Labour all over

Labour are funny. Yesterday Jeremy Corbyn decided to denounce the Tory ‘cap’ on social care  despite the fact that no such proposal exists. But even if he had understood what was proposed the Labour position would still have been wrong. Old hard-left Labour hates wealth because they see it as a zero sum game whereby people can only become rich by making others poorer, even though real figures show that on average everybody in Britain has become progressively richer, decade on decade, without any help from Labour.

What the Tories are doing, however, is directly from Labour’s playbook, hence the criticism from their own side. Stop paying benefits to those who don’t need them so you can continue to help those who do. In fact, over the last seven years, the Conservative and coalition administrations have progressively shifted the burden of paying for the state from the working poor, who were often unfairly penalised under the last Labour government, to the better off. Despite the constant accusations of ‘tax cuts for the rich’, the despised wealth creators are paying way more than what an ordinary person would consider their fair share.

That last assertion may seem contentious but given the facts; that the poor actually contribute almost no tax (after tax credits and other working benefits are taken into account many are actually subsidised to a considerable degree) while those who earn above about £40k only ever pay in, it can easily be shown that it is the relatively better off who are penalised. But it’s a system we accept. It’s only the left, who twist the reality to suit their narrative of robber barons and fat cat industrialists, squeezing the poor for every drop to fuel hedonistic lifestyles, who don’t seem to get it.

It’s all about the words. Tories adopt a more egalitarian position, redistribute wealth, increase employment, live within our means and strive to create a fairer society with maximum participation for all and they are painted as the nasty party. Labour would disincentivise ambition, penalise success, favour their pet divisive projects of multiculturalism, enforced diversity, state-funded idleness and national bankruptcy and they still manage to convince some voters that they care. You would, literally, have to be stupid to vote for Labour in June.

Don't mention the war...

The last two weeks have seen the party in such disarray that even if they genuinely believed a single thing they say it is clear that they are not singing from the same hymnal. Practically every single spokesperson – some more memorably so that others – has been found devoid of an argument to back their claims when pressed. And several have had to issue post-interview ‘clarifications. This isn’t media bias, it is journalists doing their job and doing it well. If Labour’s message is now so muddled that their leader has to go on television and attack Tory policies that appeal to Labour voters it is surely the end. They think it’s all over? It is now.

The Left are revolting...

There have been demonstrations. Is it all a protest against the oppression of a violent dictator state, which ‘disappears’ troublesome upstarts, or imprisons them for years in torture dungeons? Is it a protest against the wholesale eviction of council tenants so their homes can be flattened to build munitions factories? Is it a Jarrow March style demand for jobs, to save the shipyards, the coalmines, the steelworks? Is it, even, a resurgent CND, trying to bomb the whale, or whatever? Nope; it’s a protest against democracy. It is an outright denial of the right of free citizens to elect the government of their choice by a simple majority. How ironic that the left want to impose the values of islam, a primitive totalitarian cult which they may not criticise.

See the democracy!

“This is not the government we need!” they cry and in their hyperbole make risible comparison with Nazi Germany. “The people demand better!” But of course that is exactly NOT what the people demanded. There has been much talk over the weekend about ‘shy Tories’, people afraid to admit to their ‘progressive’ acquaintances that their lives haven’t been blighted by the coalition and don’t expect much blight in the next five years. People made to feel ashamed for not wanting to allow the parlous experiments of socialism free rein to ruin the lives of the poorest. Because it is always the poorest who suffer under Labour. Always.

But don’t worry; although the massed mobs hurl abuse and bricks the children of the left are not the legion they believe themselves to be. And they only represent themselves, a whining multitude of entitlement-whores, convinced the world exists for them alone. The best that can be hoped is that they one day grow up and leave the cult. The worst is, well, have you seen Arthur Scargill lately? The teeth of the left, like much of their character, are made from mediocre stuff and those who don’t regain sanity are to be found mewling in corners and sucking on their rusks. We’ve been here before; the left are a spent force.

Meanwhile, meet Jim. Jim dutifully voted Labour all his life because, as his dad told him, “That’s the party for us, son.” Jim is lucky to have a job and come Monday he’ll kiss his wife and kids goodbye and drive to work in his small car, on which he has only a few payments left. Jim worries about his children’s education and is saving up, when he can, to help the with tuition fees in the future. With his young family the state of the NHS is also of some concern but his experiences thus far have been all good and he pays his taxes from his average salary without complaint because we all have a part to play.

Although Jim is not a regular charity-giver he would never want to see the genuinely needy going without. The poor and the sick need help and he sees it as the state’s job to provide for those who can’t do it for themselves. But he has no time for those he knows carve out a perfectly reasonable life on benefits and see it as a right. He doesn’t blame them directly but he does blame the system which has made that an option. And although he doesn’t believe himself to be a racist and feels lucky to live in a country to which half the world’s poor people see as a dream destination, he has a niggling feeling that mass immigration isn’t helping.

Vicious, nasty, murdering Tory scum!

Jim hopes to retire with his mortgage paid off and his state pension supplemented by a small works pension he is fortunate to have. He won’t end up rich, but his children will have the best he can give them and hopefully he will have instilled in them the need for self-reliance and a civic duty towards less fortunate others. As he watches the riots on the television Jim wonders if those demonstrating actually do understand the lives of those they say they represent; the lives they say the Tories don’t understand. Jim dutifully voted Labour all his life, but this time he put his ‘X’ against the Conservative candidate. He has yet to feel the urge to stamp on the heads of poor babies.

After the ball is over...

Now, I may get to regret my words later and in many ways the forthcoming thoughts are more of a wish list than actual prediction, but given that the campaigning is effectively over (except in majority muslim communities where the electoral beatings will continue right up to the line) I am turning my attention to the leaders. Or, rather, where the leaders will likely be once the votes are counted; every ‘X’ in every box takes us one step closer to their political end times. So here goes with Old Battsby’s Almanac for post-election 2015. Release the tumbleweed…

Ed Miliband: Following a lacklustre final showing despite all the bully-boy tactics of Unite’s rent-a-mob, trained by the LEA (Lutfur’s Electoral Academy) Labour lose every seat in Scotland, much of the North of England and despite retaining shithole constituencies in Wales and East London it fails to turn its percentage into posts. Although coming second overall they can do nothing without the Scottish National Party, so Ed resigns in favour of pursuing the 'family' business: He and Justine take over the Kinnock’s lucrative EU jobs and discover they can actually do more to influence UK policy from an anonymous office in Brussels than they ever could in Downing Street. There they plot to continue the progressive decline begun under Harold Wilson.

Alex Salmond: Disappointed at Ed’s copping out, Wee Eck realises that the only the strings he can still pull are connected to Nicola Sturgeon and despite her fan-dabby-dozey support in Holyrood the SNP is still an also-ran without a Labour Party to blackmail. The unionists breathe a collective sigh of relief, unaware of the gathering sentiment south of the border for a truly independent Scotland. Oil prices remain low and after the English get their Scottish Independence referendum in 2016 the Scots economy relies once again on whisky and shortbread. Salmond is exiled, via a wee, bonnie boat, to Skye and never heard from again.

Nutty Natalie Bennett: Still the leader of the Green Party which now has a round number of MPs – zero. No challenger emerges to replace her because, well, the Greens just aren’t like that… you bully. Also, as few people can understand what she says, largely because they fall asleep within minutes of her opening her mouth, they figure that it would be unfair to remove her just in case she has got a credible policy struggling to get out.

Meanwhile a number of former safe seats fall with the result that the odious Douglas Alexander, the ginger Danny alexander and the titty-selfie-fixated Simon Danczuk all retire to run think tanks and quietly become rich in taxpayer-funded, self-congratulatory non-jobs. Russell Brand’s career goes into a slow decline until he ends up playing at provincial comedy clubs to dwindling audiences composed almost entirely of crack-bound pseudo-anarchists who still live with their ‘stupid parents’.

Nigel Farage: Naughty Nigel – just scrapes in at South Thanet despite Dan Hodges almost obsessive attempts to write him down in every column he has written since 2012. He presides over a Ukip parliamentary showing of seven MPs. Less than he wanted, but more than anybody had dared to predict. This is just enough to counter the few LibDem rebels in the coalition. Oh yes, because:

Nick Clegg: Remains Deputy Prime Minister after the Tories came to his defence in Sheffield Hallam. He still has to fag for George Osborne as part of the deal, holding his nose whenever he has to vote against all the natural instincts of his party; whatever they are. Nick continues to host ‘Call Clegg’ on LBC radio and is rumoured to be lining up a media career for the very near future. Nobody predicts he will retain his seat in 2020.

David Cameron: Once again Call-me-Dave manages to be Prime Minister despite not actually winning the election. He plans, as promised, to stand down before the end of the term, but he presides, as a broken man, over a coalition made up largely of fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists. There is still no sign of a referendum on membership of the EU any time soon.

Big Brother Dimbleby... always watching.

As always the only real winners are the Dimblebies of this world. The commentators, media hacks, columnists, bloggers, sketch writers and Andrew Neil Cobbley and all; Hodges, Toynbee, Jones, Marr, Robinson, Utley, Brooker, Letts et al are still at it. Proof, if proof were needed, that the best way to get rich in a gold rush is to sell shovels and blankets.

Just Kipping?

Yesterday morning, on the Today programme, I heard Nick Clegg described as the most abused man in British politics. I suppose in BBC-Land that would ring true, given that in their closed world Nigel Farage simply does not exist if they shut their eyes and chant loudly enough. In truth the kind of people who make up the majority of the Beeb’s staffers could quite cheerfully insist that he is a figment even as they hold their nose and conduct a constantly interrupted interview with the leader of the third most popular party in the country. What, somebody other than Holy Labour actually listening to 'ordinary people'?  It. Does. Not. Compute. There is also plenty of anecdotal evidence of huge porky pies being told on doorsteps by activists of other parties and a failure to prompt for Ukip by polling organisations. What is everybody so scared of?

In support of the establishment thesis that Ukip is insignificant and thus by inference so are the opinions of those who will vote for them, the general election media coverage in the last 48 hours is steadfastly playing down any Kippery, unless of course it plays into the narrative that Ukip supporters are all unhinged, frothy-mouthed racists obsessed with and blaming every single ill on immigrants. Yet Ukip have categorically stated that it is not immigrants but uncontrollable, high-volume immigration, stemming from our membership of a political union that nobody was ever asked to join that is the root cause of our inability to arrange our own affairs sensibly. Hence the name; the United Kingdom Independence Party and not the United Kingdom Darkies Go Home Party.

Given that all the other outfits are similarly campaigning on stretch in the NHS, the ‘crisis’ in education and school places, a lack of housing, the downward pressure on wages and our creaking infrastructure, is it really too outlandish to surmise that a greater population than our society can comfortably accommodate may be contributory to every single one of those problems? And if – I hesitate to use the word - ‘mature’ parties like the Tories and Labour are insisting they will bring immigration under control despite the failure of both of them to actually do so, why is it that when Ukip flag up that particular failure this is taken as proof positive of their ‘vile’ racial hatred?

Fruitcakes, loonies, ignorant, ill-educated, racist rabble? There are poor spellers, bigots, verbally incontinent morons and deluded fools voting for every political party in the land, statistically in easily greater numbers for red and blue than for purple. Some idiot children will vote Labour because Russell Brand told them to, some others will vote Green… because Russell Brand told them to. But only the ‘Kippers are racist? Maybe they just got fed up of voting for more of the same, but if it’s racism you really want, look no further than those cuddly third-world communities so beloved of one party in particular.

Do fuck off back home, dear...

I don’t have any such misty-eyed recollections as John Major’s “long shadows on county cricket grounds, warm beer, green suburbs, dog lovers, and old maids cycling to Holy Communion through the morning mist.” I know it wasn’t like that for the majority. But I do have very real memories of growing up in what felt like the best country in the world. The country that had saved - actually saved - the world from Hitlerian fascism. Whoever you vote for, surely wanting to prevent us 'sleepwalking' into becoming just another EU sub-regional backwater is a legitimate ambition to recognise and not just to slap down with hysterical slurs. Is Britain just 'Kipping? Or is it waking up?

Do it now!

There is a lie which nestles deep in the disturbed heart of the welfare state. It is not an intentionally cruel lie, but it kills with its surfeit of kindness. It is a lie more deadly than ‘work will set you free’ and a lie more ubiquitous than ‘the cheque is in the post’. Worse, it is a lie that is presented as an obvious and irrefutable truth, accepted as gospel in the face of indisputable evidence to the contrary. It is so insidious that it is enshrined in the American declaration of Independence, to wit: “…that all men are created equal…”. Palpable bollocks, promulgated by those who would rule over us and accepted by useful idiots who wouldn’t see the truth if it actually palpated their actual bollocks.

Equality requires an excess of effort that would rule out any selective drive for its perpetuation and would quickly render extinct those mutants that displayed it. Look around you and say it ain’t so. But what a lovely idea to promote; and what a very clever way to foment emotional urges to feel better about ourselves. Because while competition is the real driver of progress, cooperation is one major way in which the human species has overcome the limitations of simple herd instincts. People aren’t ‘created’ equal; nothing could be less self-evident, but this doesn’t mean we can’t also be kind without coercion. Inequality and ‘social justice’ (for want of a less puke-inducing, tree-hugging, lentil-munching phrase) are not incompatible.

But I’ll tell you what is incompatible: enforced ‘equality’ and meaningful social justice will never co-exist successfully except in the minds of those who imagine themselves to be innately superior. And there is the central paradox – those who swallow the socialist equality myth think they are inherently better than those who create the wealth that allows our cooperative society to indulge their little dreams. And those same brave comrades cannot accept that, to paraphrase Sting, the Tories love their children too. So it is that without pausing for a moment’s thought, Mummy’s Little Marxists brand everybody who doesn’t need shoehorning into a charity pigeonhole as ‘baby-eating Tory scum’.

But here’s the stupid, the real, couldn’t-make-it-up stupid. Those same big competitive beasts DO love their children too and willingly cooperate and contribute to help the children of others by bearing the lion’s share of the tax burden. To label those who labour in the real world to pay for the socially engineered fantasy world of the equality of low expectations as cruel really takes the piss. To try and make people ashamed of their success and strive always to take more of the wealth they have created is a game with only one end; the final whistle blows when they take their ball away.

The real 'Ed Stone'

So the idea of filthy rich, tax-over-easy, famous junkie role model Russell Brand exercising his own unnatural hold over impressionable minds and coming out for Red Ed, the Unite puppet and advocate of state-control over everything is irony indeed. Hate the rich Tories? Be careful what you conclude: Don’t fall for it kids; while we’re still paraphrasing stuff remember the old adage “Tired of being hassled by stupid politicians? Act now! Get a job, pay your own bills, pay taxes then vote for Labour to take away your gains and give them to others. Do it now, while you still know everything!”

Something Misunderstood

While the Bank Holiday weekend world was waiting to wake up to the political ‘peak mong’ event that was Ed Miliband’s Moses Moment, as he unveiled the monolith soon to be dubbed #EdStone I was driving to work and catching a listen to the usual farming news and other esoteric stuff, including Something Understood in which various contributors argued for the world to be ordered on more spiritual grounds, rather than be driven by economics. The programme asked whether “…the economic growth that politicians use to judge their country's state of health is undermining our spiritual wellbeing”.

In positing the need for ‘spiritual economics’ the overall theme suggested we should aim to increase the sum total of domestic happiness rather than just worrying about the gross domestic product. The ultimate function of economic systems, the ‘real purpose’ of economic development, somebody said, should be to develop the full potential of human consciousness. This was, naturally, followed by lots of transcendental chanting as if to suggest that if we stopped considering humans as economic units the world would be happy and fulfilled and peaceful.

It’s a lovely idea, of course and the programme did take pains not to ignore the raw economic realities and the needs of the poor, suggesting that material desires, spiritual needs, art and culture needed to peacefully and cooperatively co-exist. But before we get carried away we might want to keep just one eye on the murderers and rapists and beheaders and apocalyptic nutters who would cheerily bring on Armageddon, given half a chance. And think also, of the charlatans who amass their own fortunes by preying on the seekers of the nebulous ideas of religion and ‘spirituality’ or as many would call them, the young and the gullible.

We’ve all had our moments of course; those Damascene enlightenments when we have imagined a world run on different principles. It is phenomenon which is undoubtedly more prevalent in the young and impressionable, but the fact that very few go on to actually live spiritually enriched lives is a true mirror of the reality of human society. We grow up so, apart from the very few who migrate to where you can live with meagre material means, or buy their new-world awakenings from the rich spoils of capitalism, it is beyond the grasp of most of us. In other words, much as with fairness, justice and foie gras, you can have as much spirituality as you can afford; either by sacrifice or by success.

The Labour Party is trying to tap into the morality versus greed narrative and suggesting that without natural greed we can have unattainable nirvana. We can all live to ‘our full potential’ if only we could, paradoxically, banish the competitive urges and material desires that drive strong economies. Greed may not be good, but it’s the best model we have. And Ed’s carved-in-stone pledges ignore the reality of political expediency, whereby all political promises are hostage to fortune as soon as fortune stops smiling.

It's spiritual, innit?

So, do yourselves a favour and elect a government that gives you a glimmer of putting you in a position to be at least be able to buy your own peace of heaven here on earth, rather than relying on a list of vague limestone pledges that could become builders' hard-core by Friday. Hold your nose if you need to, but vote with your head for the Conservatives where they can win and vote with your heart where they can’t. But whatever you do, if you really want spiritual peace of mind, don’t ever vote Labour. 

Political Piss Take

The thing I probably write most often about is not having anything to write about, or else having far too many options and not knowing which one to go with. Either way the topic of my daily five-hundred word diatribe is often only decided as I start to flail away blindly at the keyboard. You can usually tell whether the post has undergone a long gestation of cautious deliberation, or whether it has been rattled off in ten minutes. Yes, you guessed it, the spontaneous ones generally get the best reception, while the idea-eggs I lay many hours before sometimes hatch out as ugly ducklings, rather than the regal swans I imagine them to be. That’s my problem, I reckon; overthinking.

Thankfully such affliction is rarely visited upon our glorious leaders. On Thursday night Ed said there would be no deal with the SNP, by Friday even his own supporters were briefing that of course there will be, if it proves politic. A Ukip spokesman said cap immigration and the very next day Nigel Farage said don’t. David Cameron supports Child Benefit which he would never discuss the possibility of maybe considering thinking about possibly reforming, but that doesn’t mean a cut… and the next day still nobody knows what he intends. And some time ago Nick Clegg said something about tuition fees, but I expect that will have been forgotten by the time you read this.

You’d think that maybe they could have had a meeting, or at the very least sent a round-robin email. Given that the election campaign is effectively their job interview you’d imagine that every political party would want to look less like an Alan Sugar's Apprentice-style Team-Tossers and a little bit more Red Arrows. They wouldn’t even need to fly in such close formation so much as just travel more or less in the same direction. Maybe they should all get a Digby Jones or a Gordon Ramsey… or a Bear Grylls to boot-camp them into shape before letting loose their half-assed ideas on an increasingly difficult-to-please voting public.

I can just about begin to see the appeal of Russell Brand, or Natalie Bennett; they may have ideas that would make a box of frogs appear sane, but at least their lunatic inconsistencies have a bizarre internal logic of their own… for all we know their policies may make perfect sense on their home planets. But we are not electing entertainment; we are trying to pick a team to compete on the global economic stage. Is it too much to ask that they at least get their lies straight? Because we know we’re being lied to, of course, it would just be nice for it to look like they’d made the effort to pretend otherwise.

Now there's an idea!

What’s the alternative to the traditional hustings hysteria? What could replace the good old stump when you need a tub-thump? What could a party do to convince us that they meant business, that they were a serious concern with a mission they intended to see through to the bitter end? I’ve had enough of weasel words, I want to see a potential future government in action. To that end I suggest that they all compete to organise a practical task; gather a bunch of unrelated people in a traditional work place, ply them with booze and get them to thrash out their differences. At least that way we could finally get to elect a party that can actually organise a piss up in a brewery.

Law men

Another day, another worthless gesture. “No income tax, no VAT” Dave? Will you be adding “No money back, no guarantee”? One thing is for sure – in the dying days of the election campaign all parties will be promising “Black or white, rich or broke, we'll cut prices at a stroke…” All I can say in response is “God bless Hooky Street”. But let me get this straight: A politician’s word is no longer of any value so the Conservatives have offered to enact a ‘tax-lock’ law to prevent them from doing what the other side say they’ll do should they get into office?

Leaving aside the confusing idea that this in itself is still only a politicians’ promise, does this now mean that labour will also ‘pledge’ to legally restrain themselves from obeying their driving instincts? A law to stop politicians passing laws, in fact? Because, let’s face it, the sheer burden of prohibitive legislation is a massive part of the problem in power. You get elected, you swap offices with your opposite number and the next thing you know you’re knocking one out for the common good; a law, that is.

As everybody knows, making something illegal absolutely stops it happening, doesn’t it? If that was the case I’m surprised and not a little disappointed that nobody has yet written decrees to prohibit global warming, racism, everyday sexism, homophobia, trans-something-or-othero-phobia and every other horrible thing that humans do to each other. But wait, while laws proscribing such behaviour have done nothing but exacerbate the problems, the laws against talking about it in a naughty way have been fantastically effective; punishable to the full extent of the Lord Justices' powers. So rapists still rape, sexists still sex but, boy are we afraid to discuss either in uncertain company.

If words on expensively procured paper could stop anything we could eliminate smoking, debt, poverty, obesity, cancer and unhappiness with the mere stroke of a pen. But they can’t. If politicians are so convinced of the inviolability of man-made legislation why not use that belief to curb the excesses and stupidities of elected officials? It could become an offence for MPs to consort with ‘slebs’ for instance. Or to air their marital grievances in public (I’m looking at YOU, Huhne and Pryce.) Or better yet, to prevent the Parliamentary knee-jerk response of spontaneous law-making.

Oi, politicians, No!

In one week’s time we will have elected the next coalition of legislators. Given that their instincts have regularly and predictably led us to financial ruin, loss of autonomy, societal breakdown and all-round disappointment, the best thing they can do is nothing at all. They should all be falling over themselves to cross their hearts and hope to die if they don’t make it illegal for a new government to change a damned thing until they have been in office for at least, say, five years…

In the Prime

In 1955 Cyril Northcote Parkinson observed that work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion. Actually, he observed this some years before, but being a busy man it took him a while and he only actually finally (and ironically) wrote it down as the publisher’s deadline approached. Just as well he did because otherwise the world would have been deprived of Parkinson’s Law. Without these eponymous laws to guide us, negotiating this mortal veil would be a far more perilous journey. Thanks to such visionaries as Boyle, Hooke and Ohm and solid thinkers such as Parkinson, Murphy* and Sod we understand our world so much more clearly than did our forefathers.

Everybody knows from experience the inevitability of Parkinson’s, whereby your kids never start their homework until the day before it needs to be handed in and how when you start to catch up on your Sky-Plus listing suddenly you find you’ve been sitting on your arse all day. But old Parkie goes further than this simple principle and also notes such pithy realities as: “The time spent on any item of the agenda will be in inverse proportion to the sum involved” and ‘Orgmanship’ which is "The tendency of all administrative departments to increase the number of subordinate staff, 'irrespective of the amount of work (if any) to be done." 

These statements practically amount to mission statements for all government departments, the NHS and any organisation given any public funding for any purpose whatsoever. Panels of ‘climate experts’, economic think tanks and the administration of the BBC all spring to mind as exemplars. But even in the lowliest collection of human work units there is still room to see the machinations of these universal laws in action. One such law is the Peter Principle, in which the selection of a candidate for a position is based on the candidate's performance in their current role, rather than whether they possess any abilities relevant to the intended role. Thus, employees only stop being promoted once they can no longer perform effectively, and hence "managers rise to the level of their incompetence."

We all know at least one such co-worker, floundering around, doing more harm than good and often unaware of the chaos they leave in their wake. I sometimes think that a quiet cull might be in order but generally it is kinder to just let them do their thing, keep them out of harm’s way and give them an office in a quiet corner of the premises where they can do as little harm and generate as little expense as possible. Of course, this doesn’t always work; sometimes we have to promote them all the way out of trouble, elevating them to a position where they become entirely irrelevant. I’m calling this the Prime Minister Principle.

(* Murphy’s Law states, of course, “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong” but blog authors may be more familiar with its editorial counterpart:

Muphry's law – "If you write anything criticizing editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written.")

The Election that never was...

Scouring the media, as I do, to find something to bang on about I have to say I’m finding the election build up a tad disappointing. This is supposed to be the most important election in the lives of almost everybody paying tax in Britain; a feast of Last Supper significance and yet the fare is dull and lifeless. Despite both Cameron and Miliband suddenly having caffeine injections responding, no doubt, to some advisors responding, probably, to some focus groups responding, I expect, to some polls, which seem to be more to do with influencing than sampling, there is no real buzz. We were warned of this impending election fatigue when the campaigns started back in 2010, but thought we’d stay the course.

But, be honest, the long-term economic plan versus the million-council houses pledge; the safe hands versus the magic money business; the right wing lies versus the left wing lies; it’s just the same old shit served up gently steaming. What we want is a broiling cauldron, bubbling over with spice and substance. What we’ve got is pease pudding cold… nine days old. As neither of the two main rivals has any room for manoeuvre it is now all down to the dirty old tricks of scare tactics and smear... and forever responding to what paid hirelings tell them the voters want to hear.

What happened to leading? What happened to showing us the way forward, to giving us a real hope for change? But no, it's still: The Tories will eat your young and Labour will plunge them further into debt; either way, according to respective received wisdoms the next generation is screwed. The core vote is solid and unwavering and short of the human masks slipping and our lizard overlords accidentally revealing their green scales live on the telly, nothing will change that.

So instead we are relying on the smaller parties to turn the tide and bring in the vote from the formerly voluntarily disenfranchised. Let us just take a moment to think about that… Oh my gawd, I need to lie down. It’s going to be a complete clusterfuck whatever combination rocks into Number Ten, isn’t it? They say that if you don’t vote you get the government you deserve; this time it seems that whoever you vote for you will not get the government you want. Opt for Labour and you will end up being dictated to by the communists of the Scots Nats. Go Tory and there is a chance of an unholy ConLibDupKip smorgasbord of Gordian knottiness. Either way the EU wins.

Now THAT's what I call politics!

What I do foresee is a rash of leadership challenges in the immediate aftermath of this imminent failure of representative democracy. Campaign chiefs’ heads will roll and the stalking horses will stampede, trampling all in their wake. Boris will set up his circus stall, Chuka will make his slithery move and Natalie Bennett will disappear forever - gone back to the wild. Probably the only party leader to hold her head up high will be wee Eck’s wee Eck, by heck. Maybe it’s because I already voted by post, but it feels like this doomed election is already over for me; it’s all done bar the fighting… seconds away.

Free for all!

Is it Wimbledon already? The big two’s election campaigns seem to have degenerated into a straightforward, back and forth, yes we will – no you won’t – ‘tisn’t – ‘tis – shan’t – so will, tit-for-tat about who will do what for whom and how both sides will somehow avoid paying for it all. Party promises not worth a pauper’s piss with the equally unbelievable Tory giveaways versus Labour’s iron fiscal fist. Only a week and a bit to go before we can start arguing over who actually won, but it strikes me that the only winners will be the ‘experts’ who make their living failing to forecast anything of any value.

That’s the problem, see… money. One of the great drivers of inequality (I’m taking Ed’s corner here, just to see how comfy it is) is the ease with which rich people (spits) can hover above the chaos endured by the rest of us. The rich can simply purchase better outcomes in every way; money buys you better education, health, housing, justice and, yes, government. So, let’s just get rid of all the money. Rich people, your money is no good here, for everything will be free when Ed’s dream becomes reality.

No more rent control, energy price freezes, or having to continually raise the minimum wage to keep pace with prices. Radical, brainstorming, blue-sky lateral thinking can only get you so far – what you need is a synergistic, new-energy, virtual iParadigm shift. In the Red Kingdom everything will be yours for the asking. Everything. Free house, free cinema tickets, free car, free PS4, free healthcare, free education, free, free, free. Say it out loud – don’t you feel freer already? The government – your government – will take care of everything and you need fret no more.

Food, you say? Worry not for we will set up community refectories in every ward where all the food will be delivered and stored – let’s call it a food ‘bank’ – and then lovingly prepared and served up at pre-set times. No need for cooking and so need for any more celebrity chefs or poncey cookery shows with overpaid presenters; two birds, one stone. Who says socialism isn’t thought through? The only kitchens you will ever need will be soup kitchens

Want a new car? Take your pick – the fuel is free too, so don’t be shy. And think of the work you’ll be providing for the car manufacturers. With this simple example you can see that if everything is free the demand will soar and simple economics dictates that soon we will have full employment. In fact we will pretty soon have more jobs than workers and then even Ukip will agree we need to let in more immigrants. And we will have no need to pay them, because everything will be free for them as well. And as an added bonus if we don't have any money we will have no need for banks. Who says we don't have a plan for the banks?

We'll even give you free money - because it wil be worthless!

Of course, we are not naïve enough to believe that there isn’t a price, even if it is not measured in monetary terms. Labour’s newly turned leaf now includes economic probity and we understand the need to honour two sides of any bargain. So this is the pact we make with the people of Britain. You get everything for free, forever and all we ask in return is that you give up your vote. Let’s face it; you weren’t planning on using it wisely now, were you?

(PS: For any actual socialists reading this - it's a joke.)

The Stepford Milibands

Something strange has happened to the Labour Party. No, I mean something even stranger than that. Ed Miliband and Douglas Alexander yesterday both spoke with the same voice and I do mean with the same voice; not one of human origin, but with the identical measured monotone and mock estuarine accent that Blair had downloaded into RAM from Labour spin central. Dropping their aitches and glottal stopping for all they were worth and constantly saying “Ah’ll do” and “Ah said…” the pair of them sounded utterly soulless. We all have verbal and vocal tics, but few of us go out of our way to sound like clones of a discredited political laboratory creation – at least once we have grown out of the teenage faux ‘strine accent phase.

So it is my considered hypothesis that whatever shred of humanity remained in the corpus of the Labour shadow cabinet it has been extracted and replaced with some form of alien replicant serum; because that stuff exists you know! Before you leap on the naysaying bandwagon I have to declare my theory is at least as credible as anything Labour have presented as a policy since they were kicked into touch by the British public last time round. While the Tories have such obviously flawed but hugely entertaining joke humanoid-imitating robots as Boris Johnson and Eric Pickles and Ukip, of course, has the mighty Farage, the Labour line-up looks like the clients in the Star Wars bar.

Stiff, wooden, inarticulate, humourless, condescending and devoid of any warmth, Rachel ‘Morticia’ Reeves is clearly in the final stages of Milibandification. She looks like Ed, sounds like Ed, has Ed’s adenoidal timbre and like many of her opposition colleagues displays the self-awareness of a particularly nondescript pebble. And forget the oily, buffed-up Uncle Tom Umunna, the closest thing Labour comes to colour is Ed Balls and even his remaining ruddiness is steadily being drained from those chubby cheeks as he Milibandises from within. Soon you will not be able to tell one from another which, if you think about it, is exactly what Len McCluskey has wanted all along.

Mourning the decline of identikit, Labour-voting, production line workers, paying into union coffers every Thursday, Len has had to resort to some lateral thinking. Instead of a bunch of indistinguishable drones in the mills and factories he has instead sought to appeal to a workforce that is no longer interested in the nuances of politics. Who needs difference, he has reasoned, when the technology exists to manufacture a matching set of politicians without an individual thought or personality to their name?

And he’s onto a winner. Forget about voting for the individual best able to represent your interests at Westminster. That would involve you taking an active part in democracy – weighing up your options considering the pros and cons – something Labour voters became incapable of doing long before the New-Labour/Tory-Lite experiment. No all you have to do now is listen to the hypnotic whine of lefty aphorisms and place your ‘X’ in the box secure in the knowledge that if you vote for any single one of them, you will get the whole damned lot.

WWLD? (What would Lulu do?)

The Jockanese are on the march again, woading up, dressing in man-skirts and screaming “Frrrrreeedom!” from the boggy, boggy braes… the noo. But freedom from what, exactly? They seem happy to remain wedded to an unequal distribution of state funding that the Welsh would kill for. They seem to be very keen indeed to drive policy from the back seat of Labour’s underpowered clown car and they are inordinately fond of calling resources procured largely by investment from England’s Exchequer ‘Scotland’s oil and gas’. So what is it, Jimmy, whit de ye wan’?

Because, convinced as I am that Britain’s best interests lie outside the deadly cold embrace of the European Union, it would be hypocritical of me to suggest you stay within a club you so clearly despise. Scottish Nationalism can be whatever colour it wishes; you can be as red as Mao’s little book or as blue as the sainted Maggie. You can even turn yellow and sit on the Lib Dem fence if you wish. But make up your bloody minds, will you? 55% was it? 55% voted against independence? And yet about 120% of you now seem intent to vote for the party of separation. Down here in your personal piggy bank we’re all getting a mite pissed off with it all.

We’re happy for you to stay, or happy for you to leave. But not bloody happy for you to stay and then act like churlish children, holding the country to ransom and threatening disruption. And not happy for you to ‘leave’ yet still keep bringing your washing home and cleaning out the fridge every weekend. You have to choose and stick with your choice. Of course Nicola Sturgeon is going to agitate for another referendum and of course it’s going to fail again out of fear of the unknown – oh how I wished for you to vote ‘yes’ last time. But just like every UK government’s tenatious dalliance with the EU this thing isn’t going to go away any time soon.

The one thing that can be said for the rise of Wee Jimmy Sturgeon is that it will have focused the minds of many of the oppressed majority to maybe try to head things off at the pass. For years the English have been the beaten and bruised underdog of the dis-United Kingdom, yet we’ve had to fund the architects of our own impoverishment for many decades. It’s high time somebody asked us whether or not we are happy to remain ball-and-chained to two socialist regions in Wales and Scotland and further shackled to the unholy collection of disparate economies in Europe. It’s time for the English to vote for England and with St George’s Day tomorrow, now is the time for our own rally.

The United Kingdom of St George

Yes, you say, it’s all well and good touting a gut feeling that we’d be better off on our own, but what of the detail? Where is the analysis of our trading position, our influence, our standing in a post UK, post EU world? Well, don’t ask me, ask ‘them’. Where is it? Not one single so-called ‘expert’ has the first inkling of a glimmer of a clue what would happen after a successful OUT referendum, so I reckon our chances are pretty good. What is for certain is that 60-million (a very conservative estimate of the population of England alone) are not going to starve, or stop producing, buying and selling stuff. So what have we got to lose? It’s time to ditch the ballast that has been slowing us down for years and crack on with rebuilding our mixed up, muddled up, shook up world… ‘cept for Lulu?

Dumbocracy

Nobody knows what will happen in the General Election. Nobody. Nobody knows how whatever ruling coalition emerges will govern. Nobody. Nobody has any clear, over-arching vision of how an economy and a society needs to be run in an age when the servant-master hierarchy has disappeared and in its place is a faux-egalitarian mish-mash of ‘rights’ with an ill-defined sense of responsibility. Indeed, individual responsibility has vanished in some sectors altogether and corporate loyalty has been replaced with a nebulous sense of entitlement and individualism. Oddly and contradictorily it is in those on the left, who persistently preach about the power of solidarity, where some of the lowest notions of true common cause reside.

Boris Johnson is right to talk of a new Battle for Britain but entirely confused if he genuinely believes our progressively watered-down version of Conservatism has the answers. Because people have been told for so long that the world is theirs by right they have come to believe it. There is no stigma in the things which would once have been frowned upon – able-bodied worklessness, single teen parenthood, gambling, drinking and cavorting to excess with the expectation that somebody else would always pick up the tab. Neither a borrower nor a lender be? When Labour’s Liam Byrne signalled that there was no money left, the coalition should have begun to really turn the screws, not just fiddled about, ring-fencing this and freezing that.

Of course the profligate administrations of town and county and health and education, faced with necessary budget cuts did what? Did they preserve so-called frontline services for those in most need? Did they maintain the flow of traineeships and steady recruitment at the bottom, while exploring true efficiency savings from their bloated budgets? No, their overpaid non-job leaders went into a union-like huddle and decided that such authorities were run for the benefit of the staff before the users and instead opted for short-termism. Keep the top jobs and non-jobs, come what may and cut provision to make a point to government. “See what you did to the poor and sick” said the £200,000 a year image consultants and performance indicator manipulators, while doing exactly what they blamed the bankers for.

In defence of immigration, the oft-touted statistic that 40% of NHS staff are from overseas should not be praised; it is a damning indictment of the way in which much of the country and its population has been mismanaged. Poor educational outcomes, coupled with unrealistically rising aspirations, lowered moral principles and a perverse belief that recruiting an ever lower paid workforce will somehow result in a limitless flow of funds for public services has left us with a generation poorly equipped to cope with the main fact of working life – that we don’t always get what we want. Except now they don’t even have the option of starting from the bottom.

And why do we have all this? Because we let the children decide; it is the job of a parent to decide how their kids turn out… and it is the job of leaders to lead, not to follow. A fifty-year succession of populist governments has given the people what the focus groups said they wanted, instead of taking the tough decisions and saying no. And the election campaign is too short a time to even begin to educate an electorate to search for the truth and vote with their heads.

The ship of state sails on...

So, come May 7^th we will trot off to the polling booths and we may as well vote blindfold because whatever we call them we’ll get the same indecisive, spineless, vote-whores we always do and if anybody tries to enact real reform they will be ushered out of office before the approval ratings dip a percentage point.. Somebody said that democracy is the least-worst system for governance. But when you realise how democracy usually ends up – government elected by the average; dumbocracy – nobody responsible would ever countenance it. But what’s the alternative?

The Bag Lady

I didn’t think I would like Natalie Bennett but who couldn’t fall for those blotchy dimples, those confused, out-of-focus, wide-in-the-headlight eyes and her engagingly tragic performance in interviews. With her Aussie twang forever blunted by her permanent head cold she stubbornly resisted Andrew Neil’s attempts to give her a lesson in rudimentary economics yesterday – much on the simple lines of Mr Micawber’s easy mantra – and instead insisted on rushing headlong into rice-and-beans homilies about the inherent goodness of people. She obviously hasn’t met many humans.

Plenty of people have commented in detail on the crazed fantasy that the Green Party Manifesto dishes up, so I’m not going to do that; no, I’m going to play the man instead. Much more fun. It’s a lovely idea that ‘the rich’ will willingly give up most of what they earn so that others can choose never to work and engage instead in ‘creative’ dabblings. But really, Natalie, you reckon that is ever going to happen outside a throwback sixties hippy hobby commune funded by the likes of Brian May and his badger army? And try asking somebody who has grafted for decades to finally reach the dizzy heights of £160,000 a year to give most of it back and what do you expect their reaction would be? (Also, apart from the odd – and I mean odd – millionaire ex-flower-child, what proportion of wealthy people with functioning brains do you reckon would be likely to be Green Party fans?)

Just because giving to others sounds nice and marks you out as a generous and kind soul it doesn’t automatically follow that everybody should be forced to do follow your example. In general philanthropists have their own agenda, or madness, driving their generosity; many of the original charities were founded by extreme puritans with obsessive beliefs in Christian dogma… sometimes accompanied by flogging and casual, ‘healing’ child abuse. And while giving may be repaid by gratitude it is often accompanied by resentment; many are those who would bite the hand that feeds them and there is little dignity in relying on charity.

Being nice is also a very poor survival tactic. Turning the other cheek; how’s that working out for you disciples of Nazareth? The meek will inherit the Earth? Maybe… when the big boys have finished kicking the shit out of it. Our national defence relies on rough men willing to do our dirty work for us. Policing relies on a sufficient deterrent to crime that most people are unwilling to risk having their collar felt. And educating unwilling youth into civilised enlightenment needs tough discipline and a refusal to bend to the whims of infants, no matter how big their eyes or chubby their cheeks. The little bastards will turn on you the moment they sense weakness.

Canvassing the constituency...

As a result of all this wilful blindness Nutty Natalie is now one of my all-time favourites on the political scene, but you have to wonder how long she will be able to keep it up. At every interview she has looked like a frightened mouse, blinking in incomprehension at challenges to her bizarre beliefs, then stutteringly repeating them. She obviously believes what she is saying, but are we absolutely sure she is a politician and not just some bag lady who dropped into a Green Party gathering thinking it was a food bank?

He’s not the Messiah!

At Easter the imaginary son of a non-existent god rose from his grave and carried on, much as before. Pushing his largely unheeded fables down our throats and, backed by a dwindling number of mostly deluded disciples, he imagined the world needed his soothing touch. After two thousand years of Christianity the world looks a lot less stable than it did when the Romans were ruling with an iron fist, but still some persist in believing peace will one day come.   

The modern-day followers of Christ are still being crucified in the Middle East and their message of ‘do unto others’ is ignored as savages demonstrate what truly happens to the meek. And elsewhere, Christianity is in decline as one particular hard-line doctrine enforces its will on half the world’s population while the other half has advanced and realised that blind adherence to a faith will never be a part of the solution. But some keep on repeating the same old mantras.

The dogged insistence that there IS an answer to the world’s ills if we could only get along in harmony is countered by the everyday proof of people not only succeeding but thriving without it. But still Labour the religion pushes on with its message, spreading its gospel across the land via a rag-taggle band of preachers imploring voters to convert to communal ways. But beware, in the Christian myth, as in many others, there are devils. These tortured demons, so the stories go, seek to lure the unwary from the path of light and righteousness; they are also a convenient excuse for when a devout acolyte snaps and goes 'off-message' with an Uzi in a shopping centre.

And so it has come to pass that another miracle has been revealed and risen before us we see one who had died and gone away. The question you have to ask yourself is: is he an angel from god on high or an emissary of Satan himself? And is the spectacle of his messianic resurrection to be looked on in awe and wonder, or is it a warning to all mankind to prepare for the apocalypse? Nah, it’s Tony-fucking-Blair.

Like a bad penny he’s turned up again, supposedly to bolster Ed Miliband’s election campaign. Not content with stirring up the Middle East he has returned to his unfinished project; the annihilation of the last remaining Britons. In Tony’s mind, only consigning the vestiges of Britishness to the history books and subsuming this island nation wholesale into Europe will do – although he may wish to check out the dogged persistence of Israel before he relaxes, thinking the job done.

Cherie backs him all the way...

But like Christ himself, Blair seems to believe he can live forever; he’s said he will carry on doing his good work until he’s ninety-one. You’d have thought that the Millennium Dome would be enough for one man, wouldn’t you, but no, he’s still after that lost legacy, isn’t he? Remember those eyes? He’s not the Messiah – he’s a very naughty boy.

Simple!

There is no other story to go with for today's blog than the lefty laff-fest that has been #nondomnishambles. What goes around comes around to bite you on the arse; thus found out Ed Balls when he was backed into a corner and had to explain how he now supported a policy move he opposed only back in January. The proposal was, of course, that of ending the non-domicile tax status of up to 120,000 people which between them pay the equivalent, by some estimates, of 10 million low paid workers. As a class-envy soundbite it has traction – soak the rich. But as sound economics the experts are agreed that they can’t agree.

What started out as a bold new policy announcement turned quickly into a shambolic reversal of a previous position, which became, under scrutiny, a plan instead to ‘look into’ changing a situation which Labour in power appeared to welcome, if the doubling of the numbers of non-doms in their time is anything to go by. The measure will either bring huge tax windfalls or it may cost the country money, but either way it will have no effect whatsoever on approximately 99.8% of the population over which Labour wish to exercise ‘leadership’. Are you following?

But all that detail hardly matters because few of us really understand any of the big economic arguments to any great degree of complexity, yet the left forever see conspiracy where none exists, or where it simply doesn’t matter. The very rich will be very rich until we try to rob them blind… at which point they will still be very rich, but just not over here. Keep. It. Simple… Stupid. Instead of imagining convoluted plots to grind poor people into the dirt – to what end, you ought to ask? – all you have to do is accept mankind’s venal, opportunistic, materialistic urges and all becomes crystal clear; people want to keep what they’ve got and really don’t want to give it away without a struggle.

If the non-doms are here it is because we have made it an attractive position for them to be so. Of course if Labour and the Greens and the SNP and Uncle Tom Marx and all get their way, the problems they see embodied in the existence of the rich will disappear along with their money as soon as those parties manage to relegate us from the league of properly civilised countries. But they can’t think like that; just as in Junior Chess, you have to think a few moves ahead to be in with a chance.

But no, unable to follow a coherent train of thought to its eventual terminus and explain the failure of their policies in power, they have to imagine non-existent bogeymen waiting in the shadows to de-rail their carriages. They do the same when talking about people with whom they disagree - making it complicated and assigning all sorts of calculated malevolence to those with differing opinions. And to their followers this ridiculous rhetoric rings true because how else could they be poor and uneducated and unhealthy unless the nasty, grasping, plotting forces of evil were ranged in solidarity against them?

What then, do we sentient free-acting agents think in turn of the lefties and their complicated interpretations of our devious and twisted, world-dominating motives? Well, for one thing, we don’t suppose to know their minds as they believe they know ours, in much the way we don’t really need to know what the cat is thinking. They are there, they’re a bit annoying at times, but when it comes down to it you can only judge them by their actions. They’re just not all that bright, are they? 

Blairey Superstitious...

That Tony Blair has come out for Ed Miliband shows how desperate Labour are for votes at any cost in the coming election because, surely, it is all or nothing for them now. After all the distance Ed has tried to put between himself and the Tory-Lite facsimile of New Labour the party faithful clearly have no faith in the old way that Ed represents. Big gamble, because Blair is as hated by almost as many Labour supporters as he is by the centre-right, whose garb he adopted as a Fabian wolf in the sheep’s clothing of woolly-soft faux conservatism before allowing his chancellor to do his worst.

His worst? To plunge us further into the welfare mire from which the coalition has tried to extract us, one sticky welly at a time. Because Labour is nothing if it isn’t spending other people’s money and then demanding more. A great deal that is wrong with our country can be summed up with a few of JFK’s famous words: “Ask not what your country can do for you…” If people did more for themselves then there would be fewer Marys in the world.

Mary is a hobby alcoholic; it’s an occupation of sorts. To ring the changes she also dabbles in other mood-altering substances when the opportunity arises but times are hard and there is only so much cash to go around. To this end she is grateful for her several children, who give her unchallenged access to the benefit bounty of free money for kids, rent and Council Tax. These, of course, are well-known gateway benefits, leading users to seek ever more exotic handout-highs.

 The children, as is natural when you have no aspiration, rarely attend school regularly and they are in and out of the courts and state care as often as Mary is in and out of rehab and treatment programmes. Between them they cost the country many hundreds of thousands of pounds in failed education initiatives, court costs and frequent unnecessary visits by the emergency services, called in by concerned neighbours because of the violent stand-up rows, which replace normal functional communication.

It’s likely the kids will never work and will inherit many of Mary’s troubles, going on to reproduce for recreation and soaking up ever more healthcare and social services resources. The brood will spread and in a few generations will fill a small sink estate and its attendant state-provided army of people whose miserable job it is to contain their worst excesses and limit the damage they can do to others. Multiply the problems by the number of Marys and it is clear that public spending could be vastly reduced were they simply not there.

It's our country now...

Draconian measures would be needed to expunge the blight though, and any party attempting it is automatically damned as monstrous, but it is clear to most that it can’t continue. If the country isn’t allowed to do for Mary, then Mary must do the right thing and exercise restraint. Fat chance. The rot started long ago but it accelerated wildly under the ‘caring’ and ever watchful evil eyes of Blair’s administration. New Labour solved nothing, they just took your money and concealed the crap under the carpet. The money is still all gone – where do you think Labour will look for more?

Kiddy-Fiddling

It’s all about the money, at least if you buy the Tory electoral line. And what normal person wouldn’t want to? Britain is getting back to work, people are becoming better off, the deficit is steadily shrinking and with a steady hand on the tiller we are on course for more of the same. But, in the absence of any credible policies to counter the Conservative good news campaign, the parties of the left are betting the farm on appealing to the hateful impulses of unthinking socialism. The Tories are portrayed by Labour, the SNP, Plaid Cymru and even to some extent by their coalition partners, the LibDems, as the enemy. To the left, success is to be vilified and loathed and the Tories are a rapacious horde to be exterminated. Talk about killing the golden goose…

There is no part of the constituency to which this ‘nasty Tory’ line plays better than our dumbed down, experience-lite, naïve, coddled, starry-eyed youth for whom sound-bites pass for philosophy and Russell Brand’s unhinged rhetoric for the wisdom of the ages. If one thing is certain, it is that children should never have any influence on those with the power to make decisions which affect everybody. I’d even go so far as to say that children should rarely even be consulted about decisions which directly affect themselve; they are minors and no matter how well they imitate their elders, few are capable of making wise choices about affairs to which they have made no contribution.

So, it’s little wonder that the left-wing think tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research proposes that voting should be compulsory in the first election after any youngster reaches the age of majority. In an election battle that is being fought currently on the manipulation of flimsy and largely meaningless financial statistics, what qualifies mere children to make sense of the Play-Your-Cards-Right game of higher/lower/better-off/worse-off than the adults who actually stand to win or lose by it? Which way do you reckon the spotty ones will vote; for less pocket money, or a Brucie Bonus?

The Greens have the answers to EVERYTHING!

And what does it say for the gravitas of any party that fervently seeks the votes of children to retain power - Hitler Youth, anybody? Gerrymandering is a constant political threat, whether by electoral boundaries, corrupt postal means, or the buying of votes for benefits bribes. The left are so convinced they are right and only they are right and that only they have any moral entitlement to be in power that they will do or say almost anything to groom a vote. In other words they will happily deceive gullible young minds to vote for their own enslavement to the state, which is tantamount to child abuse. But will the brown-shirted, Labour Youth, kinder-voters, in their failed socialist futures ever get a chance to point out on the political doll where the Labour Party touched them?

The secret Diary of Edrian ‘Mole’ Miliband

Friday 06^th March 2015:

Well, what a smashing week it’s been. After I demolished David Cameron at PMQs by calling him ‘cowardy custard’ a hundred times in front of all his Eton chums, I came up with a brilliant idea. I’m a genius with fantastic levels of superior intellectual confidence, so it isn’t really that unusual but I was surprised it took me so long. When I am king Prime Minister I will make it a law that Cowardy Cameron must do a telly debate with me every week and then the electorate will all see how brilliant I am. It’s not for nothing the Tories call me their secret weapon.

Saturday 07^th March:

We really must do something about the press. I told them of my excellent idea and being the intellectually inferior class that they are they just didn’t understand and said some horrid things. Well, I’m standing up to them because it’s the right thing to do. Honestly the gutter press are so out of touch with ordinary people, it’s no wonder they are all racists and homophobes. If only we could get more people to read the Guardian, the only honest and honourable mouthpiece for the working man, there would be many more informed voters and they would see that we are right. About everything. Maybe I will ask the editor if he would run a ‘Page Three’ for a while - the proles seem to like that; we could have a topless picture of, say, Rachel Reeves and have her say a few words about everyday sexism or something. That would help spread the message, I’m sure.

And if that isn’t enough we need to work on the immigration problem; we must have more immigration because as every intellectual knows, immigration can never be bad and, besides, immigrants are much better than British people because we know we can buy their votes. Our useless specimens just seem to want more and more benefits to keep them quiet. That’s all well and good and happy to oblige and all that, but who’s going to pay for it, eh? And then they don’t even bother to turn up at the ballot box, so we need as many low-paid, uneducated, unskilled bods as we can lay our hands on and then tell the chavs we need them. Believe me, I understand the ways of the working class; my own butler is one of them.

Monday 09^th March 2015:

So today it’s back on the campaign trail and we have some super new policies to unveil. I can’t wait until Wednesday when I can smash Camermoron again with all my brilliance. The Labour Party really is the only party in touch with what this country needs. I have noticed that people are unhappy; well that is going to stop. We are going to make it illegal to be unhappy and as we all know, if you make something illegal it can’t ever happen again. So if people don’t cheer up they had better prepare to have something to be unhappy about! It’s much the same way with taxation; if you keep on taxing the wealthy they get used to it and happily wait to be taxed some more.

Bill and Ed's Excellent Adventure

Which reminds me, I must catch up with our economic policy; I’m a little behind schedule pointing at things for Ed Balls to tax and I really must tip my hat to Myleene for giving me the idea. And also I have a wizard wheeze to make sure we can enact all our plans and put me on the throne in Number Ten. I have a secret meeting with the Wee Free later this week. There’s no way Cameron and his cronies can beat a Labour/SNP coalition and Eck will do exactly as I say. Flawless thinking there, Eddy boy! Now, be excellent to each other – by law.