4 December 2022

Well would believe it. Matt Hancock, part–time MP, full–time publicity seeker, has a book out. It's title, as far as I can see, is Pandemic Diaries: The Inside Story of Britain's Battle Against Covid. Obviously not a short title like Mr Greedy or Mr Bump. From the extract I have seen, Mr Nobody looks, in my opinion, to be hinting that he, Health Secretary extraordinaire, managed to save about 600,000 lives.

I gain this impression because the book tells us that the Chief Medical Officer and keen tangerine peeler, told everybody that as many as 820,000 people might die in a worst case scenario. Apparently the whole room froze and someone probably starting singing the Peter Sarstedt song "One more frozen orange juice", emphasising that we were all running down a ravine to a place that no one else had ever seen.

I'm sure later extracts will reveal how Mr Small managed to grope with the problem and rescue me and rescue you. The front page of the Daily Mail (more later) also reveals that Mr Forgetful's, what isolation rules, affair was an "affaire de couer" which, for those of you who are unsure of French letters and words, means an affair of the heart, presumably as opposed to one of the kidneys or liver or some other awful (think about it) organ.

Another paper mentions that Mr Grumpy became miserable when the public turned against him when he cheated on his wife and also broke Covid rules. I assume Mr Topsy-Turvy expected everyone to stand outside their front doors and applaud him. Anyhow you can look forward to further exclusive revelations from Mr Silly in the days to come.

Another topical point this week has been about the charitable status currently accorded to Private and Public schools. KEST brought it up at PMQs, citing as an example Winchester School which coincidently was attended by the PM, Rishi Sushi. The biggest critic of the Labour party's policy to remove the charitable status has been, and is, the Daily Mail. In their attempt to demonise the policy they referred to it as Jeremy Corbyn's policy.

Personally I think it should be scrapped and I think it highly unlikely that 90,000 pupils would have to switch to state schools. Where does this figure come from and how was it obtained? If you are wondering about the Daily Mail's place in this I should point out that the editor-in-chief of the newspaper's parent company is a man called Paul Dacre. Mr Dacre was educated at a very fine public school but instead of believing that everyone should have the best education as I do, Mr Dacre seems to feel that it should be a privilege of the elite and retain a charitable status which is, without a doubt, taking money out of our tax system and hence our education budget. I know that Mr Dacre was at a fine school because I was there too, at the same time. Mr Uppity went one way and Mr Altruistic wrote this.

11 December 2022

This is the final post of 2023 before I go into a recess or possibly a dark corner. It has been a turbulent year, of course without precedent. Three Prime Ministers, the final one being the one rejected by his own party members less than two months before, the one who was thrown out by his own party nearly getting enough support to stand again and the shortest serving PM in history.

Then there was a budget that did more damage than the South Sea bubble crash, a new chancellor who twice stood for leadership and lost both times, a home secretary who resigned for breaking the ministerial code under one PM and was immediately brought back by the next and five different Education Secretaries in 2023.

You'll be pleased to hear that the old phrase of "you couldn't make this up" is completely true and so I haven't. I think what it has shown in politics is also true in life. There are now too many people who think they have the ability to do a job but they do not. For some it is because they have a qualification which doesn't mean you can do a job it just means you have, or should have, the knowledge to enable you to do the job if you have other skills. I have a driving licence, I can not do the job of a Formula 1 driver.

The next general election is, at most, about two years away. I find it impossible to believe, in view of the current economic forecasts, that the Conservatives could win such an election, If they did then Sir Keir Starmer would be the worst Labour leader in living memory, surpassing Foot, Kinnock, Blair and Brown.

The world has also been in denial, or those in power have, about the worsening climate situation. COP 27 was even more of a failure than COP 26, 25, 24, 23, 22, 21, 20, 19, 18, 17, 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1. Had those not been failures we would not be where we are now.

Finally, if proof were needed, we know that a despicable tyrant can invade a neighbouring sovereign power and the rest of the world can do nothing. Yes, they apply sanctions, yes they end up suffering when those sanctions are imposed but no, the United Nations, NATO, any one you like, is powerless to stop said tyrant unless they actually provoke a global conflict. Maybe the time to impose the sanctions, the time to withdraw trading links, the time to cut all links with that country is when the leader takes power not when he takes action.