Opposites Day

The job of Her Majesty’s official Opposition is to oppose the government of the day. Ordinarily the way to achieve this is to ridicule the policy and competence of the incumbents while presenting credible alternatives. A certain amount of hyperbole is to be expected but in resorting to the texts of Ancient Greece, Ed Milband’s New-but, Old-but Labour is stretching to breaking point the aphorisms about learning from history. Transcripts have come to light of Shadow Cabinet strategy meetings…

Ed: Our job is to oppose, so that’s what we’ll do. Whatever they say, we’ll say the opposite. On Opposites Day black will be white, up will be down and left will become right.

Shadow Cabinet: Didn’t Tony Blair and Alistair Campbell already do that? And we all know how that ended.

Ed M: Okay, so forget the left-right thing. But we know David Cameron must have a chink in his armour, an Achilles heel. We just have to find that.

Ed Balls: How about the flatlining economy?

SC: To be fair, Ballsy, you can take naysaying too far sometimes. It IS a flat line… it’s just  an upwardly sloping one.

Ed M: How about we attack them on their employment record?

SC: Really, Ed? You really want to go there? Have you seen the figures?

Ed M: But the Prime Minister just doesn’t get it, does he? With this cost of living crisis eroding everybody’s lifestyle. We can keep stabbing away at him with that and eventually we’ll break him down.

*silence*

Ed M: What?

SC: Have you not seen the papers lately? More in work than ever before, cost of living the lowest it’s been for half a decade, housing market healthy and new-build starts higher than we ever managed… And that mild winter didn’t help one bit. Nobody ran out of heat, nobody starved, too few old people died. We’re telling you Ed, this situation is desperate.

Ed M: They have utterly failed to get a grip on immigration. 200,000 a year are coming here, taking our jobs, claiming our benefits…

SC: We let in over 3 million…

Ed B: ...that we know about.

Ed M: I know, let’s try and say he brought a criminal into Downing Street. He’ll go down in history as the first politician ever to employ a criminal! And trying to get into bed with Murdoch - can you imagine how the public will react to that?

Harman: Have you really forgotten everything about the Blair years? And did you ever hear of Robert Maxwell? You can attack Cameron's character Ed, but at least he has one to attack. Sometimes I think he looks quite the statesman while you're banging on with your puny sound bites. We're fed up of having to come to your defence all the time.

[Ed Miliband’s lower lip begins to tremble and he looks - as he so often does – as if he is about to cry. He stamps his foot and raises his voice a notch in both volume and pitch.]

Ed M: But I am the leader! And I have done my homework. He hasn’t done the right thing! He has brought disgrace on his office! He hasn’t learned the lessons of history! He HAS got a weak heel and I will keep on stabbing at it until he is on his upper class, blue-bloody knees.

Harman: But Ed, if you had done your homework you would realise that a) The general public forgot all about Leveson a year ago, b) Your carping on about him being out of touch is exactly what everybody accuses you of being, c) Your constant ‘intellectual’ politicking has been called out for the bullshit it is, d) Achilles isn’t history, it’s a myth, and e) Compared to you he doesn’t look like Achilles so much as Hercules.

Wait! I've got an idea!

Ed M: So you're saying we should stop with the personal attacks, come up with some truly ground-breaking new policies, fight for a better Britain and present the voting public with a proper, viable alternative to government as normal? But we're the official opposition, right? So let's stick with our winning formula and just do exactly the opposite.

Pressing On

Pssst!

Wassat?

I got a story... what's it worth?

Can't say... what's it about?

Daren't say.

Okay... If I print it, will anybody go to jail?

Maybe.

If anybody were to go to jail... would it bring down the government?

I've said too much already. This could get me killed.

When you say 'me' who do you mean?

You'll have to guess.

Can I quote you on that?

No.

News Today. A judge, whose name might rhyme with Ryan Meveson may have proposed a change to the way in which press freedom is controlled... or not. I really couldn't comment. The rest of this story has been censored edited while the authors are being hunted down for clarity and then lined up against a wall and shot and accuracy the dirty, lying, low-life motherfuckers. Thank you for your patience. Die you journalist scum.

And now fuck off the weather...

Viva la Revolution!

“Pass the port, brother.” The port was duly passed and dispensed and glasses raised by wizened old hands. The hands of giants. At last the dream was realised and centuries of subjugation ended. The old union lions had finally brought about the crushing defeat of the political elite. Power to the people.

The Lords Spiritual now banished, the Lords Temporal mostly in prison or in exile, the magisterial upper chamber silently awaited the common tongue and an end to unearned privilege. But first, the important issue of lunch. Waste was clearly wrong, of course, so until supplies of beer and pasties could be brought in, the assembled politburo would have to grudgingly make do with the contents of the Lords’ kitchens.

“You know, you could get used to this.” declared Dennis Skinner, as he snarfed up a quail’s egg and took a sip of vintage Bollinger.

“Agreed.” agreed John Prescott. As a member of the advance guard he had developed an impressive palate. “You should try the Chateau Margaux with the fillet” he added, with a satisfied belch and proposed a toast to Leveson, the start of the revolution. “Leveson!” they cried in Unison. “That should be UNISON!” shouted Dave Prentis, before passing out on a red leather bench.

As the afternoon wore on and the wine cellar wore down, the order of business turned to how the assembly should proceed, Len McCluskey proposed they elect a leader, to which Bob Crow objected that they had not torn down one elite to build up another… but offered to take on the role himself. There followed a heated discussion on the purpose and nature of government. By the people, for the people, was the consensus.

In the end it was agreed that the country needed an elected house of representatives of the common people and that, for want of a better title “The House of Commons” would serve well enough. But, lest those people become power-crazed it was essential that another body, shall we call it an upper house, would be necessary to curb their excesses. “That’ll be us then.” said Christine Blower, “We’ll teach them a lesson!”

“Well, now we’re here we need to stay here,” said big John P “so that lot down there don’t get above their station.” The statement was met with hearty agreement and another round of drinks was ordered. The poor house servants eyed each other nervously; this was all looking horribly familiar. “So, appointed, not elected, right?” continued John, “and we’ll need to think up a name.”

“How about, The Upper House?” asked a crusty relic from the TGWU. More vintage port was quaffed as debate raged. A few bread rolls were thrown and a fist-fight broke out in the aisle. To counter the servants’ concerns the members of the club offered to pay for any damages. Bob Crow peeled off a few fifties from a fat bankroll and threw it loftily at one of the stewards. “Plenty more where that came from.” In the end it was proposed, to murmurs of approval, that the title House of Lords was retained until something more grand was suggested.

“But, that’s what the last lot called it!” objected Len.

Man of the People

“True,” said John, donning an ermine cloak, “but they’re gone now… and besides, we’re better than them.”

News Blindness

I suffer an affliction, a cross I've had to bear for many years. I am partially news-sighted and cannot see what others see. So-called news items which engage the British public often leave me cold and disinterested. I also have a compassion-gap, for which I am extremely grateful. So those two ‘qualities’ make me react rather differently at times to the great unwashed out there. Here are a few of the kind of news stories that regularly fail to move me either way:

I am largely unmoved by stories of babies with ghastly diseases. First, it is not national news. It’s sad, it may even be tragic, I’m happy when they pull through, but I’d rather not hear about it at all, and the overuse of the adjective ‘brave’ devalues the whole story.

Similarly, animals. Animals do things out of blind instinct, not through any humanistic sense of nobility or justice... or bravery, for that matter. The same lack of nobility and justice also applies to many humans. Why then, is everybody mock-surprised when people in positions of responsibility and power and driven by natural human acquisitive instincts turn out to be corrupt, venal or just downright dishonest? So, I really don’t give much of a toss about the Leveson enquiry.

Not all foreign news is of any interest either and this especially applies to American primary elections. Why Twitter glows red-hot with indignation when one religious nut-job wins over a gun-toting redneck in a three-way competition with a climate-change apologist when none of us will ever hear of any of them ever again is beyond me. I bet the Yanks don’t follow the Lickhill ward bye-election.

In the UK we get a lot of weather. We’re bound to, plonked betwixt some pretty disparate confluent air masses and the vagaries of the Gulf Stream gyre. Sometimes it's cold. Sometimes it's hot. Often it’s wet and windy and sometimes you’ll get lots of different weather in the same day. But it’s not news for goodness’ sake and if you can't cope with that maybe you should just leave. Which sort of brings me to the only bit of news I could manage to give a stuff about today

Nobody is struggling with 'grinding poverty' in the UK, no matter how desperately some people yearn for that to be the case. Sure, you might need to reconsider replacing your telly or taking a holiday this year, but you won’t starve. Neither will you be put out of house and home. But if working people can’t afford to live exactly where they want, why should you be able to remain in accommodation those same working people could never afford? I don’t see why poor old benighted Stoke should suffer you, but the principle of moving your unproductive flesh somewhere cheaper is sound enough.

The Hanley Hillbillies - There goes the neighbourhood

Whatever else it is it is not ethnic or social cleansing as this article claims. it is simply the husbanding of scarce resources The working give enough to the unwaged as it is and nobody owes you a living. If you are over here on a benefits raid then maybe it’s time we opened the door so you can return to your former life. Pay for you forever or pay your airfare home? If I were you I’d shut the fuck up, before somebody puts it to a vote.