The prime minister’s address to the nation’s children as they prepare to return to classrooms was upstaged by Twitter tongues wagging over a school librarian with a sense of humour. As Boris Johnson told children at Castle Rock school in Coalville, Leicestershire, that exam results had almost been derailed by “a mutant algorithm”, eyes turned to the bookshelves behind him.
Lining the shelf just behind his head were titles with rather unflattering associations for any political leader, including “The Twits”, “The Subtle Knife”, “The Resistance”, and “Betrayed”.
And sticking out like a sore thumb was “Fahrenheit 451”, a dystopian novel about a society where books are banned.
If you look closely, “Guards! Guards!”, a Terry Pratchett novel, whose plot centers around a secret brotherhood to overthrow a corrupt patrician and install a puppet king.
Then comes “Hero.Com: Crisis Point” – part of an Andy Briggs series where “super powers carry super responsibilities”?
Did you spot “Glass Houses”? Granted, this one is a vampire novel. But could the famous proverb – “those who live in glass houses should not throw stones” – be a comment on Boris’ harsh criticism directed at the exam regulator?
And could Dickens’ “Oliver Twist”, famous for its heartbreaking line: “Please, sir, I want some more”, be tactically placed on Boris’ left to remind us of the government’s free school meals U-turn?
Somebody, perhaps, felt they had a story to tell the nation today. And all behind the PM’s back.
Tag: dealing with idiots
Three-word slogan
Hands. Face. Space. Get a test. And self-isolate. If you have symptoms.
As slogans go, it is perhaps the most confusing of Boris Johnson’s lockdown soundbites – which is saying something for a campaign whose previous tripartite offerings include the widely derided “Stay alert, control the virus, save lives”, the disappointing sequel to “Stay home, protect the NHS, save lives”.
The cynicism, it burns
Critics denounced the timing of Trump’s election comments as a distraction that came amid the disastrous economic report and hours ahead of the funeral of the revered civil rights and voting rights leader Congressman John Lewis. It also coincided with the preparations for a retreat by federal law enforcement agents from Portland, Oregon.
1st headline:
Quickly followed by:
UK response to covid
How very un-Swiss
Katy and I were walking into town, just ambling side-by-side on the sidewalk. We see another couple coming towardssta us, on the same side of the road. I scooch over towards Katy to let them by, but the dude doesn’t move at all and basically shoulder-checks me so I bump into Katy. I turn around to face him and my auto-Canadianism starts to apologise, when the guy just point-blank says “I was in my lane”. WTF? Rudeness? Very un-Swiss. Katy was more upset than I wals. If he truly needs to assert his masculinity this way, I’m a firm believer in karma for this sort of thing.
The world has loved, hated and envied the U.S. Now, for the first time, we pity it.
Writing in the Irish Times, Fintan O’toole says:
“Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.”
“It is hard not to feel sorry for Americans,” he states. “Most of them did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016. Yet they are locked down with a malignant narcissist who, instead of protecting his people from Covid-19, has amplified its lethality. The country Trump promised to make great again has never in its history seemed so pitiful.
“It is one thing to be powerless in the face of a natural disaster, quite another to watch vast power being squandered in real time — willfully, malevolently, vindictively,” he added. “It is one thing for governments to fail (as, in one degree or another, most governments did), quite another to watch a ruler and his supporters actively spread a deadly virus. Trump, his party and Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News became vectors of the pestilence.
“The grotesque spectacle of the president openly inciting people (some of them armed) to take to the streets to oppose the restrictions that save lives is the manifestation of a political death wish. What are supposed to be daily briefings on the crisis, demonstrative of national unity in the face of a shared challenge, have been used by Trump merely to sow confusion and division. They provide a recurring horror show in which all the neuroses that haunt the American subconscious dance naked on live TV.”
I thought it was a joke
but no. Drumpf actually retweeted this…
Nero, according to ancient tradition, climbed to the top of his city walls and fiddled as Rome burned. While the historical accuracy can be questioned, the moral of the story is typically used to criticize someone for doing something trivial and nonsensical in the midst of a crisis.
So Drumpf’s retweet of his social-media manager’s tweet showing him playing a fiddle couldn’t be more timely, considering the continued spread of the coronavirus (which will all be sorted in a week, because the US has the best, most beautiful, testing kits) and the fact that the Dow Jones plunged more than 2,000 points early in start of week trading and triggered the stop-breakers.
You can’t make this shit up. Up is down, left is right, the world is going mad…
What have you done, you idiots?
Spot the newspapers for grown-ups
I know that all the broadsheets have a media bias, on either side, but it really seems that the tabloids just aren’t even trying anymore. The Sun, particularly, doesn’t disappoint in spoon-feeding garbage to its target audience. I mean, come on, could they pile it on any thicker?