How to order an inquiry into your own behaviour when you're in the shit

ACCUSED of holding parties, Islamophobia or murder? Simply order an inquiry into it then say you can’t discuss it because of the inquiry. This is how:

Identify the problem

A traitorous colleague has leaked a photo of you at a boozy work event with your wife and child in the garden, an MP has gone running to the press about discrimination, or some bastard bleating about embezzlement on a massive scale. Either way, they need to shut the f**k up. Order an inquiry immediately.

Choose your investigator

There are independent inquiries, and then there are inquiries run by people who you know intimately, who work for you, and who are happy to agree the results in advance. Get one of these useful idiots doing your legwork. It might ruin their reputation, but so what? This is about you.

Stonewall

Now you’ve got a tame little inquiry going, you have an impregnable shield. Questions in the Commons? Inquiry. Fresh allegations surface? Inquiry. Footage released of you giving a White Power salute at a lynching calling for race war? You do not wish to prejudice the inquiry by commenting.

Pre-empt the results

Everyone else needs to wait for the results of the inquiry, not you. In the very week it’s due start talking about how delighted the British people will be to see you cleared by the Who-f**ked-the-Nanny-gate inquiry you yourself ordered, and that you will now focus on what really matters. Subliminally preparing people for a whitewash.

Rewrite the results

Sometimes little people who believe in facts turn up odds and ends that are politically inconvenient, like dead bodies in the Downing Street garden or another pregnancy. Either redact those bits, do a draft of the report yourself or only release a summary. It’s your f**king inquiry. You can do it however you want.

Move on

The inquiry’s over so move on. It’s sad that spad ODed on coke but move on. You regret employing Nazis but move on. Why are these vindictive press still on about the inquiry? It was released yesterday, for God’s sake. It’s drawn a line under the whole affair. Everyone needs to move on.

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Subscribe or we go right wing, threatens Guardian

THE Guardian is warning online readers that if they do not pay monthly subscriptions it will move sharply to the right.

Browsers are being asked to pay £12.50 per month for quality journalism or expect a diet of xenophobia, homophobia, campaigns to privatise libraries and columns from Rod Liddle.

A spokesman for the newspaper said: “We’ve tried appealing to our liberal readers’ better natures, and the twats ignored us. So pay up or we back the Tories all the way.

“We want to keep our unique, quality reporting open to everyone but we’re losing cash hand over f**king fist. Articles about Albania’s pioneering genderqueer goatherds aren’t free. Articles about Britain’s sexiest seven-figure bankers under 25 pay for themselves.

“If you want nice articles about nice people like you wild swimming and growing windowbox quinoa, stump the f**k up. Or the Culture section’s going to be about how to spunk your inheritance up the wall on second homes and Buckinghamshire boarding schools.

“Imagine this country if every single newspaper backed Boris Johnson to the hilt. Yeah, too right you’re shitting yourself. Get that direct debit set up, you tight-fisted leftie wankers.”

Reader Tom Booker said: “Whenever the app says I’ve read 488 articles in the last month, I think ‘f**king good deal that’. But I’ve subscribed now. How else would I know everyone else is wrong all the time?”

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