Now that we’ve defeated Covid-19 by – *checks notes* – pretending that we’ve defeated Covid19, we’re off to our next existential crisis, in which we mobilise platoons of Billy Brownshirts to protect our statues from rampaging hordes of imaginary Antifas armed with grappling hooks and bits of string.
And don’t worry too much if you’re uncertain which particular memorial it is that these phantom statue-topplers are targeting; slave owners, wartime generals, venerated saints, BBC political editors, the pornographer Ben Dover – they’re all on the hitlist.
Patriots – your Ingerlund needs you! Bring forth your Stella-swollen bladders and your nuanced interpretations of systemic racism, the lingering impact of imperialist oppression and the symbolism behind nineteenth-century statuary!
‘A nation that doesn’t take pride in its history ceases to be a nation,’ the author/journalist Tony Parsons told me, the other day, as we strolled arm-in-arm down Whitehall.
‘The pornographer Ben Dover and his troupe of cheeky chappies have brought joy to millions, chuckling sagely as they film themselves inserting their engorged penises into the mouths, vaginas and anuses of some accommodating young ladies keen to express themselves via the medium of having it off, thus establishing an appropriate frame of reference for the observing onanist.’
‘But Tony,’ I replied. ‘Hasn’t the pornographer Ben Dover and his troupe of misogynistic goons also brought misery to millions, guffawing without empathy as they film themselves inserting their engorged penises into the mouths, vaginas and anuses of some oppressed and abused ladies, thus adhering to patriarchal trope, propagating the warped and dangerous proposition that when it comes to male sexual gratification, women are not simply subservient but willingly complicit with it?’
‘National hero,’ the poet/philosopher Tony Parsons continued, my own words spilling unloved onto the pavement, like urine from a fascist’s winky. ‘He vanquished the Nazis on Omaha beach with just his jism. T’was a noble day indeed when they named that town in Kent after him.’
Hmm. I’m beginning to suspect that it’s not about statues at all. Just some people asking for equality, some other people shouting ‘FUCK OFF’ at equality, others still clinging to life on their ventilators, and Little Lord Boris de Pfeffel FauntleFuck, the – *checks notes again* – Prime Minister, struggling to keep within the lines of his Ben Dover’s Bonking Barmaids colouring-in book.
The Johnson administration: functioning government or a particularly nihilistic Beckett play? There’s more than a touch of the baroque lacing the FauntleFuck playbook – the decadent, Hanoverian fop king, populating his cabinet court with laudanum addicts and spivs who can’t believe their luck.
Forked-tongued sociopaths don’t do empathy. Neither do raving ideologues, the ignorant, or banshees for that matter (and you can’t tell me that Matt Hancock – after another hard day purring palliative platitudes at the TV cameras – doesn’t shed his human form to go scuttling and a-howling near the bedroom windows of some local widows, his bloodied fangs bared).
This is where we’re at; the only surprise is that a cabinet populated exclusively by ignorant, ideological, laudanum-addicted sociopathic fork-tongued spiv-banshees have managed to out-limbo even that earth-scraping bar, what with the blasé shrug at the approaching pandemic, and herd immunity, and ‘let the old people die’ (© Dominic Cummings), and ‘I was at a hospital where there were a few coronavirus patients and I shook hands with everybody’ (© Little Lord FauntleFuck), then the Cheltenham Festival, the overdue lockdown, old folk mysteriously dying in care homes, Boris quadra-spazzed on a life-glug (© Chris Morris), clap for your carers, the absence of PPE (© Matt Hancock), Captain Tom stumbling around his garden trying to keep the NHS afloat (© Vera Lynn), front-line health workers strangely dying, BAME people strangely dying, poor people strangely dying, Barnard Castle (© Dominic Cummings), ‘Arrogant and offensive. Can you imagine having to work with these truth twisters?’ (© The Civil Service), U-turns on key worker right to remain, the migrant health surcharge and meal vouchers for disadvantaged children, the collapse of the education system (© get back to school, you little bastards), the malfunctioning “world-class” track and trace system, and introducing Scrappy-Doo into the Scooby-Doo universe, thus ruining everything forever.
Oh, and the body bags. Thousands and thousands of freshly-filled body bags. How many dead? No-one really knows, but at least the government didn’t woefully misread both tone and context of Black Lives Matter, whilst having us headed directly for an EU transition period concluding without a deal, in the midst of one of most severe economic depressions since World War II – so it’s not all bad news.
Were we all grown-ups, Johnson, Raab, Patel and Hancock would be in the dock facing multiple charges of corporate manslaughter. Then again, if we were grown-ups, we wouldn’t have voted for them in the first place. Don’t you agree, model/actress Tony Parsons?
‘What a blast of fresh air to have this mood-enhancing Prime Minister at the helm of our nation,’ Tony replied. Holding hands we were, perambulating past the pile of ashes that used to be the Cenotaph, him in a cocktail skirt, me in a suit, and of course I’m making all this up; he actually said this for money, in The S*n, which is infinitely worse.
The hooker/waitress Tony Parsons: ‘Extremists are being allowed to wipe their shoes on all we hold sacred. At the heart of this conflict is what the lunatic Left never ever understands about the endlessly tolerant British people. Dreadfully sorry, but we are not ashamed of this country’s history. We are proud of it.’
Because this is what we need. More endlessly tolerant British people, with their endlessly tolerant British privilege and whitewashed worldview, giving us their hot takes on something they elect to never understand. The endlessly tolerant British people, randomly capitalising the word ‘Left’, and failing to place a comma after ‘never’. The endlessly tolerant British people, endlessly, tolerantly proud of the slave trade. The York pogrom of 1190. The Batang Kali massacre of 1948. The 2013 horse meat scandal. Jimmy Saville.
Here’s a thought. Why don’t you shut the fuck up and listen for a change? You may learn something…
But all the Tony Parsons out there – this collective noun of blowhards – they ain’t gonna do that. Gobs stuffed with Brexit pie, and still they rhubarb on, as if contestants in that episode of Bullseye that lasted for 13 hours, and still no-one won the speedboat.
Covid ain’t going away anytime soon. That it’s hit the poor and the vulnerable the hardest is a damning indictment of late-stage, liberal democratic capitalism – as well being as oh-so predictable – but nowhere is it suggested that a rethink may be in order.
That public enquiry they’ll hold to ascertain why FauntleFuck and his government treated coronavirus as if were some sort of sixth-form situationist prank? It’ll be three years of anodyne gimcrack; science criticising the politics, politics pointing fingers at science, pangolins blaming the bats, but all of it so wrapped up in apparatchik double-speak that by the dénouement we’ll conclude that it was all the fault of Nicola Sturgeon and some care home manager from Kettering.
This is us, now. Socially distant (unless it doesn’t suit us to be socially distant), half-cut on cheap cider, sex with strangers with a face mask over our gimp masks, queuing to get into Ikea, spreading a bit of inadvertent racism, nomming down on some chlorinated chicken, retweeting Darren Grimes and the Taxpayers Alliance, and having rather splendid erect penises – a boner for the ‘rona (ladies have alternative options… I just wouldn’t recommend Ben Dover). Things fall apart. Do enjoy the ride; I’m going back to bed.
Lazer Guided Melody - Tangents From Listening To Too Many Records 