LONDON, U.K. -- The Sunday Times published its this weekendâof the 1,000 richest people in the United Kingdom.
Hereâs an easy way to remember who is number one:
Every time you slip your wet hands into one of those Dyson dryers in a pub or restaurant bathroom, think money.
Think, Sir James Dysonâs moneyâall $27.6 billion dollars of it.
Think vacuum cleaners too. As in: âHey, is that a Dyson?â
He also tried to make a car, a seven-seat, electric SUV, codenamed N526. He spent $853 million of his own money on that little hobby, before giving up.
One can understand, I suppose, his need to compete with a fellow billionaire carmaker like Elon Musk. As in: âHey, is that a Tesla?â
âOurs is a life of risk and failure,â noted Sir James. âLife isnât easy.â
Really, says the man who owns more land than the Queen.
OK, letâs get back to lockdown. As in: âHey, when will this misery be over?â
You might be interested to learn that Prime Minister Boris Johnson has suffered a setbackâover his governmentâs popularity, not his health.
It started with last weekâs stumbling address to the nation about getting the country back to work. There was some confusionâOK, a lot of confusionâabout what he planned to do.
According to the latest polling, more people now think the government is messing up than think itâs doing well.
The Sunday Times told us that PM Boris made a little joke about his predicament:
âIâve learnt that itâs much easier to take peopleâs freedoms away, than give them back.â
It was, said the newspaper, âa rare moment of levity.â
Letâs backtrack now to last week, when I gave you an update on Amira, the five-year-old Canadian orphan stranded in a detention camp in eastern Syria.
I told you about her uncle from Toronto writing to Foreign Minister François-Philippe Champagneâtwiceâasking for a few minutes of his time. He never got an answer.
Well, thereâs news.
This weekend the minister phoned him to say Amira has not been forgotten.
It wasnât a promise to bring her home next week, but it was a commitment, and confirmationâas I read itâthat Canada is working on a plan to rescue her.
Amiraâs uncleâwho has asked that he not be namedâwas surprised and pleased to hear from the minister. They spoke for 10 minutesâwith the promise that somebody from Global Affairs would follow up in the coming days.
There are obvious complications in rescuing an orphan from Syria, but other countries have done it. Amiraâs uncle tried on his own, but got nowhere without Canadaâs help.
The call was a gesture, and significant. But, a gesture is only as good as the intention behind it