The Archbishop of Canterbury on... BBC bastard impartiality

17th March 2023

WAKING in a Glasgow police cell, I realise that this particular occasion differs from the others as it is under the aegis of the King himself that I am incarcerated.

His Majesty King Charles III, as Prince Charles styles himself these days, has always leant on my counsel and wished me to seek out young British acts to play at his Coronation festival which is currently short on ‘hot talent’.

To this end, I headed for noted musical venue Glasgow Barrowland for a ‘tribute to punk all-niter’, whatever that should mean. Amply fortified for the ordeal, I made my way to what I later learned is known as the ‘moshpit’, where I was jostled by unruly spectators, one of whom knocked off my mitre.

I responded by swinging my crosier at all and sundry, laying several low with head injuries. The constabulary intervened and we were deposited in the same cell where we all quickly became terrific friends, and my fellow lags now have VIP tickets alongside ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’ himself for the event.

Released and persuing the news, I find that BBC boss Tim Davie relented from his decision to suspend Gary Lineker following a tweet about government policy which breached impartiality guidelines.

St Peter’s dilated anal ring, you have impartiality guidelines? Well, that’d have been fucking news to Alan Sugar, Jeremy Clarkson and Gary fucking Lineker himself after he mouthed off about Corbyn with nary a peep from you cunts! I’ll tell you how fucking Nazi Germany started – political leaders behaving like fucking dictators and the media being too shit scared to do anything about it! Oh, and I’ll tell you how fucking Nazi Germany ended – in total defeat and unconditional surrender, which is what you fuckers did after your miscalculation that the public finds Suella Braverman more likeable than Gary Lineker! Turns out everyone, including Suella Braverman, I strongly fucking suspect, feels the exact opposite!

Jeremy Hunt announced his Spring budget this week. In it he focused on ‘the four Es – Enterprise, Employment, Education, Everywhere’.

Jeremy, you fatuous-faced streak of goat piss, how many Es did you drop to come up with that vacuous, clappy-happy bollocks? It was the usual Tory twattery – more tax on alcohol, for which may God have no mercy on your fucking soul you piece of fuck, further lashes of the whip for the galley slaves in public services and extra help for those with absolutely no fucking need of it! This isn’t gonna help with the ‘Jeremy Cunt’ Freudian slips, you know – if I were you I’d change my name to something more innocuous, like Jeremy Hwat!

U2 have released a new album, Songs Of Surrender, comprising 40 stripped-back, acoustic arrangements of songs from their back catalogue.

Holy fucking crap, I’ll tell you one thing, this pile of dead twigs of a fucking album proves that U2 are fucking nothing without all the ringing noise and gaseous, self-righteous, caterwauling bluster! Strip them back and you’re left with absolutely bollock-all! Talk about a fucking empty vessel – if U2 were a boat, you could ferry 50,000 migrants across the fucking channel in them!

Finally, Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex, has been awarded the title of Duke of Edinburgh previously owned by his father, Prince Phillip.

The Holy Spirit’s jism, Prince Edward! There’s a fucking blast from the past, eh? When did you actually last do anything remotely noteworthy? Oh yes, 1987! That fucking It’s A Royal Knockout travesty that very nearly saw the monarchy laughed out of existence! 1987! You’re the fucking Terence Trent D’Arby of fucking royals, aren’t you? The Andrew Ridgeley, still taking a fat annual wedge in return for bugger all! Still, Edinburgh’s a step up from Wessex, eh? I mean, at least it fucking exists!

'I slipped the pensions thing past without them noticing,' Jeremy says. 'You very much didn't,' I reply

16th March 2023

From the diary of Rishi Sunak, Britain’s most fiscally responsible prime minister

HE had one job. Slip a massive bung to the rich while concealing it beneath waffly childcare promises that won’t come in until Starmer. ‘Did I do well?’ he asks.

‘No,’ I explain, ‘you did not do well, Jeremy. The headlines are “giveaway for the one per cent” and “pots for the rich”. It did not go unnoticed.’

I quite like Hunt. It’s nice to have a member of my cabinet I can look down on. We both know I’d be a far better chancellor and he’d be far happier on the backbenches, but he was catapulted into a role he’s manifestly unsuitable for due to a temporary vacuum. Essentially the right-wing Corbyn.

I’d dictated the budget to him and hoped we’d get away with the pensions. After all, what’s wrong with tempting a few consultants back into hospitals? While giving bankers a tax-free way to award themselves £60 million in a pension to be collected from the age of 35?

But his delivery, up there in the Commons staring like a crazed emu at an oncoming 18-wheeler, left a lot to be desired. He had no idea what he was saying or why he was saying it, and it showed.

‘They liked the childcare!’ he adds, brightly, as if it’s news. ‘I know they did, Jeremy. That’s why it was in there. As a smokescreen. So they wouldn’t notice the bung to donors and the income tax rises.’

‘Still,’ I continue, ‘at least it wasn’t a Boris budget. Crashing in at midnight with a bottle of Chablis in one hand and a list of giveaways in the other. I wasted a full hour dealing with “HS2 to Belfast”.’

I look up, and realise I’ve messed up. Say ‘Boris’ around Jeremy and he goes rigid and his fists start to clench. Trauma from 2019 apparently. I carefully manoeuvre him into a cupboard where he can calm down.

No growth, high taxes, a load of childcare that won’t ever be delivered. It’s a shit budget. But oddly cheering, because for the first time in years it’s not my shit budget.