Hello everyone. It’s your erstwhile leader here Rishi. It’s the New Year, a time for a fresh start. For 2023, I’m focusing on ‘telling it how it is’. No more Wishi-Rishi, just straight talking from me. I’ve learnt a new technique from a leadership book that I borrowed from Matt Hancock, where you simply list all the possible scenarios in any given situation and then just see which one transpires.
Things will either happen, or they won’t. I’ll do a good job, or maybe I’ll continue to do a shit one. Here is my top list of all-encompassing possibilities:
‘Damned if I do, and damned if I don’t’ – I often feel this way about how people interpret my genuine attempts to improve the lives of everyone through my tax policies which clearly favour the mega-rich. Ok, so these policies piss off the working class, but if I didn’t put these in place, think of the backlash from my rich donors, as well my own wife, lol.
‘What goes up must come down’ – this is the immutable truth of gravity, but I’m hoping it can be applied to the rate of inflation too. Fashion gurus may also be wishing it applies to the length of my trousers, which are currently, frankly, sitting at a ridiculously high mid-calf level.
‘There are two certainties in life, death and taxes’ – so said Benjamin Franklin, sagely, back in the 18th century. Or maybe not so sagely – he could have easily avoided his taxes by arranging his financial affairs more efficiently, maximising his family’s inheritance benefits by arranging non-dom status for Akshata…sorry, I mean his wife.
‘The Chase or Pointless’ – they’re on TV at the same time, but on different channels, so its definitely an ‘either’ ‘or’ here. Ok, you can sometimes catch the final round of Pointless by switching channels quickly after the Chase finishes, but you can’t do the opposite. I like to think of Keir Starmer as The Chaser, constantly trying to catch me up, whereas I’m Pointless….no, hold on, that doesn’t quite work.
‘Take the prizes or gamble?’ – if you ever watched Bullseye in the 80s, you’d have seen this scenario many a time. I could never understand those who took the prizes. I was always shouting ‘gamble’ at the telly. The big final prize of a speedboat may have been useless to 2 builders from Worksop, but it was pretty much an essential item amongst my Winchester school set.
‘Beef or Chicken?’ – why is it that these are the only 2 options on offer for a main course when you go to a wedding these days? At my wedding we had a choice of swan or grouse, plus a separate fish course. Different times, my friend, different times.
‘Lefty loosey, righty tighty’ – Grant Shapps told me this was a good way of remembering how to loosen or tighten a nut with a spanner. It’s a bloody good analogy for politics too I think. Do you want to go loosey with Keir, or keep tighty with me at the next election? There’s no Lib Dem option, you’ll notice, you can’t just hammer the nut in down the middle, that just makes no sense.