League of Nations: Part 3

Friday, 1^st May 2020

Do you remember when you could just go for a walk in the Peak District with your dog without the Derbyshire Police Force shaming you on national television with drone footage of you miles away from anyone and anything? Ah, 2019 – what a year that was…

Anyway, it’s time to wrap up the World Covid-Response League of Nations (sponsored by Punk Krow Memorial Headstones – ‘Stone the Krows – what great prices!’). The last two places, ninth and tenth, were fought over by two men with a great vision for their country as long as you equate ‘great vision’ with overseeing anapocalypse. So, here it is…

England: 9th

Waited to Act: 8

Country Run by a Man: 10

Leader Shakes Hands: 10

Sarcastic Bleach Ingestion Jokes: 0

Started the Whole Shitshow by Eating a Pangolin: 0

Made Decisions Based on the Economy (instead of saving lives): 8         

Total: 36

Is it a coincidence that the moment we leave the European Union and ‘take back control’ from those EU-Draco-Reptilian-Illuminati-Overlords, we are immediately highlighted for all the world to see in infectious Day-Glo orange incompetence? Welcome to our new isolated nation, this mighty sovereign country, free to look like complete arseholes with no interference from Brussels. When (or if…) the whole shitshow ends, Boris and his carefully assembled cabinet of incompetents will have to totally own their response to the Covid-19 pandemic. So, let’s take a little look at where it all went wrong…

First, hats off to the Tory government of 2016 for running an exercise, Operation Cygnus, to find out how the UK health system would cope with a highly infectious, influenza-type virus. What foresight! Of course, they were doing this because all the information being shared around the world was pointing to the fact that this was not just a possible scenario but a probable one. Now, when you put everything in place to run such an operation, you clearly mean to learn something from it, unless you get your kicks from watching people in uniforms running around to put ‘infected’ plastic dummies on a ventilator.

So, what do you do when the results of the exercise show that years and years of underfunding and griping about the NHS has put it in the impossible to foresee position of being entirely overwhelmed and unable to cope? Two immediate avenues open up before you: one, you take all the necessary actions and put measures in place that mean the NHS could cope with a future-likely pandemic, or two, you ignore all the recommendations, bury the report, moan about and underfund the NHS a bit more so you can then sell it all off bit by bit to private companies who can take the blame. Unfortunately for the Tories, this last bit of the plan didn’t happen fast enough so instead we have hastily built Nightingale Hospitals (lovely name but wouldn’t Deadly Nightshade Hospitals be more accurate) and nurses wearing kinky fetish aprons because all the PPE was just ‘too expensive to stockpile’.

Now, once you are keeping this dirty little secret, you want to make sure that when a nasty-looking foreign virus comes looking for asylum in your country, you anticipate the impossible strain this will put on the NHS and act early. EARLY, BORIS! NOW! Before the secret has to be whipped out from under the dirty duvet for everyone to see. That’s what I would do but then I’m not Boris. I suppose we should have all guessed that he’s one to withdraw at the last minute…

The Captain is confined to his Covid-cabin

When he does get his Covid-response reviewed and compared to the rest of the world, he will be in a league of one (at least, as things stand) for being the leader of a country who loved shaking hands so much that he was prepared to die for his right to paw other people (again, no surprise there). And then I suppose he gave the virus to Matt Hancock, our Health Secretary, so that they could both go and watch Netflix together instead of running the country. ‘Don’t worry, we’ve always got Priti Patel and Dominic Raab who we can wheel out in an emergency.’ So, just when we thought it couldn’t get any worse, out they came, the embodiments of Boris’ vision for our country, the cabinet elite, the Tory SAS, the Conservative esprit de corps... Er, sorry, run out of sarcastic epithets.

But watching the substitutes come off the bench and start rampantly scoring own goal at least made me wish for Boris’ recovery. Come back, Bozza, and guide us through the second half. Take the helm, we’re wildly off course and need the captain back on deck. There are rocks ahead and sharks in the water and we didn’t buy any life-vests because that would have smacked of left-y subversive nanny-state intervention. Oh, actually, Boris, just die – we’re all fucked, anyway!

The good ship HMS Blighty

Of course, the above is my highly subjective opinion of what we are going through but the numbers don’t lie. We are on course to be the worst affected country in Europe, our brave and bold sovereign nation, sailing under the tattered, wind-ripped Union Jack like a ghost ship with no port in sight. There was no reason it had to be this way. We had a fucking big sea around us like a moat but we still couldn’t pull up the drawbridge.

I just hope every dead nurse and doctor and patient gather around his bed from this night until Bozza takes his final breath and I want them sarcastically clapping him or banging saucepans with a wooden spoon slowly and deliberately and I want him haunted with the rasping, croaky breath of their oxygen-starved lungs. Goodnight, Bozza. See you in hell!

USA (can now be taken as a pill): 10th

Waited to Act: 9

Country Run by a Man: 10

Leader Shakes Hands: 8

Sarcastic Bleach Ingestion Jokes: 10

Started the Whole Shitshow by Eating a Pangolin: 0

Made Decisions Based on the Economy (instead of saving lives): 10         

Total: 47

So, firmly rooted to the bottom of the table is the USA that they may as well be welded there by Chinese health operatives. If ever you look at Bozza and feel all the air being let out of your inflatable airbed of optimism, then have a look over the pond. Bozza is an over-educated, overconfident, Eton playboy who kept rising up the greasy pole with his mixture of boundless enthusiasm and rum-old-chap-ness. Now he’s at the top, he’s beginning to realise it was a lot more fun back-stabbing his rivals and running around with his willy out (like a plug looking for a socket) than actually governing with all those difficult decisions to be made and horrible plebeian masses to placate.

But Donald J. Trump is another thing altogether. As Stuart Lee said, ‘Does anyone ever wake up and have to remind themselves that Donald Trump is an actual living human being?’ I know I do. If he was a Bond villain, you’d castigate the writers for coming up with someone so far removed from reality. And that, in essence, is the problem: DJT has a head like a cauldron wherein conspiracy theories, grudges, narcissism, greed, insecurity and volcanic anger are all blended together into some phantasmogoric beast whose sole intent is malign mischief. In fact, this Beast has its hand so far up Donald’s arse you can see its fingers wiggling behind his tonsils when it spouts “Fake news!” through the Trump mouthpiece.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Donald J. Trump has had Covid-19 the whole time. He strikes me as unkillable in the same way cockroaches can survive nuclear Armageddon. His fever-mind is all aglow with ideas whilst the coronavirus also keeps his skin and hair that special shade of orange. I can guarantee that at some point, he will ask Mike Pence to get an infected pangolin brought to him, minced into a burger, so he can see what the fuss is all about (and yes, Trump may well be possessed by a Chinese ogre placed there in some daring plot by the Chinese government).

Now, if the fact that Jair Bolsonaro attended a lockdown protest march beggars belief, then how should one react to the President of the United States tweeting his support for armed protestors in his own country who can’t accept being told to save other people’s lives by staying home for a bit. They’ve got guns, they like shooting living things, and they won’t let a little thing like the rule of law get in the way of expressing their right to be angry.

‘Tell them you love them, Donald,’ says the Beast. ‘Tell them their rights are being violated and watch the bleeding-heart liberals do a mad hop!’

Seeing Trump’s daily briefings is surely the best live-streamed theatre available; a comedy and tragedy all rolled into one. Laugh or cry? Who knows?

‘Donald, tell them about the bleach idea you had,’ says the Beast. ‘They’ll love it.’

In the absence of a vaccine, Donald has filled the vacuum using his big ‘you know what.’ Try bleach, chloroquine, sitting in the sun, firing an assault rifle at someone with an actual beating heart, anything. As long as it has no scientific evidence behind it, it’s worth a try.

‘Ask the science dude to back you up on this,’ says the Beast.

And so he turns to the side to consult with the science buddy he has with him that day and you can see the thought bubble appear immediately over their heads: ‘How do I tell the people of this great nation that drinking bleach/eating a light bulb/wearing a ‘Make America Great’ cap backwards etc is not safe without making the President look like an arsehole?’

In the UK, we had the scientists of Imperial College wanking themselves silly over some graphs and data projections that made explicit the case for sitting on our hands and doing nothing until enough of us had toppled over and died. In the US, they didn’t have this expertise to draw on because Donald had, upon taking the presidency, jumped up and down on all of Obama’s, illegitimate, communist sandcastles such as the NSC global health unit and Obamacare to show everyone that he was the biggest bully on the beach. You’d think he’d be proud of his record of destruction but no, just trying asking him about it at the daily briefings.

‘Tell all the reporters that they’re FAKE NEWS,’ says the Beast.

‘Tell the reporter that was a NASTY NASTY question and he’s a VERY NAUGHTY BOY!’ says the Beast.

‘Tell them you love PUSSY, Donald,’ says the Beast, ‘But don’t tell them you’re afraid of pubic hair.’

‘Re-open the country, Donald,’ says the Beast. ‘This thing’s all a hoax.’

And you know he will.

Sick sick sick – the number of the Beast.