Thread by @mikegove12

Goveller’s Travels

Thursday 15th October

Brobdingnag’s intellectual beacons – the likes of Julia Hartley-Brewer, Toby Young, Allison Pearson, Arron Banks, Carole Malone, Charles Walker, Isabelle Oakeshott and her concubine Richard Tice – were of the cumulative opinion that

the first duty of a democratic government was not to protect the lives of its citizens, but the bank accounts of its business people. Spurred by the same altruism that saw them demonise migrants for their own safety and tank the economy so that working men could

keep Toby Jugs full of sovereignty on the mantlepieces of their repossessed houses, they were driven by concerns for the vulnerable, and their landlords. The ague they argued, must be allowed to transmit because only the elderly would die, which was very sensible, because

aside from nonsense like Umberto Eco’s Numero Zero, Verdi’s Falstaff, Toni Morrison’s Home, Vaughan Williams’ Sinfonia Antartica, Edna O’Brien’s Saints and Sinners, Lucian Freud’s portrait of The Queen, and cherished time spent with loved ones after a life of graft,

the elderly do very little. Dazzled by these stellar intellects, and the mental contortions they managed to perform with the same information as everyone else, I fiercely rebutted claims that it was as if they were suffering from the peculiar delusions of intelligence that

so plague the thick, or worse, that they were acting out of self-interest. Such a ludicrous assertion, that I would invite the reader to invoke, as I now did, those names again - Julia Hartley-Brewer, Toby Young, Allison Pearson, Arron Banks, Charles Walker, Isabelle Oakeshott,

Richard Tice - and defy them to add the words “self” and “interest”. Occupied with such thoughts, a linnet, somewhat larger than a swan, had the confidence to snatch out of my hand a Toffee Crisp, and boldly endeavoured to peck my fingers. I took a thick cudgel and threw it so

luckily that I knocked him down and scampered away in triumph to this cabal of leading scientists, offering it as tribute to their acuity, foresight and humility. But the bird, who had only been stunned, gave me so many boxes on my head and body with his wings, that I was

twenty times thinking to let him go before licensed Tory neuron operator Charles Walker MP intervened and bit off its head, citing after, through a mouthful of feathers and partially digested grubs that “We all have to die, Mike.” My eyes wandered to a wall-plaque saluting the

Brobdingnag forces lost from hostile action in Afghanistan over the course of fourteen years: 405 in all. I set this against the figure of at least 620 frontline NHS staff who had perished from contact with Covid in the last six months, and concluded “Yes, it looks like we do.”

With many thanks to @junkerbarlow for nipping down the local newspaper archive and fetching us this picture.