And what a week it was!
A week which saw…
…ugh…
…the Conservative Party Conference, and the most pronounced lurch to the right since Captain Hook’s wooden leg was hit by a cannonball.
But what else happened?
Let’s look back and see:
“It’s Hard Brexit or learn how to negotiate” Theresa May admits
Theresa May has revealed to the world that Britain will be pursuing a ‘Hard Brexit’ – which is to say we will be letting Hard Brexit pursue us – essentially by sitting down and waiting for it to pounce on us.
The PM pitched the plan as being in our best interests. Others claim that she simply doubts the Brexit team’s ability to negotiate a good deal, while simultaneously having 100% confidence in their ability to secure a bad one.
The problem with leaving the single market to repel migrants is that much of our economic certainty is dependent on both access to the single market and the ability to use migrant workers to make up for our ageing population. So the Hard Brexit scenario is essentially like a person selling all of their hair to pay for a comb. Or – more accurately – like a person punching themselves in the groin because Nigel Farage double-dared them to.
Mexico offers to build the USA four walls and a ceiling if Trump wins
Although initially hesitant, Mexico has finally agreed to build the ‘Great Wall of Donald’ that will prevent Mexicans from entering America. Quite why Trump felt that the people he’d accused of being conniving rapists were the best people to take care of constructing America’s safety barrier is unclear, but here we are.
Beyond this first construction, Mexico has also announced that with the backing of over a hundred countries, it will also be able to build the US three more walls. And a ceiling.
Some Trump supporters were wary of the offer, as can be evidenced by the words of a young gentleman we interviewed in Texas:
If there are walls on every side and a ceiling on the top, then there’ll be… I don’t know. But that seems like it will be a lot of walls! Will the sun be under the walls with us, or will we have to get a new one?
Rather than ‘Hard’ or ‘Soft’, some Tories are opting for ‘Sh*t Brexit’
by John Ranson
Because the government still doesn’t know what ‘Brexit’ means, apart from ‘Brexit’ obviously, various other concepts are being floated in the hope that we’ll soon be so confused, we’ll forget what the original question was.
‘Hard Brexit’ means different things to different people. For Euro-enthusiasts, it’s akin to hard luck, hard lines, hard cheese. A sense of futile disappointment. Plans cancelled. Projects, jobs, careers even, cut off in their prime. Profound unease about the future. But to some of its more thrusting advocates, ‘Hard Brexit’ means hard rock, hard liquor, er, hard drugs. Going all the way. Doing it properly. No compromise.
‘Soft Brexit’, meanwhile, runs the risk of meaning nothing at all. It could be sold as a skilful exercise in diplomatic realpolitik that brings the most benefits to the widest number of people. Somehow combining all the advantages of leaving the EU with the benefits of remaining a member. But what it would actually look like, of course, would be the government ignoring the referendum and not leaving at all.
The list of every cancelled event at this year’s Tory Conference
The Conservative Party Conference drew attention to itself this week when it cancelled an event titled ‘From Poverty to Prosperity’ – apparently in an attempt to do to irony what asteroids did to the dinosaurs.
What you may not realise is how many other talks, demonstrations, and seminars have been cancelled. This is especially true this year, as a result of 12 months of complete and abject Fukushima-grade hyper-f*ckery.
One of Off the Perch‘s specialist dustbin riflers has managed to get hold of a list of every cancelled event, however, and we are now able to present them to you in all of their gruesome and gory glory:
- Please, Sir? Can I Have Some Score? – Why Workhouses Are a British Institution Ripe for Privatisation.
- How We Brought Margaret Thatcher to Life – by Jim Henson’s Creature Workshop.
- Don’t Fear the Creeper – How to Harvest Souls and Still Enjoy Your £37 Breakfast – by Iain Duncan Smith.
- The A to Z of Cross Country Election Fraud.
- George Osborne – Super Chancellor (cancelled in March).
- George Osborne – Chancellor (cancelled in May).
- George Osborne – Human Shaped Person-Thing (cancelled due to lack of interest).
- How to Imitate Human Emotions.
- David Cameron – What Went Wrong?
- David Cameron – What Went Right?
- The Environment – What is it, and Why Can’t We Just Shoot It in The Face?
- Is It Time To Start Eating the Scouse?
Theresa May claims ‘economic suicide’ will be ‘hugely beneficial’ to Britain
Committing economic suicide will be hugely beneficial to Britain, the Prime Minister has claimed.
Speaking to the BBC’s tame presenter Andrew Marr, Theresa May said:
The British economy is clearly not working for everybody, and that’s why it must be destroyed by Brexit through the expulsion of all the foreign workers on whom our businesses and hospitals depend.
There has been far too much fact-mongering about the supposedly negative consequences of exiting the European Union, and I wish we would instead talk about some of the positive Great British outcomes from Brexit.
For a start, the coming brain drain will see an exodus of experts and scientists, people who are rightly reviled for daring to warn us of the dangers of voting for Brexit. For a party which engages in post-truth politics, this can only be a good thing.
Several Africans accidentally refer to Boris Johnson as ‘that moron’
Following a speech by the Foreign Secretary in which he referred to the continent of Africa as “that country”, Boris Johnson’s world knowledge has once more been drawn into question.
https://twitter.com/hourlyterrier/status/783244715193925632
This is a little bit unfair, though, as he’s only been the Foreign Secretary for a few months, and he’s barely had chance to scratch the surface of The Early Learning Centre World Encyclopedia that the PM is making him read. If this had been a few months ago, Boris would very possibly have referred to Africa as “that deodorant by Lynx” or “that smash hit by Toto”.
People in Britain’s former African colonies, however, have reacted with far less than the grace and humility that our ancestors tried to bludgeon into them – which really makes one wonder why we bothered invading them in the first place? You know – other than for all of the wealth that we pilfered?
May seizes the centre ground between UKIP and the Ebola virus
When media outlets reported that Theresa May was aiming to seize the centre ground, they seemed to ignore the fact that she’d also announced that Britain’s new motto was the following:
https://twitter.com/hourlyterrier/status/784098269815304192?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
This led many people to wonder:
The centre of which two extremes exactly? The Italian Fascists and The Galactic Empire? Harold Shipman and Dr Mengele? Being hit with a stick and being hit with a stick twice?
The Tory Party has now expanded on the matter in a secret memo – a memo which we were able to intercept when an irritated Liam Fox threw it at our heads:
The two ideological touchstones we hope to straddle are a nasty illness that possesses no intelligence whatsoever and the Ebola virus.
Tories to ban foreigners “to make life easier for football commentators”
by John Ranson
The government’s new plan to get rid of foreigners may well prove popular among beleaguered football commentators who’ve spent the last three decades getting players’ names wrong.
Regardless of the many reasons voters may have had for choosing to leave the EU, the Tories seem to have interpreted the result as a massive mandate for xenophobia. The ghosts of Enoch Powell and Alf Garnett have been summoned, and the decree has been issued:
Foreigners not welcome
In a speech to the Conservative Party Conference, Home Secretary Amber Rudd has outlined plans to compel companies to list their foreign employees, in a bid to name and shame those that have too many on their books. Maybe it was just some prankster fooling around with her autocue, but Rudd’s words have taken the Tories so far from the ‘centre ground’, or indeed the realm of common sense, that even the Institute of Directors has been forced to complain.
Tories to repel foreigners by making the UK as sh*t as possible [OPINION]
When Theresa May inherited post-referendum Britain, she had two potential directions in which she could take us:
- Attempt to reconcile the disparate strands of UK society, and endeavour to forge a new relationship with the world outside of the EU.
- SNARLING XENOPHOBIA! HISS! HISS!
And of course, being a Conservative, Prime Minister May has chosen the latter.
Which is why the Conservative Party Conference has seen such horrors as Jeremy Hunt telling foreign doctors that they’re only welcome here for as long as it takes us to train some more of our own. The problem with this being – why on Earth would they wait until then?
Because the people in question are highly trained and motivated people who have already emigrated at least once. And knowing what they know – that they are officially no longer welcome here – why wouldn’t they just go now, and leave us to tend to the festering wound that we’ve inflicted upon ourselves? You know, before we decide that merely banishing all of the doctors is a bit too liberal and that really we should be eating them or something. We will struggle to attract more Brits to join the National Hunt Service after all, but maybe if we eat the brains of doctors, we will become doctors. It could happen. The experts will say that it won’t, of course, but that’s as good a reason as any to go ahead and do it in this day and age.
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