Let’s play Woke Bingo. The rules are simple: every time someone says ‘woke’, feel free to shout ‘bollocks’ (you’re almost certain to be on the money).

You could start playing with last weekend’s edition of Mail on Sunday – “Top Tory launches TV rival to ‘woke wet BBC’.”

Sir Robbie Gibb is a former adviser to Theresa May (terrible Tory PM but a sight better than the one we’ve got now). Before that, he worked for the ‘woke wet BBC’, where he was in charge of the political programme output.

Any argument can be made into a plank with which to beat the BBC.

For instance, the fact that a noted Tory ran the political output of the BBC adds ammunition to those who see the BBC as a right-wing conspiracy organisation.

Gibb is now part of a media consortium behind GB News, which dismisses the BBC as “the most biased propaganda machine in the world”.

The BBC doesn’t do everything right and sometimes its behaviour seems designed to bring about its own downfall.

One of the chief architects of anti-BBC feeling is former Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage, the nation’s least favourite toad (happy to show bias on that one).

Farage was too often given undue prominence by the BBC, especially on Question Time, in a misguided attempt to counter allegations of anti-right bias – How can we be anti-right, here’s Nasty Nigel again.

Same case with Andrew Neil, a prominent voice on the right who was gifted a lofty platform on the BBC. Now Neil is reported to be joining Toad Master Farage in a separate right-wing news TV platform from Rupert Murdoch.

The template for both of these new ventures would be Murdoch’s own Fox News, the highly profitable American channel filled with opinionated ranting of the sort we don’t see here on TV.

Our broadcasting rules on due impartiality prevent a news channel from showcasing the one-sided opinion merchants you see on Fox. So it is likely that these would be opinion channels rather than news channels, although the edges will be muddied.

New channels cover most topics as and when they happen, and make editorial decisions that leave them open to accusations of bias. Opinion stations just jump onto their soap box and shout, lacking any wider responsibility.

The BBC has many enemies. They include free-range extreme right-wingers, disgruntled left-wing followers of former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, conspiracy lovers of all political stripes who believe Covid-19 is a state-create myth propagated by the BBC, and self-serving media barons who stir up nonsense stories about Land of Hope and Glory.

I’d say the BBC is not truly biased or woke or wet, although it does tie itself in knots trying to please all of its critics, and consequently risks pleasing no one.

‘Left-wing BBC comedy’…

Also in the news this morning, the Daily Telegraph reports that new director general Tim Davie is threatening “to axe Left-wing BBC comedy” which he sees as too anti-Trump, anti-Tory and anti-Brexit.

Whether this is true remains to be seen, but surely it misses the point that satirical comedy tends to aim upwards – and as the Tories are nearly always the ones in power, they are rightly the butt of many jokes.

Have I Got News For You is one comedy show likely to displease Mr Davie (if that Telegraph story is true). Well, it’s past its best but still rises to the moment on occasions, and I watch out of mostly happy habit.

But just imagine, if only we could think of a right-wing politician who used an appearance on HIGNFY to burnish his popular image and twice went on to host the show.

And who was promoted in this disgraceful way by the woke wet BBC? Yup, Boris Johnson, Tory stand-up comedian and part-time prime minister.

HARRY Horton is the political correspondent for ITV’s Calendar programme in Yorkshire. I usually watch the other side, so sorry about that, HH.

A clip Horton put up on Twitter shows him interviewing Liz Truss, the international trade secretary.

They are standing in a Yorkshire field with cows in the background. Those large domesticated ungulates munch grass while no doubt thinking, what is this woman on about – you get more sense from a daisy.

Horton asked Truss about the reported appointment of former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott as a UK trade envoy for Brexit – an idea so criminally bonkers, it removes any breath you may have left in your tired lungs.

Still, appointing Abbott to speak up for post-Brexit Britain does sit with the sheer reckless abandon of heading towards the No Deal cliff without a plan. And Boris Johnson refusing to budge an inch while also being determined to blame the EU for the mess he’s making of Brexit (they started it, it’s not fair).

Here is your occasional reminder: Brexit didn’t get done, we did.

Anyway, Abbott. A man ill-famed for his blatant sexism and so abrasive he could put sandpaper out of a job. He once called climate change “absolute crap” and likened climate action to “killing goats to appease volcano gods”.

Horton wondered why a man known for being sexist, homophobic and a climate-change denier should be thought suitable to represent Britain around the world. He also asked how Truss could accept such an appointment, especially as she doubled as women and equalities minister

Truss looked surprised at being reminded she had that other job, too. Why had no one told her? How could she be in two places at once when being in one place was always such a stretch?

She declined to answer, so Horton asked again. And again. And again. He was annoying in that way a good reporter should be. Truss looked displeased at being confronted by a journalist who dared to do his job. She flustered, said the same thing again and again.

She didn’t confirm Abbott’s appointment, but instead unpacked the usual old flannel about Abbott being a principled politician, a champion of free trade and a huge champion of the UK.

What a great idea – as the Brexit bus clanks towards those cliffs, let’s appoint a former Aussie prime minister that even most Australians can’t abide as one of our representatives.

As if to offer reassurance, Truss reminded Horton that she would be in charge of representing Britain. At which point any sensible person keeled over with a groan.

In this government of Brexit toadies and yes men/women, Truss stands so far back in the group photo she can hardly be seen.

Other Australian prime ministers haven’t been impressed with Abbott, although Aussie politics can be a bit of a bear pit. Julia Gillard, who suffered much sexism during her tenure, once delivered a righteous speech that rugby-tackled sexism and Abbott.

Kevin Rudd’s reaction to news of Abbott’s possible appointment was: “Is the UK joking?”

Sadly, Mr Rudd, it’s hard to tell nowadays.

But well done to Harry Horton, both for your splendid alliterative name and your persistence.

Boris Johnson has something he wants to get off his chest. And it’s not that over-sized checked shirt he wore on his Scottish holiday.

The man who is actually the prime minister, heaven help us, has joined in the latest empty rattle dominating the headlines.

Perhaps you have had your head in a box, or perhaps you ignore the news when it becomes silly. Anyway, the papers have been crammed with potty outrage about how the BBC has ‘banned’ the words of Rule, Britannia! and Land Of Hope And Glory, those dirges sung at the end of the Last Night of the Proms.

This bonfire of inanities was lit by a report in the Sunday Times that these dusty old tunes could be dropped from annual classical music event because of concerns about imperialism and the lyric “Britons never shall be slaves”.

The BBC responded that the works would be included this year in instrumental form but without lyrics, partly due to the lack of an audience to sing along. Next year, it promised, everything would be back to (dreary) normal.

At which ‘news’ the usual right-wing BBC bashers rattled their trays, spilt their milky tea and called for matron. This non-story appeared on the front pages of the Daily Telegraph, Daily Express, Daily Mail, and Sun.

The Sun, you will be flabbergasted to learn, chose a groan-worthy pun for its headline – “Land of woke and glory”.

Should you not be up to speed in the lingo of cultural scorn, and who could blame you, ‘woke’ is the new ‘political correctness gone mad’.

Yesterday Boris Johnson, perhaps forgetting that he is no longer a Daily Telegraph columnist, launched into a small outburst by saying: “If it is correct, which I cannot believe that it really is…”

Hang on there a tatty second. If you cannot believe this is true, why are you banging on about it? Surely the prime minister should know whether or not something is true before he opens his mouth? Oh, hang on another tatty second, I forgot for a moment who we have for a prime minister.

Then Johnson got to the meat in his limp Downing Street sandwich, the thinly spread beef paste of patriotism. It was time “we stopped our cringing embarrassment about our history, about our traditions, and about our culture, and we stopped this general fight of self-recrimination and wetness”.

He added: “I wanted to get that off my chest.”

Pardon me while I walk around this damp fire about nothing set smouldering to draw our eyes from conflagrations raging elsewhere.

The Mail, now an unpredictable friend to Johnson, elevates this faux-patriotic claptrap to its front page under the headline: “Boris blasts ‘cringing’ BBC” while the Express limps behind with: “Enough! Hands off our heritage.”

The people who get so worked up about these irrelevances like to dismiss the young as ‘snowflakes’ for being over-sensitive. And yet here they are, melting all over the shop.

Have we always been so prone to blowing our kettle lids in this country? Perhaps we have, but I can’t help feeling that the endless shouting match over Brexit made this tendency so much worse.

As to our history, that should be open to interpretation, not set in stone in the preferred no-questions-asked version. There’s nothing wrong with being embarrassed about parts of our country’s history. It no longer washes when considering slavery to brush it off with a shrug while saying, “Oh things were different back then.” Isn’t history a constant process of evaluation rather than a story with a full-stop?

When it comes to those temporarily unsung lyrics, I’d happily never hear them again.

Mind you, we could always rewrite the opening to one…

“Rule, Britannia! Britannia, waive the rules!
Patriotic Britons always, always, always shall be old fools…”

DIY is not necessarily my forte. This is partly down to my long-held belief in LYWDIH (Let Your Wife Do It Herself).

This either makes me a feminist or a lazy man and I couldn’t possibly comment. Let’s just say that I am good at talking about doing things; my wife is better at the doing part.

Occasionally we unite and get the job done, with me acting as builder’s mate.

Here, then, are my tips for putting up shelves in the study.

First, buy a wooden bed 30 odd years before you intend to put up those shelves. Sleep on this for ages, then replace with a larger bed and store the wooden slats and stumps beneath for many more years. They might come in handy one day, while also providing a home for the under-bed dust collection.

We bought that wooden bed in the mid-1980s for our flat in south east London. The shop is still there in Hackney; the flat is still there in Lewisham too and worth a sight more than our house in York (but that’s another story).

At the time, Litvintoff & Fawcett (“making quality beds since 1979”) swore you could take any of their beds home in your own car. Luckily, I’d moved on from the MG Midget, as that might have strained their theory, to an MG Metro.

We drove to the East End and returned with the bed on and in the little black car. Mattress strapped to the roof, wooden slats and struts placed at an angle from back to front, with my wife cowering behind the passenger seat where she normally sat. A good bed, but eventually we wanted a larger one.

The study is my haunt for writing or working from home. Or writing and not working much in my present under-employed condition. Although previously tidied up and decorated, it had become a dumping ground, dominated by a Futon sofa bed we never used. That sofa bed was donated to our daughter’s friend, unlocking the mess and giving my wife the idea for her studio at one end of the room.

Yesterday we cut up the old bed and rested the planks on metal brackets made by a firm found on eBay.

We had a few wobbles along the way, but by the afternoon we had two new shelves fashioned from our old bed. A shorter shelf above the wordy desk; a longer shelf above the arty table.

Already there are small splashes of paint on the wall above her desk; there are no word splashes above my desk, although you should see the inside of my head.

Fearing eviction from this pleasant new space, I further claim squatter’s rights with two guitars and an amplifier.

When we moved to this large garden with a smallish house attached, it had three bedrooms and we had three more or less grown-up offspring still at home. We slept in the front room until we could afford to have a bedroom put in the attic. For a short while, our eldest son had what is now the study. If memory serves, he slept on the bed that has now been turned into shelves.

So, there you have it. DIY tips from Man on Ledge. Don’t expect any more soon.

A 16-year-old boy from Sudan drowns while trying to cross the channel from France to England.

The details are tragic. Two boys are reported to have set sail in an inflatable dinghy using shovels as oars. Their makeshift craft is said to have been little more than a toy. One boy was rescued, reportedly suffering from hypothermia.

You cannot consider what happened to the boy who drowned, and other migrants sailing to Europe across hostile seas, without taking stock of your own humanity.

Even the leader in today’s Sun says this is a reminder “of a human emergency, not just a political one”.

Having given humanity the nod, the Sun then takes its customary path. Labour is urged to “stop playing politics” and “throw its weight behind Home Secretary Priti Patel as she cracks down on the real villains of this piece: the evil people-traffickers”.

Patel has spent weeks playing politics by summoning up a ‘migrant invasion’ where none exists. She has clearly magnified a relatively small problem for political purposes and as a distraction from other difficulties.

You may not agree with this interpretation of her behaviour, and that’s fair enough.

But if it’s true, as widely reported, that the home secretary told Tory MPs that she wanted to change the asylum rules in a way that would make “the left… have a meltdown”, how else are we meant to characterise her behaviour?

Patel is also widely reported to have said that the asylum system is broken because “leftie Labour-supporting lawyers” send “legal letters every day to try to stop us removing people from this country”.

It has been pointed out by many, including the writer of this blog, that Patel’s hostility to immigration seems odd as her own parents were admitted to this country and allowed to flourish.

Yes, Labour should play its part – but Patel should stop using toxic language in a phoney cultural war.

Yes, too, the people-traffickers are “evil” but they are cruelly exploiting a situation which is itself immoral.

Why, for a start, do we not process migrants in France rather than leaving them to attempt hazardous channel crossings or trying to ride on or beneath lorries?

Why do we not act on our human responsibility to welcome as many migrants as possible instead of jabbing our fingers at ‘invading hordes’?

Perhaps it is just that some people consider one migrant to be one too many, while others fail to see why we cannot offer more help to those wishing to live a life less harsh.

Two new books published soon offer insights into migration. Welcome to Britain: Fixing Our Broken Immigration System is by immigration barrister Colin Yeo. At a guess one of those “leftie lawyers” Patel disparages.

His publisher’s blurb wonders how we would treat Paddington Bear if he came to the UK today…

“Perhaps he would be made destitute as a result of extortionate visa application fees; perhaps he would experience a cruel term of imprisonment in a detention centre; or perhaps his entire identity would be torn apart at the hands of a hostile environment that seems to delight in the humiliation of its victims.”

A wider historical perspective is offered by Professor Joanna Story, co-editor of Migrants in Medieval England, c.500 – c1500. This study argues that England has been shaped by “economic migration since medieval times”.

“People often do not realise that migration is central to English history throughout time,” said Story in last Sunday’s Observer.

We may be an island, but we have never been the insular Little England some would have us believe.

Tragically pointless to speculate now, but I like to think that under a kinder system that lost Sundanese boy would have reached the UK and flourished, as many have down the centuries.

PERHAPS one day there will be nothing to see from this ledge; no political shenanigans; no rubber-burning U-turns; no more appalling behaviour from Boris Johnson.

Then again…

My last piece, on the A-levels fiasco, was written as almost 40% of students saw their results lowered by an algorithm.

Johnson shrugged off the protests, saying: “Let’s be in no doubt about it, the exam results that we’ve got today are robust, they’re good, they’re dependable for employers.”

Turns out there was plenty of doubt and he made another U-turn. Those results weren’t robust and the algorithm was shown the door. Not so education secretary Gavin Williamson, who remains in post, with the prime minister’s full confidence.

Williamson doesn’t have the full confidence of the Tory-supporting Daily Mail, which today lashes him with this splash headline: “The man who won’t take the blame.”

Of course, the other man who won’t take the blame is the never knowingly blamed for anything man in charge. Those of us who’ve long suspected that Johnson is lazy, lackadaisical, chaotic and unfocused have been pleasantly surprised – by exactly how right we were.

Johnson and co love to blame someone else, everyone else, when things go wrong. Top civil servants are sacked or side-lined; public bodies are abolished over-night without debate. Williamson blames Ofqual for the exams chaos even though he’s the man in charge.

Newspaper front pages are only one metric, but with that caution in mind, let’s look at two more this morning.

Metro digs up ‘omnishambles’ – that splendid neologism coined by the writers of The Thick Of It – to describe the governmental chaos. And the Daily Star, not usually a stopping-off point for this reader, surpasses itself with a missing-man poster casting Johnson as “The Invisible Man” – “Last spotted, er, well it’s really quite hard to say…”

North of the border, Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon still holds daily briefings on Covid-19, in telling contrast to Johnson, who emerges into daylight occasionally to splutter inanities at the TV cameras, before scuttling back into his burrow.

That Metro front page, with its “Omnishambles Britain” tag, combines Williamson, the missing man PM and the sudden scrapping of Public Health England.

PHE is to be replaced by a new body run by ‘failed Talk-Talk dud’ Dido Harding, according to Metro. She’s the Tory peer who always springs forward from whatever mess she’s left, including the government’s costly track-and-trace system.

Health secretary Matt Hancock launched the new body, called the National Institute for Health Protection, without much explanation, and leaving little doubt that PHE was being blamed for the government’s poor Covid-19 response.

The government has already called for a Covid-19 inquiry, possibly to be held sometime or never, and yet decided to blame PHE anyway in a shotgun divorce.

As long ago as April 29, almost in times of ancient history, I suggested scientists were being set up to take the blame. I only mention that again because it turned out pretty much to be true.

Why in the middle of a pandemic would you completely restructure a public health body, other than to deflect blame from yourself, cause another distraction or to pretend to be doing something important besides replacing one acronym with another.

In announcing the new body, Hancock said: “My message to everyone in the private sector is – join us.”

As feared, this government wants more private provision, even while companies such as Serco earn a fortune messing up with track-and-tracing call centres.

According to Professor Stephen Reicher in the Guardian today, “Serco’s telephone traces were around 50% successful in reaching contacts; public health tracers were over 90% successful.”

We should put more truth in local health bodies, not less.

Who could ask for anything more, to quote from that lesser-known George Gershwin song, I Got Algorithms.

We’re used to algorithms on the internet. Google something on one device and what you searched for pops up on another device, like a relentless stalker or a private detective rummaging through your bins.

Services we receive for ‘free’ – Facebook, Twitter, Google and so on – take our personal information as their reward, and we shrug because we enjoy social media and quick searches.

But using algorithms to decide the results of exams not taken because of Covid-19 is something else altogether, something darker and dystopian. It betrays our children’s future and is a disgrace.

Yes, there never was going to be an easy way to sort this out, but leaving algorithms to decide the A-level grades should shame the government – or it would if this bunch weren’t so shameless.

The price of entry into Boris Johnson’s cabinet is low: say Brexit was the best idea ever and you’ll be whisked through the door and never mind your talent.

Just look at Gavin Williamson, sacked as Defence Secretary by Theresa May and then chosen by Johnson to run education.

By the charter of columnists and bloggers, no word of Williamson is allowed to pass without mentioning that he once sold fireplaces in Scarborough. Or that he told the Russians “to go away and shut up” – a devious ploy only if the intention was to make Vladimir Putin die of laughter.

Useless people are often said to fail upwards and what must have attracted Williamson to Johnson is that the prime minister likes other people to make him look good. Others can fail upwards too, so long as they don’t fail upwards higher than him.

Williamson is likely to be canned for the hurt and anger stirred by the A-level algorithms. Such is the lot of lickspittles once their master sees advantage in their defenestration (stage direction: Dominic Cummings slides up the sash window and asks Williamson to step over for a minute).

But the blame should spread further than one man, as Williamson’s behaviour is symptomatic of the government’s high-handed carelessness, with policy being made on the hoof so often, they’ll soon be right out of hoofs.

The most alarming aspect of the A-level algorithms is the down-grading of results of pupils attending schools in less advantaged areas.

Almost 40% of results were lowered in this way.

Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham is considering legal action against the government over the results. He accuses ministers of the “single biggest act of levelling down this country has ever seen”.

Private schools have been less affected by these cruel and rigid algorithms. While the computer said no to many disadvantaged kids, it nodded the well off through (business as usual, nothing to worry about here), because of smaller class sizes and smaller subject groups.

The guilty algorithm was designed by Ofqual, the non-ministerial department that regulates exams. Oddly, the Royal Society of Statistics is reported to have recommended ways to make the algorithm fairer, but Ofqual rejected its advice because it refused to sign a no-disclosure agreement.

Teachers who have known their students for years were ignored, their marks and observations over-ruled by the computers.

Carole Cadwalladr, the Guardian and Observer journalist who lives in the dark burrows beneath social media, tweeted to this year’s A-level students: “You have been robbed of your future by an algorithm. The tech dystopia many of us have been warning about is here. You’re it. Your data was used to profile you without your consent. This is not ok. Be furious. Fight back.”

Also on Twitter, Lisa Bradley, journalism lecturer at Sheffield University and author of the new thriller Paper Dolls, received much attention for tweeting:…

“So..my neighbour got a predicted A from her teacher, B in her mock…and was given an E. A kid from the private school on the next road got a C in her mock, a predicted B and was awarded an A*. Just..? Kids..you’ll be of voting age in the next general election. Remember.”

One-off examples don’t of themselves prove anything, but Lisa’s one-off is replicated all over the country, and the blatant unfairness is plain for all to see.

DO you remember the woman who shouted at a cup of tea? This was before lockdown so her anger wasn’t caused by confinement or the pubs being shut or anything.

Sue became agitated on Twitter after Rishi Sunak, who’d just been promoted to Chancellor, put out a photo of himself making tea for his team, while holding a mini-sack of Yorkshire Tea teabags.

This caused the sort of row that occurs when people have nothing better to do. Rishi the tea-boy Chancellor might have believed he was celebrating his work experience stint at the Treasury but plenty of people on Twitter thought it was a disgrace and vowed never to buy Yorkshire Tea again.

Those attacking Yorkshire Tea were mostly from my end of the political woods, left-leaning grumblers who instinctively dislike Tories.

Disparaging Tories can be a habit almost as ingrained as tea-drinking but some of those laying into Yorkshire Tea took everything a bit far. The company insisted it had not entered into a diabolical tea-cosy pact with the Tories, saying it had known nothing about the photo.

This wasn’t enough for Sue, who rattled and shook like an over-filled kettle until the social media people at Yorkshire Tea silenced her with a clever line: “Sue, you’re shouting at tea…”

This instantly became a meme. Good on Yorkshire Tea, even though I don’t partake. Are you even allowed to admit that in Yorkshire? I prefer loose tea spooned from the tin.

Now Priti Patel is shouting at ice cream.

I am sorry to bring the Home Secretary back into this blog’s cast list of deplorables, but it’s proving to be her week.

There she was, trying to out-do Nigel Farage in bellowing about migrants while standing on the shore at Dover, and thinking, my it’s hot, I could do with an ice cream, when the official Ben and Jerry’s UK Twitter account put her right off the idea (the ice cream, not being intolerant about poor and vulnerable people).

Ben and Jerry’s posted several tweets tagging the home secretary, beginning with: “Hey @PritiPatel, we think the real crisis is our lack of humanity for people fleeing war, climate change and torture.”

This was followed by others such as “People wouldn’t make dangerous journeys if they had any other choice” and “People cannot be illegal.”

Wow, more sense from the freezer section of the supermarket than from Boris and the Brexit Botch gang.

A Home Office source told the BBC Priti Patel was “working day and night to bring an end to these small boat crossings, which are facilitated by international criminal gangs and are rightly of serious concern to the British people”.

The spokes-waffler added: “If that means upsetting the social media team for a brand of overpriced junk food, then so be it.”

Two passing observations on that double-scoop…

ONE: Get a sense of humour, lightness or perspective and don’t shout at ice cream.

TWO: Stop saying “the British people” every time you want to excuse shabby behaviour. By accident of birth, I number among them and hate hearing that. The British people deserve better than being dragged in as backing vocalists to your nastiest tunes.

At least Foreign Office minister James Cleverly didn’t enter the debate by saying something stupid. Oh, hang on, he did, tweeting: “Can I have a large scoop of statistically inaccurate virtue signalling with my grossly overpriced ice cream, please?”

I guess Ben and Jerry’s won’t be on the menu at the next Cabinet picnic.

Home secretary Priti Patel went to all the way to Dover yesterday to snap a selfie. She didn’t use her phone but dragged along a Home Office video person seemingly just out of video training school (or possibly not yet admitted).

Patel moved in and out of focus as she said things like “the fact of the matter is…” which is rarely a good sign. Especially as the “fact of the matter” (© any passing politician on the make) is that all she was doing was helping to create a distraction.

Don’t look at the God-awful mess we’re making off Covid-19, or all those millions we wasted on useless PPE, just throw up your hands in horror at all these migrants invading our shores.

“We are committed to tackling this issue and working with the French government to make this route completely unviable,” said Patel. She was wearing her frown instead of her customary smirk and whichever you find more acceptable is a matter of preference; feel free to tick “none of the above”.

No reporter was on hand as this was a self-published report free from damn pesky questions.

As the BBC’s Daniel Sandford tweeted: “In the end it is up to the UK public to decide whether they want to see their politicians at times of crisis talking in self-crafted promo videos like this, or in a genuine engagement with the broadcast media like ITN, Sky and BBC News.”

Oh, never mind, Daniel – at least we got to meet Dan O’Mahoney, the UK’s Clandestine Channel Threat Commander. Yes, he really exists! Not so sure, however, about the threat being clandestine. It’s there for all to see and the numbers are tiny when set against the population of this prosperous country.

Which brings me to my favourite Twitter exchange of the morning…

“This is an issue of national security.”

Nigel Farage.

“This is an issue of national insecurity.”

George Peretz QC.

Government ministers do love these selfies. Chancellor Rishi Sunak churns out movie-style posters bearing slogans such as: “A PLAN FOR JOBS… Worth up to £30 billion.” All come adorned with his signature.

This motivated Boris Johnson to get in on the act, although his first attempt wasn’t deemed acceptable – “A PLAN SCRIBBLED ON THE BACK OF A FAG PACKET – worth whatever Dominic Cummings just told me…”

Sunak’s signature is scrawled all over the Eat Out to Help Out campaign running this month. While this initiative has been welcomed by diners and pandemic-stricken restaurants, it’s an odd fit with Johnson saying at the weekend that it was a “moral duty to get all children back in school”.

Sunak is handing out money-off coupons, and Johnson is saying we might have to close pubs and restaurants to balance the risks raised in opening schools.

Fair enough, schools are vital – and I write that as a father to two primary school teachers. It’s reasonable to argue that schools are ‘more important’ than pubs; but it also creates just another Covid-19 confusion. On minute the government shoves us into pubs and restaurants, the next they’re saying they might have to close again. A made-up mind would help.

Over on the BBC Today programme, health minister Edward Argar was wheeled out to defend Serco’s handling of the track and tracing contract. Full marks to presenter Nick Robinson for pointing out that before he became an MP, Argar was Serco’s PR chief.

Clearly, Argar should have interviewed himself on his own radio selfie to avoid such impertinence.

Elsewhere in his Today interview, Argar said: “ What you’re talking about is an extrapolation of a subset”.

If you know what the hell that means, you’re a lot smarter than me.

HOW about we crowd-fund a channel crossing for Nigel Farage, a one-way ticket to France in a leaky, dangerous dinghy lying low in the water and liable at any moment to tipping?

It would be a relief to be rid of him. The man’s a pestilent boil on the bum of British life.

I’ll broaden this out in a moment and step away from the shouty smirk on little legs (he’s five ft six and a bit, even shorter than me).

Before moving on, let’s just consider how Farage – sans Brexit Party, sans cushy rent-a-gob job at LBC – has taken to pretending he is a journalist ‘investigating’ the arrival of refugees on Twitter with ‘headlines’ boasting: “EXCLUSIVE FOOTAGE OF BEACH LANDING BY MIGRANTS.”

Without leaving my desk in the study, I can exclusively reveal that what this means is Farage stands on the beach and points his camera. Then fires off a tweet-rant.

Look, journalism has much to put up with nowadays, jobs going all over the inky shop, papers cutting back, TV companies emptying newsrooms. The last thing this trade needs now is a right-wing agitator pretending to be a journalist.

Farage is not a journalist, but he should be investigated by real ones. Who’s paying for these films; who else is behind the belligerent one-man band other than Farage on one-note trumpet and monotonous drum?

A sad truth in all this is that Farage has 1.6 million followers on Twitter – far more than many newspapers – so he has an audience for his noisy barrage of toxic tweets.

When tweeting about refugees/migrants trying to cross the channel, Farage pretends that he alone is valiantly ‘reporting’ on this matter. This isn’t remotely true as the crossings are widely reported elsewhere.

But as he has proved before, Farage is skilled at muck-spraying an issue until proper politicians – you know, the ones we actually elect – follow his lead.

Home Secretary Priti Patel is reported to want to send in the navy to repel the migrants.

Last week she told MPs this would be permitted under international maritime law. Not so according to the Ministry of Defence source who told PA Media the idea was “completely potty”.

Barrister Bella Sankey, director of Detention Action, described the plea to the navy as ‘hysterical’, ‘irresponsible’ and ‘unlawful’, adding that “no civilised country” could consider such action.

In a bizarre twist, Patel announced she has appointed Dan O’Mahoney as the UK’s Clandestine Channel Threat Commander. I can exclusively report today that soon she’ll be appointing an admiral to guard against the clandestine threat posed by mermaids.

Less satirically, although only just, Patel tweeted about taking back control of our borders – and said we needed the French to help us do that.

To which the French, possibly with a shrug, said: “Mais oui – but it’ll cost you £30m…”

There’s Brexit in a rotten, cracked nutshell: we are taking back control of our borders, but monsieur, I know we told you to piss off, but can you give us a hand?

Back to the channel where, thanks to the weather, an unusually high number of crossings have been attempted. Dangerous dinghy after dangerous dinghy contain people willing to risk their lives to smuggle themselves among us; women and children, pregnant women and children, men and women, people desperate enough to try anything to reach Britain.

People – not refugees, not migrants; people who see Britain as a fair-minded country of opportunity (and let’s pray it still is).

To those people I say, please come in. And ignore that man bellowing on the beach. He’s the worst of us. The rest of us aren’t that bad, or not most days.