And now for something completely different

It’s difficult – in these strange times – to retain any sensible perspective upon what’s going on in the world.

Here I’m not referring to “fake news” and/or the apparently ever-increasing phenomenon in which people begin to retreat behind extreme trenchant viewpoints and then take strong exception to anyone who is less than in 100% agreement with them or, far worse, actually dares to hold a contrary opinion.

As I sit contemplating my plate of breakfast porridge this morning I have learned from the internet that those still involved in the supposedly “crucial for the future of the world” COP26 Conference in Glasgow – and yes, it was supposed to have ended yesterday – are staggering their deliberations on into the weekend because (perhaps inevitably), after what seems like a month’s worth of hot-air generation and bold empty promises from all concerned, it has transpired that nobody who actually matters in geo-politics can agree on anything.

Well, certainly anything which is going to have a potentially negative or inconvenient effect upon their own economies and/or populations.

Quelle surprise!

Meanwhile, Boris – host of COP26 – our “esteemed” Prime Minister and now temporarily Prime Cheerleader for the “Something Must Be Done” climate-change-worriers campaign – is in danger of sinking below the tsunami-high tide of doo-doo lapping up outside the front door of Number 10 as successive (avoidable but exceedingly embarrassing) crises hit the headlines, not least the latest “Tory Sleaze” revelations involving certain MPs either making tens – if not hundreds – of thousands of pounds per annum from “second jobs” and what looks suspiciously like peerages being doled out in return for donations to the Tory Party coffers, the current alleged “going rate” being £3 million a pop.

In a very real and alarming sense our Boris seems to have been hewn from the same block of stupidity that former US President Donald Trump long ago invented and copyrighted as his own.

For, in addition to the above – some of which arguably he could do nothing about – barely a day goes by without Boris causing other crises of his own making that – in former times – each on their own might have brought any British Prime Minister worth his or her salt to the brink of enforced resignation from power.

Either Boris comes out with something inherently controversial and/or so obviously at odds with rational thought or any semblance of human decency – or (alternatively) something vaguely catastrophic happens or emerges as a matter of the moment for urgent discussion and he immediately shoots from the hip and in doing so causes a reaction of general outrage among opposition politicians, public and pundits alike.

The trouble is that we have now gone well beyond the point at which any of this seems to matter.

It’s almost the case that, for example, if today Boris should cause a crisis rating only 6 out of 10 (with total extinction of the human race being a 10) we punters sitting on the upper deck of the proverbial Clapham omnibus would breathe a sigh of relief on the basis that it at least it wasn’t a 7 or an 8.

I’m not going to mention the incident hitting the news bulletins yesterday in which Labour and SNP members of parliament apparently became blind drunk on a supposedly important “fact finding” trip courtesy of the Ministry of Defence to Gibraltar.

Or indeed the latest revelations being produced in the media about MPs in all parties claiming rental allowances on properties they have moved into whilst renting out their homes for tidy sums.