TODAY I can offer you a full-fat diet of news that is good and bad. Here are political policies with a hard, old rind or policies pinched from the other lot’s cheese board.
And here, to get us rolling, are a few wise words from a defeated Ukip candidate in the local elections in Skegness. Danny Brooks was quoted in last Sunday’s Observer, saying: “The Tories are talking the talk. Theresa May could nearly be Ukip leader the way she is talking.”
Hard cheese, sir – but what you say is true. Mrs Maybe is wrapping herself in an empurpled version of the Union flag, and many of her speeches could have been given by that bloke who is attempting to lead Ukip, including yesterday’s pledge to slash migration to less than 100,000 a year.
That bit of mouldy old cheddar has been in the Tory tuck box for so long the edges are turning green. It’s a pledge that has failed before and will fail again; a pledge that won’t be met and can’t be met; a pledge that on another day you might say was a bit of red meat for the Ukip supporters. But we are not talking meat today, so it will have to be red cheese, Leicester perhaps.
Incidentally, Ukip is said to want cut immigration to nothing and to operate a “one-in-one-out” policy – exactly the same policy the party has for its leaders.
To top it all, Mrs Maybe has announced today that she will cap energy prices – a policy championed by former Labour leader Ed Miliband, and lampooned by David Cameron for being a communist plot. And now the prime minister has swiped that one from the Labour cheeseboard.
A heckler interjects…
What’s with all the bloody cheese references, buster?
Ah, all will become clear in a moment.
And this morning, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is quoted as saying that he will hang around even if Labour loses the election next month. That news is about as welcome as the bad smell we get when the cheese box in the fridge needs a wash. Not content with pushing his party to an almost certain electoral disaster, now Corbyn says he won’t budge afterwards.
Yesterday it was announced that York is to host a special edition of Question Time on June 2, where Mrs Maybe and the immovable Jeremy Corbyn will debate head-to-head – well, sort of. They will share the same bill and answer questions from audience members, but whether there will be an actual face-off is unclear, as Mrs Maybe does like to control these things.
Perhaps she will appear surrounded by those blue-tinged Daleks that usually accompany her in place of the ordinary people she always says she wants to meet but never does. Those smitten Daleks, so in love with the chief Dalek, were there yesterday when she got out that bit of mouldy old migration cheddar.
“Exterminate Corbyn!” they chorused, while almost wetting their tin pants at the excitement of being so close to the great leader.
Anyway, cheese. Today there is a story to make my cheese-laden old heart sing. “Eating cheese does not raise risk of heart attack or stroke, study finds,” says the Guardian’s headline on its website. Well, I’ll say a haloumi hallelujah to that; or a cheddar chorus; or a Stilton stanza.
Consuming cheese, milk and yoghurt – even the lovely full-fat versions – does not damage health, say an international team of experts who conducted a meta-analysis of 29 previous studies of the health risks associated with dairy products. The study concluded that eating such food had a “neutral” impact on human health.
And, if I may paraphrase, the study concluded that we shouldn’t be eating any of that low-fat muck either. What cheering news, so long as you ignore the miserable muttering from Public Health England, who are still pushing the reduced-fat stuff in our direction.
Politics and cheese, all wrapped up in one tasty sandwich.