So I'll be frank. The UK is being ruled by the worst government for many generations. With triple digit inflation in the energy sector, which is unique to the UK, a government that is doing nothing to address it but is instead focussed on a right wing beauty pageant between a female clone of Johnson (Liz Truss); who, like Johnson, can't be bothered to do the hard work of her position but unlike Johnson can't wing it in interviews so comes across even more incompetent than he did and her adversary who appears to be a little more grounded in reality although given that both he and Truss must appeal to a tiny minority of ultra right-wing Tory voters, must attempt to outdo Truss in economic insanity.

Until recently Australia also had a very right-wing government who were subject to the Youtube comedy channel Juice media. Juice Media create the concept of "an honest government ad" where they mimic an official government campaign ad but share with the electorate what they their policies are really designed to do to enrich them and their donor mates while impoverishing the average person that votes for them. Being Australian, the ads are full of strong language which for me sort of acts as strong smelling salts designed to shock us out of our political apathy and get us motivated to be more careful about which party we cast our votes for.

In this video, Juice Media turn their attention and ire on the UK Conservative party creating a video with lots of very colourful language. However, they also made a PG version suitable for websites like this one so here is the version with all the swearing bleeped but you will get the idea. If you do not live in the UK and wonder whether our government could really be this bad the simple answer is: "Yes it really is this bad in the UK at the moment".

I think one of the funniest comedy series made in the teens of the 21^st was the IT crowd. The concept of the series is based around the IT department of a big multinational (Reynholme industries) that produces a product that is never revealed (part of the comical concept of the whole series). The IT department consists of two geeky guys: a classical geek (Moss) and a more subtle geek (Roy) who boasts to his boss Jen in the final episode of the whole series that his girlfriend thinks he is on the "emotional artistic spectrum". In some episodes (including this one) a goth called Richmond, who lives in the Server room, also puts in an appearance just to add to fun.

The series in general was brilliant but like all series, there were some episodes that were particularly funny. This clip is taken from the first episode of season 2 where Moss and Roy gate crash a date with their boss Jen who taken to the theatre by a bloke she hopes will be her next love interest. Unfortunately for her, he is gay and the musical he takes them to is not what one would describe as "mainstream". Yet given this is Moss's very first time at the theatre, he is very impressed, although, unbeknown to him and Roy, things are going to get interesting as the episode unfolds with Roy having to fake he is disabled and Moss ending up working behind the drinks counter and causing utter mayhem. All crazy stuff that generates a ton of very funny comedy. The clip below is the beginning of this very funny episode.

Ok so we are now entering yet another period of complete chaos in the UK government as Truss was forced to sack her chancellor after Kwarteng released a non-costed mini budget that crashed the pound and the UK economy. Thankfully, the comedians have been at work trying to soften the pain for the long-suffering average Brit who have witnessed the health service collapse and their standard of livings fall as the government continues to pursue policies that only help the very wealthiest in society.

Yet it has also been a very busy week in UK politics. On the 19^th of October Suella Braverman resigned as home secretary because she broke the ministerial code. Two days after that, on the 21^st, Liz Truss was also forced to resign after her whole premiership was in tatters, there was bullying in the Commons as MPs were forced through the "yes" corridor in the voting chamber of the House of Commons on a crucial fracking vote, and Labour gained a 30 point lead over the Conservative party. In short, the whole country is in a right state because of a group of far right greedy, narcissistic, unintelligent, misanthropic, Dunning-Kruger-type individuals who care about as much for the common folk of the UK as I do for a garden slug. Sad and very difficult times indeed for the UK.

So here is my crazy take on the British as an Aussie immigrant, hahem, I mean expat living in England. This is my hypothesis that aims to explain everything British. The population is dominated by four phenotypes:

1. The Innovator
2. The Gossip
3. The Bad Manager
4. The Comedian

The innovators are incredible. The level of British genius at the top never ceases to amaze me and explains how the Brits were able to change the world through science and technology. A few favourites of mine are Sanger, Newton, Turing and Penrose. The gossips are those who either read the Daily Mail and take it seriously or write rags like the Daily Mail. They are important at making sure the manager phenotypes retain power.

The Bad managers are those that do real damage to Britain and sadly they don't just occupy councils, parliament and the lords, but they occupy pretty much every large business and organisation in Britain from the NHS to the Universities to the middle management of many MSEs and multinationals in the UK. I could write volumes on this lot but if you live in the UK, you only have to experience the omnishambles of the current Tory party to know what I mean. Yet I will point out two subtle symptoms of this group that some may have missed. If you were an innovator trying to write a three year research grant, the compulsory inclusion of a detailed 3 year Gantt chart, along with building some artificially large research consortium, are symptoms that the manager phenotypes have got control of your discipline.

The second characteristic is excessive accounting based on them projecting their own dishonesty onto the rest of the population. Yes we must make them spend hours filling in detailed financial reports on their grant expenditure every few months because, if we had that money, of course we would syphon it off for our own personal use. Braverman is an ugly specimen of this trait when she talks about cracking down on those at the bottom cheating the tax payer by claiming universal credit while she puts over £100k through on MP expenses.

And now we come to most interesting phenotype of all: the comedians. Britain produces by far the best comedians in the world and it is in times of deep political crisis that their work goes into overdrive. What the Managers don't realise is they owe as much to the comedian phenotype as they do to the gossip class because British comedy gives the suffering populous a safety valve to dissipate their anger and rage. Without the comedy phenotype, I think the Brits would be more like the French with much more violent protest to the current shitshow of manager phenotypes that have infested the Tory party. If you have read this far then you deserve a lovely taste of the British humour that is being generated at this bleak time in British politics.

Ryan George has a real gift of taking the cultural furniture that has been with us for our whole lives and exposing just how strange it really is when observed from a different perspective. I guess our Christmas paraphernalia is ripe for such parody given the thousands of Christmas songs that have accumulated over the centuries this season has been celebrated in the Western world.

Frosty the Snowman has always been one of my favourites since our next door neigbour once bought my daughter Grace a dancing singing snowman with this tune programmed into it. Strangely enough the version in our snowman is a little different to the classic one. Perhaps I am doing a Peter Kay by mishearing the lyrics of my dancing snowman but it truly likes he is singing:

"🎼 Frosty the snowman was a jolly happy soul, with a pink carnation and a button nose and a lively 'I don't know'🎵". My youngest autistic daughter Rebekah and I now regularly sing these words as we both find them rather amusing in their silliness.

Time for some more Blackadder. The last time I cited Blackadder on this website was all the way back in June when the days were warm and long. That particular set of sketches was taken from the final series of Blackadder which was set in World War I. This Blackadder is set around the time of George the 3^rd and this historical context created lots of opportunities for the very clever comedy writers of Blackadder to create a series of master sketches. These wonderful sketches have brought many people much joy over many years and have raised the spirits of those who are feeling the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune".

If you're a nervous flyer perhaps best not watch this sketch. Aircraft have definitely been a setting for many comical scenes over the years