An address to the British People by the Prime Minister, the Rt Honourable Boris Johnson MP, PC, VD, FOS
Good evening,
I want to talk to you tonight about the way your Government plans to move smoothly onto the next stage in this, the continuing war against Covid19 – a killer more deadly than even the Novochok germ war launched against Britain by Vladimir Rasputin during my period as Foreign Secrtary.
Unfortunately, I can’t do that because our key adviser Professor Nihil Fergusums was caught knocking up some tart in his lockdown and has thus resigned to spend more time with his donations and to be perfectly frank, the rest of us haven’t a clue how to relax a lockdown without it all turning into the most appalling mess.
Nevertheless, our legendary British determination and obedience has got us a long way down the road to New Normaland despite the anarchic advice we handed out, so with a bit of luck we can muddle through until eventually there are bluebirds over the White Cliffs of Dover once more, just you wait and see.
Now, this is a long and winding mountain road in thick fog with many a twist and turn along the way, and so – trusting as ever in our marvellous NHS frontline heroes and heroines to guide us back into the sunny uplands – I propose to give you a rough idea of how events are going to take us all by surprise in the coming months and perhaps even years.
The Battle of Lockdown is almost over; we fully expect what’s coming down the road to go down in history, and be downhill all the way as we climb every mountain in this, our fight for survival in the face of a virus that will kill us all in the end unless we submit to vaccination in a spirit of goodwill and bad faith.
And so, onto the next stage….
Countdown
This will be a necessary interregnum following the relaxation of Lockdown, during which we will conduct a Countdown to the next thing we’re going to do by continuing our daily briefings in the hope of something turning up in the data that suggests we’re on the right track and not steering too close to the rocks.
When that happens, you will be the first to know….
Touchdown
……is the period that will begin when the experts tell us we’ve made a safe landing and can thus reverse social distancing in an orderly manner, the nature of which will gradually become clear through a process of media-controlled post-rationalisation.
It is of course possible that some form of Covid19 mutation or ‘second wave’ might appear, and if it does then of course, the only responsible thing for us to effect will be a Clampdown – perhaps even a Crackdown – until we are back in Lockdown.
At this point, the chances are we’ll appoint a Virus Tsar and that will probably be my close friend and colleague Sir Mark Sednowt who is running everything else already anyway.
More likely, however, is that the dictates of the economy will require us to steer steadily through the choppy waters and onto the next signpost…
Climbdown
….which is where we restart the process of talking at close quarters rather than yelling at each other from eight feet away, and discover that the death rate continues to go down at an even faster rate than UK gdp.
During this tricky time, we expect a lot of impertinent questions to be asked about just how deadly Covid19 really was, and I cannot stress enough the need for all socially responsible British people to come to our aid at this point by shutting up these extreme, fringe online media elements who deny the Holocaust ever happened and can’t grasp that the only good Russian is a dead one.
I can promise you that my hand will be firm on the tiller: we cannot have the progress we’ve made ruined by subversive bloggers, and I shall not hesitate to bring forward legislation to abolish such people, especially if the Focus Groups say that would be popular.
This is not to say that we will eschew the process of investigating rigorously the advice we were given by experts. Mistakes have been made, but lessons have been learned and believe me – if there are patsies out there, they shall be blamed.
Your government – and it truly is your government, because you voted us in, so it’s your fault at the end of the day – will not shirk from its duty to get the economy back on its feet – as opposed to on its uppers – as we approach….
Meltdown
….in the shape of the entire financial services sector turning to shit around the world just at the time when the Treasury needs a lot of money we don’t have to bail out all those people rendered unemployed by the prophecies of Professor Fiddlesums.
Happily, I am pleased to note that Andrew Bailey, the new Bank of England governor, says the economy will bounce back strongly by 2021 without sustaining any significant and persistent damage – which just goes to show how robust our economy is in that it can take on board the worst recession in 300 years without going bust and talking of busts, there’s a rather flighty young piece working at Number Ten brought in by Dom Cummings: she seems up for it but that’s none of your business and, as your Prime Minister, I remain utterly focused on the job. To be done, as it were.
Of course, I cannot deny that there are strong headwinds against us in this our finest hour as a result of the gratuitous release of this incomparable Black Death by the forces of quintessential evil in Beijing. I have been totally consistent in my political career in never apologising for the behaviour of bankers and bourses, without whose ability to create wealth from bogroll we would all be up a gum tree and no mistake. It is this neoliberal creativity that the Yellow Peril wants to bring to its knees….a reality I grasped while crawling up their arses during my time at the Foreign Office.
The truth is that everything was looking rosey until Xi Jinping and his Commie cohorts unleashed their latest War Germ on us all. But in these islands, we shall not waver in the face of attempts at mass genocide. Which is why – if their dastardly plans do result in meltdown – we shall unflinchingly move on to…..
Shakedown.
I’m not going to try and fool you here. If the worst comes to the worst, then we have to face the fact that some of us are going to lose our assets in a tragic but unavoidable manner. As my soulmate and clear-thinking Frogette ECB boss Christine Lagarde has been saying for some time now, it is better to have a job than an expensive house that involves tedious renovation and garden maintenance – plus the complication of investments that take up so much of one’s time.
And this is really what we’re talking about here: a national campaign to save the jobs of 72 million people by levying – with only exceptional exception – a 10% asset tax across the board. This is a war for human survival against germs; and in wars, the People must expect to make sacrifices.
I therefore advise all of you most strongly, once the lockdown is relaxed and all shops reopen, to spend every liquid penny you have in a patriotic attempt to kickstart the economy, bearing in mind that by the time all the perfectly advisable expansionist leveraging has been called in, Fiat Money will be worthless anyway. It is, after all, time to move on from the wasteful and somewhat neolithic age of paper money to the new frontier of electronic money….just as we are converting to electric cars. The Fiat Money may well have been Car of the Year in 1988, but if there is one good thing that Covid19 has done, it is to make us face the future without fear. Or indeed, money.
Now I realise perfectly well that the more selfish of our citizens will balk at this idea. But some of you will recall that, while Mayor of this our fine City of London, I had the foresight to invest in vast stockpiles of high-pressure water hoses, rubber bullets, police riot hardware and so forth in order to deal firmly with…
Showdown
…when it finally dawns on the Silent Majority that silence is golden, but of little use if we, your Masters, control the price of gold.
Here again – as I did unflinchingly during the darkest hours of Coronavirus calumny – I must stress that it is your civic duty not to resist when a burly policeman kicks in the front door, turns you upside down and shakes like billy-o until the last coinage emerges from your pockets: unpleasant as it may seem, he is doing it for your own protection and the future of your grandchildren whom we would be forced to sell into Ottoman slavery were we unable to call upon your infinite generosity.
But as I say, there will be those too selfish to recognise the Common Good, and so reluctantly we shall be forced to bring before Parliament an Enabling Bill.
This has been drawn up by Sir Mark Swilled and, if necessary, will pass into Law as the It is Illegal Act, 2020.
Thank you all for tuning in tonight, and I leave you to consider this important maxim:
“We are all in this together, and only your fortitude, sacrifice and distraction will see us through”
The Slog 