Hell’s bells, Big Ben bung is a daft idea devoid of ap-peal
IT looks like we’re discovering an unseen consequence of climate change.
The Silly Season has seemingly switched from summer to winter and we’re slap in the middle of it.
What could be weirder than a £57 candle that smells like Gwyneth Paltrow’s vagina becoming a bestseller? OK, good point, an Arlene Foster one, maybe.
Or Victoria Beckham spending £6 on a loaf of bread. Who knew she ate? But nothing can touch the Prime Minister’s first big appeal to the nation after winning a thumping majority: “Let’s bung a bob for a Big Ben bong.”
That’s right, Johnson floated the idea of raising the £500,000 needed to halt the Big Ben renovations and get the bells ringing to celebrate the following happening on January 31: The UK still paying billions to the EU without any say in their rules, laws or borders until an unknown future date. Ding-dong, what a tremendous idea. It’s not as though there’s any better causes in need of half-a-million quid, like the plague of homeless people on our streets. Mind you they used to ring bells during the Great Plague so maybe it’s just bringing things up-to-date.
Brexit is now an accepted reality, but was the idea of passing round a begging bowl to pay for a Victorian bell tower to bong a few times really a sign to other global economic powers that we’re coming for them? Listening to Brexit’s biggest bell-end, Gareth from The Office’s fat uncle Mark Francois, tell those who didn’t like it to stay at home and watch Netflix, made it feel like an excuse to gloat over the 63% of the country who either voted against leaving or abstained. Even worse, Leave.EU wanted the nation’s churches to echo their reaction to the Allies’ victory against the Nazis in 1945 and peal the bells. How offensive to the memory of the 450,000 Britons who died in that war to compare transitioning out of the EU with VE Day? Not to mention our fellow Europeans.
Now that The Great British Bong Off doesn’t look like it’s happening because (surprise, surprise) Johnson hadn’t thought it through, maybe we could have a Thatcher Hologram at Dover smashing back the Channel waves with her handbag or a giant puppet of Churchill outside the German embassy giving a flashing twofingered salute.
How about putting effigies of EU leaders in stocks in Trafalgar Square and charging a fiver to Toss A Turd at Tusk?
A defiant Nigel Farage still plans to fill Parliament Square on January 31 with, among others, the loons who turn up to applaud the Duke of Kent opening a disabled toilet.
Brexit Party chairman Richard Tice is even asking the nation to come up with a suitable song for the occasion. Surely he has to get DJ Mike Read to reprise his stirring anthem UKIP Calypso.
I can picture it. When he gets to the line “leaders committed a cardinal sin, opened the borders, let them all come in” there’s a mass waving of fake blue passports.
Followed by an angry roar as 11pm passes without a single bong, because, as Farage warns:“If we can’t get Big Ben to sound on Brexit Day, the world will see the UK as a joke.”
That ship sailed long ago, mate.
How about a hologram of Thatcher at Dover holding back the waves?