Dictatorships don’t always just happen. Sometimes people let them happen; as someone should have once said, “Dictatorships are what happen while you’re busy making other plans”…

While other plans go on, an elected dictator ensures his truth is communicated as truth however far from the truth it may be. He also needs unthinking followers and De-P has cleverly recognised several such partners; one such being a true culture vulture Madline Dollies. So dedicated to her leader, she had taken a sabbatical in a jungle and suffered publicised humiliations such as eating ostrich anus. Observers suggested this fully qualified her to brown-nose De Pfeffel. In recognition, he put De Pfeffeland’s culture in the hands of “Auntie Mad” – so named by Madline’s detractors because she accused DePBC (Auntie) of nepotism despite employing her own family on political business. She also accused a talk show host of inciting radical Islam; which would have been awful had that not been “alternative fact”.

She in turn tried to get Paul Daycare – a great libertarian provided it’s his liberty to create false divisive headlines that’s at stake – to be the next leader of said BBC. When the interview panel decided none of the applicants was suitable, Auntie Mad simply ignored reality and selected a new panel.

Madline Dollies’ knowledge of her brief, received from the Ministry of Satire, has been superb. Complaining that public money should be removed from Channel 4, “it should be privately funded” she dictated. An outlet so far resisting much of the output of the Ministry of Misinformation, Channel 4 runs on a fraction of the DePBC budget and is, sadly for Auntie M, funded privately by advertising, so that’s one thing she can check off her list and claim to have achieved before the next election.

Of course the department ‘in charge of the remote’, thus vital lever of dictatorship, is the Ministry of Crime and Punishment. Brigadeer Prattle has fulfilled her ambitions of “taking back control of the remote”, quite literally by making the island of De Pfeffeland a place where ‘unwanted aliens’ are dying to enter yet demonised for trying. Any official routes to enter are mysterious and even those well advertised – like visas for HGV drivers, vegetable pickers and the “brightest and best” entering academia – provide only a trickle of vitally relevant human resources to keep De Pfeffeland afloat in the Atlantic Ocean. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Misinformation continues to keep the “unacceptable levels of illegal immigrants” message shouted out from the friends of Mr Daycare.

For those human traffickers sending migrants from France to De Pfeffeland, the possibility of two countries working together to kill their evil trade looked ominous. However De Pfeffel put himself in the position of a modern day King Cnut (not a typo!), telling the French President exactly what his counterpart should do, via Twitter. Last used by ex-US Presidential demagogue Drumpf, this kind of diplomacy had never really fulfilled its promise. And so it was that Brigadeer Prattle had her invitation, to talks with her counterpart in France to solve “the problem of illegal immigration”, withdrawn. “In doin so the French are puttin the lives of our border guards at risk” she said, without a hint of irony.

All of which would be worrying enough; but as the the Ulster comic used to say “There’s more!”

Brigadeer Pratti Prattle believes public demonstrations of protest of any kind are “takin away the rights” of those who find such protests “upsettin”. Any upset, whether intended or experienced will result in protesters “seein the full force of the law”. Police are now given the right to judge whether a protest is ‘upsettin’, even before any protest begins. Any person present at the scene of a protest, or in a place where one might be about to start, can be arrested if they question why they are being stopped and searched. If this happens, and the person arrested tries to claim innocence, the Ministry of Crime and Punishment have ensured that judges and lawyers are undermined, courts under-resourced and costs prohibitive to all but the richest and well-connected defendants.

There’s more of course – much more – but that’s for another time….