Frankie Boyles been busy:
Here’s a column I wrote during the week to try highlight a wee bit of injustice, but sadly no bastard would publish it.
You’ll find a few jokes from old FB columns pressed into service in a good cause.
Have a powerful Thursday.
I’m impressed by Theresa May’s body language; until recently I didn’t know it was possible to limp with both legs.
May must have imagined that at this point she would be wielding a hundred seat majority like the One Ring; instead she merely persists, a kind of electoral skidmark.
Priti Patel was due to be given a stern telling off from the Prime Minister, but then Boris stepped in to help, and now she’s due to be executed. Patel was on a family holiday when she met Benjamin Netanyahu. Which sounds like something organised by a team from The Apprentice. I can imagine Lord Sugar in the boardroom shaking his finger at the project manager, “They loved the food, the horse and cart ride in the old town was great, but the family really feel like the holiday was let down by the excursion to meet Benjamin Netanyahu. Why did you didn’t choose the water park I’ll never know!” Patel broke the ministerial code by meeting the Israeli Prime Minister. Had she not discussed policy but instead simply felt him up, the whips would have probably had the decency to sweep the whole thing under the carpet.
Her flight home must have been unpleasant. Mulling over the end of her ministerial career and how she would deal with the press frenzy and the venom of her colleagues. Still, I’d take that any day over the latest Adam Sandler movie. It’s probably the only time a first class passenger on Kenyan Airways has pressed the button above her head to summon a flight attendant only to ask what they make a year and if there were any vacancies. Yes, she might have advocated giving aid money to the Israeli army, but it was for a hospital, so she was helping people who were fighting for their lives. I mean, technically they were fighting for Al-Qaeda, but it feels churlish to point score about such things.
The Tories have a lot more trouble scheduled for the immediate future, all of their own making. A six week payments gap when you switch to universal credit? You’d almost think that unscrupulous loan companies had a history of donations to the party.Then there will be the harrowing spectacle of next week’s budget presented by a Chancellor who uses Dickens as a style blog. A pre-Christmas budget, what a wonderful ring that has: not unlike a February 13th herpes flare up. The budget is a diorama of our political class’s patronising view of the public. They wheel out the guy responsible for the complexities of quantitive easing, the regulation of derivatives, and export tariffs, and he gives a speech about only putting fivepence on cider to a bunch of people with a subsidised bar. The construction industry is very worried about the budget, as after Brexit it will consist of one bloke called Terry having to fit twelve thousand kitchens a week. My own big Brexit worry is that my poor cleaner will be forced to leave the UK and I’ll have to burn my own sheets.
Boris Johnson has managed to give the impression that if the Brexit deal isn’t to his liking, he might resign on principle. Boris and principle are incongruous terms, and the whole thing feels a bit like someone telling you they think their Alsatian has a strong sense of religious duty. Ken Clarke recently suggested that in normal times Johnson would have been sacked. As it is we’re just going to have to settle for him being incinerated in a thermo-nuclear war along with the rest of us. The thought must occur to the Conservatives that even Boris is not cartoonish enough; that in these dumbed down times, where seeing tragedy on a west end stage probably means going to a Bee Gees musical, something even more basic might be required. Step forward Jacob Rees-Mogg, a composite figure drawn from the nightmares of 18th century child millworkers, a Punch cartoon of the first giraffe in England. Hats off to the blighter for trying to bring religion into Conservatism, a movement largely based on coveting.
I was deeply disturbed by the Foreign Secretary’s failure to properly apologise or make ammends for his remarks about Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. He said the remarks had been taken out of context, which they weren’t, unless he meant they only make sense in the context of him being an incompetent jackass, which is true. I was equally disturbed by Liam Fox pooh poohing it as a “slip of the tongue”. These are two people who have made lucrative careers not just out of Britain, but of the idea of Britain. They have wrung their hands about British sovereignty and borders. They have attempted to align themselves with the idea of shared British values, and defined those who oppose them as being contrary to Britain’s values, and even security. The corollary of that position is that British citizenship has to mean something. You can’t reasonably say that you want greater sovereignty in the interests of anyone other than your own citizens. And if you want to align yourself with British values, you ought to know that there’s nobody in the country, or your own parliamentary party for that matter, who would say that their values allow them to brush off the prospect of a British mother rotting in jail.
Andy Tsege is also a British citizen and he was living in the UK with his partner and children just over three years ago. He wrote a book that detailed how the rulers of Ethiopia, having recently won power, had embarked on a campaign of violent oppression against their people. Little did Andy know that this book would see him sentenced to death by the Ethiopian regime whilst he, unawares, was living with his family in the UK. Andy felt safe in Britain. He had moved here because he was being targeted in Ethiopia and believed in British democracy. He studied philosophy at Greenwich University and made a living by driving a mini cab. Andy travelled on a UK passport which requests, in words attributed to Her Majesty the Queen, that the bearer be allowed “to pass freely without let of hindrance.” Apparently her Majesty’s officials took their eyes off the ball when, in June 2014, Andy was kidnapped while transferring through an international airport more than 600 miles away from Addis Ababa . He was transported to Ethiopia and locked in the worst conditions imaginable, tortured, beaten and made to “confess” on national TV. He has been stuck on death row ever since.
If you’re in Parliament at the moment you are in a uniquely powerful position. There is a government that lacks the ability to govern, defined by trade negotiations that they are consumed by without ever managing to begin. If you’re a Conservative MP right now, you occupy an odd moment in history where, as part of a minority government that needs your support, you could actually achieve things. If you were looking for a place to start, you might ask yourself whether you feel your values are being represented by Cabinet members who seem sanguine about British citizens being sentenced for crimes they didn’t commit; for promoting democracy; for going on holiday? I like to think that some of you, watching this saga continue without apology, deprived of even the barest nod at decency, might even realise that you can do something about it.
Details of both campaigns here
freenazanin.com
www.reprieve.org.uk/case-study/andargachew-tsege