Sunday, 17 November 2024

Revenge of the Spads (3): COP Comms Catastrophe

Scene: a breakout room in a Whitehall conference centre.  Sparquin the Junior Spad is sitting alone, idly thumbing his 'phone.  Enter Ru-Ru, a Superspad, looking bronzed but distracted.


JS:  Rupes!  You're back!  God, we've needed you.  What was it like over there, working for the Dems?

S-S:  A total shitshow.  Started in DC, hot as hell, but then they shipped most of us to Penn.  Fucking incredible, all they cared about was their sodding celebrity endorsements.  Turns out, Swifties aren't old enough to vote - who knew?  Everybody, that's who.

JS: But you're looking fit, man - where've you been?

S-S:  Chap I was at school with owns a small island off Trinny.  All beach cricket and surfing.  I needed some R&R, I can tell you.

JS:  Maybe, but mate, we needed you here these last few weeks.  Total comms fuckup on all fronts.  First, PM goes to the Commonwealth thing at Samoa, gets ambushed on reparations!  Never saw that coming, totally unprepared, had to busk it: only headlines were bad ones.  Disaster.  24-hour flight each way, comes back knackered and furious.  All the hacks at the back of the plane - they used to keep a straight face & simper for the group photo, but now they snigger!  

Then.  THEN there's COP.  Off to Baku, absolute hell-hole, nobody else there that the PM knows but with big shiny Lines-To-Take for him & Mili on new UK emissions commitment bollocks.  Plus a new line on being Leader of the World - I thought of that one, seeing that no other first-tier c**t bothered to show up - which cheers him up a bit.  Mili of course is completely in his element & off with the fairies - far as I know, he's still out there arguing the toss with the petro-states, well he's on his own with that one.

ANYHOW.  Then fucking Welby explodes!  Catastrophe - can't buy a headline anywhere for love nor money.  Does any man, woman or child in the entire country know we increased our bloody emissions offer last week?  They do not.  

S-S:  Tough gig: I was better off on that beach than I realised.  Can't have helped, either, that the Gray woman finally sloped off, briefings from all directions - much juicier story than CO2.  Someone put shit on her shoes on the way to the door alright - was that you?   

JS:  Ah, now you're talking!  Yes, I got to do that one, and very satisfying it was, too.  We targeted end-November, didn't we?  Spot on the money!  Fucking excellent.

S-S:  I'll give you that one.  Sounds like you're just the man to spin the economy for Reeves - you'll enjoy that.  Now: diaries out: when's that Xmas Party ..?

As overheard by ND

11 comments:

Elby the Beserk said...

Slightly off topic... but Willis Eschenbach, a regular contributor to Watts Up With That has dissected Miliband's "plans" to come up with a figure for the global cooling that this will achieve. And the cost.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/11/14/keith-starmers-climate-madness/

I commend it to you. Willis is on X, and well worth a follow. Smart, witty man with as sharp a tongue to deal with fools as you will find.

Btw, the temperature reduction forecast is 0.00007 degrees Centigrade...

Anonymous said...

It makes sod-all difference what we do here as long as India and China keep churning out CO2 in mighty quantities - India are hoping to mine a billion tons in 2024. Record amounts of coal and oil were burned last year, while virtuous UK has the highest electricity prices anywhere I can think of (maybe Odessa this morning). And then the Guardian sounds astonished.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/08/antonio-guterres-cop29-climate-breakdown-tipping-points-fossil-fuels-finance-aoe

Sobers said...

Loving the fact that whoever created the link for the WUWT article linked above thought Keir Starmer's first name was Keith. KS is boring, self absorbed and self righteous. Definitely a Keith.

Anonymous said...

The BBC referred to "the G7 group of industrialised nations" - in the UKs case it's deindustrialising. I'm sure that'll work out well.

As someone said (I paraphrase) "we ought to set
the life and endurance of Britain very high in our duty, and not
be led astray by illusions about an ideal world, which
only means that other and worse controls will step into
our place, and that the future direction will belong to
them"

dearieme said...

I dare say that this idea has been widely canvassed but it occurred to us only recently. 2TK is "on the spectrum", isn't he?

dearieme said...

The Daily Sceptic tells me that "Britain Has an Astonishing 470 Delegates at Climate Change Summit".

Isn't the spectrum expensive?

jim said...

Been in idleness far south. News seems more slow moving and more irrelevant from the end of a very long fibre.

Glad to see Trump got in, they deserve him.

Picked up a couple of J le Carre books and it seems the higher up the dunghill politicos go the more detached from reality they and their advisers become. Agree with Anon @ 11:20 that what we do is irrelevant and my feeling is there is no technical solution and the political solutions are distasteful. So nothing will be done and sooner or later Nature will make her views clearer.

Poor old Kier is becoming a one-trick pony. Better to send Mili to a very slow knacker's yard and face the world as it is rather than how idealists would like it to be.

Meanwhile laid in some cheap brandy and dug out the Xmas cake recipe. BTW, EJ's seats may be cheap but d$%ned uncomfortable.


Elby the Beserk said...

2TK on the spectrum? No, I'd say he is a sociopath.

1. The beyond dead eyes
2. Total lack of affect
3. Ability to lie

Anonymous said...

100% ot, but Welsh rugby writers/commentators veer like a weathervane. Either the team are utterly wonderful and capable of beating anyone - only one World Cup ago, or the coach should be sacked asap. Agreed they were pretty bad, but if a new coach arrived, where are the good young players?

It was only a year ago that Australian rugby was apparently completely down the tubes.

Nick Drew said...

Yup, that's OT !

We don't mind.

dearieme said...

@E the B: he was a Human Rights lawyer - lying is his professional skill presumably.

The eyes; so that's why he needs his expensive glasses.

Lack of affect: and there was me thinking that he was just excruciatingly boring. Or, might it explain his scorning of his father who would see to have been a more impressive chap than the son.