Boris Johnson has lost his work pass. Big wow, I do that all the time.
Mind you, mine’s usually in the car and not gone forever as a result of a Commons vote to confiscate it after I misled Parliament over lockdown parties at Downing Street.
He’ll keep himself busy. He has all those speaking engagements and writing gigs, including a memoir. Although he did once describe £250,000 a year for his newspaper column as “chicken feed”.
If that’s what Johnson feeds his chickens, goodness knows what the UK’s richest ever prime minister, Rishi Sunak, feeds his. Bitcoin? Government bonds?
Or something really valuable like olive oil, which has gone up 58% in price or frozen food which is up by a quarter since the start of the war in Ukraine.
Sunak won’t be losing sleep over his own mortgage after the Bank of England raised the interest rate to a 15-year high of 5% and may explain why he doesn’t sound as bothered as the rest of us.
“It’s going to be okay,” he said. “I’m 100% on it.” Phew, I feel so much better, thanks Rishi.
Doom loop
When he says he’s “on it” perhaps he means he’s “at it”, because I’m sure he can’t move the needle on inflation, no matter what he’d have us believe (that when it goes up it’s due to global pressures but when it comes down, that’s all him).
The UK economy is trapped in a growth “doom loop” caused by half a trillion pounds’ worth of underinvestment, said the Institute for Public Policy Research.
It is not to be confused with the hyperloop, a rail system proposed by Elon Musk in 2017 to connect New York City with Washington DC.
I mention it because it’s one of many Musk plans that never happened and why I didn’t rush to the bookies this week when he announced he and Mark Zuckerberg will fight each other in cage match.
The two tech billionaires have agreed to meet at the Vegas Octagon, where the Twitter boss has threatened to do his “walrus” move “where I just lie on top of my opponent and do nothing”.
Facebook chief Mr Zuckerberg could be taking things more seriously, having recently won a number of jiu-jitsu tournaments.
This is clearly what’s been missing from the upper echelons of the corporate world – hand-to-hand combat.
Rail strikes
Imagine if industrial disputes were settled by a square go in Sin City.
If we could get RMT general secretary Mick Lynch in the cage with the train operating companies and the government, there’s a chance July’s planned rail strikes could be averted.
The airfare to Vegas is a stretch, but I might be able to make it to Barra.
Landing on the world’s only beach runway is on my bucket list and now the airport is offering someone the “dream job” of running a café there to provide hospitality for passengers.
Rare Nessie sighting
A blissful change of scene may appeal to stressed health workers at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary who are having to arrive hours before their shifts to get parked.
A parking space at ARI might be a rare sight, but Nessie not so much, with the second reported appearance this year.
French tourists Etienne and Eliane Camel reported seeing a 65ft-long shape moving just under the surface of the loch.
They may have been feeling the heat as midsummer is proving to be glorious, which makes the prospect of an Irn-Bru shortage all the more concerning.
‘A time to gie a bosie’
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “Imagine a hot summer in Scotland and no supplies of Irn-Bru to quench raging Scottish thirsts.
“Well that’s exactly what’s on the horizon if the management of AG Barr don’t revise their current wage offer to Unite members.”
Anyone who needs a hug at the idea of an Irn-Bru shortage may be comforted by Gordon Hay’s Doric translation of the Bible which he has now completed after a 17-year labour of love.
Ecclesiastes says there’s a time to embrace and a time not to, or as the Doric version has it: “A time tae gie a bosie, an a time tae haud back fae gien a bosie.”
