Games Without Frontiers - Bordering on Insanity
Like many others I could not hide my despair and embarrassment when I heard Education Minister, Gavin Williamson interviewed by Nick Ferrari on LBC.
"Did the fact that we are in the process of and have Brexited; did that mean that we got the vaccination (sic) a world first ahead of the US and the EU?
Well, replied Williamson, beaming to camera.
"I just reckon we've got the very best people in this country, and we've got the best medical regulators, much better than the French have, much better than the Belgians have, much better than the Americans have, that does not suprise me at all, because we are a better country than every single one of them aren't we?"
This is, I should remind you, the Secretary of State for Education talking, not the Minister for Propaganda. Not even the Minister for Sport. Needless to say, Williamson did not answer the question. Maybe because the answer to the question is, No! Brexit had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, as June Raine, the Chief executive of the MHRA, later confirmed. Williamson's jocular jingoistic tirade was probably just a bad joke, and a failed attempt to confect an imaginary win for Brexit Britain. Instead of making a serious response to a global pandemic, he made it sound like he was commentating on a victory for GB in the European, It's a Knockout, Jeux Sans Frontiers, the 1970s game-show, much like the Great British Broadcasting institution, and serial sex-offender, Stuart Hall, used to do, only far less eloquently and in a whiny high-pitched voice.
One wonders why, while he was notching up victories against our European enemies, he did not big up the good news that the UK is winning the only game in European towns, namely dealing with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. On the number of Covid-related deaths, in spite of the UK's valiantly conservative estimate of the numbers, we are currently ahead of France, and streets ahead of Germany, and basically leading in Europe. Obviously, we must be a better country than all of them.
True there are some spoilsports out there who do not seem to appreciate our win in Great British Vaxof. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, claimed our victory was nothing to do with our plucky British derring-do, but cheating: "They kind of ran around the corner of the marathon and joined it in the last mile." Biden's pick for chief medical officer raised an eyebrow at the fact that the best of British Regulators "just took the data from the Pfizer company and instead of scrutinizing it really, really carefully, they said, 'OK, let's approve it, that's it.' And they went with it." Maybe he's a hard loser.
For Jeux Sans Frontiers read je sens frontiers. The smell and feel of borders currently pervades every aspect of UK politics. Priti Patel is busy ordering inanities - rounding up as many asylum seekers as possible and deporting them, possibly illegally, under existing EU legislation, legislation that will soon lapse, to be replaced by laws no doubt far more unjust and inhospitable. Brexit looks to be heading for a shambolic Deal or No Deal dénouement, with the latter increasingly likely outcome, now being dubbed an 'Australian Style' agreement, to make it look like a more creditable planned outcome than the economic and political clusterfuck of epic proportions it inevitably will be.
The idea that the Brexit bonus we were all promised is not £350 Million per week to fund the NHS, but that we can have our fishing waters back, is mathematically mad. It doesn't take an economist to point this out, but a prominent one did. And besides it's no point being able to catch lots of fish and then having no-one to sell them too. Meanwhile, Conservative ministers, who appear to tbe bordering on insanity, have confirmed that the Navy will be deployed to prevent European Boats fishing in our waters. For God's sake doesn't anyone remember the last time England took on the doughty Icelanders and lost? No not when they got knocked out of the Euros in 2016! The cod wars, when British fisherman protected by the Royal Navy got knocked out of Icelandic fishing waters. And this whole vollbeschissene Pelzmütze, to use the German technical term for Brexit, has apparently all come about, you will recall, in order that we can finally Take Back Control over our borders.
How, you might ask, is the business of taking back control of our borders going, now Brexit is upon us? Well, we've recently learned that lorry drivers will need a permit to enter, not France, but the county of Kent, where they will have to wait in huge lorry parks currently under construction, if they are ready in time, and if not, then on the M20. (Let's hope the lorry drivers all have a wee before they leave home.) And the latest of the Government’s genius ideas to deal with the inevitable waves of congestion at Dover and other main ports, is that they are going to introduce a “light-touch régime”, a policy that basically involves waving everything through and not checking: goods, vehicles, contraband, asylum seekers, economic migrants, the lot. So waiving border controls to allow the free movement of goods and people from Europe. Hang on! Wasn't the that what EU membership allowed in the first place. So it is Jeux Sans Frontiers: maybe the honorable member for South Staffordshire was not so far wrong after all.
Stuart Hall in Jeux Sans Frontiers