subscribe
/ Sign Out

If you're all so poor, how come the pubs are so bloody full? by Philip Hammond

BY PHILIP HAMMOND

I HAD a dog’s arse of an afternoon the other day.

Delivering a Brexit budget to Britain means pretending to divide up money we don’t even have anyway far too thinly across a load of lost causes, and frankly the whole farce did me in.

Even as I took my last swig of grappa at the dispatch box, I could hear the whines across the nation about how the pathetic concessions I made were cold economic comfort in these desperate times.

I tell you, I needed a fucking drink. So I hooded up and padded across Whitehall to the nearest pub.

I couldn’t believe it. The queues were six deep. Chief among them the so-called young.

I saw wads waved, credit cards brandished – it was like something out of a 1980s episode of Only Fools And Horses, except it was me falling through the bar in sheer astonishment.

Seriously, are you people taking the piss about this so-called economic downturn? Because it seemed to me, unable to get a drink even after 15 minutes waiting, that you’ve got enough in your pockets to get wrecked on a Wednesday afternoon.

Tell you what, they should make you fuckers Chancellor. I can’t find the money anywhere to do anything. But you people magically pluck banknotes from the air to drink solidly from six till midnight. You’re walking bloody economic miracles.

Anyway, somewhere between last orders and getting into a fight with a minicab driver I seem to have lost my umbrella, phone and right shoe.

If you’ve got them, return them to 11, Downing Street. I’d offer you a cash reward but I’m maxed out from scraping every last penny in the pot to bribe people to vote Tory.

Milton Keynes told to ditch European Capital of Culture bid but not because of Brexit

MILTON Keynes has been advised its European Capital of Culture bid would be unsuccessful even if Britain stayed in the EU and paid £350m a day.

Confirming the UK candidate cities would be excluded from the contest, an EU spokesman said: “It’s a shame about Dundee, Belfast and Leeds. They have some culture. Not what we Europeans would necessarily call proper culture, but they had the right idea.

“Nottingham was an odd one, but we honest-to-god just assumed that Milton Keynes was a joke.”

The spokesman added: “Anyway, we would hate for the people of  Milton Keynes to think they lost out because of Brexit. That would be unfair and unhelpful to them in the long term. There was never the slightest chance they would even be considered.

“We’d be more likely to award the title to an abandoned bus in a scrapyard in Mogadishu.

“Was it actually a joke?”

Next story ›