Just about to do the final Podcast for the US circle. What a pleasure watching these 12 episodes. The joy of watching Shubham telling us that social media is the bubonic plague of modern times. The guy who doesn’t know flirting or emojis. I felt a distinct connection with him and sent him an email immediately!!
Today Boris explained to Dan Walker that he was surfacing through the ice as a submarine. Bizarre. Colourful and typically Boris! “The submarine is crashing through the ice floes. The conning tower is emerging through the ice floes right now. Here I am. I gave two press conferences yesterday. I want to be as available as I possibly can.” (not on holiday as you can see)
About extradition from the US: “I’ll be clear with you, the chances of America responding by sending Anne Sacoolas to this country are very low. That’s not what they do,”
Brexit: “Bung a bob for a Big Ben bong”/ with trade deals “epically likely”
About FLYBE: “It’s not for government to step in and save companies that simply run into trouble.People will understand that there are limits commercially to what a government can do to rescue any particular firm. But what we will do is ensure we have the regional connectivity that this country needs. That is part of our agenda of uniting and levelling up.”
Harry and Megan: absolutely confident they will manage “much more easily without running commentary from politicians”
The North: giving “people the chances to exploit their talents.”
Iran nuclear deal: “If we’re going to get rid of it, let’s replace it with the Trump deal. That’s what we need to see. President Trump is a great dealmaker by his own account and many others.”
Last week, I went to see Alex who won the first season of the Circle. We made a few videos each, the first part of mine I have just uploaded here.
Alex tested me on acronyms and I was fairly useless. It follows on from an exchange I had in the Circle with Woody. Alex’s video is here:
Here is my drawing of Alex:
Here are a selection of drawings that illustrate the recording (links enclosed below) I have made reading Dickens’ Christmas Carol:
An absolutely fantastic friendly from Campbell and Clarke showing us EXACTLY how to do it. Here, then, is the quest of the day- How to get Johnson to steal a chip from New Labour and unite an enlarged middle of his party as well as silence the fruitcakes and loonies at both ends. At the same time, how to unite and bring together a frankly divided country and to focus on reality rather than a never-ending “what might have been”.
And now to Alastair Campbell: I was so impressed by this man. He has the mind to cut through all the nonsense and to see what needs to be done practically. He also demonstrated a charm and ease that I had thought was vanishing in the corridors of Westminster. I am deeply heartened by this programme and what I saw today. Well done, all!
To see these two men spar was a rare insight into the carefully-guarded secret of centrist politics; it is self-deprecatory, undecided, but remorseful and actually embarrassable- ultimately, it can be held responsible (or they can) which is more than can be said for the Boris bus, Farage’s madness, May’s dithering (and hiding behind bureaucracy) or Corbyn’s dogmatic socialism (I enjoyed Ken Clarke’s observation that Corbyn was “naive”: exactly.) Oh what a joy to see intelligence so casually and confidently displayed.
There is certainly hope for the future!
I have been drawing pictures over the last few days. Here are some of them along with a link to my “Middle of the week” video. I shall try to keep up a mid-week vlog until Christmas.
There is a big debate about anti-semitism in the Labour party. It seems to me that this is really a debate about the quality of leadership that is offered by Jeremy Corbyn, and Miriam Margolyes, a committed Labour supported and of course a Jewish actor, yesterday on Channel 4 put it rather succinctly.
The question remains whether the Chief rabbi is right to get involved in politics during an election. He talked about “a poison sanctioned from the very top – has taken root” but what he well knows is that this has been ongoing for a good few years. It is nothing new. So the newsworthy issue is the fact that the Chief rabbi has spoken out at a time that is judged to cause maximum damage to the Labour campaign. What is generally agreed is that Corbyn has not dealt with the underlying issue well enough and that there is a swelling and vocal group within labour that smudges the distinction between being Jewish and being Israeli. There is a distinction between the two and Miriam Margolyes makes it adroitly in her interview (she goes further in fact and says she is not a zionist and that there are many things about the current state of Israel that need to change. She emhasizes that she does not in any way question the existence of the state of Israel or its legitimacy. I would be more cautious than Margolyes and simply point to the impeachment of Netanyahu as a demonstration that the rot is now identified). It is about language and about the way anger can slip into prejudice, but it is also about mob mentality and Corbyn fails to understand this. When it comes to leadership, it is not enough to look at individual failings but to strike at the problem. The problem is a nasty use of language and a casual disregard for how it is perceived. In the end, it is about arrogance.
The Chief rabbi did not specifically tell people to vote against Labour. He urged them to vote with “conscience”. He also said that there were 130 cases of anti-semitism in the labour party that had not yet been processed. (There were 635 complaints at the beginning of the year)
To prove the point of his criticism, however, on 4 occasions today Corbyn has refused to apologise to the wider Jewish community for his failure to stamp out anti-semitism in the Labour party. He has admittedly, in the past, now apologised for calling Hamaz and Hezbollah “friends” back in 2009 and has eventually permitted labour’s definition of anti-semitism to be brought in line with that of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.
Diane Abbott today, however, said she did not think Jewish people were “anxious and frightened”. I suppose she knows Jewish people better than the chief rabbi, or is this another instance of the “arrogance” of the labour leadership? To their credit, Labour MPs seeking re-election, Wes Streeting (for Ilford North) and Jess Phillips (Birmingham) have both apologised to the Chief Rabbi for the way this has been handled, saying they will do whatever they can to “win back trust” in the community. Again, their apology suggests the leader remains out of sync.
One of the great masters of TV but also of modern media in general has died. His detah was announced about an hour ago and I have drawn a very quick picture of him which I am posting in memory here.
There is an interesting story that William III may have been gay, or at least had affairs with two of his soldiers. They were both there when he died. 
animate-tim.com 