Who’s the prime minister today?

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Britain’s had a lot of prime ministers recently, and the average citizen could be forgiven for not caring who’s in charge anymore, but you might think the prime minister himself would remember. Not so. Rishi Sunak went to a pub for a photo op not long ago, trailed by the predictable photographers and reporters and hangers-on, to fill a pint glass and promote the government’s latest solution to our least pressing problem. So far, so boring. Then he referred to himself as the chancellor.

To be fair, he was once the chancellor, and I wouldn’t blame him if he got nostalgic for a job that didn’t involve sticking his head quite so far above the parapet. I mean it’s one thing to lust after the prime minister’s job, but it’s a whole ‘nother thing to actually be the prime minister. Of a crisis-laden country when your party’s best idea involves playing three-card monte with the taxes on alcohol.

Irrelevant photo: I wouldn’t swear to it, but I think this is called a balloon flower, for the shape of the blossom before it opens out.

Anyway, for one glorious moment he forgot that he was and is the prime minister, and I’m sure it served as a mini-break before his actual break, a week or so in California–a break he may have needed but Greenpeace needed even more, because it took advantage of his absence to drape his house in black, in honor of his expansion of oil and gas drilling in the North Sea.

But back to our alleged prime minister: this isn’t the first time he’s forgotten what role he’s playing. Last year, when it was time for the prime minister to stand up and speak to the House of Commons, he kept his hind end blissfully planted on the bench, waiting for someone else to get up there and spout the required nonsense.

It doesn’t explain everything about what’s wrong in our political moment, but I do love it when they give me something new to make fun of.

 

Department of High Security

Meanwhile, our immigration minister, Robert Jenrick–well, to be fair, I don’t know that he forgot that he was the immigration minister, but he may have walked off and left his ministerial red box unattended on a train while he went to the toilet. Yes, ministers have to use the toilet no matter how powerful they become. Sad but true. 

What’s this about a ministerial red box? Well, ministers have red briefcases, called boxes, since they’re not really boxes but are at least boxy. The government’s website says they have to use them when they’re carrying papers that need to be kept secure. Why? Because they “offer a higher level of security.” At least if you don’t leave them on the train seat. 

A photo of Jenrick’s red box sitting all on its lonesome in an empty first class train seat, and Jenrick says it’s misleading since that he was sitting across the aisle. The person who took the photo says, “He 100% left it–it’s an important document case, we were baffled.”

Me, I haven’t a clue what happened but I’m putting my money on him having left it. Since we’ll probably never find out, it’s safe enough.

*

Since we’re talking about security, Britain’a Ministry of Defense accidentally sent a number of classified emails that were meant for the US to Mali, an Russian ally.  

How’d that happen? The US military uses “.mil” in its addresses. Mali uses “.ml.” So Britain sent what it says were a small number of messages that weren’t classified as either secret or more secret than secret. The US, on the other hand, sent millions of emails to Mali, including passwords, medical records, and the itineraries of high-ranking officers.

Who needs spies?

 

And also in the US

Activists who oppose self-driving cars wandering loose on the streets of San Francisco have discovered that if they put an orange traffic cone on the hood of the car, it forgets it’s a car. Or–well, who knows what goes on in the mind of a self-driving car? I was looking for a connection to forgetful politicians. It stops. It goes nowhere until a human being shows up to take the cone off. 

To avoid stranding riders, they’ve targeted empty self-driving taxis. 

 

But back in Britain . . .

. . . English Heritage, one of the massive nonprofits that run visitors through historic buildings, shaking some spare change out of their credit cards and some feelings of awe out of their souls along the way, has discovered that adults will forget whatever bits of dignity they pretend to have if the dress-up boxes that had formerly been for kids only include adult size clothing. 

But because no organization that large and respectable can be taken seriously unless it commissions research before introducing a change like that, it commissioned research into the adult imagination, discovering–surprise, surprise–that adults still have them, and that they seem to improve with age.

I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that this is all bullshit, but that’s okay because I’m not sure it matters anyway. The costumes aren’t available at all English Heritage sites and I’m not clear about whether the change is permanent or only runs through August. If you happen to visit, if you’re an adult, and if the adult costumes have been taken away, that doesn’t mean your last shot at imagination has left. At your age, you’re responsible for your own imagination. Don’t wait for someone to tell you when to imagine, or how.

28 thoughts on “Who’s the prime minister today?”

  1. I don’t think I can hold it against the minister for leaving the red box behind. I don’t know where he’d have put it in the toilet and I certainly wouldn’t have wanted him to put it back on the seat if he had taken it with him.

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  3. I will raise my hand to admit that I am an adult who has dressed up at historic sites and in museums that offer adult sized dress up garments. I am not too concerned about dignity, to be fair, plus any opportunity to have my kids assess me as “cringe” is not to be missed.

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    • I actually like the idea of adults dressing up, and if I were with kids I’d dive right in. Since they wouldn’t be mine–none are–the cringe factor doesn’t come into it. Or so I tell myself anyway.

      As it happens, I can’t allow myself near hat departments or shops–men’s or women’s. I don’t like hats, as in wearing them in the real world, but I think they’re hysterically funny to try on, and when people are trying to sell them they don’t think I’m as funny as I do. When I decided I needed one to keep the sun off, trying them on wasn’t half as much fun.

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  4. Gosh – your PM may just have won the week. The best we could offer was the Former President being asked at his arraignment how old he was and answering “Seven.” adding, after a moment’s reflection, “Seven.” Which some of us pronounce “seventy-seven” when we are asked a like question.

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  5. I always called it a balloon flower … quite exciting if you’re around when they make that tiny popping sound as they cast off the shackles of bud-dom and become flowers. :D … as for the rest – not only are the lunatics running the asylum they’re also infant lunatics.

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  6. Back in stoneage (late Eighties, Nineties ?) a joke said that the Russians would only need to ride some trains to gather information, because all those officials left their papers & files behind (they were usually too pissed to remember their names). Others said : Why bother with riding these trains, just pay the binmen.
    I did not know that English Heritage was into adult role playing.

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    • I had the same thought about spies riding the trains, and I’m sure everyone else did too. I hadn’t thought of the binmen, though.

      As for English Heritage, we don’t know for sure if they’re into adult role playing, only that they think the rest of us might pay money to be.

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