Monday, October 31st, 2022
Rishi isn’t going to Cop27. He doesn’t need to. If the number of private jets on display is anything to go by, our world leaders are supremely confident that life on Earth is safe.
Tuesday, November 1st, 2022
Annoying afternoon showing some constituency sixth-formers around the Palace of Westminster. They kept asking questions about fracking, striking nurses and the Northern Ireland protocol. I kept explaining that only new fossil-fuel-extraction licences can save us from planetary-systems collapse, that it’s the nurses who should be paying us for the privilege of wiping elderly arses, and that the Irish shouldn’t have put a border across their own country in the first place. They didn’t seem convinced, so instead I showed them my old trick of getting free Rolos out of the vending machine in Portcullis House by turning the plug socket on and off at the wall.
Wednesday, November 2nd, 2022
Whether it was the nine-hour ambulance wait, the laughing teenagers or Matt Hancock performing mouth to mouth, I can’t say I enjoyed any aspect of getting electrocuted. The A&E staff were not very nice either, thus confirming my suspicions that NHS medics and carers are all vindictive bastards who are only in it for themselves. If only those irritating adolescents from yesterday could have seen the nurse who referred to me as ‘that grasping twat from the telly’ deliberately overinflate my catheter, I think they would have been significantly less sympathetic about industrial action.
Thursday, November 3rd, 2022
The nurses have become yet more unpleasant, simply because I said I only wanted to be treated by English ones. So I rang Sir Gavin Williamson and asked him to come in and have a word. However, after he’d threatened to throw the healthcare assistant who was emptying my commode out of the window and made a throat-slitting gesture at the RVS volunteer with the library trolley, they’ve become even more disagreeable, so I’m not sure it worked. The whole experience has steeled my resolve to defund the NHS.
Housing in Ireland is among the most expensive and most affordable in the EU. How does that happen?
Ceann comhairle election key task as 34th Dáil convenes for first time
Your EV questions answered: Am I better to drive my 13-year-old diesel until it dies than buy a new EV?
Workplace wrangles: Staying on the right side of your HR department, and more labrynthine aspects of employment law
Friday, November 4th, 2022
Discharged, so I got Health Secretary Steve Barclay to fast-track me an ambulance home because the Overfinch is still in the garage getting a Somme vinyl wrap. What should have been a 25-minute journey ended up taking three hours because some Just Stop Oil riffraff were blocking the road. Initially they moved to one side to let us through, but when the ambulance driver told them that I was the person inside, they immediately blocked it again.
Saturday, November 5th, 2022
Had meant to go to Nadine Dorries’s annual bonfire, but it was cancelled because the leader of the 21st Bedfordshire Guides complained about her troop having to burn effigies of Carrie and Dilyn. So stayed at home and tweeted some made-up stories about Albanian crime syndicates instead.
Sunday, November 6th, 2022
Went for a Toby carvery with Steve Baker and Andrew Bridgen. We brainstormed the Northern Ireland protocol over our heatlamp turkey and tepid gravy, and we think we’ve had a breakthrough. It’s quite simple, really: we convince the Irish to cede the Republic back to us so that there is no more need for this annoying border.
Monday, November 7th, 2022
Rishi has decided to go to Cop27 after all because Boris is doing that thing that David Brent did on The Office, still turning up to work even after he’s been made redundant, and he was in danger of being upstaged. When this calibre of person is in charge, I’m more certain than ever that the planet is safe.
Tuesday, November 8th, 2022
Huge buzz around Westminster when Peston tweeted that the vending machine had been fixed. But by the time I got there it was broken again after Jonathan Gullis had tried to headbutt some Fruit Polos out of it.
The Diary of a Secret Tory MP: (Almost!) True Stories from the Heart of British Politics is published by Mudlark. You can follow the Secret Tory on Twitter
