Interview with Shadow Defence Sec Liam Fox
June 5th, 2009 at 18:23

I went down to Westminster today to see what was going on, and to check if Gordon Brown was still the Prime Minister or not. I bumped into Shadow Defence Secretary Dr Liam Fox whilst down there – so seizing the moment I thought I better ask him something. I am now officially a citizen journalist:

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Is Adam Hart-Davis a Tory?
August 23rd, 2008 at 00:06

I’m not one to moan, but I think I’d be fairly justified in saying that I’ve had a pretty bad week. Right now, for instance, I should be rocking out to Rage Against the Machine at Reading, but my tickets never materialised, and for the past few days I’ve had a bloody awful stomach bug, which meant I’ve spent a couple of days in agony as my stomach decided to make the metaphorical “pain in the arse” debacle that was my Reading tickets fuck-up almost literal (it was more of a horrible pain in the stomach).

But now to top things off, for reasons I forget, I’ve discovered that one of my favourite celebrities, Adam Hart-Davis, is related to one of my least favourite people: David Cameron. Yeah, I needed to take a moment to let that sink in too. It turns out that, according to the ever-reliable Wikipedia anyway, that they’re second cousins once-removed.

This has somewhat tainted my preconceptions about how cool AHD is. I’d previously assumed that when he went into the polling booth, Adam (we’re on first name terms despite having never met) would obviously vote for the greater good, and do his democratic duty of voting for whoever keeps the Tories out. But now I know this new information, what’s to say his tribal loyalties don’t kick in? It’s pretty natural to vote for friends and family in things where voting is involved – it’s pretty much the done thing. Does this mean that AHD is voting for the Tories?

It would all make a depressing amount of sense: they both went to Eton and both have “riding bikes” as a sort-of quirky, eccentric trait. And Cameron used to be a director at Carlton Communications, one of the constituent companies that made up ITV… who later commissioned AHD’s (inexplicably excellent for ITV) How London Was Built.

I can only hope that AHD and David Cameron aren’t the best of friends. Perhaps AHD could be like the embarassing cousin? At family functions whenever Adam arrives, Dave winces and thinks “Oh god, not him again… what’s he wearing this time? Who thought the bright yellow shirt and shorts were a good idea? I hope he doesn’t show me up by enthusising about his love of science and history…”

C’mon Adam, betray your genetic make-up and don’t be a Tory, please! Ask your partner (leading psychologist and pioneer of memetics, Susan Blackmore) if she can introduce you to altruistic memes like social conscience and helping the poor!

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Tory leader (sort of) “ruins wedding”
July 6th, 2008 at 17:17

Though I’m a big advocate of replacing the convention of giving individuals names, and replacing them instead with unique alpha-numeric ID numbers, there is at least one benefit I can see in retaining the archaic database-unfriendly tradition: using out of context quotes to attack the Conservative Party.

There’s an incredible story in today’s Observer, about how David Cameron ruined a wedding. No, not that David Cameron, unfortunately:

“Church officials are investigating a couple’s complaint that a vicar threw their two-year-old son out of their wedding ceremony for being too noisy.

“The vicar, David Cameron, asked for the child to be removed when he kept repeating his father’s name. He also ejected a guest who complained, telling her not to ‘make a scene’. “

This obviously paints David Cameron as an unpopular person, who just upsets people, and hates families. Can we really expect David Cameron to act in the best interests of the children? Hmm!

And it gets even better – the little bastard of a son that caused the upset is also named Cameron. Meaning you can take the following quote out of context for massive damage:

“The bride’s uncle, Michael O’Driscoll, said: ‘Cameron wasn’t screaming and crying; he was making baby noises. I’ve never witnessed anything like it.’”

Cameron in “causing a scene and being generally unpleasant” shocker!.

I always knew David Cameron was a bad person.

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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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DaveDave does the right thing (ie: messes things up for the Tories a bit)
June 12th, 2008 at 23:14

I felt a bit ill yesterday watching Prime Ministers Questions, as I found myself agreeing with David Cameron on something – specifically, 42 days. I was worried that this is how they’re doing it – get you on one sensible issue the government are fucking up on, and before you know it you’re attending weekend Tory indoctrination retreats in the countryside(including fox hunting on the Sunday morning).

So it was quite a relief to learn today that David Davis has resigned and the Tories will hopefully be back to destroying themselves again soon. I wonder at what point this afternoon during the media frenzy that DaveDave finally realised that his shit was hitting the fan and making a horrible mess? Consider:

1. None of the other parties are standing – the LibDems, UKIP and even the BNP aren’t standing… so he’s going to be fighting the by-election with the rubbish joke parties. I can’t wait to see the debate between DaveDave and Miss Great Britain (who presumably can’t actually count to 42 days).
2. Even when he does get back in… he’s lost his job. Within minutes of him resigning, another anonymous grey man, Dominic Grieve (whoever he is) had been declared Shadow Home Secretary. Grieve looked a bit chuffed with his promotion too.
3. Clearly DaveDave and singular Dave aren’t the best of friends. Maybe this’ll split up the party? Its shitting all over the Tory ascendancy whatever its doing.
4. “I can’t see Gordon Brown or all of the mistakes he’s making, because DaveDave’s ego-tripping media circus is blocking my view!”

Maybe Labour should stand a candidate and scaremonger about terrorists a bit? They might even stand a chance of winning this “42 days referendum”, which would be a nice turnaround for them. Better still, they could get that wanker who called himself a “comedy terrorist”, Aaron Barschak, to be the official Labour candidate. According to Wikipedia, he’s actually stood in a by-election before.

So come on, Tories, do the decent thing and tear yourselves apart! Look at DaveDave being soft on terror! And remember Europe? Yeah, Europe, asylum seekers foreigners! Think about them!

And Bloggers, lets try and introduce “DaveDave” as a nickname for David Davis – we can only do this if we work together!

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Outed the blue?
May 27th, 2008 at 22:02

A spectre is haunting Britain – the spectre of Conservatism. All the Powers of Middle England have entered into an unholy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Big Business, The Countryside Alliance, Fundamentalist Christians and large swathes of an uninformed electorate.

Horrifyingly, I learnt today that one of my oldest and closest friends appears to have joined Conservative Future, the Tory youth organisation – judging by the Facebook groups he’s joined anyway (I’m hoping to retract this when it turns out he’s joined it to troll).

Its perhaps unfortunate that I now have an official Tory Friend. This means that every time I talk about him, he’ll be labelled with the prefix “my Tory friend”, to differentiate him from the Guardianistas I usually hang out with.

I’m not sure what horrified me more – the fact that someone I know has outed themselves as a Tory, after experiencing years of me railing against the party both on my blog, and in my sweary real-life self, or that an apparently well educated, relatively young person can be indoctrinated by Tory dogma, and actively support the party.

It’s weird – its like when you find out one of your friends is gay, only worse, as him being a Tory will actually impact upon my life in a negative way, if his votes in elections are counted – and like when you find out that someone is gay, it contextualises history and suddenly it all fits together, like explaining why someone has spent so much time kissing men.

It does all make sense now though – the lack of political views, and silence during political discussion for all those years wasn’t due to being uninformed or lack of interest… it was because he was too afraid to admit to being a Tory. Until Cameron came in, they were the Nasty Party – they still are, but Cameron has inexplicably made it acceptable. Which is why its only now he’s come out Tory. Maybe the reason his appearance at the party at the local Conservative club was so fleeting because he was scared that his two world were colliding: the one where he knows me, and his secret Tory life with his evil Conservative friends?

Who knows what is going on inside his brain now? And worse still, what does this mean for my opinions? If others think like this, why don’t I? Maybe leaving the standard of living on the poorest people to the whims of the free market is the best way to do it? Maybe the market never does fail? Maybe an overpowered, sabre-rattling military is the best way to achieve world peace? Maybe immigrants are coming over here and doing the awful thing the Dailies Mail and Express say they do?

Please, readers, tell me: has the whole world gone insane or I am the mental one?

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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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Who let the dogmatists out?
April 8th, 2008 at 00:50

“The earth is spherical”

“What?! That’s clearly not true! There’s just a big scientific conspiracy by the liberal left to give the scientists jobs! Anyone who talks about the shape of earth should give a balanced view and give equal time to the flat earth society!”

I hate it when science is politicised. This might surprise you, as I love needlessly politicising everything else: films, TV shows, abstract concepts, politics, I’ll find a political angle on them all. But I think that the politicians should stay the fuck away from science.

Case in point: dangerously credulous Tory blogger Iain Dale keeps posting tenuous stories about how climate change totally isn’t happening. Y’know, despite all of the stacks of evidence and the overwhelming scientific consensus saying that it is.

What bothers me about it that its a purely dogmatic thing: Tory Iain presumably is under the impression that because he’s a Tory, he hates taxes, and therefore, if there’s green taxes to try and manipulate the market away from fossil fuels and carbon emissions, its a bad thing, because taxes are bad full stop, and therefore, any crackpot claiming that climate change isn’t occurring is proof that it’s a New Labour nanny-state socialist money-grabbing exercise to increase state control of the economy.

Its the same with the new laughing-stock of a film, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, about how how evolution by natural selection is a conspiracy orchestrated by “Big Science” and their Nazi agenda- the latter part of the title being a subtitle, not instructions to the cinema about who to turn away.

Obviously the thought process is even more clearly dogmatic here: “Our book says God created the Universe, therefore, despite stacks of evidence, evolution is totally untrue”.

I think it’s pretty clear that I disagree with them.

“But they just want a balanced view!”, defenders cry. That’s sounds fair, doesn’t it? Freedom of speech and all that? “If we don’t have freedom of speech then its Nazi Germany!”

Unfortunately for the global warming deniers and the creationists, science is not democratic, you cretins. Everyone could think something and it’d still be wrong, because science needs evidence. It’d be madness to suggest that (Godwin alert!) Holocaust Deniers should be allowed to give a “balanced view” of the Holocaust, because there’s stacks of evidence contrary to their ludicrous opinions.

And yeah, I know I’m not a scientist, but I do appreciate and understand the value of evidence – obviously if the scientific consensus on an issue were to shift, it’d be because some new evidence came to light. If the scientists launched a new satellite that scanned the earth’s interior and determined the earth had a honeycomb centre, and there was observations to back this up which falsified previous theories, then I’d be willing to believe the scientists.

So, please, politicians and dogmatists, please can you stay the fuck away from science, for the good of humanity?

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Daily Excess
March 25th, 2008 at 03:25

You’ve got to love the Daily Express. They can’t write about Maddie any more, and the Diana Inquest is nearly over, so they need a new issue they can write about to death on their front page. The weather? Nah, it’s spring now so things will be getting better. What about vilifying the Muslims? Brilliant idea! No one loses with that!

The front page today screams about a “FURY OVER PLAN TO TEACH KORAN IN SCHOOLS”, suggested by the National Union of Teachers – the sensational revelation not being that they want to teach kids about the Koran (this already happens), but the idea floated by the NUT, which in the Express’s world has already become a concrete plan, is that they want to invite Muslim Imams into schools to preach – and its been nicely illustrated by a photo of some MUSLIMS in school in BANGLADESH. That is exactly what things will like if this madness doesn’t end.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I think this is a stupid idea – I don’t think religion has a place in schools outside of history and sociology lessons or as a perverse exercise in critical thinking, but the Express seems indignant that:

The National Union of Teachers’ conference also said existing religious schools – almost all of them Christian – should have to admit pupils from other faiths.

Not other faiths! They might disrupt the institutionally Christian hegemony with their unspecified and miscellaneous characteristics!

But hang on… where is the “FURY”?! Oh, that’s right, an obscure MP is a bit pissed off:

But the proposals prompted immediate outrage. Conservative Party backbencher Mark Pritchard said: “This is just further appeasement for Muslim militants.

“We should just follow the existing laws on religious education, which state that it should be of a predominantly Christian character. All this will do is further divide many communities that are already split on religious lines.”

That’s quite a bizarre non-sequitur. Apparently by schools being more inclusive by not isolating anyone (apart from secularists, it would seem), that will split communities?

But then, this is Mark Pritchard. He isn’t really in touch with reality. Mark Pritchard is the man who wasted several hours of limited parliamentary time last year complaining about Christianophobia and how Christianity is apparently under threat. Y’know, despite it being the official state religion, having guaranteed Bishops in the House of Lords, aka the legislature, being practised by millions of people, and having the shops open for less time on Sundays, just for them.

Call me a godless revolutionary, but surely we could do away with all of this faff by having secular schools, and y’know, if they must, let people practice their religions privately?

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Trust in Politics
March 25th, 2008 at 02:46

According to a recent poll by Ipsos MORI, the polling firm named after the placeholder text in Microsoft Word, you probably don’t trust me.

Apparently, only 18% of people trust what journalists have to say – compared to 90% trusting doctors and 86% trusting teachers. The only people who are trusted less are black-and-white striped shirt wearing masked men who carry bags around with “swag” written on the side.

As someone who is a bit like a journalist, – I only differ in that I don’t have to do any research, fact check, or have qualifications proving my competence – I find it particularly fascinating. Sure, I’m probably a horrible liar, but only 18% of you would believe me if I admitted it.

The politicians are in the same boat as journalists – everyone apparently mistrusts them too, with again only 18% of people believing what politicians tell them. It’s a bit of a problem for them, because it means that if an honest politician, like Conservative MP Derek Conway, wants to continue the family business and pay his son lots of public money to do not very much work, everyone – especially those liars in the media – complains about it!

As you might expect of me though, I think I have a solution for this crisis of trust in politics. Like a lot of my ideas, it’s inexcusably blatherskite, and unlike trying to use the word “blatherskite” in a sentence, it just might work: politicians could tell the truth for once.

That’s not to say they tell nothing but lies all of the time now – it’s just the culture of spin means that they’ll tend to dress up everything they say to make it sound better than it is. The old adage is that you “can’t polish a turd”, but politicians would give this a damn good go anyway, smearing it everywhere, spreading the mess far and wide, spoiling everything else in the process.

Its just like how if you’re told by someone that they “go to university in Cambridge…”, it sounds impressive until after you’ve finished making an impressed “Ooh” sound and they say “…to Anglia Ruskin”.

I think the Prime Minister would be much more likeable if rather than defend the Iraq war, he just came out and said, “to be honest, invading Iraq was just a running joke at Cabinet meetings…we all thought it was just the joke bullet point at the bottom of every meeting agenda, but then Tony went and took the joke too far”.

Similarly, if David Cameron would just come and out admit that he’s a bile-fuelled robot with a plastic face that emits platitudes, we’d come to love him rather than distrust him.

I guess the only problem with this approach would be that it could make foreign relations slightly tenser. Even the most incompetent spies could probably pick up on the hints if the Gordon Brown were to publicly admit that he thinks George Bush is an idiot or that Nicholas Sarkozy’s new wife could “do better”. Because obviously all high ranking politicians do is gossip about each other.

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