Another glorious week in Global Britain, where our government is forging ahead with WORLDBEATING levels of Covid infections, hospitalisations and deaths.
In fact, the current infection rate in Britain has now reached such a WORLD-BEATING state that our government, against their better nature, inclination and track record is now contemplating DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
As such, last week they voted to allow the dumping of several thousand tons of fine British raw sewage into the seas and rivers around our great nation, because there’s nothing like a good old-fashioned nationwide cholera outbreak to put a footling 18-month pandemic into perspective.
However, should this ingenious diversionary tactic fail to work, the administration may have to take things a step further and implement the oft-whispered-about Plan B. Rumours that Plan B was soon to be put into effect were greeted with surprise and confusion throughout Britain, as people everywhere thought “Wait, there was a Plan A?”
So, in order to minimise surprise and confusion, here is a complete list of the government’s Covid plans…
PLAN A
If, like the people mentioned above, you were astonished to discover that there has in fact been a plan in effect these past few months, that’s because the differences between “Plan A” and “act like it’s all over already, do nothing and hope that everyone forgets about everything, especially all the dead people” are at best academic and at worst imperceptible.
Our leaders, you see, have decided that the best strategy for tackling this phase of the pandemic is that time-honoured middle-class method for defusing any awkward situation: “Least Said, Soonest Mended”.
PLAN B
To lose one Christmas, as Lady Bracknell didn’t quite say, may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose two on the trot may start to look like the kind of incompetence even the Daily Express won’t be able to sweeten.
This government, as we know, lives from headline to headline, and is led by a brittle narcissist with a desperate need to be loved by everyone which is horribly undermined by his disinclination to do anything to deserve it.
Boris Johnson is still stung by his failure to save Christmas 2020 and fears, perhaps rightly, that if he screws up Christmas 2021, even a compliant BBC, a complicit press, a comatose opposition, the masochistically deferential tendencies of much of the British public and an almost comically skewed electoral system may not be enough to preserve him. Hence the dreaded Plan B.
So what will Plan B involve? Probably not that much; a bit more wheedling about wearing masks which will be ignored by all except those people who are still wearing masks anyway, some garbled messaging about social mixing and a few other vague ordnances which will make no difference because they still won’t close the schools.
Oh, and all of this is to be carried out while alternately singing retro soul in a falsetto voice and rapping in a Cockney accent (this joke was brought to you by the year 2010).
PLAN C
So once we’ve all spent Christmas alone in our unheated houses, eating spam out of the tin and the infection rate is STILL rampant, it may be time to bring in Plan C. What is Plan C, I pretend to hear you ask?
Well, the schools may have to close at last, but there’ll be so many staff and pupils off sick that this may in fact take care of itself.
It’ll be made illegal to visit any friends or family, but again, this won’t make much difference as there’ll be another officially non-existent fuel shortage by then. Your car will be uselessly empty and there won’t be any buses because the drivers will all have been forcibly retrained to drive HGVs, which is something I literally joked about happening, in this column a few weeks ago, and now they’re actually thinking about doing it.
Meanwhile, the now well-worn controversy as to whether it’s OK to keep working from home or if it’s time to go back into the office will also resolve itself as companies all over Britain go out of business (but NOT because of Brexit. None of this has anything to do with Brexit).
PLAN D
Lots of exciting new job opportunities as people are hired the length and breadth of the nation to push a big trolley through the streets while ringing a bell and shouting “Bring out your dead”.
POEM OF THE WEEK
It isn’t easy doing satire
When the things you say for laughs
keep coming true
And whatever gag I crack, however crazy
Turns up a few days later on the news.
What’s parody today is fact tomorrow
It’s so hard to keep up, believe me folks
It isn’t easy doing satire
When reality keeps stealing all your jokes.
