Maybe the future is safe?
June 27th, 2008 at 19:48

Remember a few weeks ago when I told you about how a friend of mine had joined the Conservative Party? Thankfully it turned out that it was his girlfriend messing about with his Facebook groups (or so he tells me). Whilst I was delighted by this news though, there is still the horrible reality that a Conservative Future organisation does exist and is active in my area.

In a brilliant coincidence though, I found myself in the pub last night though, arguing with who I believe was the chairperson of the local Conservative Future branch, who rather inexplicably, is the latest girlfriend of another of my friends. (Unfortunately, “connections” like this merely mean that I live in a small, incestuous town, rather than am sort sort of town bigwig who knows the other bigwigs.)

Of course, when I found this out, a quiet evening at the pub became a bit like a junior version of Question Time, where Star Columnists (ahem) and Key Political Figures are bought together to argue about the issues of the day. And the best bit? To my delight, the future Tories - the party that are back in their constituencies preparing for Government - are completely clueless.

I started by challenging the Tory chairwoman and her “Tory” friend with an easy question: “Eh? What the fuck? You’re under the age of 60 and support the Tories? What Tory policies do you like?”

The question appeared easy, but then I did slip in the phrase “Tory policies”, which must have floored them a bit. After the friend muttered something weak about the Tories being “for families”, and agreeing that the other party’s Maoist “People’s Communes” policies are ridiculous, they eventually they said something about the Tories “abolishing university tuition fees”.

“Huh?”, I thought, having not heard anything like this - challenging them, they then went on to admit that they’d “just made it up”. Which I suppose is one way to win an argument. (Googling after the event revealed this, but I’m about 95% sure this isn’t current policy.)

“Do you really like David Cameron?”, I asked next, expecting them to say they did, so I could rant on about his plastic face and his mollusc-like slime trail, to my surprise, the chairwoman said she didn’t actually like him for these very reasons. “PARTY DISUNITY!”, I somewhat childishly cried as I pointed at them, to the bemused glances of the pub’s other patrons. “Who would you prefer to have in charge? IDS? David Davis? Norman Tebbit?”, was met with a blank look and protestations of “You don’t talk about politics at the pub!”, which became their most powerful line of “argument”. I was bewildered by this, as politics chat is all I go to the pub for. I mean, other than objectifying women and grunting whilst football is on the TV, obviously.

After this, unfortunately every time I mentioned politics they were all “I don’t want to argue!” - so I responded to this complaining that argument is what politics about, and how if that’s what the Tory campaign is like, I can’t wait for the next general election. Unfortunately, rather than, er, argue with me, they just ran off to smoke - and presumably phone the constituency chairperson to let them know to keep an eye on that James O’Malley and his ultra-leftist column in the local paper. Or at least, that’s what I hoped had happened.

So, er, at risk of ending on a Partridge-ism, needless to say, I had the last laugh!

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The Conny Club
April 26th, 2008 at 01:43

I’ve got a confession to make. This evening, I did something terrible. I went to my local Conservative Club.

No, I haven’t renounced my dignity, I was there on business. Well, sort of anyway. I was there for the 21st birthday party of two of my friends, Ben & Bailey, who are the cool sort of people I’d make a sacrifice like this for - its just they have inexplicably poor taste in booking venues.

When I parked in their car park, the stench of Conservatism was already thick in the air - there was a notice on the door informing me that I had to be a “member” to park there and there was a regressive fixed-rate fine for parking violations (as opposed to linked to income), meaning that it was the poor who’d be hit the hardest.

So after I’d re-parked my car in the chemist’s car park (Free medicine for everyone? How sickeningly socialist), I approached the entrance again, trembling. I didn’t know what it’d be like inside. Would there be the heads of murdered foxes lining the walls? Would rivers of the blood of poor people pass by the terrace outside? Would there be genuine, real-life Tory voters inside?

I took a deep breath and pushed open the door. I was surprised that I’d made it this far in - every week I write in the local paper and slag off the Tories or Tory values in one way or another. What if they recognised me? I was worried that someone would “out” me as a nanny-state loving liberal. Would they throw me out? Or worse?

The bar appeared to be basically an old man pub, and they had the same selection of drinks on offer as secular bars. What was slightly unsettling was that everyone in there looked like a Tory - its hard to describe exactly what makes a Tory, but if the birthday party hadn’t been there, the median age would have been in the upper-50s or low-60s, and they all looked moderately well off and self-interested. I felt like Louis Theroux observing a group of crackpots and not trying to be offensive to their horrendous worldview.

The other problem was with money. I was buying drinks from the Tory bar - was my money going directly to funding the Conservative Party? Is David Cameron going to be paying for his chauffeur to drive behind his bike using my money? The prospect is too horrifying to even think about.

I spent £4.50 there (on three Pepsis, since you asked) - I think now the only thing I can do to morally redeem myself is to donate £4.50 to a cause that opposes the Tories. Maybe the LibDems, as the least evil of the three big parties and the second biggest party in my constituency (the Tories are depressingly first). But then, Nick Clegg is a Tory in all but name, isn’t he? I’m thinking maybe donating it to UKIP - a party equally, if not more hideous than the Tories - the theory being that I can try and split the right wing vote and give the lefties, whoever they are, more of a chance.

I’m assuming all of the evil plans were hidden away as they were allowing “outsiders” in.

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Easter Meet
March 16th, 2008 at 17:54

I had an excellent day yesterday - I went down to London to meet my nerdy mates from my other website. Here are some exciting photos of me looking really popular in the company of other people:

Chris, Lottie, Barney, Kyron, Ant, Me, Sam, William, Shark, Kat and Dan. Not pictured: Katy.

Dan bothering a mime.

It being Easter, we thought we should respect the religious aspects, and celebrate Jesus’ death by recreating Leonardo’s Last Supper.

As luck would have it, Barney looks a bit like Jesus. And Sam looks a bit like Mary Magdeline. And I played the part of Judas. The other apostles were perhaps a little less enthusiastic.

Spending about eight hours with me is difficult enough for anyone, really. Unfortunately, William’s Jamesomalley tolerance was slightly less than eight hours, so he ended up punching me.

But it was fun. I may have another tale to tell about this in a few days.

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Christmas Drinks
December 17th, 2007 at 16:25

On Saturday, I went down to London to go to the pub with some of the people from my other website who are old enough to get into pubs. It was most excellent, because it means I’ve got 90 photos on Facebook like this, which make me look really like a really popular and easily likeable person:

It was also excellent because I got to meet my friend Matt for the first time - after knowing him online for very nearly seven years:

Despite being in London, we didn’t do anything particularly touristy - we just went to three pubs and a Pizza Express like locals may do, largely ignoring the spectacular views of central London around us.

As the day went on, things got progressively louder, culminating in a drinking game in the last pub (which didn’t really work on me, as I wasn’t drinking alcohol), and Barney, Dan, and Sam getting approximately very, very, drunk. They’d been drinking since 11am, having gone to a pub at Liverpool Street Station before meeting the rest of us, so by 9pm, weren’t walking in a straight line. This meant that me, being sober (I’m straight-edge), and Katy (who I’d dragged along for the day), who was only tipsy, had to try and guide them back to their train stations so they could get home.

It was a most excellent day, really. 10/10.

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Quiz II
November 29th, 2007 at 21:40

I’d love to tell you what I got up to yesterday, but I’m contractually not allowed to. Today though, I took part in my second quiz of the week - it was a bit more of a humble affair. It was a charity rip-off of University Challenge hosted by my University.

I put together arguably the most formidable quiz team in the country - who coincidentally were my university friends Katy, Sean, Sarah and Michael. And I, as the most experienced quiz player, was the Captain.

I’d been training the team for over a week. This didn’t actually involve any practice quiz questions, and was more a case of drumming motivational slogans into their heads. “It’s not the taking part that counts, it’s the winning”, “We can’t do it if we really try - we can only do it if we know the answers to the questions that we are asked”, “I’ll hate you forever and not be your friend if we lose”, and so on.

Things got off to an unfortunate start when Michael failed to turn up - but as luck would have it, so did someone from the opposing team.

So the quiz began, and we got our first starter question right - but then the other team got two in a row, and it went on like this - much like you’d expect a quiz to. There were bonus rounds on identifying the Simpsons guest stars, and a music lyrics round, a bit like a lower-brow version of the thing on the telly (we are a former Polytechnic, you know).

It got a bit farcical though during one round which was “identifying the place from an aerial photo”. The first slide said “Where in Britain…”, so we thought that all of the locations were in Britain. The first one was Wimbledon, the second was Alton Towers (I thought it was Jodderell Bank) and the third location looked really, really like the Hoover Dam. It turns out that it was the Hoover Dam. Damn.

And so it went on - with us eventually losing by something like 85 points to 65… which is fairly respectable. It was interesting to see Sean, who’s usually calm and collected, and the sort of person who can “work the room” without feeling ridiculous lose his cool slightly as he confronted the host about the aerial photo fiasco, or photogate, as I hope it will become known. She wouldn’t change her mind and admit that it was a travesty worse than naming a teddy Muhammed.

Still, at least there wasn’t any massive cash prizes at stake this time - and it was apparently for charity, so I can’t really complain. The team tried their best, so I can’t fault them. Just a shame its reduced my quiz shows participated in to quiz shows won ratio to 2:1 (50%) for this week, really.

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London Yet Again
November 13th, 2007 at 02:08

I can’t help but think that my blog is slowly degenerating into a poor man’s Diamond Geezer, given the amount of times I’ve been to London. I went to London again today with my ginger friend Bouff. Where we did some London things.

Westminster Abbey

We went to Westminster Abbey - actually paying to go inside a Church. It was surprisingly worthwhile, as there are stacks of dead people in there. I saw the tombs of stacks of royals: Elizabeth I, Henry III, William & Mary, Mary Queen of Scots, and Mary I, for example. Unfortunately though, they are sort of hidden between a lot of filler. Nobody really wants to see the ex-MP for Exeter, whoever he was.

There were also lots of other important people: Newton, Darwin, Thomas Hardy, various old-timey Prime Ministers and so on. Now no one can say that I haven’t drummed on top of Chaucer’s grave.

It was also sort of funny to see the spot where Oliver Cromwell was buried, until Charles II got it removed. There’s some sort of RAF memorial there now.

By far the best bit, though, was what is apparently BRITAIN’S OLDEST DOOR. Here is a photo of me, knocking on BRITAIN’S OLDEST DOOR:

There’s even a sign explaining that it is BRITAIN’S OLDEST DOOR. It even made the news.

David Davies

It seems like only last week I was slagging off David Davies. Whilst walking through Westminster today I spotted him being interviewed for the telly. Here is a picture of me stroking my beard with him in the background, as if to imply that he is saying stupid things and is a twat:

We also saw Sanchez from Garth Merenghi’s Darkplace walking down Tottenham Court Road, but I don’t have a clever picture of me arsing about with him in the background.

Apple Store

We walked up Regent Street to find the Apple Store. And I got to have my first ever go on an iPhone. And it turns out that I really, really want one. Anyone from Apple reading? Send me an iPhone for free, please? I’ll review it and say nice things!

It was literally the best thing since sliced bread - the interface was incredible. The scaling, the scrolling, everything. The picture was sharp as anything. Its just a massive shame that £270 is ridiculously expensive, even before you consider the £35 a month contract.

We also had a go on the Apple TV - which is a set-top box/media server sort of thing, and I ended up watching my own YouTube videos on a massive plasma telly in London. Which was cool.

Conclusions

London is still cool. iPhones are excellent. Important dead people are interesting. But perhaps the most pertinent conclusion is that I am still a dreadful tourist. However much I try to fit in, complaining about tourists, reading the Metro on the Tube, walking around like I know where I’m going, I’m still Oyster-less and have to get about by using the most humiliating ticket known to Londoner: a national rail day travel-card.

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Woburn Safari Park
July 10th, 2007 at 21:16

Yeah, I quite like going to zoos. Katy and I decided to “up the ante” today (whatever that means) and take a trip to a Safari Park, where we’d actually get dangerously close the animals.

One thing I worried about before going, aside from potentially being eaten by lions, was the car insurance implications. I mean, do the park pay for any damage the monkeys make? Or do I have to swap insurance details with the monkey, then ring my insurer and try and explain to them how a primate smashed in the bonnet?

Unlike most worries, this was not baseless: a monkey did actually jump on to the car, and wouldn’t go away. So I ended up driving along with a monkey on the roof to try and knock it off.

After the drive though bit, where we came up-close with a rhino, a bear, a lion - all of the scary animals basically, you can park your car and look around a more traditional Zoo-like area. Unlike zoos though, the animals don’t tend to be behind fences, and you can get right up close to them. Here are some photos to prove this point, in case you, er, don’t believe me:

The best bit though was undoubtedly an aviary, where you can just walk in and be surrounded by birds. Whilst this doesn’t sound too spectacular, you could buy nectar in little cups, so that when you walk into the main area, half a million birds swarm around you and land on you, fighting over the food. Here’s a short video (and I do mean short- it’s only 26 seconds, unlike the eight minute epics I’ve been producing lately):

In retrospect, instead of saying “Hello” to the bird at the end, I should have said “So, do you come here often?” to maximise the gag. I guess this is why proper film makers write scripts.

But yeah, it was good. Recommended.

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Changing of the guard (Prime Minister)
June 29th, 2007 at 00:12

So yeah, if you’ve watched the video below, and I hope you have done considering the sheer amount of toil involved, you probably know that yesterday I went with Katy to London, and watched a historic day in the history of History unfolding: the transfer of power from one Prime Minister to another.

We tubed to Embankment station and walked down Whitehall to College Green. The plan was to get to Parliament and see if we could blag our way into the last Prime Ministers Questions. We were unsuccessful, unsurprisingly. But walking down Whitehall, who should we see heading towards Downing Street, but none-other than TV’s Huw Edwards. I’m not sure if he noticed me excitedly saying to Katy “Holy shit! It’s Huw Edwards… fucking hell! Huw Edwards!”, whilst wildly pointing at him. I hope he did.

Bizarrely, despite the old adage saying that the camera adds weight, he seemed to have a fatter face in real life than I remember from the TV. Rubbish geeky quip: maybe the BBC studio uses 2.35:1 ratio cameras and they squash the picture?

When we got to Parliament, we were told by a woman working there that there were no tickets available until “about 12:30″ (the time PMQs ends) - she seemed completely oblivious to the significance of the day.

College Green was a hub of excitement - and according to Wikipedia - the roof of an underground car park. All of the news crews were there. You can tell its a big day when they’ve got the gazebos out. The BBC were there, Sky were there. ITN were probably there but they didn’t make themselves very visible. Even the Austrian national broadcaster, ORF were there.

As we got in everyone’s way, we noticed a number of big names. There was Julie Etchingham (Newsround circa-1996) presenting live for Sky, Jon Sopel (a man who is fluent in French, unneccessary fact fans) presenting live on News 24. I was surprised to see Andrew Rawnsley there, not only because ITV seemed to have opted for broadcasting mindless bullshit in the form of This Morning, rather than covering the most important political event in ages, but because his jaw is even more massive in real life. I’m not sure why I keep judging celebrities on their faces.

Quentin Davies, the Tory defecator defector was there being interviewed too, as was Tessa Jowell. On watching the News 24 coverage when I got home I was impressed with her. When Jon Sopel interviews her if she thought she still had a job, the ultra-Blairite said that she’d love to stay in the cabinet, despite it being obvious that she was destined for the figurative rolled up carpet in the back of Brown’s figurative Mafia car. Knowing this, quite incredibly, she said “but that’s not what today is about”, religiously defending the incoming Brown regime. That’s pretty impressive, as if I were sacked, I wouldn’t religiously defend my former employer. But then, I don’t do anything religiously.

Talking of former employers:

As PMQs drew to a close, we wandered down from College Green back to Whitehall, where by now crowds were starting to gather. There are some hinged barriers in front of the gates of Downing Street which are used to keep the proles back whenever people need to get in and out - despite the barriers being in use, as we were all standing in a big crowd waiting for Tony to fuck off, normal pedestrians, seemingly uninterested by the day’s festivities tried to push their way through the crowds carrying multiple bags of shopping from Tesco’s, only to get frustrated and turn back when they realise the barriers were in use.

Not being funny, but who goes and does their shopping, then on the most important and widely publicised political day of the year decides to go home via Whitehall? Would they just have walked past Downing Street without giving it a second thought? Is that how Londoner’s operate? “Oh, it’s only Downing Street, so what?”.

We witnessed Tony come back from PMQs as his car swept into Downing Street for one final time. After maybe half an hour the gates opened again and his car whisked him off to the Palace. It was a bit underwhelming in a way, as the whole car passing bit lasted maybe twelve seconds, and the windows were tinted so we couldn’t even see him.

Across the road were some anti-war protesters dressed as Guantanamo detainees - despite having the best viewing spot of everyone gathered there, they unfathomably decided to wear black bags over their heads so they couldn’t see what was going on. I’m all for staying in character, but this was history in the making, and they missed it.

After this, following a tip-off from the political blogs, we headed down to the Treasury, as we knew that’d be where Gordon Brown was leaving from before heading off to the Palace himself. Katy and I got a spectacular viewing position - if it weren’t for the hundreds of armed police officers in the vicinity, I could have easily happy-slapped Gordon Brown as he left. Take a look at the video to see for yourself.

Sky’s Jeremy Thompson (doing a pre-record, in which we were clearly visible in the background) and Jon Craig were there (doing a live), and the BBC’s Carol… someone or other was there. Michael Crick was there for Newsnight too.

Again, this only lasted a few seconds after quite a long wait. Brown walked out, waved a bit, got into a Ministerial car and was off. The media were calling it a “limousine”, whereas Katy rightly pointed out it was a red Vauxhall of sorts… which doesn’t look or sound too fancy.

After this was over, we headed down Horseguards Road, round the back of Downing Street, heading towards the Mall. Excellently, parked up on Horseguard’s Parade were Tony Blair’s Removal Vans. Here’s a photo with me by them:

I could have been standing literally inches away from Tony Blair’s guitar or Cherie Blair’s juggling balls.

It was an exciting day. Now watch the video.

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What happened yesterday…
June 28th, 2007 at 19:29

Yesterday, Katy and I went down to London to watch the big Prime Ministerial changeover. Here’s what happened in video form. Words and pictures to follow shortly:

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London Zoo
June 15th, 2007 at 01:05

Long term readers, assuming you exist, are probably vaguely familiar with some of the stupid videos that I’ve made. I think its fair to say that my three “best” videos thus far have been maybe the time I went to the Space Centre with Katy, my trip to London in April, and a trip to Twycross Zoo. Yesterday, being someone who has horrendously original ideas, and doesn’t know the meaning of the phrase “flogging a dead horse“, I, er, went to London Zoo… with Katy. And did a video:

As you can probably tell from the video, the zoo portion of the day went swimmingly (think back to the aquarium bits and this is puntastic). We saw lots of animals, as, er, you might expect: zebras, monkeys, pigs with moustaches, lions, lizards, llamas (with excellent faces), a ferret, which bit the trainer’s arm, and an excellent guinea pig. (Photos? Here.)

Travel logistics seemed to be a bit of a recurring issue all day though. First off, as I explain at length in the video, actually finding the zoo was a lot of hassle - its not as well sign posted you might expect, and Regent’s Park is a few magnitudes larger than a “normal” park too. Here’s a map of the route we took. (I think this is easily the most web 2.0 blog entry ever).

On leaving the zoo, it turned out that it was actually really close to what a countryside person like myself would describe as Camden town centre. So after eating we got the tube back to the train station to go home, only to discover that because it was now “peak time”, our tickets weren’t valid. Bugger. So we had about two and a half hours to kill, so we did the most obvious thing and went to Westminster (via the circle line clockwise, tedious travel fans).

I love Westminster. From the second we left the tube, I was reeling off near-guidebook calibre trivia (slight exaggeration) constantly. “Bloody hell, it’s the Cenotaph!”, “Look! Banqueting House! That’s the last remaining part of the Palace of Whitehall! Oh My God! Ofgem!“. I think my boundless enthusiasm for all things London began to irritate Katy at this point. Probably because aside from enthusiasm for seeing the road where the Channel 4 Headquarters is, we both knew that I was sort of cheating, having studied up on the area only a few months ago.

We ended up sitting outside Parliament just in time for the six o’clock news - where we saw Sky News’ John Craig do a piece to camera live, and another broadcaster (I guess ITN) do the same thing. It was especially interesting to see that by ten past six, with the live done and dusted, they packed up and went home. Presumably they were all home in time for the regional news.

When we got back to St Pancras station to try and get home, the train had been delayed for yet another hour, and worse still, the trains that were scheduled for later on seemed to drop certain stations to presumably get back on track faster - meaning that it was nothing but hassle trying to get on the correct train. I’d call Midland Mainline the Stasi again to try and kick up a fuss, but I think that’d be too much of a compliment - presumably the Stasi were well organised, efficient and knew how to handle a crisis - completely unlike Midland Mainline.

In summary: Trains - boo. Zoos - hooray!

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