Category: Governing the people

IT DOESN’T TAKE A SUPERFORECASTER : DOWNING STREET is high in the international league tables for CV-19 response and with the brains trust firmly in command it is looking to stay there.

“We are looking to ramp up our world beating reputation. This will coincide with the totally unprecedented second wave, which no one forecast when we reopened the entire country at once. As the wave breaks across this green and pleasant, concreted land we will keep our place internationally,” a Downing Street source told LCD Views, “and to ensure that only care homes, and not the NHS, are overwhelmed, we are bringing in new measures to slow the spread and control the virus.”

The new measures will involve restrictions that have not yet been employed in the UK, as so far the Dido Harding Serco Test and Trace system has kept the UK virtually free of Coronavirus. And all at a steal.

“For the first time we will bring in a curfew which will put paid to the gloomsayers who query if we are doing everything we can to keep pubs open just to stop Tim Martin phoning Johnson up at midnight and boring him to tears for hours.”

The curfew will be specifically targeted to hit Covid-19 at the time of its peak activity, as determined by Dominic Cummings’ understanding of the virus, as viewed from a perspective of Sun Tzu.

“2am to 2:15am is when the virus really lets rip. Well not in Global Britain. Not today. Or tonight,” the source adds, “every minute is vital in the fight against this invisible mugger loose on our streets again. But with the 15min circuit breaker, which will be in force from the 31st of November this year, we will send Covid-19 packing!”

*curfew does not apply to Barnard Castle. Any of Robert Jenrick’s homes. Wherever Stanley Johnson happens to be. And anywhere where Boris Johnson is cosplaying as a pleb.

IT’S GRIM OOP NORTH: The North’s attempt to acquire public funds for Tier 3 compensation has backfired. This attempt to apply taxpayers’ money for the benefit of taxpayers has enraged a government intent on embezzling it. In retaliation, The North will become one great big lorry park.

This will solve a number of knotty problems. Troublesome Manchester will finally be obliterated, there will be plenty of parking while goods await movement through ports like Liverpool, Hull and Newcastle, and nobody will ever have to eat black pudding again.

This will also benefit Scotland, as The North will form a concrete border with England, and make it that much easier for them to rejoin the EU.

It will also create jobs for all the northerners, who, sadly, will have to make way. Still, a bad job is better than no job, and the government will spend many millions on a campaign informing the hordes of the great unwashed, homeless, flat ‘at, flat vowels brigade, just how lucky they are.

The great cities and the stunning northern countryside will be flattened, and covered with layer upon layer of cheap concrete. That’s what levelling up means.

The motorways will still exist. When a consignment of avocados finally gets through the mountains of customs forms, transit permits, and blue passport controls, there will be no time to lose. Avocado Priority Lanes on the M1 and M6 will ensure that the delicacies will arrive in London by lunchtime, ready to be smashed by trendy hipsters.

Nobody will mention that the avocados will by then have ripened, matured, passed their sell-by date, and rotted away, while stuck in a lorry, waiting for world beating frictionless trade to be invented.

No downsides, just a considerable upside. Trade will still happen. London will still be ok. And nobody will ever have to put up with a northern accent again.

CAN YOU HEAR THE ANGELS SINGING : DOWNING STREET HAS ANNOUNCED TODAY that it is really serious about levelling up the ‘North’. So serious it’s going to do something exceptionally symbolic.

“It’s to show our appreciation for the red wall voters,” a Downing Street insider told LCD Views, “if they hadn’t believed in the Oven Ready Brexit and come over to us to GET BREXIT DONE, well, we may not be free to trade with the world. Except the EU of course. We don’t trade with them anymore.”

The symbolic gesture will surprise many, given that Prime Minister Boris Johnson has avoided gesture politics in his long career. Except for holding up a kipper, posing as a builder, driving a forklift through a pile of empty boxes, and all the other empty gestures.

“The statue itself will showcase Britain’s world beating statue building industry to the world and will be made with locally sourced materials.”

Designs for the statue, nicknamed the ‘Colossus of Wanknassus’ by the design team, are still being finalised but the elements that will be used in the construction are already known.

“The body will be of wicker, with a cavity in the centre for offerings from grateful northerners in their funny flat caps. The whole structure will be coated in iron pyrite so it really catches the light the one day a year the clouds part north of Watford. And the feet will be local clay. It’s a boom for manufacturing.”

There are plans to hold an annual festival of gratitude at the site too.

“Once a year on Brexit Day people will gather to recant the benefits of Brexit and discover who their prime minister is shagging now. It’s going to unite the country like only Boris Johnson can.”

YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE DRUNK TO WORK HERE BUT IT HELPS : RUMOURS ARE AFOOT, and a hand to mouth in the Westminster estate today, following the decision to ban the sale of alcohol by Speaker of the House Lyndsey A-Hoyle There!

In particular the rumours are focused on plans to stage an internal coup, lead by David “DD” Davis and Michael “Grade A” Gove.

“Once we seize control of the beer taps we will hold all the jars,” David Davis is said to have asserted, confidentially, blithely, over confidentially, perhaps drunkenly, and in complete denial of what most sentient life forms, with or without thumbs, would call reality. But that won’t dent David’s confidence.

The move to ensure that the flow of alcohol remains seamless, while the UK transitions through the pandemic, will also help with the ongoing internal negotiations with the “North”.

“We have to ensure Dominic ‘Doom Bar’ Raab stays well oiled if he’s to bludgeon the upstart Mayor of Manchester in the ongoing negotiations. We’ll be giving Dom yard glasses of warm ale, telling him how macho he looks and then with a slap on the butt he’ll be going to Manchester swinging! Burnham won’t know what hit him. Especially if Raab is carrying CV-19 asymptomatically. Which given the way Jacob Rees-bogg’s is managing the Commons is increasingly likely.”

But potentially the real benefit of ensuring consistent supply of alcohol to the Commons is the risk of an improvement in overall governance if MPs are forced to make decisions sober.

“There’s the real risk of a dangerous precedent being set,” Davis has warned his fellow saboteurs, “if we sober up for a day we maybe forced to confront the reality that we are really, really shit at government. And that’s a red line I’m not personally prepared to cross.”

FCUK NOES WOT RULZ : PRIME MINISTER BORIS JOHNSON HAS MOVED TO BRING CLARITY to the rules, laws, regulations, restrictions and confusion relating to CV-19 restrictions in England.

“He’s replacing the whole lot of them with a lucky dip box,” a Downing Street source told LCD Views, “it’s going to upset Matt Hancock. He spends hours each day transcribing fevered voicemails left for him by Cummings into new laws. But no one cares about Matt. So that’s alright.”

The move to replace an increasingly complex set of guidelines, and legally enforceable rules, with one box of chance is thought to be a reaction to the embarrassment the Prime Minister experienced yesterday.

“That journalist who asked him about the rules in the NE needs a beating,” the source grumbled, “imagine expecting this prime minister to be able to clearly communicate anything? It’s not fair. That’s not why he is there.”

To make it properly exciting all the rules currently in force in England will be put into the boxes, which will be placed on street corners across the country.

“You simply walk up to the box when you go outside and pull out a slip of paper. The rule you have to follow will be written on it. It will bring a sense of suspense to what is a pretty dull period. You might even get lucky and pull out one of the early rules telling you to just get sick and get over it.”

But like any game of chance there will be one amazing prize to be grasped by the fortunate.

“The Barnard Castle Eye Test is the major prize. Pull that rabbit out of the hat and you get to go anywhere, sick or not.”

FAHRENHEIT 55 (TUFTON STREET) : DOWNING STREET has moved to make patriots even safer with a ban on public smiling coming into force from midnight.

The new measure is being taken not against Coronavirus, although it utilises legislation being used to make CV-19 regulations, but to better prepare the people for the end of the Brexit transition period.

“It goes hand in hand with banning literature in schools,” a 10 Downing Street source told LCD Views, “we need the people of one mind. And that mind needs to be downcast and staring at the cracks in the pavement.”

The fine for public smiling will start at £1,000 but ratchet up rapidly the bigger the smile is.

“If teeth are involved you are looking at £10K and perhaps a custodial sentence,” the source adds, “smiles are as infectious as a novel cold virus and we need to stamp them out. And don’t even think about laughing. You’ll be tasered.”

But critics of the new ban point out that with the hash the government is making of (*checks notes) everything there is no need to outlaw smiling.

“What do we have to smile about?” one punter told us, “they’ve taken the Oven Ready Brexit Deal out of the oven before it was even warmed up. They’ve stripped us of so many rights it’s mind boggling. They’re clearly pursuing herd immunity with CV-19, based on a lively mash up of eugenics, sociopathy and idiocy. The economy is set for a world beating crash to the benefit of Tory donors. We’re all miserable. And winter is coming! They don’t need to ban smiling in public. They might want to ban pitchforks though!”

But regardless of what Joe or Jolene Public think the ban is coming into force, with one or two exceptions.

“Matt Hancock will still be able to grin inanely as he struggles to comprehend what he’s done. And Priti Patel can’t help herself. There is a clear need for exceptions with those two. Oh, and Dom will still be able to smile in public. He retains the right to signal the contempt he holds for every last one of us.”

THE ANCIENT DANCE OF THE MEAT PUPPET : Britain’s foremost intellectual, and winner of the coveted “Most Use of Google Translate – English Phrases to Latin 2019”, Jacob Rees-mogg, has intervened to bring some old fashioned values to the furore over Covid-19 test availability.

“Fluctus calicem tea,” Mr Rees-mogg told a sleepy House of Commons chamber yesterday afternoon.

The decision to set a floor and ceiling on the issue by the inheritance millionaire, who presumably had no such trouble getting CV-19 tests, due to all the hard work he put into the accident of his birth, will soothe many a furrowed brow.

But just in case some serfs are vix auditus, Mr Rees-mogg moved to bring crystal clarity to the subject, in line with his famous interventions in the Grenfell fire disaster, and the uplifting nature of food banks (a direct result of uplifting Tory policies).

“We can’t have every soul, regardless of how able bodied they are, rushing away from tilling the soil of their lord’s manor to find out if their worthless flesh needs preservation,” the embodiment of Christian values reminded the nation’s toilers.

“With that in mind, it is of course urgent to ensure that those who the cap is doffed to are not inconvenienced by difficulty in testing. It is clear we need to ration the tests available to those who are inherently more valuable.”

Happily Mr Rees-mogg was ready with a simple criteria that could immediately be put in place.

“Only those middle aged men who still need nanny should be allocated a Covid-19 test. Or in the words of the Saviour himself, screw pauperis.”

And all the angels in Mogg’s idea of heaven did sing A-men. Because such a man is singular in nature. Gratias Deo.

INTO THE MOUNTAINS WITH YOU : THE HEALTH SECRETARY of an industrialised nation currently mismanaging Covid-19 has made a plea for assistance from the nation’s young.

“Some would think we’re still pursuing herd immunity as our strategy with Covid-19,” he began, “but just at a slower, more political manageable pace. Rather than the mass pit burial velocity we had to pull back from before the summer. Nothing could be further from the truth. Your leaders are famous for adjusting their positions based on public opposition. We U turn all the time. You can trust us to U turn on you. And you can trust me when I say that, because I’m from your government.”

So far, so good.

“And don’t listen to any unpatriotic types who suggest that urging everyone back into offices, after reopening pubs, at the same time as refilling schools is not a sensible public health strategy. Teenagers, and drunks are famous for their self control and adherence to rules. Drunk teenagers especially! It’ll not be our fault if they catch Covid. It’s just nature taking its course.”

All perfectly sensible.

“But there is one area where I need the youth of this nation to help me out. It’s not just wearing face masks while shoplifting, or whatever past time you scallywags get up to these days, that I need your help with.”

Alright. Get on with it.

“It’s with your grandparents. You maybe aware we have a social care crisis in this country. For too long governments pursued a shortsighted agenda of helping people live longer. Long past their ability to work in the gig economy. This is a now a serious problem. Of course the funds that could be spent solving it are currently in tax havens. That is where money belongs. So what to do about all these old people hanging about the place, and between you and me, not doing much that’s useful except grandparenting?”

What indeed. Someone has to give them Covid?

“You don’t want giving them Covid that on your conscience. So let it happen as a result of other people crisscrossing the UK in search of Covid tests. World beating navigation will see us through. And if you really want to help out, take a drive to Barnard Castle and sneeze. We’re taking the right steps, at the right time. This is why you need to protect your grandparents so a rogue algorithm can take care of them, just like it did for A level tests.”

Don’t kill your granny. That’s the government’s job.

THE VENOMOUS VIGILANTE: Or the Banksy of Brexit. Slimy shit stirrer Nigel Farage has had his collar felt after defacing an ancient monument.

Farage was taking a break from harassing weary asylum seekers arriving near Dover. Instead he paid a visit to the heart of the Garden of England, where vast lorry parks are being constructed.

But the paving of Paradise had to be halted temporarily. Woke activist lefty snowflake archaeologists discovered an ancient Saxon wall in the way. This, they believe, was originally constructed to prevent people fleeing from the ruins of the Roman Empire.

Engraved upon this wall was the following legend, written in genuine Anglo-Saxon. “Faecke offeth, wir sind fölle!” Farage rendered this into modern English in six foot high letters using red paint: “Bog off, we’re full!”

Police arrested Farage at the scene of the crime, for defacing an ancient monument, causing a beach of the peace, and failing to wear a face mask.

The ancient site has created a stir of interest. Royal grave hunters have been all over it like a rash, because it is now traditional to build a car park over the burial place of a King of England.

Farage himself was incandescent with rage. “This is a disgrace!” he foghorned. “Land of Hope and Glory? Political correctness and whingeing liberals are ruining the country! Rule Britannia!” The police slapped an oversized mask over his face and dragged him away.

Farage refused to do community service. This is because he argued the community service was what he was doing when he was arrested. So they threw him in a cell for the night and let him bellow himself to sleep.

Maybe they should have left the mask on. Or the muzzle. Or the face nappy, given the amount of sh*t that comes out of his mouth.