What was Done

This film has been censored. We ask for people to share and copy it. Do not give in to political intimidation. Dial M for Murdo explains the background to the censorship of satire.

“General, the machine has locked us out. It’s sending random numbers to the silos.”

The above quote, as those of a certain age might remember, is from 1983’s WarGames, wherein a teenage hacker, played by a suspiciously old looking Matthew Broderick saves the world from nuclear annihilation after unwittingly starting a game of Global Thermonuclear War with a super computer that can set off nuclear missiles without human interference.

Last Friday evening cultural agitator and all round good cove, Bonnie Prince Bob, launched his latest satirical film, ‘Jeremy Bernard Corbyn: What Was Done’ at the dopey masses. Following the unparalleled success of his earlier venture ‘James Francis Murphy: Saviour of the Union’, expectations were high, if not a little tremulous by the fact that the budget for this production was approximately midway between diddly and squat.

In a report from the future, Bob as narrator, looks back on an imagined history, where the people used their democracy to remove the venal, nepotistic, Tories and installed part-time allotment botherer Jeremy Corbyn as Prime minister, who in turn created a nirvana of social justice, publicly owned utilities and free education for all.

The 30 minute long film played to a rapturous audience at Neu Reekie and was launched simultaneously on Bella Caledonia’s webpage.

By the following morning the YouTube page had amassed a couple of thousand views and praise for one of the most incisive pieces of satirical insight into British politics, was gathering pace. Despite a sensible reluctance to engage with the behemoth of social media, the intrepid Bob was persuaded to put together a Discontent page and launch the video on Facebook. In a ten hour period the video had over 11,000 plays and several positive comments. Then something happened…

The following morning Bob received word from FB that the image he had used wasn’t quite clear enough to see his face. ‘No problem’ quoth he, ‘here’s a clearer image.’ Facebook replied stating that the account was disabled immediately and a decision on its future would be made in the next 72 hours. Not Big Brotherish at all from the worlds favourite purveyor of prevarication.

How odd that a truly gigantic corporation, who have recently received justifiable flack for leaving online, a spree of vile videos of human beings doing unspeakably bad shit to their fallow sapiens, should act so hastily in disabling a video that pokes fun at the establishment, the monarchy and of course big business.

This morning, after an exhilarating mug of Java, I ventured on to Twitter to peruse whatever horrors had been carried out in the name of democracy as I slept the sleep of the innocent. Pondering how the views for ‘What Was Done’ were doing, I ventured on to Bella, clicked the video and was met with the all too familiar “This video is unavailable”. Intrigued I headed over to YouTube to see what was occurring. Hmm no evidence of the video there, in fact at the time, there was only a few of the young Bob’s videos in his archive, a revisit 30 seconds ago and all 34 videos appear to be missing from his Discontent account…

I decided to message the Prince-ling to determine WTF was happening, fearing our floppy fringed situationist might have foregone the acclaim for a decent nights kip from constant notifications, only to discover his Twitter account had mysteriously vanished.

A call was placed long distance from my current Northern abode to his urban pied-à-terre. Barely out of his scratcher, an air of befuddlement was in the young warriors voice. He could not get into his Twitter account, Twitter was rebuffing him with something about the ‘wrong password’…

At this point, I’ll just wrap an additional layer of bacofoil around my head and hazard a guess that the young gallant’s accounts have undergone a full Matthew Broderick hacking. Someone or various someone’s, I would imagine are pissed off at some Scottish oik, ripping the absolute piss out of their political party, their lineage, their old school tie, their political machinations, their predilections for paedophilia and their innate corruption.

As ancient Roman top bloke Cicero might have put it, before his head was lopped off and his tongue stabbed by Flavia’s hairpin, ‘Cui bono’, who benefits? Which party benefits from removing every trace of a satirical agitator’s finest rib tickling words and imagery?

As I type this, I’m chatting with a few friends, we see either an orchestrated attempt to silence a significant voice, or perhaps a bedroom dwelling lone wolf cub, sitting in Pepe embossed underpants.

Thankfully all of His Bobness’ work remains on various hard drives and will in time be put up across as much of social media as can be mustered. A wee reminder to the hackers, nothing drives the will to see something, quite as much as those films and songs that ‘they’ tried to ban.

In the interim, until such time as order is restored and a defiantly impossible password is re-secured here is ‘Jeremy Bernard Corby: What Was Done’. Enjoy and do share.

Oh and as Joshua the super computer in WarGames discovered the concept of futility and no-win scenarios after a string of draws playing tic-tac-toe, the only way to win is to not play. Fancy a game of chess?