By Ben Pensant

He’s done it this time. Not content with making Twitter addicts and clickbait journalists terrified to use the bathroom in case Coronovirus jumps out of the toilet and bites off their tiddlers, Boris Johnston has sunk even lower with his sociopathic decision to inflict a month-long lockdown on our dying country. And four days in, this reckless move has already been more disastrous than anything Chris Shitty could imagine, with reports suggesting two-thirds of the media establishment have succumbed to severe soggy mattress syndrome.

But it gets worse. Because as all decent pandemipantpissers know, a four-week lockdown won’t merely impact terror-stricken columnists who believe if they open their front door their whole family will die. No, the dire effects will be felt by everyone, from selfless civil servants working from home surrounded by teacakes and fluffy cushions to greedy working-class saps endangering the public by squeezing their fat arses into disease-ridden Presto checkouts. Because as any idiot knows, the problem is not that Lockdown 2 goes too far: it’s that it doesn’t go far enough.

Yep, sticking to their tried-and-tested rule of ‘too little, too late’, Bo(o)ris(h)’s lily-livered new restrictions aren’t just an affront to those of us who’ve spent 8 months bravely grassing up our neighbours, they will also do absolutely nothing to stop selfish pensioners visiting their grandkids or contagious teens spitting at Muslims. And this time it’s personal, as my home town of Newcastle laid the groundwork for the tough new measures, only to see Geordie hearts broken with a dangerously half-arsed lockdown that will be lucky to put half-a-dozen pubs out of business.

I mean, it’s not as if we’re spoilt for North East idols. In fact, most Tyneside heroes are anything but: Local soccer ‘legend’ Allan Shearer is still feted despite giving a Nazi salute every time he scored a touchdown. Ant and Duncan are revered even though their only talent is the ability to shit out of the same arsehole. And let’s not forget popular Emmerdale star Denise Walsh, whose dangerous anti-lockdown views have caused the deaths of thousands and severely damaged the North East’s feminist community. The yo-yo knickered slut.

Thankfully a new breed of Tyneside warriors have emerged, ones who don’t wear silly shorts, dye their hair coke-whore blonde, or force ’80s pop stars to jump out of helicopters eating hippo’s fanny batter. Yes, I’m talking about the fearless leaders of Newcastle City Council, who’ve been at the forefront of implementing draconian restrictions and flushing everything good about the region down the ideological shitter. Champion!

Because while the UK has finally got its act together after that suicidal summer when people were allowed to go about their business as if the vast majority of them had nothing to fear, courageous NE councillors like Nick ‘Nick’ Forbes have been going all-out for months, ensuring the dumb Geordie public have as little fun as possible until we are free of the deadly virus so deadly it’s killed as many as 0.06% of the population.

Indeed, Newcastle was one of the first councils to demand the government make life harder for the folk who do the normal jobs that clever people don’t have to. Luckily, no-one will have to do them soon as there won’t be any normal jobs left. Good. As long as the uneducated drones who empty our bins, scan our shopping, and deliver our parcels keep pulling their weight we should survive. Though it would help if they did the decent thing and died more often: those statistics won’t exaggerate themselves!*

(*They will.)

Fortunately, those most petrified of Covid don’t read statistics, and those that do have convinced themselves that tiny numbers are actually enormous ones. Which is great news for the average post-op transman self-conscious about his small penis, as he can now simply present his freshly sculpted little soldier to the nearest mask-wearing scaredy cat and be instantly reassured that he’s hung like a Derby winner.

Because for every alt-righter who sees a table showing 250 infections per 100,000 in a city of half a million and thinks “Phew, that’s refreshingly low” there are scores of concerned ideologues who’ll look at the same figures and think “If we don’t stop people visiting their nanas or ordering pints after ten EVERYONE WILL DIE!”

And this latter group includes Nick ‘Nick-Nick’ Forbes, who recently endeared himself to Newcastle’s small but well-groomed progressive community by lobbying the government to impose tighter restrictions on the North East then complaining when the government imposed tighter restrictions on the North East. Naturally, right-wing doughnuts pounced, querying why Nick was so hasty to close pubs early and ban people from visiting relatives when cases were relatively low. They also stupidly asked if he’d considered that the tiny rise in infections may have been inflated by increased testing, false positives, and people who were neither symptomatic nor infectious. Luckily, Nick’s a pro and handled these aggressive questions by coolly ignoring them.

Which was easy as ‘false positives’ have been comprehensively ignored for months, dismissed by a petrified pundit-class determined to lock the public up indefinitely lest they pass on a bug so universally dangerous most people barely notice they’ve got it. And who can blame them? If you start reporting that estimates suggest over 40% of positive tests might not actually be positive then before you know it the public might twig that cancelling a country, knackering its economy, and ruining people’s lives probably wasn’t entirely justified.

Inevitably, the BB(rexit)C have disgraced themselves by repeatedly covering false positives. Fortunately, these dangerous reports rarely appear on TV, and are usually tucked away online where only dozy libertarians like Christopher Hitchens and Brendan O’Bullshit can find them. Thank god somebody at the Beeb understands the proud left-wing tradition of burying good news.

Much like our Nick, who couldn’t be more proudly left-wing if he had blue hair and a shit beard. Indeed, one look at Nick’s Twitter profile reveals his SJW credentials: “Musician, vegetarian, husband, climate change activist” it states, Twitter’s cruel algorithm denying Nick the space to add “Authoritarian, fearmonger, destroyer of an entire region”. In fact, the only thing missing are his pronouns, which is unfortunate as it’s becoming increasingly hard to tell if Nick has balls or a fanny.

Unlike Boris the Butcher, whose toxic masculinity lies at the heart of his ridiculous restrictions. “Ridiculous?” the righties cry. “How can you say they’re ridiculous when you’ve spent months supporting them and grassing up people who break them?”. Dear me. Once again for those at the back: Boris’s restrictions aren’t ridiculous because they’ve gone too far – they’re ridiculous because they haven’t gone far enough. Kapeesh?

Because any idiot can see that every single death happened because of the Tories’ half-measures, especially in working-class areas, with their after hours drug dens and death-trap playgrounds. If Lord Jezza were PM the lockdown would’ve been ten times more severe and NO-ONE would’ve died, apart from a handful of decrepid Leave voters and some racist children with terminal cancer: the whitest disease on the face of the planet.

See, despite what the clowns calling us the government’s propaghandhi wing think, leftists only appear to be going along with the Tories’ piss-weak rules: what we’re really doing is fooling them into thinking we support them. Yet all over social media right-wing thickies accuse us of defending Tory policies despite hating the Tories. Erm, that’s how it’s supposed to look, numb-nuts. We’re blessed with a cowardly government obsessed with satisfying people who despise them. Who wouldn’t take advantage of that?

Hence this clever ploy, beautifully executed by legions of left-wingers determined to express their hatred of Boris Johnston by doing exactly what he says. And the media have contributed too, helpfully exaggerating the threat in a variety of ways: reporting deaths with Covid as deaths from Covid, releasing speculative news items on the as-yet-unproven spectre of Long John Covid, and paying roly-poly Irish journalists to harass people outside petrol stations because they didn’t put their masks on quick enough.

This stunt – by well-fed crusader Steven Nolan – caused much controversy among Northern Ireland Twitter users, with mobs of Loyalist bullies ganging up on Steven after he harmlessly pestered strangers outside Tescoe for forgetting to wear face coverings. Shameless. These Bob Paisley-loving pricks should count themselves lucky Steven only had a camera with him. Far worse things have been pointed at people on garage forecourts by mad Irishman in masks.

Naturally, this brilliant left-wing ploy to make the Tories think we like them has been driven by social media, where sceptics who express even the slightest reservation about masks or lockdowns are dismissed as tinfoil hat-wearing loons by people who think Boris Johnston didn’t have Covid and his baby doesn’t exist.

The ruse was brilliantly enabled by commie sexpot Ash Starkers, who took to Twitter to mock that pensioner from Burnley who suggested that the government should focus on protecting the old and vulnerable and allow the rest of society with little to fear from Covid to go about their lives. That the old goat also used war metaphors made her even more deserving of abuse. Which she duly received, gifting us the wonderful spectacle of a thread full of Labour supporters attacking someone for attacking a Tory government. 2020 rocks!

But the most ingenious thing is that right-wingers are on board too! Some are staunch Tories who support their party no matter what. Some detest the working-class for wearing denim, eating kebabs, and not doing as they’re bloody well told. And some are simply sad bastards with a hard-on for authoritarianism and snitching on people. In other words: they’re just like us!

In fact, when it comes to Coronasteria you can barely fit a Rizla between leftist fear-junkies and their right-wing counterparts. No-one exemplifies this better than ex-fascist Pierce Morgan, who’s been at the coalface from the off, combining his desire to shut down the country with constant complaints about the consequences of shutting down the country.

Only last week Pierce stated that Britain “needs to lockdown nationally, immediately” before going on to say “they also need to ensure non-Covid patients get treated and businesses don’t go bust”. Quite right, Pierce – the government needs to make sure people don’t lose their jobs or miss medical treatments but first they need to do the one thing guaranteed to make sure people lose their jobs and miss medical treatments. Perfect.

And no, this is NOT siding with a wide-faced Tory windbag, no more than following The Rules is ‘supporting’ Boris. We’re simply manipulating the right, biding our time before hitting them with something unspecified but amazing that will humiliate the government and pave the way for Grandmaster Corbyn to reclaim the number ten throne. (As soon as he finds a party that’ll have him.)

Because only a true leftist has the nous to capitalise, unlike alt-lite Ken Starmer, whose vanilla suggestion of a two-week ‘short circuit’ lockdown was widely rubbished. Two weeks? You’re about 100 weeks short, pal. We need to lockdown for at least two years to get these filthy spreaders in line, with everyone isolating for the duration so the STAYATHOME# rangers get to experience life without shops, water, electricity, phones, TV or radio. Sure, there’ll also be no broadband, making it harder for the #STAYATHOME rangers to tell everyone how ‘liberating’ it all is but we’ll think of something. Perhaps working-class folk could power the internet by running on giant treadmills so the rest of us can continue posting pics of our artisan craft projects on Instabook? It’s the least they could do after they voted for Brex(sh)it.

Whatever happens, you can be certain we’ll carry on holding the Tories to account by promoting their poxy restrictions. And no-one has promoted those poxy restrictions better than the brave Newcastle City councillors who’ve been instrumental in fooling the Tories into doing our bidding.

Or have they? Because despite everything I’ve just written it seems they may have bottled it. Indeed, before Lockdown 2 was announced they were claiming infections in the North East had dropped, with reckless talk of restrictions being relaxed rather than increased. And now they’re appearing on telly bragging about the North East being one of the few places where infection rates are flattening. Is this part of the plan? Or have Nick and co been blackmailed into taking the anti-lockdown dollar by Julia Hartley-Brewdog and The Daily Fail? Whatever the explanation, something is clearly off about the sneaky turncoats I’ve just spent a whole blog lauding.

They should take a look at how the pandemic was handled by other provincial shitholes. Take Nottingham Forest, wisely put in the top tier weeks ago, meaning most of its inhabitants will die but at least the survivors get to see out the rest of their short lives foraging for weeds on abandoned building sites. Which is a fairly generous outcome for a city that looks like Sunderland if it were gangraped and left for dead. Sadly, anyone who’s spent five minutes in this Gamora will know instantly why infections are so high: notorious burger-and-tits brothel Hoofters, where self-hating waitresses wander around in tiny orange shorts with their fanny lips hanging out. Is it any wonder they’ve all caught the non-Chinese flu?

Ditto Manchester, which, thanks to Lord Mayor Larry Burnham’s masterstroke – feigning anger over tougher restrictions in his city despite the fact that he wants tougher restrictions everywhere – was safely under lock and key a fortnight before the rest of us. And you only have to look at the deranged anti-lockdown talk from brick-think rockers Iain Brown and Liam Gallagher to know that the Mancs thoroughly deserves it. Happily, the shaggy-haired twosome got their comeuppance when they were roundly mocked and accused of being Tories, despite the fact that they’ve never voted Tory, have repeatedly slagged off the Tories, and were objecting to the actions of a Tory government. The two-faced bastards.

So there it is. From Geordie heroes to spineless zeros in 2000 words. Slow handclap, Newcastle. Still, lockdown-lite is better than no lockdown at all so do your best, Tories! We’re right behind you! Honest! Granted, we’ve stuck a knife in your back and a girl-dick up your arse but we’re behind you all the same!

In the meantime, spare a thought for our progressive brothers and zizters across the pond, who no longer have a right-wing fruitcake with shit hair to hold to account and cry about on Twitter. In fact they won’t have anything to cry about as they tend not to be arsed about the awful shit the president does when he’s a Democrat. You thought four years of Trump was bad? Imagine four years without him. Shudder.

Still, at least with Joe Bidet and Queen Kamala in the driving seat the yanks get to spend those four years in glorious lockdown: masked-up, unemployed, without a pot to piss in or a Trump to throw it over.

See how it’s done, Nick?