A new report suggests that eco-warrior Carrie is actually damaging the planet by renting clothes. The new study, published by the Finnish scientific journal Environment Research Letters, argues that renting clothes has a higher climate impact than simply throwing them away once the hidden environmental costs of packaging, delivering and dry cleaning them are also accounted. According to the boffins from the Department of Sustainability Science at LUT University, renting clothes was the worst option with the highest global warming potential (GWP). Wearing the same clothes for extended periods had the lowest GWP. Fashion is just bad for the planet.
This will come as terrible news to climate-conscious Carrie, who notably rented her Christos Costarellos wedding dress for just £45. In fact, Mrs. Johnson ordered several decoy dresses alongside her dress of choice in order to keep the real dress a secret. Imagine the unnecessary damage those decoy dresses had on the environment…
To add salt to the wound, Carrie also rented all of her outfits for the G7 summit, where world leaders pontificated about the importance of tackling climate change. Wearing the same thing twice would be more sustainable, though a little less fashionable. The only truly net zero solution is to grow your own clothes…
Another week, another Cummings Substack* – this time answering his most-asked question of why he helped Boris in 2019 if he knew him to be unsuitable for the top job. To precis the 4,600-word post, while Cummings believed “Boris is obviously unfit for the job”, he thought the combination of a second referendum – which would “be violent” – and Corbyn as PM would be an “even bigger disaster”. Cummings claims the day after the Brexit vote Boris told him “Obviously it’s ludicrous me being PM — but no more ludicrous than Dave or George, don’t you think?”
Alongside resuming his attacks on Carrie – something he promises will be further advanced in his next Substack – he writes of Boris’s character, “He is both much more useless than the media portray and much more capable of self-awareness and ruthlessness than they ever portray, or his enemies usually discern.” He contrasts the PM with David Cameron, who was Boris’s opposite insofar as being portrayed by the media as simple on the surface with mysteries beneath the surface.
The most humorous claim from Cummings is on Boris’s attempted persuasion to get him to join his No. 10 team in 2019. Cummings demanded Boris “do whatever it takes, when officials start babbling about Ireland, the union, the rule of law and what not”:
“we just keep bulldozing. Prorogue. Refuse Royal Assent. Whatever. They’re trying to overthrow the biggest democratic vote ever, we’re entitled to use extreme measures to stop them.”
Boris declared:
“We did the referendum, come on, you’ve got to do it and it’ll be great fun to smash all those ***** again.”
Cummings leaves it up to readers’ imaginations to fill in the blank. Guido has a few ideas…
*Guido encourages readers to subscribe here, if only to avoid Cummings’ threat of submitting invoices to editors whose hacks don’t offer enough credit to the author…
While she may not be getting the honeymoon of her dreams until 2022, Carrie’s getting on with the important post-marital job of updating social media with her new name; confirming the switch to Carrie Johnson on Twitter and Instagram. Unfortunately the changes have resulted in Mrs Johnson losing her blue verified ticks on both platforms. Unfortunately for a comms professional, Carrie forgot to save her former Twitter handle.
Congratulations to user Louise Bevan (now @CarrieSymonds) for being the first to grab it…
Married in a small, private Catholic ceremony at Westminster Cathedral yesterday afternoon. Amoris Laetitia
From the tone of coverage and discourse on social media about the Downing Street flat’s controversially-financed redecoration, you would imagine that there was a snobby reaction to the “John Lewis furniture nightmare” on the part of Carrie and Boris bordering on allergic when they moved in. This morning’s coordinated tweets from Labour MPs give a flavour of that view:
Boris Johnson and Carrie Symonds consider John Lewis furniture a “nightmare”.
— Nadia Whittome MP (@NadiaWhittomeMP) April 27, 2021
Maybe they should ask the 14 million people living in poverty, or the 280,000 people who are homeless, what they have nightmares about.
I bet John Lewis sofas wouldn't feature.
Many of the customers of John Lewis don’t agree they live in a “John Lewis nightmare” what unctuous snobbery oozing from No10!
— Barry Sheerman MP (@BarrySheerman) April 27, 2021
Most revealing about Johnson & his Downing St refurb - he wanted rid of Theresa May’s “John Lewis nightmare”. Most people consider John Lewis reliable, good value & upmarket. One of Britain’s favourite brands. #TorySleaze
— Ben Bradshaw (@BenPBradshaw) April 25, 2021
The commentariat hasn’t been shy of misattributing the phrase either:
Can't quite get my head around Carrie Symonds reportedly looking down on 'John Lewis furniture'. I think we had our wedding list there. For all but the tiniest section of the population, John Lewis is posh.
— James O'Brien (@mrjamesob) April 27, 2021
One of the most offensive details of the PM/Carrie Symonds reno scandal is that they had the flat redone because it was a “John Lewis nightmare”. That nightmare is aspirational and out of reach for very many people in this country. And nobody is paying for their gaffs
— Hannah Fearn (@hannahfearn) April 27, 2021
Somewhat lost in this saga is that the phrase “John Lewis furniture nightmare of the May years” actually originated months ago from the elegant hand of Anne McElvoy in a Tatler article, not the mouth of Carrie Symonds. The actual evidence is that far from despising the middle-classes’ go-to shop, Carrie is in fact one of their most avid customers. On the very day she moved into Downing Street the Daily Mail had photographs (above) of a large delivery of boxes arriving from John Lewis. That’s a lot of boxes from a store she is supposed to detest…
Dom’s blog is back in action and not pulling any punches following last night’s No. 10 briefings against him. To sum up his claims:
- Whilst he possesses some WhatsApp messages between the PM and Dyson, he claims to have not found the ones leaked to the BBC. He is willing to have the Cabinet Secretary search through his phone to prove this.
- On who leaked the second lockdown plans: the Cabinet Secretary told the PM it couldn’t have been Cummings or Cain, and that all the evidence pointed to Henry Newman and others in that office. Cummings claims Boris then tried stopping the leak enquiry, as he couldn’t sack Newman owing to his close friendship with Carrie…
- On the No. 10 private flat refurbishment, Cummings claims Boris stopped speaking to him about it in 2020 as Cummings told him “plans to have donors secretly pay for the renovation were unethical, foolish, possibly illegal”
- He describes the PM and his office of “falling so far below the standards of competence and integrity the country deserves.”
He adds in a follow-up tweet: “Also everyone shd ignore all media claims to have quotes from ‘friends’, ‘allies’ — they’re all bullshit”…
Read Dom’s blog in full…
