven .

varian Sun 24-Jun-18 12:38:46

Theresa May admits Boris Johnson is to miss crucial Heathrow vote despite Tory MPs being ordered to back government plans. Foreign secretary had vowed to 'lie down with you in front of those bulldozers', but will not turn up in the Commons when colleagues decide on the controversial proposal.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-heathrow-vote-third-runway-uk-theresa-may-foreign-secretary-a8411166.html

Boris Johnson's lies hardly get noticed these days. We have come to expect it. His colleague Greg Hands had the decency to resign as a minister because he also opposes another runway at Heathrow.

www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2018/06/greg-hands-heathrow-resignation-leaves-boris-johnson-tight-spot

If Boris does not resign, do you think he will fulfill his promise and lie down in front of a bulldozer - or will he just lie?

varian Tue 22-May-18 10:53:11

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 39, was taken to a court on Saturday morning and informed by a judge she was likely to be found guilty of spreading propaganda against the Iranian regime, the Free Nazanin campaign said.

A number of demonstrations have been held in London in support of the mother. Speaking to Sky News, her husband Richard Ratcliffe said his wife was "shaken" and she has spoken to the British ambassador, urging Rob Macaire to protest to Iranian authorities and also visit her in prison.

Mr Ratcliffe, who met Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson in March, said he had been "quite cross and vocal" with UK authorities at points during her long-running case, and was hoping to meet senior officials at the Foreign Office later this week. Last November, Mr Johnson was accused of inflaming the situation with comments he made about her, for which he later apologised, saying he retracted "any suggestion she was there (in Iran) in a professional capacity (when she was arrested in 2016)".

news.sky.com/story/nazanin-zaghari-ratcliffe-told-she-will-be-convicted-on-new-charges-11380534

It is bad enough that this buffoon Boris Johnson should have managed to become an MP, but it is truly appalling that Theresa May thought fit to appoint him Foreign Secretary, a post where his lies and buffoonery have caused real harm to people like Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

Jalima1108 Sun 13-May-18 18:31:35

They may start out at Mr or Ms Ordinary lilypollen but rarely stay 'ordinary'!

lilypollen Sun 13-May-18 18:05:20

How representative is any politician of Mr/Mrs Average Citizen?

GillT57 Sun 13-May-18 17:46:20

Boris Johnson is a dangerous individual masquerading as a loveable rogue, a bit of a buffoon. He has fooled a few in the past but only a complete idiot would fall for the act now. Links posted on here have proved that he is proven liar so why anyone continued to believe the nonsense he spouted during his Brexit campaign is astonishing. Teresa May has wisely, in my opinion, kept Boris close alongwith Gove, Leadsom and others who have proved to be duplicitous 'Keep your friends close and your enemies closer'. Boris cares only about one thing and that is Boris. He has publicly humiliated his prime minister, his cabinet colleagues and his country, and endangered the lives of British citizens.

varian Sun 13-May-18 17:23:47

Two years on, May’s decision, (to appoint BJ as Foreign Secretary) to put it mildly, has not aged well. Johnson has performed the rare act of pissing inside the tent as well as outside of it. He has routinely humiliated May at home and the United Kingdom abroad. Indeed, it sometimes feel as if he is writing a book entitled 100 ways to cheat the sack.

Johnson’s latest offence was to assert last month that British laboratory Porton Down was “absolutely categorical” (had “no doubt”) that the poison used in the Salisbury attack originated from Russia. In fact, as it transpired on Tuesday, UK scientists could not determine “the precise source”. Johnson’s typically loose lips gifted Russia its biggest political victory since the attack (the Foreign Office, to the Kremlin’s glee, was forced to delete an inaccurate tweet).

The surprise is that anyone should be surprised. Johnson is an accident permanently waiting to happen. This is the man who wrongly told the Foreign Affairs Select Committee that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was in Iran to train journalists (the second anniversary of her imprisonment passed with no prospect of release), who accused French president François Hollande of contemplating Nazi-style “punishment beatings”, who said the Libyan city of Sirte could be like Dubai once “the dead bodies” were cleared away, and who recited Rudyard Kipling’s colonial-era poem, “Mandalay”, in Myanmar (forcing the British ambassador to interject). Johnson is one of the world's foremost practitioners of anti-diplomacy.

His overweening ambition to become prime minister has led him to shamelessly flout collective responsibility. His 2017 Conservative leadership bid (disguised as a verbose Daily Telegraph article) disrupted the party’s conference and helped precipitate the speech that nearly killed Theresa May.

Again, the surprise is that anyone should be surprised. Dishonesty, ineptitude, truculence and narcissism are the hallmarks of a man who was sacked by the Times for fabricating a quote and by Conservative leader Michael Howard for lying about an affair. In defiance of the nation’s finest economist and statisticians, he has continued to promote the mendacious claim that the UK will gain £350m a week or more if it leaves the European Union (in fact, it is forecast to endure a net fiscal loss of nearly £300m a week).

www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2018/04/boris-johnson-has-achieved-impossible-he-s-been-even-worse-expected

Fennel Sun 13-May-18 16:59:02

When I see a photo of him with his arm round some bonny young lass I wonder why questions have never been asked about his 'peccadilloes'.

lemongrove Sun 13-May-18 16:54:36

Jalima grin my blonde hair, although longer than his, does look equally messy first thing.

lemongrove Sun 13-May-18 16:52:49

Although Boris can be a loose cannon at times, T May must value his input as a cabinet minister, because she could, but doesn’t sack him.Furthermore, she didn’t have to make him Foreign Sec so she must have wanted that.
Further to that, there is a lot of newspaper / social media chat about these things, but more goes on in the cabinet meetings and in Westminster than we are ever going to know.
Being constantly melodramatic sells papers and gets the chatterers of all media churned up.

Wheniwasyourage Sun 13-May-18 16:51:35

What variansaid.

When the awful Boris went to Washington on that trip he did not actually meet the President, I understand, but went on some TV programme which Mr Trump watches, to speak to him that way. What, I wonder does that say about the famous "special relationship"?

varian Sun 13-May-18 14:53:19

The nation’s most senior foreign affairs Minister was sent to the capital of our most important international ally – under instruction from the Prime Minister – in an attempt to convince this ally not to embark upon a course of action that could lead to a war in the Middle East and a conflagration that could consume the globe. And he chose that precise moment, and stage, to stab his Prime Minister in the back. She was, he told the watching world, the architect of a ‘crazy’ foreign policy over Brexit.

She was not in charge of her Cabinet, he said, with colleagues voicing ‘different concerns about different aspects of the argument’. Mrs May seemed to want to be ‘locked in the lunar pull of Brussels’, he chided, rather than looking to deepen ties with the US.

The international community was trying frantically to stop a descent towards war. The Prime Minister was trusting her Foreign Secretary to throw his shoulder into that effort. And her trust was betrayed. Because even then – with the world teetering on the abyss – her Foreign Secretary still had only one thought. Himself.

www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-5722369/DAN-HODGES-Foreign-Secretary-proved-cares-just-one-thing-colossal-ambition.html#ixzz5FOCkOBDm

Theresa May is constantly derided as a weak and feeble PM who has no real leadership qualities. What she should now do is sack Boris Johnson. He is totally unfit to be Foreign Secretary and an utter disgrace to the UK. She has the power to sack him and that is what she should do. By sacking BJ now she could reassert her authority, put the other lying brexiters in their place and demonstrate that she is fit to lead our country away from the brink of disaster.

Jalima1108 Fri 11-May-18 10:29:43

Yes, probably, although not many of us have got that blond hair!
The colour is lovely but the style leaves something to be desired, rather like mine when I wake up in the mornings and spend ages trying to organise into some kind of style.

MaizieD Fri 11-May-18 09:50:55

I do think he is quite representative racially. Seeing as he is 'mixed race', as probably most of us are...

Anniebach Fri 11-May-18 08:28:42

Is there an average UK citizen ? Who/what is ?

M0nica Fri 11-May-18 07:34:46

Boris has been caught out lying more than once.

dbDB77 Fri 11-May-18 00:05:33

Anniel - completely agree with you about Frank Field - an excellent MP.

MaizieD Thu 10-May-18 23:57:02

www.independent.co.uk/voices/why-are-we-so-surprised-that-boris-johnson-lied-when-he-s-been-sacked-for-lying-twice-before-a7105976.html

Allygran1 Thu 10-May-18 20:53:24

Varian tell me more about Boris Johnson being sacked for lying please.

You know I really don't know how we determine what the "average UK citizen" is composed of. Have we any ideas on this?

Allygran1 Thu 10-May-18 20:49:15

Well said Anniel.

varian Thu 10-May-18 16:57:57

Boris Johnson, someone not previously identified as having an interest in healthcare, will forever be remembered for standing beside a large red bus promising an extra £350 million per week for the NHS. This, the British public was promised, would be available only if they would vote to leave the European Union. Given the obvious problems that the NHS was facing, many people found this an attractive argument, with some of the main backers of Brexit regarding it as their winning argument.

There was, of course, one small problem. It wasn’t true. This was pointed out to Mr Johnson at the time by the chair of the UK Statistics Authority, who wrote in April 2016 that “The continued use of a gross figure in contexts that imply it is a net figure is misleading and undermines trust in official statistics.” Undeterred, Mr Johnson, by now Foreign Secretary, repeated the claim in September 2017, leading to a further rebuke by the new chair of the Statistics Authority, who wrote “I am surprised and disappointed that you have chosen to repeat the figure of £350 million per week… It is a clear misuse of official statistics.” And in January 2018 he repeated it yet again. The main criticism at the time was that this figure took no account of the rebates that the United Kingdom receives on its gross contributions or the money that is returned to the country through European Union programmes. It was possible to take these into account, and the resulting figure was far smaller than that claimed. Yet, as others pointed out, even that took no account of the damage that would be done to the British economy as a consequence of disruption of trading arrangements with the remaining European Union.

blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2018/04/19/martin-mckee-they-promised-us-350-million-a-week-for-the-nhs-the-reality-will-be-very-different/

When he was a journalist Boris Johnson was sacked from The Times for lying. Would the "average UK citizen" ever get away with telling such blatant lies?

M0nica Tue 08-May-18 23:06:01

There isn't such a thing as an average British citizen. We are an extremely diverse nation. It is like saying that the average age of people living in the country is 45, or some such figure. It tells you nothing and many more people are not 45 than are.

Ethnically Boris is representative of many people living in this ethnically diverse and multi ethnic state. Boris Johnson is a very clever operator who hides his devious ways behind his public persona as a buffoon. I wouldn't trust him as far as I could see him with my eyes shut.

Bridgeit Tue 08-May-18 20:03:16

I agree ,very well put Anniell

Anniel Tue 08-May-18 19:51:21

Not a very easy question to answer!. Boris may not be representative of many of us. but then I would not consider most MPs to be like the rest of us! I don't identify with Jeremy C who has been in Parliament for most of his life. I am a Conservative but there are labour MPS I do identify with. I admire Frank Field the member for Birkenhead and even though he is a bit of a maverick I do like Dennis Skinner, who gives a lot of his salary to good causes. I do not think that Boris is a good foreign secretary however bright he is. As a rather ancient person I think we are very short of real, inspiring politicians. They are mostly only interested in keeping their seats. MSM also inhibits MPS from giving us their true opinions because anything they say that is not absolutely politically correct will make headlines in the red tops the next day.