Category: Getting around the country

THE NORTHERN SLOWERHOUSE: Levelling up means levelling up. Except when it doesn’t. Some levelling up is more up-levelling than others. 

Many millions of pounds have been promised. Most of them are being spent on extremely expensive external “consultants”, who are employed to tell us what a brilliant job Boris Johnson is doing. 

This leaves bugger all money for the railways. A few quid will be spent on mending the existing creaking infrastructure, as soon as a suitable Tory donor willing to assemble a chain gang comes forward. 

This will mean closing worn out lines for years at a time. People and goods in The North will still need to move from one grim and rainy shithole to another. So in response, Johnson has pledged to supply enough rail replacement buses to claim to have bridged the gap. 

Anybody who suggests that the single, clapped out London Routemaster bus assigned to the Manchester-Leeds route is somehow inadequate, will be forced to sit beside the M62 and cheer whenever it chugs past at 25mph.

The fleet will be supplemented by Johnson himself. Any shortage of transportation options will be addressed very simply. The missing rail replacement buses will be replaced by rail replacement bus replacement painted wine boxes. 

Eventually, the plan, such as it is, is to encourage local interests to take up the slack. Yokels in possession of a horse and cart will receive inducements to whisk stranded commuters from their Godforsaken former Pennine mill town hovels to their shiny new city workhouses. From there, the most enterprising may save up enough to afford a single rail ticket to civilisation, otherwise known as within the M25. 

After all, it’s really only London that matters. London, where the streets are paved in gold, or at least they were until the Tories stole it all. 

THREE WORDS TO SAVE THE DAY : The surprising outbursts of naivety amongst Northern Tory voters have left 10 Downing Street more than a little baffled this week as converts to the cult of Boris struggle to comprehend his latest broken promise. Downing Street has the answer.

“They don’t need a new high speed rail line,” a 10 Downing Street source told LCD Views. “Look at Spain! Pretty much the entire network there is high speed and what has it done for their sovereignty? No. Northerners need something British. Something uniquely Great British.”

What they need is a slogan, according to Downing Street, and that’s what they’ll get from Leeds to Manchester instead of HS2.

“Get HS2 Done! That’s the slogan that will placate Northern Tory strongholds. We’ve replaced farming, manufacturing, fishing, financial services, building and well, pretty much every British sector with the slogan ‘Get Brexit Done’ and got away with it. People are still celebrating even as winter brings massive increases in fuel prices now we’ve left the EU energy market. Why not use three words as a rail replacement service? It’ll save us billions. The public will be intensely grateful. Get HS2 Done has the feel good factor Northerners need as they take hours daily to travel short distances on Victorian infrastructure.”

And the money saved will be put to good use.

“We’re paying Randox to store the unusable PPE old Paterson got Randox £600m to produce. We can use the savings to keep paying Randox and other corporate interests. It’s a very virtuous circle. I’m sure once Northern Tory MPs are hooked into the lobbying network they’ll soon release what the Conservative Party is all about and blame it on the pandemic.”

MAKING THE TRAINS RUN ON TIME: In the frenzy over the rebranding of our national rail service, one point has been overlooked. Great British Railways will actually be operated by buses. 

The Great British Rail Replacement Bus is as much a part of the British psyche as crap food and holidays on a freezing windswept beach in pouring rain in August. We crave the disappointment, the misery and the expense. Post-Brexit Britain is finally getting back on track.

Meanwhile there’s all the existing rail infrastructure. There’s plenty of scrap iron rails and land to give to Tory donors to sell. It’s a platform for Great British Asset Stripping. 

The trains themselves will go back to the EU. European operators who own the rail franchises. It’s about time we ended their Free Movement over Our Railways. Don’t they know we invented trains? Thomas the Tank Engine will be spinning on his turntable. 

We true patriotic Great British People are sick of the EU meddling with Our Country. We are tired of their so-called efficiency, tired of cheap, fast, clean journeys. We crave being stuck in a cold, leaky compartment with unpredictable angry strangers. We want to be late arriving at our destination. We enjoy the lottery of finding the right train on the right platform at the right time. We yearn for the times when we halt in the middle of nowhere for no good reason, with no food, information, or toilets. 

The Great British Rail Replacement Bus Service will tick all the boxes. It only needs Great British Curly Sandwiches and Great British Fare Rises to complete the picture. 

The sides of the buses will provide advertising space. This will bring extra profit to the bus companies. Insiders expect the first bus to read “£350m for the NHS” and the rest to be covered with laughing emojis. 

Could transport be any more patriotic without sticking a Union Jack on the side of the trains?

YOU HAVE REACHED YOUR DESTINATION: Boris Johnson has a technological solution to sell you. A roadmap out of lockdown? No, that’s old hat. We have satnav! Put in your postcode, and keep turning far right.

Except it’s not a postcode you punch in, it’s the date you want lockdown to end. That’s democracy in action!

The technology has been developed by a bunch of well-connected posh boys. It works almost as well as the useless covid app that was developed using the same principle, and costs much, much more. It’s a shame they didn’t ask Fatima to do the job, or even Jennifer Arcuri.

This hasn’t stopped Matt Hancock claiming the credit for it.

But this momentous moment belongs to Boris Johnson, not Hancock. The man who brought you fictional (albeit horribly expensive) tunnels and bridges now wants to drive covid out of town.

“We need to be cautiously reckless,” said a remarkably un-Boris like Johnson at the daily briefing. “Stick to the speed limit, keep your distance, which is still 2 metres by the way, wiff waff, no, sorry, I’m being serious now, mirror, signal, manoeuvre, and pull out!”

 Words to inspire great confidence.

So it’s time to chuck out the sad, coffee-stained roadmap we all have somewhere, and get with the 21st century. The Lockdown Satnav will detect all the bumps in the road that mysteriously appeared after Brexit. It will lead you down all kinds of diversions while the government wants you to look the other way, 

Early prototypes actually speak in Boris Johnson’s voice. “At the vaccination centre, take the second exit, no, the third exit, no, erm, yes, erm, marvellous, tempus fugit old chap, look, I need a power nap, OK?”

Eventually, though, the Lockdown Satnav will do what all satnavs do, sooner or later. It will take you home. Or, in other words, you will be right back where you started.

OUT OF BODY EXPERIENCE : PRIME MINISTER BORIS JOHNSON is said to be beside himself today after the High Court ruled that his Health Secretary Matt Hancock acted illegally in concealing details of multi-million pound PPE contracts.

“Seriously, Boris hasn’t laughed this hard all week,” a 10 Downing Street source told LCD Views. “He was in a right state after making an absolute tit of himself attempting to clean a chair yesterday. This ruling cheered him right up. He found the ruling so funny he pretty much astral travelled.”

While some would have expected the High Court ruling against the government and the Health Secretary to have consequences, they are seen by Downing Street as so naive as to be contemptible.

“The court going as far as to say a minister of state acted unlawfully? So? Johnson and Mogg lied to the Queen and illegally prorogued parliament. And they got to carry on being the government! This is just a joke.”

Mr Hancock appears safe to carry on overseeing the deaths of over 120,000 Britons during the pandemic.

“If you think Mr Johnson cares about accountability you have not been paying attention to the entire career of Mr Johnson. He pretty much broke a rib laughing when Priti Patel was forced to resign by Theresa May. What an idiot! He shouted. I would never do that. This is an opportunity to remind the plebs who rules them. I’m going to make Priti Home Secretary when I become PM, just so everyone knows how much respect I have for them.”

What will happen to Mr Hancock as a result of the ruling seems a foregone conclusion then.

“Absolutely nothing. What signal would it send to the rest of the cabinet if Johnson fired someone for something as insignificant as breaking the law? They’d be sleepless nights. People might think twice before acting unlawfully. The entire modus operandi of his government would be up for question.”

But what would a minister have to do in Brexitannia to get fired?

“Take the piss out of his girlfriend? That’s the red line. He can’t stand all the nagging that happens afterwards. It’s hard enough getting into costume for the important work of photo shoots each day as it is.”

HOW MANY NATION TORIES : FOREIGN SECRETARY DOMINIC RAAB IS wrestling today with a Kentish dilemma.

It appears the sudden imposition of a border between Kent and the rest of the UK has baffled a man not exactly famous for reading maps.

“Poor little Dom has only just worked out that Dover and Calais are on either sides of a strip of water, but not in the manner of Buda and Pest, but in the sense of completely different countries and there’s no bridge,” an aide to the embattled Foreign Secretary told LCD Views. “But somehow trucks magically move between the two places. Mind blown!”

To now be faced with a Kent border seems to be too much to compute.

“Brexit is all about taking back control of our borders,” the aide continued, “in Northern Ireland, Gibraltar and now Kent. You would think Raab would be pleased, as he now gets to be even more international in his job, and he doesn’t even have to leave home.”

But it seems to buy time while he works through the conundrum Mr Raab has imposed a travel ban to and from Kent.

“It’s a standard play for vacuous populists and it should work with Kent. It also gives the truckers valuable practice at being stuck for days at fictional lines on maps, dogging and deciding which are the best located temporary toilets.”

Once Mr Raab works out that the border in Kent is a natural result of Brexit, a project he has championed for years while simultaneously doing zero preparation for, the travel restriction will be lifted.

“Don’t be silly. Kent now belongs effectively to France as Raab will never work out that it’s the result of his pet political project, and the non-existent interaction with Brexiters with reality, that established the border. Which at least solves the mystery of Dover-Calais. And besides, before he solves the Kent border problem he’s got to work out why he’s called the Foreign Secretary when he’s not foreign at all?”

HIT THE ROAD MATT : HEALTHY REGIME FUNCTIONARY MATT HANCOCK has moved to shore up his popularity with the travel industry today by making the right change, at the right time, to the Covid-19 testing service.

“The news today is full of tiresome reports of people requesting a Covid-19 test being advised they’ll have to travel the length and breadth of the United Kingdom in order to get one,” Matt told somebody, we suppose, we don’t know who listens to what he has to say, “well I can tell you today that the men who died on those beaches did it so you could see those beaches. Travelling hundreds of miles for a test is the patriotic thing to do.”

Whether it’s wise to be suggesting people, who may potentially be carrying a life threatening, communicable virus, to travel hundreds of miles to different areas of the UK, in order to find out if they have the disease after they get back, is still up for debate.

“But not for Matt,” Matt Hancock told the screaming void that travels with him, absorbing more and more light, becoming so dense that Hancock will soon be his own gravity well, “Matt is sure the men that died on those beaches did it so Matt could support the travel industry during a viral pandemic.”

And that seems to be the key to his actions this week.

“This is why we have moved the Covid-19 booking service onto Expedia. It’s not because we’ve designed a daft system in order to encourage people to hand over all their personal data to a US credit rating service instead.”

Never let it be said.

“And best of all, now when you travel for a Covid-19 test your journey will be ATOS protected!”

CLEAR AS MUD ON A WINDSHIELD : THE GOVERNMENT HAS BEEN FORCED to reintroduce Coronavirus restrictions in the north of England after people followed their advice.

“I don’t honestly know what’s got into you all,” Mr Johnson told the nation this lunchtime, “we said you must go back to work if you can, you must go to pubs if you can, you must get back out and enjoy all the things you’ve been missing, if you can, basically you must keep the high road and hospitality industries alive, if you can, but you had to STAY ALERT and CONTROL THE VIRUS while getting hammered with family and friends. Your selfish behaviour has COST LIVES.”

How the nation will deal with being told off isn’t clear, but it’s likely there will be a massive shrug.

“I don’t honestly know what to make of it,” our pandemic affairs analyst says, “it’s almost as if the messaging is designed to confuse, so the government of Dominic Cummings can continue to pursue herd immunity. This would have the advantage of potentially eradicating a potentially tricky section of the population when it comes to selling off the health services lock, stock and barrel to US corporate interests. But it can’t be that. The primary job of government is to protect the populace. There must be something in the superforecasts that I’m missing.”

But it isn’t all confusing news. There is some welcome clarity in the new restrictions.

“The good people of the north of England may not visit each other in their homes at present, and they must not leave their region,” Mr Johnson added extra clarity, “but under Dom’s Law they can still visit Leeds castle for an eye test.”

Dominic Raab will be holding a press conference later today, complete with a map of Siberia, to explain how to do this.

SMASHER IN CHIEF : HULK IS NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO SMASHES, British Prime Minister, Boris de piffle Johnson is also given to a bit of smash and grab. But unlike the famous green skinned superhero, Mr Johnson doesn’t break things fighting against injustice.

In this vein he’s off to Scotland to try and stop himself from breaking the Union.

“He’s got some great words planned,” an aide to the PM told LCD Views, “Dom’s worked him up a few slogans of course, but he’s also got some of the best, just the brightest, words of his own.”

And the words are occasionally multisyllabic.

“He’s going to reach right into the chests of Scots for their hearts. Grab those thumping organs and squeeze.”

But what is he going to say to them?

“He’s going to implore them to judge him by his actions and not his reputation.”

Right…

“To see him as he really is and not how he is portrayed in the biased right wing media.”

Are you sure they’ve thought this through?

“He’s going to ask the Scots to really think about why they voted to stay in the UK during the IndyRef in 2014. Was it because they liked being ruled by unelected bureaucrats? Or was it because of the way in which representative democracy is managed from Downing Street?”

It’s not too late to do something different you know?

“And he’ll finish by reminding them that we’re stronger together as a family of nations, values aligned, leveraging the strength of our combined industries, populations and the cost savings that come from a unified, single market.”

What date is Scottish independence again?

JUST A NORMAL SENSIBLE COUNTRY WITH A SENSIBLE PROACTIVE GOVERNMENT : HEALTH SECRETARY and all round seller of his principles, Matt ‘those men who died on the beaches’ Hancock has given the nation an eagerly awaited update.

Speaking from the crypts of Leicester Cathedral, Yorkshire, Mr Hancock spoke at a podium lit by flashing lights. Taking an envelope from a ‘booth bunny’, fetchingly outfitted like a red cross nurse replete with stockings, Mr Hancock paused dramatically before opening the envelope.

“Whoa, mind the social distancing,” he playfully kidded, while closing in and leaning over the ‘nurse’. The angle of his lean a little too enthusiastic and mildly creepy, but only if you’re a normal, functioning human.

He took several seconds to open the envelope before removing the folded paper inside.

“I hold in my hands the Covid-19 test results for King Richard III,” Mr Hancock said dramatically, a smile spreading across his face like a warm party donation from US private health interests.

“People of Britain, King Richard III has tested negative for Covid-19!”

The bunny jumped for joy and Mr Hancock pressed a hidden button that released balloons and streamers.

“And we can be sure he is negative because we tested his bones 10,000 times in the last week alone,” grin so broad now his teeth looked set to fall out of his mouth, “and that’s what matters. How many tests done, not how many living, breathing humans tested.”

His plan is working.

With a flourish Mr Hancock then held aloft the skull of the long dead King. Staring deeply into the eye sockets like a high school Hamlet.

“Later today I will be accompanying Richard III to Durham to perform the now standard eye test,” he added, “and I think it’s safe to say that will also be negative. As for the rest of the inhabitants of Leicester? You’re to Stay Alert and stay in Leicester. No need to thank me for that.”