Daily Mail, Tuesday, July 30, 2019 Page 21ITTLEJOHN
[email protected]PLanS to recruit
20,000 extra coppers
may be scuppered by the
fact there aren’t enough
police stations to go round
these days. Modern Plod
need large lockers to store
all their fancy equipment.
Space is in short supply.
Your average bobby has
stab vests, body cameras,
telescopic truncheons, two-
way radios, laptops,
protein bars, you name it.
We’ve come a long way
from the days when all adetective needed was a
shooter, half a bottle of
scotch and a bacon banjo
from the canteen.
Or as Jack regan, in the
Sweeney, instructed his
new driver: ‘i want the
glove compartment filled
with Mars bars, Wine Gums
and Jelly Babies, and ham
sandwiches, the sort that
come in cellophane
packets, and sausage rolls
— but no potato crisps,
they interfere with
transmission.’S
eems like I’m not the only
one who doesn’t do honey-
moon periods. Project Fear
hasn’t missed a beat since
Boris got the job.
Yesterday’s World At One on Radio 4
was a collector’s item, a veritable
cornucopia of scare stories ‘R’ Us.
Not since miserablist Leonard Cohen’s
first album has there been a more
depressing 40-odd minutes of music to
slash your wrists by.
No turn was unstoned in the producers’
efforts to put the fear of God into us.
They even managed to track down a
professor in Australia, of all places, to
warn that No Deal Boris was passing a
death sentence on what remains of the
British car industry. This was predicated
upon Vauxhall saying it might have to
reconsider plans to build a new model
at ellesmere Port.
Now there’s a surprise. multinational
motor manufacturers never miss a trick
when it comes to putting the squeeze
on governments for tax-breaks, regional
development grants and so forth.
Given that Boris is already planning to
bribe the North with a tsunami of public
money, it wasn’t necessary.
merseyside can expect a large bung
from the Treasury, especially with lone
scouse Tory esther mcVey in the
Cabinet, and Vauxhall will almost
certainly be one of the beneficiaries.
T
he truth of the matter is that,
Brexit or not, the car industry
is in far better shape than any
time in history, including
when I covered it in the seventies and
British Leyland was a byword for
clapped-out nationalisation and
industrial anarchy.
still, why let the facts get in the
way of a good horror story?
This latest doomsday bulletin
from Project Fear was as
predictable as the Confederation
of British Industry going into full
Grim Reaper mode at the prospect
of Boris taking us out of the eU
without a ‘deal’.
even so, the CBI was forced to
admit that other european
countries were less well prepared
than Britain for that increasingly
likely eventuality. Given that
this corporatist, fanatically
pro-eU organisation has been
spectacularly wrong on just about
everything I can remember, this
was a rare confession that our
so-called european ‘partners’ have
just as much, if not more, to lose
than we do.
The World At sixes And
sevens then wheeled on the pro-
Remain Labour mP for ellesmere
Port, where 58 per cent of his
constituents voted Leave.
Prime minister Johnson wasn’t
just the nemesis of Vauxhall, he
wailed, he was going to close down
British manufacturing industry
entirely. Don’t these people ever
take a day off?
As Boris embarks on his summerof sorcery, his natural enemies are
cranking up their opposition to a
No Deal departure. hilariously, the
Guardian warned yesterday of an
impending ‘No Deal Brexit
emergency’, which would leave
public spending plans ‘in tatters’.
hang on a minute. As part of
Boris’s ‘love bomb’ to Britain, he
intends to turn on the spending
taps, splashing out on everything
from high-speed rail to social care
and schools.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I
always thought the Guardian was
in favour of more public spending.
Apparently not, if it’s promotedby a pro-Brexit Tory Pm. (mind
you, ‘emergency’ is the Left’s
favourite new word. see also
‘^ climate emergency’, what we used
to call summer.)
The Grauniad furthermore
quoted some quango I’ve never
heard of accusing Boris of
planning to destroy the Union.
They obviously hadn’t noticed
that Johnson was in scotland
yesterday, sucking up to Wee
Burney and Ruth Davidson, and
is making whistle-stop visits to
Wales and Northern Ireland.
he’s also going to bombard every
home in Britain with a leafletspelling out the benefits of Brexit
— in stark contrast to the defeatist
drivel churned out by the Vichy
government presided over for
three dismal years by mother
Theresa and spread Fear Phil.
maybe he could revive the spirit
of World War II and send a refur-
bished fleet of Lancaster bombers
to drop the leaflets from 25,000ft
— rather as the RAF did over
Germany before hostilities turned
seriously grumpy. That would
probably appeal to Boris’s
Churchillian sense of destiny.
Actually, yesterday’s World At
One managed to draw not a World
War II but a Cold War analogy
between a Boris Brexit and a
nuclear winter.
An author who writes about the
advertising industry explained
that the leaflets the new Govern-
ment would be sending out may
be reminiscent of the Cold War
‘protect and survive’ propaganda,
giving advice on what to do in the
event of a nuclear holocaust.
everybody hide!
I’m assuming this was tongue in
cheek, but with Project Fear you
never know. elsewhere yesterday,
it threw up a prediction that every
farmer in Britain would go
bankrupt if a No Deal Brexit goes
ahead — despite assurances to the
contrary from michael Gove.
At this rate, it’s a small step from
agricultural Armageddon and
manufacturing devastation to
nuclear annihilation.
And on that bombshell, as
Clarkson likes to say, enough Brexit
already. maybe a honeymoon period
isn’t such a bad thing after all.ONE of the consistent themes of this column is
that no good ever comes of fancy dress. How
many times over the years have I brought you
news of fights between everyone from
superheroes and Elvis impersonators to
Where’s Wally wannabes?
Memorable incidents have featured drunken
Star Wars warriors brawling with Smurfs and
Disney characters. More often than not, Oompa
Loompas are involved. Mostly these mass
brawls happen at railway stations, at comic
book conventions and at chucking out time on
provincial High Streets. But never before atsea. Still, it was no surprise to learn violence
had broken out on an all-you-can-drink cruise
ship off the coast of Norway. Fighting erupted
when passengers wearing black tie and waving
Union flags squared up to a man dressed as a
clown. (Incidentally, who packs a clown suit for
a booze cruise round the fjords?)
A huge fight ensued. Furniture and plates
were used as weapons and there was ‘blood
everywhere’, according to eye-witnesses.
It was reported that ‘large amounts of alcohol
had been taken’. Surely not.
Bring on the Oompa Loompas!LABOUR’S disgusting, patronising condemnation of the
Conservatives’ ‘Uncle Tom’ tendency in the new Cabinet
is nothing new. The Left have always thought that they
should own the votes and loyalty of black and minority
ethnic citizens (BAME) — not just here, but the United
States, too.
Welfare programmes and social housing are designed
deliberately to keep people in their place, beholden to
their benevolent betters.
Randy Newman nailed it as long ago as 1974 in his
biting satirical song Rednecks, which you’ll never hear
on the radio because of its repeated use of the unsa-voury n-word. It centred on Northern ‘liberals’ sneer-
ing at racist Southerners and boasting about how they
had freed African Americans from their slavery chains.
Yes, Newman wrote, they’re ‘free to be put in a cage in
Harlem in New York City’ and ‘free to be put in a cage
on the South Side of Chicago, and the West Side.. .’
going on to list notorious U.S. welfare ghettoes.
That’s how the Labour Left think of black and ethnic
minority citizens in Britain. They despise as traitors
anyone of immigrant heritage who would ever vote
Tory, let alone serve in a Conservative government.
They’re as racist in their own way as any Redneck.LIKE many of
you, I
basked in
the nostalgic
glow of the
pictures of
eggs frying
on the pave-
ment during the heatwave.
These were a Fleet Street
stock in trade when I was a
paperboy, more than 50
years ago. Of course, that
was before global warming
had been invented.We’ll keep the Redneck flag flying here
Doesn’t Project Fear
ever take a day off?