Category: Governing the people

Mind your language: the new NHS app doesn’t just identify proximity to covid-19 sufferers. It doesn’t just give “Classic” Dom Cummings and his merry troupe of Vote Leave conmen unprecedented access to your personal data. It now teaches you manners.

The app constantly listens in to your conversations. It is programmed to respond when a man and a woman are talking. At the first sign of the women becoming assertive, the voice of Matt Hancock himself will emerge to remind her of her place. Stock phrases are believed to include “moderate your tone, dear”, “get back into the kitchen”, and “calm down, dear, it’s only a conversation”.

One of the app’s developers was due to give us an interview, but, very unfortunately, before he could do so, the nation’s mainstream media discovered that he had once taken a non-essential journey, and vilified him across the front pages.

Another developer was unable to talk due to feminine modesty.

In the end Hancock’s right hand man, Andy Shandy, gave us the official line. He’s a bit of a wanker, and does the occasional job for Little Matt, but had the inside track on the tracking app.

“There’s absolutely nothing sinister going on,” he claimed brightly and not altogether convincingly. “Manners Maketh Man, and women should be seen and not heard. Victorian Values are coming back, thanks to Brexit, and it can all be achieved under the disguise of fighting covid-19.”

Isn’t this all, well, sexist, in the modern era?

“We are taking back control,” he explained, talking slowly as if to a lady. “Stay home, stay safe, have dinner on the table by six o’clock sharp, lie back and think of England. Do your duty for the good of mankind!”

Otherwise men will be forced to break lockdown to get their end away with someone more willing, get pissed, and play golf with other Telegraph readers.

“Exactly,” said Shandy.

And if a man doesn’t play golf?

“Then he’s clearly not one of us,” he replied. “Filthy working class scum, needs to be locked down for his own good. Rules are there for a reason you know.”

The app is also programmed to recognise regional accents. In this case, Matt Hancock’s voice will warn, “Know your place!”

It’s a jungle out there! A brave, patriotic soldier has been discovered, who is still fighting World War Two. The location is the impenetrable jungle in south-eastern Albion, known locally as “Essex”.

The man was discovered in full, if dirty, fatigues in Kingley Wood. He carried a loaded rifle, and took our reporter into custody in an old,  hollowed out oak tree, before consenting to grant an interview.

“Whose side you on?” he demanded, jabbing your reporter with his rusty bayonet. “Churchill or Fritz? You can’t trust anyone these days!”

I’m an Englishman, said the reporter, and anyway we are all on the same side these days.

“Nonsense! You’re a German spy! I speak German, you know, so you’ve been warned!” He moved the blunt point of the bayonet up to neck level. “Vot ist you in zis vood doink?”

Really, the war has been over for 75 years, put the rifle down and come home.

“You don’t fool me!” he shouted through his clenched teeth and advancing with a slightly constipated expression on his face.

Look, could you move away a bit, we are supposed to be keeping two metres apart at the moment.

“Typical Jerry trick!” he spluttered. “Don’t you cough on me, I’m part of the invincible English Army!”

Look, there are no Germans, and your government needs a brave, patriotic soldier like you to give the country a boost.

“No! They could attack at any moment!” he cried. “They will swarm in from Southend-on-Sea and overrun the country so it looks like Chelmsford when Poundland has a sale on!”

Your reporter, by now fed up, pushed the gun barrel to one side and left.

“Come back, you traitor! You’re going to betray me to the enemy!” He trained the rifle, steadied himself, pulled the trigger. The old gun clicked, but did not fire.

Enquiries locally revealed that an old lady, who claimed to be the soldier’s mother, would take pies to the wood daily, but nobody would be quoted on this. Doors slammed, net curtains twitched, and the little village assumed an air of silent menace.

“Are you local?” No. Fearing repercussions, your reporter narrowly escaped on the number 452 bus.

Pig-headed, out of touch, and still fighting The War, the government could learn much from this man.

WE WILL FAIL THEM ON THE BEACHES AND IN THE CARE HOMES : THE BRITISH PRIME MINISTER, AL TO HIS FRIENDS, IS EXPECTED to reassure an anxious United Kingdom in a major speech, later today.

The speech has a capacity to be 100,000 words long, which is all that matters, not how long it actually turns out to be.

“It’s okay. We’ll crowdsource the extra words from the party faithful, and from Dom’s army of fake Twitter accounts,” a Downing Street source told LCD Views, “most of the speech will be a mishmash of barely understood and distinctly misapplied Churchillian references and Ancient Greek. Maybe some Latin if Boris is feeling wistful. And then claim victory. Our ICU’s were never overwhelmed. Just don’t ask why.”

The speech is further expected to hit the right notes, at the right time, and the impact of the speech will be a victory. It will be spoken about in WW2 metaphors and hopefully a few veterans will be co-opted to make anyone tempted to criticise the oratory feel so guilty they keep quiet. That will also be a victory.

“Everyone will understand that Boris has been victorious,” the source went on, “and he’ll wrap it up by revising an ancient and traditional British chant.”

Two World Wars And One World Cup?

“Precisely. That’ll see off any questions about how Germany managed to deal with Covid-19 so much better than Blighty, so far. We were following the science. That’s a victory too. Mostly for setting up scientists as fall guys for when we need to claim victory in the aftermath.”

Tune in and tune out.

The numbers game: The happy news was announced in the nick of time today. Priti Patel, masquerading as usual as the Don’t Leave Your Home Secretary, was privileged to let The People know.

“Let me me completely and absolutely clear about this,” she dissembled. “The Prime Minister’s fiancée has popped out a sprog. This girl, boy, dog cat, whatever it is, is the Prime Minister’s eleventy twelfth child!”

She paused to simper and smirk at her adoring public.

“This is a momentous occasion!” she continued. “This is the first time in many hundredty thousandty years that a baby has come to Downing Street.”

She checked her notes. An imperious ruffle of papers, a haughty look. A measured intake of breath.

“The last child born to a sitting Prime Minister was Leo Blair,” she announced. “In the year twoty dozen and nineteenty several!”

The new arrival gives Johnson the perfect excuse to skive off Prime Minister’s Questions.

“This will only be the umpteen thousandty time he’s missed it,” Patel observed. “It’s a good job that there isn’t a crisis going on, which would have needed Boris’ firm, decisive leadership! The rest of us will hold the fort until his five years paternity leave are up.”

But Patel had one revelation left up her sleeve. She put on her least empathetic expression, and eyeballed her virtual audience dramatically.

“This birth means that there are now two little bastards in Number Ten!”

Shock. Outrage. Even the hard-bitten sycophants at the Daily Mail and the Telegraph drew breath sharply. Patel had finally used a number correctly. One by one the screens went blank, as headlines sprung up instantly on websites far and wide.

“That went well!” said Patel, stepping down. She turned to her fully PPE’d assistant. “Pat me on the back!” she demanded.

As Boris Johnson transitions from ‘Prime Minister’ to ‘Absent Father’, we wish Johnson junior well, and hope he does well for himself, despite his disadvantaged start.

HUMANUM CLYPEUS : HOW COULD YOU BE SO HEARTLESS? Tory commentators, sock puppets, bots, useful idiots and weird, feverish natural supporters have a new shield to guard them as the UK bumbles along into mass mortality from CV-19.

“You can no longer mention herd immunity, because baby,” one well placed strategist told LCD Views, “mind you, when we were planning this baby last year we thought it’d be a distraction from No Deal Brexit. But you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Or a baby. Or do you? Do people look newborns in the mouth? I guess they do. But my point still stands.”

Of course the newborn is blameless of the sins of the father, but the father himself is a sudden beneficiary of the instinctive need to shield and provide sympathy for parents with new babies.

“It’s quite the lucky break,” the source went on, “now everyone, all across British political life, can forget instantly that Boris Johnson is infamous for not admitting how many children he’s fathered. Has fought against being named as father in court. Has numerous children with different mothers and is not exactly a poster child for fathering. But that’s all swept away. Want to know how to get public support when leaving the wife of three of your children, while she’s undergoing cancer treatment, for a much younger woman, before becoming engaged to your mistress, after moving her into Downing Street, while pursuing divorce against the current wife? Have a baby. It’s a no brainer.”

But such cynicism helps no one. Not least the workers in the NHS arguably dying because of Johnson’s avoidance of detail, trust in cranks and all round laziness and misadministration.

“But baby, you heartless bastard,” the source concluded, “how dare you attack the baby?”

I didn’t. I actually want to know why the government downgraded the seriousness of CV-19 in March and don’t think a baby excuses the father from accountability.

“Churchill famously took months off during Dunkirk when his mistress had a baby,” the source slapped back, “now zip it. Or you’re going to be accused of singlehandedly wrecking the baby’s chances in life.”

I’M JUST HERE FOR THE FOOD : DOWNING STREET has issued urgent clarification today after ongoing questions from traitors over the prime minister’s work ethic.

“He’s fulfilling the job criteria to a T,” a source inside Downing Street told LCD Views, “he’s not required to do any work and he’s not. If you have a problem with that you need to read the revised job spec for PM.”

It appears the category the job nestled in was revised in late March, at the same time as the downgrading of seriousness of CV-19.

“Look, let’s stop pretending, everyone knows Boris is just in it for the shits and giggles, perks and applause. It didn’t seem sensible to keep putting so much strain on the man. Ghastly bit of fate that soon after saying ‘take it on the chin’ he took it on the chin. We need to avoid his mouth and actual events conspiring so neatly together. So we made the appropriate changes to what the role of prime minister demands, at the appropriate times.”

And patriots can be reassured that none of the perks and benefits of the job have changed, the prime minister will still be on full salary with benefits, regardless of the hours he works. Whether or not he notices.

“It’s the ultimate zero hours gig at the moment,” the source continued, “which just shows how clever Johnson is and why he’s the right man to lead the country through the crisis his administration arguably made much, much worse. Do you get to live like a king? No. So shut up peasant.”

Great news! Our great leader has been declared fit for work by the Universal Credit people. He will be working day and night to distract attention away from where it should be.

“Ah, yes, the jolly old reins of power, raring to go, wiff waff, I say,” he is expected to say at the early morning press conference, which will be just in time for elevenses. “Well I’m back, yes, protect the NHS, stay home, stay safe, strain every sinew, err, something something, wibble, wibble, in vino paintbox, did you miss me?”

The nation will breathe a sigh of relief at the return of Johnson. If only because it means that the country is no longer in the hands of Dominic Raab-it-in-the-Headlights.

So what has been going on behind the scenes? The transcript from a private briefing between Johnson and the newly installed Professor of Medicine at the University of Tufton Street, “Classic” Dom Cummings, has been obtained by LCD Views’ Phone Tapping correspondent. This is what it says:

CDC: Ok, Spaffer, just get out there, be charming, and bugger off again sharpish. Claim your doctors have told you to take 60 minutes’ rest every hour, or something.

BJ: What shall I say, Classic? There’s 20k dead even using the adjusted figures, the members are getting restive, and Donald has forgotten to take his meds again.

CDC: Claim ignorance. They think you are a lazy, ignorant bastard anyway, so nobody will challenge you. The old tart Kuenssberg will be told to stick her tongue up your backside as per. You don’t have to worry about anything.

BJ: What about the science we are supposed to be following? What is the latest from SAGE?

CDC: You know as well as I do that science costs money we won’t get back. You mustn’t say Herd Immunity any more, even the ERG find it offensive now. I have worked hard to negate every point the fucking experts make. Just say the catchphrase and stutter winningly. Chuck in some Latin if you must. The usual.

BJ: Business as usual, then.

CDC: Business as usual.

Nothing to see here. Nothing. Move on, move on. Phew.

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON : Home Secretary and cheerleader of foreign militaries, Priti Patel, has announced she has set up a “task force” to look into the “baffling and escalating” levels of truancy in British schools.

“I have full confidence that the Home Office’s Task Force Truant will find out which families are encouraging their children to skip school. Once the guilty are identified measures will be taken,” Ms Patel said, with her best serious face, before smiling.

While it’s currently a closely guarded secret who is on the task force, and how many are involved, the level of truancy is out in the open for all to see. People are suddenly very brazen about it.

“This time last year there were no truants,” Ms Patel continued, “but during the later half of March and through April there have now been three hundred thousand, and thirty four, nine hundred and seventy four thousand students skipping school. Personally, I blame the parents.”

What sanctions the guilty parties will face, once identified, are also clear.

“Deportation,” Ms Patel beamed, “perhaps the best English word ever invented. It’s my favourite. Capital is second. Punishment third. My favourite colour is of course blue. And everyone knows my favourite number.”

But it wasn’t all bad news, Ms Patel has a secret army of left leaning male fans on Twitter, some of whom have confessed to thinking she’s hot, and she has a number of Home Office successes to trumpet.

“Shoplifting has fallen through the floor, relative to last year, when there was no Coronavirus. So too high street attacks by Great White Sharks and deaths by lightning strikes on Ben Nevis.”

All can feel confident that with the disgraced former Minister for International Development overseeing Task Force Truant, that success is assured.

“It’s funny, isn’t it,” Ms Patel is reported to have mused, “once upon a time being caught running a private foreign policy agenda with a foreign military would have seen you thrown out of politics, your political party and never again be in government. But these days? The modern Conservative Party has gone back to traditional politics. Which is something I personally smile a lot about. There’s absolutely no harm to the democratic institutions of the United Kingdom by allowing gross misdeeds in public office to go unpunished.”

To smirk or not to smirk? There’s only one answer to that question.

NO TIME TO LOSE : A well placed and entirely fictitious Downing Street source has confirmed today that an official slogan has been adopted to make best use of the unending bin fire of the Johnson/Cummings’ premiership.

“Nunc est tempus procedens reprehendat studium primus minister,” the source said, “old Jacob had his children do the translation as part of their home schooling.”

The release of the slogan is being timed for maximum benefit, with the decision of NHS staff to work without sufficient PPE continuing to distract from the business of sensible and pragmatic governance.

“It’s really a gift,” the source went on, “both the Prime Minister’s new motto and Covid-19. We thought we’d need the cover of No Deal Brexit to completely remake the U.K. in the image of US corporate interests, but here’s a distracting virus. Two dead cat rich environments for the price of one!”

You couldn’t make it up.

But it wasn’t all plain sailing, with a raft of different ancient languages in the running for the slogan.

Latin was eventually chosen, after fierce debate between Johnson and his SPADS at Chequers, over a bottle of Chateau Lator 1950, as Latin is believed to be more accessible to the average voter, even though Mr Johnson’s personal choice was half remembered Ancient Greek.

Which only adds to speculation about who is really running the government. But now is not the time to ask that question either.

FOLLOWING THE SCIENCE OF CHABLIS BORDEAUX AND CHAMPAGNE : The prime minister’s dwindling band of mouthy supporters have struck back today against Rupert Murdoch’s plan to replace Boris “took it on the chin” Johnson with the man-tadpole called Gove.

“These libellous rumours that Mr Johnson missed five consecutive Cobra meetings over Coronavirus are true,” an imagined source told LCD Views, “He basically greets such invites in the same robust, defective way he does invites to a birthday party for a child he may, or may not, have fathered.”

Governs like he parents?

“Too much like hard work. Anyway, he didn’t need to go in person because Dominic Cummings was at every one of them. Dominic does policy. Boris does world king. And Dominic has some really far out ideas about how to solve the social care crisis. Like magic. But don’t take that to mean the prime minister never turns up to Cobra.”

So which Cobra meetings does he attend?

“The ones he deems vital to his style of viral governance,” the source confirmed, “the ones to do with securing the constant flow of wine into, and just as vitally, out of the cellars at Chequers, Chevening and 10 Downing Street. He personally convened those ones.”

So guiding the country through crisis is all about a consistent approach?

“That’s it. And following the science both of avoidance of accountability and dishing out the blame.”

Don’t clap for Boris. Raise a glass of Chateau Idiotese 1964. Much more appropriate.