It was sunny and warm today. I’ve been indoors this morning working on my Beefheart book and listening to Elmore James. I went for a pleasant walk up my hill late morning, kicking up leaves like a schoolboy.
This afternoon I was privileged to interview the Prime Minister Boris Johnson. He dropped in for a chat in order to escape the glare of publicity in line with his policy of not going on any show that might ask awkward questions or challenge his policies. It’s the Tory strategy. Starve the fire of oxygen – simply ignore everything and wait for the media to move on and people to forget. It’s a strategy that is working perfectly. Right now he’s hiding away to avoid having to apologise for trying to undermine the whole parliamentary procedures for dealing with corruption. My place was good.
He thought I’d be my usual affable self. He was right.
‘Thank you Mr Johnson for coming on Opher’s World.’
‘Hrrrummmphhh.’
‘Let me start by asking you a very simple question. Is it true that you deliberately ruffle up your hair and appear like a shambling wreck because that makes you popular with working-class people? They think you are a good laugh and a jolly character?’
‘Urhhh mmm, err.’
‘I’ll take that as a yes then. Now let’s start with Brexit, shall we? Are you not ashamed of the lies you told? The 7 million Turks coming to take our jobs?. The £350 million a week for the NHS? The Oven Ready trade deals? The Northern Ireland border? The sunny uplands? The lack of red tape? The free tariff-free movement? The fishing? The farming? All that you labelled Project Fear coming to reality? The financial centre exodus? Firms going bust? Firms moving abroad? The massive costs so far that exceed all that we paid in to the EU over the whole 40 years? The big hit to GDP?’
‘Well golly, Corporus et prospectus, dieu et patri, hrrr, hmmmmph..’
‘I’ll take that as a no then. You are obviously happy that it brought you great wealth and power. Sod everybody else. But talking of costs. The amount you are borrowing to cover up the massive hit from Brexit and your incompetent management of Covid is far greater than anything Corbyn was proposing, wasn’t it? You ridiculed him for irresponsible spending, didn’t you? Yet you are spending even more aren’t you? And not achieving anything through it – just a cover-up isn’t it?’
‘Urrrgggghhhh, um nil desperandum.’
‘I didn’t think you’d admit to that level of incompetence. Let’s move on. Corruption and lies have been the bywords of your administration, haven’t they? Do all these donors who paid for your luxury holidays, crates of £180 a bottle wine, wallpaper at £840 a roll, meals and furnishings, get anything in return? The odd multimillion-pound untendered contract perhaps? A peerage for a mere £3 million? How many of your Tory colleagues have hugely lucrative advisory roles where they get a massive annual salary for hardly any work – just secretly lobbying the government? You know – like Owen Ames and David Cameron did with Greenswill? Or George Osborne did for Blackrock – costing the taxpayer millions?’
‘I errrr, hrrrmmmphh, gosh, golly.’
‘Right, I think that answers that then. As a further question to that, are you planning to go through that revolving door into some hugely lucrative advisory role when you get kicked out of office? Like your colleagues, all seem to? Will you be telling firms how to avoid paying the tax they owe?’
‘Well, cripes and pancakes. Err gosh.’
‘I’ll take that as a yes. So much for all in it together eh? Now, let’s address levelling up, shall we? As the inequality has grown enormously your government has been shovelling great fortunes of public money to the wealthy while applying tax increases, national insurance increases and pay cuts on the poor and public servants, are you planning to finally plug up the tax loopholes so that the wealthy have to pay their taxes and don’t shove millions into the Cayman Islands tax-free?’
‘I should think, err, ummm, yes, no err.’
‘So that’s a no then. Taxes are only for the poor. Which brings us to law-breaking and broken promises. Do international or national laws mean anything to you at all? What about parliament? I know that with an 80 seat majority you feel you can do what you like and parliament is just an inconvenience, but, proroguing parliament, lying to the Queen, breaking treaties, cutting international aid, doesn’t any of that mean anything to you?’
‘I umm, hrrr,umphhhh.’
‘I’ll take that as a no then, shall I? Let’s move on to Covid shall we? Why did you ignore the Cygnus report? Why were you so unprepared? Why did you not watch what was going on in China and then on the continent? You were horrendously complacent weren’t you?’
‘I say, errr errrr golly.’
‘Why did you then panic and award all those untendered contracts to Tory donors who were ill-equipped to deal with them rather than approaching proper firms? I mean Hancock’s landlord is hardly an expert is he? And don’t we have tens of millions of useless PPE, still costing us a million a week, because being a Tory donor doesn’t make you good at manufacturing PPE? And weren’t some of those contracts simply subcontracted to cheaper firms in China and Hong Kong with those Tory donors simply pocketing millions? And did that company actually have any ships?’
‘I hrrrreeewwww er, cripes.’
‘Isn’t it true that tens of thousands have unnecessarily died because you were too slow? Because you dumped elderly patients from the NHS into Care Homes? Because instead of providing a Ring of Protection’ you sacrificed the elderly? Because you didn’t bring in border controls or lockdown soon enough? Because you opened up too quickly and did all those silly schemes like ‘Back to the office’ and Eat out to help out’?’
‘I err did hrrrmmmphh ya,’
‘That’s a yes then. So how much was spent on Track and Trace? Was it really £37 billion??? And hasn’t Dido Harding, a Tory donor, got a string of failures behind her? And what happened to that app? Is it still being jettisoned? Are you happy with Moonshots and world-beating this that and the other? None of which turned out to be world-beating. Are you happy being the country with one of the worst records in the whole world? With the worst-hit economy?’
‘Ya, err, ummm, errr.’
I could go on and on. Maybe soon I’ll bring you the second half of our fascinating conversation.
Meanwhile, out in Coronaland, the cover-up begins. While Johnson is absent other Tories are apologising for supporting corruption and sleaze. They don’t mean it though. All’s fair when it comes to making money. That’s the raison d’etre for a tory. Exploitation and lies are the tools. It’s called unbridled capitalism.
So there were other 31,982 cases yesterday with 57 more deaths. It’s still coming down. That’s great!
The care workers have already had a mandatory jab. It seems that those who didn’t want to have a jab for whatever reason simply took a job with the NHS. Now the NHS is bringing in compulsory jabs. What’ll they do?
I noted that abroad they seem to have all manner of inducements. One Vienna brothel is offering 30 mins with a lady of choice in exchange for a jab.
Anyway, get jabbed and live!! Stay safe!! My booster is this Saturday!!