And what a week it was!
A week in which it snowed! A WEEK IN WHICH IT SNOWED! A WEEK IN WHICH IT SNOWED!!! ARGHHHHH!!!! SEND BISCUITS!!!!!
But what else happened?
Let’s look back and see:
Calling out Tory bullsh*t is ‘abuse’, claim Tory bullsh*tters
Last week, the tabloids openly and aggressively suggested that Jeremy Corbyn collaborated with the Soviet Union. When a Tory MP repeated these claims, the Labour leader threatened to sue him for libel.
And you should know that what Corbyn did is everything wrong with modern politics.
https://twitter.com/hourlyterrier/status/967752662052679680
Off The Perch caught up with the Tory minister of Truth to find out what the craic is:
This is absolutely outrageous. If we’re not allowed to slander our rivals with untruths and falsehoods, then how the hell are we supposed to hold our own?
I must say, this modern thing of idolising the truth puts us at a terrible disadvantage. How will anyone trust us with the economy if we’re open about what a total bollocks we’ve made of it? And you have to ask yourself, what’s next?
Will we be punished for binning our manifesto as soon as we’re elected? Will the prime minister be forced to tell the truth in parliament for fear of being ridiculed by uppity plebs? And will Iain Duncan Smith be made to remove the human skin suit he wears and reveal the true fiend beneath?
Frightening times. It reminds me of North Korea. Because the people there are always saying mean things about the government too.
Pants on fire
Other people have suggested that maybe – just maybe – libel isn’t a legitimate political practice. Although I wouldn’t listen to the people who say that. They’re all dog wankers from what I’ve heard.
Theresa May announces plan to pay ‘army of voters’ to elect Conservatives at next election
Ahead of forthcoming local elections, prime minister Theresa May today announced the Conservative Party’s new electoral strategy: ‘Operation: Hire Vote’. In the absence of grassroots support, the Conservatives will pay people £500 to cast a vote for the party.
Cutting out the middle man
The Conservatives are aiming to recruit three million people to join Operation: Hire Vote and vote Conservative at the next elections. Party officials believe this should counter the ever-increasing popularity of the Labour Party. The project is being funded by an offshore trust set up by disgraced retailer Philip Green.
The announcement came just days after the Conservatives unveiled their new social media strategy. Under those plans, the party will pay people to say positive things about Conservatism and the government, in the hopes of swaying public opinion. When unveiling the new electoral strategy today, the prime minister said:
Operation: Hire Vote owes much to the recently launched social media strategy. But it also makes it redundant. The zero-hours contracts of the 500 newly recruited social media czars will be transferred to the electoral strategy hub. No one will lose their non-job.
Wait a minute
New Statesman journalist Philomena Pashmina asked the prime minister if she was aware that the plan breached electoral law. After a brief coughing fit, May replied:
If this party designed its electoral strategy around abstract concepts like ‘within electoral law’, we wouldn’t be where we are today. No, literally, we wouldn’t be in government. I really mean that.
The prime minister handed over to Figg Liefe, head of the Electoral Commission. The chief of Britain’s electoral watchdog appeared briefly from beneath Theresa May’s skirts. Off The Perch asked Mr Liefe if the commission was likely to censure the government for this gross breach of electoral law. When Liefe shook his head, the prime minister threw him a biscuit. After catching it, and receiving a short head rub from May, Mr Liefe once again retreated beneath the skirts.
Eva Dinoff of electoral transparency campaign group Clarity criticised the move, saying:
Everyone who predicted that the Electoral Commission’s pathetic response to the Tory election fraud scandal would embolden the Conservatives was right. The Electoral Commission is a blind, deaf and toothless watchdog. This is banana republic level corruption, with our government literally buying votes to stay in power. And there isn’t a thing we can do about it. It’s beyond a joke.
Don’t trust Labour on Brexit, warns Boris ‘bus-truths’ Johnson
After leaving the Tories to stew in the mess they made for themselves for a few years, Labour has finally cobbled together a Brexit plan. The announcement has not gone smoothly, however, as Britain’s most trustworthy man has warned of potential foul play:
Crumbling Corbyn betrays Leave voters – and all because he wants to win a commons vote. Cynical and deluded.
— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) February 26, 2018
Reliably Boris
The insinuation is that Labour’s plan betrays what people voted for. Although it’s difficult to confidently say what that was, beyond ticking a box with the word ‘YES’ next to it.
Boris & Co are in a good position to argue that Labour doesn’t have a clue, though, as the right has spent the last two years proving how competent and trustworthy it is. Highlights of that period of ultra-proficiency include:
- Calling a snap election, but not actually planning for it so no one could say they had an unfair advantage over Labour.
- Allowing Jeremy Hunt to carry on saying and doing things.
- Showing they look out for the unfortunate by employing Toby Young – a man who would be unemployable anywhere else.
- Proving that Jeremy Corbyn was a spy who worked for James Bond’s archenemies SPECTRE.
- Countering the idea that no one likes the Tories by paying people to go online and pretend that’s not true.
What dreams may come
Just today, Boris said wearily:
one day we’ll be sitting here not talking about Brexit, it’s going to be fantastic
Many have argued that, if anyone shouldn’t be allowed to forget Brexit, it’s Boris Johnson. Which is why Labour has announced that, should it be elected into government, it will be changing his name by deed poll to ‘Brexit Johnson’.
Boris Johnson blames freak weather on ‘EU meddling in jet stream’
by Steve Topple
A leaked letter from foreign secretary Boris Johnson has laid the blame for the UK’s extreme weather on “Brussels bureaucrats meddling in the democratically elected, sovereign jet stream”. But the memo, seen by Off The Perch, is at odds with the official government line. A line which blames Russian Twitter bots exerting influence over a large area of high pressure.
The ‘Ogre from Moldova’
The current UK cold snap, affectionately called ‘The Ogre from Moldova’, has seen temperatures plummet to ‘put-another-pound-in-the-gas-meter’ degrees celsius. Across the UK, mammas had to buy additional pyjamas for the school run, foxhunts were cancelled, and the Southern Rail service from Brighton to London Euston ran out of tea in all first class carriages. The country’s official meteorological website, dontblameusblamethecomputermodelling.co.uk warned of a:
Record-fucking-breaking chilly snap, muthafuckers! Y’all best panic-buy loads of shit you don’t really need! As this shit could last for hooouuurrrs!
But wading into the mass hysteria and record-breaking levels of dogs-in-snow selfies, Johnson hit back at the EU.
Take back control
The leaked letter, written by Johnson to Theresa May, was passed to Off The Perch by a disgruntled Polish cleaner at the Department for Bringing Back 19th-century Colonialism (BBC) (not to be confused with the BBC (even though the similarities are striking)). In it, Johnson ranted:
When we met on 7 February, I offered to send you a paper setting out how I believed the threat from European extreme weather permeating our soft border could be managed on the basis of a highly facilitated solution. And a wall extending down the North Sea and into the English Channel.
WELL, you fucking ignored me, didn’t you? And now? And now, THIS.
I warned you what would happen when you give those fuckers in Brussels an inch.
And NOW LOOK what’s happened. Brussels told the jet stream that tariffs of around 30% would remain while it stayed in its current position. And now, we’re FUCKED. Record numbers of accidents on my bike in central London. Estate managers unable to host the finale of the hare coursing season. Farage’s light aircraft grounded at Farnborough Airport. TAKE BACK CONTROL?
Downing Street responded by saying:
As part of the ongoing inquiry into Russian state actors’ disruptive behaviour on foreign issues, we are currently looking at the possibility that Kremlin-authorised Twitter bots flooded the hashtags #Snowmageddon, #LondonSnow #Weather and #MakeAFilmWintry, therefore causing a large area of high pressure over the Nordic block to sink south, resulting in the extreme weather conditions we currently have.
Meanwhile…
BBC Weather took a broadly impartial stance on the Orge from Moldova, laying the blame at the door of both Europe and Russia:
A homeless person for whom Off The Perch bought 20 JPS superkings said of the weather:
I heard it was to do with a heatwave in the Arctic causing record breaking temperature, which in turn experts think was probably due to man-made climate change. My homeless mate Bob thought the same. But he died last night because the police took his tent away. Otherwise, y’know – he would’ve told you himself.
May has reportedly told Johnson to “go fuck himself or start dealing with the important shit”. Which for the Conservative government probably means National Book Day on Thursday 1 March.
Hot air from climate change deniers reverses blizzard
Whenever there’s a bit of cold weather, right-wingers make variations of the same joke:
*KNOCK KNOCK*
“Who’s there?”
“Cold weather.”
“Oh, well I guess global warming isn’t real then.”
Large parts of central London have no salt on the roads. Perhaps they are all so convinced by global warming they never thought any would be needed.
— Nigel Farage MP (@Nigel_Farage) February 28, 2018
It's really cold outside, they are calling it a major freeze, weeks ahead of normal. Man, we could use a big fat dose of global warming!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 19, 2015
This year, in a delicious twist of irony, the hot air released by right-wingers was so intense that it reversed a blizzard.
This again?
Scientists stopped referring to the climate phenomenon we face as ‘global warming’ because it was confusing to idiots.
“But if the planet is supposed to be getting warmer, how come it’s still proportionately colder in the seasons when our hemisphere is further away from the sun?” the idiots would ask.
As such, the term ‘climate change’ was coined to better represent the outcome – namely that CO2 would lead not only to hotter temperatures but to a greater fluctuation in weather patterns.
The wily idiots got around this by stubbornly continuing to refer to it as ‘global warming’.
Hot air
As we’ve come to expect now, the coming snow was accompanied by thousands of middle-aged men reciting their global warming joke. The sound of their droning was something like a hair dryer, only more boring.
This year, so many of them droned on that snowmen and women across the country instantly melted.
Speaking on behalf of all the boring, middle-aged men, Nigel Farage said:
Just because men made the climate change, that doesn’t mean that man-made climate change is real.
No one was able to follow what he said, though. It was just so tedious.
Leveson Inquiry 2 not needed because the press is doing such an excellent job
Part two of the Leveson Inquiry was set to look into unlawful and improper conduct by the British media and police forces. However, as the press has been doing such a bang-up job since Leveson part one, said investigation is no longer required.
Huzzah for the red-tops!
After the phone hacking scandal, faith in the press was at an all-time low.
Worried that print media could be nearing its end, the press did everything it could to restore faith. Largely by pushing award-winning stories like the following:
- JEREMY CORBYN BEATS CHELSEA PENSIONER TO DEATH WITH COMMUNIST MANIFESTO.
- KINDNESS CAUSES CANCER.
- LILY ALLEN LINKED TO KILLER SEAGULL.
- SINGLE MOTHER OF THREE BULLIES SLUMLORD.
- LOLLIPOP LADY WHO ‘ISN’T THAT KEEN’ ON BREXIT SHOULD BE HANGED.
- EVERYONE YOUNGER THAN 55 ‘THICK AS SHIT’.
- FUCK SCOTLAND (The Daily Mail)
- SCOTLAND GOOD (The Scottish Daily Mail).
- THERESA MAY A COMPETENT LEADER.
- EVERYONE WHO DISAGREES WITH US IS A CRYBABY SNOWFLAKE WHO CAN’T TAKE BEING DISAGREED WITH.
Faith restored
When you get right down to it, the real crime would be forcing the press to undergo scrutiny right now.
It’s busy, after all, exposing Czechoslovakian spies and going morally and financially bankrupt.
Saboteur-crushing Tory urges the country to ‘come back together’
Theresa ‘crush the saboteurs’ May has urged the country to come back together. Which would be somewhat ironic, if Tories weren’t so routinely hypocritical.
Ploy division
May is famous for a number of things – none of which brought people closer together. These things include:
- Having vans drive around London telling foreign people to fuck off back to where they came from.
- Appointing Boris Johnson to improve our standing in the world.
- Supporting the austerity programme that led to many people being either significantly poorer or dead.
Timeline of terror
You can summarise May’s career trajectory as follows:
- Crush the saboteurs!
- Strong and stable!
- Oh dear.
- I’m just very, very sorry.
- Please stop noticing how terrible I am.
Unity – or else
Falling back on old habits, Theresa May has commissioned a fleet of ‘unity vans’ to drive around London instructing people to:
Come together – or else!
The government has also authorised the drivers of these vans to launch Union Jacks at anyone who doesn’t look visibly ecstatic about Brexit.
A journalist asked why no attempt was being made to reach citizens beyond London. In response, a spokesperson from 10 Downing Street repeated the government’s official position on the broader UK:
Fuck ‘em.
Belief
The Tories seem to think that, if people just believe in them hard enough, then everything will magically just happen.
That sort of fantastical thinking never brought Father Christmas to life, though, and it’s certainly not going to give life to their discredited and callous right-wing agenda.
Theresa May presents her Brexit plan in the form of a riddle
The government’s Brexit strategy is so murky that it makes the toilet water in Trainspotting look like Highland Spring.
In an attempt to clear up the damage done by her last several speeches, Theresa May has given yet another speech.
Her intentions were transparently opaque.
Let her be clear
The PM said:
There have been some who say my previous attempts to clarify things have not been very clear. Let me rectify that.
May then coughed before continuing:
Riddle me this-
What has regulatory independence but no hard borders?
What’s ridiculed and praised by Boris Johnson depending on which way the wind is blowing?
What will make us a global hub while making it clear that Johnny Foreigner needs to fuck off back to where he came from?
What will allow us to take back control from the elites while simultaneously being a big earner for Jacob Rees-Mogg?
And what’s going to be great for exports but is happening in a country that doesn’t fucking make anything?
As soon as May finished speaking, several of her negotiators began to scream and pull their hair out.
Clarity
If there’s one thing that can be said about Brexit, it’s that sooner or later we’ll probably figure out what it is.
Although by ‘probably’, what I actually mean is:
Get Involved!
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Featured image via Wikimedia – UK Home Office (image was altered) / Wikimedia – Chris McAndrew (image was altered) / YouTube screengrab / Kenneth Lu / Flickr Creative Commons / Wikimedia – Chris Sampson (image was altered) / Wikimedia – Mohan (image was altered) / BBC Weather / David Holt/Flickr / WELT/YouTube / Flickr – Gage Skidmore (image was altered) / Wikimedia – David Shankbone (image was altered) / Wikipedia – Annika Haas (image was altered) / Flickr – UK Home Office (image was altered) / YouTube screengrab
