An interesting thing

boris-johnson.com is a website which appears either to belong now, or to have belonged, to our noble leader. It has quite a large number of articles written by him.

Except ... well, look at this defanged text (what were links are bold, targets indicated following them, my elisions marked as [...]):

The programme seems to be far more thrilling, to the younger generation, than Men and Motors, or the Playboy Channel. It is called Takeshi’s Castle. It comes from Japan, and there is nothing like it, believe me, on British TV. Given the widespread use of smartphones and easy access to internet, myriads of mobile apps for doctors are now available to help the doctors reach out to their patients through distant chat, call and video consultation features. [...] Check this out [link to https://stillbirthalliance.org.au] site for know about how to keep yourself healthy at any situation. These mobile apps [...] Mobile apps for doctors-the future! You can check out all the services we can offer you here [link to https://desertmobilemedical.com/] about Scottsdale’s #1 Trusted Mobile Family Doctor.

– From https://www.boris-johnson.com/2006/02/16/health-and-safety/

There is much more like that: a mixture between what looks like his text (ending 'TV.') and more-or-less toxic spam. Obviously, it has become infested by spammers, because no-one has been looking after it since, probably, 2016.

It's fairly easy to use the very wonderful Wayback Machine to search for old versions of that page:

• 16th February 2006 is the first capture of it, although the URL has changed since then;
• 20th December 2016 is the first capture under the current URL, and it looks messy but intact;
• 26th January 2018 still intact, looking better now;
• 9th May 2019 spam is now present, afer which it remains the same for a while;
• 20th October 2020 it now looks like it does today.

So, clearly things started rotting slowly, and the rot is now progressing. It is possible that the spam is being interpolated into the text by some third-party bit of JavaScript which has been infested with bad things, but it looks as if all the content on that page comes either from boris-johnson.com or is fairly obvious user-tracking noise from 'reputable' sites.

It certainly does appear as if this was some site associated with Boris Johnson at one point which, as with so many things, he has moved on from leaving behind him the smell of rot. I mean, does it really matter if the former website of a major (well, 'major') world leader is now serving spam? Certainly not to Boris Johnson.