It's So Obvious, it Screams at You...

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The thinning-down of the state and the rise and rise of autonomy for the Executive continues apace. The Minister for the Eighteenth Century, Jakob Fees-Dogg, is quoted in today's i - in a pre-emptive attack on his own ministers' reluctance to follow his diktat on civil service cuts - "You must watch out that we don't try to get around [the proposed 91,000 civil service job-cull] by changing the definitions". This from a member of a government that chops and changes semantics to suit its ends at almost every available turn. Pot, kettle, black, methinks...

He also expounds on the need to get free of "... ridiculous, pettifogging [EU retained rules]..." citing the EU working time directive on firms reporting extra staff hours - beyond 48 weekly - saying "...an administrative burden... it doesn't serve any particular purpose...". Like protecting workers from being forced into working spurious overtime at no extra gain to themselves, for example? Allowing people to be forced to work all the hours God sends for unsustainably low wages, maybe?

He's then quoted as saying that the British wine industry would benefit from (his?) genius idea that leaving behind all remaining EU legislation would allow UK vineyards to sell sparkling wine in plastic bottles, a concept so unimaginably crass on so many levels, it beggars belief. OK - and if all that wasn't stupid and self-serving enough - after all, Fees-Dogg wouldn't dream of drinking any other sparkling wine apart from [the EU product] Champagne - he really does give the whole Tory game away in one, grand(iose) Freudian slip:

Referencing the vaccine rollout, not only does he imply that Brexit was a driving factor in its success - manifestly not so - but claimed that because of it, "... We got ahead. We got a clear economic advantage from that [my italics] ..." Poker players all have their 'tells'. That statement was Fees-Dogg and his government's 'tell'. Their true colours well and firmly nailed to the mast...

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