Boris, Paltrow, Books - Breathtaking - Rachel Clarke
Boris Johnson is "an unrepentant and inveterate liar" who feels he is not subject to the same rules as others, Sylvie Bermann, the former ambassador to the UK during the Brexit vote, says in a new book... She predicts Johnson will seek to use Covid to mask the true economic cost of Brexit to the UK...
Describing him as intelligent and charming, she said he uses "lies to embellish reality, as a game and as an instrument of power. The ends justify the means. He has no rules.
Asked at a Royal United Services Institute thinktank event about her description of him as an unrepentant liar, She said: "He would not object to being called that. He knows he is a liar He has always played with that. He was fired from his first post for that reason."
(Patrick Wintour, The Guardian, 2021)
*The Assault on Truth: Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and the Emergence of a New Moral Barbarism - Peter Osborne
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| Truth and Falsehood Alfred George Stevens ( 1817-1875) Photo Credit:The Fitzwilliam Museum [CC BY-NC] |
... Some of these [lies]are well known, such as those that led him to be sacked from the Times aged 23 (fabricating a quote) and later the shadow cabinet (falsely denying that he'd had an affair with a Spectator colleague.) He [Peter Osborne] also details the serial lies told about Jeremy Corbyn, Labour and the impending Brexit deal over the course of the 2019 election campaign, a time when Osborne maintained a purpose-built website to keep track of all the falsehoods. "I have been a political reporter for almost three decades," he writes, and "I have never encountered a senior British politician who lies and fabricates so regularly, so shamelessly and so systematically as Boris Johnson."...
Johnson's lies are no secret, though they have rarely been as well documented as they are in The Assault on Truth. The question is why they - and books such as this - do him so little harm..
(William Davies, The Guardian, 2021)
Gwyneth Paltrow
Gwyneth Paltrow has been warned to stop spreading misinformation by the medical director of NHS England after she suggested long Covid could be treated with "intuitive fasting", herbal cocktails and regular visits to an "infrared sauna".
The Holywood star, who markets unproven new-age potions on her Goop website, wrote on her latest blogpost that she caught Codid-19 early and had since suffered "long-tail fatigue and brain fog"...
She embarked on a "keto and plant-based" diet, involving fasting until 11am every day, "lots of coconut aminos" and sugar-free kombucha and kimchi. Paltrow goes on to recommend her brand's Madame Ovary supplement and Seedlip "the incredible herbal nonalcoholic cocktails". She added: "I'm doing an infrared sauna as often as I can, all in service of healing."...
However, her unproven advice prompted a rebuke from Prof Stephen Powis, national medical director for the NHS in England, who urged influencers, such as Paltrow, against using misinformation.
"We need to take long Covid seriously and apply serious science. All influencers who use social media have a duty of responsibility and a duty of care around that. Like the virus, misinformation carries across borders and it mutates and it evolves"...
(Matthew Weaver, The Guardian, 2021)
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| A Quack Selling Medicines unknown artist Photo Credit: Wellcome Collection [Public Domain] |
*Adam Kay, a doctor and the bestselling author of This Is Going to Hurt, questions why celebrities seem obsessed with telling the rest of us how to be healthy.
Cate Blanchett and Sandra Bullock endorse “epidermal growth factor facials.” The growth factor appears by means of the foreskins of newborn babies.Victoria Beckham’s breakfast is apparently a side salad and some apple cider vinegar.
Simon Cowell seems to put his faith in 1V Infusions – “a casserole of vitamins and amino acids designed to annihilate toxins.”
Kim Kardashian supports appetite suppressant lollipops whilst Gwyneth Paltrow claimed that inserting jade eggs into a vagina, balanced hormones and prevented prolapse.
(The Sunday Times, 2019)
“Vaginas do not need steaming. You can get terrible burns and there are no health benefits. Rubbing your body in turmeric is not going to make you healthy. Celebrities are giving wrong information and speaking outside their areas of expertise. I can’t believe it’s OK that you go on social media and sell yourself as an expert. They’re making money out of people and giving incorrect health advice…People believe it because they want to believe it. Everyone wants a quick fix. With health there is no quick fix.
…They are not regulated. Doctors are. If they’re making money out of people, there has to be some kind of liability somewhere. The whole world is celebrity mad and all these teenagers are fascinated by women with fake lips and designer clothes, and I thought, “Why is everyone interested in aesthetics? Why is no one interested in knowledge?”
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| A Physician Wearing a Seventeenth Century Plague Preventive Costume unknown artist Photo Credit: Wellcome Collection [Public Domain] |
The story of the pandemic has, to a significant extent, been framed in numbers: death toll, rise in infections, scarcity of hospital beds, level of economic recession. These and other statistics are near-constant reminders of the colossal effect the virus has had, and continues to have, on the world.
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