Friday 20 September 2019

Canada - UK: a decency gap


Justin Trudeau, current Prime Minster of Canada and up for re-election in a few weeks' time, is being much maligned and on the front pages of even our newspapers for having darkened  his face and worn a turban to attend a fancy dress party with the theme of "Arabian Nights."

That was 18 years ago when he was a teacher and before he entered active politics. I suppose as the son of a previous prime minister he needed even then to be extra careful, but I can't for the life of me see that there was all that much inappropriate about it.

On a scale of one to ten rating  errors of taste, judgement, morality and suitability for high office how would it rank alongside our own prime minister who:
  • as a student was a member of a club that thought it was fun to book meals at posh restaurants and then trash the place;
  • was sacked from an early job as a reporter for sending in stories that were untrue;
  • was sacked from his party's front bench for lying to his leader about an extra-marital affair;
  • is alleged to be required to support several illegitimate children;
  • according to the latest revelations (via David Cameron's book) probably believes that the UK should remain in the EU, but calculated that supporting Leave in the EU Referendum would better endear him to the party faithful and so strengthen his chance of becoming prime minister;
  • peddled all sorts of misinformation in the referendum campaign;
  • still can't stop lying.  The latest concrete example is that, a few days before he engineered the prorogation of parliament, he claimed that such  an action was not even being considered, and then a paper was  released which revealed that he had signed off on the idea two weeks earlier;
  • and, whatever the courts decide about the legality of the affair, who can seriously believe that his purpose in proroguing parliament was to provide time to prepare a new Queen's Speech, rather than to prevent parliament from monitoring  the government's actions at this most critical time?
Dear old Canada: streets ahead of both the UK and the US in the morality stakes.  Just such a pity it's so cold for so much of the year.

Fingers crossed to Mr Trudeau's and the Canadian Liberal party's re-election.

6 comments:

  1. You forgot the NHS bit where he said that the press was not their.
    Yes Trudeau was not a politician when he was young. We do crazy things when young and do not consider what will happen 20yrs in the future. dragging muck up from the past seems to be more important than solving todays problems

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    1. Thanks Nigel. I hadn't picked up until this morning that, when accused of electioneering, Johnson had claimed "The press aren't here" when the TV cameras were actually on him.

      Re the "crazy things in our youth," I wouldn't classify Trudeau's fancy dress capers as "crazy." Until at least the mid-60s (the period when I might claim to have been a youth) one of the most popular entertainments in the UK was "The Black and White Minstrel Show". The music master at the first school at which I aught was in it. We all admired him. Now we know better.

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  2. I don't know why everybody makes such a big deal about Boris's motives for supporting the leave campaign. I don't care what his motives were for being on the right side; what matters is that he helped get the right result. He might well have been doing it for personal advantage rather than out of true belief; who cares? Did we turn down Stalin's help against Hitler because his motives weren't pure?

    Similarly I don't care what his motives are for getting us out of the EU by the beginning of November, as long as he does get us out.

    The Trudeau thing is just funny because of the hypocrasy. Boris has never claimed to be anything other than a disgusting sexually-incontinent libertine. Trudeau loved to make out he was woker than woke, so to see him have to backpedal furiously is hilarious.

    Oh, and:

    The latest concrete example is that, a few days before he engineered the prorogation of parliament, he claimed that such an action was not even being considered, and then a paper was released which revealed that he had signed off on the idea two weeks earlier;

    What he claimed wasn't being considered was proroguing Parliament over the 31st of October. What he had signed off on was a prorogation which ended on the 14th of October. So he carefully picked his words to give a misleading impression without actually technically lying. And that's just what politicians are paid to do, isn't it?

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  3. So you're happy to have as our Prime Minister a man who realises that leaving the UK will be bad for the country, but was and is capable of supporting this because it increased his chance of obtaining (and keeping) the top job.

    If he's right that Brexit is bad for the country (and I and most informed opinion believes he is) then he will simply suffer from diminished international respect.

    But the people lower down the pile, the 20% already experiencing poverty, those waiting of NHS treatment, children in under-funded schools, immigrants with uncertain status, the elderly with inadequate care, to name but some, will all suffer even more, both mentally and physically.

    Not much morality there

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    1. So you're happy to have as our Prime Minister a man who realises that leaving the UK will be bad for the country

      I want the UK to leave the EU (and I think doing so will be good for the country), so as long as he achieves that, why would I care what he thinks?

      I wouldn't say I'm 'happy' to have Boris as PM (I would prefer a PM who wasn't a debauched libertine, obviously), but if he's what it takes to get out of the EU, then he's what it takes.

      If he's right that Brexit is bad for the country

      But if he does think that, I think he's wrong. And the only way to find out for sure is to do it.

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