HERE are a few notes posted on the fridge door of my mind. These do not refer to Sir Keir Starmer or his presumed replacement, Andy Burnham, as they were plastered all over here last week.
We can skip the first one as all it says is “Buy beer, bake bread.” Another cautions against drinking wine this early in the week, but that’s been covered with one saying: “My, the Mail is horrid, isn’t it…”
That was occasioned by The Mail on Sunday’s front-page attack on education secretary Bridget Phillipson. Her presumed sin was having grown up in a former council home that years later generated a supposed profit of £90,000 (lower estimates are available).
This allowed a sub-editor to compose the honestly ridiculous headline seen above.
Phillipson was six at the time, but the Mail doesn’t record whether some of her pocket money helped to buy the two-bedroom council house.
Kevin Hollinrake, the Tory chair, blabbers in the report: “Labour have once again been caught red-handed displaying their spiteful class-war hypocrisy.”
Hollinrake’s own wealth comes from selling houses, in case you’ve forgotten. As for that class-war jibe, he is clutching straws of nowt.
Many people benefitted from Margaret Thatcher’s right-to-buy policy/bribe. The hope was that the new owners would gratefully vote Tory for ever more.
A more telling consequence had been the madly overheated housing market we have all these decades later. Oh, and a shortage of council houses spawned by the Tory refusal to reinvest the money in building replacement council houses.
Same thing with privatising water. Only the unforeseen bit here was the creating of massive profits for foreign companies. And lovely flotillas of shit in our rivers and sea. But, hey, free markets rule.
Looking at the next note makes me squirm. It reads, “Piers Morgan is right.” What’s more, he’s right two times over. Firstly for going on the BBC and saying what a disaster Brexit has been, blaming Nigel Farage and David Cameron. And then for saying that the Reform UK leader is doomed as he keeps changing his story on why he accepted a personal gift of five million pounds from that Thai-based crypto king who seems more or less to keep Reform UK afloat.
An illustration on Threads showing the Reflecting Pool under Biden and Trump
Next are a few overlapping notes about Donald Trump. These read – Thinks he’s Atlas. That pool reflects more than he realises. His state fair stinks more than that pool.
Greater sins have been committed by Trump than his hugely expensive renovation of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool, but it does stand as a perfect metaphor. It no longer has a reflection as it’s full of algae and the newly applied rubbery blue paint or whatever is coming away beneath – and this bit is priceless – dead ducklings said to have been discovered floating in the non-reflecting water.
Trump, who gave the job to a swimming pool contractor buddy, blames everybody but himself. And he’s had people arrested for reaching into the water to see what’s going on. A fence has now been erected around the non-reflecting pool to deter all those imaginary vandals Trump says have sabotaged the pool.
That state fair was intended to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary, but assorted announced guests withdrew, and Trump rallied to the cause by, er, making it all in support of himself. And no-one much seems to be attending.
In case you’ve not noticed, the whole world is basically having to be rewired to power AI. And one of the uses of AI is that Donald Trump can put up dodgy images of his America 250 state fair featuring thronging crowds. This is only achievable with AI, as untampered images show an event emptier than a village fair the local vicar forgot to publicise. The AI ones contain endless duplications of what appear to be digitally generated people.
Ten years ago Trump was always whingeing on about “fake news”, in other words news that was insufficiently flattering. Now, thanks to his tech bro brothers in the billionaires’ club, he can broadcast his own fake news, sharing, as we’ve seen, pictures of himself as Jesus. And now as Altas supporting the world on his shoulder pads.
As Trump sits in a pool of his own dissipating flesh and other unmentionables, the images he shares on social media always show a man of strength and undying power. His lights may be dimming, but online he is lit up as if a nuclear reactor has been shoved up his saggy old bottom.
And as people have gleefully been pointing out, in the Greek myth Atlas had to carry the heavens on his shoulders as an eternal punishment for losing a war. Another accidental truth there.
What a time to be alive. Farage appears to be wobbling; his on-off pal Trump is coming apart at the seams.
Oh, and just in case you have forgotten about Tory sleaze, along comes the former Conservative MP Craig Williams. He has just pleaded guilty in court to cheating at gambling. This followed bets he placed on the date of the general election in 2024 (and what a long time ago that now seems).
He admitted to having used confidential information to bet on the timing of the election. Insider information from a man who is now an outsider, and who, it must be said, looked a sorry sagging sight as he shambled up to court.