All things Boris: has it really come to this?

[Scot Dutchy]

Well Sasha (as he is called by "friends") is being placed on the escalator to the tory exit.

[Scot Dutchy]

[Scot Dutchy]

Chumocracy on holiday.

Boris Johnson’s holiday villa linked to offshore tax havens, documents suggest

Marbella villa was lent to prime minister by Zac Goldsmith

With its two swimming pools, organic farm and private woodland, it may have seemed the ideal place to escape for a prime minister hoping to get away from it all.

But the sprawling Marbella estate where Boris Johnson has been staying this week may be an awkward reminder of the questions he faced – and managed to avoid – in the wake of the Pandora papers revelations last week.

Documents seen by the Guardian indicate the luxurious villa, lent to him by environment minister Zac Goldsmith, has been held by an opaque offshore structure based in multiple tax havens.

The papers suggest the minister and his family may have owned the property through a Maltese company held by companies in the Turks and Caicos Islands and administered by a wealth planning firm based in Switzerland.

Talk about fiddling when Rome burns.

[Sean Hayden]

Is that supposed to mean something? Is there another way of owning such things?

[Scot Dutchy]

It is a product of corruption but that is normal in the States is it not?

[Sean Hayden]

If it's corrupt it's fully managed by Europeans.

But seriously, is there another way of owning such things? I guess what I'm questioning is the usefulness of pointing out that someone's in bed with the devil on paper; that's kind of the way of the world --when in Rome...

[Scot Dutchy]

I am not saying we are angels in Europe but ... You Americans have made it an art. Corruption is just second nature; every man has his price after all.

[Svartalf]

In corrupt land, do as the corrupt do, let Boris doe a blowjob to a pig while being fucked by trump's dick

[Scot Dutchy]

Boris ‘Bertie Booster’ Johnson serves up climate baloney for breakfast

PM forces Bill Gates and other investors to stomach a net zero speech peppered with recycled gags

Sit back and enjoy the ride. Here was Boris Johnson in his comfort zone. A conference room at the Science Museum where he could indulge his fantasy as the Bertie Booster of British politics by giving his standard upbeat, cut out and keep after dinner speech – never mind that it was actually shortly after breakfast – to an invited audience of some of the world’s richest men and women at a Global Investment Summit.

This was Boris at his most optimistic. No need to mention the inconvenient truths of food and lorry driver shortages. Covid infection rates increasing at an alarming rate could also be safely ignored. Those were all just present day irritants. The story he wanted to tell was of a future in which Britain would lead the world to the promised land of net zero by 2050. A speech that was light on detail but peppered with recycled gags. Not that Boris got many laughs. Perhaps billionaires don’t have the same sense of humour as the rest of us. Or maybe they’d heard them all before at Davos.

Dominic Cummings has described the prime minister as an out of control shopping trolley veering from side to side down the aisles, and Johnson’s 15-minute cameo had all the hallmarks of someone playing Supermarket Sweep. Boris began by reminding everyone of the inventions that failed before attributing the success of the Covid vaccine to free market capitalism. Some might remember government funding and the NHS also playing a part. He then skipped to a passage where Brexit was creating new opportunities for investment – that will have come as a surprise to many of the business leaders who have relocated outside the UK – and invited everyone to join Britain in the green revolution.


Boris also went on to say there were huge profits to be made from investing in long-term solutions to the climate emergency. Gates looked at Johnson in amazement. He hadn’t realised he had just signed a deal with a serial lunatic. Hadn’t he already said the whole point about these speculative technologies was that some would fail and that there might not be bumper returns? Or any returns? Certainly not in the foreseeable future.

Just to make sure everyone got the point, Gates repeated his caveat. Boris ignored him. He was in his bubble. He was the centre of attention. People with access to $24tn were his captive audience. And he was funnier than all of them. That’s what really counted. All was well with the world.

[Svartalf]

I hate seeing that swine in anything that would remind on of Wodehouses' work.

[Brian Peacock]

Yeah. Wooster was essentially a harmless buffoon. Johnson is dangerous, and doesn't have a Jeeves.

[Scot Dutchy]

Gove does not count? He is a good fag.

[Scot Dutchy]

Boris Johnson used £2.6m Downing Street briefing room to watch new Bond film

Costs were said to have been met by companies involved and similar screenings have happened previously

Boris Johnson used his White House-style press briefing room, which cost the taxpayer £2.6m, to enjoy a screening of the new James Bond film with No 10 staff.

It was understood the prime minister attended the screening of No Time To Die at No 9 Downing Street after work hours on Thursday.

Lobby briefings with Westminster’s political journalists instead took place in a room in No 10 that day, as well as on Friday.

Chumocracy at work.

[Scot Dutchy]

More Chumocracy:

Goldsmith family funded Boris Johnson’s Marbella holiday

Update to register of ministerial interests does not specify how much PM’s break last month was worth

Boris Johnson has admitted receiving a free holiday at a luxurious Spanish villa linked to Zac Goldsmith, the former MP who was given a peerage and job by the prime minister.

The latest update to the register of ministerial interests revealed that Johnson’s near week-long stay in the Marbella property in October was funded by the Goldsmith family.

It did not specify how much the holiday was worth but this is likely to be declared separately in the register of MPs’ interests. The property is marketed online for rentals, reportedly for as much as £25,000 a week

The register said: “The prime minister has a longstanding personal friendship with the Goldsmith family and, in that capacity, in October 2021 stayed in a holiday home in southern Spain, which was provided free of charge by the Goldsmiths. Given Lord Goldsmith is a minister of the crown, the arrangement has accordingly been declared.”

No 10 has previously declined to answer questions about whether there could be a perceived conflict of interest, given that Johnson awarded Goldsmith a peerage after the latter lost his Richmond seat in 2019, and allowed him to keep his job as an environment minister.

After the holiday, the Guardian revealed that documents indicated that the luxurious Goldsmith family villa had been held by an opaque offshore structure based in multiple tax havens.

[Scot Dutchy]

Boris Johnson sleaze crisis deepens amid pressure on Covid deals

Sir John Major attacks PM’s actions as ‘shameful’ while poll shows slump in Tory support

The row over Tory sleaze reached new heights on Saturday night as MPs demanded details of any lobbying by Owen Paterson of government ministers on behalf of a company that won almost £500m of Covid-19 related contracts last year.

The crisis facing Boris Johnson also worsened after the former Tory prime minister, Sir John Major, described his successor’s attempts to block Paterson’s suspension from parliament last week for breaching paid advocacy rules as “shameful”.

A new Opinium poll for the Observer shows ratings for Johnson and his party have slumped dramatically since last weekend, with the prime minister’s personal approval figures hitting their lowest ever level.

With Tory MPs already fearing their party is regaining its reputation for financial impropriety after last week’s chaotic events involving Paterson, all the main opposition parties turned up the pressure.

Labour, the SNP, the Liberal Democrats and the Green party all switched their focus to the award of pandemic contracts, demanding investigations by the cabinet secretary, Simon Case, or the parliamentary commissioner for standards, Kathryn Stone, into Paterson’s contacts with ministers during the pandemic.

Paterson, who announced his resignation as an MP last week, was paid more than £8,000 a month for 16 hours’ consultancy work by Randox Laboratories, until he resigned from the role on Friday. Randox was awarded two Covid testing contracts last year worth nearly £480m without the normal competition. Government officials cited the urgency of the pandemic as grounds for not advertising the contracts.

Chumocracy. The idiot cant live any other way.