The Freak Box

Gawd….

So here we are again. Another Lockdown. But this time it’s different. This time we are split in every direction possible and the idea of clapping in the street with your neighbours for any fucker is a long way off.

Fuck. That. We are broken.

World War ‘C’ is raging. It has busted the country and the walnut brains of the ‘leadership’ to such a level that all we can do now is nothing and so a whole lot of nothing is being done. If you are looking for positives I have few other than we are all doing nothing together although we are very, very alone in doing it. The only plan appears to be do nothing, meet no one, merely exist and be bombarded with visual images you neither understand or care to understand.

Have you seen ‘WALL-E’? If not, it’s a Pixar animated romp about a robot left on Earth to clean it up after we have fucked it. The surviving humans languish on a cruise spaceship waiting for better days. We are now those humans, lounging on the deck of ‘HMS Phuqtit’ having state sanctioned information rammed into our heads while we eat and get fatter and fatter waiting for a new world to appear over the horizon.

Checkmate….helpless and cattled…just floating….adrift….drinking the potato water to barely live…

* breathe…

Before I continue with this rant I should explain that I am not a conspiracy theorist. I fully believe in Coronavirus and the devestating affects of it. I therefore fully endorse this quote from genius comic book writer Alan Moore:

“The main thing I have learned about conspiracy theory, is that conspiracy theorists believe in conspiracy because that is more comforting.

The truth of the world is that it is actually chaotic. The truth is that it is not the Illuminati, or The Jewish Banking Conspiracy or the Gray Alien theory.

The truth is far more frightening. The world is rudderless”

Never has the world been more rudderless and chaotic.

This isn’t a man made War which could be stopped through a fine wine shared around a table after all the leaders realise the killing was pointless, this is nature and the unpredictability of it has crippled human thought….for now. The world, and particularly this country is just drifting along desperately trying to sort shit on a minute to minute basis.

The reality is that none of us should have expected anything less. There is no reason to believe that a scruffy haired adulterous slob with a history of weapons grade lying assisted by some of the blandest most inept people in existence should or even could have the ability to sort out a problem like we have now. Even the experts in the shape of men of science seem like bullshit merchants who can’t decide what they want with the flipping and the flopping getting more and more out of control. The lack of direction is palpable and has led to the rise in stupidity globally which in turn is causing more problems.

Once more I am appalled by the levels of stupidity before me….. and I know you’ve heard it all before from me on this very platform but the planets greatest learning machine, Homo Sapien, Human, appears to have peaked.

I am not vey well educated but I see myself as far from stupid. You may disagree with that and that is your right regardless of how wrong you are. How do I compare myself? Well, take the bloke I just heard on the radio who, when asked if he would have the vaccine, said with a straight face (well, voice, I couldn’t see his face but I assume it was in trouble with nostrills and earholes all over the place) that he wouldn’t as he believed that the pandemic was created so pharma companies could make money. The host, the sarcasticly fantastic Nicky Campbell was dumbstruck as it was clear that this plum really believed it.

The caller, ‘Richard’ from Jubville in a Potteries hamlet where a thumb is reveered was insistent that this whole pandemic across all countries with unprecedented death and economic damage to business was created by Pharmacutical companies in order to make money from vaccine sales and he wasn’t being part of it. I nearly clapped. This is what we are up against. Rank stupidity with access to telephones, social media and the ability to created children to sadly keep the thick quotas refreshed.

“The thickness is deep”.

I find myself saying this more often lately, kinda on a daily basis either out loud, in print or simply in my head as I watch another person enter Sainsburys unchallenged without a mask to float about coughing over the bananas or test the ripeness of an Avocado.

I think it on the Tube when I see some dim ponce enter the carriage with their mask under their chin otherwise they can’t stick the heart busting buttery delight of a Cinnamon swirl or a steaming polystyrene cup of their favourite overpriced cafe au lait into their pie hole.

I shout it at the TV when I’m confronted with another OAP via a ‘vox pop’ in the street who calls for more stringent measures in the form of a ‘complete lockdown’ even though they are standing in the street with no mask being interviewed while they are out shopping. A complete lockdown would mean just that and require some form of logistical genius from the Army to deliver food to everyone in their houses. No one wants that as they would then have to complain to some squaddie carrying a box of beans, chutney, powdered egg and crackers who says ‘Here’s your weekly proviosions….see you next week’. The lack of teabags (Typhoo as they are thick) would not be tolerated.

I thought it as I sat in my local curry house waiting for a takeaway for 40 minutes (best night out in 7 months) when some old codger walked in and declared “Do I need a mask?” to which I replied “Do you live on the moon?” to his perplexed face and I bellow it when I read another millionaire celebrity spout ‘Stay Home, Save Lives’ from the comfort of their luxury dwelling previously serviced by now furloughed staff, bought with a bank load of cash, laced with not a care in the world other than their profile being ‘out there’ face first.

The thickness is indeed deep and is no deeper than in the good ole U S of A where ‘Freedom’ is apparently at stake.

American Freedom is apparently greater than freedom elsewhere. In this country we have freedom but we allow it to be smashed to bits and we accept it because we are polite and tend to say ‘sorry’ a lot even if we don’t mean it or even have to. Hmmm….bit harsh. We allow our freedom to be compromised for the greater good of society. The greatest example of this was during the inital lockdown when we reluctantly embraced it in most cases as the shock of the pandemic hit home. We did it as we were told it would help to limit death and assist the Superheroes of the NHS. Turns out that was also a great big fat load of bollocks as the system never reached the fabled capacity… No matter we love the NHS and they deserved the clapping as did all the other carers and public sector workers but it was partially built on cobblers.

Over the water in the ‘Land of the Free’, which has a two-party electoral system where the most popular candidate with the public doesn’t necessarily win and if you have the money and quite fancy it you can be President and not only run the country but also the worlds most powerful army without needing any experience, didn’t take as kindly to it with almost half the country refusing to even believe this ‘Goddam -muthafuckin’-freedom-hatin’-chinese-lovin’ disease existed and was really a plot by a shady group of pizza eating paedophiles to take their guns away.

This was obviously fuelled by a citrus skinned psuedo Macho man Mummy’s boy who avoided warfare on a number of occasions with various ailments from heel spurs to ‘don’t fancy it’. I won’t bore you further with Donald as I’ll do that in the end of year review but suffice to say the Land of the Free became the ‘Land of the Me’ under him and if you weren’t oozing MAGA while dressing like a ‘Call of Duty’ character you were very much a ‘pussy’ who hated the Country.

As expected all of these hard nuts refused to adhere to the use of face masks and simple tasks like washing your hands in favour of mass gatherings, shouting (lots of shouting) and weeping to the Star Spangled Banner followed by lashings of illness and death. ‘Freedom’ was at stake and so Death could wait as no ‘Ayatollah-Assahola’ soft handed Democrat was going to take that ‘Freedom’ be that in the form of being tooled up in a supermarket, killing cute placid animals and people, porch flag raising and Mommas Apple pie from them. Death didn’t wait and so like their hero Charlton Heston’s infamous ‘From my cold dead hands’ NRA Speech the outcome was very much death, to be fair it’s what they would probably have wanted.

Back in Blighty the initial Lockdown ended and the Oaf-in-Chief announcing handshakes all round with a barrel load of ‘Huzzahs!!’ on top for a jolly good effort by Charlie Farley and the ‘little people’. In reality and given this idiot’s track record these announcements should have had all off us rushing to the nearest ‘Londis’ to stock up on substandard bog roll and tinned tomatoes prior to a public driven self lockdown as no one in a position of power in this country (in a suit anyway) had a fucking clue what was happening.

Lockdown had been heralded as a success and so we were all encouraged to leave our cells and return to ‘the new normal’ which basically meant fuck off out to save the country with your household to eat a cheap dinner but try not to converse with anyone unless you have to. It was much like going on holiday in Magaluf but without the pissheads, the heat and the gutter full of chunder and soiled knickers.

The majority of the country went nuts. Well, when I say ‘nuts’ I actually mean went to the pub in an orderly fashion, used the hand sanitizer, washed their hands and sat down to be served by a member of bar staff, got a bit pissed and went home. You wouldn’t know this though as every tabloid in the country simply focused on the shitholes where control was lost and everyone in the flat roofed pub claimed either to live together or be in a ‘support bubble’….Chaos reigned according to The Daily Mail and why wouldn’t we believe them eh?

The reality was far more boring but that isn’t really newsworthy and won’t stoke up middle England and the tweed and lavender wearing blue rinse, piss stinking brigade. Every pub I visited was controlled, Covid secure and in line with what ever government guideline had been dished out that hour. I fully get that some pubs and restaurants were taking no notice but don’t punish the compliant, tackle the rule breakers like society says you should, bit difficult that in a woke, no blame culture I know but try it…it migt work.

I see this tactic in my job all the time when someone fucks up as 50 of us get an e-mail telling us not to do it again. It’s the ‘Full Metal Jacket’ Private Pyle trick of punishing everyone for the error of the individual. All that was missing was a mob of people descending on the pisstaking pubs armed with bars of soap in towels to batter the punters within while repeatedly shouting ‘GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER!!! GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER!!’. Actually I fully endorse this idea and have stockpiled ‘Imperial Leather’…. send me your addresses for free lumps.

During the gap between lockdowns, that now seems to be purely a seasonal blip, Johnson waxed lyrical in that new way that this shower do by talking in analogies much like I’m doing here as it’s generally a sign that you are winging it a bit.

Both he and some bloke known by the initals ‘JVT’ (always a bad sign the initial users….oozes ‘look at me’) have continued the analogy use as they have realised that the thickness might be deeper than they initially thought and if they don’t sell this shit through the prism of a ‘penalty shoot out’ (vaccine test success), ‘spare seats on a train’ (vaccine availabilty) or ‘foot on the throat of the beast’ (a flattening of the curve) then the little people won’t get it. Johnson and JVT (prick) stood at the podium like Auric Goldfinger and a scientific Oddjob laying it on the line simultaneously with a smirk and a menacing scowl. All that was missing, although it wouldn’t have been amiss, was ‘I, I, I, …err…well… err….I expect you to die’ delivered by the lumpy Oafmeister.

JVT and the other science bods all have the faces of men not ready for TV and a wider audience. Whitty looks like one of those Spitfire pilots who failed to eject fast enough as the fusilage burned and Valance has the air of an aging lothario called ‘Paddy’ who hangs around cocktail bars sniffing for fresh meat in the shape of newly widowed GILF’s. I do not doubt the expertise nor the sincerity but to really get the message across you need to use some people the public know and trust and not some stiff with dandruff and dry skin scrapings on his suit who you wouldn’t want to make you a sandwich.

It was suggested by my cousin that a good idea would have been to get Ant and Dec, Davina McCall and Stephen Fry to carry out these briefings as at least the majority of the public like and in Fry’s case particularly respect them and so some of the important stuff will make it into the generally dense Charlie Farley brain. Given the deepness of the thick on this island at present I reckon this may have been better because most people able to wipe their own arse or use rudimentary tools look at Johnson, Hancock, Raab and Gove and think: “Hold up. What does he really mean? What’s in it for him?”. The trust levels for all these Tory charlatans is in the bin and so ever time I see one telling me what to do my instant reaction is to speed off in completely the opposite direction as I assume it will be bad for this worker bee and the hive in general.

And there’s the problem. Nothing Johnson and his Organised Crime Group say can be seen as anything other than complete rubbish due to the fact that they lie on a hourly basis. They lie, twist and smirk as a natural reaction, it’s the default setting. None of them have any gravitas or sincerity. They rally to protect each other even when rules and laws stand in their way. They ignore the rule of law, both internationally and nationally and dismiss everything before them with a disdain that only a certain type of elite posesses due to the education they received and the position they see themselves holding.

They U-turn but only when under immense pressure from their own or when you can no longer avoid a fact before you. In any other life you would respect a change of decision which wasn’t working as it is seen as good management, admitting your mistakes is seen as a strength. There is no strength however in getting 12 or 13 national directives incorrect in a row requiring a change of direction. That is quite a feat and defies both logic and the balance of probabilities as you’d assume that even a monkey would press the right button once in 13 times. Even after changing path they ignore it or blame the opposition, who, having pointed it out are now accused of not being supportive towards the government….. you know…. the opposition, the Queen’s official opposition, opposing stuff.

As for the opposition it is clear that they are scared of Starmer as he can destroy Johnson at will. Starmer is an educated individual closer to the Tories than the Tories and seemingly a large section of the Labour Party would like. The issue is whether you want your Labour leader like Starmer. You might not but neither do the Tories. They want another Corbyn. They want another ‘Loony’ who they can demonise as they did last time resulting in 14 million strokers voting these numbskulls in. If you fancy preventing two decades of Tory mismanagement and corruption within this island we need to get back some form of capable opposition and I think Starmer can potentially do that. He has Johnson’s number now and when you look at the others behind him it is a very ‘thin gruel’ to quote Jacob Rees-Jub. Johnson is the best they have in terms of mass appeal and that is not due to ministerial ability but most likely because he’s ‘a bit of a laugh’.

The Tories hold all the traits of those we dislike but with extra arrogance being key to it all. They have fine tuned the Trumpian tactic of twisting the rules and the truth to suit themselves and try to get away with it by fronting it out with phrases such as ‘That’s the end of the matter’ or ‘we’ve drawn a line under this’ (which they think makes them sound in control) or they simply avoid answering the questions put to them in the first place at all. It’s the old ‘We’ve said it so it’s true’ used by the worst bosses you ever had. A failed management trick used by people mostly out of their depth. It’s similar to that boss we’ve all had who hears your idea, dismisses it and introduces it as his own with the old chestnut ‘What about this?’. Tricksters with little or any real ability running a country during the greatest health crisis it has faced in a lifetime and at a time when we decided to commit economic suicide based on the lies of the Grand Wizard currently wearing the extra pointy hat.

Their game plan is simple: We can do whatever the fuck we want and there is nothing you can do about it.

Sadly this is true at least for the next 4 years.

And so the public, and I include myself in this, have had enough. They have had enough because they no longer respect, trust or believe anything they are told because most information relayed to us has been incorrect, twisted, manipulated or crowbarred in to suit an agenda. It’s no shock to me that some parts of the country are ignoring the governmental advice with regard to coronavirus, I’ve ignore some bits of it for my own sanity and will most likely continue to do so. Like I say it’s not that I don’t believe it and its existence or even its potency to certain age groups and races, I just think that the response is disproportionate given the devastating effect it will have on the country and all the people within it for a number years after this pandemic. The catastrophe is yet to happen.

Now, before anyone on here who knows me starts to think that this is just me moaning that I can’t go out on the lash over Christmas, it isn’t that. My ‘up the pub 4 nights a week’ days are long gone. I’m 51. I go to the pub now probably twice in a single week at a push, I don’t go to the cinema as the people in them annoy me and I’d be arrested. We eat out occasionally but not excessively. I have it easy. I live in a house that they can’t take off me, we earn good money (not ‘proper money’ as an associate of mine once pointed out….fucking embarrassing that was) which has not been affected by furlough. My employer is understanding and assisted me to work from home. I have access to unlimited booze and food and every imaginable entertainment service the country has to offer. But there are other people who don’t have all this shit. The youth of this country are not only going to be saddled with the economic strife inflicted on them by a dying generation through Brexit but are now having their freedom taken from them when they have just got going. My age group have been doing the ‘rule of six’ for years. I rarely go out with more than 5 others, im happy to be waited on and will go home well before 2200 hours….piece of piss.

A year of grief for me is no biggie as I have 50 years of chaos behind me but a year for my 17 and 14 year olds is a lifetime and has had an effect on them no matter how many devices they use. That is hard for a parent to take.

I am a people person. I have worked in big office environments for years where laughing, teamwork and comaradery are essential. I have none of that now. Now I have lone remote working in a shed or at a kitchen table. I get the odd phone call but mostly I communicate through e-mail or text. It’s like being in the International Space Station without the fun of floating about a bit or the potential of being bludgeoned in your sleep by a narky Cosmonaut called ‘Alexei’ who has been taken by ‘the madness’ due to a lack of Vodka. I’m constantly invited to ‘Zoom’ drinks or ‘Teams’ meetings on the laptop but they are fake representations of humanity. Let’s face it, you’ve never been to a party or dinner at someone’s house where you all take turns in talking…. the randomness, the interuptions, the cross talk, the side conversations that become the main chat, these are the reasons we love socialising directly with people.

I’m not sure how most people are dealing with this. Those who live alone or the single mothers or just the mothers looking after kids all day must be really struggling. The isolation must be a challenge. I’m in a house with my own family and a dog (unconditional love) and I feel lonely as I’m not used to this level of restriction. The mental health resprecussions will be huge as will the fall out from all the unemployement and failed businesses effectively closed by governmental mismanagement. ‘Stay in but go out’, ‘Go to work but work at home if you can’…even the brightest bulb would struggle to follow this flip flopping and so it is no shock that rules are broken, people are confused and hope is lost. The real problems are yet to come in my view as the reprecussions of the restrictions hit home and we return to what is being called ‘the new normal’ a phrase that should illicit a hefty smash to the front teeth a second after it is delivered. I’m only interested in the normal and so I’ll be ignoring Matt Wankcock’s expectation that ‘hopefully the public will maintain social distancing long after this pandemic’. If you fancy a hug you knobber, I’m available.. call me…

For a man with little talent other than having a big mouth in a social setting and writing these streams of conciousness for my ego, oddly I seem to know a lot of talented people in both the entertainment industry and hospitality. Musicians, Shop owners, DJ’s, Publicans, Restauranters and the staff that go with all these trades. These people are the hidden heroes who make our lives happy and fun and all of them have been treated like second class citizens during this. They aren’t Police or Nurses or care workers but they exist to serve all of us and communities need these people like we need all the public service personel. Without these people we have this…. this shit… and I think I can say with confidence that we don’t want this shite any longer.

The hospitality industry listened to the truth twisters and adhered to all requests put on them from screens, hand sanitizer, table service the whole shebang… And what did it get in return?.. Shutdown. It would be fair to say that all the places that complied and had controls in place were ruined and all the places which don’t or have limited control such as supermarkets, tubes, trains, buses, schools remain open. I’ve seen people refused entry to pubs for not having a mask but if you simply fancy walking onto a bus, tube or a shop then crack on because no one is stopping you. Schools and their seemingly expendable Teachers have introduced strict protocols for pupils but at 1501 hours they all spill out and walk home together or hang about waiting to enter packed buses for the journey home effectively eliminating the effectiveness of a day seperating the kids. What can you do? The whole plan is untenable.

The only flaw I found with going out socialising was when using the track and trace app set up by the government. I entered a pub and did everything they wanted me to do. I checked in via the app, left my mask on until the table was allocated, ordered via the app and remasked to go for a wazz. Happy Days. At one point it struck me that you should really check out if you check in. I asked a member of barstaff how I checked out of the app when I was leaving.

Confused faces all round…

It appears there is no provision for checking out so if you check in at say 1700 hours and leave at 1903 hours (marginally alight on a two pint an hour pace) you remain in the pub on the app until it shuts unless a hawkeyed staff member knows you have left and actually logs it down. Then at 1916 hours Covidboy boy rocks up in the pub. Due to the sickness he is thicker than normal and so has punched his symptons into the app and left the house with those syptoms which you shouldn’t do (another flaw….if you are that way inclined why would you put the symptons in?….people can’t be trusted….said it for years). His presence sets off the Track and Trace alarms and we all get told to self isolate……even if you had left before he arrived.

I’ve used this app everywhere on purpose to see if it actually works and I’ve had nothing. This is not wholly unusal given the amount of official cases in a country of 69 million people (the odds are in your favour) and of course the app has been universally panned for not being fit for purpose but it did manage to conveniently alert not only Johnson but also Dido Harding the spanner who controls it. What are the odds eh? particularly when it was in the news for being useless….Maybe it’s programmed to only alert the useless as they are adding nothing to the workforce? You can’t write comedy like this….oh…looks like I just did…

So, how do we fix it? Fuck knows. Don’t ask me, I never wanted the power nor the massive hat with ‘PM’ written on it but what I do know is that you might stand a chance of people taking some notice of you if you didn’t batter their will into submission or you were trustworthy enough. There is currently no trust in this bunch. The Tories are incapable of trust as decades of governments have proved. They are self serving strokers who run a country like a private club where their closest associates are assisted and the non members are ignored. We are the mini cab drivers waiting in the lobby of the golf club as our shoes are the wrong colour and so not authorised to cross the threshold into the warm sanctuary of the bar with the laughing and the snacks and all the bollocks that goes with owning slacks and a Pringle tank top.

They have no track record of success in anything including this pandemic other than succesfully topping the European charts with an official number of close to 60,000 dead regardless of the restrictions they have put in place. Little they have instigated has worked. I know of no one who thinks they have succeeded or trusts them.

I hear all the ‘unprecedented situation’ stuff and that doesn’t wash much with me as other, larger countries have less death than us even with public dissent because the people at least trust and understand the decisions made and so go with it. Here it appears that it’s either incompentence ruling or a deliberate act to confuse people as they need to make it complicated so we truly don’t get it and therefore our peanut brains will simply accept it.

Chaos reigns on this rudderless ship and the crew has had enough…..time to set Captain Johnson and first mate Gove adrift with some Rum and a cheap compass however unlike Bligh he’d have sunk within three feet of the mother vessel.

I will enjoy my Christmas in a responsible way but I’m promising nothing as I know that I will not be 100% saintly. Friends, family and human interaction is essential in the dark months ahead and that should not be forgotten in a country where people can no longer die and a thermometer, the stable of any parent, appears to only register Covid-19 heat.

It’s far from compulsory that you should go out so if you don’t want to as you feel the need to protect someone, don’t go out. People will help and understand, even me…If you want to shield or are shielding I’m fully on board but if you knock on my door I’ll open it and have the Mulled Wine ready.