Nicola Sturgeon’s off the hook. Bad news for Bojo.
fandabidozi
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Ruth “The Burrower” Davidson’s gas will be at a peep tonight 
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I posted this challenge on the UK citizenship process earlier in the thread…
Now Zoe Williams has exposed the absurdity in The Guardian:
It is a test to keep people out, of a nation where the criteria of belonging are narrower every day.
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Well, I get 0/3
In part (though I’ll freely admit that I had to use Google) at least two of the questions are unanswerable (as Zoe Williams points out) - there were “Christian communities” in England in Roman times but they were small, do they want that or C4th/5th when it became widespread.
The Tower was built by Guillaume le Conquérant, but it was added to over the years. Certainly by Richard I, Henry II, Henry III, Edward I, reparations during Henry VIII’s time and modifications by the Stuarts - it would be more enlightening to list the monarchs who did not do something to it.
As for the Oscars, honestly, who cares?
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To be fair the only Jacky Stewart I know of is Jackie Stewart the racing diver, and Leonardo Dicaprio is an American who only dates 22 year olds, so I took that to be a bit of a trick question 
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I knew the Tower of London one but had to guess the others - I actually guessed the last one right, but also only because I thought DiCaprio was American and Jacky Stewart a racing driver!
In the Zoe Williams story one of the immigrants she was helping failed the test - again - even though he knows more about British history than she does. My guess is that most people would fail it, whether they’re born British or not - because, as she says, it’s designed to fail people.
But it also for me raised a deeper question: what does it mean to be British?
This is I think much easier in France because it has a written constitution, foundational values that everybody (at least officially) shares, and a single relatively coherent set of public institutions. It is possible to put together a Livret du Citoyen, most of the contents of which I guess most French people would know and agree with. The UK is simply not like that - if you ask British people what it means to be British, you’re likely to get 60 million different answers.
Open mouth and include foot. Of course, the AZ vaccine is being provided at cost which is not the case with other big pharma companies.
I have to declare an interest in AZ as they produce my asthma ‘huffers’.
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I’ll just leave this here…
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Without even reading this I’d just like to say Bojo has lied to Parliament repeatedly. It’s just not worth counting anymore.
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An interesting if demoralising read:
The Assault on Truth: Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and the Emergence of a New Moral Barbarism by Peter Oborne.
It only confirms what we all already know.
It’s obvious isn’t it. Don’t do what I do, do what I say.
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If you were not brought up in France and educated in the French system I think it might take just as much learning to get through the French interview as the UK test.
But it would take a lot of learning to get through the UK test even if you were brought up in the UK.
I don’t think France is much more rational in it’s approach than the UK - I think for example that the recent extension of the language test to older people was a thoughtless response to ‘the great replacement’ anxiety (that French or European culture is being overwhelmed). I think the same unreasoning fears for the loss of a world in which people were confident their place are felt by all western European governments (and others - notably America).
I do think the Livret du Citoyen is less ‘sloppy, moronic and jingoistic’ than the UK’s test - but possibly, as I said, only because France has it relatively easy: I think there is greater consensus about what it means to be French than about what it means to be British.
Approaching a quarter of a million more has been infected in France compared to the UK.
Why the UK death rate is higher than France remains to be determined.
Oh I think the answer to that question is obvious enough Nigel.
My theory is the general health of the UK population John compared to France, what’s yours?