HERE is a mistake spotted last night. I pass it on because it had a cheering effect.
A writer on the Irish newspaper accidentally rechristened that arch Brexit bully Jacob Rees-Mogg in a way that tickled, and we all need a tickle nowadays.
Incidentally, no slight is intended on the writer of the piece, as we all do these things. I just typed “William Rees-Mogg”, stiff-backed father to the appalling son.
Incidentally times two, that occasionally disinterred TV footage of Jacob Rees-Mogg as a 12-year-old in a stiff suit reading The Times just shows we’ve been indulging the man for far too long. And look where it’s got us.
Anyway, that mistake.
Throughout a report on Brexit, he was referred to as Jacob Rees-Moog. This raise a smile at the end of a shift busy with the Pope’s visit to Ireland.
This amused me on two grounds.
One, it just sounded funny. Two, as ageing music fans will know, a Moog is a sort of synthesizer. Not only that, it is an analogue (or analog) synthesizer. That means it’s a pre-digital instrument. As is Jacob Rees-Moog himself, a man from a pre-modern era who wants to hasten us back to a dark new future in which wealthy financiers such as himself will be free to be even wealthier
It is often said, rightly, that the BBC has been much too tolerant of Brexit midwife Nigel Farage over the years (call the midwife – oh, please, don’t). The breath of institutional laziness has helped to keep Farage in the air for far too long. And look where it got us (times two).
The same is true of the Moog man. No discussion of Brexit on the BBC is complete without Jacob Rees-Mogg being given yet another platform from which to rumble and moan. And there he stands like an upper-class undertaker ready to pick a pocket or two, or possibly a million, as he drones out his usual pro-Leave hymn (onward cross-eyed soldiers).
The bad boys of Brexit all went into meltdown on Friday with plenty of ‘Project Fear’ ranting, and all because the chancellor, Philip Hammond, said a no-deal Brexit could have “large financial consequences”.
The Tory MP Marcus Fysh hit out at “another instalment of dodgy Project Fear”, the Brexit-blighted Daily Express let out a shriek of “Project Fear 2.0”, and the Daily Mail went all nursery room on us with “Eeyore Hammond launches Project Fear (Pt 2)”.
Mail launches Project Brexit (Pt two million and two).
I have always thought that Project Fear was just Project Sensible Concern About All This Over-Heated Brexit Shit As No One Has A Clue Where It Will All End. Not snappy, but it gets the message across.
Today’s Project Fear story is that a no-deal Brexit could bugger up next year’s Grand National, according to the British Horseracing Authority. This is because crashing out of the EU would potentially hit Irish trainers and Irish Horses. At present a Tripartite Agreement system allows horses to be moved between the UK, France and Ireland.
Horseracing passes me by, much like the bouncing jockeys and their skinny arses, but this latest Project Fear story suggests that just about nothing has been thought through at all.
But never mind. I’m sure the Rees-Moog pre-modern synthesizer will be along in a moment with another stern graveside lecture.