I’ve been meaning to start watching that show Stranger Things but then I saw some of the Conservative Party Conference and figured it’s probably similar.
The people in the queue outside were scary enough and that’s without Liz Truss proving she’s harder to kill off than Freddy Krueger and the spectre of Nigel Farage floating about with a press pass.
Weirder still, everyone seemed to have had their memories erased as they suggested voting Tory was a vote for change despite being in power for 13 years.
Runaway car
With this lot in the driving seat, I feel it’s like being held hostage in a runaway car, trying to dodge hazards when the brakes don’t work and you just want out.
This literally happened to driver Brian Morrison in Glasgow when his electric car became stuck at 30mph was he was forced to crash slowly into the back of a police van to get his ordeal to end.
Maybe this would have been a better solution for the Tory Party, instead of their four-day conference which amounted to the same thing.
Cruella Braverman intended to terrify, but what was most alarming about her “hurricane” of migration soundbite was how reminiscent it was of Enoch Powell’s Rivers of Blood speech.
It’s like she plugged that 1968 address into some sort of AI speech-writing thesaurus and had the printout loaded on to the autocue in Manchester.
Why Sunak keeps Suella close is a mystery but maybe he’s like the Philadelphia baseball fan who made the headlines for taking his ‘emotional support alligator’ everywhere.
Sunak’s secret weapon
Sunak’s wife, Akshata Murty, is the real secret weapon though. She is so sweet my face was hurting from smiling at the telly until I had a word with myself.
As she talked about the man she loves, I almost forgot that inflation is more than three times what it should be, food banks are rationing baby formula and the Tories have presided over the worst strike chaos for 30 years.
Akshata was there to tell us more about the man behind the suit, but we are no clearer.
We know he must like red pens having made the bizarre choice to put the cancellation of something at the centre of a speech on which hangs his own political future and that of his party.
Cancelling stuff would appear to be Sunak’s MO and putting a line through the northern section of HS2 comes weeks after diluting the UK’s net zero goals.
How ironic that his wife, when summing him up in one word, chose “aspiration”.
Akshata was a good warm-up act but it got more tepid from there as Rishi gave a speech so forgettable it felt like Hermione Granger had cast one of her famous Obliviate spells.
No joke
One moment was notable for the wrong reasons. His ‘gag’ about Nicola Sturgeon was cringe-worthy and somewhat beneath him.
He was like a stand-up comic trying out material to see how it lands before honing it for the bigger stage.
Where it’s landed him is being the subject of a complaint by the Alba Party to Police Scotland.
There was more about pupils having to do maths until they’re at least 18 (way to win over the kids Rishi) and a plan to raise the smoking age by one year every year.
Thinking long-term as Rishi suggests, does that mean in 20 years we’ll see 37-year-olds lurking outside shops asking 38-year-olds to buy them 20 Silk Cut?
All go for the Granite City
Meanwhile, aspiration abounds in Aberdeen and the Highlands.
Our Union Street has an army of volunteers preparing to revamp the Granite Mile and everyone is invited to get involved.
There are two big marketing drives with tourism bodies urging people to explore Aberdeen and the north-east and slow down in the Highlands and Islands.
Tourist Greg Crawford did just that on Barra but had his camera stolen.
He was later contacted by Castlebay Police Station, who had received a letter with the camera’s memory card but with a note saying a stranger had sold it to pay for their own holiday believing it was “karma”.
I take it back, that’s the strangest thing I’ve heard all week.
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