Continuing yesterday’s rant, the ever-amazing Tony Jay:
… The answer soon arrived in the form of a brutal report (https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2530) on the Government’s response to the Covid pandemic put out by two of Parliament’s joint select committees, Health & Social Care and Science & Technology. Now, bear in mind that these Committees are chaired by Tories. In the case of the Health & Social Care committee it’s chaired by Jeremy “No Dear, they’re just calling you a runt” Hunt, who was Tory Health Secretary between 2012 and 2018 and so was the man directly responsible for many of the cuts, ‘reforms’ and supply chain reorganisations that left the National Health Service of 2019/20 already overburdened, under-resourced and ill-equipped to deal with Covid despite multiple past exercises warning in excruciating detail exactly how unprepared the NHS was for such an event. While people of normal ethical standards would be wondering “Who the hell thought that total and absolute Hunt was qualified to head up that particular Committee given his abysmal record and the degree of loathing he’s held in by everyone outside of the very top executive (Government appointed) echelons of the NHS?” you have to remember, these are Tories we’re talking about. Failure is the grease on their pole and gravity is only ever an optional constraint. He only fucked up his Health brief if you think fucking up the NHS wasn’t his job. In Tory terms he played an absolute blinder.
Many observers foolishly assumed that Hunt would pull his punches like a good little soldier and give the Government a mediocre whitewash. After all, any honest [I see what you did there – Ed] appraisal would lay a fairly damning portion of the blame on his bony shoulders and expecting a Tory to willingly assume blame for failure if they can possibly avoid it is like expecting George Armstrong Custer to refuse a medal for ever so gallantly slaughtering half-starved Native Americans while the regimental band played a cheeful garryowen.
What they apparently forgot, but the ever-paranoid Flobalob clearly didn’t, was that the Saudi-funded Hunt had come second in the 2019 Tory Leadership Election and resigned from the Cabinet rather than tarnish his middle-of-the-road brand serving under the Bullingdon Boor. He might be as slimy and malleable as any of Johnson’s ring-kissers, but Hunt sees himself as the only viable King Over the Water for the ‘establishment’ Tory Party, ready to slide into Number 10 as a safe pair of blandly corrupt hands if and when the Annos Anus finally come to a sticky end, and only too happy in the meantime to stick a knife into the weakened joints of his rival’s Body Politic where and when opportunity permits. Given this, it’s hardly surprising that Johnson got out of Dodge ASAP, he knew exactly what was coming and didn’t want to have to answer any questions about “one of the most important public health failures the United Kingdom has ever experienced” where his Cabinet had viewed the oncoming pandemic through “a veil of ignorance” and where “the heroic efforts of NHS staff, are to be celebrated, but do not compensate for the mistakes”.
In any normal political milieu this report would have cut a swathe through Government faster than a mankini-clad Prince Andrew rushing to a Queen of the Teens Party on Epstein Island, dropping Ministers like sizzling bon-mots and necessitating Flobalob himself taking a short walk to the podium outside Number 10 Downing Street to read a brief note of contrite resignation before sawing off his own head with a blunt butter knife. But we’re not in a normal political milieu, not anymore, not even close. The diabolical troika of Press/Media collusion + foreign financial and social media backing + self-sabotaging Opposition means that the only threat to Flobalob’s grip on the Throne comes from within, and so far, he’s been able to keep a majority of the Tory Party’s reactionary cadres, its high-end Donors and roughly 40% of the dumbed-down electorate happy enough for his rivals to restrict their challenges to his authority to the discreet and deniable. When that changes, and it could happen very quickly indeed depending on circumstances, everyone within licking distance of the Great Brass Ring wants to be in a position where they can point to something they said or did that gives them a (barely) plausible window to represent both continuity (because a Tory Government can never, ever, be said to have done anything wrong) but also radical change (because everything that people say went wrong – even though it didn’t – was someone else’s fault, not theirs).
With that in mind, one unavoidable side-effect of Flobalob doing a runner down to ‘Marbs’ (as it’s colloquially known in Essex gangster parlance) was his leaving the feral malcontents who constitute his Cabinet without anything remotely resembling adult supervision for a while, which is never a good idea. Whenever Dumpy Drippydick goes AWOL for a few days bored political mediavores of every species start foraging about in the mouldy Westminster undergrowth for something juicy to suckle on and everyone with an ounce of ambition takes the opportunity to tout their portfolio of steadily more revealing publicity shots around the usual expensive London eateries hoping that one of the Broadsheet Big Boys will take a shine to them. Thing is, they all know that there’s a built-in expiration date on Johnson’s Premiership, that’s just how it rolls when your Party leader is (how does it go?) an egotistical mishmash of rodentine ethics and masturbatory instincts. All the pundit guff about him being so popular with Tory voters that he can feasibly challenge Thatcher’s longevity is just laughable. They said more or less the same thing about David Cameron and Theresa May, and we all know what happened to those titans of mediocrity. All Tory Prime Ministers are looming granite monoliths with political destinies measurable only in geological timescales… until they’re very suddenly not, and the Infotainers who were fluffing them so enthusiastically just a moment ago will unlatch and move on without a second glance, professionally addicted as they are to the spicy hit of the next Kwizats Hadderach’s pulpy wee worm twitching excitedly upon their nimble tongues [bleach cocktail, stat! – Ed].
The truth is, Johnson is sitting pretty right now because he’s a useful attention sponge behind which the real movers and shakers who are dismantling the UK into disposable chunks of short-term profit can operate, and because he happened to seize his moment of glory at a point in time when the pendulum of Establishment opprobrium was swinging so ferociously against the previous Labour leader (a man who wanted to raise taxes on the rich? Stop arming terrorist regimes? What a monster!) that the British News Media have found themselves, by accident or design, pancaked up against the far-Right side of the political sphere where simple inertia has resulted in them displaying a level of bias so shocking that even Injustices Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett would struggle (but only briefly) to match it. Johnson could have spent the last two years vivisecting baby seals on the altar of St Paul’s Cathedral while dressed as a Nazi Nun and singing “Thank Heaven for Little Girls” in a camp falsetto and it wouldn’t have mattered. The coverage would still have cycled unquestioningly between tonal variations on “In other news, the Prime Minister was in London today honouring the wartime experiences of religious groups on both sides of the conflict while showing off his butchery skills and, to the delight of onlookers, a surprising gift for crooning. Did he hit all the right notes? We sent Bubbly Northern Reporter Trisha Token to the nearest Conservative and Unionist Club (that will admit women) to find out”.
But that’s unsustainable. Everything new becomes old, entropy is a thing, and only a truly well-curated hatred lasts forever. Whether it’s the Brexit Bill coming due in the form of spiralling prices and collapsing businesses, Covid cancelling another Christmas because Sir Chubby of Chequers chickened out of another fight with his Party’s hemlock-guzzling Wingnuts, genuine violence returning to the cities and towns of Ulster thanks to Tory shithousery over the Northern Ireland Protocol, former-Labour voters in England’s run-down northern constituencies making up the so-called ‘Red Wall’ realising that they can’t eat anti-immigrant bellyaching or heat their homes on anti-Woke showboating and turning on their new Tory MPs, or any of another hundred entirely possible scenarios spiralling out of this amateur night at the third-best Dadaist improv club in Saffron Walden level joke of a Government’s control, the current situation will change and something will force Flobalob to take a swinging boot of reality right in the nuts. At that point His Solipsistic Majesty will deflate to the size of a popped party condom faster than you can say “Let’s Go,
BrandonBoJo”.The struggle to replace him has already started. Hell, it started back in 2019 the moment his balding pate was anointed with their crazed spittle by a radicalised Tory base of Gilet & tweed clad rural Squires and blue-haired Women’s Institute harridans. He’d very much liked to have filled his cabinet with wall-eyed loyalists who would dropkick their firstborn off the Tarpeian Rock if it would buy The Man Himself a day’s good headlines, but Johnson doesn’t seem to inspire that kind of intense devotion in anyone other than Nadine Dorries (a part time trash-novelist so vindictive towards ‘The Arts’ and wholeheartedly obnoxious to everyone working within it that she simply had to be promoted to the ‘Bully the BBC and fill it with Tory loyalists’ Ministerial post), and anyway, places around the big, shiny table had to be found for all the various externally controlled humanoid national/corporate franchises in expensive suits who populate the upper reaches of Tory Party ‘talent’. The former are pretty lightweight individuals, bound to rise or fall on the custard seas of Flobalob’s own popularity, while the latter are the ones you have to worry about, since they’re usually seen wearing the hungry grimaces of sharks let loose in a practice pool for overweight baby seals. For their time, you see, it has come.
I’m not going to bore you right now with a dramatis personae for the runners and riders in the race to succeed Bully Bunter, I can do that at great and grating length when the flag goes up for real sometime before the next Election. What I will point out is that Rishi Sunak, the heavily lacquered millionaire homunculus appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer by the Banking sector is going to be sadly disappointed if he thinks Johnson’s congregation of dry white whiners are going to vote for one of ‘those people’ to reign over them. He already looks like he gets packed in salt once a week to draw every ounce of moisture from him, imagine how salty he’s going to be once he realises that all of the Media tongue-baths in the world (I’m looking at you FTF Guardian ‘journalists’) don’t count for shit when melanin outrage come into play. The same out-and-proud Islamophobia did for the then Chancellor Sajid ‘Did you know my dad was a lowly bus-driver on Sontar?’ Javid back when he filled the Bankers’ Chancellor role (House Deutsche Bank in his case, House Goldman Sachs in Sunak’s) and thought he could power-stance his way to the top job after May stepped down. He’s obviously a glutton for punishment (or maybe he simply thinks the ethnically pure pickings on the Tory front bench are so thin he can pull off an upset once the Tory membership have exhausted their racist quivers pot-shotting Sunak’s ambitions) because he’s clearly using his recent move to the Health Secretary post to burnish his anti-Union, pro-privatisation and entirely fictitious tough-guy credentials.
Priti Patel, the (White) Home(land) Secretary and Minister of State for Smirking While Dogwhistling, has clearly made a similar calculation. Her entire tenure so far has been one long audition to be the Dominatrix so many Tories not-so secretly crave to have kitten-heeling air-vents in their wrinkled nethers, with performative cruelty the one sustaining policy directive for everyone working under her. It’s possible that her lack of a menacing penis might cancel out the duskiness of her origins in the minds of Tory voters *if* she can keep them blitzed to the tits on regular injections of anti-immigrant viciousness and photoshoots of drowned brown infants. Especially if every squeeze of the plunger is accompanied by a sultry “Do you want to see some more?” smirk.
But the point, ah, the point. The point is that Johnson’s grip on power is slowly, imperceptibly, slip-slipping away from him, and a fair portion of his Cabinet see their jobs as extended auditions to replace him come that happy day. The point is also that, as I bemoaned way back up there at the start of this rant, it’s hard to write about all this headslapping lunacy because the sluice gates of outrage are always wide open and working at full capacity.
For example, since I started writing, all of this happened.
WARNING – DRY DATA DUMP AHEAD – MOSTLY
Brexit. It’s always Brexit with this lot. They ran and won an election on the simple promise to ‘Get Brexit Done’ and promoted the Withdrawal Agreement they signed with the E.U. as nothing less than the immortalised bestiary of every single nocturnal dream and goosestepping desire Leave voters envisaged when they lay back in those voting booths and thought of Greater England back in 2016, but all they’ve done since their moment of glory is whine incessantly that the very same agreement is an unconscionable tether around the gonads of British sovereignty and pick fights with the E.U.’s negotiators whenever they need a bit of tabloid love to grease them out of a tight PR spot. Johnson’s point man for the monumental task of ensuring that the United Kingdom consistently chucks dead cats on the table of diplomatic battle is Baron David ‘No, not the Nixon one’ Frost, a man so formidably talentless that he could lose a staring contest with a blepharmospasmic cyclops. A man so pig-ugly he exists solely to give Brian Cox and Michael Gambon a role to fight over in the TV adaptation of his tell-all diaries. A man so self-reverentially truculent he makes Ted Cruz look like First on the Guest List material in comparison. A man so… you get the drill. Frost’s sole and defining role in this national humiliation seems to be as follows.
1) Make a speech in front of a friendly audience demanding that the E.U. completely changes the agreed terms of one or another foundational clause in the Northern Ireland Protocol or else the UK will simply stop observing it.
2) Grumble threateningly while various European diplomats go into a huddle, with one or another occasionally peeking out to see if he’s still there, then the huddle breaking up so that the tallest and thinnest can stand next to the porcine Frost, bend all the way down to the microphone and emit a breathy “Non. Ce n’est pas négociable”.
3) Stamp his little piggy feet in more interviews with friendly journalists warning the E.U. they have until he’s finished eating a 12-course tasting menu and three bottles of expensive wine at the most exclusive restaurant he hasn’t been banned from in Paris/Brussels/Kings Landing to change their tune and recognise British Exceptionalism.
4) Boast to those self-same journalists that Johnson’s last-minute decision to capitulate and agree to whatever face-saving terms the E.U. offer in order to get Frost to fuck off for a while is another Brexit victory and proof that everything is going exactly as planned.
They’ve been dancing this dance again with the latest row over the NIP — which, at the end of the day, boils down to two related things. Northern Ireland has remained within the EU’s Single Market and Customs Union rules while the rest of the UK has left them, which has meant Northern Ireland enjoying a booming economy and none of the supply chain/shop scarcity problems bedevilling the rest of the UK, which makes Brexit look like a stupid and destructive self-own and so cannot be allowed to stand. And the fact that the very Withdrawal Agreement Johnson signed to “Make Brexit Happen” specified that the European Court of Justice would remain as the ultimate arbiter of legality where issues touched on the NIP, but Brextremists HATE, HATE, HATE the European Court of Justice with the heat of a thousand auto-da-fé’s, so now it’s absolutely unacceptable.
Demanding that the ECJ should be booted from having any role in overseeing the NIP is simply a no go, won’t happen, but that’s what Frosty the Showman has been sent out to demand, with the inevitable result that the E.U. will tell him to go and shove his demands up his tunnel de vent while also having their diplomats draft some face-saving language about trade that Frost and Johnson can take to their tabloid friends as proof of a great victory over the Tyrants of Brussels. Nothing will change, the clock will still keep on ticking down to the moment when the UK either implements the full terms of the Withdrawal Agreement (and finally takes the substantial hit of being outside the E.U. right in the kisser) or openly reneges on the internationally binding promises it made… at which point hold on to your heinie because then shit gets real and no outcome is good.
Thanks again, everyone who voted for this crap. Super solid you did us there.
For issues outside of the NIP where the European Commission’s diplomats haven’t been given the job of negotiating some kind of deal that both sides can swallow, patience with Little Brexitannia has clearly run out. President Macron of France has an election looming, and would you believe his luck, but Johnson’s minions have been engaging in a bit of Frenchie-baiting over the issue of licences for French boats to fish in British waters. The Withdrawal Agreement specified that the UK and France would maintain the status quo, meaning that boats that could prove they had long fished in each other’s waters could still do so, but, and here’s the issue, suddenly the only form of proof that the UK would accept was electronic navigational data from expensive kits that smaller French boats don’t possess. Refusing to issue fishing licences to French boats led to the French arresting and impounding a large British trawler (actually Scottish, okay actually owned by a small Canadian firm called Clearwater Seafoods, yes, this is sarcasm) for a bit.
Macron has threatened to ban the entire British fishing fleet from unloading their catches in French ports, which would be almost as disastrous for the British fishing industry as Brexit itself has been, but has held off imposing sanctions until after talks with Baron Frost (remember him?) in a decision made much simpler by the hasty issuing of numerous licences by the island of Jersey, since that’s the part of UK waters where the bulk of the French boats fish anyway. As usual the Government and pro-Brexit Media have acclaimed the French decision as a climb-down in the face of British grit, but back in the real world it’s a sign that the French are in no hurry to let this issue come to a boil, not when they hold the majority of the cards, and it can be successfully parlayed into an election issue that Macron can benefit from. Either Johnson capitulates as normal and changes the licencing rules to allow the French fleet to get licences (this will happen) or Macron gets to extract a little juicy flesh from the haunches of Terre de Rosbif and display it in the Place de Concorde.
Life as a tiny little country that no one likes. It’s magical.
Conservative MP David Amess was murdered by someone for as yet unclear reasons while holding a surgery (which is what we call it when constituents can book a meeting with their MP without being a lobbyist for a major corporation) in his constituency. I don’t think I have to lay out my opinions on murder, so I’ll just say that it’s been pretty revolting to see the same people who couldn’t rustle up two shits when Labour MP Jo Cox was stabbed to death by a radicalised far-Right nutjob in the run-up to the 2016 Referendum suddenly bemoaning the language people use when attacking their political opponents. And exploiting Amess’ death to bring in completely unrelated rules designed to hide their expenses, donor lists and travel itineraries from public view, on the grounds that, if people saw the amounts they were claiming, what for, who they were being funded by, and where they were being wined and dined, they might get angry and trust them less. No shit, Sherlock. Oh, and I think it’s alright to be repulsed by the rush to beatify a homophobic promoter of forced birth laws who consistently voted to take food out of children’s mouths and strip basic dignity from the poorest amongst us. You are what you do, and what Amess did with his career was be a reliable vote for the worst Tory policies of the last few decades.
And I can’t sign off without mentioning the latest dish to plop onto the all-you-can-eat crap buffet, though it’s hard to do it justice.
Basically, a Tory MP called Owen Paterson was investigated by the Commons Standards Committee for taking £100,000 in donations from two private companies and lobbying for them in Parliament, which is a big no-no. He was found incredibly guilty in a damning report which suggested he should be sanctioned with a 30-day suspension from Parliament (the horror!). So far, so normal for naughty Tories. During the course of the investigation Paterson’s wife hung herself in woods by their home, and while initially Paterson claimed he had no idea why his wife did this, once it became clear that Johnson’s Government were opposed to the concept of anyone on their side of the House of Commons being punished, however mildly, for a bit of highly profitable corruption, his story changed to her suicide being a direct result of the ‘witchhunt’ he was suffering through and we were off to the races. Yesterday the Tories called for a vote on whether or not to accept the findings of the Standards Committee, and in a partisan vote (that saw scores of Tory MPs abstain – brave Sir Robin’s that they are) they not only voted to give Paterson a free pass, but to scrap the entire system of enforcing standards on MPs and replace it with a leaner, more up-to-date system consisting of a room full of Tory MPs all standing on tables and singing Billy Joel’s “Innocent Man”.
To say this went down badly would be an understatement. If they’d drafted in the writers of The Onion they couldn’t have scripted a more pitch-perfect example of the utter contempt the modern Conservative Party has for Parliament, rules, laws, justice and/or the opinions of anyone outside of their donor class. The fact that they tried to justify their corrupt power-grab by unearthing the rotting corpse of St David the Martyr (we’re just trying to protect our honourable public servants from hostility, they cried) was just the cherry on top. It takes a lot to stir Sir Keir Starmer out of his pose of mannequin stillness, but Peter Mandelson must have forgotten to confiscate his mobile phone because he was right out there condemning the sleaziness of it all and following the Scottish Nationalists in saying Labour would not give the new and improved (no) standards format time of day.
As far as colossal political own goals go, it was a pretty humungous one, and true to form, the jellied substance which passes for the spine of Johnson’s Government soon started to melt into goo once the wave of revulsion felt by most of the country started to hit MP’s social media pages. The day started with Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng (the Minister for Going On TV To Justify Shit When No One Else Wants To) going on TV to justify the whole shambles (he didn’t) lie about what had happened (he did) and heavily imply that the Commissioner in charge of the Commons Standards Committee should step down (she didn’t). Then the Chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life gave a blistering press conference in which he openly called out the Tories for partisan fuckery of the system and told them to stop that shit right the fuck now (or words to that effect). In the last few hours they’ve started the inevitable u-turn, with Government sources briefing that Paterson’s triumphalist rounds of the evening news bulletins (like they hadn’t been scripted for him ahead of time) had hit the wrong tone and now, suddenly, MPs would be allowed another vote on whether he should have to suffer the 30 day suspension after all, and the idea of a new Standards Committee was, of course, just an idle thought and not something they actually intended to run as an Old Boy’s Club, because somehow the vote they’d held the day before hadn’t been supposed to mean what they said it meant and could everyone just stop shouting at them and let them get away with this, please?
Paterson obviously had a visit from the Men in Suits because he’s just resigned as MP, still squealing his innocence and blaming everyone else for being absolutely beastly to him, but what can you expect from a Tory?
One dangling plotline that hasn’t gone away, and hopefully won’t, was the suggestion that the whole farrago was a Batman Gambit by Johnson’s circle to force the aforementioned Commissioner of the Commons Standards Committee to resign, with Johnson choosing her successor, because she is in the process of investigating the thought dead and buried story from a few months ago of who, exactly, paid for the expensive redecoration of Number 10 demanded by Johnson’s wife (ex-Tory Party Communications Chief Carrie ‘Antoinette’ Symonds-Johnson) and glossed over by the minion Johnson appointed specifically to clear him of any wrongdoing. There’s always been something very stinky about that incident, and apparently the Johnsons are shitting bricks over what an investigation might reveal. Which is nice.
See what I mean? There’s always something else to get outraged over where the Tories are concerned, and the crap rockets never stop falling. I haven’t even mentioned the laughable shitshow of COP26 where the same Prime Minister who has allowed private companies to pollute our river and beaches with raw sewage on a massive scale and made thousands of pounds rubbishing environmental issues in his newspaper columns tried to pose as a concerned Green for the second time in a month (didn’t drag the muppets into it this time, though, which is a relief) before falling asleep, maskless and probably the worse for wear after a liquid lunch, next to the 95 year old global treasure David Attenborough. It’s almost – almost – cause to jack it all in, exclusively watch episodes of ‘The Goes Wrong Show’ and just piss myself sodden with laughing, but no, that’s the vodka and absinthe appetisers talking, and if there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that talking drinks should be ignored whenever possible.
Good night, and may your god go with you.
Omnes Omnibus
I am not really sure that it is possible to comment here, given that Tony has used all the words.
Tony Jay
@Omnes Omnibus:
Not true. I left ‘muscular’, ‘thong’ and ‘over-friendly’.
What you do with them is up to you.
Baud
@Tony Jay:
I can’t believe you didn’t use “thong.”
Old School
It’s always good to know what’s going on across the pond.
My biggest surprise is that this post was started before David Arness’ death on October 15th. I always pictured these things being written in one wild meth-fueled frenzy. (Which I guess it could still be, but it is a longer meth-fueled frenzy than I was picturing.)
Bill K
@Baud: There was ‘mankini’ so pretty much the same thing.
trollhattan
@Baud:
Thong’s for the memories.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tony Jay: Golly.
Bill K
I always feel I need a shower after reading these.
Bill K
I always feel I need a shower after reading these.
BC in Illinois
I get my UK related tweets by way of Scotland and the Scottish National Party. The SNP seems to be pretty much what I want the Democrats to be. (See YouTube “What has the SNP ever done for us?”) I wonder if Nicola Sturgeon can bring Scotland out of the UK and back to the EU.
Tony Jay
@Baud:
I was thinking it, but that doesn’t count.
@Old School:
I started ranting, but then half-term hit and all my spare time was spent sanding down the banister.
Not a euphemism
Plus, One Ball Bob was out of the country on a drugs run to Marrakesh until Saturday so I was all out of sorts and fidgety.
RaflW
Semi-relatedly, fuck Mark Penn. The Bill Clinton darling has done so much to wreck the Democratic party. Today he took to the FYNYT to piggyback on their effort to claim the Biden presidency needs to be ‘saved’. (No link to that steaming pile).
Really. Fuck Mark Penn. He’s everything I hate about the poll-driven, heartless & calculating Democratic party that rears it’s head far too often and alienates so many of us.
Baud
@RaflW:
Mark Penn sucks, but he’s representative of maybe 5% at most of the current party, no matter who many op/eds he pens.
Mike in NC
Boris seems to have as many amusing nicknames as our idiot The Donald.
germy
Tom Levenson
@germy: I approve of that message.
Chetan Murthy
Anybody seen the latest from Umair Haque? https://eand.co/how-britain-turned-into-the-worlds-most-self-destructive-society-2b46db754928
Follow-on to: https://eand.co/want-to-see-a-modern-country-commit-suicide-take-a-hard-look-at-britain-fdeb3ad4bd3c
Enhanced Voting Techniques
So he murdered his wife as a sporting kill?
germy
@Tom Levenson:
I thought he’d want to go to Belarus, as is the fashion.
germy
eclare
@germy: HA! Perfection.
J R in WV
Is “The Goes Wrong Show” anything like the old Gong Show, with terrible and untalented amateurs failing to perform well and being, well, GONGed off the stage? I didn’t know that was shown on British Telly, how quaint!!
Also:
The visual edit window is absent this time, reminding me that I’ve seen this absence on occasion before. My current thread has no comments in it, although I’ve been outside running bags of trash down to the pickup area with the tractor, much to the joy of the dogs! Dunno if the lack of other comments is related to the lacking of the visual edit tab…
Tony J, so glad to learn that your RWNJ tories are as incompetent as our RWNJ fascists. Their collective inability to form a complete sentence without contradictions and obvious falsehoods is one of our only hopes~!!~
Linux Ubuntu 18.04.6, Firefox 94.0…
eclare
Always glad to get your hilarious, “have to laugh because otherwise it’s too depressing” posts, Tony Jay.
But as you say, things are the way they are until suddenly…they’re not. Downfalls are quick and ruthless. Think Icarus. More modern take, think A-aron Rodgers.
Here’s hoping.
Tony Jay
@J R in WV:
It’s a show we recently discovered in which an ensemble of very talented actors play a disorganised amateur theatre troupe who put on various shows where everything that can go wrong does go wrong, with hilarious results.
Our version of The Gong Show is currently in Government, except they passed legislation banning the gong so they never have to leave the stage.
Tony Jay
It’s nice to see that Our Mighty Leader has responded to the Paterson Debacle by running away from a Parliamentary debate on Government corruption and hiding in a school.
He’s such a gutless chickenshit.
Anyway
@Tony Jay:
I understand the awful BBC unable to stand up to the Murdoch-bought press and not saying boo to Boris and the Tories. I understand the traumatized Labo(u)r Party not figuring out which outrage to focus on. But your side of the pond used to possess some sharp-eyed, acerbic “independent” comedians who did not mince words when observing current events —
What happened to them? Have they been co-opted/initimidated by Murdoch? The shitshow you describe doesn’t seem to have elicited near the aghast reaction I would have expected – aghast in between bouts of non-stop laughter. How do the Tories get away with it?
Betty
I think Dumpy Drippydick may be my favorite, but the choices are all so good. Too bad the Labour Party has become so useless. The whole situation seems simply hopeless. Impossible to offer any words of encouragement.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@germy: Heh. I think I’ve seen that guy on the right.
We were going through the Frankfurt train station during Euro Cup time, and it was full of drunken British soccer fans. One of them was unconscious on the floor of the station, in full face paint.
We never saw him conscious but we did keep seeing him in different places around the station. My assumption is that his friends were doing a “Weekend at Bernie’s” thing with him.
Geminid
@Tony Jay: That fisheries dispute sounds serious. Is there any chance Baron Frost could be superseded by Lord Sugar? Maybe he could sweet talk Macron.
Betty Cracker
I laughed so hard both dogs became alarmed. And the elder of the two is stone deaf!
Tony Jay
@Anyway:
There are some brutally acerbic takes on the ‘current unpleasantness’. The Mash Report/Daily Mash pulls no punches in slamming Johnson and Co, but yeah, I know what you mean.
I really think that Brexit knocked the ‘political comedy’ world hard. Most comedians were totally against it, mocked it constantly, but then the referendum went wrong and we’ve had years during which I think the relentless awfulness of everything has pushed comedians into looking for brighter topics.
Plus, the BBC and Channel 4, nurturers of a lot of comedy ‘breakout’ talent, have the Tory Government openly out to get them and (especially the BBC) Tory placemen installed to enforce ‘non-partisan dogma’. If you’re too anti-Tory you simply won’t get booked.
Kim Walker
I’m so sad to see Britain self-destruct. I lived there for two years (2005-2007) in the most beautiful village. I absolutely loved it. I built a beautiful garden. Everyone was so kind and so friendly. I would have stayed forever if it weren’t for husband’s and my elderly parents. Also darling cute grandchildren in Kentucky.
I loved the grocery stores and the food available. Absolutely fabulous. The food here is Canada is very sub-par. But at least there is food.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Kim Walker: Not sure if the food choices post-Brexit will be quite the same.
We love the Great British Bake Off for many reasons, but we’ve never seen anything on there that we would actually want to eat, much less make.
eclare
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: I occasionally see something that I would like to eat, especially when the bakers, say, make their own ice cream. But suet pudding? Hard pass.
Frankensteinbeck
@germy:
Yeah, it was kind of a revelation when I realized that when Terry Pratchett writes about the stupid, venial, ignorant commoners and even stupider and incredibly arrogant elites in Ankh-Morpork, he meant Britain. I know I have read about British tourists being almost as big assholes as Americans. Our American myth of Britain is a giant fantasy.
Timill
I should go look on Youtube for Dave Allen sketches…
Betty Cracker
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: GBBO inspired me to make a Victoria sandwich cake (delish!), and I often see them cook stuff that looks wonderful, though often not traditional British but Indian, East Asian dishes.
Kalakal
Excellent stuff Tony. The writing on the wall is when the Daily
FailMail starts to put the boot in, when that poisonous rag slags off the Tories as it did over Paterson they’re in trouble.Here’s the wonderful James O’Brian showing British media at its best as he eviscerates Bozo & co
https://mobile.twitter.com/LBC/status/1456601290096660482?
Ruckus
@Tony Jay:
Please, please, please, no one ask Tony if he was wearing a thong while typing this…..
Kalakal
@Timill: Size 9
divF
Now that I have discovered that your nom de plume here is the name of the noted voice actor, I can’t help reading your pieces and hearing them in the voice of Sher Khan from the 1967 Disney version of The Jungle Book.
Ken
@Chetan Murthy: From the first linked post:
Eerily similar to the scene in 1984 where Winston is asked to rectify a newspaper article from a few months back which says that the chocolate ration would be increased, and changes it to a warning that the ration might have to be decreased. Then a little later after the ration is cut, the story is changed again to say the ration was increased to the new (lower) value.
Another Scott
The hits keep coming…
Winning?? :-/
(via IamHappyToast)
Cheers,
Scott.