And what a week it was!
A week in which the local elections happened! A week in which everyone except UKIP did a little bit better! And a week in which people managed to argue that doing better was actually a sign of doing worse!
But what else happened?
Let’s look back and see!
Leaked memo shows what Theresa May wanted in a new home secretary
Rudd is out!
Javid is in!
But why such a fast turnaround?
A leaked application has shed light on the situation.
May day
The job application – hastily scribbled on the back of a deportation memo – asked the following:
Hello.
Can you start immediately?Also:
- Do you have a passion for other people’s mistakes?
- Did you vote in favour of all the horror-bills which are now causing us so many problems?
- Does ‘bullet shield’ sound like a cool nickname you’d like to have?
- Are you unaware of the expression ‘the last days of Rome’?
- Will you agree not to join in with all the other ministers when they make me look like a twat? This would be nice, but I appreciate beggars can’t be choosers.
- Do you yearn to take bullets for others – crave it in fact – leaping at said bullets like a greedy Labrador chasing toffees?
- Do you have practical ideas for dealing with immigration? If so, this job isn’t for you.
- Are you happy to lie until such a point that your trousers catch fire? Are you happy to claim that said trousers aren’t ablaze even when they are?
- Do you have no shame? What am I saying – of course you don’t! You’re a Tory!
- Again – are you immediately available to start taking bullets for me? There are so many of them!
Lots of love,
Applicant
Thankfully for May, there were hundreds of Tories who met this description. Unluckily for us, these people are all still in power.
For now.
Real life protesters are ‘all Russian bots’, reveal papers
With the local elections coming up and the Tories folding in on themselves like a popped bouncy castle, the papers have had to act. The latest revelation is that everyone who has ever:
- Protested against,
- Complained about, or
- Been deported by the Tories is a RUSSIAN BOT!
Digital commies
The editor of The Times explained to BBC Breakfast:
We realised something was amiss when these people said things which were less than patriotic.
Things like ‘why has every library been replaced by 500 potholes?’
Things like ‘how can people have known what they were voting for when your definition of Brexit changes every week?’
Things like ‘why are you gentrifying us out of a home instead of giving us non-flammable cladding like you promised?’
And things like ‘why have you assessed my mum as being fit for work when she’s been in a coma for the past 7 months? What sort of work is she fit for? “Human draught excluder” isn’t a real job.’
The BBC Breakfast host nodded throughout this.
“These people are disgusting,” he agreed, “so it’s unsurprising to find out they’re also communist cybermen. We should both stand up and spit at them now.”
The pair proceeded to gob at an image of protesters behind them.
U, robot
You’re probably wondering if you yourself are a Russian bot. Thankfully, there’s an easy way to tell: if you can feel the pinch of living under a Tory government, I’m afraid to say you’re a robot.
But we’re all robots here, comrade.
Rees-Mogg suggests ‘stealing a leprechaun’s magic’ to solve Irish border issue
So far, the Irish border issue seems to be incompatible with leaving the customs union. That hasn’t stopped the Brexiteers from making some suggestions though. Some of which are merely terrible. Others suggest these people are abusing solvents.
Pip pip
Jacob Rees-Mogg has often been described as a bit of an 18th-century gentleman. But he would likely have seemed backwards even then. And he’s really best thought of as a posh version of the cartoon weasels from Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
His ‘ideas’ for the Irish border have included:
- Saying there’s no issue and hoping that’s true.
- Fixing it with technology that doesn’t exist (and likely never will if the government’s track record is anything to go by).
- Questioning how important peace in Northern Ireland actually is.
The latest suggestions include:
- Capturing a leprechaun and stealing its magic.
- Building a wall between the two countries and having Mexico pay for it.
- Cautionary strikes against Mrs Brown’s Boys.
- Seeing if we can enlist freelance big-picture-thinker Kanye West to ‘figure this all out’.
- SIMPLY DOING IT ANYWAY! WHO ARE THESE OIKS TO STAND IN THE WAY OF OUR GLORIOUS BREXIT?
Dragged
Some people say the Brexiteers are dragging us back to the past. That’s simply not true. It’s more like they’re dragging us into a parallel dimension where up is down and all problems can be solved with wishful-fucking-thinking.
Victory for Tories as several candidates are yet to be exposed as secret sh*tebags
The Tory party had to suspend a lot of candidates this year. Perhaps because their plan to attract UKIP voters went somewhat awry. Those people were only supposed to vote Tory – they weren’t supposed to run for office.
The Conservatives have had a partial victory, however. Namely because many of their preferred candidates have not been exposed as out-and-out bigots.
Which is to say they haven’t been exposed yet..
Lest we forget
It’s worth looking at who’s been suspended so far (as this is election day, we’ll make doubly clear this is a satirical piece):
Edgar Groinbag: Groinbag was exposed as running a blog in which he referred to anyone who earns under £50k a month as a “shit-brained, Carling-binging mutant”. That’s £75k a month when you account for inflation.
Liza Funt: Funt was recorded saying anyone found guilty of terrorist offences “should be deported to Scotland to kill two birds with one stone”.
Nicholas Poo: Poo’s entire body was covered in tattoos of Nigel Farage petting German Shepherds.
Maleficent: Maleficent was literally an evil witch.
Count Dracula: Count Dracula was literally an evil vampire.
Barry LeStrange: LeStrange asked, “If gay people are allowed to get married, how come I can’t marry my pig?” LeStrange denies homophobia, however, and claims to have been in a stable relationship with one ‘Babe’ since 2007.
A close shave
Still though, it’s not the ones who’ve been caught out that are important. It’s the ones who’ll fail to get voted in because the government is collapsing.
As Cambridge Analytica folds, a new start-up called Bambridge Analytica is attracting interest
by John Ranson
As the worlds of tech, big data and politics mourned the loss of cutting edge outfit Cambridge Analytica, a new player emerged into the spotlight.
Bambridge Analytica promises to bring a fresh new approach to the sector. One that definitely won’t involve raking over the coals of now-defunct companies. And why should it? After all, Bambridge Analytica has nothing to gain by dishing any dirt on that other, utterly unrelated, mob – Cambridge Analytica. In fact, it’s probably best to let sleeping dogs lie.
Coincidences
Industry analyst Terry Chestnuts told Off The Perch that it was “a freaky coincidence” that Bambridge Analytica has the same correspondence address in Canary Wharf previously used by Cambridge Analytica. We asked Chestnuts if he thought it was also a coincidence that there were so many familiar names among the directors of Bambridge Analytica. “It’s a very compact sector,” said Chestnuts. “Some even call it incestuous.”
Ken Chisel, from the Institute of Criticism, took a stronger line:
Given all that’s happened recently, it’s frankly obscene to see a company of this nature appearing with such haste. Names such as Julian Beatland, Johnson Bo, the Alexanders – Bix and Bayler, and of course the Bercer sisters will be familiar to followers of the Facebook data mining allegations. Some people might wonder if this isn’t just an attempt to hide in plain sight.
Follow the money
We asked a Bambridge Analytica spokesperson if the Bercer sisters were daughters of millionaire financier Robert Bercer, the money behind far-right nonsense funnel Shitefart. “No, absolutely not,” she said, before we heard her muffle the phone and (we think) say to a colleague, “shit, they’re onto Mercer.”
Note: Just before going to press, we received a text from Terry Chestnuts:
Think Bambidge Anal tickle is red Herring. Contacts say look 4 co Bemerdata. CA new cloths. Oops soz auto cottage
Which we think might have meant we should check out Emerdata.
NB: This article owes a debt to the geniuses of Monty Python (what doesn’t?), and in particular the sketch North Minehead By-election.
Thwarted UKIP voters remember they used to vote Tory
by John Ranson
The local elections of May 2018 were a tough time for UKIP voters. Up and down the country, Europhobes and people who think ‘Cameron is soft on the gays’ faced a dreadful realisation. There’s no UKIP on the ballot.
Skint
With UKIP having spent most of its funds on press conferences to announce new leaders, the party is on the rocks. Local associations have had to raid the campaign coffers just to stop HQ going bust. As a result, UKIP more or less forgot about the elections and has organised hardly any candidates.
The Black Death
While this led one observer to call UKIP “virtually dead”, party spokesperson Terry Chestnuts went further:
We’re not “dead”, we’re “death”. Death itself. The Black Death. The most disruptive of all the deaths. You just watch. Under Farage, we crushed the feudal system and started the Renaissance. OK, we might be a bit quiet now, but just you wait. We’ll be back in about 300 years’ time and then, POW! And everyone will be glad to see us.
Choice
Elections expert Prof Ken Chisel, who was in the middle of a sponsored sleep-deprivation for Comic Relief, said UKIP voters would have had a stark choice in the polling booth:
Without the comforting British lion of UKIP on the ballot, voters of that persuasion would have seen something like this:
Labour (Russia)LibDem (drug people)
Green (windfarms)
Save The Hospital (Communist)
Residents’ Association (local soviet)
Conservative (oh, I remember Maggie. Dear Maggie)
It’s not hard to see why much of the UKIP vote went Tory.
Laura, can I have some of your Red Bull?
Trump claims London is entirely overrun by ‘droogs’
Over the past few years, the Tories have been slashing police numbers, closing youth programmes, and annihilating social prosperity. As such, it’s obvious what caused the recent surge in knife crime: it’s non-white people who’ve lived here for generations.
At least that’s the assertion of the bigoted right, anyway. And chief among them is Donald Trump.
Ultra-violence
Trump told his loyal followers:
Take London, for example. Big, big problems. Used to be such a beautiful place: now it’s overrun by makeup wearing thugs.
They have this documentary called ‘A Clockwork Orange’. I said to my staff, ‘I can’t believe this is real!’ They gave me that look that says I just dropped smarts bigly.
There are no Muslims in the documentary, actually. But I looked at it and I said, ‘I think this is the Muslims’. Not everyone is brave enough to say what they think without evidence, but I am!
Trump then explained how British children are being indoctrinated in Satanism at “Hogwarts School of Jihadism”.
Surge
Towards the end of his speech, someone asked Trump what he thought about gun crime in America being wildly higher than knife crime in the UK. He replied:
Really? We’re that far ahead?
This led to several hours of Trump and his supporters chanting:
WE’RE NUMBER ONE!
WE’RE NUMBER ONE!
WE’RE NUMBER ONE!
WE’RE NUMBER ONE!
Racist Tory councillors returning to the party now the elections are over
Before the local elections, the Tories were forced to suspend several candidates who had made bigoted statements. Now the elections are over, the bigots are being invited back.
Come by
As soon as the elections were over, Theresa May got her hiking boots on and headed for the Tory heartlands. The bigots had been released on the Quantocks to graze. When May got out there, she whistled for her trusty hound Michael Gove to round them all up.
I’m sure you can imagine what Gove looks like in locomotion, but I’ll describe it to you anyway.
Unlike human beings, Gove runs with a stiff hunch – his body like a plank: his shoulders angled forwards: his limp arms like fleshy spaghetti. Above all that, his head is at an angle to his body. He’s no silent strider, either – regularly emitting a noise that many have compared to a vixen regurgitating a flan.
Although a secretary of state like Boris Johnson would be better for rounding up racists, Gove just loves the fucking countryside now, doesn’t he.
In it together
The problem, though, is what will the Tories do the next time there’s an election? There are currently two options.
The first is they fit Westminster with trick walls, so that whenever an election happens, all of the bigots and cranks can be hidden away like gambling tables at an illegal casino.
The other is that they hope the press carries on not drawing too much attention to the daily instances of prejudice in the Tory party:
https://twitter.com/alexnunns/status/988037816469815296?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdev.thecanary.co%2F%3Fp%3D111204&tfw_creator=hourlyterrier&tfw_site=TheCanaryUK
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Featured image via Daniel Leal-Olivas of i-Images – Flickr / Peter Damian – Wikimedia / LadyGeekTV – Wikimedia / Public Domain Pictures / Flickr / www.quotecatalog.com / Wikimedia / US Air Force / DonkeyHotey – Flickr / US Air Force
