Open the tuck shop!

+When it is necessary, it is good to shout at the radio, as I found myself doing last night during the ‘Downing Street party political broadcast on behalf of the Conservative (and no longer Unionist) Party.’ The idiot bearing the surname ‘TwoOrMoreHouses-Jenrick,’ sounded to me like a true apostle of the dawning age of automatism, trotting out words like ‘clear,’ ‘coherent’ and ‘comprehensive’ in a spout (‘at pace,’ another favourite phrase) of verbal diarrhoea that bore no resemblance to reality. Having government ministers trying to master the art of sounding semi-rational when their brains have been shuttered in lock-down for the past god knows how long—isn’t that a neat trick? Jenrick, following the rules programmed into him read out a long list of statistics, all attesting to the success of the government’s clear, coherent and comprehensive approach to the pandemic, but missed out the figure that shouted out ‘Thank god for Trump!’ - we’re being kept in second place as the country with the most deaths! Given how our great leader is completely f*****g things up, I shall be watching the opinion polls more closely, if only to determine how deluded the public may remain under the auspices of the most incompetent government since . . . since . . I don’t know . .  the time of Fred Flintstone? I think I’ll watch Downfall again, to see how the delusional Fuhrer demands to know why his armies aren’t on the offensive—when the looks on his generals faces all tell him that his armies no longer exist. I suspect there’ll be a few Johnson/Hitler Downfall memes out there.
 
+Another cause of rage in self-isolation is the occasional re-appearance of Jeremy Hunt, with his ever so eager look of glee that he’s got to the front of the tuck shop queue. How can we accept as Chair of the Health and Social Care Select Committee a man so responsible for the wilful neglect of those sectors? When, as it should, the Committee comes to inquire into the causes of the unpreparedness of the NHS and care sectors, are we to be asked to tolerate this poacher turned gamekeeper being in charge of it? In my view, no ex-ministers should be allowed to chair select committees, least of all departmental select committees for the departments where they were Secretary of State. That this is allowed to happen merely shows how far Parliament has yet to go in reforming itself. But there will not be any more of that talk whilst the current status-quo ante Speaker is in charge, or the Tories have a majority.