How to spend £37 billion and have f**k all to show for it, by Boris Johnson

YES, I have just spaffed £37 billion on a useless track and trace system and Dido Harding’s grasping, clueless army. But sod you, taxpayers. Be grateful I didn’t spend it on these projects…

Pulp the cash to build a papier-mache bridge to Northern Ireland

Whinging, so-called experts would say that such a bridge would instantly collapse into the sea. But it would serve notice to the EU that we will seek any solution, however calamitously stupid, to preserve British sovereignty.

Bung a billion to make Big Ben visible from space

With a major cash injection, we could rebuild Big Ben as a 50-mile-high, luminous, throbbing symbol of British potency. We’d give the money to the contractors first and if they said ‘Actually, that’s impossible’, well, we wouldn’t be so churlish as to ask for the money back.

Statues of me holding a whopping great syringe outside every hospital

Well, I am The Man Who Vaccinated Britain. I’ve spent more time playing with vaccines in laboratories than the geeky eggheads who invented them.

A £37 billion one-off gift to Amazon’s Jeff Bezos

Who’s kept things running while all the shops are shut? Good old Amazon, of course. We could clap them on our doorsteps but why not just give Jeff a large cash sum, which he will surely share with all his employees.

A fund to rebuild Buckingham Palace out of solid gold

Does it make you a racist to think this is a good idea? The ‘woke’ brigade would say it does. But anyone who opposes this idea is the true racist. Just thought I’d keep that pot boiling.

Six toys you never had as a child that left you scarred for life

DO you still have feelings of bitterness and resentment at not being bought certain highly desirable toys as a child? Read this list as a form of therapy.

Action Man training tower

Unbelievably impressive and your friend Iain had one. If your parents didn’t buy it for you they must have hated you. On the other hand, all you could really do was send an Action Man down a short death slide, and it came with odd stuff like tiny spoons. Discuss this with your therapist.

Tickle Me Elmo

Plush, cute and packed with cutting-edge toy technology, the 1990s Elmo sold out instantly everywhere. If you didn’t have one to teach you conversation, empathy and tactile skills that’s why all your relationships have failed and you will die alone.

Sindy doll house 

These were massive, and much nicer than the crummy flat or two-bed semi you live in now. If you could somehow shrink down to tiny size and live in a three-storey Sindy house, all your property problems would be solved. It might be a good idea to install a toilet, though.

A skateboard

You should have had a skateboard. Ignore the fact that when you did actually try skateboarding, you just wobbled a bit and fell off. Still, it’s your parents’ fault that you don’t have a multi-million dollar skateboard franchise like Tony Hawk.

Millennium Falcon

An expensive but superbly designed toy. Okay, the chess table didn’t literally generate holograms, and the quad-cannon just made a clicky sound. But if you did not have this as a child your parents must have rued the day you were born. Maybe you were ‘unwanted’. At least they didn’t put you in care.

Palitoy Family Treehouse

If your parents were too tight to stump up for this, at least you don’t have dreams of living a life of perfect conformity inside a giant spring-loaded plastic tree.