SMOKES & DAGGERS

A mischievous mix of (mostly) news

SMOKES is dominated this week by the political bombshell to end all bombshells: Brexit. Lead Labour Leave campaigner Kelvin Hopkins was interviewed Thursday by the redoubtable Bryan Dobson – who was at Westminster for the historic result. Asked about the potential impact of a Scottish border vote on the union, he suggested the Scots would have to win their independence with votes, ‘just like the Irish did 100 years ago’. He meant the winning we presume, not the voting. FAIR and balanced they may be, but US news network Fox News apparently struggle with accuracy. An on-air caption proclaimed that the UK had voted to leave the ‘UN’. If only – we could probably live with that. We also noted, with a chuckle, the sub headline in an Irish online news outlet that suggested Brexit was ‘the biggest blow to the eU since WWII’. Which is remarkable since the precursor to the eU, the european Coal and Steel Community was only established in 1951, as a direct result of WWII. One presumes they meant europe, of course, but now more than ever the terms are not interchangeable. Former minister Alan Shatter didn’t allow the absence of a Dáil chamber in which to vent to spoil his rant on Brexit. On Friday, he expounded: ‘Brexit vote confirms this is a pre-enlightenment age of unreason, extreme nationalism, demagogic xenophobia and tweeterised sloganeering.’ A sentiment ruined only perhaps by the fact he himself was ‘tweeterising’ it. BORIS JOHNSON is not just a politician, of course, but a former journalist – who among other things, used to write a motoring column. Was he any good? Far be it from us to judge, but car blogger Raphael Orlove, editor of blog Jalopnik, believes he was perhaps the worst motoring writer of all time. His proof, or part of it, is a phrase Johnson used in a review of the Ferrari F430. While working for GQ, he wrote: ‘It was as though the whole county of Hampshire was lying back and opening her wellbred legs to be ravished by the Italian stallion.’ A sentence so awful, as to be praiseworthy. Unlike perhaps Mr Johnson. eVeN if you wanted to go to the cinema to escape the Brexit doom and gloom, you couldn’t. Independence Day – Resurgence opened this week. On Thursday. You couldn’t make it up. OUR favourite non-sequitur response of the week was from the online wag, who asked: ‘Does this mean that Chris Eubank will be called Chris Bank?’