Prefects and New Bugs

Among the natural characteristics of the conservative mindset is a tendency for old habits to die hard; and this trait has a tendency to particular dominance among persons whose intellectual capacities strain towards the insectile, or even the amoebic. Hence the obvious inability among the various sclerotic schoolboys in Her Majesty's Government to rein in their long-unleashed enthusiasm for bamboozling the public. Although his colleagues Michael Green and Sebastian Fox may be as yet on-message, the Graybeing wannabe Grant Shapps has incurred a rebuke from Big School for treating the voters like first-year squits and telling them whoppers about the rules on tuck. In a similar vein, the jabbering homunculus Michael "Ripped" Gove decided to come over all expert about fitness, prescribing walking and jogging routines for all the world as if he once wrote a leader on the subject for the Murdoch press. Following the ministerial example, police forces are strong-arming in all directions, ordering Bozza's Britons to abstain from rest during exercise and to give up Easter eggs for Lent. Even during a merely global emergency, there might be a case for asking British public figures to act like grown-ups; it remains as yet unclear whether Her Majesty's Government will countenance so flagrant a breach with the Conservative Party's famous libertarian traditions.