LCD Views

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.

OPERATION LAST GASP : Rumours in the political mills this morning that the old Emperor of the post colonial British Empire, plucky Australian/British/American upstart Rupert Murdoch is ready to change his prime minister again.

“All the little Satans are in a frenzy,” our Satanic mill correspondent reports, “pokers are being sharpened and heated, racks are being restrung, and the political gallows are being erected in the shadow of the giant brass toilet.”

The reason for the frenzy appears to be a reaction to a Twitter feed..

“Mrs MacBeth is almost clinically insane these days with thwarted ambition and she let’s her boss Rupert know about it,” our correspondent continues, “Mr Murdoch can’t sleep at the best of times anyway without that ‘mad English fart’ sounding off. And with the fall of democracy in English speaking, Western countries being partially incomplete. Jerry does her best, but he wakes sweating, screaming about “razing farking Liverpool to the ground and car parking the lot of it”. So something has to be done in the service of a good night’s rest.”

And that something appears to be the shock revelation of Prime Minister Johnson’s blithe and disinterested approach to the pre-match stage of U.K. v CV-19.

“Clearly anyone without blinkers on who was paying attention a couple of months back saw immediately that Johnson’s government of entitled bluffers were going to get Covid done just like they got Brexit (not yet done).”

Shame you can’t gaslight a virus.

“Or delay the consequences of your ideologically driven, human viral sacrificing choices over years and years. Long enough for old Odey to fill his boots again and again. Shame. Pity.”

But what does Mr Murdoch himself say of the rumours?

“Oh he only talks through an ouija board,” our correspondent finishes. “and right now the pointer is blazing out ‘I LIKE TO CHANGE MY PRIME MINISTERS LIKE I CHANGE MY UNDIES. YOU WANT TO MAKE SOMETHING OUT OF IT? WHAT’S I”

The sentence remains unfinished, but Mr Johnson’s sentence appears to have been passed.

ALL MOUTH NO TROUSERS : A leak from Downing Street today reveals a bold new initiative to be launched by government in coming days that will “take the fight to Covid-19”.

The plan, which was intended to be leaked, in order to gauge public appetite for it, will see the new NHS Nightingale hospitals transformed into “red, white and blue nerve centres of patriotic flags and bunting”.

“Covid-19 won’t see this coming,” a genius advising the government told LCD Views, “it’ll be so wrapped up in feel good nationalist fervour it will sit down with nausea and retch. That’s when we’ll deal the killer blow.”

What the killer blow is exactly remains under wraps, but it’s believed to be a badge of some variety.

“When this virus was busy mutating in Tufton Street, I mean, in bats and pangolins, it never dreamed one day it would face thousands of freshly ironed Union Jack flags. England will be so festooned in symbolism it won’t matter that what we’re actually doing is still herd immunity. What’s a few tens of thousands of economically inactive dead between friends? Hey? Grandparents. Huh! What are they good for? Huh! Say it again.”

It’s fair to hypothesise that the nerds running Germany, with their elected officials and their PhD’s and their pragmatism, and the bleeding heart snowflakes running New Zealand, with their voluntary pay cuts by MPs and commitment to the sanctity of life, can learn more than a thing or two by watching how we go about CV-19.

But what if the leak reveals there’s little public appetite for thousands of flags? That what anyone paying any attention at all wants is proper PPE for all people on the front lines and a regime of testing, testing, contact tracing and isolation?

“Then we’ll announce some big showy numbers so client journalists can run with it and meanwhile we’ll keep hanging flags. Simple.”