Wrong on many levels but very, very funny.
Media
We will all be waiting when the bulldozers come
Q: Who lives in a – truly amazing – house like this?
(And no, Gilles Toucas, I haven’t forgotten about you, either, don’t you worry. Cock.)
Flaccidity
I thought Iain Duncan-Smith would be the worst Leader of the Opposition I ever experienced. Wholly lacking in personality, gravitas, communication skills or the indefinable leadership ‘X factor’, his only redeeming feature was that he was a fully paid up member of the Toryscum and his maladroit tenure was therefore amusing to me.
Edward Samuel Miliband has, however, romped clear in the race to be the least competent and most clueless holder of the office. The distance Miliband – a man so inept I can’t even be bothered to think of a soubriquet for him – has put between himself and the likes of Duncan-Smith, Howard and Foot resembles nothing so much as the way Shergar drew clear of the field in the 1981 Derby.
Miliband’s campaign for the leadership was pathetic insofar as he sought to claim that the calamaties of the Bliar and Arrivederci Years were nothing to do with him. That untrue, self-serving claim ensured he did not get my vote.
Interestingly, of course, he didn’t win the vote of MPs and MEPs.
He didn’t win the vote of party members, either.
While I am in favour of both trades unions and proportional representation, you do have to wonder whether everything is entirely rosy in the garden when a candidate who lost two of the three electoral colleges on offer still wins the election.
I’ve given him as much time and cut him as much slack as I could. But while I largely decry the knee-jerk reactionism so beloved of rolling news channels, there is also a point at which you have to accept that things are not working out and that persevering with the status quo will do more damage in the longer-term than the short-term damage of changing leaders for a second time in twelve months.
The way politicians sound and look matters. It shouldn’t matter – and certainly not as much as what they say and do – but it does. And Miliband sounds and looks dreadful. For wont of a better description, he looks and sounds floppy. While having the charisma of a breeze block didn’t stop John Major, at least he was not handicapped by also being ill-at-ease with himself and others.
So, awkward and floppy. It’s not much of a selling point, is it?
And the electorate can’t help but draw an unfavourable conclusion in comparison with the presidential swagger and unrelenting smoooooothness offered by PBD. (LL Cool D, anyone?)
That Bloody Woman and Bliar were lucky Prime Ministers in that they faced (largely) awful Leaders of the Opposition at most of the elections they fought. If we hope to have a welfare state, a state education system and an NHS to leave to our children, we can’t repeat that mistake. We have to put up a vertebrate against them.
The final straw for me came with Miliband’s abysmal decision to call for Kenneth Clarke’s resignation last month. Clarke fucked up during one radio call-in, fair enough, but anybody who has actually paid any attention to British politics over the past 30 years knows that Clarke is one of the last Toryscum standing on whom social democrats should not automatically urinate.
Miliband’s judgement was abysmal on the day of Clarke’s problems, but I might have been able to overlook it had he not compounded the problem 48 hours later by publishing a pitiful attempt at self-justification in The Independent (effectively the only ‘quality’ newspaper left to the Minister until Harry Potter is finally sacked for bankrupting The Guardian).
He could have just moved on and hoped that everyone would forget. But he didn’t. In a lovely little microcosm encapsulating his entire time in office, his judgement was awful and his performance worse. He stood limply at the despatch box savaging Clarke like a dead squirrel and then awkwardly spewed anaemic, nonsensical drivel in the direction of news microphones and newspaper column typesetters. It was only marginally less infuriating than it was embarrassing.
(I’m not going to waste everyone’s time by repeating again the various arguments about why Clarke should have rightly been called for his poor use of language in espousing a perfectly sensible penal policy proposal and then left to get on with it. I will, however, observe that Miliband’s limp posturing almost certainly resulted in that policy being spiked. So well done, Ed. Fucking brilliant work.)
For the record, I voted for Ed Balls in the Labour leadership ballot. I don’t care whether or not he’s a nice guy: he is undoubtedly the best performing senior Labour politician against the Eton Trifles. He gets under their skin; he gets at them; he gets to the point; he gets that point across. The contrast with Edward Samuel Miliband could scarcely be starker.
Anyway, enough whining about nonentities. Typography For Lawyers has just landed on my desk. And I may have just wet myself a little bit.
Sir Bobby Robson
Once upon a time there was an English football manager who won things that mattered.
He adored the game, respected its heritage and never lost an infectious enthusiasm for the potential of 22 fellas running around after a round leather ball.
He didn’t abuse the reporters who (at times) abused him; he didn’t refuse to speak for years on end to the broadcasters who helped pay his wages; he took evident pleasure from developing stars rather than buying them in. He conducted himself with humility and humanity. His teams played pretty damn good football. And you got the feeling he’d have done it even if it didn’t pay him a penny.
How sad that he passed away having had to witness the crumbling of his beloved Newcastle United, whose current, humiliating predicament can be traced directly to his sacking in five years ago.
The English game, whose soul visibly diminishes with every passing month, today lost more than perhaps its last great manager.
Rest in peace, Sir Bobby. And thank you.
Sir Bobby Robson CBE, 1933-2009
Wade in
Apparently, the London Olympics start three years tomorrow. That’ll be nice, won’t it?
I’m desperate for there to be one hugely successful, absolutely sodden night for the British athletics team in the Olympic Stadium just so the subs on The Sun get to publish the ultimate headline:
Rubbisherwatch 5
(I keep thinking I’ll get bored of this and then I see something else that sends my blood pressure soaring and my spirits plummeting.)
This is the life of illusion: wrapped up in trouble, laced with confusion
The West Country locals are revolting.
Camborne councillor Stuart Cullimore has received a personal apology from the Liberal Democrat party after being called a “greasy-haired twat” in election material.
The words are contained in an election leaflet distributed by Anna Pascoe, who is a Liberal Democrat candidate in this Thursday’s Cornwall Council elections and a fellow town councillor.
Around 40 of the leaflets are believed to have been delivered in the Basset Road and Basset Street area of Camborne.
The leaflet states that Ms Pascoe “has always campaigned on behalf of the people she represents – rather than using her position as a personal platform (like greasy-haired twat Stuart Cullimore).”
Unparliamentary language, yes.
Fair comment, though, surely….?
(The Minister would like to congratulate Councillor Cullimore on his election.)
The Lion Sleeps Tonight
If you want to learn just how clueless and spineless Labour MPs are, read Allegra Stratton’s article “Why plot to oust Gordon Brown failed” in today’s Harry Potter Bugle. Seriously, how cluelessly fuckwitted are these people?
By Wednesday evening, the covert tactic unravelled as thousands of emails arrived. Apart from the odd one from genuinely sympathetic MPs, spoofs, foreign emails, and junk emails flowed in.
Who’d'a thunk that a Hotmail address leaked to a national newspaper might not be the best way to conduct these affairs? (Particularly when I am reliably informed that the rebels without a clue all have ENORMOUS penises and therefore have no need for lengthening potions and devices.)
Meanwhile, I can exclusively reveal that Roger Alton’s pulsating organ, The Independent, is both (a) clueless, and (b) dishonest.
It is true that the great bulk of the British public wants a change at the top – but nothing suggests that by this they mean a new leader of the Labour Party; no opinion polls have indicated that with Alan Johnson, or David Milliband, or (fill in gap) as leader of the party, its electoral chances would be transformed.
- Dominic Lawson, The Independent, 9 June 2009, page 27
Er…
Johnson would deny Tories outright victory
‘Independent’ poll reveals that new leader could transform Labour’s prospects
- The Independent, 9 June 2009, page 1
Once upon a time newspaper employed sub-editors, proofreaders and sense checkers to avoid this kind of idiotic and entirely preventable error.
Now, a work experience kid just changes the t’Internet version of the story and fails to say that they have done so:
It is true that the great bulk of the British public wants a change at the top – but little suggests that by this they mean a new leader of the Labour Party; only one opinion poll has indicated that with Alan Johnson, or David Miliband, or (fill in gap) as leader of the party, its electoral chances would be improved.
- Dominic Lawson, The Independent, 9 June 2009, online edition
Even bearing in mind Lawson’s usual pisspoor efforts, this is pathetic stuff.
And we can now firmly discount The Independent as an accurate, honest and impartial historical record.
Consider this the hint of the century
Everything I was going to post this afternoon has already been posted here. Go there. Read it. Click the links. You won’t be disappointed. It’s very good.
I know that there are some who’d prefer things like egg-chucking at Griffin not to happen, and I can see that point of view. I just happen to think that seeing his fat smelly face looking frightened and upset is a wondrous thing. For sure, the way to defeat the fascists is to engage the working class into politics they can believe in, to work hard on real solutions to poverty and unemployment, and to fight at every turn to denounce the lies spouted by prejudiced idiots about immigration and multiculturalism. Yes yes, I know that. But making that vile fascist tit look stupid is a good thing. Satire is egg-chucking without the actual egg, and we need that too. We need all kinds of attacks on Griffin, making him look ridiculous in every sense, exposing his nastiness and making him into the national joke he is.
Mr. Beavis, meet Mr. Butthead
Who’d'a thunk it? That Communist bloke has a sense of humour.
