"Cabinet: Leadsom in, Gove out, Hunt stays"

[TaiShang]

http://www.bbc.com/news/live/uk-pol...ng&ns_source=twitter&ns_linkname=news_central


Within hours, she made Boris Johnson, the former London mayor who led the Brexit campaign, foreign secretary.

***

Boris Johnson wins The Spectator’s President Erdogan Offensive Poetry competition
Douglas Murray

May 2016

I’m pleased to announce that we have a winner of The Spectator’s President Erdogan Offensive Poetry competition, and here it is:

There was a young fellow from Ankara

Who was a terrific wankerer

Till he sowed his wild oats

With the help of a goat

But he didn’t even stop to thankera.

The author of this winning entry is former Mayor of London and chief Brexiteer, Boris Johnson MP.

I am sure there will be those who claim this is a stitch-up. I am aware that Boris’s entry – which came via an interview with Die Weltwoche – commits two solecisms. Amid the first deluge of entries I intemperately announced (via Twitter) a unilateral ban on this rhyme for ‘Ankara’. I also think Boris should have settled either on ‘goats’ and ‘oats’ or ‘goat’ and ‘oat’. As a classical scholar himself he must know that the rhyme is not wholly perfect and that on such occasions one must find a way around the problem and simply go with the plural both times or not at all.

Nevertheless, I am the Vizier of this competition and what I say goes. Despite trying to follow Erdogan’s example I have not snaffled all the prize money for myself. And I am quite sure – though have yet to confirm with him – that the former London Mayor will happily give his prize money of £1000 to a deserving charity. There are a number of charities whose giving details I will urge on Boris in the coming days. But for myself the appeal of Boris’s entry was there from the outset. Certainly there were better poems. For sure there were filthier ones (and may I take this opportunity to congratulate the person who got the term ‘dirty trombone’ into their entry? The discovery that something called a ‘Turkey slap’ already exists also inspired several readers to new poetic heights).

But this award is entirely anti-meritocratic. For myself, I think it a wonderful thing that a British political leader has shown that Britain will not bow before the putative Caliph in Ankara. Erdogan may imprison his opponents in Turkey. Chancellor Merkel may imprison Erdogan’s critics in Germany. But in Britain we still live and breathe free. We need no foreign potentate to tell us what we may think or say. And we need no judge (especially no German judge) to instruct us over what we may find funny.

For those of you who haven’t been following the story, here is the link which explains why we are running the competition.


***

@mike2000 is back ,

 

[Green Arrow]

Well he is going to be the next foreign minister now.

 

[Steve781]

"Wankerer" and "thankera" are not words.

 

[bsruzm]

@TaiShang , your title doesn't fit the link you've posted above, were you so desperate doing that?

Original title: "Cabinet: Leadsom in, Gove out, Hunt stays"

@waz , what do you think of such flaming troll's on a forum you moderate? Ban those, who do such thing often or those, who naturally respond?

 

[xenon54 out]

Gotta give it to Erdogan he is keeping you guys busy.

 

[CrimsonFury]

Not that I care much for Erdogan, it's still disturbing that a twat who likened Putin to Dobby and insulted the Turkish president in a poem is made the top diplomat of the U.K. Going to be fun to see what the clown will do to be taken seriously as he has proper responsibility on him this time...

 

[damm1t]

Even the Brits are desperately sorry about the situation.

Britain faces being a laughing stock after Boris Johnson is made Foreign Secretary by Theresa May

http://indy100.independent.co.uk/ar...y-about-our-new-foreign-secretary--b1AjvATnBZ

Dear rest of the world,

Please accept our humblest apologies for the fact that you will now be dealing with Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson as the face of the United Kingdom on the global stage.

That's right. This guy:

 

[CrimsonFury]

Even the Brits are desperately sorry about the situation.

Britain faces being a laughing stock after Boris Johnson is made Foreign Secretary by Theresa May

http://indy100.independent.co.uk/ar...y-about-our-new-foreign-secretary--b1AjvATnBZ

Dear rest of the world,

Please accept our humblest apologies for the fact that you will now be dealing with Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson as the face of the United Kingdom on the global stage.

That's right. This guy:

I can't wait for when he meets Erdogan/Putin or Obama in person...acting like twat is easy in newspaper columns, let's see if he has the spine to repeat what he's said in the past

 

[bsruzm]

Dear rest of the world,

Please accept our humblest apologies for the fact that you will now be dealing with Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson as the face of the United Kingdom on the global stage.

I don't think they are (as the British government) sorry, that sounds more like "f*ck you rest of the world, deal with it" It's like "d*şşak geçmek" with the world including their American cousin's. Another ugly story is this Boris guy being a relative of Ali Kemal.

pro-PKK b*stard's are already celebrating:

"In an interview in 2015, Boris Johnson told ITV News that "his sympathies are with the PKK", despite the group being regarded as a terrorist organization by the UK."

 

[Steve781]

I don't think they are (as the British government) sorry, that sounds more like "f*ck you rest of the world, deal with it?" It's like "d*şşak geçmek" with the world including their American cousin's. Another ugly story is this Boris guy being a relative of Ali Kemal.

pro-PKK b*stard's are already celebrating:

"In an interview in 2015, Boris Johnson told ITV News that "his sympathies are with the PKK", despite the group being regarded as a terrorist organization by the UK."

He was talking about their fight against ISIL. I don't think he's stupid enough to endorse the PKK as Foreign Secretary.

 

[bsruzm]

"(November 2015)

In an interview in 2015, he told ITV News that "his sympathies are with the PKK", despite the group being regarded as a terrorist organization by the UK.

Speaking about a case of a 21-year-old woman from North London, who was sentenced to 21 months in jail for plotting to join the PKK terror group, Johnson said, "My sympathies are very much with the PKK and the Peshmerga and I hope that the legal system will reflect that, and that she gets sensible treatment rather than some absurd punishment."."


Boris Johnson tells ITV News he supports a banned terror group

He was talking about their fight against ISIL. I don't think he's stupid enough to endorse the PKK as Foreign Secretary.

Al Nusra also fights ISIS so? I am sure, he's anything but stupid.

 

[TaiShang]

He was talking about their fight against ISIL. I don't think he's stupid enough to endorse the PKK as Foreign Secretary.

He is surprisingly interested in the Middle Eastern affairs in the sense of the Kurdish problem. This is partly understandable from geopolitical perspective given that they are one of the very few feasible groups to deal with the ISIS threat.

This is one of his articles published in 2014.

Now he is foreign secretary, probably he will likely not be so sharp in rhetoric, but I do not think he will have a total change of heart.

**

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...r-tragedy-if-we-did-not-defend-the-Kurds.html



By Boris Johnson

9:21PM BST 10 Aug 2014


Like all the rest of us I have been looking with sickened disbelief at the changes in the map of northern Iraq, and the Ebola-like spread of the fanatics. It seems incredible that the disintegration should happen so fast.

It was only in May this year that we welcomed a dynamic and forward-looking young politician to City Hall in London. His name is Nechirvan Barzani, and he is the prime minister of the fledgling state of Kurdistan. He brought his finance guy, his transport minister, his tourism minister – the whole lot.

For about an hour we talked about the great Kurdish boom, and their plans to build ski resorts, hotels: how to put the place firmly on the map for the British tourist. We talked about how to beat traffic congestion and how London could help advise with transforming Erbil into the natural banking centre of the Middle East.

We ended pledging deeper cooperation, and the prime minister presented London with a lovely embroidered carpet and some scenes of Kurdistan (all duly registered), and I presented him with a copy of one of my books and some engraved whisky glasses, though I am not sure how much whisky they drink out there. I promised to come as soon as possible to inaugurate the ski slopes.

Now look at poor Kurdistan. Barely 20 miles from their prosperous capital the Kurds face one of the most horrible and brutal armies since the Middle Ages. The troops of the Islamic State are already in possession of the dam at the key Kurdish city of Mosul, with all the power that gives them over lives downstream on the Tigris.

They are offering people the choice of converting to Islam or facing instant execution. They have so terrified the population of northern Iraq – with its patchwork of ethnic groups and faiths – that the minorities have fled for their lives. As of today, there are still tens of thousands camped out on bare hillsides, their children dying of thirst, in scenes of biblical horror.

We are watching a catastrophe unfold, and the Prime Minister is absolutely right in his instinct – that Britain must act, and that Britain must help. I know how people feel these days about getting involved in overseas conflicts. There is a deep weariness and cynicism that has entered the bones of the nation – a sense that we were all bamboozled by Blair over Iraq, and that we won’t be fooled again.

People will look at the tragedy of the Yazidi and the Christians, and they will reasonably ask why we are choosing to try to help here, when we decided in the end there was nothing we could do for the Syrians who were being massacred in Aleppo. People will ask, reasonably, why us, when we are only a medium-sized European power with an overstretched Army and a budget deficit of our own.

Public hesitations are entirely understandable; and yet I am certain that it is time to get involved, and to support the American-led operation. We have to act because this is a humanitarian crisis.

I have heard some people suggest that there is some kind of extra imperative here, because many of these persecuted folk are Christians, and therefore our official co-religionists. That strikes me as paradoxical, since the central message of Christ was surely that we should treat everyone as our neighbours – and that applies surely to the Yazidi, who believe in the Peacock Angel, as much as it does to Christians.

It doesn’t matter if you are a Christian or Jew or a Muslim or a Yazidi. If you are facing the kind of genocide that seems to be underway in northern Iraq, you surely deserve whatever relief and protection we can provide.

Then we should help because we have a moral duty to that part of the world. It was the British who took the decision in the early Twenties to ignore the obvious ethnic divisions, and not to create a Kurdistan. (Indeed, on one notorious occasion the British actually used gas to suppress a Kurdish revolt.)

And it was a British decision to join in the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and in the removal of Saddam Hussein; and pace Tony Blair, it is obvious to most sane and rational people (a category that seems not to include Blair) that one of the results of the end of Saddam and the Ba’athist tyranny has been the power vacuum in Iraq, and the incompetence that has allowed Isis to expand with such horrifying speed. The final reason why we should come to the aid of the Kurds and others is that it is in our interest to do so.

My old friend the Kurdish journalist Hazhir Teimourian used to tell me sorrowfully: “There is an old proverb – a Kurd has no friends.” I am not sure that is true any more. In the aftermath of the first Gulf war in 1991 the Kurds were driven into the mountains by the vengeful troops of Saddam. The people of Britain were appalled by their misery. John Major was so moved that he set up the no-fly zones that were the precursor to the modern state.

In the last few years the links between Britain and Kurdistan have been developing fast, with the first ministerial delegation from London arriving there two years ago. Standard Chartered Bank has established there, as well as many other firms. They are going not simply because Kurdistan has theoretically the sixth largest oil deposits in the world, but because the place is an oasis of stability and tolerance. They have a democratic system; they are pushing forward with women’s rights; they insist on complete mutual respect of all religions.

It would be an utter tragedy if we did not do everything in our power to give succour and relief to those who are now facing massacre and persecution, and to help repel the maniacs from one of the few bright spots in the Middle East.

Yes, we have got it wrong before; and yes, we cannot do everything. But that doesn’t mean we should collapse into passivity and quietism in the face of manifest evil. These people need our help.

 

[flamer84]

He is surprisingly interested in the Middle Eastern affairs in the sense of the Kurdish problem. This is partly understandable from geopolitical perspective given that they are one of the very few feasible groups to deal with the ISIS threat.

This is one of his articles published in 2014.

Now he is foreign secretary, probably he will likely not be so sharp in rhetoric, but I do not think he will have a total change of heart.

**

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...r-tragedy-if-we-did-not-defend-the-Kurds.html



By Boris Johnson

9:21PM BST 10 Aug 2014


Like all the rest of us I have been looking with sickened disbelief at the changes in the map of northern Iraq, and the Ebola-like spread of the fanatics. It seems incredible that the disintegration should happen so fast.

It was only in May this year that we welcomed a dynamic and forward-looking young politician to City Hall in London. His name is Nechirvan Barzani, and he is the prime minister of the fledgling state of Kurdistan. He brought his finance guy, his transport minister, his tourism minister – the whole lot.

For about an hour we talked about the great Kurdish boom, and their plans to build ski resorts, hotels: how to put the place firmly on the map for the British tourist. We talked about how to beat traffic congestion and how London could help advise with transforming Erbil into the natural banking centre of the Middle East.

We ended pledging deeper cooperation, and the prime minister presented London with a lovely embroidered carpet and some scenes of Kurdistan (all duly registered), and I presented him with a copy of one of my books and some engraved whisky glasses, though I am not sure how much whisky they drink out there. I promised to come as soon as possible to inaugurate the ski slopes.

Now look at poor Kurdistan. Barely 20 miles from their prosperous capital the Kurds face one of the most horrible and brutal armies since the Middle Ages. The troops of the Islamic State are already in possession of the dam at the key Kurdish city of Mosul, with all the power that gives them over lives downstream on the Tigris.

They are offering people the choice of converting to Islam or facing instant execution. They have so terrified the population of northern Iraq – with its patchwork of ethnic groups and faiths – that the minorities have fled for their lives. As of today, there are still tens of thousands camped out on bare hillsides, their children dying of thirst, in scenes of biblical horror.

We are watching a catastrophe unfold, and the Prime Minister is absolutely right in his instinct – that Britain must act, and that Britain must help. I know how people feel these days about getting involved in overseas conflicts. There is a deep weariness and cynicism that has entered the bones of the nation – a sense that we were all bamboozled by Blair over Iraq, and that we won’t be fooled again.

People will look at the tragedy of the Yazidi and the Christians, and they will reasonably ask why we are choosing to try to help here, when we decided in the end there was nothing we could do for the Syrians who were being massacred in Aleppo. People will ask, reasonably, why us, when we are only a medium-sized European power with an overstretched Army and a budget deficit of our own.

Public hesitations are entirely understandable; and yet I am certain that it is time to get involved, and to support the American-led operation. We have to act because this is a humanitarian crisis.

I have heard some people suggest that there is some kind of extra imperative here, because many of these persecuted folk are Christians, and therefore our official co-religionists. That strikes me as paradoxical, since the central message of Christ was surely that we should treat everyone as our neighbours – and that applies surely to the Yazidi, who believe in the Peacock Angel, as much as it does to Christians.

It doesn’t matter if you are a Christian or Jew or a Muslim or a Yazidi. If you are facing the kind of genocide that seems to be underway in northern Iraq, you surely deserve whatever relief and protection we can provide.

Then we should help because we have a moral duty to that part of the world. It was the British who took the decision in the early Twenties to ignore the obvious ethnic divisions, and not to create a Kurdistan. (Indeed, on one notorious occasion the British actually used gas to suppress a Kurdish revolt.)

And it was a British decision to join in the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and in the removal of Saddam Hussein; and pace Tony Blair, it is obvious to most sane and rational people (a category that seems not to include Blair) that one of the results of the end of Saddam and the Ba’athist tyranny has been the power vacuum in Iraq, and the incompetence that has allowed Isis to expand with such horrifying speed. The final reason why we should come to the aid of the Kurds and others is that it is in our interest to do so.

My old friend the Kurdish journalist Hazhir Teimourian used to tell me sorrowfully: “There is an old proverb – a Kurd has no friends.” I am not sure that is true any more. In the aftermath of the first Gulf war in 1991 the Kurds were driven into the mountains by the vengeful troops of Saddam. The people of Britain were appalled by their misery. John Major was so moved that he set up the no-fly zones that were the precursor to the modern state.

In the last few years the links between Britain and Kurdistan have been developing fast, with the first ministerial delegation from London arriving there two years ago. Standard Chartered Bank has established there, as well as many other firms. They are going not simply because Kurdistan has theoretically the sixth largest oil deposits in the world, but because the place is an oasis of stability and tolerance. They have a democratic system; they are pushing forward with women’s rights; they insist on complete mutual respect of all religions.

It would be an utter tragedy if we did not do everything in our power to give succour and relief to those who are now facing massacre and persecution, and to help repel the maniacs from one of the few bright spots in the Middle East.

Yes, we have got it wrong before; and yes, we cannot do everything. But that doesn’t mean we should collapse into passivity and quietism in the face of manifest evil. These people need our help.

None can deny that Kurdish militias were more energetic in fighting ISIS than Turkey.For that,they deserve our full support,if Turkey doesn't like it,it should have been more pro active in the campaign against terrorism,which,sadly,was not the case.

 

[CrimsonFury]

None can deny that Kurdish militias were more energetic in fighting ISIS than Turkey.For that,they deserve our full support,if Turkey doesn't like it,it should have been more pro active in the campaign against terrorism,which,sadly,was not the case.

We won't help terrorists defeat other terrorists (we just kill both of them). If Europe/US wanted Turkey to participate more actively against Isis it should have given consideration to Turkeys security interests as well, which,sadly, was not the case

 

[TaiShang]

None can deny that Kurdish militias were more energetic in fighting ISIS than Turkey.For that,they deserve our full support,if Turkey doesn't like it,it should have been more pro active in the campaign against terrorism,which,sadly,was not the case.

What is good about the Kurdish YPG in the eyes of international community is that they are secular. Hence, even a post-Syrian crisis situation led to the creation of a viable Kurdish state, that would be progressive in the sense of women's rights and secular education, which, now that Turkey has gone to the direction of theocracy, is not viewed as a bad thing.