PLO Talk
May 8th, 2008 at 16:36

Apparently, Gordon Brown was on This Morning, er, this morning. Presumably it was because he was looking for the Today programme or Newsnight studios, but accidentally took the wrong door and ended up in an interview so soft it may as well have taken place in a ball pool.

Poor Gordon’s been having a tough time lately, though, facing rock bottom poll ratings and his own party sharpening their daggers, but in the face of so many problems, he’s done the classiest thing possible: started talking about his son, who has cystic fibrosis, in a bid to appear more human and less dour-honey monster.

As underhand as this tactic may seem, it is understandable given the current political climate.  Even his own party in Scotland are calling for a referendum on Scottish independence, and I’m sure from Gordon’s point of view it’d really be the icing on the cake to not just have all of that economic doom and gloom to come and kick him in the face, but be the Prime Minister who presided over the break up of the United Kingdom.

This would be particularly bad for the PM, a Scottish man, as he would induce the ire of the anti-immigration press: foreigners aren’t just coming over here and taking any old job, they’re taking probably the most important job there is.

Scottish independence would also be embarrassing for the country in international institutions, like the UN. Having to sit behind a little sign that says “United Kingdom” on it when Scotland is independent will be like how Egypt must have felt when it called itself the “United Arab Republic”, despite Syria, the other Arab state that it had brief political union with divorcing it ten years before it admitted it had no friends, and reverted back to “Egypt”.

So not only is protecting the Union important for Gordon Brown, but its also vitally important for the country-at-large. The trouble is, I don’t know if Gordon Brown is the man who can ensure that Scotland remains a part of the UK. We need a strong leader, a man who will do whatever is necessary to keep Scotland under English control.

But who do this? I think the obvious answer is that we need Israel’s far-right Likud party in power here. They’ve done a top job of oppressing Palestinian nationalism and keeping them down and under control. If only Ariel Sharon weren’t in a persistent vegetative state following a coma, he’d be just the man we need to ensure English dominance of the entire Greater Britain region.

Having dealt with Yassir Arafat in the past, Sharon would be adept at negotiating with another international pariah who the current Labour government won’t deal with: Alex Salmond. Sharon is the sort of man who would send the tanks rolling in without a second thought, and impose curfews and break international law to the point where the Scottish would give up any claims to independence, and be too caught up with campaigning for their own human rights. Thereby neutralising the question of Scottish independence.

The only way this could possibly backfire is if Hamas come to power in Scotland and refuse to recognise England’s right to exist.

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Armchair Psephology
May 5th, 2008 at 23:51

Does anyone else feel sorry for the government? They were mauled in the local elections, given a figurative kick in the face in London and to top things off, all of the pollsters are predicting a gigantic Conservative majority after the next general election which as it hasn’t happened yet, is pretty much akin to claiming that “my dad could beat up your dad”.

But I can sympathise it’s not nice to think that everyone hates you. You’d have to be dead inside if you wouldn’t give Ken Livingstone with his peg-nosed voice a hug after seeing him getting beaten by a bumbling toff who doesn’t seem capable of organising his hair, let alone a major global city.

I feel sorry for Gordon Brown as well. He spent ten long years wanting his job, looking on enviously as Tony got all of the glory and the women (well, Carole Caplin), only to find that when he finally got it he was rubbish at it. And those bullies in the media, the opposition and even some of his friends aren’t letting him forget that either.

Things are apparently so disastrous for the government that there must surely be another explanation. I mean, surely they’d do something if they were really worried? This is why I think that this could be a bluff, and all part of an elaborate plan. I think the government are actually being horrendously clever, and are adopting an underdog strategy.

After all, everyone likes supporting an underdog – both in the literal sense (the tramp in Lady and the Tramp) and the figurative sense – if these were Biblical times, everyone would be routing for David against Goliath, and even in modern times, underdogs are still pretty popular. The Iraqi insurgents aren’t exactly anywhere on the “likeability” spectrum, yet quite inexplicably, they’re still going strong against the combined might of the British and American armed forces, so there must be some people who still likes them.

Maybe appearing as the underdog is the government strategy – if they can get their poll ratings as low as possible, they can call a general election, and the theory will be that people will go to the voting booth, and see the new Labour logo, which is a picture of Gordon Brown with puppy-dog eyes, and they’ll be a mass-outbreak of sympathy for the government, so everyone will vote them back in.

Sure, getting their rating any lower for this plan to work is going to be pretty difficult for them – getting rid of the lower starting rate of income tax, resulting in the poorest people being taxed even more was a pretty spectacular move, so it is going to be difficult to top.

Maybe they could start another hideously unpopular war by picking on a country that everyone likes? What about Scotland? The PM isn’t exactly Alex Salmond’s biggest fan, and there are stacks of evidence that suggest Scotland has nuclear weapons. Admittedly, they’re our nuclear weapons, but that reasoning didn’t stop the Americans going into Iraq.

So sorry if I’ve rumbled your plan, government, but in a perverse way that might actually help you – as it’ll mean you’re in even deeper trouble.

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The Sound of Dumbs
May 3rd, 2008 at 16:35

What the fuck, London? Literally, what the fuck? You’ve changed – you used to be cool and likeable, but now you’ve turned into a wanker.

My friend Barney texted me earlier with one last hope – he suggested that this is merely like the penultimate episode of Doctor Who series 3. The Master may have been elected, but in a year’s time, after the Master has enslaved humanity, Ken will come back and defeat the Master by destroying Boris’s paradox machine, that means he can be both Tory and likeable.

I wish Russell T Davies could come along and wave a magic deus-ex-machina screwdriver and make Boris go away.

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i Ken has gambling addiction?
May 1st, 2008 at 16:23

Today was quite an exciting day – I handed in my dissertation, possibly the last piece of academic work I’ll ever do, aside from the three exams I’ve got coming up soon. Whilst it was a huge relief to take the gigantic weight off of my shoulders (I kept it there to remind me to finish my dissertation), I was hit with the realisation that I don’t have anything else lined up to do after my last exam on May 22nd – no job, no masters course, nothing, for the rest of my life.

So I thought, if I’m going to be an unemployed waster for the rest of my life, I may as well start early – so I went to a betting shop to do some gambling.

I’ve never been to a betting shop before, because I’ve always assumed they look a bit seedy – why else do they cover up the windows… what do they have to hide? Organised crime? The dregs of society depressingly pissing away their meagre wealth by watching skinny dogs run along a track?

Turns out that it was the latter. Although the former could have been going on for all I knew.

I walked through the door, and it was as depressing as I’d imagined – there were three men in there, who looked like they had no where to be, one of them playing the fruit machine and the other two watching the Greyhound racing – I initially thought that it was horse racing, before realising that’d be too classy – and there was a grumpy woman behind the counter.

I thought “Yeah, this is a scene I want to be a part of”.

So I told the woman I wanted to place a bet. What was I betting on? The London election, of course. After carefully studying the odds, and realising that the odds on Boris were backwards because they were so certain that he was going to win, I decided to risk a bet on Ken.

It isn’t looking good for Ken at the moment – the latest YouGov poll has Boris 6% ahead (after second preference) whereas every other polling company apparently has it as “too close to call” – I’m hoping that the actual results will massively swing in Ken’s favour, because hopefully when the London voters are in the polling booth, with their pencil hovering above the ballot sheet, they’ll take a step back and think “what the fuck am I doing?”, and vote for the less evil candidate.

Also: YouGov was founded by Stephen Shakespeare, a major Tory donor, and they apparently rely heavily on internet polling, which is probably pretty unrepresentative and unreliable… so I’m hoping they’re hideously bias and wrong. Hopefully it’ll be like the 1992 General Election when everyone apparently thought Neil Kinnock had it in the bag.

So fingers crossed, Ken will fluke it and win – if he does, I apparently stand to win £17.50 (having bet a fiver). If he doesn’t, Boris’s reign will start as the Tories mean to go on – by taking money off of poor people like me. And I don’t even live in London. It’ll be an extra kick in the face to accompany the first one I’ll get by the Tories being in power somewhere.

So if you’re a Londoner reading, Vote for Ken! Not just for my sake, but for the good of London!

If this goes well, I could really get into this gambling lark.

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