The Ministry Of Truth

The Minister doesn’t do Facebook.

The Minister doesn’t like Facebook.

The Minister likes that Facebook got it up ‘em somewhat last week.

But this is apparently all the rage on Facebook.

1 - Go to Wikipedia. Hit “random” or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to Quotations Page and select “random quotations” or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote on the page is the title of your first album.

3 - Go to Flickr and click on “explore the last seven days” or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 - Use Photoshop or similar to put it all together.

I am therefore proud to present the Minister’s first album; the band is named after a one-volume Manga comic and the album’s title is inspired by a quotation made by Senator Joseph McCarthy’s chief counsel.

And with this the Minister takes his leave of you for a while.

The Minister’s Wife is dragging me to the seaside for a week.

In late February.

To Suffolk.

I’m taking a jumper.

À toute à l’heure.

Two loyal readers have today enquired what the Minister has to say about the death this morning of Posh Boy Dave’s eldest son.

Accusations of naivety and disingenuity are rarely levelled at the Minister, but I genuinely hadn’t intended to say anything more about the matter than I did about the recent news that a minor royal had got engaged for precisely the same reason that I consider it has stuff all to do with me or, for that matter, anybody outside the immediate family, friends and colleagues of the individuals concerned.

I am not a parent and I cannot even pretend to imagine what the Camerons are going through at the moment.  Whatever PBD’s political faults, he is a person before he is a Tory and he must be distraught tonight.  I don’t wish that pain on anybody and I feel genuinely sorry for the family.

The reaction has been suitably hysterical (including, it seems, from normally fairly sensible overseas outlets) – the death overnight of a six-year-old boy should not dominate news bulletins all day*, let alone lead to a suspension of Parliamentary business with the country in the middle of an economic meltdown – but that is only to be expected in a country that permanently mislaid its sense of perspective in August 1997.

(*Pisspoor Meejahor of the Day: the BBC’s Political Editor, Nick Robinson, during the 12 minutes devoted to the story by the editor of the Six: “In life Ivan Cameron could not talk.  Today, in death, Westminster spoke for him.”  Fcuksake.)

There is something chilling about hearing this particular Prime Minister sermonising that, “Every child is precious and irreplaceable and the death of a child is an unbearable sorrow that no parent should ever have to endure,” when he’s played such an integral role in Our Brave Boys dropping bombs on little brown children throughout Iraq and Afghanistan for the past seven years.

The only matter I consider worthy of comment is to contrast the PR approach adopted by the Camerons today with that of Britain’s Sweetheart Jade Goody™.

According to respected sources:

Mr Cameron has made clear he wants privacy

and

Samantha and David Cameron have asked that “their privacy be respected” 

Yet this is a man who put young Ivan in front of almost every camera going, stuck his kids on his Christmas cards and seemingly brought Ivan’s illness into every other speech he gave.

With respect, Dave, if you repeatedly choose to use your extremely ill child as a political prop for years, you can’t really legitimately shy away from the cameras when the inevitable happens.  The paps have earned the money shots of the grieving mother and the child-sized coffin, and they won’t be sated until they get their way.

I don’t know Jade Goody, the person; I do, however, know enough about Jade Goody, the “celebrity”, to know that she is famous only for carving a career out of her ignorance, lack of self-awareness and immaturity.

She has, however, reacted to her terminal cancer diagnosis in a commendably honest manner: instead of seeking to retire from the public spotlight that has made her a very wealthy woman over the past few years, she has been brassy enough to say that she intends to milk her imminent death for every cent it is worth to the sons she will leave behind.  Her “reality” show continues filming; she gets hitched so she could land a magazine deal; she’ll play the baldy freak on the front page of The Sun so she can bank the cheque.

So it seems that an ill-educated loudmouth – begat of the union of a pimp and a clipper, drug addicts both – understands the way the Faustian pact with the devil Celebrity works better than our next Prime Minister, the product of a very expensive private schooling, the recipient of a first class Oxford degree and – irony of ironies – an ad man by “trade”.

Somewhere in that previous paragraph there’s the perfect distillation of Great Britain plc in 2009.

It’s a fucking scary place to be.

Boarding a train at Leicester yesterday evening, I chanced upon and began to flick through a discarded copy of The Times, in which Matthew Parris hammers another nail in Labour’s coffin with forensic precision – pygmies, the lot of ‘em; not a leader worthy of being taken seriously.

This opportunity to change society permanently, lost with breathtaking ineptitude, hypocrisy and arrogance, will not easily or quickly be forgotten by the electorate.  The Labour Party’s coming Wilderness Years will endure quite some time…

[Harman, Blears, Cooper, Balls, Milliband, Cruddas, Mandelson, Johnson...]  Within about a year none of these people will matter. There is hardly a Labour government now and by next summer there won’t be one at all. I could be 75, or dead, by the time the internal politics of the Labour Party are again of much account to the wider world. Soon begin four or five years, or perhaps ten or even fifteen, by the end of which most of the Labour front-rankers we are talking about now will have left politics for business, Europe or the Lords. So we are talking incessantly (and I don’t exclude myself) about a shower of soon-to-be nobodies in a government soon to be terminated. Their future is about as important as was President George W. Bush’s after last November.

In a few months’ time the clocks will go forward and by the time they go forward again Harriet Harman, Yvette Cooper, Ed Balls, the Milibands Ed and David, and Alan Johnson are likely to be no higher on the news agenda than Virginia Bottomley, John Gummer, Norman Fowler or Gillian Shephard were by 1998.

Labour is out of time, out of space, out of ideas, out of puff and shortly to be out of office. Meanwhile, the country is sailing into an economic tempest of unknown ferocity and indefinite duration; we are close to the rocks and there is another crew preparing to take over.

And we are not talking much about the new crew at all. Who are these Conservatives? What are their plans? What are their instincts? What is their calibre? Are they ready?

It doesn’t really matter what Gordon Brown says or does any more. People have stopped looking, stopped listening. Only news of his failures registers easily with the mob – fitting, as it does, that oh-so-Blairite concept: the “narrative” of current affairs.

Once this happens it is almost impossible to claw back the initiative: even economic recovery (John Major found) cannot regain for you the nation’s attention. Nothing is impossible but in politics some things are most unlikely. A political rebirth for Mr Brown’s crew is one of them.

Yet to a very considerable degree the warhorses of our governing Labour Party are shadowed by a cohort of warhorses in the news media who cut our teeth half a generation ago on the collapse of the Tory dispensation and the ascent into the sunlight of its new Labour replacement. The life of this movement and its young creators, Gordon Brown, Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson, has been our professional life too. We are fascinated by the unfolding tragedy of a dream gone sour, by decline and fall.

But is the nation? More to the point, should the nation be? The dear old nation, which, on the whole, dips in and out of politics and takes only a fitful interest in policy, party and personality, is inclined to shrug its shoulders as a government dies. My sense of the national mood is of attention shifting steadily away from the Labour Party and from a generation that it regards as yesterday’s men.

To which you may reply: but surely oppositions matter? What kind of opposition Labour may be poised to become, and who will lead it, and where, could be central even to a Tory story, after May 2010.

I cannot honestly remember how interested we were in the Kremlinology of the Callaghan-led Labour Cabinet in its dying days at the end of the 1970s, but I would agree we should have been. First, it was not so clear, in 1978, that Labour must lose in 1979. Second, although battle-worn and staggering, the previous Labour Government was fizzing and rumbling with big debates, big minds and big personalities. Think of Denis Healey, Shirley Williams, Roy Jenkins, Roy Hattersley, Tony Benn, Peter Shore, Michael Foot. From some of these the SDP was born, a party the ghost of which still stalks our 21st-century politics.

The stature of such men and women was huge. The questions were huge. Where should the party stand on Europe? On devolution? On our relationship with America? On nuclear weapons and nuclear-generated power? Ideologically, should Labour turn to the left or right? Long years in office had diminished Labour’s capacity to govern but not the giants among its leadership.

But where are the giants who will walk from the wreckage of new Labour next year? Blair has gone. Brown will be bust. The party will surely not be turning back two chapters to Alan Milburn, David Blunkett or Charles Clarke. Leaving whom? Harman, Balls, the Milibands, Blears, Purnell?

Only Peter Mandelson looks big among that company, and I do not recognise in it the ingredients of a great debate on the future of Labour. Looking at the dishevelled ranks of this expiring administration, what can we see that points forward to the big decisions – or even the big choices – that the Opposition front bench facing David Cameron and his crew will have to grapple with?

Stunted ministers, stunted careers, stunted ideas.

Back, then, to the politicians who should be leading the news. Who are these Tories? Do they even themselves really know, in their hearts as well as their heads, that just ahead lie the last summer holidays, and the last party conference, when they will not be in charge of the country? It’s time we did what Tony Blair so regularly urged us to do: move on. It’s time we started to find out.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again but I love the t’Internet.

And things like this explain why:

What would you like us to ask the Conservative leader on his Sussex visit?

The Argus will be speaking to Conservative leader David Cameron when he visits Sussex tomorrow and we want to know what you would like us to ask him.

Maybe you would like to know how he would address the city’s issues? How he would help the local economy? Or what he would do to improve our schools?

We will choose some of the best readers’ questions to put to Mr Cameron ahead of his appearance at a “Cameron Direct” event at the Old Market in Upper Market Street, Hove, at 6.30pm.

Scoomer, Moulsecoomb says…
12:52pm Thu 12 Feb 09
Will it be like Mastermind? Can I ask him what year Titian died?

Osama bin there, Brighton says…
1:09pm Thu 12 Feb 09
Does he realise he’s an unelectable toff?

mickeyfinn, Brighton says…
1:09pm Thu 12 Feb 09
Ask him why he doesn’t need to shave – is it electrolysis?

Lil, Worthing says…
1:23pm Thu 12 Feb 09
Should Poundland come to Worthing?

Mark Kermode, off the telly says…
1:24pm Thu 12 Feb 09
Who framed Roger RAbbit?

Holden_Caulfield, Rye says…
1:30pm Thu 12 Feb 09
Who would win in a fight between a baboon and a badger?

Lil, Worthing says…
1:31pm Thu 12 Feb 09
In a hypothetical situation, if Gordon Brown was to average 90mph airborne when hit by a Morris Ital starting at junction 22 of the M6, and Nick Clegg was hit at 88mph from J2 of the M6 by a Austin Montego, at which junction of the M6 would:
a.) They meet, and –
b.) A chockie biscuit rise high over the Cadbury’s factory?

BigH, Brighton says…
2:18pm Thu 12 Feb 09
does he think there’ll ever be a boy born that can swim as fast as a shark

wellsyuk, Brighton says…
3:00pm Thu 12 Feb 09
Could he deck a horse with one punch?

Harry Callahan, SFPD says…
3:08pm Thu 12 Feb 09
“Did I fire six shots or only five…?”

trolleydolly, Brighton says…
3:08pm Thu 12 Feb 09
Does he watch Eggheads

Scoomer, Moulsecoomb says…
3:09pm Thu 12 Feb 09
What does swan taste like?

Steve Beebee, Smash Hits magazine says…
3:12pm Thu 12 Feb 09
Who’s his favourite Spice Girl?

Pat Mustard, Hove says…
3:15pm Thu 12 Feb 09
What is the biggest leaf?

Scoomer, Moulsecoomb says…
3:27pm Thu 12 Feb 09
Would he agree that the oak tree, which takes 100 years to grow, 100 years to live, and 100 years to die, is the perfect symbol for his party?

Paul Hewson, Dublin says…
3:55pm Thu 12 Feb 09
Does he think the claims that Coldplay are worthy pretenders to U2’s crown are justified?

Osama bin there, Brighton says…
4:26pm Thu 12 Feb 09
Does he think Elbow have trancended the curse of the Mercury Music Prize, and that Guy Garvey is the best singer and lyricist to have emerged in the last 15 years?

MarjieR, worthing says…
4:28pm Thu 12 Feb 09
Has he ever seen a man eat his own head?

Scoomer, Moulsecoomb says…
4:31pm Thu 12 Feb 09
Does he think All About Eve were as good a band after Tim Bricheno was Replaced by Marty Willson-Piper?

Dominic Lawson, Radio 4 says…
4:51pm Thu 12 Feb 09
Does he think the original Scooby Doo live action film would have been much better if it had been directed by Tim Burton, as was originally suggested?

Blip, Hove says…
6:04pm Thu 12 Feb 09
Would he go gay for Johnny Depp?

GarryNelson’sLeftFoot, Lewes says…
8:11pm Thu 12 Feb 09
Do you think that Yoda sounds like Miss Piggy?

The Queen, Sandringham says…
10:54pm Thu 12 Feb 09
Should one have one’s chips with ketchup or gravy?

p. diddy, L.A. says…
11:27pm Thu 12 Feb 09
Does he find it perturbing that there’s no finite decimal expression for the fraction one-third? I find it deeply irritating and there should be a law made about it.

kkj, Brighton says…
1:59am Fri 13 Feb 09
Would he agree that if Conservatism is the answer it must have been a bl00dy stupid question?

william of orange, Brighton says…
3:11pm Fri 13 Feb 09
Will o The Wisp…or Rhubarb and Custard?

Scoomer, Moulsecoomb says…
4:06pm Fri 13 Feb 09
Does he feel that the lack of sensible questions on this thread reflects the fact that nobody in Brighton see him as anything other than a bit of a joke?

Scoomer, Moulsecoomb says…
4:11pm Fri 13 Feb 09
Something tells me it’s going to be a pretty short Q&A session…

Nice.

What could Arrivederci’s Army possibly want or need to suppress, what with this being such an eminently sensible idea, executed so well, by such competent and clever people?

The government has been ordered to publish two reviews into the ID cards scheme after a four-year battle.

“Gateway” reviews are carried out on government projects by independent assessors who look at their progress and likely success.

The government has been fighting Freedom of Information attempts to get the reviews into the controversial scheme published.

It argues that confidentiality is essential to the reviews’ process.

But in a judgement published on Friday, the Information Tribunal – which hears appeals against FOI rulings – ordered both reports be disclosed within 28 days.

1. What the fuck are U2 thinking?
2. Would someone please give Kylie something to eat?
3. When will people twig that Gavin & Stacey is actually the precise opposite of funny?
4. Lionel Richie?
5. Lionel fucking Richie?!
6. Is it me you’re looking for…?
7. Jesus wept: is THAT what Cheryl Cole sounds like?
8. The ginga one’s a bit rough, too, isn’t she?
9. Are Coldplay as pissed off with that fucking Jerusalem song as everyone else?
10. Why has Natalie Imbruglia started trying to morph into Dannii Minogue?
11. Has Jamie Oliver had tongue reduction surgery?
12. How the fuck has Fearne Cotton managed to sustain a presenting career lasting nearly a decade?
13. Did Take That really give synchronised Nazi salutes while wearing black shirts?
14. Do you remember when the Brits were vaguely worth watching instead of pathetic vehicles for gimps like The Hoff?
15. Why can’t Elbow share a couple of their pies with Kylie?
16. What do you mean there’s no whisky left?
17. Did you know Gok Wan is an anagram of Go Wank?
18. You can’t seriously expect me to sit through The Ting Tings without booze?
19. Alan Carr?  Is it too late to get Lionel and The Hoff back?
20. Aren’t Girls Aloud such a charming bunch of self-effacing ladies?
21. Since when does releasing the same record for 25 years qualify as an “outstanding contribution to British music”?
22. Whoever that is is no Dusty Springfield, is she?
23. Surely there must be something better on QVC?

The British Phonographic Industry Awards 2009, brought to you in association with The Minister, Zattoo and Lagavulin.

By the way, Arrivederci, there’s a Clusterfuck To The Poor House going on, in case it had escaped your notice while you were flicking through OK, Grazia, Hello and Heat in search of pathetic, populist soundbites…

LATEST: Gordon Brown praises Jade Goody who has been told she has months to live. More soon.

Fuck me gently.

Almost four weeks ago the Minister booked an appointment to see a GP as the Minister had been drifting into the arena of the unwell for a couple of weeks and suspected he might have a virus.

There were no non-urgent appointments available for nearly a week (but had it been urgent they could have seen me within 90 minutes).

Three weeks ago the Minister’s GP told the Minister that, after seven years of medical training, it was the GP’s considered opinion that the Minister “probably” had “a virus”.  He explained that there’s nothing they can do for viruses but ordered a blood test anyway.

The blood test results got delayed in the snow, natch, but last week I received a letter from my surgery asking me to make a telephone appointment with a doctor to discuss the results of my blood test.

There were no telephone appointments available for a week.

This morning, during my telephone appointment, a different GP told me that my blood test shows signs of “inflammation in the body”, suggesting that I “probably” have “a virus”.

The GP also told me that this is not something that can be followed up properly in a phone appointment, so he would transfer me to Reception to make an appointment in person.

There are no non-urgent appointments available for a week (but if it’s urgent they can see me in 35 minutes).

Needless to say that I obviously won’t be seeing either the GP who ordered the blood test or the GP who has just reviewed the results of the blood test, so GP³ will doubtless inform me when I see him next Wednesday morning that I “probably” have “a virus”.

Oh, and that I need another blood test.

Seriously, just switch the fucking lights off and let’s have done with this arse-end of a country, eh?

I’m quickly falling in love with the blog spEak You’re bRanes.

Who couldn’t fall in love with a blog that describes itself thus?

This blog is dedicated to the dribble-spattered lunacy of BBC “Have Your Say” discussions. Part of me thinks that the right-wing “blogosphere” of America is encouraging its slow readers to get over to the BBC and add their ill-informed opinions… but another part of me fears that the sample is actually more representative… perhaps the majority of people in the world really are this awful and stupid.

This is possibly a better description though, from an avid reader: “I just love the way you’ve appointed yourselves as the moral arbiters of what is posted on HYS, as if you have something significant to contribute. That and your self-satisfied sanctimonious attitude…“. Bang on, bitch.

Today’s posts have been immense.  First, some nonsense about the proposed Very Big Horse statue in Kent; then a mighty contribution to the debate about the Clusterfuck To The Poor House that is prefaced in the following terms:

I have a lot of respect for perfumiers. I mean, think of the genius who had to come up with Kerry Katona’s signature scent. They had to consider the fundamental abstract notions of Katona-ness, distill them into a chemical form, and manage to make the result not smell like chip fat and tears.

I fucking love it.  The only tears here are induced by laughter, and are rolling down my plump and rosy Ministerial cheeks…

And now I’ve found this – Disgraced Former Europe Minister Keith Vaz imploding on live national television – I’m really going to have to start making more of an effort to stay awake until 11.15pm:

If you don’t have 10 minutes to spare – and cut yourself some slack; you’re busy people – allow Sid (from Pickled Politics) to sum matters up succinctly in his exquisitely entitled post, Vaz Deference:

Keith Vaz, Labour MP of Leicester, pretends to engage knowledgeably on the intricate points of the issue of freedom of speech that underlies the whole [Geert Wilders] episode. Instead his ruse is blown when it becomes apparent that not only does he wilfully misunderstand the fundamentals of FoS, he has come on a discussion on Wilders’ 18 minute film on national television without even having seen the film.

He then proceeds to self destruct in a thunderous self-inflicted detonation, causing blood, sperm and liquid bullshit dripping off the studio furniture. Leaving the other protaganists in the discussion to carry on with the semblence of a conversation, while the fulminated entrails of Vaz’s credibility twitched involuntarily around them.

What a cunt (Disgraced Former Minister Keith Vaz, that is, not Sid from Pickled Politics).

I love the t’Internet.  What the fuck did I do with my life before it existed?

Now, who could have possibly foreseen this?

Texan billionaire and cricket promoter Sir Allen Stanford has been charged over a $8bn (£5.6bn) investment fraud, US financial regulators say.

The Securities and Exchange Commission said the financier had orchestrated “a fraudulent, multi-billion dollar investment scheme”.

The SEC said the fraud was “based on false promises and fabricated historical return data”.

The charges against Sir Allen, three of his companies and two executives of those companies followed a raid by US marshalls on the Houston, Texas, offices of Stanford Financial Group.

A US judge has frozen the assets of Sir Allen and the other defendants as well as those of the Stanford Group, its Antigua-based subsidiary Stanford International Bank (SIB) and another subsidiary, investment advisor Stanford Capital Management.

A receiver has been appointed to “preserve assets for investors”, the SEC said.

Certainly not ECB Chairman Giles ‘Midas Touch’ Clarke, eh, readers?

A Brief History Lesson

1989 – A Convention Of Cunts

2008 – A Cunt In A Chopper

Ministerial memo to British sports administrators: if something seems too good to be true, it usually is.

And talking of sports administrators getting into bed with greedy Chancer cunts, I wonder if Tess of Olympia will send food parcels?

An Italian court has found British tax lawyer David Mills guilty of accepting a bribe of about £400,000 from Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Mills, the estranged husband of UK Olympics minister Tessa Jowell, was sentenced to four-and-a-half years in jail at a court in Milan.

Following the verdict, she said: “This is a terrible blow to David and, although we are separated, I have never doubted his innocence.”