The sit-down protest that doesn't stand up

Traingate is the kind of political flashpoint that has all the hallmarks of a peculiarly British farce.

The Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition camps out on the floor of a Virgin carriage making a propaganda film about nationalising the railways. He claims his predicament is due to overcrowding, but the billionaire entrepreneur who owns the train company (and presumably doesn’t much like the idea of nationalisation) releases CCTV footage to show that there were, in fact, empty seats.

And from that starting point, what’s our ultimate destination? Who the hell knows? But we have all kinds of fantastic station stops to visit along the way.

Perhaps the empty seats were reserved? Maybe they had bags on them? Or young kids?

It may have been that Jez was keen to spend time with Mrs Corbyn III, but couldn’t find a double berth in which to chit-chat about his anti-austerity policies.

The train, according to Mr Corbyn, was ‘ram packed’. But when aides tried to contact him about the media hullabaloo surrounding the journey, he was reportedly unobtainable because he was making jam. So maybe the train was, in fact, jam packed?

The most mysterious thing to me is why – if the sainted JC is leading some mass popular movement, as his supporters claim – no one chose to give up their seat to the aged Islington North MP. Come on now, Virgin passengers. This is a poor show. An elderly man has entered the carriage and seems to have reservations about sitting down. You, on the other hand, have reservations allowing you to sit down. What do you do? Let him go and camp out in the vestibule area? Honestly.

Someone needs to explain the rules of the train world to Jezza.

If a reserved passenger hasn’t turned up, then you can sit down. After all, they’re not suddenly going to appear just south of Doncaster and kick up a fuss, are they? And if they do, you just tell them you have a massive mandate and it’s an impertinence for them to challenge you.

In the future, you can always book in advance. Get a seat for yourself, the Mrs and any friends. Although preferably not the ones from Hamas or Hezbollah.

I have a hunch that #traingate will be remembered long after Chilcot’s 2.6 million words on the Iraq War are forgotten. On second thoughts, Chilcot’s 2.6 million words had probably been forgotten before #traingate.

With this one, Corbyn is ahead of Ed Miliband. He’s bypassed the bacon sandwich in the buffet and gone straight for the kitchen that wasn’t a kitchen. It’s the sit-down protest that just doesn’t stand up.

A Fawlty Towers script? Si, senor!

Ok, so I gave ChatGPT the following scenario: "Imagine a theatrical script for a situation comedy set in a hotel in Torquay, England. The proprietor is called Basil, an eccentric man who believes the calibre of guests to be low. His wife, Sybil, is often frustrated by Basil's incompetence. They employ a Spanish waiter called Manuel, who struggles to understand English. Basil suspects that two guests, who claim to be married, may be lying." Here's what our favourite AI came up with: Scene: The hotel lobby in Torquay, England. Basil is standing behind the reception desk, looking at a piece of paper. Sybil is standing next to him, looking annoyed. Manuel is hovering nearby, trying to look busy. Basil: (to Sybil) I don't know why we get such low-calibre guests at this hotel. Look at these two - Mr. and Mrs. Smith. They claim to be married, but I suspect they might be lying. Sybil: (sighing) Basil, it's not our job to judge the marital status of our guests. Just m...

Becoming a Twister board

I spent yesterday evening in an old factory building off Brick Lane playing kids' games with an organisation called Fun Fed. The idea is that a bunch of adults get together and act like children for a couple of hours. We played tag and stuck big coloured discs on ourselves so that we could become human Twister mats. There was an awful lot of running around and I was thinking that I ought to get to aikido a bit more often. Being a child is very hard work.

It's been a tough year. Let's give ourselves a clap.

If something didn’t smell right about the UK handling of the pandemic, the British public was never going to notice. But they knew that if they couldn’t smell something, they really ought to get a Covid test sent to them in the post. There has been something incredibly British about the DIY swabs and their delivery via the gig-economy workers of Amazon, hasn’t there? Touch of corona? I’ll pop something in the post to you. Should be with you tomorrow. I suppose it was inevitable that we’d need some new kind of system. After all, the coronavirus outbreak was the first thing in the history of the NHS that couldn’t be cured by paracetamol, rest and plenty of fluids. This understandably left GPs flummoxed and anxious. The UK decided pretty early on that if you were ill with a novel pathogen – which proved deadly in maybe 1% of cases – you really shouldn’t go to the doctor. You should STAY AT HOME and spread it quickly to your flatmates or family members. And because they were now at ...

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