One of the bigger pieces of geopolitical news this week involves Boris Johnson. The U.K. prime minister is stepping down.
While reading about how the British media is covering the event, I was reminded that Johnson once reviewed cars.
Apparently very poorly.
That is, when he was even arsed to drive the things. Seems that Johnson often “reviewed” a car by letting it sit in one place for the duration of the loan.
Former GQ editor Dylan Jones, in the Sunday Times, on his former motoring correspondent Boris Johnson… pic.twitter.com/jVf9RhXx8Q
— Jason Groves (@JasonGroves1) April 24, 2022
I don’t bring this up to be political — I just find it an interesting way to ease into the weekend. Especially since Johnson seemed to, uh, not really do the job. It would be less amusing had Johnson been competent.
Hey, if an auto journalist/car reviewer — not all auto journalists review cars, and not all car reviewers are automotive journalists — can eventually climb to the top of his country’s political ladder, maybe that old saw we were told in third grade about how anyone can grow up to be president is true after all.
Or maybe Johnson is just lucky his editors didn’t seem to worry too much about improving his prose and didn’t seem to notice his work ethic, or lack thereof, until he’d moved on.
Either way, after going back and reading some of his old work, I’m going to have to cleanse my palette by Googling a bunch of David E. Davis, John Phillips, and Brock Yates pieces.
[Image: Michael Tubi/Shutterstock.com]
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Tim Healey brings up the topic of “work ethic”? I’ll just be quiet now.
Who is Tim Healey?
Is that any different than real estate or B movie acting?
If you haven’t clicked those links to Johnson’s reviews already, please do so. They’re gold.
My burning question about Johnson was why the man never got a f**king haircut.
Wow, I had no idea. Sounds extremely “cringe”.
I knew Boris was a dipsh_! but I had no idea how much he excelled. True dedication. Amazing how people can actually elect such an incompetent jerk….
USA 2016 is actually quite similar.
Peter Principle. A person in a hierarchy will rise to their highest level of incompetence.
The Americans elected Trump and certainly no one could be more incompetent than him.
Repeat the line.
Each and every President elected after him, are, and will be, even worse than he was. President n+1, will always be worse than President n. That’s how decay works.
“I don’t bring this up to be political…” when that is literally the only tenuous link between this and “The [purported] Truth About Cars.”
Somewhere there’s a Tim Hortons that badly needs a manager. Lucky for Healey, they probably have a janitorial position open as well.
Boris managed to get the most fuel efficiency of any of his fellow writers from his reviews and he never moved an inch. Those skills were invaluable for his transition into politics and prepared him well for party leadership and Prime Minister.
There you go not talking politics again
Nikola Tesla was once a ditch digger (for 2 years at 2 bucks per day). I have no idea if he was any good at it.
http://www.history.com/news/9-things-you-may-not-know-about-nikola-tesla
(Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some pigeons to feed.)
The U.S. economy is tanking. Prepare yourselves:
https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/auto-loan-late-payments-by-state/
I don’t think we are tanking yet but at some point we will go into a recession. Prices for vehicles are still high and any repossessions will be resold fairly quickly. When the vehicles start to pile up on the lots and when there are larger layoffs and people stop buying things then we will be tanking but that will not last. If anything the US is overdue for a recession we have had a long stretch of growth.
C’mon, Tim. Enough with the obvious non-automotive clickbait.
The art of politics is to leave office at rihgt time and let other side to take responsibility for what happens next. Now Democrats should understand that removing Trump from office was not a good idea. Now they stuck with war in Europe, cold war with China, inflation, high gas prices, coming recession and everything else like Carter did in 70s. Nixon resigned, but what came next? Carter who took all responsibily for all failures and then rise of noeconservative movement.
“removing Trump from office”
Mr Trump removed himself from office by losing the election, and he did many things to earn that loss.
As for the potential recession, I fault Mr Biden for extending and expanding the giveaway program that Mr Trump started. Our grandchildren will pay for today’s hamburger.
There’s a theory that says Trump surprised himself when he won.
There could be another theory that says that he didn’t enjoy the job all that much (at first), but then you have the theory that he grew to like it (maybe too much). I suppose one could theorize that he sabotaged himself when he wanted out (consciously or unconsciously).
“Hey Tool — are you saying the man gets in when he wants to and gets out when he wants to? Or are you saying that he’s cursed to forever get exactly the Opposite of what he desires at the time?”
“No, I’m not saying that.”
“by losing the election”
It wasn’t just “losing the election”. There was thermo-nuclear war waged by establishment and democrats against Trump. In any case Democrats got what they wished. They won the battle but lost the war.
The reviews sounds horrifically bad, but then, I could never take a car review in a magazine like GQ seriously anyway.
How does this have anything remotely to do with autos or the auto industry? Surely there are auto newsworthy events that can be reported? The change of the UK Prime Minister isn’t in any way newsworthy on an auto news blog.
I stopped following this site for 3 years due to the creeping insertion of politics in articles. only recently returned about a month ago. It will not be hard to leave again.
Stick to auto related content….this is not that.
Boris repeatedly endorsed adding speed cameras, lowering speed limits, upping congestion charging, and creating bicycle lanes when he was the mayor of London. These are unforgivable sins for someone that proclaimed themselves an automotive enthusiast.
Fewer than a quarter of households in central London own cars. Why should policy there be centered around cars, privileging a small minority at everyone else’s expense?
If you want to be a car enthusiast in the UK, you have the entire rest of the country, and central London (or Manchester, where cars are banned from significant areas) is probably not the right place for you.