Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
It’s endless laughs with Tory clowns
A GOVERNMENT Wellbeing survey claims we’ve all become happier over the past year.
But I fear the Office for National Statistics is mistaking the kind of manic, suicidal grin a funeral mourner wears when they return home to see their house on fire, for a smile.
Because with every passing day it feels like we’re all becoming extras in a fifth-rate Pinewood comedy called Carry On Down The Khazi, with the woefully inept leading actors strutting across the world stage giving everyone outside these shores a belly laugh.
David Cameron introduced these Wellbeing scores to prove there are other statistics outside of chronic trade gaps and record national debt to show how well Britain is doing. He also issued this unknowingly hilarious tweet on the eve of the 2015 election: “Britain faces a simple and inescapable choice: stability and strong government with me or
chaos with Ed Miliband.” So how’s that one going, Dave?
The only thing strong about his successor Theresa May’s government is the stench of death coming from it. Maybe that’s why Philip Hammond, with the pale, emaciated, shifty look of a Dickensian undertaker, stays on as Chancellor.
Her Defence Secretary fell on his pork sword after allegations his hands move like a sex-starved octopus whenever he meets a female journalist.
Her International Development Secretary resigned for believing it’s a good idea to schmooze one side of the most complex political divide on Earth after dropping your son off at the kids’ holiday club.
Then there are the three stooges ‘leading’ us out of the EU: The main negotiator David “So dull they named him twice” Davis, who has never held a senior Cabinet post but because he was once a weekend member of the SAS territorials, is somehow seen as a tough cookie. Even though Jean-claude Juncker, after a week-long bender could chew the cookie up and spit him out with one wine-soaked burp.
There’s Liam Fox, or Prince Andrew with added air miles, pretending to be doing trade deals in far-flung, five-star restaurants at the taxpayer’s expense, showing disinterested people old photos of the British Raj and saying... “wait until we bring this back”.
And the Foreign Secretary, who drops a British citizen in deep trouble in Iran because he is too lazy and arrogant to read a vital briefing due to his mind being focused on his only concern – planting his duplicitous backside in the PM’S chair.
But the laughs don’t stop there, folks. Not when the Paradise Papers show The Queen and her heir to have invested millions in offshore trusts and companies, while living off the fat of our taxes.
Ah, say the defenders, these shady dealings were done by their advisers and they “probably didn’t know what was going on with their investments”. Why not? What else do they do with their days?
The Queen’s sister, Margaret, who spent her life in bed being serviced with vodka and tobacco, arranged for most of her £20million fortune to go to her kids before she died, thus escaping death duties.
This is a Firm who, in the midst of austerity cuts, demanded and received inflation-busting pay rises, plus £370m to do up one of its palaces.
The only acceptable defence is that The Queen can see the future under this dying Government and has bunged her wealth in her Crown Dependencies so when the world stops laughing at us and the recriminations start she can do a midnight flit.
Which would certainly boost my Wellbeing score.
Only thing that’s strong about this government is the stench