Boris Johnson contempt for families/victims of 7/7 bombings

[Whitehall_Bin_Men]

Boris Johnson showed contempt for families/victims of 7/7 bombings
Boris Johnson 'ranted f*** the families during 7/7 bombing victims insult'

EXCLUSIVE: Boris Johnson's alleged outburst came when he was Mayor of London and being briefed about the cost of inquests into the 2005 London terror attacks which killed 52
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/boris-johnson-fumed-fthe-famili es-16524677
BY NIGEL NELSON
22:04, 15 JUN 2019UPDATED06:57, 16 JUN 2019

NIGEL NELSON ON BORIS JOHNSON'S HOPES OF BECOMING NEXT PM
PM favourite Boris Johnson faces shocking claims that he insulted families of 7/7 bombing victims in a four-letter rant.

The alleged outburst came when he was Mayor of London and being briefed about the cost of inquests into the 2005 terror attacks which killed 52.

Brian Coleman , who was chair of the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority, claims Mr Johnson erupted in fury and said: “F*** the families! F*** the families!”

And a second source told the Sunday Mirror that he was certain Boris used the offensive words.

But another source, at the meeting, disputed Mr Coleman’s account.

And there was no comment from the Tory leadership favourite when asked if he would apologise for his alleged comments.

Mr Coleman, 57, told how he was briefing the Mayor in London’s City Hall in 2011 about the cost of the inquests.

He said: “I was telling Boris how the Fire Authority was having to spend a sizeable sum on lawyers, as were the Metropolitan Police, Transport for London and everybody else involved.

Boris suddenly said, ‘I blame Tony Blair for all this. He started it with the Marchioness’.”

That, claims Mr Coleman, referred to inquests into the deaths of 51 partygoers after the 1989 Thames collision between the Marchioness pleasure steamer and the dredger Bowbelle.

At the briefing, Mr Coleman said Guto Harri, the Mayor’s communications chief at the time, explained the 7/7 inquests were for the benefit of the families.

Mr Coleman added: “To which Boris replied, ‘F*** the families! F*** the families!’

Epitomising London’s spirit in the face of adversity, Davinia Douglass, 38, being led away in a burns mask after the 7/7 bombing(Image: PA)

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“I was having none of this and snapped at Boris, ‘You didn’t have to write eight letters of condolence to families of your constituents or attend the funeral of 31-year-old Lee Baisden (a Fire Authority employee) who had been blown to pieces at Aldgate and comfort his poor widowed mother.”

Yesterday Mr Harri said of Mr Johnson’s alleged remark: “I didn’t hear him say it.

“It’s not the kind of thing he would say so I think it’s extremely unlikely.”

And the ex-communications boss has a different recollection of a subsequent conversation with Mr Coleman.

Mr Harri said: “Brian’s own account acknowledges I told him at the time that I think he was mistaken.”

But Mr Johnson, 54, is no stranger to causing outrage with his colourful language.

A year ago, he reportedly told a diplomatic gathering, in response to business concerns about Brexit : “F*** business!”

Earlier this year he criticised police spending on historic child sexual abuse investigations, saying that the money had been “ spaffed up a wall ”.

Boris Johnson also reportedly bellowed 'F*** business' during a diplomatic gathering about Brexit(Image: Reuters)

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And in 2013 he criticised the inquiry into the Met Police investigation of Stephen Lawrence ’s murder, complaining “there has been a whiff of the witch-hunt”.

The current row surrounds a blog written by Mr Coleman and emerges weeks before the 14th anniversary of 7/7.

Images still haunt survivors and families of the 52 who died.

One, epitomising London’s spirit in the face of adversity, showed Davinia Douglass, 38, being led away in a burns mask.

Mr Coleman, a former mayor of London’s Barnet borough, was a Tory London Assembly member and chair of the Fire Authority for four of the eight years that Mr Johnson was Mayor.

But Mr Coleman also has a controversial and colourful past.

After being convicted of assault on a café owner in October 2012 he was expelled from the Conservative Party.

In May 2014 Mr Coleman stood in local elections as an independent candidate but failed to be elected.

His blog – under the title The King of Bling is back – was written after he learned ex-Foreign Secretary Mr Johnson was running for No10.

Boris Johnson with Councillor Brian Coleman in 2012(Image: PA )
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He told the Sunday Mirror: “I stand by this story. I was so angry with Boris at that meeting. Boris is not suitable to be PM, for crying out loud, and that’s why I wrote this blogpost.

“I’ve never written it down before but people need to know about this. That’s my only agenda.”

In his blog he added: “I know Boris. I worked with Boris. I was the first Member of the London Assembly to endorse Boris’s candidature for the London mayoralty.

“I last spoke to him a year ago at a party he threw at No1 Carlton Gardens, the official residence of the Foreign Secretary, to mark 10 years since he was elected Mayor of London.

“Boris was a poor judge of character. I lost count of the ‘deputy mayors’ and senior aides who passed through City Hall.

"These inexperienced advisers are no doubt partly, along with Boris’s ego, the reason for so many failed and pointless projects – Boris Island, the East London Cable Car, the Garden Bridge.”

“Boris just simply never read the briefs or prepared for his speeches"(Image: PA)
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As chairman of the fire authority Mr Coleman says he had control of 6,000 staff and a £330million budget and would meet Boris every week.

But he wrote: “Boris just simply never read the briefs or prepared for his speeches.

“At one Lord Mayor of London’s London Government Dinner he could be seen scribbling notes on the napkin during the meat course.

“At a Board of Deputies annual dinner I had actually sent him a three-point brief for his speech which was thank the Community for their support in your election, express your admiration for the State of Israel and, finally, support the roll-out of Jewish Community Schools in London.

“Instead he made a speech about buses to a room full of the great and the good of the Jewish community, who rarely use them.”

[Whitehall_Bin_Men]

The Observer
The 10 ages of Boris Johnson: a guide to his road to power
From bullied schoolboy to betrayer of women and voters, his career trajectory has been a controversial one
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jul/21/boris-johnson-route-t o-number-10

Next prime minister: Boris Johnson wins Tory leadership - live
Boris Johnson elected new Tory leader - full report
Tory leadership election: full results
Sonia Purnell
Sun 21 Jul 2019 07.00 BST Last modified on Tue 23 Jul 2019 12.27 BST

Boris Johnson and Allegra Mostyn-Owen at a ball at Oxford Town Hall in March 1986.

1. Blond ambition
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson was born on 19 June 1964 in New York and is still known by his family as Al. Over the next 14 years he moved house 32 times across two continents as his father Stanley pursued a wide-ranging career. Only 22 when she had him, his mother Charlotte had given up her English degree at Oxford to accompany her husband to the US. Until the age of eight Boris was severely deaf with glue ear and was a subdued child. His mother encouraged him to be arty but Stanley inculcated an uber-competitive streak in his family.

Winning was the priority, whether running fastest, jumping highest or having the blondest hair, leading the young Al to set his sights on becoming “world king”. Unable to cope with with the constant moves and Stanley’s womanising, Charlotte suffered a severe breakdown when the family went to Brussels. Her absence in hospital led to the Johnson brood having to learn how to fend for themselves.

2. Al becomes Boris
Boris Johnson at Eton School in 1979.
Boris Johnson at Eton School in 1979. Photograph: Ian Sumner/Rex/Shutterstock
Al and Rachel – the two eldest – were sent away to prep school in England. Family friends recall that Al now came under fire for his Turkish lineage and the fact that he lived in Brussels. As self-protection he started to hone an English eccentric persona, a seemingly bumbling figure in tatty clothes concealing a finely tuned mind bent on survival. By the time he went on to Eton, this public version of Al was growing more flamboyant – a transformation he enforced by changing to the more distinctive name of Boris. As his schoolwork suffered, he impressed but also infuriated his teachers with his “disgracefully cavalier attitude”.

3. Oxford chameleon
Johnson went to Oxford in 1983 having, despite his teachers’ misgivings, won a scholarship to study classics at Balliol. It seemed that all the glittering prizes would fall into his lap, including membership of the Bullingdon Club, an upper-class drinking society renowned for its casual vandalism of other people’s rooms, property and feelings. One trophy that eluded him at his first attempt was the presidency of the Oxford Union. He barely bothered to canvass beyond public school alumni and was defeated by a slick Liberal grammar school boy. Failure struck Johnson almost as a bereavement, but he learned from it. Boris Mark II rinsed out the shades of Tory blue to appear more politically androgynous and he disguised his sense of entitlement with lashings of humour. He also recruited a band of starstruck helpers to do the hard graft for him and this time he won. It was now that he discovered that success with women was one of the perks of power. Boris the chameleon politician – and Boris the seducer – had been born.

Boris Johnson arriving at Viscount Althorp’s 21st birthday party in May 1985 with his sister Rachel and friends.
Boris Johnson arriving at Viscount Althorp’s 21st birthday party in May 1985 with his sister Rachel and friends. Photograph: Richard Young/Rex/Shutterstock
4. World on speed dial
As soon as he graduated with a 2:1 in 1987 Johnson married the beautiful and wealthy Allegra Mostyn-Owen at a wedding celebrated with a specially commissioned violin duet. Soon he landed a plum job in journalism, assisted by formidable family connections,including his godmother, the writer Rachel Billington (daughter of Lord Longford and sister of Lady Antonia Fraser). He was taken on as a graduate trainee at the Times, but the shambolic Boris persona did not impress his news editors. The star of Eton and Oxford was given low-grade work and, desperate for glory, made up a quote to sex up a story and attributed it to his godfather, the academic Colin Lucas. Lucas complained to editor Charlie Wilson, who sacked the young trainee.

5. The Brussels years
Boris Johnson at a house party in Brussels circa 1990 during his time as Daily Telegraph Brussels correspondent.
Boris Johnson at a house party in Brussels circa 1990 during his time as Daily Telegraph Brussels correspondent. Photograph: Charles Grant
Johnson was swiftly scooped up by Max Hastings, then editor of the Daily Telegraph, whom he had invited to speak at the Oxford Union during his presidency. Hastings was a more accommodating employer and in 1989 promoted his protege to become Brussels correspondent when he was just 25. Over the next five years Johnson made his name by almost singlehandedly developing a compelling narrative that everything emanating from the EU was either loony or sinister. Towards the end of his time in Brussels his distorted stories had damaged his credibility among his peers in Europe but back home he was becoming a household name. It was his first taste of power and he revelled in it.

6. The TV personality
Boris Johnson endears himself to the nation on Have I Got News For You, with a spot of hair-ruffling.
Boris Johnson endears himself to the nation on Have I Got News For You, with a spot of hair-ruffling. Photograph: BBC
Johnson was brought back to London in 1994 and elevated to the Telegraph’s assistant editor and chief political columnist – although he privately confessed to a colleague to not possessing “any political opinions”. He also acquired a column in the Spectator, which he littered with such terms as “piccaninny” and “puffing coolies”. The chilling tape of his conversation with his friend Darius Guppy, a convicted fraudster, in which he agreed to help Guppy with his plan to beat up a journalist, also came to light. But it was fashionable at the time to rail against so-called political correctness and to some Johnson seemed like a breath of fresh air.

When he was invited on Have I Got News for You in 1998, the Guppy tape was raised again but Johnson made the audience laugh with him by rolling his eyes and ruffling his hair and won a vast new following. What should have sunk him had made him untouchable.

7. The Sextator
Boris Johnson and Petronella Wyatt at the Spectator summer party at the magazine’s offices in Doughty Street, London in July 2006.
Boris Johnson and Petronella Wyatt at the Spectator summer party at the magazine’s offices in Doughty Street, London in July 2006. Photograph: Alan Davidson/Rex/Shutterstock
Johnson was now intent on cashing in on his fame and launching his political career, but in 1999, just after his 35th birthday, he was made editor of the Spectator on the explicit understanding he would drop his parliamentary ambitions. Within two years, however, he had become MP for the plum Tory seat of Henley, promising its residents that he would step down from the Spectator – but he stayed on for four years.

It was not just his employers and voters whom he thus betrayed but also his second wife Marina, whom he had married while still in Brussels. During his six years as editor the magazine, now dubbed the Sextator, became a byword for lasciviousness. One of Johnson’s longest liaisons at this time was with his columnist Petronella Wyatt, but he lied about the affair to Tory leader Michael Howard’s communications chief Guy Black. When sacked for dishonesty, he insisted that it was acceptable, even desirable, to lie.

8. Mr Mayor
Mayor of London Boris Johnson after he gets stuck on a zipwire during BT London Live in Victoria Park in August 2012.
Mayor of London Boris Johnson after he gets stuck on a zipwire during BT London Live in Victoria Park in August 2012. Photograph: Barcroft Media
Johnson’s first stint as an MP was hardly a storming success, and reports of more affairs did not help. Insult was added to injury when David Cameron, a fellow Etonian two years his junior, became Tory leader. When he omitted to raise Johnson to his shadow cabinet, Johnson’s chances of advancement seemed vanishingly thin. No wonder that when the Tory candidacy for the London mayoralty was offered to him, he was interested. A disciplined campaign catapulted Johnson into City Hall in 2008. The shine wore off almost instantly, however, when it became clear he had virtually no plans. Many appointments made in indecent haste ended in sackings, resignations, accusations of lying and racism and even a criminal conviction. And yet he won again in 2012, going global at the Olympics by allowing himself to get stuck in front of the world’s cameras on a zipwire.

9. Leave
Boris Johnson speaks in front of the famous Brexit battle bus in York during the Vote Leave campaign tour of the UK in May 2016.
Boris Johnson speaks in front of the famous Brexit battle bus in York during the Vote Leave campaign tour of the UK in May 2016. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
Red Boris – pro-cycling, pro-Europe, pro-immigration, anti-Trump – had won London but by the end of his second term the old, bluer version of Boris was back. Pandering to the new rightward swing of the Conservative party, Johnson positioned himself to attack by standing for parliament again a year before he was due to leave City Hall. In 2016 he famously wrote two columns setting out an argument for both sides of the EU referendum. But clearly his best chance of removing his Remain rival Cameron from Downing Street was by backing Leave, and he did so with his characteristic campaigning flair and disdain for facts and rules. After his side won, it looked as if he would become PM. But when fellow Leave campaigner Michael Gove declared him unfit to lead the country through Brexit – and even questioned his true commitment to leaving the EU – Johnson’s hopes were quashed and Theresa May came to power instead.

10. Final lap
President Donald Trump shakes hands with Boris Johnson, then British foreign secretary, during the United Nations General Assembly in New York in September 2017.
President Donald Trump shakes hands with Boris Johnson, then British foreign secretary, during the United Nations General Assembly in New York in September 2017. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP
To general astonishment – including probably his own – May made Johnson her foreign secretary despite obvious antipathy between them. Frustration at his failure to read briefs, however, turned to fury over his gratuitous causing of offence to foreigners. Perhaps his greatest crime was his careless words that directly led to the extension of the prison sentence in Iran of the young British-Iranian woman Nazanin Zhagari-Ratcliffe. Regarded as one of the worst foreign secretaries in history, he resigned in 2018 in protest at May’s deal with the EU, describing it as a “turd” (although he later went on to vote for it.) Such details, however, passed by President Trump, who has repeatedly hailed Johnson as the best person to become Britain’s next prime minister. If he does take possession of No 10, as expected, we will soon find out how much more the two men have in common than extraordinary hair.

Sonia Purnell is the author of Just Boris: A Tale of Blond Ambition

[TonyGosling]

If Blair's so good at running the Congo, let him stay there
By Boris Johnson12:01AM GMT 10 Jan 2002
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3571742/If-Blairs-so -good-at-running-the-Congo-let-him-stay-there.html

HE'S back. The doors of the prime ministerial plane have been opened, and he has at last been seen at the top of the gangway. Our leader is returned to his benighted children; the pater patriae is home, and how lost his ministers have seemed without him.

For ages, it seems, Supertone has been orbiting in his taxpayer-funded jet, descending to bring his particular brand of humbug to the trouble spots of the world. He did the namaste in Bangalore, and lo, the warring faiths of the Indian subcontinent immediately rescheduled World War Three. For a full 120 minutes, he and Cherie shone the light of their countenances upon the people of Afghanistan, and, who knows, perhaps the place is now rife with feminism, habeas corpus and multi-party democracy.

What a relief it must be for Blair to get out of England. It is said that the Queen has come to love the Commonwealth, partly because it supplies her with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies; and one can imagine that Blair, twice victor abroad but enmired at home, is similarly seduced by foreign politeness.

They say he is shortly off to the Congo. No doubt the AK47s will fall silent, and the pangas will stop their hacking of human flesh, and the tribal warriors will all break out in watermelon smiles to see the big white chief touch down in his big white British taxpayer-funded bird. Like Zeus, back there in the Iliad, he has turned his shining eyes away, far over the lands of the Hippemolgoi, the drinkers of mares' milk. He has forgotten domestic affairs, and here, as it happens, in this modest little country that elected him, hell has broken loose.

Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, has been at war with Peter Hain about the timing of the plan to abolish the pound. Half the adolescent population seems to be trying to steal the mobile phones of the other half. Every female columnist in Fleet Street is now in a state of panic about the mumps, measles and rubella jab, waving their babies in the air and screaming for guidance from the First Father. Across Britain, the commuters groan and snarl as the Dave Sparts and Ned Ludds of the RMT bring the trains to a halt.

And now, to cap it all, one of Blair's very own ministers, the increasingly trusted and important Peter Hain, has broken off from his war with Straw to launch an attack on Stephen Byers. Today the Prime Minister will open his copy of The Spectator (which he once told me, through gritted teeth, that he rather enjoyed), to find that Hain has made a sensational admission. He tells Anne McElvoy that "we have the worst railways in Europe". That's it, Tony: out of the mouth of one of your own ministers.

After four and a half years of Labour government, British railways are now worse than those of Portugal, Greece and Romania. Slovak drivers actually turn up for work; Bulgarian leaves do not block the track; and the 8.02 from Zagreb to Split is infinitely more to be trusted than anything running from Waterloo to Basingstoke.

What Hain has said is not only unpatriotic. It is true. It is therefore a gaffe. How can a senior minister make such a confession, and not be punished? Will Hain survive until the weekend? Of course he will, because the Government, in its arrogance, knows that it can continue to blame the Tories. It was the damnosa hereditas, they will say. It was the botched privatisation. It is only now, says Blair, that the terrible effects are being felt on the nation's arteries, just as a heart patient spectacularly collapses after 18 blissful years of eating pork pies. Does anyone really believe this account?

For all its faults, privatisation led to a 25 per cent increase in railway use; it allowed huge quantities of cash to be raised on the markets - £2 billion in 2000 alone; and, in spite of the crashes at Paddington and Hatfield, you were far safer travelling on the privatised railways than you were on British Rail.

What has caused the railways' recent cardiac infarct has been four years of Prescottian inertia, coupled with a hysterical reaction to the Hatfield crash, which drove Railtrack into a bankruptcy that secretly or openly delighted every section of the Labour Party. The railways have been managed fantastically badly by this Government; and it is good of Hain to accept the gravity of the problem.

Since he is in this candid mood, he might as well go on to say that we have one of the worst health services in Europe. To pluck a statistic at random: if you are a British woman with leukaemia, you have 21 per cent less chance of living another five years than a German woman with leukaemia. No one is suggesting that the problems of the NHS began in 1997; it is just that Labour does not seem to have any intention of solving them.

One of the reasons the Germans are healthier than us is that they are able to spend more on health, because roughly half their hospitals are independently funded. Is that a solution Blair is prepared to discuss? Or is Labour prepared to learn from France? There they stop the wasting of GPs' time by imposing a 25 per cent upfront charge - which is refundable later - on everyone who calls to see the doctor.

And if Hain were really super-truthful, he would admit that we have a philistine education system, in which the teaching of foreign languages is at an all-time low. My new pro-European policy for the Tories is to crusade for the teaching of French and German in state schools, so that we can all go over there and see what they do for ourselves. And if Blair continues to * around the stratosphere, and ignore the problems at home, he might as well find another country to run. If they will elect him.

Boris Johnson is editor of The Spectator and MP for Henley