A VICTORY FOR DEMOCRATIC RESPECT

WHILE FOR MANY PEOPLE the result of yesterday’s by-election in Bradford West will be seen as the most remarkable swing in an electorate’s choice in recent times, with the Respect Party, here led by “Gorgeous” George Galloway (above) going from almost nothing to 18,000 odd votes and with Labour collapsing along with the Conservatives into levels that do not deem counting, the true victor is another.

ALBEIT TRUE THAT GALLOWAY has shown great resilience and ability to re-invent himself, in this case as a campaigner against “bradree” corruption in the Bradford Labour Party movement, the real mover and shaker in the election, increasing his nul points (and no contest) from last time to a massive 111 votes, is Howling Laud Hope, head of the (Official) Monster Raving Loony Party. The great advance for democracy here is the “compact” between the Monster Raving Loony Party and William Hill, the betting office chaps. This suggests that in the future betting on results and placing the actual votes may be somehow fused in a manner such as when one votes Conservative one also bets on Conservative, a sort of win-win or lose-lose situation, or win-lose for those sneaky enough to cheat.

HOWLING LAUD HOPE has more than one reason to celebrate this victory: from having campaigned innocently and in expectation, along with campaign manager Slaphead, Hope managed to show his friendship with our current leader, David “Dave” Cameron, a man who is also in touch with people on a local level, but who thought it unnecessary to turn up to the elections in support of his own Conservative candidate. Even dizzy Dave, brought up on whipping and buggering, could never have imagined that Labour would have taken such a “smashing” at these elections. One wonders how long Ed “Boy” Miliband can last.

PASSING THE GRAVY TRAIN

OUR LEADER DAVID CAMERON and his no doubt charming better half Samantha may not be everyone’s cup of Pimms’ for company over a meal, although I am sure that a repast with them at Downing Street would not be without a modicum of enjoyable badinage, wit, wisdom and repartee, depending on the other guests invited. I am, however, rather less convinced that the meal would be worth the price of £250,000.

NOT, OF COURSE, BECAUSE I QUESTION the quality of or value of the ingredients that would most probably be served at the table, as I have no doubt that the shops to which multimillionaires go to stock up on food for their posh friends charge rather more than one’s average local grocery store and this would be reflected in the treat served. I am sure that Cameron is not just a “meat and two veg” chap.

WHAT I FIND SOMEWHAT WORRYING in terms of value for money are the Camerons themselves. Not, I repeat, their ability to be entertaining, as I actually heard David Cameron tell a joke recently (stating that Alex Salmond’s policy on Scottish independence was supposed to be like the movie [sic] “Braveheart” but that it was more like “Chicken Run” – not a side-splitter, admittedly] and no doubt “SamCam” has some good stories about her time as a handbag designer, but about whether they are able to use their influence to help any budding investor or company director do well in their business careers.

IN MY EXPERIENCE, PEOPLE WHO INHERIT millions, such as Cameron and Osborne, have little idea of where the money came from, how much it is in ‘real’ terms and what one should do with it. One should not forget that Cameron was a chief adviser to Chancellor Norman Lamont on “Black Wednesday”, 1992, an event which almost saw the end of Sterling. So anyone with £250,000 to throw away would probably be better off going for dinner with Cameron’s financial advisor and respective spouse.

OF COURSE, I FORGOT, then one would not get one’s photo taken with David Cameron. And obviously Barack Hussein Obama, one foreign millionaire who is prepared to splash the cash in order to eat with “Dave”,thinks he got value for money.

GREEK BELT TIGHTENING

CURVY Evangelos Venizelos, Greek Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance and Professor of Law, former head of the Bank of Greece and the Greek National Radio Council, head of the Board of Greek National Public Administration and other highly-paid positions which even he lists on his personal curriculum as “sundry positions” of little importance, is at the moment happily celebrating the positive outcome of his country not having to pay 800 billion trillion zillion dollars of money that has been loaned to it over the last fifteen years.

SURELY THIS MUST BE A WAKE-UP CALL to many people who have invested or are thinking about investing in the Portuguese debt. If the Greek government can beg and be bailed and then use legerdemain to not owe now what it owed in the past, one must weigh up whether investing in the next lost cause, Portugal, is a healthy option.

BUT GREECE HAS ALWAYS BEEN AT THE FOREFRONT of invention and, I must admit as a Classics student, underhand ways of getting out of a mess. I wonder whether the Health Minister, Andreas Loverdos, seen alongside our belt-tightener, might be, in this picture, off to "get down to work" to improve the health of the finance minister in ways that can be done without wearing track suits and having to go huffing and puffing to Marathon.

PARISH NOTICES

GIVEN THE WAY THE NEWS is going at the moment, not to mention the world, which is only a sort of spin-off of the news for most people, it is hardly surprising that an implosion of values traditionally held as fast should lead to a simultaneous societal cling to the “old” (being the 1960s) or a flailing grasp at the “new” (being the “I’m-so-modern-I-don’t-mind-men-kissing-each-other-in-public-or-lesbians-doing-the-naughty-as-long-as-they-don’t-smoke-or-eat-meat) way of seeing the church and its role in our lives.

OF COURSE ANY DECENT MODERN chap who lives in a major city should think that the church is an outdated source of comfort and joy when seen in comparison with television advertisements or the increasingly mirrored-landscape of watching ourselves do what we do as “modern” people, dashing about the “modern” world.

ONE WOULD NOT HAVE EXPECTED David Cameron, who under no circumstances slips into these upper paragraphs, to be the killer of the Conservative Party and its conservative values; yet that is what is happening at the moment. By staunchly and stoutly defending “same-sex” marriage in church he is simply asking for trouble from the traditional Tories, who tend to bankroll the party.

NONE OF THESE GRANDEES would actually admit to being prejudiced against any of the “issues” involved in the “modern world” simply because they could not give a shit what the middle classes are up to as long as it does not affect them or cost them any money.

IN THE REAL WORLD, money is money, in the business world time is money and in the political world votes is money. The Tories who control what Cameron and Osborne are supposed to be doing will be on edge at the moment, fearful that one liberal step too far might be enough to let in a Labour government; and then bang goes the offshore, index-linked, capital-gains-protected, gilt-edged, blue-chip, trust-fund-protected, ring-fenced secure investment. And all because Cameron wants to feel hip by letting chaps kiss chaps in church.

MOST OF THEM ARE ALREADY annoyed enough after the wedding between Cameron and Clegg, and although Cameron seems to be wearing the trousers, Nick and his friend Vince appear to have the upper hand when it comes to the purse strings this month.

FLOGGING A DEAD HORSE

IT APPEARS THAT SOME explanatory notes are needed in relation to my last piece. Apparently not everyone is up to speed with this “breaking news” story, and there are those who are not quite clear on why the fact that a gentleman Prime Minister such as David Cameron admits to riding a horse and all of a sudden we are in a “horsegate” situation, as it were.

THE TRUTH IS THAT in the United Kingdom it is not considered correct to give money to the police in return for favours, although in most of Europe this is common practice. So the fact that the prime minister, or anyone in a position of authority for that matter, might be involved in benefitting of this kind more or less implies that said minister is corrupt, and thus should resign.

THE STATE OF PLAY after this first innings is that Cameron has admitted that he rode this horse; ceding aging police horses to privately owned stables is not an uncommon practice; and riding horses is still legal, despite the efforts of the previous Labour government and its countryside-hating agenda.

THUS, HARPING ON ABOUT this issue, which seems to be the desire of the red tops and the reds in general, will merely doing what my title states.

A HORSE IS A HORSE

It is a sign of the lack of decent news and of the desperate state of some of the newspapers and other organs of the established Conservative media that their will to hunt down and mutilate Rupert Murdoch and his cohorts holds sway over their desire to support their own party and its present leader, our good PM David Cameron. One can only imagine what evil acts these people believe that Murdoch has perpetrated as proprietor of the now defunct News of the World and The Sun, with its now phoenix-like sister paper The Sun on Sunday or The Sunday Sun or whatever it is that Murdoch has decided to call it.

It was a left-led challenge to Cameron that stimulated the media to discover the (as they see it) shady friendship between Mr Cameron and Charles “Charlie” Brooks, the racehorse trainer who is now the husband of harridan Rebekah Brooks, née Wade, former Sun and News of the World front person responsible for some of the more juicy activities carried out by these august organs over recent years.

Flame-haired Rebekah has never made any secret of the fact that it was common practice on her newspapers to give money to policemen in return for information, and sees no problem in admitting a retired police horse, Raisa, was lent to her for two years. Cameron equally has no problem about admitting that they are friends. And that should be, as they sometimes say, that.

However, the earnest and try-hard leader of the Labour Party, Ed “Mr Ed” Miliband, has spent a large amount of his limited intelligence and energy today finding ways to besmirch Cameron for riding the horse. What “Mr Ed” should understand is that ever since the first debate in parliament between these two party leaders David Cameron has been riding him hard into the ground every Wednesday. How long before someone realizes it is time to put him out to grass?