After a test viewing of the Smith films, members of the Scots Guards attempt to force their kilts back down.
(Picture found in a seedy back room here)
I’ve often wondered just what it would take to get the British public, or even the media, to demand that this government finally resign. Invading Iraq on the basis of lies? Soaring knife crime? Trainspotters and tourists confused with terrorists by the police? Plastic policemen bossing them around? Neighbourhood snoops on council pay? Children encouraged to inform on their parents? Banks asking which political party they support? Tax upon tax upon tax? Banning anything they enjoy? Having their children criminalised for drawing hopscotch boards on the street? All grumbled at, but accepted.
Ministers and ‘public servants’ voting themselves a pay increase while everyone else gets a pay cut or loses their job? Expense allowances that would make a banker blush? Charging for a second home less than forty miles from the original? Charging for a second home while staying with relatives? Pillaging pensions while gold-plating Government ones? Allowing unfettered immigration and branding anyone who objects as racist? Interfering in every detail of our lives – tracking our movements, following our internet use, phone calls and emails, recording us when we leave the country, stopping and searching thousands under anti-terrorist laws while failing to find a single one… the list is endless.
None of that caused more than a few mutterings of ‘political correctness gone mad’ – an idiotic phrase because political correctness was mad to begin with – but otherwise, nobody stirred. Nobody protested. Nobody regarded any of these as career-ending moves made by the drain sump residue running this country.
And yet, when Jacq the Ripper’s paid-husband watched £10 worth of porn and charged it to the taxpayer, it’s considered something she can’t recover from.
Eh? She recovered from demanding that anyone visiting a prostitute be named and shamed, while allowing anonymity for child molesters. She recovered from the Damian Green business. She was unruffled by revelations of her troughing in the allowances, and yet £10 worth of porno films brings her down?
I wonder, is it because the sums involved in those allowances are so large that the average person can’t quite believe it? Bring it down to charging for a bath plug or Sky TV and they can see it, but talk about mortgage-sized sums and it doesn’t feel real. Is that it?
Or maybe there’s a shred of British decency left. Maybe she’s finally offended those British morals which allow the porn industry to flourish as long as nobody admits to buying any. That mindset that says ‘Oh, we all know Carruthers shags alsatians but as long as he’s never caught in the act, it’s all okay’. The old ‘Do what you like as long as it doesn’t frighten the horses’ attitude.
Perhaps it’s the outrage of the Professionally Offended, who see no problem with ministers stealing from us because it means we have less money for booze and tobacco and fat-generating foods, but woe betide any who fall below their Puritan standards.
Whatever nerve needed twisting, the Ripper has, at last, twisted it.
There would be a certain poetic justice in this Government falling because of the professionally offended. Those they trained and encouraged to find offence at the slightest thing must be reeling in shock at the idea of The Ripper’s pet man tugging at his loose thread so hard he risks unravelling. All those who begged for ID cards from Big Jacq must now consider that she has touched those hands, and then touched the ID cards. She might even have claimed for the tissues. Look at the twinkle in her eyes… did she watch? Did she help? Were those tight-pursed lips put to use, their fount of lies and spin silenced for a few moments? Hey, if it shut her up, it’s £10 well spent.
I should have put ‘sick bags at the ready’ at the start of that paragraph. I hope you had one handy.
The British are a funny lot. I’m reminded of ‘Carry on up the Khyber’ where Kenneth Williams (the Khazi) catapulted the heads of fallen British soldiers into Sid James’ tea party, to no effect. Kenneth Williams’ line “A thing like that leaves them unmoved, but put the milk in the cup before the tea and they go berserk” sums it up nicely. Jacq the Ripper and the rest of the Gorgon’s goblins have been throwing heads at us for years. Now she’s put the milk in the cup first.
You can shaft the Brits for money and they’ll grumble about it and do nothing. You can make up stupid rules and they’ll grumble but follow them anyway.
But get caught with one of Those Films and it’s whisky and revolver time.
On the rocks, Mrs Shagnasty – sorry, Miss Ripper? Oh, and there are two bullets in your gun so you can take Tugger with you.
Quickly now. There’s a queue.
Update: Spark Up informs me it’s milk first, tea second. Well, I wouldn’t know. I’m genetically predisposed to espresso and pasta and scary driving and a recognition of the fact that while rules exist, they only apply if you’re being watched by someone who cares.
I’d go back there but I can’t ride a moped and I’m not Catholic. I also don’t speak the lingo since it had faded from the family by the time I was born. I can make a decent espresso at least.
So I have to take Spark Up’s word that I have the milk and tea part the wrong way round. Sorry about that.