DESPERATE MEASURE OF THE WEEK
Perhaps cognisant of the fact that their ongoing attempt to blame the financial and social chaos into which they’ve plunged the entire nation on a handful of desperate people clinging in terror to small rubber boats doesn’t seem to be landing quite as hard with the general population as they’d hoped it would, our vestigial administration has announced some measures to tackle that favourite bugbear of the Tory base: “antisocial behaviour”.
Oh good, you may be thinking, are they perhaps going to announce an increase in police numbers, with a new emphasis on community outreach and crime prevention, rather than “stiffer sentences“ just for once? Are we perhaps, to see some new investment in recreational facilities for our nation’s urban youth to keep them from falling in with the wrong crowd? Well now, that would be lovely, wouldn’t it, but you have met our government, I take it…?
No, rather, they have announced two initiatives, one bizarrely specific, and the other maddeningly vague. Specifically, the government proposes to ban the sale of nitrous oxide, or “laughing gas“. Presumably because, having eliminated all social and economic causes of joy and merriment among the general population, for the sake of neatness, they’re going to eliminate all chemical causes as well.
The second, rather more nebulous initiative, proposes to “allow communities more of a say in defining antisocial behaviour, and in deciding on appropriate punishments.” Excellent, what could possibly go wrong with that?
The proposal doesn’t state whether these “communities“ will be issued with pitchforks and flaming torches, or whether they’ll be expected to supply their own.
NON-COMEBACK OF THE WEEK
Speaking of antisocial behaviour, I’m sure you were riveted by at least some of Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day last Wednesday. Karmically speaking he’s still in debt and probably will be for ever, but it would take someone with extraordinary powers of Zen not to feel at least a flutter of schadenfreude at the fact that the only break Boris got all day from being slowly barbecued live on air by the Parliamentary Privileges Committee was to nip back to the House to watch his attempt to thwart the latest iteration of the Brexit deal (which, you’ll recall, he “got done” three years ago) go up in a very small puff of smoke.
A fairly high-profile backbench revolt, as backbench revolts go, featuring as it did three former Conservative party leaders, including two ex-PMs (and yes, Liz Truss does count as an ex-PM and has the resignation honours list to prove it), but with only 22 MPs voting against the government, it failed to put a dent in the majority, which, irony of ironies, Boris himself created in 2019.
Meanwhile, as you will know if you watched the hearing, Boris did indeed deploy the only logical defence available to him: that he’s too stupid to understand that a room full of people getting drunk and eating cake constitutes a party unless his advisers tell him it is. So now, most commentators agree, whatever credibility he had left is in ruins, his reputation is in tatters, and he stands exposed for the shambling fraud he is and has always been.
As such, he’ll be Tory leader again within two years and back in No 10 inside a decade.
BIZARRE IDENTITY POLITICS OF THE WEEK
Ofcom finally got round to explaining their reluctance to address the increasingly flagrant breaches of their regulations being perpetrated over at GammonBall News, with high-profile Tory politicians, not only being employed as presenters, but frequently being brought on to interview each other. All of this is, or rather is meant to be, strictly verboten, but last week Ofcom explained that GB News is not subject to the regulations controlling news channels because “GB News is not a news channel”.
This came as something of a surprise to most people given that the word news literally makes up two thirds of the name “GB News” and the station’s own literature refers to it as “Britain’s news channel”.
So, let me get this straight; GB News is not actually a news channel, it merely IDENTIFIES as a news channel…? Sounds all a bit woke to me.
POEM OF THE WEEK
Dishy Rishi’s tax returns
Were to the papers sent
He looks relaxed because he’s taxed
At 23 per cent
That’s how it is for wealthy sorts
The system has them smirking
They earn from property and stock
Not shabby things like working
Meanwhile the rest of us, like Keir
Still toiling for our livings
Must cough up 40+ per cent
And swallow our misgivings
We subsidise the billionaires
And slave away like fools
In tax, just like in everything
It’s the rich who make the rules
