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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Comment
Stewart Lee

Only votes from the dead can keep this zombie Tory government alive

Illustration by David Foldvari of a zombie's hand emerging from the rubbled holding a voting slip.
Illustration by David Foldvari. Illustration: David Foldvari/The Observer

If the dead could vote, who would they vote for? And what would the deceased community make of the Britain they have left behind? For example, in ye olden times Britain, before there were privatised water companies to keep us clean and hydrated, a famous warning cry went out when people threw their urine and faeces into the uplifted faces of those below. Gardyloo! The word, it transpires, is derived from the French for: “Look out! I am throwing my excrement into your eyes because Anglian Water doesn’t exist. Sorry.”

People who think everything was better in the past must be thrilled that we are returning to similarly simple times. Our assiduously asset-stripped privately owned water companies cut out the middleman of actual waste treatment and dumped raw sewage directly into our rivers and seas 300,000 times in 2022 alone, often in the spawning grounds of endangered salmon during breeding season. How would the typical Conservative MP like it if someone came and tipped a load of human excrement over him while he was having sex? We could always ask Conservative Friends of Russia founding member Matthew Elliott, as the KGB is bound to have some compromising photos.

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