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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