An Ode to Boris the Bluffer
O no one’s great surprise, it has been confirmed that the nation is currently in recession. Industries are on their knees and hundreds of thousands have already lost their jobs. And this is only the start of it.
But never mind all that, because now comes uplifting news from upscale Santa Barbara, several light years west of Grim Reality.
Harry and Meghan (below), bless them, have managed to secure their very own starter mansion in La-la Land. Price — $14m or thereabouts.
Well, that’s a weight off all our shoulders.
Having wept for them as we’ve leafed through the distressing pages of Finding Freedom — or at least through newspaper highlights from the book, finally published this week — it’s some comfort to know that the pair have at last found a cosy 14,563ft property with nine bedrooms and 16 bathrooms to call home.
This modest nook is reportedly set on five acres of land and includes those standard features we all insist upon: the giant swimming pool, sauna, library, theatre and adjoining two-bedroom, two-bathroom guest house.
Harry and Meghan are reportedly calling it their “sanctuary”. You would.
Unfortunately, as is often the case with this couple, their timing has not been the best.
The book cataloguing the awfulness of their palace predicament has been released in the same week that the increasing economic havoc of Covid-19 becomes clear.
And at a time when people have more pressing challenges to deal with than how to cope with being blanked by the sisterin-law.
Most of Harry and Meghan’s gripes had already been aired in published extracts from the book — with which, of course, they insist they did not collude, despite the intimacy of the detail.
From new snippets this week we garner that Meghan is generally held to be perfect and is great at packing a suitcase. Harry feels they were “thrown under the bus” (or, in this case surely, Her Majesty’s Gold State Coach).
But the most intriguing insight, for me anyway, has to be the line about how Hazza
was “delightfully surprised” when, during a trip to Botswana, Meghan went for a pee in the woodlands.
No wonder he was surprised, delightfully or otherwise.
At the time the couple were staying in a £1,500-a-night glamping tent with private terrace and en suite bathroom. Why couldn’t she just use the loo in the tent?
What is it with this pair and bathrooms? Their new billet in Santa Barbara has 16.
Sixteen bathrooms. The definition of architectural incontinence.
As has been pointed out in many quarters, Finding Freedom has been a PR disaster for the couple.
It’s doubtful, though, that this will clip their wings in terms of the whingeing and Zoom-lecturing.
Santa Barbara, the home of sanctimony, will be a good fit for them. Expect more preachiness.
And not just from Princess Perfection and the Duke of Badly Done-by.
Increasingly, commercial concerns are getting in on the lecturing circuit, too. It makes them look big-hearted and humanitarian. That seems to be the thinking anyway.
A more cynical interpretation is: you catch the public mood, you sell more product.
This week Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream tackled the complex and distressing issue of the cross-channel trail of migrants into the UK and attempts to stymie the cruel trade in people-trafficking.
Tweeting publicly to Home Secretary Priti Patel, the company declared: “Hey, Priti. We think the real crisis is our lack of humanity for people fleeing war, climate change and torture.”
No mention of the lack of humanity of the criminal trafficking gangs, who put people on rubber dinghies and launch them into the English Channel to risk their lives.
This is an intricate crisis that will take more to solve than a couple of scoops of strawberry-rippled platitude.
Still. If firms like the multinational giant Unilever, which owns Ben & Jerry’s, truly want to help humanity, nothing’s stopping them directing a large whack of profits towards refugee charities.
Because, Harry and Meghan aside, finding freedom is generally about a helluva lot more than an exercise in PR.
BORIS was in town for a fleeting visit this week, sprinkling fairy dust and good cheer. Writing in this paper, the PM talked up recovery from pandemic.
We will build bigger. Build better. We will be “standing side by side” in these difficult days.
Shoulder to shoulder, eh Boris? I hope Phil Coulter will forgive me for this...
Come the day and come the hour, Come recession and the Covid, We are urged to answer Johnson’s call,
In the four proud nations of the UK.
Boris, Boris forever asking all. Build back better!
The place is in freefall.
From the face mask to the school desk
From the closed doors of the wet pub,
From the mad fiasco of A-level marks,
It’s a whole heaped pyre of confusion.
But Boris, Boris, forever asks of us.
Build back bigger!
And alway take the bus.
Firms of steel and manufacture, Planning never to reopen, You can go to Spain, but you’ll quarantine.
And test and trace is still a shambles.
But Boris, Boris repeats his upbeat call,
On a one-day visit.
Which frankly says it all.