As a former courtroom, the Information Center No. Nine of Downing Street has noticed their fair percentage of drama, and nothing more than last year. Around £2. 9 million was spent to turn the site into a level for press conferences, as a component of the government’s television plans for briefings with the parliamentary lobby, but all that was replaced in April when, after the break-up of Dominic Cummings and Lee Cain, the concept was abandoned, and allegra Stratton went from lobby briefings to the rhythm of COP26.
But what about the newly restored newsroom, freshly adorned in royal blue and in abundance of Union Jacks?For the more than six months, the former audience room of the Privy Council Office has hosted intermittent speakers, adding Sajid Javid’s Covid briefings and Boris Johnson’s children’s climate replacement convention – “an uncommon possibility of having mature questions”, as one 10th attendee put it. However, for the most part, the room remained empty and loveless, with only one or two Henry Hoovers filling its cavernous walls with panels.
However, a new use for the venue was discovered last month, after it was revealed that Boris Johnson had used the room to host a secret screening of the new James Bond film No Time to Die. and an old Etonian entangled in Whitehall politics, shown to the audience, with all prices borne by the corporations involved. Issue 10 told hackers that “similar screenings have already been done,” prompting enthusiastic hypotheses about the other films that were screened there.
Famously, the AMERICAN president has his “White House Family Theater” with a list of records that reveal the tastes of various headlines: Bill Clinton enjoyed Naked Gun 33 0. 33 while Finding Dory was the first film to be screened there under the presidency of Donald Trump. Eager to know which films were screened in Downing Street, Mr S has conscientiously submitted a request for access to data, eager to see the photographs that our priapic Prime Minister has seen.
Some of Johnson’s favorite films include Apocalypse Now, The Godfather and Love in Fact, which, in their own way, can touch the chords of his long-suffering Downing Street team. of Johnson Kermit the Frog’s speech at the UN, or of Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V to put them in a state of war with France?
But now The brief reaction from Downing Street has returned to verify that, apart from the “film” that is already in the “public domain”, “no other film has been screened” since April 1, 2021 – despite the fact that No. 10 informed reporters that “similar screenings were held” before the film 007.
Given the obvious discrepancy in those responses and the ongoing investigation into the Cabinet Office’s use of FOI apps, let’s hope the next film to be screened in Westminster will be Lie Aher Day.
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