LCD Views

TWO WORLD WARS, ONE WORLD CUP AND ONE CV-NINETEEN : Exciting news today from 10 Downing Street with the announcement that Prime Minister Boris Johnson is to undertake a victory tour of England.

Many quarters of an impressively uncritical press have been calling for an open top bus “Victory tour” for some time. This is standard for any impressive national victory by a great team.

Huge parliamentary support is also there with many MPs looking to take any spare seat up top on the bandwagon and shout “Vaccines! Vaccines! Forget the PPE scandals! Forget your dead NHS staff! Vaccines!”

Revelations yesterday that the PM has produced an entire propaganda film, paid for by the taxpayer, to gloss over the absolutely catastrophic (and avoidable) death toll in the U.K. only heightened anticipation that a victory tour was looming.

Dido Harding will of course have a pride of place, assuming someone can find her on the day.

We went out into the queues for tiny post office kiosks (that snake down most high streets during the plague in once crowded urban areas), thanks to the pre-virus austerity closure of the old boring big and spacious branches, to see what the public think.

“I can’t wait,” I Hope To Be The Last Person Left Alive In My Village told LCD Views. “We’re very patriotic around these parts. Well, we were. But I still am. I’m going to make sure the bunting is up early and on the day the bus comes by I won’t mention the dead at all. I expect to get my second vaccine dose sometime in 2039. It’s great.”

Have your British Exceptionalism polished and ready for the day the victory bus crawls by and be ready to shout “We haven’t done elimination as a strategy because death is too lucrative!”

FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES : The Serco Track and Trace system is receiving a lot of flack this week over the paltry £37bn cost it has absorbed for questionable public health outcomes. But it has one defender outside of the cabinet.

Speaking earlier today in the House of Lords Tory Life Peer Lord Phumble Knut of Bileheath praised the efforts of the private team behind the world beating system.

“Austerity was said to be a great redistribution catalyst from the public purse to the deserving wealthy, but Track and Trace has proven to be far more efficient.”

Lord Knut went on to list the tangible successes of the system.

“The pension and social care bill for the Exchequer has been notably reduced over the course of the pandemic, with every contact who was either not contacted in a timely fashion, or not supported to isolate after, undoubtedly spreading the virus further in their communities. Those crowing Antipodeans could learn a thing or two from Mother England.”

And it isn’t just in the catastrophic second wave over the winter where the Lord of Bileheath noticed success.

“Just the sheer number of Georgian manors purchased by holders of the PPE and Track and Trace contracts, those modern day golden tickets to Willy Wonkas famous chocolate factory, just the number of them alone speak to the dramatic success of the system. I wager more inheritance millionaires have been created this year alone than in one year of the sadly vanished Raj.”

Lord Phumble Knut also had a stinging rebuke for people “nitpicking” over the way the money has been spent.

“Base jealousy and envy. But what do you expect from the great unwashed?”

The BBC is said to be making a documentary already on the system titled “Track and Trace – A Very Exceptional British Success”.

NOT SO DEARLY DEPARTED : BRITAIN’S FAVOURITE PLASTIC PATRIOT, NIGEL FARAGE, has hit upon a new way to use his unspeakable talents.

While some feared his latest retirement from politics with leave him with little to do but shout at the sea, Mr Farage isn’t one for slacking and he’s got a new gig which makes the most out of modern technology, and grief.

“Mr Farage has begun offering to conduct funeral services over Zoom,” a PR spokesperson for the new Farage gig, Dead Inside and Out Funerals 4 U, told LCD Views exclusively.

“He’ll basically say whatever you want for money, just look at his entire career. And now with a tsunami of Brexit consequence about to crash over the UK, and leave only tears and wreckage in its wake, it’s the right time to move into an untapped domain. From there he can deny he had anything to do with Brexit.”

The services will be socially distanced, but the payment will be upfront, as is fitting for the times we live in.

“A one minute funeral service for £63 a pop? What’s not to love. No one likes hanging around video calls longer than necessary anyway.”

But while some have questioned Mr Farage’s credentials, claiming he only causes grievances, he doesn’t help heal them, Dead Inside and Out has a ready comback.

“Mr Farage has helped bury an entire modern, representative democracy. You don’t think he can talk your gran into the ground? Please. The moment you hear him begin his service with the famous catch phrase ‘No. No. Let me speak’, you’ll wish he was burying you too!”

NURSE! NURSE! : Running endless focus groups can be a tiring way to govern a democracy crumbling rapidly into a feudalist fetish rebirth colony, especially if you don’t think the great unwashed have a right to think. Happily British PM Boris Johnson has hit on a way to short circuit all that.

“The boss is going to give his mate Dom a retrospective bonus for all his out of the box thinking in 2020,” a Downing Street source has revealed to LCD Views.

The motivation for the surprising decision appears to be a way to conduct a complete and total focus group of the entirety of the British public and press factions all at once.

“It’s the perfect day to do it. You must keep in mind that Johnson is emotionally a very abusive individual. He’s praised and promised nurses for saving his life, for dying for their country and then he’s given them a sub-inflation pay rise. Essentially a pay cut. It’s hilarious. He’s very pleased with himself. But he’s really eager to see just how much he can get away with. How far can he push it? Well, let’s find out.”

So find out he will.

“350 is now as iconic a number in British public life as the devil’s 52/48. So let’s give Dom a 350% bonus on his salary last year and make it every week. See if the public snap? Bloody funny.”

We send £350m a week to the EU let’s give it to mates of Johnson instead. Doff the cap. Keep calm and carry on at the trough.

WE’VE GOT A SITUATION HERE : The UK’s prime minister is on a one man mission to spend all of the UK’s money and he doesn’t let an opportunity pass to splash more of it up the wall. Any wall.

In keeping with his raison d’être he has announced that a new room will be built within 10 Downing Street at extravagant cost. Nicknamed “The Situation Room”, it will be a hair salon just for the use of Mr Johnson and his inner circle.

“The Prime Minister believes a man’s appearance is a key to understanding his inner workings. His base psychology. His values. Clothes maketh the man and all that. But so does hair,” a 10 Downing Street source told LCD Views. “In keeping with this the PM needs to ensure his appearance is consistent.”

While not many would disagree with any of them, some would argue at the cost of fitting the hair salon into the historic address.

“It’s mostly the cost of installing the industrial strength wind turbine,” the source illuminates. “The old days of dragging himself backwards through a hedge are over. He’s serious about his look now. He will stand in the wind tunnel and an aide will crank the dial to 11, which is higher than 10, and he will get the full force of the tornado strength gale face first.”

Additional cost is believed to be involved in keeping a consistent stock of puppies in a basket.

“After the wind blasting he will have the puppies placed on his head and let them do whatever it is they like. Only then is he considered suitably styled to talk to the nation about his world beating pandemic death toll. Oh and Brexit. Which he got done.”