It's the season to be silly - but not stupid

Maurice O'Brien • Published 6 Aug 2009 08:00 0 Comments

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YOU may have noticed it's that time of the year they call the silly season, when newspapers are supposed to have nothing to write about.

At least that's what the politicians, usurers, mountebanks and shysters who run our green, unpleasant land would have you believe.

This week alone we all felt silly to discover that bank debt is nationalised but bank profits and remuneration are privatised, and get trousered without demur by the people who never lose.

You'd also have been silly to get taken in by Flipper Bercow and the nauseating crocodile tears of his Commons cronies who, as soon as they thought we weren't looking, awarded themselves another no-questions-asked, no receipts allowance worth £25-a-day tax free.

Presumably that wheeze emanated from the traumatised reptiles reportedly found sobbing in Commons corridors, and teetering on the brink of suicide, simply because we ingrates mistakenly thought they were crooks.

Equally silly, in fact positively daft, would be to think the Brussels Mafia might have any intention of allowing former EU Chief Accountant and sacked whistleblower Marta Andreasen within sniffing distance of their bloated budget.

Having got rid of her once they weren't about to permit the newly elected UKIP South East MEP to take the democratic route to the key role of Budgetary Control Committee vice president.

Traditional bitter enemies from left and right united to block her candidacy in a vote which, while normally conducted on a show of hands, was taken by sinister secret ballot.

A political sister being rather sillier than usual was Harriet Harperson. Instead of going along with the illusion that she was in temporary charge of the country, Hattie flannelled on about women deserving influential government roles, while Lord Mandy got on with running things as usual.

Extreme silliness on two counts from Boy Dave. As PR slick appears to be his only discernible talent, how can he really expect us to believe those rude words just slipped out during Mr Family Man's well-oiled radio appearance?

And which elector exactly did he think might be impressed by his amazing 'cool'? Maybe Dave was aiming at the UK Drug Policy Commission, which believes we should only jail big-time narcotics dealers who kill each other. Did they not wonder how small time dealers get to be big-time?

Once, and I swear just once, I was silly enough to buy organic meat and veg before realising the only difference was the ludicrous price.

A decade later the Food Standards Agency has just reached the same conclusion.

Meanwhile the computer which predicted a "barbecue summer" is the same one which supplies doomwatch data to the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. How silly is that?

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