Summer of Discontent

(Read on, or view here: https://youtu.be/rK7EAliLOiQ )

Pretty much everywhere the wheels look like they’re coming off. Doctors here have locked horns with the government over their NHS pay claim, while medics in Gaza are nearly as malnourished as the starving kids they’re treating. And racist riots across Britain are a very real threat, fuelled by lies put out by fascist groupings. Still, at least the man who weaponised the term ‘fake news’ is having a lovely time on the links.

If you fancy a crime spree in Scotland, now’s the time for it. The massive shield round The Donald during the so-called ‘informal’ visit to his golf courses has hoovered up half the police force.

That’s on top of his own security chappies, who’ve brought so much muscular hardware that the operation almost looks like a dry run for annexing Greenland or Canada. Or both.

Whether it’ll also protect him from the gathering storm over his ties with the deceased paedophile Jeffrey Epstein is, however, open to debate.

Whatevs, he’s so proud of his dear old Scottish mom that you half expect him to give orange a break for once and spray his face tartan instead. As comic music hall acts go, he’s hard to beat.

Nonetheless, our Prime Minister has no choice but to tiptoe round him, as Trump’s tribe is refusing to join the international chorus of abhorrence at the Israeli military’s savagery in Gaza.

Sir Keir’s under mounting pressure from within the Labour party to do more than just grumble about what’s looking increasingly like a policy of extermination by starvation of the civilian population.

But if he does echo the French President’s symbolic but potent gesture of solidarity with the victims, and formally recognises the Palestinian state, the Yankee Prez will be ever so cross with him.

He could even, as a punishment, threaten to whack taxes back up on British exports to his great big beautiful country.

That’d certainly be one in the eye for Starmer when he’s just sorted his big deal trade deal with India. He’s ever so proud of it, even though it’s barely a tickle next to the commercial hammer blow of Brexit.

Credit where it’s due, however. He has made a fair fist of rebuilding bits of bridges smashed in Boris Johnson’s up-yours total severance of ties with our biggest business partner. But there’s helluva way to go yet.

And he’ll be scrabbling for every penny as he and Chancellor Rachel Reeves spend half of parliament’s six-week holiday trying to figure out what in god’s name to put in the autumn budget.

As she’s still ruling out raising the taxes that bring in two-thirds of the dosh, that’s to say income tax, National Insurance on employees and VAT, she’s stuck with making enemies at every turn.

Think winter fuel allowances, welfare cuts, and, fast-approaching, benefits for families with more than a couple of kids.

And here ministers are stuck in a lose-lose situation. Stick by your guns and you’re hated. Backtrack and they’ll come back for more.

Thus the doom loop looms. Nearly all official figures tell the same gloomy story, that the British economy is in bad shape, and likely to stay that way without the growth that Starmer’s both banking on and praying for.

Talk about Charles Dickens’ character Wilkins Micawber: ‘Something will turn up.’ The worst of it being that a something that has already turned up is Russian aggression.

A very nasty turn that, as, coupled with the Trump-inspired flakiness of once rock-solid allies across the Atlantic, it’ll mean doubling defence spending in the next ten years. A full frontal switch from welfare to warfare.

The new hard left party founded last week by one-time Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn says this is all wrong. And a new poll gives him a less unfavourable rating than Starmer.

But he and his fellow founder Zarah Sultana haven’t even managed to agree on what to call themselves yet. The People’s Front of Judea? Judean People’s Front? Maybe best not hold your breath.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, there has been a sharp intake of breath by the Health Secretary Wes Streeting at the junior now restyled resident doctors’ pay claim.

They’re after a twenty-nine per cent rise, even though their money’s already been upped by that amount in the last three years.

Having tried to be understanding about it, in the hope that their threatened five-day strike would be called off at the last minute, Streeting is now not so much gasping as raging that it’s gone ahead anyway.

He’s sticking by his insistence that his offer, of less than one-fifth of what they’re demanding, is all they’re going to get. And what’s more they won’t be able to make up for lost wages with overtime shifts.

Polls show dwindling public support for the doctors’ action. But if horror stories emerge about conditions in skeleton-staffed A and E departments the government will soon be in trouble for not sorting it.

All this is grist to the mill spinning away in Nigel Farage’s head. And, as surveys suggest his Reform party’s way out in front of Labour as well as the Tories, he claims to have an answer for everything.

Not to say he won’t keep his distance if anti-migrant demonstrators get rough, even though most of his supporters will be egging them on.

But though he poo poos any suggestion that he’d dismantle the NHS he certainly does want to shake it to its core. Same applies to the current policing and criminal justice system.

Apart from putting lots of beefy bobbies on the streets, to scare the pants off naughty people, thus cutting crime by half, he plans to get the army to knock up loads of prefab prisons so old lags won’t need to be let out early.

He’s also going to deport violent criminals, maybe to El Salvador. And, back on the poo poo front, he’ll renationalise half the water industry. Nice idea, shame it’d come with a fifty-billion quid price tag.

Shame too that, when asked by hacks where he’d find the money, he had to confess he’d no idea. Oh, and btw, nor had he checked with anybody in El Salvador how they feel about taking in stinky Brits.

All of which puts the man who could yet be our next Prime Minister up there with a winged wonder named Rocco.

Like most African Grey parrots, he’s dead clever, and a great talker. Gifts that he put to good use when a member of the staff at the UK-based National Animal Welfare Trust adopted him.

At this kindly person’s home he was particularly struck by the Alexa smart speaker, and what a handy piece of kit it was.

In no time he got the hang of saying ‘Alexa, order …’ and tacking on words like ‘watermelons,’ and ‘strawberries,’ and ‘ice cream.’ Clearly his faves.

Annoyingly, from his point of view, the orders don’t get processed because the thing isn’t hooked up to a payment method.

You spotting the parallel here? All very well saying what you want, actually getting it may be just for the birds.