Sanguinicity

Sanguine, that’s me, or so some think; cheerful in apparently adverse circumstance. Others believe me dour and pessimistic. And yet more have in the past remarked on my impassivity and calm in the face of the shit storm, remaining imperturbable and somewhat nonchalant as all around empires crumble and the mighty are impotent to stem the tides… or at least, the photocopier is up the spout again and we’re out of milk.

The thing is, I really don’t see the point in getting all worked up about stuff; no rational reason to get too excited – only disappointment will follow. No, stay grounded and the Earth will turn, the sun will rise, the weather systems will run their regular seasonal gamut of change and no matter the prophecies and prognoses of all the well-paid hot air spouters we have genuinely seen it all before. The same with pretty much all disasters and chaos, natural or man-made.

While I can readily agree that to send aid to destitute victims of floods and famine, terror and tragedy, is ‘a good thing’, I don’t see why I need to be emotionally involved. It strikes me that a mewling, keening, ululating display of mourning and garment-rending for people who I don’t know, will never know and with whom the most interaction I will ever have is maybe dropping loose change into a tin, is entirely unnecessary. I want neither their gratitude nor their never-ending dependency; in fact if I do put money in a tin the most likely reason is that I just want rid of the shrapnel.

Each to his or her own, I say. We have enough to do just to look after our own hearth, never mind the rest of the world. Charity really should begin – and in many cases end – at home. Look after the pennies, they say, and the pounds will look after themselves. The same applies to humanity – sort out your own shit and don’t go looking for a mission until you have done so. Far too many people take umbrage on behalf of others, or take up cudgels for lost and unworthy causes when their time would far better be spent taking personal responsibility.

All of which – and more besides – is why I could never be a politician. Pretending to care about things I know nothing about, spouting supposed ‘opinions’ which are every-ready to change, depending on the audience. Promising solutions to problems I don’t fully understand with money whose production I know little about. Like Jeremy Clarkson, or Katie Hopkins I would look about me and laugh at the little people… because they are, quite frankly, hilarious.

The answer to pretty much every question...

So, there’s no point in trying to wind me up on The Twitter, or trying to persuade me of some noble cause that involves people whose significance to me is as an ant on an elephant hide. I’m not without emotions but they are mine and mine alone and I don’t deploy them, Diana-like, to be part of some weird drone-driven hive-mind of morbid mediocrity. My Twitter profile says “No need to argue; I'm always right.” Take that as read and we’ll get on fine when I’m King.

Election themes and Internet Memes

In The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins posited the notion of memes – ideas that replicate. A meme is a device which passes on cultural ideas, themes, thoughts, even emotions, via some simple recognisable icons or symbols in much the same way as genes replicate biological characteristics. Memes can even mutate and in a sense evolve and as a result the feelings they provoke can be transmitted from one individual to others, appropriated and misappropriated, often in unintended ways. The Internet is a perfect breeding ground for memes, and the name has attached to those handy sound-bite pics where a quotation is coupled with a picture to convey a misleading message.

Isabel Hardman in The Spectator has written about one such series of images and how they can be manipulated to tell a story which – true or not – stirs up the outrage on those conveyor belts of hurt that are Twitter and Facebook. So powerful are the effects on those who willingly suspend normal critical faculties online that the picture-meme is already becoming a major tool in the battle for the general election in 2015. It’s an absolute gift for the activists who have nothing better to do than paint their opponents in the worst possible light.

Forget policy, forget facts; in politics perception is everything and perception can be manipulated much more easily with a simple lie than with a whole Hansard of verifiable truths. Thus with Cameron, Osborne, Balls and Miliband all but agreeing to choose the NHS as the battlefield for the next election, expect a spate of unchallenged, statistically-backed, facts-lite images that variously claim: That the Tories are selling the NHS to their rich friends, that Labour already did, that thousands of people will die due to Tory cruelty, that Andy Burnham’s death squads will roam again, that spending is being raised, that spending is being cut, that blah blah blah blah blah…

Abe tells it best

I don’t know about you, but I have yet to see a single verifiable account of a Tory actually prising a toddler’s mouth open to steal food. Or of a Labourite actually donning a Mao suit and calling for the execution of intellectuals. But then, like you, I rarely let the truth get in the way of a good story and I’m looking forward to seeing how far each side's supporters can go to create fantasy myths about impending death of the NHS . But be warned; I’ve checked and it appears the NHS is bigger by far than any government and has to date survived every imagined attempt to kill it off, while it has abetted the downfall of any who would use it as a political weapon.

So, bring it on, fellas, there is a willing army of dreamers ready and receptive to believe almost every last thing you want to tell them about how very few days the fragile behemoth will survive under one or other administration. Meanwhile the top ten boy’s name in Britain is no longer Oliver (Oliver, really?) as of the last count it is, as predicted, mohammed. Get meming!

Blank Slate

I’m sometimes asked how I come up with ideas for the blog. Well, occasionally there is a story I have been wanting to tell and something triggers an opportunity to do so. More often than not the germ of an idea comes while driving and listening to the radio news. Usually a chance remark, a sound bite or a profoundly stupid political reaction can bring inspiration and every now and then, like today, I just start with a blank slate and let the words pour out to fill it. Spoiled for choice, I was:

How about the news that 84 state schools in England have not one single white, British pupil, with the majority of their non-white contingent having English as their second language, even when they have been born here? In this nasty, clearly racist and extremely offensive story, entirely dreamed up by imaginary neo-Nazis the obviously fictional issue of white flight rears its ugly head. How very DARE those white bastards leave the poor ex desert dwellers to dismantle a thousand years of civilisation all by themselves!? You’d think they would be grateful for all that multicultural enrichment.

Or the story that estimates that almost 50,000 (You can almost certainly double or quadruple this figure) ‘visitors’ have fraudulently obtained visas following wholesale cheating in English language tests on a near industrial scale. Mind you, it’s not as if people near to the whole corrupt system knew anything about it and had been blowing that whistle with all their puff, year after year after year… but they were just more racists, obviously. I mean next thing you know they’ll be suggesting there is corruption in the administration of the islamic republic of Tower Hamlets. The very thought!

But then I heard the news about the phone hacking trial and the suspicion formed that Rupert Murdoch clearly favoured Rebekah-kah-kah-kah over Andy Coulson. Realising the baying mob of the Leveson loons needed some scraps it’s not a huge leap to surmise that while there is still a chance that Cameron's old school mate Charlie Brooks may in time re-forge a link to the PM it was Andy C who had to be fed to the dogs. Now I really couldn’t give a shit about the whole Leveson showdown, but what caught my ear was Labour’s response to the verdict.

That response was straight out of the textbook chapter on how to make political capital while wearing the mask of innocence and outrage on behalf of a population you have already royally shafted and would seek to shaft again. If they thought they could get away with it, Labour would do exactly as the Tories did and recruit somebody on the inside of big media. After all, Tony Bair was elected by Sun readers after its editors told them to ditch John Major. Oh and, anybody remember Alistair Campbell? 

Ed Miliband and Chris Bryant merrily poured on the scorn from mouths in which it seemed all the butter had yet to melt. While Cameron delivered the long-rehearsed apology Ed said “This taints Cameron's government.” But of course it doesn’t, not really. Most people care as much as I do about Leveson; most have forgotten what it was all about anyway. As I heard Chris Bryant take his turn to say all the same things Ed had said my attention began to fade as I realised just how far disconnected the political twonks are from the concerns of ordinary people.

There was nothing sincere in any of it. The investigation process is certainly flawed, the apology was a sham, the condemnations mere political reaction in a game that long since lost most of its spectators. It is little wonder that next year’s crucial election – it will decide the minor niggles such as the choice between prosperity or Labour, and whether we stay with or ditch the millstone of the EU – will be settled by a dwindling band of real believers on both sides and a desperate last-cynical-gasp bid for votes based on bribery. The majority of voters will still stay at home.

Politicians respond to the concerns of the public

So, if you ever wonder how I come up with ideas for the blog, I just take my cue from the politicians - I start  off with a blank slate and fill it full of cynical, opportunistic, sound-bitey bollocks.

Keep It Simple, Stupid!

The great con trick pulled by experts the world over is to make their expertise appear beyond the wit of mortal man. Thus shamans the world over claim a direct connection with a world inaccessible to the herd, religious leaders proclaim themselves the keepers and protectors of the sacred word and alternative healers publish mumbo-jumbo masquerading as science and let the placebo effect do the rest.

All it takes is to fool enough of the people enough of the time and your place in history, society or the head of the paying-in queue at the bank is assured. The first objection you have to overcome is your own; there is none so zealous as the flag bearer for the cause and once you've brainwashed yourself the rest is relatively easy. Of course, KNOWINGLY misleading people is called fraud, but once you've convinced yourself of your mission it is simply called delusion. Fraud is a crime, but delusion is legal.

Luckily, in the real world our wackier delusions are often brought down to earth by a heavy dose of common sense. If I tried to borrow money from a bank for a business idea I hadn’t properly analysed I’d get short shrift. If I tried to convince listeners that I’d received the word of god at three o’clock on a Saturday morning following a night of excess I’d rightly be met with scepticism. And if I concocted a miracle cure in my shed and tried to flog it in recycled jam jars at the car boot sale I somehow doubt I’d be retiring any time soon.

But package any of those ideas up in the right way and you have the latest stock market darling, a whole new faith and GlaxoSmithKline. Research (by experts) shows that if you say it often enough, commission studies to arrive at a pre-ordained conclusion and get the price right, people will buy any old shit. Which brings us to politics.

Politics has nothing whatsoever to do with producing useful outcomes for ordinary people. It isn’t about the best way to run the country and it certainly has nothing to do with whatever the electorate says it wants. The alchemy of snakes like Mandelson is to gently tell you that what you believe isn’t the right thing to believe and that he’ll be gentle with you as he makes you nicer. The prestidigitation of a Cameron is to talk tough medicine for all, while privately bending over for big business and special friends.

No wonder people are disengaged with politics. If you buy a can of fly spray that doesn't kill flies you get your money back. If you buy a vacuum cleaner that sucks – or doesn't  as it were – you exchange it for another one. And if you order a blue car you don’t expect to get a red one delivered. Yet in politics, if it doesn't work or it’s feeble or you don’t get what you voted for, the Sale of Goods Act just doesn't apply.

Here in real life if you don’t like cheese you don’t buy cheese, if you can’t afford to heat your house you don’t pay to heat your neighbour’s house and you don’t continue to pay for membership of a club you never go to, that your dad signed you up for forty years ago. It’s that simple, yet the power of the political shaman lies in making it complicated.

Here’s a classic example. Everybody is banging on about tax. The tax code in the UK is so complicated nobody – literally NOBODY – can fully understand or explain it. So, the common sense answer is to simplify it. Do the sums, work out how much we need to collect, decide who is going to pay how much of it and there you go, done. In a household we call it a budget. The politicians’ response? Make it more complicated still… Oh and bung some more Europe into the package.

Walking - as designed by politicians

The reason people are drawn to Nigel Farage is because he doesn't seem to offer false hopes and he doesn’t appear to offer all the answers. Whether the reality ever lives up to the hope is up to the future to reveal but maybe political naivety is exactly what we need right now. He doesn’t play the political game because unlike the others maybe he’s seen through the smoke and mirrors and realised something many of us suspect. We’re told there are no easy answers? Of course there are! Politics – it’s only hard because they make it hard. 

Oh no! It's Owen Again!

I didn't study Politics and Psychobabble at the University of La-de-bleeding-dah, but I didn't need a degree in name-calling to pass through education into gainful employment where I have resided ever since the nineteen seventies. Picking up tools, producing real things, turning a profit and by and large contributing to the economy is an excellent vantage point to observe that the devil does indeed make work for idle hands to do.

At ‘street level’ this means simple benefit fraud, a bit of light theft, casual smuggling, counterfeiting and the cultivation and dealing of illegal substances. Among the alumni of the London School of Busybodies it takes the form of the study and furtherance of cults[sic]. At least it looks like it. Who knows the truth behind The Frankfurt School, Common Purpose, the Bilderberg Group, Demos, The Fabians, et al? One thing’s for sure; wherever the left gather there will be plenty of theoretical politics.

What the Philpott case has revealed is the utter desperation of a policy-free Labour Party and the callow opportunism of its cheerleaders. It is so much easier to rail against success than to achieve it; so much simpler to hate than to cooperate. While the media has naturally focused on the lurid lifestyle of the odious man, outraged rhetoric has been hotting up on… er just one side.

You can’t help but notice how those in the centre ground – there really is no ‘right wing’ in British politics - tend to calmly carry on, accepting the bad news then resuming their best endeavours, doing what they can to reduce the size of the shit pile. George Osborne’s response, after making it clear that Philpott’s crimes were his alone, was to echo what many millions of ordinary people feel – that questions should be raised about this sort of lifestyle.

“Questions should be raised”? From Ed balls’ spluttering hysterical response you might think he’d proposed the slaughter of the innocents in Bethlehem as, red-faced and foaming with outrage, he denounced the Chancellor’s perfectly reasonable and well considered words as exploiting a tragedy for political gain. It was hilarious – has Ed ever considered a career in pantomime? (Oh yes, he should!)

The left wing press went into overdrive to echo the cry with a great wailing and a gnashing of teeth and gallons of spittle flew across the land as various commentators rolled out their finest faux fury to hurl the same accusation – 'how very dare' the Nasty Tories exploit a tragedy like this? Oh, the irony.

Twitterrati in full flow

Any minute now they’ll get the Boy Wonder, Owen Jones on the telly… and there he is. And there. And there! He stated on Twitter that had the evil government not been so vile he wouldn’t have had to be on telly at all. Had to be? Oh Owen, your hunger for exposure would shame an X-Factor retread!

If anybody is using this event to further political objectives it is surely the opposition who have never grasped that simply saying no and stamping their feet at every single government policy is just silly. Rolling out The Jones to do a Violet Elizabeth Bott to order on the telly box does them no favours whatsoever. Because more and more people are recognising that many of the things they denounce became entrenched during labour’s wasted riding of the no-more-boom-and-bust years.

So I have a challenge for Owen – the biggest foot-stamper out there. Iain Duncan Smith has worked tirelessly to understand the problems of Britain’s society at large and through the Centre for Social Justice has made positive steps to bring about change for the good of all. How about, instead of ranting about £53 a week challenges, you actually listen – I mean really listen – to what he has to say and divert some of your time away from your own media career to work with him?

Borrowed time, Owen?

Your time in the sun may be short-lived and there are only so many times you can say “demonise” and pass it off as original thought. If you truly want to improve more than just your bank balance then swallow your Marxist pride, shake the man’s hand and roll up your sleeves.

Gone Fishing

Give a man a fish and he’ll eat tonight. Teach a man to fish and he’ll be gone all weekend. So, let’s talks about the price of fish... specifically Eastleigh fish. Right now a host of fishermen have assembled in Eastleigh, all eager to over-fish the same depleted stock of votes in the hope of making a career-best catch. The little fish of Eastleigh, meanwhile, are desperately hiding anywhere they can from the attentions of earnest canvassers and media crews eagerly recording vox pops of the most pointless kind.

Looking at the motley band of anglers dangling their wormy charms into the waters it’s good, yet somehow depressing, to see that hope springs eternal – according to Wikipedia, no fewer than fifteen deluded nutters are standing, representing... well, gawd only knows what they represent. Here, in no particular order I present to you a voter’s guide to the parties at the, er... party.

Liberal Democrat – the big trawler, churning up the sea bed, desperate to catch every fish, no matter how insignificant and with no regard for what anybody thinks about their decimation of political stock in ever murkier waters. This may be the last full net they ever land.

English Democrats – the rarest of breeds, taking to choppy seas in a leaky old rowing boat and looking to gaff one or two the last surviving examples of a near-extinct species.

Wessex Regionalist – Far from the madding crowd, Gabriel Oak is no longer smiling... Bathsheba is long gone, so he may as well dangle his fictitious lure far and wide; plenty more fish in the sea.

Elvis Loves Pets – no shit, seriously - obviously on the hunt for the rare little British goldfish but more likely to land one of our more numerous little brown fish.

Peace – fishing with an unbaited hook; the barb filed off and the point blunted– they may as well be using a stickleback net and a jam jar. Peace? Gertcha!

Monster Raving Loony – now a mainstream stalwart of the fringe and trying a little too hard to corner the mermaid market.

Beer, Baccy and Crumpet Party – actually catching the odd mermaid... the odder the better.

Conservative – the purse seiner of the local fleet, delicately skimming the surface; trying not to cause unpleasant ripples. The trouble is, the fish here are cruising deeper waters, though they are a LibDem stronghold so obviously not all that deep.

UKIP – They are OUR fish – hands off! Will readily throw back any non-native species and throw a cordon around our shores. Only true British cod will fit the bill. British fish are, after all the finest species in all of Europe.

National Health Action –coughing and wheezing and lying in dirty bandages in their bivouacs on the bank in a fever-ridden stupor and listening to the real action on Radio Free Tooting.

Christian – fishers of men – Simon, who is called Peter – never use your real name - cruising the gay bars and looking to net whatever he can. If he’s not successful this time he can always come back another day... as Paul.

TUSC - Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition – All fish are equal, but some are more equal than others, brother. Unlikely to ever leave harbour as long as champagne and smoked salmon sandwiches remain.

Independent – a bloke with a bamboo can and a bent pin. He’s only out fishing because his wife seemed so keen he should take up a hobby. I mean, really keen. Meanwhile her latest ‘hobby’ is the talk of the cul-de-sac.

And finally, the rusty old tub that is Labour – dipping into everybody else’s catch while nobody is looking, then lying about it. It’s worked so far, you never know, but the joke’s wearing thin. They need new scriptwriters and might as well field a comedian –anything for a cheap laugh.

 There you have it. Good luck Eastleigh; you'll need it. Not long to go now; just grit your teeth, cling on to the rocks and do your very best to not get caught in the wrong net.

Dedicated follower of fashion

Every now and then it’s good to spend a bit of time organising one’s wardrobe, after all, spring is on the way and a king needs to look his best. So that was one of my jobs at the weekend, following my recent castle move. When I say wardrobe I mean a few shelves and a hanging rail to accommodate my small collection of... well, when it comes down to it it’s mostly tee-shirts. And being a chap of a certain age, they’re mostly black. 

I eschewed fashion decades ago, when I learned that I will never see being trendy as being worthwhile. Following the herd; expressing my individuality by wearing the same uniform as everybody else - that was never for me... although, for eight years in the navy, that was exactly what I wore, on and off duty. It was the law. 

But driven by preference I refuse to wear obvious labels and scoff at the prices of high street fashion. Man at Matalan – that’s me, but in its own way that is still following a trail blazed by other fat balding middle-aged blokes. At least in my defence, neither my mother nor the missus buys my clothes... that’s why they are mostly black tee-shirts. 

Let’s face it, few of us are attractive clothes horses and with the exception of formal business wear, making a sartorial effort often falls well short of the intended impact - fellas are not made for fashion. Oh, it’s fine for the Beckhams of this world, but admit it, if you see a fashionably dressed bloke over thirty you assume he’s gay. You have to cut your cloth to suit and I’m more a fashion acorn than icon. 

Of course, the politicians are no stranger to fashion and are quick to follow a trend, or to drop it as soon as it attracts the wrong sort of attention. The current trend seems to be to dream up more ways of taxing the bejasus out of all of us, but as in the rag trade there is little that is actually new. Labour, having dropped the10% rate under Gordon Brown are now trying to sell it as the Emperor’s new clothes, but we can all see through its flimsy attempt at selling a Tory principle (low taxes) as their own. 

At the same time, Tim Montgomerie seems intent on reclaiming a LibDem spring fashion standard of taxing acquired wealth; if I was a squirrel I’d be well hacked off that my year-long effort to hoard nuts was to be raided to feed lazier squirrels. Good luck with selling that to Conservative voters, Tim. 

It all comes down to sales. To sell stuff you have to pass it off as desirable, new... different. If you can get people to eat horse sold as beef I’m sure you can get them to swallow poo dressed as policy. In politics we don’t call it marketing, however, we call it propaganda. When fashion gets desperate it panics and does this:

They seek him here... he's in hell.

When politics gets extreme you need a modern day Joseph Goebbels...or Peter Mandelson to sell your shit.

But why can’t politics be innovative, rather than just, you know, a bit ‘stealy’? Here’s something new for government: live within your means. And here’s a new and exciting way to be fair about taxation and discourage under-reporting of income. Why not set an earning level above which you pay LESS tax? It is manifestly unfair that the busy squirrels lose the most nuts; why not actually reward success for a change?

That’s a trend we could all be comfortable with, unless you’re still stuck in the miserable Marxist mode of hating anybody who has more than you do.

A Christmouse Tale

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the state,
Not a worker was working; no, not for that rate.
But stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
‘Cos it’s cruel for the skivers to have cupboards so bare.

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of paedophiles danced in their heads.
And blokes from the seventies, mostly with beards,
Shredded their hard drives and shivered with fear.

Up from the Lords there arose such a clatter,
Lord Baron Von Prescott got fatter and fatter.
His Police and Crime gravy train gone like a flash,
He slunk back to Pauline who kept all their cash. 

The reflection of neon on the rain-sodden street
Gave a sparkle to Bobbies on Downing Street beat,
“Fuck off you plebs!” said the naughty Chief Whip,
But as soon as he’d said it, his career did unzip.

"Now, DASHER! now, DANCER! now, PRANCER and VIXEN!
On, COMET! on CUPID! on, DONDER and BLITZEN!
This gay marriage lark is so hard to take serious,
Why Dave even bothered is what I find mysterious.

The Queen was well feted this Jubilee Year
And our runners and jumpers and cyclists made clear 
That cheating with drugs like Lance Armstrong was wrong 
But Korean Psy’s Gangnam stole the show with his song.

One thing not short was a year-long inquiry, 
With Leveson imposing on famous folks diaries. 
The outcome was certain, it’s said the press lied. 
And Ed Milibands response? “An inquiry!” he cried. 

So here we all are on this new Christmas Eve,
The politics behind us and all given leave.
To get pissed and make merry and not give a fuck 
About who believes what and Gawd ‘elp us, good luck!

Pee-nuts, myths and legends

There's a popular urban myth that 'scientists' have analysed bowls of peanuts provided for patrons in pubs and discovered traces of urine or faeces from, variously, ten, a dozen, twenty, or as many as a hundred different people. Such 'facts' are accepted as truths almost without question because they sound vaguely plausible. Well this one is bollocks on so many counts. Firstly, what kinds of 'scientist' would mount such a study and who would pay for it? Secondly, if it had actually been done, why the alarming discrepancy with the numbers? And thirdly, a cursory understanding of bio-chemistry would tell you that nothing conclusive could be revealed by any such study.

This made up inconsequential titbit is probably the brainchild of somebody with a bee in their bonnet about blokes not washing their hands. (As if any such story would really have any effect; there's no limit to the crap blokes will swallow!) It's a fable, not a fact.

If you hit somebody over the head with a cosh, a chair, a piece of lead pipe or a handy rock you may well kill them. If you sock somebody in the jaw you are just as likely to break bones in your hand as their mandibular bits. (It's one of the reasons boxers wear gloves.) The least likely outcome is that you render them harmlessly unconscious just long enough for you to make your escape. But the latter possibility is a regularly used cipher, a handy code used in movies and thriller novels, suspending reality and allowing the plot to progress. Don't try it at home, kids.

We grow up with tales of ghoulies and ghosties and long leggedy beasties and things that go bump in the night. We are also calmed by once-upon-a-times and all's well that ends well. But eventually most of us grow up and begin to grasp that the only reality is cause and effect and cold, hard economics. And so to the politics...

The lovely J M Barrie-like stories of the happy ever after welfare state, where everybody is nice and kind and we all care about each other and nobody ever has to suffer indignity or ignominy or hardship or pain or poverty is really a Grimm's tale of trolls and goats and wolves and dark, dark woods. Politicians want to tell you the first without accepting the second; who would vote for pain? (At least in this matter religion, the flimsiest of fictions, pulls no punches with its 'vale of tears'.)

We all learn by our mistakes. We've all made promises we couldn't keep and we learn two strategies to cope with this; either only make promises you know you can fulfill or, far more successfully, don't make unfulfillable promises.

Growing up is hard for everybody. Leaving behind the fantasies and facing the facts is no easy mission, but it's the only honourable way out of childhood and into a life well-lived. While we do have plenty of fully-formed adults among us we still have a far too highly infantilised population; a population who still hide under the bedclothes to avoid facing the monsters. Deliberately, or misguidedly allowing voters to believe in unsustainable fictions has lead us to a world where some people never question where their living comes from and expect the world to provide.

But I sense the tide changing. The budget is straining the seams of the nation's purse. We have no choice but to pay our way. For those who already do, this is a common sense. For those who never have, it's time to lose the jim-jams and get out of bed. As the welfare burdens weighs ever heavier on the shoulders of the nation's wide-awake, grown up tax payers, we have less and less tolerance for those who think we pissed in their peanuts.

(If you want a great example of a fairy tale - read this illuminating story about the best Prime Minister we've had since the war.)

(If you want another one, how about the great EU jobs myth?)

The Taxman's Lament

“It's the same the whole world over, It's the poor what gets the blame…”

Yes you, you stupid poor people. You’ve screwed everything up what with your ‘needs’ and your ‘human rights’ and your ‘fairness’ and your simple base human nature.

Council houses weren’t good enough for you, so we sold them to you for a knock-down price. But then you wanted to parade around in your chavvy BMWs, so we let you over-mortgage to the point where you managed to break the housing market. You wanted cheap package holidays so we invaded Benidorm, which you then contrived to turn into a sort of sunny open prison.

You wanted your expanding multitude of idle thick kids to do well, so we dumbed down the curriculum, inflated the grades and pretended they were all university material, yet those who do find work ended up in ‘retail’ (shops assistant) or ‘catering’ (McDonald’s). You didn’t want to do the dirty jobs so we opened up the borders and let the rest of the world in to do it instead. You wanted ‘cheap’ and your yearnings fuelled globalisation.

See what democracy did? You demanded choice – now look what you’ve gone and done with it, you stupid, stupid, poor people, you. It’s all your fault.

It’s the silly season, what with the footie coming back and the end of the summer holidays, the autumn storms approaching and the MPs returning to Westminster on Monday. Now is the time for that peculiar form of political prestidigitation, which exchanges lovely new money for old and conjures new imperial clothes from fresh air.

“It's the rich what gets the pleasure…”

There are no more poor people to tax – they’re all on benefits now - and no more palatable general taxes to raise, so the only thing left is to tax pleasure. With that in mind I commend my autumn budget to the house:

Let’s tax fun – it’s all we’ve got left and it will have the delicious trickle-down effect of spreading the warm glow of schadenfreude throughout the land. So, from now on you’ll be taxed on every smile, laugh, grin, chuckle, fumble, tickle, giggle, guffaw and gurn you engage in, be it at home, on the bus or at the dentist – a laughing gas tax, if you will.

You don't deserve me, you really don't - here I am bailing you out yet again! What’s that, Mr Clegg, how will I levy said tax? I’m the ideas man here mate, I imagine whatever mechanism you dreamed up for your wealth tax would probably work fine, you twonk.

Oh fuck it... let’s all of us just give up, hand over every penny and work for the state - it's where we're headed anyway.

                                              

“Ain't it all a fucking shame?"

The Big Bonus

A parliamentary inquiry has discovered the secrets of the universe – the Big Bonus, the so-called God Principle.

The Big Bonus is an elementary incentive within the standard model of incentive economics. On 4 July 2012, Bob Diamond announced the formal confirmation that an incentive "consistent with the Big Bonus… exists with a very high likelihood of 99.99994%". However, MPs still need to verify that it is indeed the expected bonus and not some other new incentive.

The existence of the Big Bonus was predicted almost 50 years ago to explain how bankers manage to acquire so much mass when other particles have very little. ‘Mass’ is, of course, bankers speak for ‘money’. Mr Diamond used the rather simplistic analogy of the Higgs boson to explain The God Principle. This principle describes why bankers need to acquire ‘mass’ in such significant quantities in order to be allowed to even exist within their own universe.

Of course, ordinary people can’t be expected to understand the workings of these mysterious incentives, so here’s a useful cut out and keep guide:

And that, my friends is the secret - when you haven't any coal in the stove and you freeze in the winter and you curse on the wind at your fate. When you haven't any shoes on your feet and your coat's thin as paper and you look thirty pounds underweight - the simple secret of the Mark or Yen, or buck or pound, that makes that clinking clanking sound, that makes the world go round!

Cunctatious Claptrap

Once upon a time, I had a job where desks had to be cleared at the end of the week. No drawers, no hiding places; all in-trays to be emptied and processed, no question. It didn't take long for one bright spark (not me - dull as a dishwasher[sic] me) to come up with a cunning plan. Like all the best plans it was devilishly simple. You scooped the detritus from your desk into a large envelope, addressed it to yourself and sent it to the post room, where the drones, who never thought to question the destination, duly franked and despatched it.

The mail being what it is, said envelope often didn't return to sender until the following Wednesday, by which time it was inevitably too late to respond to some items. Disgraceful, I hear you say... outrageous. Ah, but stick with me. Anything that genuinely needed doing would usually trigger a follow-up call, the response to which would be an innocent declaration that you'd not received the original request. It was an eye-opener to discover just how many formerly "utmost urgent" requirements could nevertheless stand a fair bit of delay.

But here's the best bit of all. The vast majority of un-actioned items generated no response whatsoever. Nada. Zilch. Sweet F-A. In other words, an awful lot of what passed for 'business' was simply somebody else's way of wasting my time. Filling quotas, ticking boxes, yada-yada-yada. For me the sound of that particular penny dropping was deafening.

When I later learned that certain management gurus even preached about the principle of managing by delay - do the urgent, important stuff now; the stuff that must be done, else the world ends, and leave the rest. If it's important for 'them', let 'them' do the prodding. If they don't, it clearly wasn't that important. Subsequently I have met a great number of people whose grasp of the strategic importance of their job to the company is feeble to say the least.

Am I implying that a significant proportion of workers care not about what they do? That in their absence the organisation notices not one jot? Am I implying that despite the billions pumped into the Euro experiment, virtually nobody can really justify their tax-free salary or properly explain their job? Am I implying that some of the European leaders are fully aware of this and that management by procrastination is their game plan? Stifle debate, stall and obfuscate and hope that in the end it will all come good? Damn right I am.

One way or another people have to eat. In the case of Greece and Spain, followed by Italy and France it probably matters not whether they remain an integral part of the Euro confidence trick; they'll get fed. If it takes uprisings and civil wars, the very thought of which should signal abject failure of the one feeble justification for the whole project, the Eurozone apparatchiks will shrug, do nothing and call it a re-balancing or some such meaningless aphorism. They'll all still get paid, out of our money, for performing their important function of remaining motionless on their shiftless arses..

The European Union is a huge white elephant. Like the United Nations it has rarely achieved anything of worth. Its history has been one of endless rounds of discussions and its edicts have either been prohibitory (the disastrous CAP) or damagingly liberal (human rights, open borders). The EU is the political equivalent of one of those 'premium' bank accounts that takes your money in return for doing fuck-all while looking and sounding important. The Emperor has new clothes, or so they say.

A bunch of cunctators doing fuck-all

Which brings us, neatly, back to the title. We are not lead by dictators, instead we have replaced them with a bunch of Cunctators. And it really doesn't matter how you pronounce or mispronounce that word it still contains all the right letters to express just exactly what a bunch they are.

Thought So...

In the latest atrocity committed by the rambling Socialist experiment that is twenty-first century Britain a woman has been jailed for speaking out about her concerns. For the supposed hate crime of having fears relating to the uneasily and unevenly shifting demography of this country she has been sentenced to twenty-one weeks loss of her freedom and most likely her ability to earn a future living unaided by the state. Good move, Judgey.

At the same time, violent young thugs up and down the country are being given feeble tickings-off by magistrates, receiving fines which will never be paid and being offered counselling and anger management courses – at huge cost to you and me – which are almost universally ineffective. Those same thugs will go on to perpetrate ever more violent acts on individuals and society with impunity: statutory rape as they create more under-aged mothers, drug-peddling, casual theft and routine threatening behaviour, often spilling over into actual assault.

So, jail for Jacqueline Woodhouse for drunkenly saying out loud what is now considered a crime to even think about, but counselling and care for real violent offenders. The race-hate-filled Lee Jasper must be cock-a-hoop as the state spends more and more of your money pursuing new, easy targets – white people who dare to be afraid or ignorant – rather than tackling the true crimes all around us.

Woodhouse was undoubtedly drunk and disorderly and she definitely used threatening language, but did she actually hurt anybody? Her language was indefensibly offensive, but were any of her words translated into action? And since when did causing offence become an actual offence? As with the case of ‘Olly Cromwell’ in Bexley she has been punished for nothing – absolutely nothing – more than speaking her mind. Sticks and stones…

In vino veritas, they say, except often that simply isn’t true – we say things under the influence of drink that we definitely don’t mean and in any reasonable society her drunkenness, whilst a misdemeanour in itself, would be taken as partial mitigation for her words.

Even if her intoxicated tirade represented what she actually thinks, Is it a crime to prefer the company of your shared heritage peers? Really? It’s an actual offence to feel like a minority in your country of birth? It’s illegal to feel physically intimidated by persons of significantly different appearance to your own? Animals survive by recognising shapes and postures as friendly or otherwise – is it now a crime to allow evolutionary instinct to shape your views? Apparently so.

Diplomats learn foreign customs and gestures so as to fit in and to understand the ways of the countries they visit. When Woodhouse’s lawyer asked for a lesser sentence, combined with a “diversity awareness and prejudice training course” her plea fell on ears deaf to the very notion. If judges think we can re-train the uneducable chav scum of our society, why should not the same accommodation be offered an otherwise useful member of the same society?

And as for threatening behaviour, have any judges actually been to a town centre on a weekend evening and seen at close quarters what their liberalism has wrought on Britain’s moral fabric? Have they ever watched a soap opera where virtually every plotline revolves around some moral failure or other? Threatening violence? Why not just lock us all up for thinking violence?

Orwellian thought crime - Labour's legacy - will take a generation to eradicate even if we start today. But that’s not going to happen, is it? Because tomorrow’s judiciary and educators, police and politicians have already been brainwashed into believing the Socialist diktat.

We used to say you can’t be locked up for telling the truth. Well that seems to no longer be so. At least some of what Jacqueline Woodhouse said was true. We’re fucked. 

Will the last intelligent Briton please put the cat out and unplug the telly?

Feeling the Benefit

Well, I appear to have come back from holiday to a shitstorm of stuff going on and it's going to take a few days to get my head around it all. I'm assuming that Greece is still being dragged along in chains behind its European gaoler and that the economies of Spain, Italy, Portugal, France and Ireland are teetering on the brink and that we still have six days to save the doomed Euro (dear god, let it die).

I see that the Leveson business (what IS that about, really?) continues apace and that Tony Blair now seems to be in charge, so I've ordered a Kevlar jacket for when the next war starts. The government appears to be cack-handedly not doing the things it said it would do and the opposition, as ever, have sprouted the wings of innocent cherubim and continue to fool large chunks of the lumpen proletariat by simply lying about their culpability in all that is wrong with this country.

Which brings me to this outrageous benefits saga, the only news article I've really had a chance to read today and for that I offer thanks to a stray Tweeter who broadcast it early this morning.

An impoverished family in Breadline Britain 2012

Go on, click the link and have a quick look. The headlines say it all. Late last night I finished reading "Our Culture, What's Left Of It", by Theodore Dalrymple in which he discusses at erudite length the progressive infantilisation of an increasingly ill-educated populace and the abrogation of personal responsibility. Mr D waxes lyrical indeed on society's ills and I thoroughly recommend his book to anybody wanting a stimulating and learned reading of the situation.

But, not possessing Theodore's deft touch with the pen, I offer the blunter appraisal that this 'news' story pretty much sums up what a crock of shit Socialism is. Is this what we've come to? To openly play the system that is sinking this nation and not give a toss? Are we so far down the rocky road that it is no shame to openly boast about stealing from the state?

And when I say 'state' I mean, of course, you and me - the dwindling number of fools who work to pay for it all.

It's Digital, Man!

I can't be arsed with all this Greece nonsense. They are going to be enslaved, exiled or invaded and there's nothing any politician really cares about it, so long as they can stay in office by pandering to the uneducated, egocentric wiles of their increasingly dumbfounded electorate and keep telling them what they want to hear. Why change a winning formula?

So, sod the economies and the concerns of Greece, Italy, Spain Ireland and whichever knave in the house of cards is next on the world stage, professing to have the first clue as what is needed. Sod ‘em all and let’s look closer to home. Good old Blighty.

The UK is a pretty affluent country, you know? Of course we got troubles – who don’t, innit? – but Birmingham didn’t seem to think so yesterday. From the teeming masses out on the spend I saw little sign of a country in crisis.

There is nothing – and I mean NOTHING for sale in the Bullring that anybody actually needs. From the bizarre bubble-wrap skin of Selfridges, to the plethora of games and gadget shops, sunglasses huts, coffee emporia, perfumiers, chocolatiers and jewellers, there is sweet F-A that anybody needs to live on. For a country that’s supposedly broke it’s doing a great job of looking like a consumer paradise.

Every other outlet sells mobile phones with enough computing power to get man on the moon, or run an army from exile; the sheer capability of these things is truly awesome. But look who’s really using them and for what purpose.

The digital native, it is said, needs no formal knowledge-based education, for all knowledge is at the fingertips. What use is there in teaching history, geography, the sciences, language and maths when you can carry your brain in your pocket? (Something, incidentally, that men have been doing for millennia.)

Educationalists posit that ‘digital immigrants’ (that’s us crusties, folks) have trouble teaching digital natives because of the proliferation of a new language and new social paradigms. Educationalists, it seems can always come up with another pseudo-scientific reason not to educate. This, however, is a simple case of the tail wagging the dog – who is supposed to be teaching whom?

If the aimless, lardy simpleton waddling along New Street, glazed eyes fixed to a tiny screen, is an example of the digital native (and it certainly is) then you have to ask yourself at which point this genius is going to transform our brave new world.

For every Alpha entrepreneur, using technology in a new and interesting way, you have a million drooling Deltas using the same technology to order pizza. Aldous Huxley’s novel, while not great literature, was nevertheless prescient… and far more stuff needs cleaning than inventing. As long as you keep the drones happy, the world keeps on turning. 

Hmmm, (shudder at the thought) maybe the Eurocrats know what they're doing after all?

How naïve can you get?

This week I encountered a grizzled old class warrior, a red book waving, card-carrying Marxist firebrand, who regaled me with stories of the most extraordinary deviousness and back-room dealings, secret pacts and international plots to supress the aspirations of the working man. This swivel-eyed mentalist had dates and names going back to the glory days of the seventies, charting how the wicked capitalists had systematically emasculated the unions to bring us to the current state of affairs.

Well, I’ve met, you know, “people” and I have yet to see any evidence that mankind possesses the wit or intelligence to pull off any such prolonged and above all, coordinated, scheme. More often than not, as Rab said, “The best-laid schemes o’ mice an' men gang aft agley.”

BBC Question Time last night – always a rich seam of unintentional humour – presented the usual rag bag of apologists for Socialism, apologists for the present administration and the cattle-prod herded, demented loons of the audience. As per expectations, at times it descended into the familiar tit-for-tat squabbling about whose fault everything is.

The only panellist who stood out, who presented clear, unbiased-sounding arguments, who actually voiced the opinions of a good many viewers, whatever their socio-political allegiance, was Nigel Farage of UKIP. Farage consistently performs well in Brussels, he’s not afraid of a fight and he seems to be one of the few politicians with a genuine love of this country and the balls to question orthodoxy.

Subsequent Twitter-chatter revolved around the fact that neither of the two main parties really have a clue and nobody in their right minds would trust the perpetually confused Libdems, so er, what about giving UKIP a go? The main argument against was UKIP’s inexperience in government. As compared to the vast experience and impeccable credentials of the current mob of career politi-children on both sides of the house, you mean?

When Tim Martin was at school, a teacher named J D Wetherspoon told him he would never make it in business. When he started the pub chain that now bears his old teacher’s name he knew nothing about running a pub. Tim’s also a renowned Eurosceptic, on record as saying he believes the euro will collapse. I’m inclined to believe him far more readily than I am to trust the opinion of any one of the ‘experts’ who failed to prevent the global financial crisis and are currently pouring €billions into shoring up the hated Euro-fiasco.

Europe in pictures

 Conventional political wisdom says, effectively, do nothing, tinker at the margins and keep your fingers crossed that a global upswing will save us. Farage says, to hell with Europe, let’s get out and take our chances. Naïve, some say and I agree. But isn’t now exactly the right time for some naive politics? Time to disregard the complex myths of entrenched political dogma, throw away the rule book and do what feels right.

History is liberally peppered with self-made heroes who had absolutely no business going and getting successful, but did it anyway. So why not, next Thursday, give the tired old parties a bloody nose and give UKIP a chance to step up? How hard can it be, after all and what's the worst that could happen?

Believe it or not...

It turns out I have super powers. Able to detect and deflect bullshit with a single withering glance, I have grown armour impervious to hoo-doo, voodoo and how do you do, Mr Huhne? (Wind farms, my arse, you big, daft, green eejit.)

Fortunate to have been educated, rather than indoctrinated, I laughed at the follies of Russia and America and their counter-cultural myths about each other. I knew then what all the commentators in the world didn’t. Both sides were lying. How did I know they were lying? They were politicians and ‘intellectuals’ and their mouths were moving.

At times I have doubted my powers but I have rarely been wrong because I employ simple logic to solve conundra. Will people with the ability and drive to grow rich use that power to feed poor people? Why would they? So any attempt at social reform will be met with resistance. Push them hard enough and they’ll take their money away. If I can see it, why can’t everybody else? The real question with the bankers et al, is why did the last government freely allow them to gamble?

Determination of right and wrong should be predicated on fact, rather than on faith or fiction, but all too often reaction to any sort of news appears to be based on which church you belong to. Worship at the altar of socialism and any attempt to generate wealth is seen as almost literally prying open the jaws of starving children to snatch out a morsel of nourishment. Pray to Mammon and the world appears to be teeming with undeserving masses ready to slit your throat for your iPhone.

So, the world according to Batsby is pretty much black and white, based not on belief, but on observable reality, with any shades of grey consigned to the margins under the heading Make Your Bloody Mind Up. Here, for your Sunday discussion group is a cornucopia of fact and fiction to get wound up about.

Fiction - all men are created equal.

Fact – the world is largely populated by gurning, jut-jawed imbeciles dependent on the endeavours of a tiny number of genuinely superior beings for any form of prosperity beyond grubbing for roots and skinning rabbits.

Fiction - this equality imbalance (which you don’t sign up to- all created equal, right?) can all be solved by yet more laws and controls, otherwise known as social engineering.

Fact - we, all of us, will try to avoid paying tax in any form whatsoever if we see it being used in ways we don't support. Those who pay the most tax are the most able to exercise the prerogative not to.

Fiction – there once were unicorns.

Fact - a unicorn is fiction. Grow up.

Fiction – The evil ‘Fatcher’ (Socialists can’t pronounce the ‘th’ sound) would creep into your homes at night to eat your babies and she single-handedly consigned poor people to the gutter forever.

Fact - Margaret Thatcher was instrumental in bringing economic success to Britain. Without her, the welfare state itself would have collapsed long ago as the unions drove investment away from Britain. This wasn’t achieved without casualties, but it was a long time ago and you can’t just blame her for everything, forever.

Fact - work hard, behave and learn your lessons and you will get a job.

Fiction - we just have to be nice to the kiddies and they'll become geniuses all by themselves

Fiction - we can redistribute our way to equality.

Fact –wealth will then immediately begin the migration back to where it came from..

Finally, for the greenies:

Fiction - we can be green and save the planet

Fact - we use lots of energy.

Who IS this masked man?

Have a lovely Sunday and if you are running in the London Marathon…. Are you mad?

That A level.

I suppose you have to be, or know somebody, from The Black Country to understand this joke. It goes like this and it has to be told in the local accent. Ready?

"Ah kid's got wun of them A-levels. In carpentry."

"Aa-ah?"

"Aaa. 'Ee put some shelves up and 'ee ses, "That a' level"."

Ba-da-and furthermore-bing! Plenty more where that came from. (I guess you had to be there... or more precisely, here. For clarification, watch Doreen's Story.)

'A' used to stand for 'Advanced'. That is, an advanced qualification capable of being attained by only the better scholars. Now, however, the 'A' clearly stands for 'Average'... if a large proportion of pupils passes them that's what they are, by definition. (One sort of average at any rate - this would need no explaining to a proper 'A' level maths scholar, but probably 'means' nothing to today's A-plus-double-plus-good clones.)

Beneath the A-level stood a solid tier of achievement known as the 'O' (ordinary) level. And beneath that, for those not destined for the groves of academe, the Certificate of Secondary Education, or CSE... the qualification for the thick kids. Not an issue, by the way; more a badge of honour for those who were going to hit things with big hammers, pull stuff out of the ground, or have babies for Britain.

Well, I was there when they ripped it all up. When the progressive  educationalists (I lump the 'ists' together so you can see the full force of my disdain: psychologist, sociologist, therapist, criminologist, apologist… rapist) ripped the still-beating heart out of Britain's proven, highly esteemed fit-for-purpose, education system. So pernicious were the changes that a future colleague of mine was sent back by his father from London to Guyana in order to undergo a 'proper British education' in a former colony that had yet to ‘benefit’ from ‘progress’.

Because ‘progress’ invariably seem to mean ‘regress’. Progress in transport means that the average speed of traffic in London today is a fraction of what it was a hundred years ago. Progress means that you no longer have to rely on a human being to miscalculate your electricity bill – we have machines now that can fuck it up so much quicker. Progress – in the absence of any accelerated human cranial evolution – means that we replace achievement with the illusion of achievement.

So, Michael Gove’s desire to put the ‘A’ back into A-levels has to be applauded, if not actually completely believed. His heart is undeniably in the right place, but he will be thwarted by the liberal intelligentsia who, despite their lofty, egalitarian posturing have wrought nothing but harm to our entire society.

Oh yes, liberal fuckwits, I’m gunning for you. You, with nothing to lose, have experimented with several generations of Britons and now see the mess you’ve left us in? Bereft of decent public education, available to all, it is you who have left the nation in the hands of the kind of career politicians we have today, scions of the very privileged classes – on both sides of the house – that you sought to crush.

 If Michael Gove truly wants to achieve political immortality he should put all his efforts into the very illiberal and definitely non-intellectually-taxing enterprise of fucking the lot of you right up the arse.

A long time in politics

Wow, what a week it's been and what a sorry reflection on the 'grate' British public.

• Last summer's riots were blamed on anybody but the rioters themselves.
• The Tories got caught in a Blairesque cash-for-favours affair.
• Francis Maude idiotically scared stupid sheeple into panic buying fuel, causing utter chaos.
• In the absence of any real policy the opposition counter-attack on George Osborne's budget amounted to nothing more of substance than pasties. 
• Then, when their attention was focused on being photographed in pie shops, Bradfordistan voted in their very own artificial Ayatollah in the form of preening narcissist 'Gorgeous' George Galloway, sycophant to Islamic tyrants the world over.
• And to cap it all, a fool in York sets herself on fire by decanting petrol while cooking on gas.

How in the world will we spot the spoofs, come April First?

Well, all this confirms what I've long suspected. You, the British public, in common with people the globe over, are basically quite, quite stupid. (Not the ones reading this, obviously) You put showboating before logic; you vote for personality rather than ability and you will probably jump to the rhythmic click of my fingers and the hypnotic tone of my voice if I feed you enough of the right kind of chocolate biscuits.

"How many biscuits?" you incisively ask, "And how much chocolate?" you demand to know. And, of course, now I've got you. While Newsnight debates the level of sugary, biscuity bribe that will get your vote, I've had my henchmen peek into your shallow souls and count up your worth. We'll be having your principles melted down for our gain even as the chocolate melts in your mouth. That's politics.

Gosh, how cynical, you gasp. Do I really see the human race, populated almost entirely by slack-jawed, entitlement-focused, undeserving yokels?

Yes. Yes I do. I said so, right from the start: It all started here.[link to first ever Batsby blog]

Now, be off with you, peasants, while I get on with my reign... and my weekend. (PS: Have a nice day!)

The Sultan of Swing

As the week ends forget pastygate. And you might want to consider stockpiling petrol for an entirely different reason, for a new threat to the nation’s sanity has emerged. ‘Gorgeous’ George Galloway is the new Ayatollah of Bradfordistan, once a proud, northern mill town, now a burgeoning suburb of Karachi.

Galloway said, 'By the grace of God we have won the most sensational victory in British political history'. The madness of King George knows no bounds and no doubt fatwahs and favours will soon be issuing forth as he sits in Gadaffi-like splendour, eating dates in his big tent in Bradford’s Green Square. He may even invite his arch enemy Tony Blair for a photo opportunity. For George has cast off his sins and adopted the one true faith, the faith turned to by many another beleaguered pugilist. George has adopted the faith of ‘hismam’, righteous self-worship in the name of publicity.

The former Marxist, communist, head-the-ball and out-and-out swivel-eyed lunatic has benefited – according to the losing Labour faction – from a drop in support for the conservatives. It’s not their week, I know, but even I can’t imagine a former Conservative supporter switching sides to an unconvincing, cat-imitating, Big Brother reject. No, there has to be another reason for the high apparent reversal of voter apathy.

Maybe George’s kitty-cat tongue has had a workout licking all those stamps for the not-at-all-suspiciously large postal ballot? And who was that agile, yet stocky, burka-clad figure seen dashing from booth to booth in a last minute voting frenzy; one photographic ID, yet thousands of identities? (It’s a local custom) 

We may never know, but one thing is for certain. Bradford is no longer a British city that has simply lost its identity. It will forever be known as a city that has lost its mind and gone stark, staring mad. Respect? George Galloway? My arse!

But the government must look to their laurels. The entirely avoidable disasters of the last week are nothing compared to this travesty. One thing's for sure - if this can happen, anything can happen. Remember, every household in the land now has a can of petrol standing by. Man the barricades, the infidel is at the gates.

PS: For every ethnic, religious or historical inaccuracy in this article I offer no apology whatsoever. It's my blog and I can write what I like for comic effect. 

PPS: So there.