It is exactly a year since the Rt Hon Liz Truss began her brief period as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Including ten days of mourning for her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II , Ms Truss lasted just 44 days in office. And rightly so; her actions were not just bad, they were so horrendously abysmal, that they raise a question. How can we comprehend this catastrophe? What can it be compared to?[1]
We consulted many experts: economists, historians, media personalities, psychiatrists; but we found one group had the answer which most satisfied our curiosity and reduced our levels of cognitive dissonance to manageable levels. It was Bad Movie fans, and their choice of Robot Monster as the template paradigm for the Truss Government.
For those alien to the fraternity, Robot Monster was the one where they stuck a diving helmet on the head of a man in a furry gorilla suit. As the Director Phil Tucker explained [2]
“I originally envisioned the monster as a kind of robot………I talked to several guys that I knew who had robot suits, but it was just out of the way, money wise. I thought “OK I know George Barrows George’s occupation was a gorillas suit man When they needed a gorilla in in a picture they called George, because he owned his own suit and got like 40 bucks a day. I thought “I know George will work for me for nothing. I’ll get a diving helmet, put it on him, and it’ll work!” [2]
If you want to know why it doesn’t work, try combining the two images at the top of this article, or click on the links [3], [4] to see Tucker’s creation in its full glory.
Tucker was a reasonably intelligent man. And his premises were strong: people liked scary movies, especially about things like robots, gorillas and aliens. So, what was not to like in Robot Monster? Now click again. And try to keep a straight face. Truss was (is) a reasonably intelligent woman, and probably more honest than a number of her Parliamentary colleagues. And the ideas she loved (lower taxes, a smaller state) are at least defensible, if not always right. But it is possible to put right things together in a wrong way, especially if you are working fast, and on the cheap. The results are always the same. Robot Monster. And the Truss administration.
[1]https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/liz-trusss-49-days-chaos-30858891?int_source=amp_continue_reading&int_medium=amp&int_campaign=continue_readin
[2] Medved H, Medved M The Golden Turkey Awards Perigee 1980
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot_Monster
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_considered_the_worst
#liz truss #robot monster #kwasi kwarteng #uk
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