Читать книгу Scotland’s Jesus - Frankie Boyle - Страница 8

I read an article in the Guardian recently about universities being corrupted by accepting money from fossil-fuel com-panies. I agree, but what about the Guardian accepting advertising money from those companies, or the ones that make cars or sell flights? Or what about the fact that it’s printed on a tree?* Those things are so far off the agenda that you’d look crazy just for bringing them up. But that’s because the press set their own agenda and their inherent contradictions obviously aren’t on it. If I were to justify myself in the way the Guardian does – I’ll do adverts for all kinds of companies but make up for it by talking about how harmful their products are in my comedy show! – I’d be considered at best a hypocrite, and perhaps even some kind of a lunatic. It’s worth remembering that much as we say we like to see orthodoxies challenged, we usually mean other people’s orthodoxies.

I don’t fly anywhere, or drive, and the whole fixed-grin, let’s-pretend-it’s-not-happening approach to global warming has given my adult life the sinister air of mid-period Hitchcock. It’s a big reason I’ve never really felt I fit in with other comedians. It’s hard to buy into anyone’s carefully presented self-image when they take long-haul flights to international festivals every year. All these kooky shows about not being able to relate to your dad performed by people as indifferent to the fate of the Earth as a Dr Who villain.

It’s bizarre in an age in which we are increasingly connected that we willingly choke our planet by taking unnecessary journeys. Flights and trains are packed with business arseholes going to meet people they could Skype, who spend the whole journey calling, texting, emailing home. The ultimate aspiration is to be ‘jet set’, jumping on planes to be away from our families, with headphones on to be away from ourselves.

How much bleaker do things need to get for these guys? Extreme weather events are becoming more powerful and more frequent. Most experts believe these are due to man-made global warming, although the prevailing opinion in the US is that it’s God showing his anger at the lies spread by climate scientists. I’m sure we were all shocked by the Oklahoma tornado. Winds gusted up to 295 mph. To give that a bit of context it’s the same wind speed that sees 90 per cent of Scots reluctantly leave a beach.

Britain is to face wet summers for the next ten years. I don’t care as I’ve just invested heavily in umbrellas and sticks of rock that have baked in anti-depressants. When you cut through the stick of rock it says ‘Buy an umbrella you miserable cunt.’ It’s going to be wetter than Michael Gove’s bottom lip after a melon-eating contest. Actually, the government is forcing insurance companies to cover anyone at risk of flooding – which, if the Bible reports of Sodom are anything to go by, seems to be the entire cast of Coronation Street.

And Britain’s winters could soon be colder because of increased Arctic melting. If the Arctic thaws it could reopen the Northwest Passage, till now just the title of a particularly bleak Preston-based erotic film. A bit of snow in Britain is great. As long as you don’t want to go anywhere, come back from anywhere, leave the house or survive. The AA has warned people to take a special snow kit with them in their vehicles in winter – it comprises two bits of coal, a carrot and a scarf to make their car into a snowman.

I do my bit during the winter months, leaving out a cake I make from old bacon fat and seeds. Though a lot of the homeless are too proud to eat it. Hang it from your letterbox, then when they curl up for a post-meal nap they make a perfect draught excluder. Actually, I’ve been doing my bit for the homeless with my soup runs but to be honest I’ve never seen people so ungrateful for a bowl of gazpacho. If you’re a pensioner worried about the cold weather, do the same as my neighbour and block out draughts by leaving your mail in the letterbox.

We seem to have problems with snow every year now – isn’t it about time they started making paths out of salt? People moan when trains and flights are cancelled because of snow. It’s like what they really want is pilots to come on the radio and say, ‘Hi, it’s probably too dangerous to take off, but fuck it, let’s give it a go. Who’s with me?’

Which reminds me, I’m supposed to be talking about transport. Rail fares are up by 11 per cent but I’m not going to slag the rail companies off. Some of these new services have great views from the top deck. How do these executives come up with that figure? My best guess is that they spend most of their days on their own trains, going nowhere, staring at the tracks heading off in to the distance. Subconsciously those track lines get processed as 11 per cent. So if we want cheaper train fares in future you know what to do: if you ever find yourself travelling next to a rail executive, pluck his eyes out with your plastic M&S spoon.

Rail bosses denied they’ve consistently missed performance targets, pointing out they’ve met the most important one, to get 100 per cent of price rises arriving on time.

Some people haven’t been affected by the rise in rail fares. Justin Lee Collins, for example, won’t have to travel to work ever again. I tried travelling free by hiding in the toilet. But it was too much faff squeezing behind that panel. And by the time we’d got anywhere I was hoarse from blowing people’s hands dry.

Commuters have reacted furiously to the price rises. Many of them let their eyes glaze over as they pretend to read the Metro, lost in hypothesising the ‘maximum damage for minimum bullet’ route from their office to the roof, before emitting quiet sighs of relief as they picture being picked off by a marksman in a police helicopter.

But there’s an easy way round it. Head to a collectors’ fair and buy some Victorian tickets for the relevant line, then just by growing a huge moustache, popping on a top hat and dusting yourself in flour, pass yourself off as a ghost. Just be sure to remember to go, ‘A Kit Kat, whooooooh, and a bag of Mini-oooooooo-Cheddars . . . eddars . . . eddars . . .’ when the trolley arrives.

The completion of the high-speed rail link between London and Birmingham could be delayed until after 2027. Meaning the announcement of delays is well ahead of schedule. We can be damn proud that we’re able to announce delays to projects before they’ve even started. It’s lucky it’s a high-speed link or it would be delayed until 2079.

The high-speed rail initiative will reduce journey times to Birmingham at a cost of £32 billion. For that sort of cash I imagine they’re going to achieve this by building a replica London somewhere around Wigan. I’m certain that any form of transport that can get you out of Birmingham at 225 mph will be welcomed by everyone. Passengers will now be able to say, ‘How much? But it’s just a coffee and a Snickers!’ at previously unimaginable speeds.

Most of the track will be hidden, although I suspect a train going past at nearly 230 mph might just alert you as to where it is. There’s going to be over twenty miles of tunnels – so at least there’ll be somewhere for Cameron to hide when rebels decide to hunt him down like Gaddafi. The government would have more support spending £32 billion burying Birmingham under a tunnel and leaving the train on display. With the way the recession is going it’ll end up just being a Megabus whose driver has a weight in his right shoe. The completion date for the new train route is 2033. They set that date because that’s when the last remaining commuter starts working from home.

• • •

Hellishly enough, they’re privatising the roads. Let’s hope it goes as well as rail privatisation, so that in ten years’ time we’ll struggle to even get a seat in our own cars. More tollbooths will ensure traffic runs smoothly by having everyone standing completely still, waiting for a tourist to find £2.30 in change.

We already have roads only the wealthy can use. I mean, have you seen the price of petrol? Cameron called for us to show the ambition of the Victorians – so we should aspire to enslave half the world, masturbate at the memory of seeing a woman’s elbow and die from mumps. The coalition wants to privatise the roads, NHS, schools, pretty much all services the state currently provides – soon the only way to get around will be to cut a hole in your pocket and leave a trail of 50p coins wherever you go.

I was stunned by rumours of price rigging by Shell and BP. It’s totally shaken my belief in the benevolence of faceless multinational corporations. I just hope it’s not true, as I can’t stand the idea of being phoned twice a day by some prick asking me whether I’ve been mis-sold any premium unleaded. The government’s right to have a go at oil companies for sneakily adding a few pence to petrol. That’s their job. I decided to try living without petrol but it’s hard. It took me over an hour just to push the car to the top of our street. Cameron says the oil companies will face the full force of the law. If he takes as hard a line as he did with the bankers they could risk having their fuel-selling division separated from the one that sells pasties.

To be fair, oil companies have been very careful about price fixing over the last ten years; they only put up petrol prices when the price of oil rose and when it fell. Let’s remember that forecourt petrol sales in the UK have actually fallen by 20 per cent over the past five years – a sign of the damaging impact that peace in Northern Ireland has had on the economy. It’s estimated that the oil companies have ripped British motorists off by £300 billion. To put that into perspective, that’s enough to fill the petrol tanks of almost a dozen cars. Despite BP being responsible for the Deepwater Horizon accident, the worst oil spill in US history, their profits have more than tripled this year. This seems reasonable; maybe there’s just more of a market for dead pelicans than anyone knew.

Skint Britons are switching to mobility scooters to get round the high cost of motoring. Worries they’ll block the pavements have led to immediate complaints from cycling groups. They may only be designed to go at 6 mph, but I got one up to 30 on the downhill. Only for a moment, though, then the caravan jack-knifed. OK, mobility scooters may not be that quick, but dey certainly get all dat sweet Day Centre pussy cumin to da TV Room winda, kna-wha-am-sayin, bro? If the price of petrol goes any higher, people might be forced to walk to the shops.

Lots of new road building has been announced. The most expensive road project will be the A14 between Huntingdon and Cambridge. Is this a priority? People are losing benefits but students at an elite university can soon visit a poisoned monkey and be back home in time to smash up a tea room. It will take three years for these roads to be re-built; think of all the things that could happen in three years – in three years that girl who ran off with her maths teacher will be on her seventh Nuts cover after having been voted out of Celebrity Big Brother for not being able to add up the shopping budget, but at least when she finally throws herself in front of traffic on the A1 it will be nice and smooth.

They always announce the cuts first, then the spending the next day – like a violent husband waking up the morn-ing after and trying to make it up to you by buying you a road. No one has a job, so where are they going to on these roads? I suppose no matter how penniless people get they will still want to live as far away from their in-laws as possible. It appears that there are ten potholes for every mile of road in Britain. That’s pretty dangerous – I’d recommend putting your Scotch into a beaker with a stopper before setting off.

More 20 mph speed limits are to be rolled out. Good, it’s safer. Although journeys might take a little longer, we can just use the extended driving times as a chance to catch up on texts and emails. It’ll mean more speed cameras but if you get flashed just do what I do. Rig up a magnetron from an old microwave to your car battery and fire it at the big yellow box to fog the film . . . even if it doesn’t work, this lump now growing on my head means I look nothing like the photo they’ll have of me at the DVLA.

You’ll be fined if you use your mobile while driving, even if you’re playing Mario Kart on your iPhone to practise your driving skills. Eighty drivers were sent police warnings after using mobiles to snap an accident on the M1 while driving. That’s wrong. Far better to pull over, then change into your US cop costume, sneak up to the wreckage and stride purposefully from the flames like a T-1000. There’s also to be a £90 fine for smoking at the wheel. They won’t get me; I’ve just had my giant briar pipe electroplated as there’s nothing in the rules about driving while playing the sax.

Recent research shows that one in eight drivers can’t see properly in the dark. There’s a simple solution – people with glasses should only be allowed to drive solar-powered cars. I sometimes drive when I’ve forgotten my glasses. It’s not dangerous, as I’d know if I were about to hit someone by the panic in the sat nav’s voice.

And speaking of dangerous driving, George Michael fell out of a car door on a busy motorway! Great to see him taking a break from singing to get back to what he does best. Poor George. He now has no choice but to do another world tour as it’s the only way he can fund his next insurance premium. The police investigating the accident were looking for an explanation, then they saw George and went, ‘Ah, right.’ He’s set to be the first person to be banned from travelling in the passenger seat of a car.

In much the same way as travellers favour a St Christopher, Middle Eastern truck bombers now clutch an effigy of George before driving at US embassies. I guess there was only so long George could look at the white line in the middle of the road whizzing past without wanting to hop out and attempt to snort it. There’s been a suggestion that George tried to commit suicide. I don’t believe it. After all, if he really wanted to hurt himself he’d have tried to park. It will be difficult to charge George with any kind of offence, as although he was caught on a speed camera going over the limit he has the unusual loophole defence that he wasn’t in a car at the time.

George’s car needed work after the incident, requiring a new honky-honky horn and a bit more custard in the radiator. He was rushed to hospital, regaining consciousness just long enough on his trolley to plough it into an A&E vending machine.

*Hopefully, you’re reading this on a Kindle or similar so it’ll seem a lot less hypocritical of me.