Category: Governing the people

PARTY HATS ON : Westminster has gone into recess for the next three weeks. The decision to shutter the place is technically for party conference season, but really it’s because everything is going so well MPs are taking another well earned break to have some parties.

“Just look about you,” a 10 Downing Street source told LCD Views. “Everywhere you look you can see the impact of sovereignty. Shops. Petrol stations. NHS. Dentists. Control of our borders. It’s amazing what we’ve achieved in just a few months since we got Brexit done.”

Of course it has been long established that nothing can stop a parliamentary recess.

“Recess is the toughest manmade substance known,” the source agrees. “You can’t stop it. It’s like a runaway freight train and it’s left the tracks and is headed for your house. Unlike a grocery delivery. Ha!”

Conferences will be a little different this year with MPs wondering who has got the virus.

“That’s why Tory MPs haven’t been wearing masks in the House of Commons. Forward planning. Let’s all get sick now. One big measles party. Get it over and done with and have at the canapes and champers!”

But there are some who think perhaps now is not the best time to go into recess?

“Look. Have aliens invaded? No? Well. Everything is going just fine. Let’s all get together and tell ourselves what a great job we’re doing, if you’re in the government. If you’re in the official opposition, what’s the point of being in parliament anyway? Whatever crazy idea the Tories have had since 2010 Labour goes along with it. Austerity? Check. Brexit? Check. More Brexit? Check check check. Pandemic forever? Sure, check, just pick about the edges. It’s completely baffling why the Tories continue to run the place ragged when the alternative agrees with them on all the biggest things.”

Perhaps that can be discussed at conference.

IT AIN’T EASY BEING GREEN: Dishevelled and with deeply misplaced leadership ambitions, Boris Johnson lookalike Fozzie Bear has all but ruled out a Muppets reunion. All the others are too busy with running the country down. 

“We’ve all got to grow up a bit,” said Fozzie. “Like me. I’m very grown up, in fact I’m the most grown uppest person I know, but the others aren’t, I mean, they need to prenez a grip here. I’m doing my best. Donnez moi a break!” 

Fozzie paused for effect. Nobody applauded, not even Muppet groupie Cora Lunesberg. 

“Erm, erm, erm, yes, no, well, green is good!” continued Fozzie. “Green is the colour! Green for go! Damien Green! Green with envy like the marionettes! Lucrative greenbacks! Kickbacks! Wiff waff!” 

The other Muppets were not happy. 

“Fame has gone to his head!” remarked Kermit the Frog, during a break in his latest world tour. “One verse in a minor hit single and he thinks he’s Robbie Williams! Riding on the back of MY success! Sorry, but it’s like the tambourine player going solo.” 

Miss Piggy was scathing. “He’s never been the same since he was on that panel show, a few years back,” she said. “It went to his head, which was enormous anyway, and now he’s totally lost it. His appearance has changed too, he used to be quite smart, for a bear. Now he looks like he hasn’t groomed himself for months!” 

“He’s regressed back to Sesame Street days,” said Big Bird. “He couldn’t count to ten for real!” 

“Bring back the Muppets?” said Statler. “Who do they think we are, a bunch of Muppets?” replied Waldorf, and they both dissolved into fits of giggles. 

“Hold on, what’s all this fake news?” roared the real Fozzie Bear. “I was hibernating, what have I missed?” 

Boris Johnson. Calling him a muppet is unfair to Muppets. 

ALL ALONE IN A COLD SEA : The United Kingdom has not gone batshit crazy, that much is obvious, it’s merely having an extended identity crisis. From which it will clearly recover in good order and everyone will be pleased with it.

The decision to keep a prominent monarchy and have the majority of the elected government be people of inherited privilege has in no way caused a conflict psychologically between what overblown, entitled nonsense the country’s rulers are weaned on and reality in the 21st Century world. For those not born to rule, the grand palaces they govern from compensate for what was missing in their early years as they struggled out of state schools and into the arms of the Tory Party.

Happily for the befuddled citizens of the shrinking island estate wedged between the North and Irish Seas they have a Prime Minister who is extremely capable of denying reality and doing whatever the hell he likes. Mostly because unseen forces profit from it.

The young of the island may feel a little lost, with all the upheaval of recent years. But that is just a fitting punishment for being young. Normally it’s a wedge of older voters who feel confused and lost as the world moves on and their minds calcify. Not in Blighty! Here the frozen neurone has taken back control.

But it won’t do to forget the aspirations of the upcoming generations entirely. They need to be guided, a hand held as they step along the suddenly different paths of Brexitannia.

“We will soon be banning smart phones for anyone who is not a Party member,” a 10 Downing Street source told LCD Views. “Which means for the great unwashed, as a rule of thumb, anyone under sixty. We’ll also be bringing back pre-decimal currency.”

The return of pounds, shillings and pence will do more than any other measure to help the youth adjust to living on an isolated rock, as the world churns on unseen beyond its borders.

“They’ll be so occupied trying to work out how to pay for this week’s bread ration they’ll forget that once there was a world with greater horizons. And they’ll have the Prime Minister to thank for that.”

PLEASE SIR MAY I HAVE SOME MORE : Fantastic news for social justice campaigners today with the discovery their work just got easier.

The reason for celebration is related to Prime Minister Boris Johnson shuffling the deckchairs on his personal Titanic yesterday. Many had expected the long anticipated flushing of the stools to have “zero to null” influence on the direction of UK governance because “Johnson is an autocrat who only puts subservient fools into high office to give the appearance of a democratic system of government”. Those critics are now attempting to get the finger out of their eye.

The most immediate and dramatic impact of the reshuffle is to do with the much spoken of “levelling up” agenda that Mr Johnson has promoted as his favourite slogan for the “time being”.

Food bank use immediately felt the impact of the butterfly flapping its wings in Westminster with national use dropping to levels not seen since Wednesday 15/09/21. It is also expected that the reshuffle will be the “pillow held over the face in front of the gun” when the planned cut in UC goes forward to encourage “exhausted people holding down several jobs in an increasingly predatory jobs market” to take on more work.

Mr Johnson will later address the country from the head of a banquet table to laugh heartily over his achievements. The public can expect to see soup and wine stains down the front of a “creased shirt worn to excite the keenest of observers”.

The task to level up the country won’t stop with yesterday’s triumph. With plans to drive forward in work poverty and charity use to levels not seen since “the darkest days of Dickensian Britain”. Ordinary folk are expected to applaud the reshuffle with a clap this evening.

“But not from your doorstep like the dark days of 2020,” a Downing Street source urges. “We’d like you to gather in crowded spaces for the clap in an attempt to get our national measles party over as soon as possible.”

DINING AND DYING : The UK’s ramped up, off grid, glamping Prime Minister is to make a major speech this week laying out the unforced errors he’s planning for the months to Christmas.

Clearly with the economy impersonating the Titanic, the novel virus mutating in state schools because no one in power could give a shit, and Shapps attempting to turn the country’s motorways into a Mad Max appreciation society, via HGV interpretative dance, the public need reassurance. That’s where the PM stumbles in. Late. After focus groups suggest he’s tanking.

With his hair cut and his fists clenched Mr Johnson will reveal his detailed planning.

“We will continue to mismanage the pandemic as we have done from the start,” he will say, “to offer the certainty of the continuity of malpractice the public have come to trust as their reality. If you are able to afford a mansion, chauffeur driven cars and helicopter transport you will be as safe as an MP. Well, discounting the days we put on our show in Parliament.”

So far, so good.

“Those of you who have heard rumours of an October half term firebreak can be reassured that if you’ve booked a holiday destination that aligns with a senior cabinet minister, or Tory donor, you will not be inconvenienced. The rest of you? Sacrifices have to be made for the common good. Just not by myself or my cabal.”

The decision to continue to manage the country to allow Tory MPs to maintain lifestyles that most closely resemble their pre-pandemic plans will ground the country in a tranquil assurance.

“It will be like living at the steps of Mount Vesuvius,” the PM will add. “Remember, it’s a lovely day tomorrow, all you have to do is hold your breath.”

PENNY PINCHING PHILANDERER : Aren’t we all happy today to know that the nanny state has cast its stern eye over the children of the nation and decided to get them in shape.

“Any GP will tell you losing weight is not just about exercise, you also have to watch what you eat,” a 10 Downing Street source told LCD Views. “Which is why we’re making the overweight, slovenly, work shy British worker poorer. Less money for food. Less flab. More money for the private sector contracted to provide social care services. It’s a win win. We should be thanked.”

And thanked Downing Street will be for the speed with which it has pivoted from generous state supporting (some of) the people through a bungled response to a pandemic and over to reverse Robin Hood tax rises.

“It’s great,” one lucky voter told LCD Views. “The 10% increase in my NI contributions? That’s fantastic. Being treated like I have see you next Tuesday written on my forehead by Tories? It brings me back a sense of normality. The furlough scheme had me all unbalanced. But robbing me blind? Pushing me into food poverty, even though I work? Boris Johnson doing that says the universe has regained its balance. They should raise VAT while they’re at it. Except on luxury goods.”

Less money for food is also expected to lead to greater productivity for British business.

“People were always bunking off to eat a snack before the NI rise,” one Tory MP who knows fuck all told LCD Views. “Now with less money to spend on food there’ll be less hiding in the toilets to eat a sugary treat.”

As for the wealthy who will be largely unaffected by the proposed tax rises?

“It’s wrong to say they’re laughing all the way to the bank,” the MP added. “It’s all done by wire transfers these days. You can make tens of billions disappear from the public purse at the push of a button.”

EVERY LITTLE BIT HELPS : The United Kingdom’s King Boris Johnson was elected on a promise to Get Brexit Done and solve the social care promise.

The second promise was clearly a load of horse shit tacked onto his campaigning to broaden his offer from just Brexit, which of course no one with half a brain would have done.

“It’s a bit tricky now,” a 10 Downing Street source told LCD Views. “We’ve a man with half a brain trying to solve the social care crisis and fully 3/4’s of that half a brain has previously been devoted to conducted extramarital affairs. I’m not sure he’s up to it.”

The major obstacle is how to make the poor pay more so the money can be funnelled into tax havens, but convince them it’s all fair?

“We are thinking about getting a bus and painting it with a number that out of context looks large. Then we can just drive it around the country. It worked before. Maybe it’ll work now.”

There’s additional confusion due to the ongoing pandemic.

“It’s clear the mismanagement of the pandemic along the lines of eugenics has reduced the social care burden considerably,” the source muses. “However it’s a Johnson strategy so it’s incredibly short term. What it if creates a lot of chronic illness which exacerbated the social care crisis? We’re not smart enough to work this out.”

There’s also the conundrum of how to take everyone’s equity off them, which is stored in home ownership, and give it to wealthy Tories, but still have people believe the housing market is the store of aspiration in the country.

“Why bother spending your entire life in debt up to your eyeballs if you’re just going to have to cash in that asset so your kids can use the liquidity to pay some private firm to wipe your parents bums? Still, maybe we’ll get lucky and no one will notice?”

The most likely way out seems to be to link two crises together.

“People should be grateful really,” the source adds. “They’re saving a lot on groceries now thanks to Brexit emptying the shelves. They should be saving those savings towards their care in old age, while continuing to pay National Insurance. It’s either that or tax the super rich and no sane Tory who likes a steady stream of political donations is going to do that!”

A CASE OF MISTAKEN IDENTITY: Puffed up, dressed up, lightweight. No, not the latest set of candidates on Strictly or The X Factor, but the (alleged) Prime Minister. So keen was he to appear to be working while on a much undeserved break that he took his World Beating dressing up box with him. 

In a Worldwide Exclusive, LCD Views can reveal the depth of thought that went into this harebrained idea. This depth is so deeply profound that it must be measured in microns. 

This scoop was obtained, not by wielding a huge sum of money, but by default. All of the mainstream press were desperate to point out how hard Johnson is supposed to be working. But none of them wanted to admit that it’s all an act. 

Today, since the public eye is on Dominic Raab and his refusal to disclose the date he went on holiday, Johnson can relax and pretend to be a tubby middle aged man on holiday. His work done, he may then resume actually being a tubby middle aged man on holiday for the rest of the day. 

But tomorrow, who knows? Executive Holiday Consultant Heidi High had some inside information. 

“I help Boris with his packing,” she revealed. “I mean, I have a friend who helps him. Possibly she helps him in other respects too, I couldn’t possibly comment, but I do know which items went into the dressing up box.” 

Do tell! 

“There’s a hi viz jacket in every conceivable colour,” she said. “And hundreds of hard hats. A butcher’s apron and a string of sausages. A collection of lab coats. Several dozen Union Jacks. Scrubs and a stethoscope. A mop and bucket. There’s loads of it!” 

The only outfit missing seems to be something appropriate for a Minister of State. Instead of dressing up, he should be getting a dressing down.