Holiday Oddities

It is bank holiday weekend in the UK. Around the world conflict, droughts, floods and other crises continue unabated. UK government has ground to a halt while the Tories fight amongst themselves unwilling to recall parliament and unable to govern. To get away from that as much as we can, here at Lib Dem Voice Towers we have been looking at recent silly season stories. Some are funny, some stupid, some sad, some tending on the serious and some very scary.

In compiling this compendium, we have consulted with Larry, the No 10 cat. He says that if the prime minister had not been on a one jolly after another, he could have kept the country laughing for weeks. Larry is of the opinion that it is the job of a prime minister to keep us all amused, which is why Teresa May didn’t last long.

If you have your own silly season stories, whether political or not, please add them to comments.

Political dances

It is not long since the world of Westminster reacted with shock when it discovered that Michael Gove liked dancing and night clubs. Who’d have thought the ever so serious former Bullingdon Boy would like some late night fun. Mind you, he wore a suit when bopping just as Boris Johnson wore a suit on his ego massaging visits to Kiev.

The dancing disease is catching. Finland prime minister Sanna Marin, who is a spritely 36 years of age, shocked the world by being filmed drinking and dancing wildly like most thirty-somethings. As the grey hairs in the Swedish establishment choked on their smorgasbord, she had to take a drug test to prove she was not an artificial high and was human after all. The row got worse and the fun increased when a video was published of two Finish media influencers boob bombing in the official residence in patriotic support for their country.

If this trend continues, we will soon be choosing our top flight politicians with a show in the style of Strictly Come Dancing or Love Island. Maybe that will happen. The indomitable Jackie Weaver has been selected as a candidate on the upcoming Channel 4 unreality show, Make Me Prime Minister. But can she dance? We demand to know.

Shaggy animal stories

Love. Over in Japan, scientists have found that dogs cry tears of joy when they are reunited with their owners. And an otter recently gave a display of mother’s love. All say aah now:

https://twitter.com/gabriele_corno/status/1562823957559930880

Contrary to popular myth, men having a small one makes them more attractive to women. Spanish researchers found that men walking smaller four-legged friends are seen as less threatening to women than those with larger dogs. Residents in Helen Morgan’s constituency were so fond of the recently deceased Ellesmere Goose, they erected a statue in its memory. If there wasn’t enough trouble with the trains already, a giant tortoise halted trains in East Anglia. Allegedly it was horny and looking for love. The tortoise is understood to be recovering after a failed attempt to befriend a train.

Scary. A cat is reported to have been terrorised after a baby seal broke into a home in New Zealand. There was a happy ending after the seal was returned to the sea. Broadland District Council paid £20,631 for seven wicker corgi statues to mark the Queen’s platinum jubilee. Cats now fear The Wicker Dogs of Broadland – well you all saw the original film.

Sex. Scientists in Ireland have discovered that fossilised frogs died en masse after being exhausted by sex. What a way to go. Canadian researchers said monkeys in Indonesia get their rocks off using rocks thereby confirming the sex toy hypothesis. Who knew that existed? We are liberals, so each to their own on this one.

Death. In the leadership hustings, Liz Truss vowed to get rid of the mice in House of Commons by employing more cats. LDV reporter Newsmoggie thinks this could be a good opportunity to spy on what the Tories are up to. In sadder news, if anything could be sadder than Liz Truss, anger rose in Norway after authorities decided to kill a walrus after they deemed the 600kg animal a danger to the public. A bronze statue is to be erected in memory of Freya and a sand sculpture in her memory appeared in Seahouses, Northumberland.

Political snakes. Since Helen Morgan’s stunning victory in North Shropshire two boa constrictors have been found roaming in the constituency. Suspicions that basilisks were being introduced by political opponents grew when a python was found in the Eastleigh constituency. Mind you the Tories are under attack by poisonous crabs in Cornwall. And sex-crazed spiders are reported to be marching across the country. There must be a general election coming. Be scared. Be very scared.

Tantrums

Motorist tantrums. Rent-a-quote star Grant Shapps suggested that cycles might have number plates. The innumerate Daily Mail claimed that 91% of car drivers support this, something Full fact disputes. Where will it end? Pedestrians wearing numbers on their backs before they are knocked over and have to wait hours for an ambulance?

Kid tantrums. Pay attention if you wish to pass your parenting exams. Dr James Hind from Nottingham Trent University announced T = 70 + 0.5E + 15F – 10S is the formula parents need to understand their kids on car journeys. T is the time in minutes it takes a youngster in the back seat to start howling where E is for entertainment, F is food and S is for siblings. Useful stuff in car full of kids. Ruth Ogden from Liverpool John Moores University takes a different perspective on why journeys seem so excruciatingly long for children.

Meta tantrums. Google’s new chatbot, BlenderBot, seems to have fallen out with Meta’s founder. It described Mark Zuckerberg is “a good businessman, but his business practices are not always ethical”, adding “It is funny that he has all this money and still wears the same clothes!” But the AI behind the BlenderBot is clearly working. It told early users: “Since deleting Facebook my life has been much better.” Has anyone asked what BlenderBot thinks of Nick Clegg?

Science curios

Salami sun. A supposed picture of a distant star shared and liked by thousands of people on Twitter, was in reality a slice of supermarket chorizo. A French researcher performed the stunt to alert social media users to fake news. The Police nationale are said to have ended an investigation into potential scientific fraud after it found all the evidence had been eaten.

Je viens présenter mes excuses à ceux que mon canular, qui n’avait rien d’original, a pu choquer. Il voulait simplement inciter à la prudence vis-à-vis des images qui semblent éloquentes par elles-mêmes.
La blague d'un scientifique https://t.co/wHiJWxscxq #Astronomie via @LePoint

— Etienne KLEIN (@EtienneKlein) August 3, 2022

Imperial phallus. Some delicate students at Imperial College have worked themselves up into a tizzy over a new campus sculpture by the renowned artist Anthony Gormley. They are concerned that that a horizontal rectangular block resembles a phallus. It is understood the university is to introduce a new syllabus on biology and art.

And back to politics

Jacob Rees Mogg. What more needs to be spoken than the name Jacob Rees Mogg to raise a laugh in the snug of an evening. But it seems that the historic JRM has got confused. Publishing an attack on empty desks in the Serious Fraud Office, he supplied an photo of empty desks in the Cabinet Office. Surely, he knows that serious fraud is based around the corner at No 10 Downing Street?

Tractor porn. Neil Parish will go down in history as defining a new genre of pornography. He is now planning a comeback in a podcast series, where he will no doubt talk of the excitement of a new combine harvester and more.

Doppelgängers. They don’t just look alike, they are alike. A study of unrelated virtual twins found that each pair shared genetic traits. They were also more likely to both be smokers or non-smokers, left or right handed, and short sighted or normal sighted. LDV understands that when gene editing technology is perfected, the UK is to have a duplicate prime minister rather than a deputy prime minister. Now, that’s more of a nightmare than boa constrictors, menacing crabs and marching spiders any day.

* Andy Boddington is a Lib Dem councillor in Shropshire. He blogs at andybodders.co.uk.