Open secret Santa

THANK GOD IT’S FRIDAY

IN THE SPIRIT of goodwill engendered by all that new Brexit bonhomie in Not-So-Great Britain and the god-fearing Republican Party who prefer former KGB agents to Democrats, I’m appointing myself “secret Santa.”

And here are my presents for some not-so-secret people.

Lying, thieving, emolument-grabbing White House squatter Donald Trump: a Tony award for the Best Reality TV Series for every series of the Apprentice and Celebrity Apprentice ever or to be made.

If Fat Nixon had got just one of these earlier, his jealousy of president Barack Obama might have been a great deal less acute and he would not have been tempted to boost his ratings by appearing on the Republican party nomination contest reality TV show.

The world would be safer; and American Nazis and white supremacists would not have been given free sheet and/or top White House posts; and the Republican Party would not have been transmogrified from the party of Abraham Lincoln into a far-right, conspiracy theory-promulgating assembly of blithering cretins eager to lie to save a criminal from making a well-deserved jail.

Prime Minister Keith Rowley: hair gel. Keith Rowley is one of the best human beings ever to get involved in the confidence game we call government but no one is above being corrupted by it – not financially, but in their souls. When everyone around you tells you only what you want to hear, you very quickly develop a Messianic complex. If we see him laughing at his gift of hair gel, we know we’re all right but, if we see him rubbing it in his own bare scalp, it’s time to vote UNC.

If they’re really interested in collective responsibility, Cabinet should also give Keith the nickname “Rasta,” to bring back the street cred he loses every time he sits in his armchair on stage and literally talks down to the hoi-polloi on the floor of the community centre.

Finance Minister Colm Imbert: an NBA scholarship. Based on a combination of the reasoning processes detailed in the first two presents above, giving Colm a basketball scholarship – to MIT, of course, to flatter his other shortcomings – would give his ego the boost it needs to finally get over his height, or lack thereof, and focus on his main job of raising the prices of everything until just before the point of public riot.

I’d also get him additional gifts of a place on the starting team of the Toronto Raptors and appoint him personal coach to LeBron James, Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant.

UK Opposition Leader for Life-wannabe Jeremy Corbyn. For the man who managed to make Boris Johnson look more electable and more trustworthy, I wouldn’t so much give him something as take away his rose-tinted glasses so that he could see, at last, that, to all but the hard core of his supporters, he was not the messiah who would rescue the poor and suffering from the tentacles of the Tories, but the only thing standing between voters and a Labour government.

Not even Brexit – which, for personal reasons, he contrived not to exploit – was as damning as Jeremy himself. If Britain crashes out the European Union in the next year, the individual who will be most responsible for it will not be Johnson, but Jeremy. Hmmm. Change his gift to a kick in the pants.

Aspirant Tobago independence leader Watson Duke: swimming lessons.

British PM Boris Johnson: the official title of Man Who Achieved Most with Least. He won 365 seats in Parliament with a three-word slogan that was a lie, ducked into fridges and pocketed phones to avoid difficult questions or images, refused to say how many children he has sired and reneged on every promise he ever made, publicly or privately – and has been rewarded with five years as UK PM! There is nothing you could give him, except this formal title.

Brexit and Brexit-election winning “strategist” Dominic Cummins: the unofficial title of British Prime Minister.

“Moscow” Mitch McConnell, Lindsay Graham, Ted Cruz and the Fox News lineup (minus Chris Wallace): a mistaken identity arrest and imprisonment for a long weekend in an inner-city jail; preferably in Baltimore.

Trinidadian drug dealers: an extension on the deadline for changing the old $100 bills for the new ones.

TT President Paula-Mae Weekes: a gold Tinder membership, which, with luck, might eventually lead to her meeting her own requirements to be legitimately invited to her own events.

US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg: eternal life.

Her brother judges Gorsuch and Kavanaugh: early death; and, for Kavanaugh, beer.

BC Pires is openly heterosexual but secretly lesbian. Read the full version of this column on Saturday at www.BCPires.com