Christmas is a time for families, apparently. But don’t despair, there are some enjoyable aspects to it too. Who doesn’t like getting whooshed up on alcohol at breakfast time, especially if your Christmas is going to be a time for ‘the family’? Under the guise of bucks fizz we have the perfect excuse to neck a few champagnes with the cornflakes until the orange juice runs out. Then the champagne goes in the cornflakes as well as the schooners.
I rejoiced when I heard that The Sun, Britain’s newspaper of record, was urging us to wear masks indoors at Christmas and to avoid hugging. I mean, have you seen my in-laws? I was hoping the government would go the whole hog and lock the country down again. That way they’d stay at home, and we would have the perfect excuse to do the same. I look back on the days of social distancing and lockdown in a haze of nostalgia. Surely someone in Wuhan is taking swabs from a bat’s behind and planning some gain of function research next to an open window. Just where is the next deadly Covid variant when we need it?
With any luck the UK Covid-19 Inquiry will take a break over the festive season. If this inquiry goes on much longer, and they don’t stop asking questions of our hard working and well-meaning politicians and scientists, they are likely to conclude that the lockdowns were a waste of time and caused more damage than good. They ought to quit while they’re ahead and keep the light of hope alive in our hearts that lockdown was not just a one-time event. The British people want another lockdown and with half the country believing masks should be mandatory on public transport and a fifth (really, only a fifth?) wanting an immediate lockdown, it is the government’s duty to deliver it. If the Conservative Party would stop obsessing about immigration and illegal migrants which, let’s face it nobody cares about, and focus on the important issues of the day, for example another lockdown, they’d sweep the board at the next election.
Meantime, in other news, there is much speculation about the possible exchange of Christmas cards between the leaders of the four nations of the United Kingdom. This is made all the more problematic as we have a Hindu and a Muslim who don’t celebrate Christmas in charge of two countries, a complete idiot about whom nobody gives a Christmas hoot in charge of another, and one of our constituent countries has no identifiable leader as it has no identifiable government.
Still, here at The New Conservative, we have our ear to the ground. It seems that Rishi Sunak has gone for a card featuring Boris Johnson, Suella Braverman, Priti Patel and Robert Jenrick on a boat headed for Rwanda. Humza Yousaf is issuing a card featuring a transgender Holy Family of colour. The Welsh chap, whatshisname, has given the people of Wales the Christmas gift they were all hoping for, having resigned this week with immediate effect. Mind you, he was the only one that really captured the joy and happiness of the season with his card featuring a sheep chained to a lamppost.
Readers of The New Conservative will be pleased to know that we have developed our own range of ‘merch’. This can be purchased at any time of the year, but we pushed our manufacturers to have the full range available for Christmas. And just imagine how any of the following will light up the faces of your loved ones if they find this in their Christmas stocking. The merchandise is a range of dolls celebrating aspects of, and important figures in, British contemporary culture.
First we have ‘Inaction Man’, a doll which you can sit beside any window. The doll stares aimlessly out of the window and is meant to symbolise the vast hordes of our civil servants, academics and other public sector workers who have opted to work from home. Inaction Man comes with a range of accessories including a coffee cup, a TV and a bottle of gin, and he can be dressed in any of the following: dressing gown; pyjamas; shorts and t-shirt.
Next, we have the limited-edition Mr Owen Potato Man Jones doll. All the parts of this doll are removable; thus the mouth and the anus can be interchanged as the fancy takes you, and as luck would have it without any drop in coherence.
Finally, in a unique collaboration with Mattel, we have the Nicola ‘Barbie’ Sturgeon© doll. The features of this doll have been faithfully crafted to represent the utter horror of the real thing. The doll can be clothed in a range of trouser suits and Nicola can be paired up with Pete ‘Ken’ Murrell©. Nicola and Pete can go touring in their specially designed Camper Van—with separate beds—called ‘Loadsamoney’ and even have their own plastic house featuring police tape and gazeboes in the front garden. If you pull a string on Nicola’s back she says, ‘nothing to see here’.
The year just past, 2023, has been a bumper year for arseholes of all sorts, which keeps these erudite and informative columns going. Let’s hope that 2024 brings another crop of the same. Life would be very boring otherwise. The team at The New Conservative wishes to thank all our loyal readers and we hope that you will remain with us in 2024.
Roger Watson is a retired academic, editor and writer. He is a columnist with Unity News Network and writes regularly for a range of conservative journals including The Salisbury Review and The European Conservative. He has travelled and worked extensively in the Far East and the Middle East. He lives in Kingston upon Hull, UK.
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Merry Christmas to you too, and thanks for the laughs.
A delicious piece of perceptive satire, full of amusing references to all sorts of oddities in our society.
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