Working as a stand up comedian for over 15 years, I have studiously avoided having any political jokes in my set. I much prefer to talk about myself. ‘How is that possible?’ you may ask, unless you’ve met me, and then you’re probably not. After all, one of the main reasons I love stand up is that I am the centre of attention; I can talk about myself and if anyone interrupts I can tell them to shut the fuck up. If real life was like that I might even be in a relationship right now. However, this government is so bad it’s managed – what up till now I and most of my good friends would have thought was impossible – to make someone as self-centred as myself want to talk about other things.
As we move into what I hope are the final stages of the disaster movie we’re all living in called 2020, it’s hard to find words to describe what’s happening in the ‘supposed’ real world. I’m afraid we went through the looking glass months ago.
Recent events have reminded me of my days in the Soviet Union (yes, I’m that old). History may well be written by the victors but in the Soviet Union blatant untruths were unashamedly held up as facts.
When talking about the Second World War, the Soviet Union would date its active involvement from 1941, thereby handily avoiding any mention of what Soviet troops were up to in the killing fields of Poland from 1939-1941; and on no account did Trotsky have anything to do with the October Revolution.
As a student in Kiev, I remember watching a Soviet film about the Second World War where Stalin was portrayed as an intellectual, Churchill a trembling drunk (no comment) and every time Truman appeared the music gave the theme tune to Jaws a good run for its money.
At the time, the main Soviet newspapers were Izvestia and Pravda. The joke went that there was no news in Izvestia (news) and no truth in Pravda (truth). I’d be the first to admit that puns don’t translate but you get the gist.
Yes, Izvestia and Pravda would extoll the unmitigated success of the Soviet economy where production targets were invariably surpassed time after time. The thing is everyone knew it was bullshit: but the Soviet Union was a police state and dissenters tended to disappear so the authorities could lie with impunity. Plus ça change!
In Britain, a supposed democracy, where the press are supposed to hold truth to power, government ministers and our de facto Prime Minister, Dominic Cummings, lie to us with what seems similar abandon. It’s as if they no longer care that we know they are lying to us. Recently when a journalist, Emily Maitlis, did speak out, she was taken off air for apparently having the temerity to state actual facts.
The final nail in the truth coffin was when our (shadow) Prime Minister, Dominic Cummings, explained that he only drove for 60 miles to a local beauty spot on his wife’s birthday at the height of lockdown because he wanted to check his eyesight. I’ve read short stories by Kafka more realistic than that. Obviously, plebs, such as myself, without a car and, more to the point, without a spouse and a young child whose lives we can endanger on such a cavalier basis, whenever we need to check our eyesight, are forced to wait till the opticians reopen.
If that wasn’t bad enough a plethora of Tory ministers, were ordered by their leader (I obviously mean Cummings) to categorically state that he, Cummings, had done nothing wrong. This included the Attorney General, Suella Braverman, who, let it never be said, was ever in danger of putting the law over naked political interests throughout this whole sorry saga.
Then again, if you’ve spent the last couple of years bullshitting the British public as to how an economic block of 27 countries need us far more than we need them why stop now. But, as our Government is finding out to its cost: it’s far easier to lie about a supposed future of ‘sunlit uplands’ than it is to try and convince a nation of 66 million people that Cummings was right not to have gone to Specsavers.
Perhaps the peak moment in all this bullshit was when Michael Gove almost said he too had tested his eyesight by getting behind the wheel of his car – realised midway that this was too big a lie even for him – and refused to comment further on the grounds he wasn’t an expert in driving. Ironic, given that he was the very politician who suggested we should never listen to experts in the run up to the EU referendum.
https://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/nick-ferrari/michael-gove-driving-eyesight-cummings-baranard/
Personally, I suspect you don’t have to be Lewis Hamilton to appreciate that the one thing you don’t do if your eyesight is dodgy is drive. Days later, Michael Gove’s Twitter account inexplicably liked a Tweet featuring hard core porn. One wonders if that is the preferred medium for Gove to check his eyesight?
In a desperate attempt to move the story on, the Tory government is now lying about the science in order to loosen lockdown in England. The UK’s other nations are wisely ignoring the UK government’s lead while we poor sods in England are wishing we’d had the foresight to move to another home nation before lockdown set in.
If you’re not British, you may be wondering why the British Government would be so reckless with British lives. It’s simple: they’ve got away with killing over 60,000 of us so why stop now? Just fiddle the figures; lie about what’s happening; threaten NHS staff if they tell the truth; and don’t forget to use the pandemic as an excuse to sell off bits of the NHS to your mates. Talking of the kleptocracy that is now Britain, let’s not forget that Tory donors need the plebs back working for them. It’s hard to make your millions – on which you probably pay zero tax – when your staff on zero hour contracts can’t work for you.
This Tory government is to good governance what Harold Shipman was to the care of elderly patients. Though to be fair to Shipman (not something I thought I would ever say), he didn’t kill nearly as many people. It is somewhat ironic that a party that can’t stop banging on about the Second World War has killed more Brits than the Blitz.
Meanwhile in the States, George Floyd, is killed in broad daylight in the middle of town by a cop, Derek Chauvin, who knelt on his neck and choked the life out of him. In broad daylight? If this cop feels he is able to do that in broad daylight I shudder to think what he has done when his actions weren’t in plain sight: or the culture that allows someone to feel he can behave in such a way in the belief there would be no consequences to his actions.
At first, it looked as if Chauvin might be right when Hennepin County Attorney Michael Freeman told an unbelieving world that Chauvin would not face charges saying ‘But there is other evidence that does not support a criminal charge.’ Had he watched the video? Because by now the whole world had and we had seen exactly how George Floyd died.
Presumably under political pressure, Chauvin has now been charged with third-degree murder. In Minnesota this is defined as ‘without intent to effect the death of any person, caus[ing] the death of another by perpetrating an act eminently dangerous to others and evincing a depraved mind, without regard for human life’.
The official version – at least at the time of writing this – is by kneeling on Mr Floyd’s neck for the best part of 10 minutes, Chauvin didn’t bring about his death with the official autopsy report citing underlying health conditions and ‘potential intoxicants’. Firstly, the term ‘potential intoxicants’ seems to imply to me that the coroner didn’t find anything they could legally list on the autopsy as way of intoxicants but, by mentioning they were ‘potential intoxicants’, they indulge in a bit of victim blaming by muddying the water with the implication that Mr Floyd might have been on drugs and/or drink without being able to prove this was the case. More importantly, Mr Floyd could have had the constitution of an Olympic champion but I would defy anyone to survive having someone kneel on their neck for over 8 minutes. (Since writing this, a private post mortem has found that George Floyd died from asphyxia [lack of oxygen].)
One of my favourite quotes is by the South African anti-apartheid activist, Steve Biko: ‘The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed’. What is one of the most effective ways of keeping oppressed people in that state? Keeping them in fear for themselves and for their families. How do you do that? One way is to weaponise against them the very forces that are supposed to protect them.
What that video of George Floyd’s final moments neatly encapsulated was how little value Mr Floyd’s person and ultimately his life had for Chauvin and his colleagues. Moreover, by behaving in such a callous and brazen-faced way, Chauvin and his colleagues signalled to any person of colour watching that this could easily happen to you.
As I admitted at the start of this blog, I’m primarily a comic and a self-centred one at that. I’m no expert on the American legal system (surprise, surprise) but if you want an insight into its inner workings I suggest you watch 13th on Netflix or track down Reggie Yates’ insightful documentary on Race Riots USA.
Below is a clip from said documentary. I recommend you watch it. Sometimes there really are no words.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p033dypl
