Hotting up...

Ah, another week in Westminster and all is well with the lunatic world of those running Asylum Britain. Both Tory and Labour ex-Foreign Secretaries take a turn in the stocks for their apparent arrogance in accepting cash for access; didn’t we do all this before? But maybe it was a case of taking bullets for the team? Rifkind possibly intended to draw attention away from George Osborne reining back his promise to increase minimum wage to £7 an hour, which looks pretty shoddy compared to £5k a day, doesn’t it? And maybe Jack, the man of Straw, was keen to deflect attention from the astonishing announcement regarding a former cabinet colleague. 

Yes, that old dinosaur John Prescott has been dug up, dusted down, re-animated and brought out of retirement as an exhibit in the Unnatural History Museum – an example of the extinct hominid Homeo hullibilis on-the-pithecus – in order to be, wait for it, Ed Miliband’s special advisor ‘responsible for global warming’ by one report. I expect the lithe and sporty Mr P has been responsible for a fair portion of it over the years but it seems a little unfair to single him out as being entirely to blame. Mind you he can throw a mean punch so maybe this is the plan to engage climate change sceptics? Believe or Big John will lamp you one.

Because it is far more about belief than it is about science, isn’t it? And Red Ed falls hook, line and sinker for the climate change message, swallows unsubstantiable ‘truths’ wholesale and Oliver Twist-like, begs for more. Why? Because listen to the siren call to the young and impressionable: “Oh woe, woe and thrice woe,” they cry, “we have only five days to save the planet. The nasty grown-ups burned all our futures!” Even if this creaky Hollywood premise were true we are either too late, or else we can do too little - but think of the votes! Personally, I genuinely don’t give a fuck because all that I am will die with me in a couple of decades from now, long before any changes will affect my lifestyle.

Except for one thing. Miliband’s absurd target will only make it more expensive, year on year. He says “The next Labour government will commit Britain to making our electricity supply carbon free by 2030.” Does he have the first inkling of a clue about how anything works? Of course not. A schoolboy Marxist he thinks all things come from the state and is prepared to repeal the natural laws if necessary to turn policy into personal hardship for millions. He has no clue about physics, meteorology, chemistry, biology, or anything else not covered in the Oxford PPE syllabus and in his ignorance will happily make you pay for every madcap gimmick the Green gurus will dream up and petition him to adopt.

In Labour’s wonderland, new technology must miraculously appear without the intervention of humans. Humans who create carbon dioxide (Prescott alone has a carbon footprint the size of Hull) and all the animals we eat, which create carbon dioxide and the minerals we mine, transport and process using fossil fuels which emit carbon dioxide. There is no such thing as zero-carbon energy unless we rely on direct sunlight alone and preferably don’t employ any of that energy to create even more humans.

Simple Gore-geous!

But beyond simple ignorance there is a massive hypocrisy in Labour’s pursuit of green credentials and it is the little matter of one of Labour's raisons d'être - equality. In the bright red future, only the very wealthy will be able to afford heat and light and transport and technology and just as now the very wealthy will be able to choose how much they want to pay in order that the rest of us may have a share. From sunny, tax-free climes they will occupy the choicest spots on the planet and watch as the rest of us shiver in the dark. Somebody said, as a joke “What if we run out of renewables?” Would anybody dare bet that couldn’t happen under Labour?

Of Pies and Men: John Prescott’s Diary - 1st January 2017

Dear Diary,

Well, today’s the day they said could never ‘appen. It’s seven in the morning and still dark - the sun never rises on the glorious People’s Republic of Kingston upon Hull – or Ull, as it is properly known - as she embarks on a whole year as European City of Culture. And what a culture it is. I am dead proud to be cutting the ribbon on the inaugural wife-beating ceremony down the docks. Pauline is 'aving her ‘air done just now and as soon as she’s finished, about half-eleven, a fleet of Jags is on standby to escort 'er for wobbly coffees wi’t’ladies wot lunch… then it's us dinner time.

Just time to put the finishing touches to my big speech:

‘Friends, Ronan, people of Ull. Unaccustomed has I am, it is your great pleasure to ‘ave me back on terra cotta in my ‘ome town. Actually, it’s not – I’m as Welsh as they come, really – but you ‘ave took me to your ‘eart and that’ll do. As I said a few years ago “the city of York already is a city, as is my own city of Hull is a city, and that I think is the definition of city and town." And I think that's pretty clear,really.

First off, I must say a big thank you to t'caterers for that magnificent blow-out. I have to be careful with my bulimia nervosa and all that, but the pork pie was magnificent, As were t’mushy peas – now you don’t get food like that in the ‘Ouse of Lords, which ennoblement I only ever accepted against my better judgement for the good of you all, which fact is well known and noted in t’committee minutes. Ta.

I’m known for my plain speaking and I’m not going to stop now. No, I’ve only just started, so you might as well get comfy. Now, when I first come ‘ere, Ull were a shit’ole. But look at it now. There used to be green fields over there, but now; concrete as far as you can see. The Green Belt was a Labour achievement… and we built on it. The schools were rubbish too, but as I said a few years ago, “the trouble is, if you build a good school, they all want to go to it" so we stuck to us guns and what ‘ave we got now? The people of Ull stay ‘ere and loyally ‘elp to build this strong community. They ‘ave to; nobody else wants ‘em.

But it works both ways, see. As immigration swamps other cities in the country, thanks to those Tory bastards, trying to rub us noses in diversity, ‘ere in Ull the only bloody foreigners we see are them on t’ferries from Rotterdam. And they come ‘ere, tekk one look and go straight back ‘ome, no bother. And them others, ‘oo come in via Dover, they can never find us. Nobody else in Britain knows where Ull is… and that’s ‘ow we like it.

In Ull we are proud of our working class roots. My roots, my background and the way I act is working class, but it would be hypsocritical to say I'm anything else than middle class now. And a lord, think on. So, as I unveil this statue to Ull’s greatest son – me - I thank you for the council taxes that paid for it. But there’s more than that and I bring you today, one of my former flagship policies, one that will help to preserve the purity of Ull’s culture for decades to come.

'Oo's laffing now?

For them who’s worried about this City of Culture award raising our profile and bringing more strangers to Ull and trying to change us ways. For those concerned at the possible influx of teams of documentary makers and anthropologists, probing our foibles and spending in our shops. For those anticipating a rapid change in our fortunes I say don’t worry, prepare for history. I give you, the new M62 bus lane! 

You Little Beauty

I had half a mind to write about the cabinet reshuffle but decided against on two counts. One; that I’m not really all that interested. Two; neither are you. Finally, everybody else has talked about nothing else for the last twenty-four hours on every form of media known to UKind. (Yes, I know that’s three reasons, but there’s British education in a nutshell.) Instead I’m going to talk about perverts. Are you sitting comfortably? Let’s see if I can’t change all that for you.

On the car radio yesterday I heard Jeremy Vine discussing the phenomenon of US-style, child beauty pageants coming to a fucked-up chav town near you any day soon. Surely nobody, this side of sanity could imagine for one minute that dressing up your three-year-old as a twenty-buck-a-trick hooker and sticking her on a stage will end in anything but disaster? Did we learn nothing from Bonny Langford?

Not surprisingly it was the girls’ pimps – their mothers – who were the ringleaders of this sinister flesh-trafficking industry. Also it will come as no surprise to hear that the greatest detractors were those voicing concerns of predatory male interest. Paedophiles get such a bad press, don’t they?

Who decides who’s a pervert? What’s the cut-off point? A fifteen-year-old girl can easily look twenty, so is ‘not legal’ the same as unnatural? Given that a thirteen-year-old is perfectly (and demonstrably) capable of becoming pregnant, it would seem natural, in the literal sense that they are ready for procreation. How low can you go before stretching a point becomes altogether unnatural? Is it a relative thing? (And when I say ‘relative’ the evidence usually points to a tradition of keeping it in the family.)

At what point on the scale of admiration does a leg man become a foot fetishist? Beyond which boundary does binding become bondage? How safe is your safe word? Where does one man’s auto-asphyxiation lead to a two-man, two-hand stranglehold? And it’s not just the men; according to E. L. James there’s fifty shades of fetish going down out there, as it were.

Until 1967, male homosexual acts were illegal in England and Wales and it took until 1980 for such enlightenment to reach Caledonia. Even heterosexual titillation was still seen as sordid and it took a new century and the Internet to reveal the full gamut of sexual predilection (or depravity, depending on your tastes) open to humanity. You can not only do it today, you are encouraged to flaunt it - dress-down-Friday becomes cross-dress everyday. 

Not everybody suits a Tutu - ask Tony Blair!

The world is agog, nay, Google-eyed at the sheer number of deviations in delight and nothing appears to be out of bounds… except the kiddy thing.

But there’s good news for pageant organisers. Not everybody is against the bump and grind baby parade circuit. The police heartily welcome the circus coming to town and they encourage the widespread advertising of show times – it takes their mind off the grim prospect of a Prescott police commissioner and it’s so much easier to catch the paedos when you know where they all are.

Mind how you go now.