This morning I rang my friend Dave to ask him a few things, but found him unable to talk. He’s in deep mourning for David Bowie, whose death, mumbled Dave, courageously fighting tears, is “a great loss”.
Dave also referred to his deceased namesake as “a music legend”, which humbled me deeply. I thought no name of a music legend, from Bach to Offenbach, would fail to ring a bell with me but now, thanks to Dave, I know I was wrong.
Hence, even though I wasn’t entirely sure who David Bowie was, I readily agreed he was a legend and offered my condolences. My probing questions could wait, I said to Dave.
Now Dave is a lovely chap, but he has this little idiosyncrasy: an aversion to giving straight answers to straight questions. I don’t hold this against him – he’s a politician after all.
Since exercises in futility aren’t part of my fitness regimen, I hardly every ask him yes or no questions face to face. However, there’s no harm in doing so in writing – this medium gives Dave time to ponder the queries and respond to them as evasively as only he can.
Actually I’m maligning the poor chap. Sometimes he does give straight answers to questions, as he did yesterday when asked if his government had made any provisions for leaving the EU should the referendum go that way.
Dave’s reply was long and couched in political cant, but anyone fluent in that language could discern a firm ‘no’ underneath. This has led some commentators to accuse Dave of irresponsibility, which only goes to show how little they understand my good friend.
Dave isn’t irresponsible; he’s confident. He knows he can make sure the right people will never cast wrong votes. And even if they do, he’ll always be able to count on his Brussels ringmasters to invalidate the referendum and tell us to vote again until we get it right.
In fact, the first three questions I’m about to pose to my grieving friend deal with that very issue. After that, it’s free-for-all, in no particular order:
1. Do you really think ‘Brexit isn’t the right answer’?
2. Is there one rational reason for Britain to stay in the EU (your desire to be EU president one day doesn’t count as one such reason)?
3. Are you going to use bogus concessions from the EU to trick the electorate into voting to stay?
4. Does reducing our armed forces to the pre-Napoleonic level compromise our security?
5. Are various crimes committed by Muslims in Britain and elsewhere in any way motivated by Islam?
6. Is Britain really enriched by an uncontrolled influx of migrants from hostile cultures?
7. In the light of current events, do you have any second thoughts about the Schengen Agreement?
8. Is regaining control of our borders more important than being on good terms with Angie and Rumpy-Pumpy?
9. Does comprehensive education work, in the sense in which education is supposed to work?
10. Is the £140 million you’ve committed to replacing vile council estates adequate to the task? (It’s only enough for 1,400 flats – on average, one flat costs £100,000 to build.)
11. Does the NHS really benefit from the systematic growth of the administrative staff at the expense of frontline doctors and nurses?
12. Is waiting a fortnight for a GP appointment a good medical practice?
13. Considering that no other European country has a wholly nationalised medicine, do we really know something they don’t?
14. Is there any value to an economic recovery almost entirely driven by borrowing and the inflation in the paper values of properties?
15. Is homosexual marriage consonant with our history, tradition and morality?
16. Is the fact that over 200,000 abortions are performed in Britain every year consonant with those things?
17. Is the welfare state, which effectively replaces the father, good for the family?
18. Is it good for society that half of our children are born out of wedlock?
19. Is it possible to run the country without such ministries as those for communities, sports, culture, diversity, women and so forth?
20. Is Islam really a religion of peace?
No sooner had I finished putting these down on paper that I e-mailed the list to Dave, asking him facetiously if he’s capable of giving unequivocal yes or no answers. He proved that he is, by instantly replying ‘No!’.