The ever wily Boris Johnson managed to start a war in Ukraine just to deflect from the inquiry into Covid abuses at Number 10. And its been a very successful ploy. 24 hours is a long time in politics so in 35 days that’s sufficient political time for glaciers to move a mile. Sadly though, for Boris, the deflection tactics proved only temporary as the Met Police yesterday issued 20 fixed penalty notices for Covid rules breaches. They gave them to the people who made those rules. Fortunately though, ‘no disciplinary action will be taken’ over the penalties. Because being a hypocritical, denying, lying tosser is not a crime in this country, whereas sitting next to someone with a glass of wine apparently is.

Putin is a keen advocate of this recent political tactic of ‘lying through your teeth’ too. He lies to everyone, including the 145 million people who live with him. ‘Ve don’t attack civilian targets’. But you blew up the Theatre in Mariupol where 300 civilians were sheltering, the one marked in great big letters CHILDREN!!!, big enough for bomber pilots to see. ‘No, not us. Must have been a different invading country which is also NOT at war with Ukraine.’And the Skripals? Novichok? Never heard of it. Those 2 KGB officers were just visiting Salisbury Cathedral, honest. Beautiful apse in there, and the pipe organ? Well, any mass-murdering torturer would give 2 weeks cabbage to hear such a magnificent instrument.

So how do you meaningfully engage in ‘peace talks’ when the talking is done with forked tongue? Yet the so-called peace talks are ongoing. In Turkey. Which is like having a conference about fiscal responsibility and financial morality at Manchester City’s ground. But then again, not many nations would host that many Russians. Just think of the cleaning bills. Teams of chemical and nuclear warfare experts in Hamzat suits for 4 weeks just to render the meeting room ‘safe’ once more. But Turkey is a ‘neutral’ country in that allows all sorts of vile dictators and terrorists to murder people within its borders, as they did with the Saudi murder of Khashoggi.

And that would appear to be the state of play in the world. All of it.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx