SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE : POLITICAL MOVERS AND SHAKERS are energised this morning over the opportunity that has suddenly arisen from Boris Johnson’s decision to go to Scotland for a love-in.
“It’s well known how deep the feelings of the people of Scotland are for the People’s Prime Minister,” a representative of the EST (English Secessionists Today) called General Kokup, told LCD Views. “If they feel that strongly about him they can keep him! Ha! Just another gift from Westminster.”
It seems the EST aren’t messing around either and are calling for England to immediately secede from the United Kingdom.
“This is potentially a once in a generation opportunity to get rid of Boris Johnson,” General Kokup continued. “As you can see by my thinking my name is another example of reverse nominative determinism. Like James Cleverly. He can go north too!”
Whether or not Cleverly will take the EST’s advice isn’t clear, but what is as clear as his famous countdown clock is that Scottish independence is looming. And Boris Johnson is helping.
“Why should the jocks have all the fun? Breaking up the Union? The English started the ball rolling with Brexit. We need to keep it going. Keep the initiative. We don’t need those deepwater military ports and fishing grounds and renewable energy potentials. We’ve got cheese exports!”
How the customs border would work hasn’t yet been made clear, nor in reality any other planning.
“So? Did lack of preparation stop Brexit? The important thing is just to do something and let clever people work out how to fix it later. We’re going to build a wall! And pork exports will pay for it!”
Nicola Sturgeon is expected to respond to the EST’s call later today. As the situation clearly presents her with an opportunity to achieve Scottish independence and a speedy return to the European Union, and the 21st Century.
“She may think it’s a bit rum having to keep hold of Johnson to win independence. But she can build a camp on Trump’s golf course and keep him there. When the golf course is repossessed later this year they’ll take Johnson with them!”
“Flag waving is a popular propaganda technique, meaning that an action is justified on the grounds that doing [what is promoted] will make one more patriotic” – Nicole Hein, Spinning Coverage, 2008
We twenty-first century Brits like to wave the Union Jack. Bunting for festivals. A little flag to wave on the last night of The Proms. Village fetes and street parties. It’s a badge of justified pride and identity for sporting teams, the military and iconic exports like the Mini.
We are, or most of us were, proud of our flag. We know what it means, or thought we did. But its meaning seems to be changing. It is suddenly plastered across everything from Priti Patel’s living room to the front doors of Lidl?
This flag has the weight of our history woven into its fabric, beginning life as a maritime flag in the eighteenth century, ordered into being by King James VI and I, the first king of the United Kingdom.
Three centuries later it is now as much a cultural icon as a national flag. And it’s as true of our politicians as the people they’ve been elected to govern. British politicians have confidence in their vision for this green and pleasant land, don’t they? When they pose with the Union Jack, don’t they do it out of pride in the shared accomplishments of the United Kingdom?
It’s not for our politicians to misappropriate the flag, to weigh it down with exclusive nationalism instead of good, old fashioned “true” patriotism. Scoundrels like the former President of the United States of America, Donald Trump, do that. Our leaders treat our flag with dignity, taking their responsibility as custodians seriously.
Or at least they used to. Until Boris Johnson, until Brexit.
Now the mood in the land is shifting. And like the Saint George Cross before it, to many the Union Flag is becoming loaded with nationalism. People who want to still see the flag as a positive symbol wonder where it is heading.
And the Union Jack is everywhere now. The world of commerce reflects the political climate. The German supermarket Lidl has a heart shaped Union Jack on its doors. Why is that? They didn’t need to carry that symbol before Brexit.
The Co-op too were roundly mocked for their ice cubes. Not because people are ashamed of the Union Jack, quite the opposite, it was because it was on packaging that proclaimed the ice was “Made with British water”. As if water now must carry a nationality, like our happy British fish. These examples are becoming more common all the time.
Now when our politicians fly the flag it seems not so much to proclaim who we are, but to appeal solely to our emotions. If you disagree with me you must be unpatriotic, because I have the Union Jack at my back. In the age of populism too many politicians aren’t after debate and policy based on facts. No, they’re just after our emotions. They want us to act on our feelings. To take our country back. You have to ask where to, or from whom. They’re less exact on that.
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or dedicated communist, but the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists” – Hannah Arendt
Flag waving is now as endemic in UK politics as Covid-19 is in the United Kingdom itself. Health Secretary Matt Hancock is reported to have backed calls to have the vaccine developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca packaged in a Union Jack. Is Matt Hancock hoping to inject you metaphorically with nationalism while fighting the Covid-19 virus? Note that Pfizer didn’t insist on the German flag on their packaging. In any case these vaccines are the product of international cooperation.
This misplaced patriotism leads to this ridiculous situation: “Patients refusing Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine to ‘wait for English jab’, doctor claims” – The Daily Mirror, Jan 7, 2021
Maybe Matt Hancock is hoping you won’t notice the UK’s world beating Covid-19 death rate. He hasn’t suggested draping the coffins of our 100,000 CV-19 dead in Union Jacks. Why not honour the glorious dead, the foot soldiers of the War On Covid?
And it’s dangerous now. This fetish for the flag, as cabinet ministers display limp Union Jacks on stunted flagpoles in their homes for TV interviews, as if daring you to challenge them and be charged with being unpatriotic. Are we expected to not ask questions when we see the flag? To buy whatever it has been plastered onto? Be it a political project or a bag of ice?
Tory MPs seem under orders to stamp their social media posts with Union Jack emojis, like digital bunting. But the more the Union Jack is raised the more it seems to suggest we don’t know where we are going as a country. It raises more questions than it answers. Boris Johnson got Brexit done, but the resulting problems cannot be simply waved away.
Maybe leading Brexiter, Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary, Dominic Raab, can help explain the situation with some of his unique wisdom. “We’ve been humiliated as a country in these talks with the EU,” Raab asserted in June 2019, when he made his pitch to be Conservative Party leader, “We’re divided at home, and demeaned abroad.”
It’s hard to argue with that. Can a pandemic of flags cure our ills? Are the flags covering up more than coffins? Let’s hope this flag waving patriotism is not, as Samuel Johnson said, “… the last refuge of scoundrels” (Remember he was talking of untrue patriotism, he also believed it could be “true”). But words and deeds must match.
Because if it is a refuge of scoundrels, the viral flag waving, the lethal nationalism of the 20th Century, so replete with flag displays, tells us that the next coffin to be covered with a Union Jack could be the United Kingdom’s.
ALAS, ALAS AND ALACK: The poor man’s Winston Churchill impersonator, Boris Johnson, has defended the invisible track & trace system. The world beating, table topping, up ramping operation has cost £22bn to date for little or no return.
Where has the cash gone? Johnson explains in his usual unreassuring manner. Alas, we were obliged to spend the money on expert consultants, so necessary to ensure value for money.
“It is necessary to roll out people who know things,” babbled Johnson at the daily coronavirus briefing. “And experts do not come cheap. We want to build a world beating system, one that is already the envy of the whole world, Mars and Venus, Jupiter and Saturn, Oberon, Miranda and Titania. Neptune, Titan, stars can frighten, ooo!”
Johnson has captured Syd Barrett’s freewheeling style nicely there, but that’s where any resemblance ends.
Where has all the money gone, demanded LCD Views’ Dog With A Bone correspondent, Don Taskagain.
“Well, yes, no, erm, wiff waff, yes, it’s important that we do this correctly,” he replied. “There’s no need to panic, we have everything under control, these things take time, I give you my word that it will be up and running by September, no doubt about it, November maybe, February at the absolute latest!.”
But where’s all the money, Taskagain asked again.
“Yes, yes, yes, I’ve already answered that,” countered Johnson. “The problem, yes that’s it, the problem is the aging population and widespread obesity, and new models need to be created to cope with this new data, and we have a working party who will roll this out, until then, sadly, we will have to take the virus on the chin. We will fight covid on the beaches,” he said with sudden inspiration and a clumsy salute.
“And that’s all folks!” he concluded. “Same time, same place tomorrow, for Coronavirus Special!”
He gave a gameshow host smile and wave, and was gone like £22bn.
STRAINING EVERY SINEW: Working day and night to avoid scrutiny is not an easy job. Who can blame Crime Minister Boris Johnson, for needing to take the occasional power nap during the working day?
For example, a typical Wednesday morning for Johnson starts as early as 11.30am. His dedication to the cause is demonstrated by the fact that he puts on yesterday’s clothes, and doesn’t bother combing his hair. These moves are designed to save precious time.
He will then rush to the House of Commons after foregoing a second Full English breakfast, while fortifying himself with a few stiff G&Ts in his chauffeur driven limousine.
After that, he sacrifices a whole hour of his precious time to the traditional ritual of dodging Keir Starmer’s forensic questioning. After that, any man would need a swift forty winks.
By 4.30 he is ready to rouse himself for another Herculean effort. A couple of large brandies later, and he is ready to surround himself with flags and toadies to address the Great British Public. Once again, he makes a monumental effort to avoid the issues and to promise to take full personal responsibility for something or other.
Once again, he permits his cosy coterie of client journalists to lob him a few easy questions, for form’s sake. It takes a lot of nerve and skill to waffle meaninglessly on the spot, so another decent nap is on the cards.
By 8.00pm, he is once more awake, and by now hungry enough to tackle a modest 6-course banquet and a case of Champagne. On completion of this barely adequate repast, he now tackles his red boxes. A man of detail, he delegates the detail to someone else and reads the 2-page summary in large print. Adequately prepared for the following day, and by now mentally exhausted, it’s finally bedtime. He likes to relax with a couple of busty blonde fillies before taking a mere 12 hours of sleep.
TAKE IT ON THE CHIN: As the covid death counts tops a world beating 100,000, Crime Minister Boris Johnson has spoken to the nation. I will take personal control, he waffled, of taking full responsibility.
“I want you to know what I want you to know,” he clarified. “And what I want you to know is that I’m right behind the science, following it all the way, leading from the front. I’m right behind you, at the head of the queue, wiff waff, I say, and I want you to know that I am taking personal control of, erm, of taking full responsibility.”
There was a lot more of this, most of it comprising words flung together in a more or less random fashion, and delivered in that distinctive stuttering cod-Churchillian fashion, like a semi animated scarecrow.
“I am now fully in control of the fact, yes the fact, folks,” he claimed desperately, “that tenty hundredy hundred people, alas, have sadly passed from illness. I got that sentence from the Send ‘Em Home Secretary herself. We will, eventually, decisively, take immediate action. I take full responsibility for ramping up, doubling down, pulling in, rolling out, in, out, shake it all about, and doing the hokey cokey.”
The PM paused, since Matt Hancock’s tear generator (which he had borrowed for the day) kicked into action and drenched his face in water.
“As I said, I am taking full and personal responsibility for picking up the phone next time Marcus Rashford rings to have a go at me for delivering my party’s priorities!” he burbled in a sudden spurt of coherence. “And, rest assured, my personal photographer will be on hand to record the moment and photoshop it!”
The government was informed of the existence of covid-19 in December 2019. However, at the time the PM was too busy with his election.
Months of downplaying the risks and wittering about herd immunity followed. Then a full lockdown ruined by the Cummings affair. Next came the anti covid propaganda and highly expensive and ineffective Track & Trace. The virus laughed at us and took back control. Is the PM taking full responsibility for that?
“I’m taking full responsibility NOW!” he said, pausing dramatically. “There. Done that. The moment has passed. It’s somebody else’s fault again now.”
DUCK AND COVER : HEDGEHOGS IN THE UK ARE NOW OFFICIALLY AT RISK OF EXTINCTION. DOWNING STREET IS NOT HAVING THAT, WHICH IS WHY THEY ARE RE-INTRODUCING NEONICOTINOIDS FOR ONE, TO REDUCE THE INSECT POPULATION.
But they’re not stopping there, they’re going one better and appointing a hedgehog Tsar to save them.
“Chris Grayling has the job,” a 10 Downing Street source told LCD Views, “with his flair for shifting public money to private pockets, regardless of public outcomes, we should see all one million remaining hedgehogs in the UK safely in the custody of Serco by the weekend.”
And Grayling is believed to have many other ideas for how to save our spiky little friends.
“He’s going to individually shave them, to make them more approachable. And he’ll be feeding them. Pizza mostly, as he still has a hotline to a Pizza Ferry Delivery Service and can get them all a great deal. They won’t starve this winter with a large ham and pineapple pizza delivered to their little doors.”
But critics have suggested that the move is just a publicity stunt as Downing Street scratches about in the dark for a good news story.
“That’s nonsense. We’ve already carparked half the countryside of England for lorry holding zones. The hedgehogs are finding moving about much easier now. And when the post Brexit riots start the hedgehogs will benefit from burnt suburban fencing.”
Of course, as it’s Johnson’s government, the initiative wouldn’t be complete without a slogan.
“Get Hedgehogs Done!”
“It’s catchy! And in Grayling we’ve picked just the man to see hedgehogs through to completion.”
But the hedgehogs don’t seem to thrilled with the drive to save them.
“We’ve started a petition,” a representative of the hedgehog sector told LCD Views, “most of us have signed it already. You lot have done enough already. We demand you keep Chris Grayling as far as f*ck away from us as possible.”
BONNIE PRINCE BORIS : THE LAST PRIME MINISTER OF THE UNITED KINGDOM, BORIS JOHNSON, IS HEADING TO SCOTLAND TO ASSIST NICOLA STURGEON IN HER QUEST FOR SCOTTISH INDEPENDENCE.
Even before the deep thinking membership of the Conservative and Unionist Party elected Mr Johnson as the UK’s unelected, unaccountable, incredibly thoughtful divine ruler, Mr Johnson had put in strides to create a customs border between England and Scotland.
“He’s going to launch his bid to push Scotland out of the Union at Culloden. He understands his history. He wants the correct backdrop when he begins to do his idea of speak,” a 10 Downing Street aid told LCD Views. “He’ll be garbling some Burns and will probably recite some poetry he’s written himself describing the Scottish as a verminous race. He’s hoping no one will realise he’s just recycling some of his old columns.”
The trip north is well timed too, as the government is currently pumping out “Stay At Home” messages by the truckload, seeing as all the trucks in the UK are empty of other freight. Thanks to Brexit. With any luck some of his entourage will test positive for Covid while on tour and they’ll all have to stay in Scotland for weeks. This will give them the time to bring English nationalism to the Scots in all its outward looking acceptance of difference.”
And he will be making quite the spectacle of himself.
“He’s having a special outfit tailor made for the Scottish fling. A high visibility kilt, but with Edward 1st’s heraldry instead of tartan. That will make quite the impression.”
It’s understood the Prime Minister will also toss a caber while he’s north of the border. But only if they can get a small child to stand still long enough for it to land on his head.
The tour has been codenamed “Oven Ready Haggis” and is certainly to give the SNP a boost.
THE CALEDONIAN MERLOT : DOWNING STREET HAVE FINALLY responded to the increasingly desperate cries of Scottish fishermen with some sound and pragmatic advice.
Speaking at a meet and greet with industry representatives, fisherman’s friend and Environmental Secretary George Useless, was ready for whatever they threw at him, be it a dead langoustine or a rotting halibut.
“There’s an emerging market in the United Kingdom for affordable wine,” he told the bearded men, “Brexit looks set to price the French out of our domestic market, except for high net worth individuals like myself and Stanley Johnson. Back to the future you could say, as with all things Brexit!”
When asked what he was talking about specifically Mr Useless said, “Why, wine of course! You can retrain as vintners. Much less risk than sailing the high seas in all weathers. Take a leaf out of the book of ballerinas. They’re retraining in cyber and will all be coders by the weekend. You can do the same, only with vines.”
In order to give the fishermen a leg up it is said the government is providing a support package of £5.99 per fishermen who turns his hand to wine.
“As visionary statesman John Redwood says, there’s a demand that we grow our own and our prevailing climate be damned! Believe in Britain!”
It’s unclear how many fishermen will take up the call, but it’s clear the opportunity is there, with as much as £1.50 expected to go onto a bottle of French plonk now Brexit is done.
“We’ll even provide geographical status for the industry. English sparkling for Kent and full bottled Scottish Cabernet Sauvignon across the entirety of the Highlands.”
RUN RUN THE SKY IS FALLING IN : Julius Caesar famously chose the winter of 55 BC to invade ancient Britain after consulting an oracle who said, chicken guts at her feet, “when the sky white is the people painted know no delight in transportation or flight”.
We know what happened after that, as Caesar recorded his exploits on an ancient Etch A Sketch that he carried everywhere.
It has been easy for historians to decipher the pictograms of ancient Britons baffled to immobility by snow, their chariots piled together, their swords stuck in their sheaths, the druids scratching their heads and tasting snowflakes. While unnoticed Caesar’s legions surrounded the haplessly snowed in Celts.
And so it has been for the past two millennia.
The Angles, Jutes, Saxons and Vikings arrived in successive waves like blizzards, but only when the people of Great Britannia were immobilised by a dusting of powder.
1066 may have had a different result if it had not been snowing heavily on the paths and rough roads Harold One Eye had needed to traverse to face the Norman army of Norman Williamson.
So too the 19th century invasion of the Sax-Coburg empire who seized the thrones of England, Scotland and Wales, never to let go.
Even today their descendants like no better sport than waiting for it to snow before rushing out into the inevitable gridlocks so they can taunt stuck lorry drivers and small traders by asking “And what do you do?”
With all this being true no one expected today. The snow. And the aftermath. Because nothing is the aftermath. The snow falls but all that is happening is people breaking out forgotten sleds and children pelting one another with snowballs.
Neighbours emerging to stand socially distanced on the white pavements of the United Kingdom, blink at each other and enquire “And who are you again?”
And the traffic hasn’t halted in frustrated and vulnerable masses of metal doom, because the trade has already ceased.
And what power could it be that has rendered the snow god obsolete?
Why Brexit of course, and Covid-19 under the management of Boris Johnson and his cabinet of loyal halfwits.
The snow will have to try a little harder from now on to disrupt and cause to cease the life and commerce of old Britannia, because Boris Johnson is way, way ahead of it.
HE WHO PAYS THE PIPER CALLS THE SCREENSAVER : DOWNING STREET HAVE PLEDGED TO LEAVE NO SPACE BAR UNPRESSED as a new mystery contorts the country.
“It’s a welcome distraction to be honest,” a 10 Downing Street source told LCD Views. “As long as people are talking about the laptops being handed out by Tory donors to poor kids, no one is talking about the frankly horrifying death toll from mismanaging the pandemic.”
And talking about the laptops people are. Especially educators.
“It was a nice initial effort to have many of the laptops being given to our country’s future chimney sweeps to be missing sound cards,” the source grinned. “But the screensavers of a shirtless Putin on a horse? OMG. Jackpot. I personally would have gone for him fishing shirtless, but that’s just because I can’t wait to get out of lockdown and go fishing shirtless.”
While some are suggesting that the screensavers are a result of the laptops being riddled with Russian developed computer viruses, our source has a more down to earth explanation.
“It’s intentional. A living and breathing dead cat. We employed dozens of SPADS over last weekend to take this idea from just a scribble on a chalkboard to a proper scandal. I think it was actually an idea leftover from Dom’s time at Downing Street. The idea blackboard doesn’t get used much anymore.”
The SPADS concerned are thought to have photocopied thousands of images of the Russian leader and blu-tac’d them to the laptops screens. Then the laptops were delivered to schools.
“The pictures had to be stuck to the screens, because the supplier pulled all the laptops out of a skip behind a medical waste facility. Really lucky find. Increased the profit margin considerably.”
