satire – Philip Letts

Who’s Leading Us Out Of The Coronavirus Mess?

26th May 202026th May 2020 by lettsgroup

It seems as though every country is currently exiting Corona lockdown in some form or another. For Europe and the US this has come in the nick of time for the annual beach binge as the end of May marks the beginning of summer.

Huge bets have been staked on exit directives holding up and people acting responsibly. ‘Social distancing has to be maintained’ is the new battle cry for 21st Century leaders and their weary law enforcers. Have they seen how packed some of these beaches have gotten? Mind you, the strategy might work, after all who wants to get too close to sweaty, dripping, half baked sun worshipers on New Jersey board walks.

Our leaders are clearly frayed and fatigued from the lockdown stage of the battle against Covid-19 but they would do well to pace themselves as the next phase of the war could prove even more challenging. First they have to successfully reopen without second waves of the pandemic and, talking about waves, they need to get football back on tap. Yep, we need footie like we dream of an ice cold Corona. And let’s face it, leaders need to find some popular(ist) stuff to help their depressed and weary citizens find joy and fun and all things Dom in the spirit of holiday entertainment (not).

But, enough of us lowly citizens. How are our poor leaders faring? I mean, why care about ourselves when we could be mostly concerned about them? Like a puppy dog excitedly chasing a toilet roll after it’s somewhat benevolent owner.

It seems that world leaders wellbeing falls into one of two camps. They’re either female, full of love and compassion and generally in the glow so doing quite well or their male, a bit petulant, slow in and perhaps a little rapido pulling out so generally red faced with frustration. What’s new?

If you were to paint a stark, simplistic picture of leadership types in modern germ warfare you would have to say that women seem to come out on top. And tippy top of the ‘Hottest Tackler of Corona 2020’ has to be New Zealand, Taiwan and Germany – all led by women.

Bottom of the rankings sit USA, Brazil, Russia and the UK all run by men. And, perhaps I should add, a certain kind of man, or is it two in the UK. One who perhaps enjoys their own company more than any other, that find the image of themselves in that mirror more compelling than Mona Lisa or Madonna or Kim just not Kim Yong Ding Dong. Leaders that need golf and shooting and photoshopped jogging pants so long as it’s all in the name of good photo opps.

They have children, sometimes on purpose and mostly after a bender, which is why they can’t seem to remember where they’ve all gotten to, so they embrace us citizens as though we’re their children presumably because it’s easier than tracking down the real ones. They’re the master of the mass hug. You know like Joaquin Pheonix in Gladiator or the slightly confused kid in the horror film that accidentally squished the puppy he so lovingly held. Hopefully not the same one chasing the toilet roll.

When the macho leaders kids, er citizens, get caught misbehaving they’re naturally bounced off to boarding school or Coventry or fruit picking duties cos apparently no one else can do it. They sack ministers as fast as Astra Zeneca presells futures on vaccines, unless, of course, you’re Bozzer for Dom like Russia with Love. They take question time like a three year old takes a telling off – not particularly well.

And when it all comes crashing down – which in the end it always does and their self imposed satire comes to an end – they’ll want us to love them even more and will not understand (with a stamping foot) why we might not want them around anymore. Like that mirror in Dorian Grey; why, oh why, do we smash them away.

Mind you there might be another way. There might be an exit plan for these poor overworked neo-bunnies. There could be a way through this Corona mess. They just need to get that gender transitioning operation and come back as Jacinda Ardern.

In the meantime I’ll dream of New Zealand. More Jacinda with Love than Russia with Love.

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Imagine a Post Coronavirus World led by Big Tech

13th May 202025th Jun 2020 by lettsgroup

The poster boy of Covid-19 lockdown, governor Andrew Cuomo of New York, has had an epiphany about how to reimagine New York post Coronavirus. A new post pandemic vision for economic and social reconstruction that we should all pay attention to.

His epiphany (not Tiphany – go read the Sun for that) is, though, less new green deal and more new big tech (side) deal so it looks like the only green stuff floating around New York’s gonna be the greenbacks heading for Bill Gates.

You see, what Corona has taught Cuomo is that human contact is a bit passe and robots are the new cool. After all, how many driverless cars caught the virus? And how many bats and pangolins have you seen infecting Amazon’s little robots stacking boxes in the warehouse?

In a flashdrive of digi-genius Andy’s decided that teacherless schools, nurseries and colleges alongside doctorless hospitals, pharmacistless pharmacies (try saying that after a few drinks) and general peopleless everything (check Amazon) is the way to go. His endless drive to win Governor of the Planet 2020 means he’s gonna do everything possible to hit the ultimate Corona target of zero infections, hospitalizations and deaths by taking the human part right out of the equation.

The government of New York’s takeaway (proving they too can do it better than any restaurant) is that the way to hit this target is to keep EVERYONE at home for ever and to invest in twitter cos they just announced that their workers can work from home ‘for ever’ which means they must also have discovered a vaccine against death.

And what twitter has taught them is that everyone in New York should now work, shop, exercise, eat, prey and make love – yep, you guessed it, at home. Period. Until death do us part. After all, there’s a nifty little Microsoft, Google or Facebook for everything else.

Wanna go to a park? Zoom up your local friggin park warden. Wanna visit the museum? Hit up Google Arts and Culture. Wanna date? May as well do the whole thing online until there’s a robot for that. Want privacy? How very 90’s of you. And wanna do some gardening? Come on! There’s astro turf for that.

Cuomo’s new big tech wheeze will work right up until the day that he wakes up, smells the coffee and realises that the good ol days of the Coronavirus might have been a walk in the virtual park compared to a cyber virus that crashes a delivery drone up his ass, turns Bezos’ robots into a bunch of smart little organised droids who want a tonne more money for taking over humankind and has robo cops out robbing every bank in New York at the click of a Tesla chopper.

So Andy, next time you wanna reinvent your planet, maybe let Dave-boy-Attenborough bend your ear away from Schmidt-I-promise-I’m-not-a-plant-sent-by-Google-or-is-it-Alphabet-now and play it safe. Stick with rewilding Central Park. Just make sure to keep the bat’s and pangolins at bay.

When a Plan Means – a Plan!

11th May 202013th May 2020 by lettsgroup

There used to be a time when a plan meant exactly that – a Plan. Mind you, it’s not very often that we expect such lowly things of politicians. After all, you could reason that if you want a friggin plan then go elect a project manager or planning manager (God forbid) not a lawmaker or PR luvvie or Donald Trump.

The problem, politicians might argue, is not their planning skills which are clearly as visible as the Corona itself – the problem is Coronavirus. You see, if Covid (the barbarian) hadn’t come along and spoilt their party/credibility/skill-at-pretending-to-be-at-work/ability-not-to-give-a-damn-about-anyone-else none of us would have had to experience the so called planning skills in the elusive chase for an exit to lockdown.

But, you see, every plan has a flaw. Germany’s flaw was opening up a little too gingerly in the name of Mercedes and Benz only to see their R rate bounce back as quickly as a little sports car goes nought to sixty. China’s flaw is a city on the border with Russia that keeps flaring up with the Corona like a kid with measles. So where’s Trumps Wall when you need one? Americas flaw in the Donnie plan is that no one seems to pay the slightest bit of attention to it or him or twitter any longer – not even him or he’d learn to spell at least. And who said the wild west was lost? Even South Korea’s much lauded planning was thrown wide open by a few dudes partying their socks off and swapping saliva like betting slips at a live market cock fight in Seouls slinky night spots. And, last but by no means least, it seems the UK’s flashing flaw in the plan is, well, Bozzer.

You see, while we were probably all a little astounded at the opaque nature of most leaders lockdown exit plans it seems that the UK set a new record for coming up with the planets most anticipated, most pre-trumpeted plan ever that, like the best of the best magic tricks, once revealed proved as solid as thin air and as present as a rabbit exiting the hat. The greatest PR trick of all was sold to the great British public – presenting a PR coup of a plan that had absolutely no plan whatsoever. Its kinda genius really.

It would be the equivalent of Churchill announcing that after many months of enduring the WW2 blitz and rationing and lights off at night we could all of a sudden go out a bit more to exercise so long as we stay alert, which would presumably be a motivational training tip to keep us exercising at a faster rate for fear of German invaders pouncing from behind park benches. That way we would stay warmer and require less heating while we stay at home, to save lives, to figure out how to invent the NHS! Cos apparently the best time to build a start-up is in the middle of a crisis.

But, Winnie would then tell us, no worries, because after this blitz dodging phase we should hopefully be OK and so at some other point we might think about venturing back out onto those Normandy beaches to meet up with some other soldiers so long as it’s one at a time and we’re careful who we bring back on the boats unless of course they’re French because apparently they’re great lovers and they cook really well. Both handy traits after you’ve been ravaged by the visible enemy in a murky blue suit and enjoyed quite a few lonely weeks on the Dunkirk beaches.

And after we somehow miraculously win the war thanks to absolutely no planning whatsoever but some really great cigar toting TV appearances (from Winnie) we will probably be able to open everything up again including the hospitality sector because we’ll have to be as hospitable as possible to thank all those people from all those other countries for beating back the marauding, non invisible Nazi folk. Because they will have had a plan (to win the war) (we hope) and so will be much more likely to find us with a map than the other way around. Plus, why wouldn’t they all want to travel to the populist, er popular UK for the weather, beaches and pubs. Well, at least the pubs.

And like that would have been the exact best way to lose WW2 it looks like this latest lack of an exit plan might prove to be the exact best way to lose to Corona. Mind you, at least we’ll all get to stay in and watch the football season restart assuming we can still afford the Sky TV box or they figure out that nationalising the premier league is the plan to beat all plans.

Maybe I’ll just escape to France.

Why are CEO’s No Longer Trusted?

6th May 20206th May 2020 by lettsgroup

I read a survey recently which stated that since the Coronavirus crisis hit, CEO’s trust ratings have plummeted. Mind you, have you met Dave from Tesco? Yet, terrifyingly enough, just a few months ago the same survey revealed that companies were more trusted than politicians (kind of a low bar) and the media (kinda no bar).

It seems that Coronavirus exposes people to a special little nano virus that not only attacks our lungs but also forces us to reveal who we really are. More warts than all. Politicians, of course, become total f***whits, while the media reminds us of the meaning of vanity (I mean who in friggs name stays on air from home all red faced and bleary eyed while self isolating with the Corona) and, it seems, CEO’s are all about optimising….., well, really just one thing – their bank balance.

Sadly neoliberalism created this convenient scam which makes it legit for EVERY CEO to be focused on one thing and one thing only – making them the money. Yep, neoliberal for ‘SHOW ME THE MONEEEEEYYY!!’. Placing the passion for great products, customer service and inventions on the scrap heap named Wall Street – all too easily bus chucked in the name of Warren stiffin Buffett. And think about it, do you really want to be Warren? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean his cash which is handy for Bill and Melinda, I mean him? Think about it.

Maybe it no longer needs to be that way. Maybe Corona won’t just kill all of us, more importantly it will kill neoliberalism. It’ll nuke the greedy ass CEO. Make a Dodo of Warren. Still wanna be Warren?

And maybe then we’ll be clear to start again, to find a post capitalist model where every CEO follows a new path, a better path, you know, where they become Jacinda Ardern. And more than that maybe the new new CEO will be a fusion of Jacinda, Trevor Noah and James-I’ll-drive-you-anywhere-so-long-as-you-crack-out-some-nice-ass-tune-Corden all mixed up with a smidgen of Charlie Chaplin. Empathy and ethics combined with humour and slap stick. With more slap than stick and no slap and tickle cos that’d be more like Harvey boy Weinstein and look how it worked out for him.

Maybe the new CEO school should teach leaders that so long as they always put people first then profits will follow. No longer profits first in the vain hope that people might follow. And putting people first means making them laugh, or cry, or just talk. You know like Oprah did. Where CEO’s leave the finances to finance people, the data science to data scientists, leave the engineering to engineers, the marketing to marketers, the backhanders to politicians and just focus on the people. Actually, even more than that, by treating customers and employees as ACTUAL people. And treating them like people means treating them like a close friend, a bestie (just not in the Harvey Weinstein kinda way).

Where it’s the done thing to treat colleagues as actual, real life friends. Where you get your advice from Joey or Rachel instead of McKinsey or Bain and where not everything is in the name of business but where it’s about the mates (again, just not in a Harvey Weinstein kinda way). Where the new business hipsters are about making the friends to make money and I don’t mean a new season of Friends though that would be nice too.

Imagine if reopening post Covid-19 lockdown meant fewer employees dragged into shitty offices, wharehouses, factories or foosball halls (thanks Google). Where the office politics gets kicked into touch. Where Jerry Maguire was right all along and fewer customers with deeper relationships really is the best way forward. Where the new company bubble means we get to generate a bit less less money while becoming lots more successful.

Where we get to spend more time enjoying empathy, ethics, humour and the sheer dream of one day finally hitting the pub again. Where every day on the job is fun and fruitful, emotional and valuable, loving and luxurious. Just like a day on the set of Baywatch. Where all of a sudden everyone’s your friend and they visit you all the time, you know, to make sure they also get on the set of Baywatch. Where it’s like grabbing a drink with your best buddies, not drinking the cool aid but swigging real alcohol and speaking it like it is. Yep, where every day’s another Guinness ad.

So, as we reopen, think about replacing the word customer or employee with ‘friend’. Ditch the customer toilet signs or customer loyalty programmes cos its anyones bathroom and friend loyalty. It’s the friends cafe and friend parking. Where the only new office layout you’ll need to research is the set of ‘Friends’. Where its couches and weird leather chairs and kitchens and cafes and terraces. Where you show up every day just for the laughs. Where customer ratings soar cos they’re from friends like they were last time around, just more legit this time. Where you get to write a new script every day. Where people show up cos they want to. Where Chandler finally feels truly at home.

Now that really would be a new norm. That might even be worth breaking out of lockdown loonies, donning the hazmat suit, getting back on a train and actually showing up to work for.

Where do I sign up?

A Miracle Cure for the Climate Change Crisis

4th May 20204th May 2020 by lettsgroup

This weekend I had one of those sleepless, tossing and turning kinda nights. You know, the one where your mind spins like a Corona press conference while your body sweat shop’s like an Amazon warehouse. Then, suddenly, as if by magic I awoke to a place of peace and calm and magical light bulbs. That place where your deepest insights surface and everything suddenly seems to make karmic sense. Where colours are brighter, sounds are intensified and smells are, well, orgasmic right to the point where you sadly came to realise that you’re not tripping with the Kardashians but instead lying on an old pair of socks. I wasn’t in heaven or hell or even Nigella Lawson’s kitchen, I was being struck by that proverbial light bulb moment.

You see, it had suddenly hit me that the most prophetic crisis of our life time, the one that makes Corona look like a nat on a flea on a Mexican bottled beer, had found its miracle cure. The climate change crisis had discovered it’s Viagra, it’s hydroxychloroquine, it’s Trumpian antidote without needing to figure out how to turn his ceaseless twitter thing off. Cos the climate crisis has discovered its very own cure and its called Covid-19. Yes, Coronavirus, may be a pain up the human butt, but it could also prove to be the ultimate cure for our planet. Nature’s way of rebalancing itself. You know, just like Dave boy Attenborough or Tonto or my meditation instructor told me so.

And can you blame nature? Well, 3 odd million people probably can echoed by a horrifying amount of deceased, but perhaps it’s nature’s ultimate wake up call screaming out ‘Christ alive if we have to wait for the UN to come up with a coherent plan to solve global warming you won’t need Nigella’s dream convection heated cook top to boil the water, you’ll just dunk the pasta in the sea. And forget farting to get the hot tub going, our global warming will have it to the point where losing the mother in law takes on a whole new in-tub dimension’.

You see, the planet couldn’t wait any longer for us mortals to come up with a plan to save it or for Bozzer to host a conference in Glasgow so it invented its very own miracle cure. And, to be honest, you couldn’t have figured out a more perfect way to solve this climate thingy than Covid. It’s like it was purpose built for it. You know, better designed than an iPhone. More purpose built than a Bovis home. Or better fitting than Pamela Anderson’s bikini.

You see, experts have told us that the four highest-impact things an individual can do to tackle climate change are eat a plant-based diet (sorry MickeyD), avoid air travel (sorry I’m-really-Rich-Branson), live car-free (sorry everyone), and have fewer children (sorry MickeyD again). Coronavirus miraculously tackles all four simultaneously. The plant based diet thingy mostly because we’ll all be so broke that we’ll only be able to afford to eat the grass off our lawn. The having kids thing cos no one wants to have sex in lockdown and after that who in the world would want to have sex ever again just to risk having kids around for the next lockdown – sorry to say it again but have you met my teenagers? And for the answer to the air travel and being car-free part go back to the plant-based diet bit. BTW it really will mean car-free (not care-free) – i.e. bye bye Formula 1 or go karting dependent on how old you are. Unless, of course, your Lewis Hamilton in which case your gonna be depressed as shit either way cos your little enough to do both.

But Corona, the miracle cure for the climate crisis, doesn’t just stop there. Oh no, its got us all so shit scared of bat’s and pangolins and any other friggin wild virus carrying creature and we’re so super friggin terrified of forests that we’ll never go anywhere near one again which deals with the whole habitat destruction thingy. And as if that wasn’t enough, it looks like all the predators on the planet are gonna rise up and eat us as thanks to Corona they’ll have figured out that they’ve got us on the run and that we’re not quite as smarty pants and dominating as we conned them into thinking we were. And, as if we needed another nail in our human coffin, they’ll hone in on the fact that we must be an even lower form of sub species given the morons we’ve chosen as leaders to get us through this Corona crisis. So they’ll hoover up enough of us to permanently deal with the over-population and car and travel things and pretty much any other human created climate hell in a basket invention we came up with over the last 100 years. At least those of us that survive might get to keep this planet.

I think when I die, which by the look of things could be pretty soon, I’ll return as a bat.

Are People Already Revolting over Coronavirus Lockdown?

30th Apr 202030th Apr 2020 by lettsgroup

I feel an undercurrent swirling way deep down in the bowels of democracy, a genuine shift in thinking when it comes to our western attitudes towards Covid-19. One of those shifts that are so grass-rooted that Presidents or Prime Ministers remain entirely oblivious to the emerging dissidence. You see, unlike most cabinet level politicians and health officials, I believe that the people in the US and Europe (still including the UK – I think) have moved on.

Yep, we’re cruising past the Corona-rabbit-in-headlight-frozen-to-the-floor-or-tv-or-bed phase and have started the next phase of getting on with life with Corona and have kinda stopped listening to the politicians bang on about curves and ventilators and PPE and lockdown or exit or new norms, second waves, great depressions, social distancing, social gatherings or just plain socially f***ed. We’ve been doing it all long enough to get used to it and for God’s sake its gotten sooooo boring.

Also, lets face it, even our crappy school grade maths skills mean that we, the lowly people, have figured out that the pandemic bell like curve thingy we get served up daily like an upside down bowl of porridge means some time in June we’re gonna start going back to work, school, shops and maybe even the post Corona lockdown holy grail to end all holy grails which is a real friggin bottle of real friggin Corona in a real friggin pub. And for the record I have never in the past said pub lock in when I meant lockdown. Honest.

I just don’t think that we Corona-care as much anymore. We’ve become immune, not yet to Corona, but immune to the endless politico ramblings and stats and rules and generally depressing shit we get served day in and day out on every TV channel, newspaper, website and ad. Yep, we’ve finally become Corona tone deaf and started to figure out our own exit strategies cos if we wait for governments to come up with a real one we’ll be beyond broke and when you’re beyond broke who gives a shit about rules or ramblings or even Corona itself.

Mostly I see it on the roads, in the streets, shops and under-rumblings. I hear it from Dave-the-boss-man at Tesco every frigging week emailing me with how the entire goddamned nation’s back shopping with him cos he’s really cracked this Corona shop-till-you-drop in-store thingy and if you have Corona dropped then no problemo cos he’ll deliver to your door now he’s energiza bunny like gone and gotten a gazillion more delivery slots per minute than UK wide testing kits. Mind you, that’s kind of a low bar.

I also hear it from Tim-I’m-a-pubaholic-Weatherspoons telling us that his pubs will be open from June. And let’s face it no one’s gonna dare disagree with Tim cos he’s got the cheapest beer in town and drinks way too regularly with that other kinda scary guy called Far-arse. But mostly I see it in the divine Corona boredom now emanating from the Donnie and Bozzer show signalling that we really can start getting on with our lives alongside Corona cos they ain’t gonna figure it out for us mostly because they just wanna get back to Mar-a-lago or Chequers or banging other dollies. So, time to get on and off and get up-from-the-couch and start planning our post Corona, avec Corona June existence. And if our eminent Anglo Saxon leaders have confused you to the point of rigor mortis about what to do next just keep it simple and book a one way trip to New Zealand. Cos Jacinda really has got it all figured out.

See ya!

The Next New Norm – The Secret to Not Getting ClimateF***ed

28th Apr 202028th Apr 2020 by lettsgroup

Now that we’re used to the Corona in our lives, the lockdown loonies, Great Depression 2.0 and the fact that Kim Jong Ding-dong is dead we thought we should try to look to the next new norm. You know, the one where we start to exit lockdowns (Brits exempt) and rediscover the simple joys of visiting a park without getting arrested, grabbing a coffee at Starbucks reminding us that it’s way cheaper at home and parking the teens at the beach to accidentally forget to pick them up for a week. Let’s not, though, underestimate the importance of survival skills.

The smarty pants among us will be figuring out which of the last ‘new norms’ (Christ I’m sounding like a politician) will become permanent changes cos if they don’t we’ll all get mothered by pandemic 2.0 just lurking round the corner called ClimateF***ed. And I don’t know about you but I’ve kinda had enough of lockdown 1.0 so I’m really not into an even longer, more invasive lockdown 2.0 which by its very nature will be too late so all our proverbial little fingers in the damn will, of course, do absolutely sod all to delay the inevitability of getting well and truly ClimateF***ed.

So here are the 5 key elements to ‘The Next New Norm – the Secret to not getting ClimateF***ed’:

1. Healthier living – der yeah! You see lockdown loonies gave us material monsters the chance to step back, breathe in the polluted air from our shitty shoebox apartments and realise that there had to be something more to life and Levi’s and the Big Mac. Well, OK, maybe not the Big Mac. We’ve reconciled our lowly consciousnesses to the fact that we’re gonna have to trade in some old crappy behaviours to keep, well, living. And we’ve had the once in a generation opportunity to learn to appreciate walks in the park so long as we don’t dawdle, making our own food cos there’s no point waiting for Dave from Tesco to start stocking pasta again and even enjoying our jungle of a garden because it’s better to hang out there than get Corona on the street. Going forward we’ll travel less mostly because we’ll all be broke, we’ll want less pollution cos they’ll prove that pollution feeds Corona (not the beer) and Donnie and Bozzer will figure out that their only chance of survival beyond the botched Corona thing will be to pin their entire machine and slogan making team on the next hot trend cos more than anyone they don’t want to get caught behind yet again and get politically ClimateF***ed. Plus all those self help and yoga stretch pants books that went straight in one ear and out the other will suddenly make the smallest amount of sense so we’ll all succumb to the healthier living, deep breathing, all-avocado cool aid.

2. Home Working – yep, not because we all loved it. But because our tight ass bosses spent all that money on Zoom licenses to get through lockdown loonies and won’t want to see them to go to waste. So, bye bye company car, meetings for gossip in the hang out room, sweet company lunches and trips abroad or anything whatsoever that broke the endless monotony of working at this dump called workplace. But, hello Dave boy Attenborough who’s gonna remind us 24 hours a day that our new found zero travel life has cut emissions to the point where we just saved another rhino. But, hey, their wellbeing comes first in this green new deal, next new norm.

3. eServices – cos we all figured out that watching a YouTube video on how to fix the kitchen sink was a frig load cheaper and easier than trying to persuade a plumber to come rip us off, give us Corona and not fix the thing properly so he gets to do it all over again in a few weeks time.

4. Online Sports and Culture – let’s face it the only thing more amusing than Live Aid was watching Lady Gaga trying to coerse a bunch of geriatric rockers to rock it somewhat out of tune from their homes/gardens/the morgue. Beyond that, pretty soon PlayStation and Xbox will figure out that lockdown loonies taught us all to play soccer way better than those slightly spoilt, entirely analogue pro footballers so they’ll make the next set of games so friggin realistic with the AI thingy that we won’t need the offline players anymore making the Xbox sub a must have and the season ticket a must dump. Plus who wants to sit with a gazillion other sweaty, drunk people in a stadium or theatre or anyplace whatsoever only to get spat on, puked over, hot dogged or just to catch the Corona from them.

5. Virtual Healthcare – see 3. and the whole plumber thing. Plus, we’ll have had enough Corona hospital time to last many a lifetime and every government will have gone broke trying to (not) fix the Corona thing. So we’ll have to figure out DIY health. And pretty soon 3D printing will get us our stay at home pill dispenser, ventilator, vaccine and robot care giver which will prove more than handy given the Great Depression 2.0 meant we sold our car. At least the car bit will make Dave boy Attenborough happy which seems to be the game with this climate solving thing – right?

Christ, I think I’ll just go plant up a wildflower meadow.

Hope in the Time of Coronavirus

27th Apr 202027th Apr 2020 by lettsgroup

Hope in the time of Coronavirus has been in short supply. Lockdown loonies combined with the incessant, daily pandemic curve-watching mixed up with our precondition of job loss terror has unleashed a perfect storm for our fragile souls. And this mega storm has created a national wellbeing crisis. One that needs a different kind of leadership – a leadership of hope.

You see, when we’re all feeling a little depressed we need small, incremental green shoots, particularly as we’re heading towards the second half of lockdown loonies. Cos with the benefit of hindsight it seems that around four weeks is our limit before lockdownitis truly sets in. The walls start closing in, the routine starts to feel a little, well, routine-like and we start reliving weird apocalyptic zombie movies in our nightly dreams that are just starting to feel a little too, like, possible. Enough I hear you shout! Time to snap out of it! Time to start thinking differently, to pick ourselves up, to shake off those lockdown blues. Time to stop staring at endless news conferences in the hope that, well, there might just be the vaguest amount of hope. Time to think about a new tomorrow, a better tomorrow and most important of all time to get back to McDonald’s.

You see, we can put up with the endless negative news cycles and the stay at home teens firing up testosterone like it was a chain saw in our left ear. We can handle Donnie and Bozzer banging on and off – mostly off. One being Mr time off and the other just off the rocker. We can take the military style operation of a weekly shop or drive to pick up gas or goddamned exercise in dodging everyone else to perform the perfect social distancing dance in a napkin sized so called community park with not a lot of the community bit left given the gestapo gangs of do gooders taking pics of us getting one inch too close to other earthly beings while dodging rabied dogs snarling at our proverbial heels. We can even take the new roadblock vigilantes straight out of the cast of Hot Fuzz that keep us from going too far to take a walk or jog or simply to go have sex in a forest. Doesn’t everyone do that? And talking about Hot Fuzz, have you met our local villagers? But while we can take all of this, we cannot, cannot, cannot take another friggin second without our Big Mac and fries.

Where’s the leadership of hope from Mickey D? They just keep telling us not yet. Not yet. What the f*** is not yet! Endlessly bombarding us with this horrifically over used Corona statement ‘not yet’ doesn’t solve a goddamned thing. Just cos every politician uses it doesn’t make it right. And they only us ‘not yet’ cos it’s French for I don’t know what the fuck’s going on in my government cos it’s such a friggin crap shoot of chaos right now that ‘not yet’ is as good a statement as your gonna get from me and in any case who thought getting elected meant we had to make decisions in the first place. And btw ‘not yet’ is only as overused as every goddamned Coronavirus statement from EVERY single venue or hotel or attraction or National Trust joint starting with ‘It is with a heavy heart that we have to close for now…’ What the f***, did they all just cut and paste the same friggin statement. They pay the bosses of these joints like cash went out of fashion (which it will soon but that’s another matter) and the closest they can get to writing a goddamned customer statement on the front of their website is a cut and f*** you paste.

But, getting back to the immediate Mickey D issue, how friggin long does it take to do socially distanced drive through or take out or just goddamned click and collect. You see I’m willing to let any politician we can still remember the name of, given Donnie and Bozzer hog EVERY airwave like a Corona virus on a pollution particle, take every last shred of rights from me but I’m not prepared to go another day without my McDonald’s. I mean there has to be some kind of limit right? There has to be a line – and that line could even extend to a friggin queue across London just to be able to exercise my inalienable right to chew on shit from Mickey D.

And that, in the end, is why we need a new kind of leadership. A leadership of hope. The thing that has gotten clearer and clearer from this pandemic is that the old fashioned Putin style, populist, white male, autocratic leader type that thrives off fear and flag and slightly strange free press semantics where the truth is as popular as the Coronavirus, is dead. And when I say dead I don’t just mean Kim Jon Ding-dong, I mean ALL of these old style leaders in government, in corporates and in life. And I guess to wrap this all up in a McWrapper what I’m really trying to say is that we should invest our time not just in finding a virus for this little Corona fella but also on a major Jacinda cloning programme so we can get Arderns running every government and corporate and mostly running McDonald’s. You see, if Jacinda was running things right now, I’d be sitting down at my local Mickey D swigging a chocolate shake soaking up a good old fashioned burger and fries while listening to Jacinda on McTV telling me that everything was going to be just fine. And I wouldn’t need to believe a goddamned word she said cos it wouldn’t matter two hoots of a Corona infected bat so long as I could hang out at my kinda heaven – Mickey D heaven.

McNewNorm really can be as simple as that.

The Bad and the Ugly of Covid-19

24th Apr 202024th Apr 2020 by lettsgroup

Having previously covered the hero’s of the Coronavirus it’s time to examine the villains. There are, of course, far too many to mention and we apologise in advance if we’ve missed you out – it won’t be for want of trying. But we, like so many others, have just skeleton staff (literally) for now.

First up, it would be entirely remiss not to mention the little fella himself. No, not Danny de Vito, I’m talking about Corona. Like all good villains you have multiple personalities and names like Corona, Coronavirus, Covid, Covid-19, invisible enemy and fucking pain up the arse virus. You, dark Corona villain, can stealth it like the best of those bombers, you can spread like Nutella and you don’t need to waste money on fast fashion – you’re friggin invisible. You can teleport across time and space and you’re really hard to track or maybe that’s just a Chinese thing. You’ve gotten inside a bat, a cute little pangolin and countless ladies proving you can shake it up like the best James Bond. You get Prime Ministers so scared they hide for weeks or at least until dozzer come-on-me’s better, you get Donnie to show up for work most days and stay off the golf course for more than five minutes at a time. You’ve quietened Kim Jong Ding-dong, Jose Mourinho and the entire cast of the Lion King but apparently not the Pope, Andrea Bocelli or Dave the incessant, pain up the frigging rear end Tesco boss who keeps emailing me telling me how goddamned smarty pants and heroic he is just for delivering food. Obviously not that smart cos he keeps emailing folk who wouldn’t shop at his over-processed food joint even if Corona made it the last food joint on this scorched earth. Mind you with climate chaos crashing down on us maybe…

But enough about the invisible guy let’s focus on the ones he’s brought out of hiding just to remind us that a good ol crisis can bring out the best of so many but the worse from a terrifying few. So let’s celebrate the few. The good news is we don’t have to go much further than Donnie, Bozzer or Bols-anus-aros to see what bad really looks like and they remind us every single remorseless day across any frggin media we wish we could hide from. But, it seems, they also went and inspired a whole cast of wannabes. Like the Turkish dudes who promised 400,000 hospital gowns to the really desperate muppets in Westminster only to deliver 4 or was it 40,000 who’s counting… Well, maybe the same loonies who bought a gazillion antibody tests that couldn’t antibody test their way out of an infected rat. Then there’s the vacuum cleaner guy who loved the idea of an independent UK so much he moved his entire company to Singapore presumably cos he had some friggin scientific insight into the fact that the UK would be about as good at prepping for Corona as a teenage misfit prepping for GCSE’s only to find out that Singapore recycles Corona infection peaks like a high speed wash cycle. But, maybe he could reinvent himself with the world’s first Dyson Corona vacuum. Just shove this baby down your throat, press the green button and it’s guaranteed to suck Corona right out of you or you get your money back or a free dose of hydroxychloroquine or a sun ray down your gullett or just plain disinfectant (thanks again Donnie).

Let’s not though forget to mention the guys who made the latest James Bond movie and kicked the release date out a year proving they’re not only the greediest bastards on the planet but also the dumbest – I mean just think of all the gazillions of Netflix dollars they could have made while we watched it over and over and over. I mean what better cure for Corona-lockdown-beat-me-over-the-head-with-boredom-itis than the latest Bond release on constant Sky store loop. Mind you, talking of dumb schmucks how about this Georgia governor Kemp who thought that a Corona infection curve going up was a good thing and lifted the lockdown right as their infections were spiralling like a football straight out of Tom Bradys palm. Dude, curve up equals not good Corona spread – curve down better. Easy to remember as it’s the opposite of the effect from your Viagra pills.

But, last of all, I would like to reserve a special thank you to Xi Ping Pong for not listening to that nice young doctor dude who spilled the beans on Corona way back when and could have stopped this whole damned Corona thing in its infant tracks while, at the same time, making sure that at the very least we got to see James Bond on the big screen which is our goddamned divine inalienable democratic right. And while you might not be that into the whole rights thing we are – or at least we are when it comes to James. Got it!

I think I’ll go watch Tiger King again.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Coronavirus

21st Apr 202021st Apr 2020 by lettsgroup

Sticking with the slightly biblical theme of yesterday’s post I thought that today we should delve a little deeper into who exactly are the saints and the sinners of Covid-19.

Let’s start with the easy one – the saints: naturally the list includes anyone working for any healthcare service anywhere in the world with a big shout out for Kim Jong-ding-dongs poor about to be decapitated physicians, but also care givers (particularly elderly care providers in the thick of it), delivery people, supermarket staff and generally anyone supporting us through lockdown lock-me-up-and-throw-the-key-away-hell-after-all-have-you-met-my-teens? Added to this list should be Milan’s town planner who’s just figured out that pedestrianising the city is the best way to keep Italian drivers off the streets and keep everyone else alive. And a last saintly hat tip goes to Netflix for bringing us ‘Tiger King’ cos we naively thought that shit couldn’t get weirder than this Corona thing!

But, that’s the obvious list. And the one we should all keep raving about and shouting or clapping or singing or walking round and round the garden on a zimmer frame for or climb endless Everest like stairs or Christ even binge watch the Kardashians for. You see, while politicians may have dawdled/dragged their proverbials/hid in the nice house yet somehow paraded their shiz all over prime-time press conferences the saintly ones have been out there holding us all together. You know actually doing stuff called work and getting us what we need to get through lockdown-looneys. And the great irony is, now we’re stuck at home in gracious perpetuity (with the teens), we’d bight off any of their left feet or arm or pretty much any limb just to be able to go back to work. Yes, the same work we’ve been bitchin’ and moaning about for the last God knows how long suddenly seems as attractive as a simple back massage from Pamela Anderson. The same bosses we’ve been whining about and trying to undermine at every turn now seem almost, well, saintly. Particularly when those bosses are politicians who seem to think its OK for them to go back to work but that we still can’t cos we haven’t figured out how to work Zoom.

But there are also unsung hero’s (obviously not Andrea Bocelli) and we’d (not weed) like to shout them out. There’s the Pope who wears a weird robe thingy while walking the empty streets of Rome with some shady looking dudes in black suits stalking him as he tirelessly searches the alleyways for his flock cos they haven’t shown up at St Peters Square the last few Sundays. There’s Mick Jagger who gets the prize for shutting himself in a pint sized room for that online concert to make himself look bigger and presumably poorer to provide a cover for the fact that he pays Charlie Watts so little he can’t even afford a drum kit and also for the fact that he’s the only man on earth smaller than Tom Cruise. There’s Mike Pence for putting up with Donnie and there’s anyone working with Pence for putting up with him and there’s obviously the entire British population for putting up with you know who.

There’s CNN’s Chris Cuomo for getting Covid-19 and being forced to stay on air while his dad gets it up the rear from Donnie and there’s all of us for having to watch their kinda weird English finance news presenter dude bang on about hoping we all have a ‘profitable hour’! A f****** ‘profitable hour’ tard, how in pandemic hell are we supposed to have ANY ‘profitable hour’ when we’re all bankrupt or doled up or paying others to take our oil cos we lost the manual that explained how to switch the goddamned well off or just plain friggin broke thanks to this Corona thing which, seemingly, he’s the last dunce on the planet to think is not a pandemic but a friggin Mexican beer. Christ, does he watch his own news? Maybe he finds himself as annoying as the rest of us and dozes off when he’s on.

There’s my plumber who’s gotta deserve a shout out in the vain hope that he might show up this decade once we’re set free and hopefully won’t hit me up the ass with partial amber friggin traffic light ‘special’ lockdown-looney pricing. Then there’s my mother, who let’s face it, is the only person out there that actually bothers to read this crap. Love you mum. But, last of all, there’s me. Yep, me. For doing nothing more than putting up with the teens. You see, when they had to go to school for real they could get themselves up just fine. Now you know who has to get them up for ‘school’ every friggin day which you would have thought has gotten easier given their commute is exactly five steps past the kitchen which they raid on the way and all they have to do all day is to sit on the couch and pretend to listen to some poor teacher politely bang on to them online while instead they watch TV, do their nails, fall asleep, raid the fridge a little more, social media meme each other and scream the moment I ask them to do anything what so friggin ever as all of a sudden they miraculously (yes Francis they can do it too) have way too much school stuff on one screen when they’re actually watching Kim, and I don’t mean Kim Jong-ding-dong. Then, of course, when it comes to them having dinner or exercise or anything that doesn’t involve them lying on the couch pretending to be at school they just shout out about how school online means it runs all day and night and seven days a week and could we please just keep bringing the food and drinks so they can keep 100% focused on their studies really, honest, promise. And yet, somehow, I can only hear the odd bit of teacher coming out of the room that they keep tightly locked like a government backed loan, but really all I friggin hear ALL day is Kim or Kylie or Bieber-still-with-a-baby-face-no-matter-how-hard-he-tries-to-be, well, hard or friggin Billie Eilish I-got-my-hair-stuck-in-the-paint-machine and the entire goddamned cast of Glee.

And seeing as that list took a while/my sanity I guess I’m gonna go put my feet up with the teens and you’ll have to read my next post for the list of Coronavirus bad and uglies.