As we Zoom through the current lockdown it is genuinely heart-warming to know that both the vaccine is, dependent upon your age and condition, winging its way to us sometime very soon and that The Hon. Kate Bingham, vaccine tsar, has hit a rare stride of governmental competence in its successful distribution. I sincerely doff my flat-cap in her general direction and patiently await my turn in the queue to be told “you’ll feel just a little prick”. Again.
Cards on the table. I want Scotland to have another independence referendum and I want them to bloody this Government’s collective nose. I want the Scottish nation to actively show Boris Johnson the error of his Brexit ways and I want him shunned for the rest of his natural.
Now that Brexit’s done, the moon-shot achieved and our response to the pandemic the envy of the whole world, I feel the time is nigh to turn my focus to the developing situation north of the border. Boris Johnson will always be the Prime Minister who took Britain out of the EU but could he also be the one responsible for breaking up the United Kingdom?
Phew. TFFT. So, the fateful 20th January 2021 and the inauguration of President Biden mercifully passed without major event. Being an avid Jack Reacher reader I was genuinely concerned that fiction of the alt-right could easily become fact.
I make no apologies for lifting this, verbatim, from the superbly satirically-crafted pages of our premier finger-pointing rag, Private Eye. God Bless Ian Hislop and all who sail in him.
One of my guilty pleasures during the current lockdown was tuning in to the nightly broadcasting of the marginally less difficult, Christmas University Challenge, where alumni of their august institutions pitched-up to show us exactly how much they had forgotten from the halcyon days of their further education.
Notwithstanding the stock-market performance of Elon Musk’s leccy Teslas, this has been the worst of times for the car industry and, having witnessed over £100bn wiped-off its value, things are about to get Darwinian. Even before the pandemic kicked in, the industry was facing massive disruption following the worldwide economic slowdown, restrictive EU emission tests, falling demand for diesel vehicles and mounting concern over trade wars and border tariffs.
Back in the day, you got fit in order to do something. Getting fit enabled you to run a marathon, swim the Channel, cycle to John O’Groats or whatever flicked your adventure switch. With many New Year resolutions probably focusing upon this particular condition, it begs the question, when did ‘fitness’ become a pastime in and of itself, an activity separated from any particular physical escapade, athletic endeavour or social aspiration?
As the Christmas shop-fest recedes in our collective drink-addled memory, how many gifts did you receive this year that were exactly what you secretly wished and hoped for? I was given two fantastic pressies and couldn’t have been more delighted. Mind, I’ve a confession to make wrt the others as three went directly to the local charity shop and one is already re-wrapped in order to ‘re-gift’ next year. Sorry. Especially if it has your name on it.
A deal is done. Having been likened to a new-born searching for a nipple, Boris Johnson has defied this critic and got Brexit done. And remainers must accept that we’ve now, once and for all, left the European Union. For the sake of the youth of today, and of the future, I know I have to but I can’t do so easily and ‘told you’ will always only be a moment’s thought from my mind. And my lips.