The Ministry Of Truth

So, er, welcome to the new Ministerial residence.

According to my bank, this is where I live.

According to my bank, this is where I’ve lived for a few weeks.

It’s in Croydon.

The only problem, of course, is that I don’t live in Croydon.

I’ve never even been to Croydon.

And I would have much rather spent the last hour of my life paying my credit card bill via t’internet banking and then surfing for donkey porn than trying to prove to the satisfaction of a gimp in a call centre in Lancashire that this Minister is the Minister and that I really do live where I really do live.

Which, as I have said before, is definitely not in Croydon.

After 37 minutes he finally believed me and said that we needed to reset my security questions.

“What is your place of birth?  What’s your mother’s maiden name?  What was the name of your last school?”

“I don’t mean to be awkward but none of the answers to these questions have changed since I left my last school 19 years ago.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Well, somebody has already successfully hacked my bank account, right?”

“Right.”

“Which suggests that they managed to negotiate at least some kind of security measures, right?”

“Right.”

“So why are we re-setting the account with exactly the same information that was on the account when it was hacked a couple of weeks ago, at least some of which seems to be known to the person who hacked the account?”

“These are the only questions I’ve got on the screen.”

Right you are.

The Minister needs to find a new exchequer.

The first in an occasional pictorial series dedicated to highlighting – through the reproduction of front page teaser “stories” – just how pisspoor The Guardian has become under Alan Rusbridger.

Fuck me.

Actually, on second thoughts, that’s so not what I meant to say…

Hackwatch in this week’s edition of Private Eye consists of example after example of the fragrant Polly Toynbee – annual salary a mere £106,000 – pronouncing on “last chance” after “last chance” for Arrivederci.

Today’s Harry Potter Bugle:

[W]ill the cabinet and leading MPs seize this last chance to sack their failed leader?
[...]
I have no idea if a coup will happen, but if they let this moment slip, history will record this as the spineless cabinet that threw away Labour’s last chance.

Given that this woman is a notorious humour free zone, one can only conclude that she’s phoning it in as much as Arrivederci’s Army.

Silly, but funny.

Somehow I missed this last week.  How remiss of me.

Where Cameron has a real Achilles’ heel is his hang-up about the privilege of his background. Another of his slick slogans is “It’s not where you’re from, it’s where you’re going”. This may be intended to reassure those who have been born without the advantages Cameron has enjoyed that he wants to create a meritocratic society in which they, too, can flourish. But, in my dealings with him, what is really noticeable is how he wants to distance himself from his own wealth and how often he “bigs up”, as he might put it, the way his party has recruited people from very different backgrounds to his own. At times, he and his associates sound like the posh girl Jarvis Cocker sends up in the blistering Common People.

I wanted to know when he started caring about the poor. Did he ever come across poor people growing up? “Yes, of course.” When and how? “Well, in my home life, where I lived, you were very aware of the country you were in.”

Where in your home life? “I’m trying to think…” Did you know any poor people? “Yes, of course. People who are less well off than me, yes of course.” Where did you meet them? You didn’t meet them at Eton, did you?

“No, but at home.” How did you meet them at home? “I don’t want to disinter my entire childhood and who I played with and what it was like…”
[...]
So how many properties do you own? “I own a house in North Kensington which you’ve been to and my house in the constituency in Oxfordshire and that is, as far as I know, all I have.”

A house in Cornwall? “No, that is, Samantha used to have a timeshare in South Devon but she doesn’t any more.” And there isn’t a fourth? “I don’t think so – not that I can think of.” Please don’t say, “Not that I can think of…” “You might be… Samantha owns a field in Scunthorpe but she doesn’t own a house…”

The rest of the interview was punctuated with Cameron’s nagging anxiety about how this exchange was going to make him sound: “I was wondering how that will come across as a soundbite”; “‘Not that I can think of’ makes me sound… I am really worried about that…”; “I am still thinking about this house thing”; and his parting shot was: “Do not make me sound like a prat for not knowing how many houses I’ve got.”

It’s the end of the Graun as we know it.
It’s the end of the Graun as we know it.
It’s the end of the Graun as we know it…

How do you make your perfect brew?

…And I feel fine.

So, manhandling my enormous European election postal ballot form, it seems I can vote for:

Animals Count – “a political party to help create a better world for people and animals”
British National Party – “protecting British jobs““nasty racists”
Christian Party – “proclaiming Christ’s Lordship”
Conservative Party
English Democrats Party – “putting England first!”
Jury Team
Liberal Democrats [yes, they really do still exist, apparently]
No2EU: Yes to Democracy
Pro Democracy: Libertas.eu
Socialist Labour Party (Leader Arthur Scargill)
The Green Party
The Labour Party
United Kingdom First
United Kingdom Independence Party

or

Peter Edward Rigby – Independent

It’s nice that the Christians believes that it’s Christian to have as the main slogan on their website, “Britain is a Christian country.  Vote to keep it that way!”  Amen to that, my tolerant, cheek-turning brothers and sisters.  Just for that, I thought I’d give this another run out:

(It’s one in the eye for the nasty racists, too, because I think Ariane Sherine’s skin might be a bit too dark for their liking.  In fact, she should probably fuck off back home to, er, London…)

By my reckoning, only three of the parties for which I can vote are actually pro-Europe – Lib Dems, Green, Labour.

Eight of the 15 candidate parties are anti-EU: BNP, English Democrats, Jury Team, No2EU, Libertas, Socialist Labour, UK First and UKIP.  If they’re so opposed to the fucking institution, why do they want to be inside its tent pissing out?

Christ (or possibly the Christian Party) knows what Peter Edward Rigby thinks about the EU because he doesn’t seem to have bothered to set up a website or produced any election literature.

And while I’ve nothing against animals per se – after all, I eat them – do they really need a single-interest political party?

The Minister’s Wife spoiled her ballot paper.  Surprisingly, given the options, this was not a deliberate act of protest, merely an act of fuckwittedness.

I was tempted to vote for Libertas on the grounds that they too want to kill themselves, but then I realised I was confusing Libertas and Dignitas.

The Minister would certainly like to take this opportunity to thank the marketing gimp at the British Heart Foundation who arranged for this envelope to be sent to me at this time: