Too difficult?

As you get older the spring of optimism gives way to the winter of pessimism. You know that no matter how hard you try you will never play for Celtic, especially given the fact that you couldn’t get a game for your pub team. Surplus to requirements.

Your bullshit detector, however, gets more refined with age. The charlatan that is Boris Johnson gets short-shrift for everything he says and everything he stands for, for being Boris Johnson, basically.

Boris Johnson is like a Buddhist sutra there are always aspects of his bullshit waiting to be discovered.

His reluctance, for example, to commit to bringing a handful of British children back from Syria because it was too difficult.

We all know about the Kindertransport that saved mainly Jewish, middle-class, children from the Nazi state prior to the beginning of the second world war. That didn’t seem too difficult. We put children on a train and then we put them on a ship.  Around 10 000 of them arrived safely.

Taking soil samples from the surface of Mars needs a larger commitment and to be more organised.

1. Sending a rocket up into the Earth’s atmosphere to circle our planet.
2. Sending it on a trajectory to Mars.
3. Orbit Mars
4. Land on the Syritis Major region.
5. Send a robotic vehicle from the hold of the spaceship to collect soil samples
6. Collect samples of soil from the surface of Mars put it in a metal tube and seal them.
7. Leave sealed metal tubes on the surface of Mars.
8. Send a second spaceship to Mars and land it near to the metal tubes.
9. Send a second robotic-rover across the surface to pick up the metal tubes and bring them back to the craft.
10. Use a specially designed rocket to send the metal tubes into orbit around Mars.
11. Send a third spaceship to intercept the orbiter with soil samples on board.
12. Bring the spaceship back to Earth.
13. Break through the Earth’s atmosphere.
14. Release the capsule by parachute to a spot on the Utah desert.

Not really that difficult is it? Now imagine for a minute that you are Boris Johnson and somebody asks you how difficult it would be to bring a handful of children from camps in Syria.