One thing about this miraculous post-Brexit wonderland in which we’re lucky enough to find ourselves living: things are much more RELAXED than they used to be, especially STANDARDS.
Standards are so much more easygoing now! Why, just in the last couple of weeks it’s been announced that since shortages of water purification chemicals are making it hard to maintain standards of sewage treatment, those standards have been – yes! – RELAXED, with raw untreated effluent being dumped into rivers and estuaries, just like in the good old days before the BUSY BODIES and DO-GOODERS came along with their pettifogging concerns about smells, aquatic wildlife extinction and cholera.
Then just this last week, our wise and in no way panic-stricken government decreed that since a shortage of qualified HGV drivers has brought the country to a standstill, the training requirements for heavy goods driving will be – altogether now – RELAXED! This just a few weeks after it was proposed that the limit on how long a shift lorry drivers are allowed to pull should be extended.
So, boy racers, if you’ve ever fancied having a go at driving a 25-ton truck for 12 hours straight with nothing but your wits and Red Bull to sustain you, now’s your chance! Look out, slow lane drivers! We got us a CONVOY, and it’s unqualified and exhausted!
In the spirit of this new, limitless Global Britain, here are some more “standards” which could do with being dialled down a bit:
MEDICAL PROCEDURES
What better way to relieve the pressure on our overstretched NHS than to encourage poorly members of the Great British Public to perform simple surgical operations on THEMSELVES, in the comfort of their own homes?
Why should those know-it-all so-called “doctors” have all the fun and get all the credit anyway? Just because they’ve spent their entire adult lives in study and training doesn’t mean they know better than you what the matter is or what’s to be done about it.
From now on, “patient-practitioners” will just look up their symptoms on Wikipedia, then follow the instructions on how to operate on themselves on our new YouTube channel, How To Operate On Yourself (scissors and Dettol not provided).
Soon you’ll be stitched up and good as new in the convenient surroundings of your own bathroom (you did remember to do this in the bathroom, right? Oh well, too late now).
FOOD HYGIENE
There’s not much left and what we’ve got, we’ll have to make it last because there’s no more coming. So forget all that bureaucratic nonsense about “Best Before” and expiration dates; just ask yourself the following four questions:
- Meat: Is it dead? Yes? So what are you worried about? It’s DEAD. It’s not like it’s going to get any MORE dead, is it? Just cook it till it’s black all the way through and it’ll be perfectly okay (and remember; maggots add extra protein).
- Vegetables: Throw them at the wall. Did they stick to it? No? Then they’re FINE.
- Dairy: You like cheese, don’t you? Well then.
- Baked goods: Don’t throw away the blue hairy bits! They’re the closest thing to antibiotics we’ve got left!
ADVERTISING STANDARDS
Remember the four golden rules of advertising? That all adverts, print or broadcast, had to be “legal, decent honest and truthful”?
I know, right? What was THAT all about? BOR-ing.
First of all, turns out that “legal” means pretty much whatever the government says it means, so no need to worry yourselves about that; “decent” is entirely subjective, and “honest and truthful” mean the same thing and nobody cares about either of them!
So go ahead, ad men, say what you like. Make whatever outrageous and unfulfillable claims you want to about whatever product you’re trying to hawk, and feel free to plaster as many lurid images all over it as takes your fancy.
Because we’re living in the POST-FACT world, where anything and everything is “true” as long as you can persuade enough people to WANT it to be true.
There can be no such thing as actual “truth” because that would mean that there were such things as LIES, and then, well…
STANDARDS IN PUBLIC LIFE
Let’s face it, these have already been relaxed as far as is either possible or indeed imaginable.
POEM OF THE WEEK
Once we were bound, beset all ‘round
With rules and weasel words
Now we are free, our silver sea
Is full of British turds.
We showed no fear, we chose to steer
The ship of state ourselves
With heads held high, and steely eyes
We stare at empty shelves.
And now our land at last can stand
Alone and proud again
To war we rushed and eagerly flushed
Our country down the drain.
