Personal score-settling and diversity at Oscars

THE Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings saga and a diverse Oscars ceremony were the topics discussed by columnists and contributors in the newspapers.

Daily Mail

Dominic Lawson asked how dangerous the Boris Johnson scandal of getting Tory party funds to pay for the refurbishment of his Downing Street flat was.

“Boris Johnson has said ‘[the public] doesn’t give a monkeys’ – despite the fact that Mr Johnson clearly gives lots of monkeys, or he wouldn’t have earlier briefed newspaper editors about how disgraceful it was that [Dominic] Cummings had, allegedly, been leaking stories about the unorthodox financing of his domestic refurb,” he said.

“But these excesses were all funded by the taxpayer without us having known what had been going on, still less having any say in it.”

Daily Express

Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith said Covid, not Westminster sleaze allegations, was the topic most people were worried about.

“I don’t say that the issues about ministerial and civil service codes of conduct aren’t important, they are,” he said.

“Government has in its hands vast sums of taxpayers’ money and has to be careful not to leave itself open to the charge that it favoured any business for personal financial or political reasons.

“But what we don’t want or need now, on top of all that Covid nightmare though, is the eruption of personal settling of scores seen in the last few days, by advisors, ex-advisers and some ministers.”

The Independent

Charles Arrowsmith said that the Academy found itself able to nominate and reward great work by a refreshingly diverse set of voices in this year’s Oscars.

He said: “To hear Regina King, Travon Free, Tyler Perry, and Angela Bassett talk about the Chauvin trial, racial injustice, police brutality, and the Jim Crow South, lent the ceremony an urgency and authenticity it’s often previously lacked.”

He added: “What’s possible is that this year will mark a genuine turningpoint for the Oscars, as the art, politics, and personnel of a newly progressive Hollywood come into alignment.”