I’d welcome return of silly season in the UK

✒ WE now have a new Prime Minister. But his name escapes me.

Not long ago the period from the end of July to the end of August was known as “Silly Season”.

In the absence of hard news stories the print and electronic media tended to give us frivolous items.

A good many “Loch Ness Monster” sightings were brought us to us during Silly Season, for instance. How times have changed. Our new PM has assembled a cabinet and one of the very first appointments to be announced was Dominic Cummings as a sort of Chief Executive Officer.

He is remembered as one of the driving forces behind “Leave” and “Project Fear” in 2016.

His refusal to attend a recent House of Commons hearing may mean that he continues to have no Parliamentary pass. Earlier this week he told the world that it is now too late for Parliament to change the “leave EU” programme; a day later our PM agreed with him.

Our new Home Secretary, Priti Patel, said at the weekend that she hopes to make potential offenders “literally feel terror” when contemplating criminality.

Her own record on rules and regs is somewhat shaky - one recalls her dismissal from the Department for International Development a few years back when she was caught making a secret trip to Israel without the knowledge of either Downing Street or the Foreign Office.

She used to hold strong views about capital punishment and on the bloated welfare state; but maybe she has changed her mind on some of these matters.

Another member of our government who is due a “policy review” is Nadine Dorries since her statements and actions on women’s reproductive rights cause concern for bleeding heart liberals like me. Ms Dorries now has a junior post at the Department of Health.

Our lovely new PM has just announced an extra £1.8bn for the NHS, but folk in the know say that most of this money had been awarded last year anyway.

Come back, Silly Season. All is forgiven. » John Ricketts Lynworth