The title of this piece is not original. Way back when, a Rhodesian author Robert Early wrote a book with the same title and although his book was about the Rhodesian war, my thoughts today centre on the madness affecting the world today.

To my mind, the world – certainly this crowded little island part of it – really seems to have gone bonkers. Britons in general still appear fairly evenly divided in their feelings on Brexit – with or without a deal – and the ‘authorities’ who regulate our lives seem to be abusing their new Coronabug powers to a terrifying degree.

When it comes to Brexit, I have always been in favour of leaving the EU without a deal and Britain finding its own way in the world as it has so many times before. Perhaps my feelings are coloured by having come from a landlocked country that was shunned and abandoned by the rest of the world for fifteen long years. No imports were allowed in to Rhodesia, but we were resourceful people and if we needed something, we made it ourselves.

It worked too and before Mugabe and his ruinous policies came along, my tiny little country was feeding and providing for most of Central Africa, so it can be done and if Britain leaves the corrupt EU without a trade deal then Britons will just have to do as we did and get their collective noses to the industrial grindstone.

As for the so-called ‘authorities,’ the most outrageous abuse of power I have heard of so far came in Barnes, South-West London, where a drinker pleaded with a pub landlord to sell him a pint.

When he was told that he could only be served if he ordered via an app in line with Government diktat, he said his mobile phone had run out of juice and he was gasping for a beer.

Eventually, the landlord took pity and pulled him a pint. The ‘drinker’ then whipped out a badge and revealed himself to be an undercover Covid inspector from Richmond Council. ‘Undercover Covid Inspector’ – talk about delusions of grandeur!

Anyway, the pub was served with an enforcement order and had to close.

This is a scandalous case of entrapment. Both the undercover turnip and whoever ordered this covert operation should be sacked and charged with using deception to solicit a criminal offence. It is truly disgraceful behaviour and at the very least, these moronic desk jockeys should lose their jobs although I would prefer to see them locked up.

This general madness must end and given what we know now, if the Government really wants to stop the spread of the Coronabug, they would be better off letting the pubs open and closing the hospitals.

Surely there must be someone in the seat of government with the courage to stand up and say ‘STOP?’

Or am I hoping for too much?

Yes, perhaps I am. Elsewhere a government lawyer convicted of ‘upskirting’ has escaped being struck off after blaming Brexit. Daren Timson-Hunt was arrested for using his phone to take pictures up a woman’s skirt at Embankment Underground station.

He claimed it was a ‘moment of madness’ brought on by the pressure of putting in eighty hours a week as head of the Department of Trade legal team working on our departure from the EU. 

Oh come on! Not even the architects of Project Fear in their wildest imagination came up with the idea of Brexit driving men to take covert photos of ladies’ unmentionables but this pratwinkle is allowed to continue practising because he works for the ruddy government.

Timson-Hunt could and should have been jailed for two years but was given community service and fined twelve hundred pounds instead. His law licence was suspended for six months and his future career prospects have gone down the tube, so to speak.

Sorry – that was a rather tasteless pun in the circumstances but this sort of thing makes me cross.

And to top off the collective madness of modern Britain, Bunter Johnson is now being sued by civil servants for clearing Priti Patel of bullying, despite an independent report which concluded she had shouted and sworn at staff.

Lawyers for Civil Service mandarins delivered a pre-action notice to Downing Street last Wednesday which accused the Prime Minister of acting unlawfully when he chose to stand by his Home Secretary and overrule his independent adviser.

I rarely have much praise for our revered leader but at least on this occasion he did support his staff, yet the lawyers’ letter accuses him of ‘setting a damaging precedent which gives carte blanche to the kind of unacceptable conduct which the home secretary was found to have committed.’

The action is the first step towards a judicial review which could force the government to make public the full Cabinet Office investigation led by Sir Alex Allan which concluded Ms Patel’s actions amounted to bullying.

Poor hard-done-by Sir Alex resigned last month after Bunter J tried to persuade him to tone down the report.

Overruling his adviser on ministerial standards, Mr Johnson acknowledged that while Sir Alex had concluded that Ms Patel’s behaviour could ‘on occasion’ be described ‘as bullying in terms of the impact felt by individuals,’ he had ‘full confidence’ in the Home Secretary and he considered ‘this matter now closed.’

Good for him but surely a little sanity should be brought to bear in the vastly overstaffed civil service. Yes, I know they are delicate souls and have those dereadful ‘yuman rights’ to prop them up but if they cannot take a little bit of shouting from a diminutive Asian woman who has had to fight all her life to get where she is, then how can we trust them to make decisions that affect the rest of us.

This is a rough world damnit and we need fighters looking after our interests, not snowflakes who worry about being ‘bullied.’ I went to boarding school at the age of seven and with curly black hair, choirboy looks and a name like Lemon I received more than my fair share of bullying so when I read about this sort of idiotic nonsense from some of the most powerful and privileged individuals in the country, I am afraid my blood tends to boil somewhat.

What little faith I had left in ‘The System’ has almost entirely dissipated and I fear for the future of this country.

Mind you, as I wrote those last few words, the rain was bucketing down outside my window yet despite this, two ladies from the High Moorland Womens’ Institute have just delivered some daffodils in a pot as a Christmas present to Shelagh and I. They remarked that it was a poor substitute for their usual Christmas meal – which we would not have attended anyway – and wished us both a Happy Christmas.

Perhaps there is hope for this soggy little island yet – provided we leave the future to ordinary folk and take responsibility away from the political class and their benighted civil service who have already proved themselves as being totally inept and horribly corrupt.