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Rishi Sunak certainly has his finger on the pulse of public opinion. His Conservative government has been in power for 13 years now and, having cut police numbers to the bone, he has now realised that crimes such as rape and robbery are barely investigated. If your car gets trashed, your house gets burgled or half a ton of shit is fly-tipped down your way, well that’s just too bad. But Sunak’s spin doctors have come up with the solution. He’s going to crack down on people drinking at bus stops and war memorials.
Now I’m not a big fan of people drinking at bus stops, although in Bristol I can understand it given the absence of actual buses. You’ve got to have something to do. It’s not as if you can have a train replacement system, is it? But as a paid up bus wanker (not literally, I hasten to add), I’m not sure that people drinking at bus stops is quite the issue Sunak seems to think it is.
According to all newspapers, “Graffiti vandals will also be forced to scrub away any mess within 48 hours of getting caught, while litter bugs will be put into ‘chain gangs’ and made to tidy up local areas.” Of course they are. Squads of police officers will be removed from frontline duties and told to go after ‘graffiti vandals’ because it’s so easy to catch them. And if you drop a dog end or a crisp packet, Rishi Sunak will be all over you like a rash. “PICK THAT UP OR I’LL MAKE MICHAEL GOVE GET YOU TO PICK IT ALL UP!”
I am not a big fan of drinking at bus stops. I may have done it in the dim and distant past, but to be honest I’d rather drink a pint in the pub or have a glass of wine at home over a hot meal or cheese and biscuits. And anyway, at my age I have to carefully arrange my drinking arrangements to suit my bladder. Drinking at a bus stop with no bathroom facilities does not make a great deal of sense to me.
Obviously, we know that in truth Sunak is a lightweight politician with a heavyweight team of spin doctors whose job is to convince us that their piss poor efforts on the issue of law and order are effective, when anyone on the street can tell you we’ve never had it so bad.
Anyway, I warn you not to open a can of beer at a bus stop near you in case Sunak is waiting to nick you. And the thing that bothers me most of all is that Sunak doesn’t drink at all, despite being caught partying with Boris Johnson during lockdown and being fined for it.
What we really have is the smell of bullshit. Sunak’s focus groups have identified a minor issue and they want to turn it into a major issue, far more important than, say, the collapse of the NHS and catastrophic levels of underfunding in schools. Get angry about the little stuff and we can carry on getting away with the bad.
Sunak is a very different person to Boris Johnson but he’s every bit a wrong ‘un. He’s laughing in our faces. Soon, we will have the chance of laughing in his. Let’s not waste it.
