Text of phone call from Boris Johnson to Leo Varadkar

Exclusive

Text from a transcript of the first phone conversation between Boris Johnson and Leo Varadkar, as leaked to the Willesden Herald.

Boris Johnson: I want to assure you that we will never put physical checks or infrastructure at the border in Ireland after Brexit, Leo. If I may use a metaphor here, British businessmen - and women - will never wear clothes after Brexit, they will go naked, happen what may. The Irish can wear clothes, if they wish.

Leo Varadkar: Won't you be a bit exposed? No pun intended.

BJ: No, seriously! Do as you will. Cows, sheep, linen, pantechnicons - let them fly back and forth. Ramble where you will, we will not be concerned. You may put some obstacles on your side, if you insist but as for the UK, come one come all, as they say. And come as you are. We're naked, as it were, so anything goes.

LV: Ah now Boris, are you pulling my leg?

BJ: Not at all. By the way, Northern Ireland is in the UK, isn't it? You are aware. I think I'm right about that one. I found out the other day that the Isle of Man isn't. Who knew?!

LV: Ah Boris, you're winding me up.

BJ: Of course. Of course. But they do have marvellous kippers in the old I.O.M., Leo.

LV: And Norman Wisdom. And Nigel Mansell.

BJ: Norman is sadly no longer with us. But look Leo, I'll come to the point.

LV: Go on.

BJ: Rejoin the UK and you can have the Isle of Man.

LV: Nah, you're alright.

BJ: But if you do go through with this EU way of negotiating you're going to have your kippers cut off from Britain, old man.

LV: We're not doing anything, Boris. It's you who are leaving. You will have your olives cut off.

BJ: Right, right. Sounds dreadful! You're right, I completely forgot it's we who are leaving. I must tie a string around my finger. You're kicking us out on October 31.

LV: Not at all, Boris, you're welcome to stay. I know some of the winos in Brussels - no names no pack drill - might have said "Here's your hat" but don't mind them.

BJ: It wasn't me, it was Mrs May. They haven't said anything to me yet. It's almost as if they can't wait to be shot of us. This is a big mistake they've made, kicking the UK out of the EU.

LV: Well come over to Dublin and drown your sorrows. We'll talk again. Cheers.

BJ: Sláinte.

--
Feargal Mooney

The thoughts of Red Woodward

A selection of "spokes", as he would probably call them, uttered by our legendary proprietor Eddie "Red" Woodward and shared among staff of the Willy in a long-running in-house email discussion.

1. Never trust anybody honest.

2. This everybody dying malarkey has got beyond a joke.

3. What a person says a lot about says a lot about a person.

4. Minimalism is the biggest load of crap ever.

5. There's no such thing as waiting. You are either doing something useful or you are doing something useless.

6. Meditation? It's a racket.

7. You can put me in a box when I pop my clogs but not before.

8. Evidently I'm past my sell by-date but not my use-by date.

9. In life, you either do something and feel guilty about it, or do nothing and feel guilty about it. There is no in-between.

10. You can't put everything right in the fourth act of a three-act play.

11. The only review worth a damn is written on a cheque.

12. We're not about to go bang.

Feargal Mooney

Testing 1, 2, 3, thingy

Simon here. Well it looks like it's working. We've cranked up the old AudioBlagger™. Steams to work okay. Are you reading meat red?

Hello. Hello. What the foot?

I'm just sane the old AudioBlagger™ steams to be working okay here at the sud berry press.

Hello? Is that you Simon?

Yes.

Come again?

Yes. It's meat.

Tell free gal to see me in my office ass sap. I've got a tip, I mean a policy up date to disgust with him. Where is he, the lazy bar starred?

Careful red, this is all going instantly online.

Oh for fox sake. Turn it off you gob daw. ... Is it off now? ... Hello? Hello?

Where's the poetry?

Opening times for the Willesden children's library

I went into the half of the library that's been plonked in The Lewinson Centre on the High Road. The other "half" is at George Furniss House, Grange Road. I asked the man, down behind the desk, where the poetry books were. He suggested looking in the other half of the library at George Furniss House. I told him I'd been there and they have no poetry. The man said, "We only have children's books here." I said, "Oh, is this the children's library?" "Yes." "Okay," I said. "By the way, children should have poetry too!"

Feargal

There's a smell of horse dung in the NHS executive lounge

Private Eye | Official Site

Private Eye exposes the chief executive of the Imperial College Healthcare Trust, which is in the red by £40 million, presiding over payments to a network of companies held by his wife, for "horse-based leadership training" [Is there a word missing there? Ed]. Of course hubby and missus's horse-based training company loses so much money that it has to be subsidised from their other holding companies, for which read "tax write-off". This geezer, Mark Davis, is in charge of an NHS trust that is hiring his wife's loss-making company while at the same time paying £2,000 per day for his services into another of his wife's companies that is channelling money to the first. Clear?

Here's another pile of executive horse dung: The Telegraph highlights NHS executives receiving golden handshakes only to be rehired on exorbitant daily rates. "In one case an official given a £300,000 payoff was re-employed on daily rates of £3,400" (Telegraph)

No wonder there's a revolution starting, we're being taken for a ride.

Feargal

The long-predicted fall of the Euro?

The idea of pooling European debt is like your neighbours asking you to pool their debt with yours. Think about that for a minute. They have more debt than they could ever possibly pay and you are just about getting by, maybe. As part of their proposal they want to retain complete autonomy to spend as they see fit, accruing more and more debt and pooling it with you. That's what the Euro zone is facing.

It's preposterous to expect Germans to take responsibility for other countries' debts, no? Surely the Euro will collapse, either in the sense of shrinking the number of countries using it or a complete rout and dissolution. Northern Euro and Southern Euro?: no way, the peripheral states won't want the worst of both worlds. It's just one of those things where we have to admit the naysayers were right in the beginning. That used to include Labour before the entryist Blairite faction took over.

To be fair to Gordon Brown, though otherwise a hopeless manager by his own pragmatist lights, he did a few good things, not least keeping Britain out of the Euro. You can't let others govern you through toy, pseudo-democratic institutions. There's too much like that at home already. Even the dogs in the street know it.

Feargal

The fall of Capitalism

Every day brings news of more financial collapses. It started with Lehman Brothers in the US and at present there is no knowing where it will end. The ominous metaphor that comes to mind is the collapse of the World Trade Centre towers. At present we are in the phase after the initial plane impacts, equivalent to the multiple financial shocks (that money is heir to). The economic collapse that follows might be as far beyond anything we have imagined as the collapse of the towers on that day. It could mean starvation, destitution and disintegration of the civilisation we have known in recent centuries and the advent of a new dark age. We saw the fall of Communism with the Berlin Wall in 1989; are we now seeing the fall of Capitalism?

Feargal

Gravitas proposes a Poetry Tax

Gravitas Manifesto

Now that the Liberal Democrats have self-destructed the Conservatives might manufacture a petty disagreement and call a snap election on the pretext that we need their "strong government". Therefore I think it's time for a new manifesto for Gravitas.

As you know we campaigned last time on a Jubilee debt cancellation initiative for all personal debt to be declared null and void every 50 years (backdated to 2000). Plus permission for shoulder-launched rockets to be used against cars with booming stereos, summary execution for tailgaters, one law limit per ten years etc. Having failed to achieve power last time our think tank has been hard at work and we have come up with a simple but radical plan to solve the debt crisis and reform the tax system. Our proposal is for a Poetry Tax.

If everyone who writes poetry just had to buy a £50 license for each poem they write and include the license number with it when published, at a stroke we could wipe out the national debt, eliminate the need for all other taxes, solve world poverty and still have change left to replace unsustainable energy sources with eco-friendly ones, establish free education and free school lunches for all children everywhere. This would also have the benefit of improving the general standard of poetry in the country.

Vote Gravitas to implement a Poetry Tax now. Thank you.

From the desk of
Feargal Mooney
Founder and President for Life
Gravitas Jubilee Debt Amnesty / Death to Tailgaters

Sub-contracting brutality to children

Revealed: brutal guide to punishing jailed youths

Instructions to staff warn that the techniques risk giving children a "fracture to the skull" and "temporary or permanent blindness caused by rupture to eyeball or detached retina".

The guidance, designed to cope with unruly children, also acknowledges that the measures could cause asphyxia. One passage, explaining how to administer a head-hold on children, adds that "if breathing is compromised the situation ceases to be a restraint and becomes a medical emergency". (Society | The Observer)

The war between humanity and inhumanity is so finely balanced in the UK that at any moment our humanist defences against the brutal vicious and "privatised" horde could collapse, initiating an era of unbridled mayhem and carnage.

Feargal

Ant & Dec preside

We're being ruled by mothers' boys. Your mother would love to have them to tea but they are not men. That was a man Nick "Wee Jimmy Cranky" Clegg betrayed.

Feargal

No unstable Tory minority government

A Labour Liberal coalition would be far more stable than a "confidence and supply" arrangement with a completely disenchanted Liberal Democrat party. The Lib Dem's must not be the Tories patsies to be used and discarded in a move to another election. There is more stability and durability in a Labour Liberal coalition, a proper coalition with shared ministries and programme.

(Just after Gordon Brown's announcement that he is retiring and the party is entering formal negotiations with the Liberal Democrats)

Feargal

Nick Clegg must resign

He lost the Lib Dem's five seats and then made a bad judgement to talk to the wrong party about coalition. The idea that he had to talk to the party with the most votes first was a complete nonsense. What he had to do was talk to whoever would ensure electoral reform. Financial crises come and go but the electoral system goes on forever. He has been subjected to panicky talk and bully bouncing by the media and walked into to it through his own ingenuousness. If he signs up to support the Tories, the Lib Dem's have been taken for patsies.

The idea that anything progressive could come out of negotiating with William Hague, Oliver Letwin and George Osbourne is a very unfunny joke. Will Nick Clegg emerge holding a piece of paper and declaring "Peace in our time"?

Feargal

"No more Mr Nice Guy" Nick Clegg

Forget the niceties, Mr Clegg (Will Hutton, Guardian)

The Lib Dems must turn to Labour (latest Guardian editorial)

The television and newspaper media are trying to bounce the Lib Dems into an unwise shotgun marriage with the Tories. They are trying to bully and bounce the country into an unpopular government. Only 36% of voters voted Tory. Labour + Liberal Democrat voters = 62%.

The inevitable result of a deal to prop up the unrepresentative Tories would be a government that collapsed within months and the entire blame for it going to the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives being the only party with funds to fight another election.

No more Mr Nice Guy. They will only walk all over you, Nick.

There is a severe case of "group think" going on in the country. Just because more people voted for the Tories than before does not mean they have won, they still have not got a majority. There is a parliament and within that parliament every MP is equal. Whoever can form a government has won the election. Nobody has yet won. 36% of voters should not lord it over the rest just because of a febrile group think, panic over finances and bully bouncing by the media.

Nick: Do not be rushed. Do not be bounced. Don't let them walk all over you. No more Mr Nice Guy.

The alternative coalition with Labour is one that can run a full term, it also comes with ministerial trappings of course, but it is a marriage made somewhere nearer heaven and farther from hell. The Conservatives will throw you to the wolves within months, you are only going to be used and discarded. Labour really wants you and will stick with you all the way.

Feargal

My advice to Labour

Gordon, I have been beastly to you in my blog posts, but I sort of like you really. I can't forgive you though for supporting the degenerate militaristic crap that passes for international politics. Why don't you get real yourself? Yes to defence, no to aggression. 

1. Give us a target date for withdrawal from Afghanistan. 

2. Appoint David Miliband as your deputy leader designate.

3. More Yvette Cooper, less Harriet Harmon (zero would be good). 

Yvette Cooper and David Milliband are your two best people. We need to work with the Liberals (forget the stupid "Liberal Democrat" tautologous gang of four baloney, what else would they be - Liberal Tyrants?). Give clear guidance to us voters as to which way we need to vote, constituency by constituency in the context of the possible outcomes, to keep out the Tories, which outranks all else in importance for the good of the country.

Feargal Mooney

Call for a general boycott

"In a 'difficult' meeting at the Foreign Office, the UK minister Ivan Lewis told the Chinese ambassador Fu Ying that her government had failed in its basic human rights responsibilities by ignoring representations about Shaikh's mental health. 'It's a deeply depressing day for anyone with a modicum of compassion or commitment to justice,' Lewis said." (Guardian)

Where possible let's boycott goods from countries like China and other tyrannical, oppressive and corrupt regimes, including the US, Russia and Israel for their stupid and disastrous foreign policies and penal systems. Maybe if enough people do this the idiots in power might start to get the message. While we can't boycott our own goods, others overseas should do so in order to convey the same message to the UK government. If world trade is shut down, well "What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?"

Feargal Mooney

Converging planes

Scenes like this can be seen continuously over King Edward Vii park in Willesden. This is not even a good example, often they seem to converge to the same point, which is puzzling - is it not? Trails can cross but for the leading points of two trails i.e. the planes to cross exactly at the point: this can be seen repeatedly, almost hourly from the park.*

Another thing you can see occasionally from this viewpoint is a plane flying surprisingly low though we're not near the airport. They made a mistake building Heathrow so that planes had to overfly built up London all the time, so let's back Boris Johnson's new estuary airport replacement all the way and close Heathrow. Otherwise it's only a matter of time before a disaster brings out all the hypocrites - if they survive - to wring their hands and puzzle over how it could possibly have happened. Yeah right! Just move the airport - get on with it.

Feargal Mooney

* I know this is probably daft but it makes me wonder if there aren't one or two rogue air traffic controllers practicing for or trying to create a collision - Al Qaeda? Ed.

Boycott Question Time

LENIN'S TOMB: The case for 'no platform': it's only good manners

Freedom of speech does not stretch to include any obligation on the BBC to host people whose participation in debate is not in good faith. The answer to this is for the main parties, especially Labour - at least Labour! plus the Liberals? - to refuse to appear on the show with the atavistic fascist pigs of the BNP. No platform.

Feargal

Virgin Mobile insurance con

"3 months free phone insurance. Cover your Virgin Mobile Pay Monthly phone, and the first 3 months are on us. After that, its just £5.99 a month."

£5.99 per month to insure your phone? What a rip-off, a tax on the busy parents of impressionable youngsters who demand mobile phones, not anticipating that this financial trap is being laid for them when they click through online. All "first 3 months free" schemes should be banned.

Feargal

Richard Littlejohn's racist rants etc.

Happened to be in the barbers today and nothing else to read but the Daily Mail rag. To be fair, this housepaper-in-waiting for the genocidal BNP dictatorship had one good double page memoir about sexual mores in France, which was worth reading - an eye opener as they say. However it also contained a pageful of brutal and racist rants by a big Jeremy Clarkson-like buffoon called Richard Littlejohn. Like Clarkson this blatherer Littlejohn has made a living out of being an arse in the media for years.

He criticizes the police in a strange backhanded way, for example he complains that a guy was Tasered three times while spreadeagled on the ground while also describing him as "a piece of lard who probably deserved a good kicking". He gets some things sort of half right, probably by accident, including pointing out the stupidity of Tasering a sheep that was blocking a road. He then goes on in another strange backhanded sort of way about police swimming lessons being cancelled in Wales because it would put Muslim women off joining.

What I really didn't like was how he then went on via a tenuous link to say (and I quote) that "the Warwickshire police are holding a pikey's picnic this weekend, inviting all members of 'the travelling community' to a day of festivities at the force's Leek Wootton headquarters. The manicured lawns of the country house HQ will play host to a traditional Roma band, story-telling and even 'a graffiti project'. I hope they remember to lock up their lawn-mowers." [My emphasis]

It's not just the word "pikey" - which is offensive enough, I think, but that remark about locking up their lawn-mowers. I don't think you need me to draw the historical parallels of vilification that little jibe evokes. Have people like him learned nothing from history? As long as this country thinks he and people like him are, in the American term, "good old boys" we are headed for the horrors.

Remember today, remember everything you see around you: the communities, the arts, the hospitals and hospices, the schools and special schools, the languages you hear everywhere, the public transport passes for pensioners, welfare for people in hardship, benefits, pensions, freedom, rights. All these things will be violently and wilfully destroyed and disappear forever if people like him have their way, if they ever gain power. All that will be left is a feudal system of mansions, with unrepaired roads between them and surrounded by hovels, the Brazil of Europe, a banana republic with no bananas and no republic, run on the divine right of inherited privilege.

We can start the fight by binning the Daily Mail. Let's also oppose the Tories 10% cuts proposals and their alliance with the far right parties of Europe. New Labour sucks, and Gordon's expenses fiasco (yes, let him own it all) sucks majorly but look around, there is regeneration everywhere: new sports centre, rebuilt secondary school, rebuilt community hospital all within five minutes walk of where I live. When you go to a hospital appointment, you don't have to wait as long to be seen. There are new tests that are pro-actively promulgated for preventive medicine. There is a minimum wage. These are just some of the things one could list.

Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater, let's purge lazy and concupiscent MP's but let us not install Lord Snooty and his friends to try to turn the clock back. Don't let them dismantle and sell off the investment that has been made. At the very worst, a Lib-Lab pact can survive. It is by no means over till it's over. Cameron is "measuring the curtains for 10 Downing Street" and therein lies his party's Achilles' heel: they think they have it in the bag, they have seen the winning post too soon.

Feargal

Neda Soltan family 'forced out of home' by Iranian authorities

World news | guardian.co.uk: "Parents of young woman shot dead near protests are banned from mourning and funeral is cancelled, neighbours say"

The world doesn't need the Willesden Herald to blog about this and Iran is not a so-called ally like Israel, so there is not as much imperative to disown its atrocities, which are like the atrocities of many tyrannies around the world. I don't feel I have to keep saying "Not in my name" for every shameful lower-than-rats activity of every crawling politician in power around the world - or else I'd spend my whole life going around like a town crier, bewailing the state of the world. However, that doesn't mean I can't say anything ever, either.

Feargal