For generations doctors have tried to work out whether folk are plugged into reality by asking “Who is the Prime Minister?”
This stopped working with Maggie because she was there so long everyone knew – even the mad.
Doesn’t work today either, as no one knows, not even the sane……
OK, old joke, old enough that The Goons used it in Tales of Old Dartmoor (“I have made arrangements with one of the French governments”) and well known enough that I spotted it in a recent Dominic Lawson column. Lawson admitting that that’s what his reference was to.
But still, I did find myself checking Google News just now to see if it had changed since breakfast.
Update – so this is a joke that didn’t age very well then, eh?
I have a request. (whisper whisper…)
step step step step rattles lock step step step step step step opens door step step step closes door step step step step step
pause
step step step step opens door step step step closes door step step step step step rattles lock step step step step step step
Sorry, what was it you said?
🙂
How to tell who the current Prime Minister is?
Press F5.
A question even the mad should be able to answer:
Which university did the Prime Minister attend?
There’s a suggestion on Twitter that after a possible concussion the correct answer to ‘Who is the Prime Minister?’ is ‘Dunno, how long was I out for?’
– Press F5.
Clickity, clickity, clickity. It’s a quagmire.
The correct response is “Do you mean the nominal one, or the de facto one?”
“ A question even the mad should be able to answer:
Which university did the Prime Minister attend?”
I’ve just been listening to Niall Ferguson on the Goodfellows podcast make the same point. These battles aren’t over policy, by ever have been, they’re about which Oxford graduate gets to be PM.
Although he never went completely batty, my dad suffered from a series of infections towards the end, each of which sent him pretty loopy (as they tend to, at that age). He did, though, still have the presence of mind to be able to answer, “I believe it might be Mr. Johnson now,” in August of 2019. Which certainly impressed me, considering that he thought he was on a tour of South America at the time.
I’m not sure if that says more about him or the ineffectiveness of the question as a diagnostic tool.
Can’t help but wonder, if she couldn’t even handle two months in office, what business did she have in running in the first place? Almost like this may have been planned in advance.
alkdjflad
Sunak was supposed to win, but the membership didn’t like him. So like Brexit, the Establishment tried to reverse the result. Because Liz is not an “operator” in that sense and gave them ammo with a budget which sounded “conservative” ( apart from the borrowing).
I just realised, I didn’t finish the sentence.
“Her fate was sealed as soon as the dust about the Queen had died down.”
@Bloke in North Dorset
“These battles aren’t over policy, by ever have been, they’re about which Oxford graduate gets to be PM.”
There’s something one learns running a business. If you keep finding the components don’t come up to scratch, change the fucking supplier.
7 out of the last 10 have come from that shithole by the Thames & they’ve all been duff but one.