SWIVEL-EYED LOONS

I AM PLEASED TO SEE that I am not the only person to have a strong opinion about the unfortunate state of the British Conservative and Unionist Party. According to both today's Times and Daily Telegraph, a close ally of David Cameron has called party activists "mad, swivel-eyed loons" who are forcing Conservative MPs to take reactionary positions in Parliament. The unnamed "ally" suggests this is ridiculous, and that Conservative MPs should follow Cameron's lead.

 

THIS PRESUMABLY MEANS that Mr Cameron's friend is unaware of the British electoral system, under which elected MPs are supposed to do what their constituents and local party activists want them to do -- that is, an MP elected for a constituency in rural England, if he or she wishes to be returned to Parliament, would be best advised to vote for a return to fox hunting, vote against gay marriage and vote in favour of leaving Europe. As well as lower taxes for the upper-middle classes, etc..

 

EQUALLY SO, AN MP ELECTED in a run-down, working class urban area in the north of the country would be wise to support a robust social policy. What, I wonder, is wrong with that?

 

MANY CONSERVATIVES ARE UPSET with Mr Cameron's "modernising" (ie, leftish) policies, and would like a return to stronger, more traditional values, with over half of Conservative MPs voting against the government last week in Parliament. This obviously means that Cameron will have to get his act together and behave more like a Tory, or he will be facing unemployment at the next elections.

 

(My picture shows David Cameron and George "Boy George" Osborne showing contempt for the swivel-eyed loons who are members of their party)

FARAGE TAKES THE HIGH ROAD

IT IS BY NO MEANS A SECRET that I would vote for Britain to leave the European Union in any referendum even though I have never voted in any elections in my life and feel in no way political. The fact is, however, that I am attracted by Nigel Farage's UKIP party for two reasons.

 

THE FIRST IS THAT THEY PROMISE to leave Europe and put Britain back where it should be; ie splendid in isolation and with close ties to Switzerland and our former colonies, including the United States of America. How this could be worse than a financial and economic agreement with the likes of Slovenia, Bulgaria, Turkey and Romania I fail to understand.

 

THE SECOND REASON IS THAT THEY appear to be a group of well-minded buffoons. Indeed Mr Farage himself is the closest I have seen to a likeness of Hugh Laurie when he played the public school-educated upper class twit Bertie Wooster alongside Stephen Fry's Jeeves.

I AM SOMEWHAT DISTURBED, however, at the fact that some sections of society are happy to call him 'racist'. Proof of the fact that this is not true is his recent visit to Scotland, and his willingness to accept the Scots within a future 'independent' Britain. The very fact that his party is charitably called the United Kingdom Independence Party is testimony to this.

 

YET I AM NOT QUITE SURE he will be making an early return to Scotland. On his well-intentioned trip to talk to the angry hordes of spittle-mouthed Picts he was attacked to the point of having to be escorted by two anxious policemen and barricaded in the Canon's Gait pub 'for his own safety' as the anti-English racist natives were far more than restless.

 

I AM SURE THIS IS NOT THE FIRST TIME that Farage has enjoyed a stay-behind, but the serious point here is that the Scots have no idea what their future will be. It may well involve being independent from a Britain that is no longer in the European Union, which would leave them with a future sharing poverty with Iceland.

 

BUT MY OWN HOPE IS that Britain leaves the Europe and Scotland gains its independence but remains in the hated European Union, just like the idiots in the Irish government ended up doing. Scotland would go straight into bailout territory, particularly after the oil-rich Shetland Isles vote to reclaim their independence or join Norway under the buy-out clause established by Christian I of Norway in 1469. Then we will see hordes of Scots taking to the low roads again and looking for work.

THERE AIN'T NOTHING LIKE A DAME

IT WOULD BE SOMEWHAT AMISS of me to allow a state ceremonial occasion, such as the incinerating of the last remains of Britain's most important prime minister of the XX century, to go without a fitting word of recognition. And thus, as I feel it my duty to do so, I would like to add my words to those of so many who have committed key to screen over the last, upsetting days.

 

IN A GOOD WORLD, prime ministers would die in office, whether killed by lunatics who had ill-will toward them, or due to old age, having been good, decent, knowing and sensible folk for a long time. Dame Margaret Hilda Thatcher never had the chance to choose her end, having been beaten into submission by the very people she had promoted to power. This is a matter that those who have strong feelings on this issue should consider.

 

IN THE MEANTIME I THINK I SHOULD suggest, for those who have short memories, or who never go to the musical theatre, an excerpt from "South Atlantic", the famous Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II production, with its book by Joshua Logan:

We got sunlight on the sand,
We got moonlight on the sea,
We got bilberries and raspberries
You can eat them off your knee,
We got volleyball and ping-pong
And a lot of dandy games!
What ain't we got?
We ain't got dames!

GEORGIE PUDDIN 'N' PAYE

 

GORMLESS GEORGE 'GIDEON' OSBORNE, our dear and beloved Chancellor of the Exchequer, has admittedly been somewhat at a loss to endear himself to the great unwashed, an issue which is relatively unnecessary in his Cheshire constituency where the majority of voters favour footwear of the green-Wellington kind and appreciate his pig-snorting laughter version of 'haw-haw-now-lets-see-where-the-tottie-have-got-off-to-and-give-them-a-bit-of-a-feeling-up-the-bum-before-the-hunt' sort of "chappish" behaviour. There is indeed nothing to be scoffed at in this.

 

HOWEVER, IN THE BIG, BIG WORLD of today's politics, David Cameron, who used to be his friend at university and is now his boss at the new college they all frequent, occasionally wishes for George to 'show a bit of a leg', 'muck in', 'knuckle down' and 'get in there' with the working classes so that these unfortunates may like him, and -- although this is a long shot for Osborne -- want to re-elect the Conservative Party as the government.

 

OZZIE'S MAIN DIFFICULTY in touching base with the working class is his voice. His voice and his accent. His voice, his accent and his pronunciation. His voice, his accent, his pronunciation and his intonation. His voice, his accent, his pronunciation, his intonation and his delivery.

 

WHILST IN THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT the above attributes may fast-track him for a position of some note -- as it has obviously done in the academic world -- these attributes are a drawback when talking to 'real' people. Today Mr Osborne gave a speech to supermarket staff in Kent, and appeared to have undergone some sort of radical change in the language and style with which one associates him.

 

BEYOND THE DROPPING OF THE 'T's and the rather clumsy introduction of glottal stops (i', instead of 'it', "that's better inn'it"), there was no real incursion into Estuary English, and one does tend to imagine that if one ventures into these fields one should really go prepared. I suspect that even Georgie's political advisors, should such creatures exist, have no idea about the difference between the type of relaxed English spoken by supermarket workers in the south of England and the English spoken by gangsters of Italian descent in New York City in films from the 1970s. Thus we had to hear Osborne stating that things would be reduced by 'twennny percent'. And stating that the coming fiscal and tax policy may be "wannadebest" of recent years. Can no one help poor, misguided, inarticulate urchins like George? Surely education is the best policy?

FRANK IN SENSU STRICTU

THE NEW BISHOP OF ROME, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Archbishop of Buenos Aires and perhaps former chemical engineer before entering into the much-hated fraternity of the Jesuits, promises to be something of a revolution in the Roman Catholic Church. As indeed all popes tend to promise before they become bogged down under the weight of trying to supervise (when they try) the most labyrinthine, underhand, corrupt and incomprehensible organisation that exists on the face of the Earth. If it is in any manner a reflection of what life after death may be then Heaven help us.

 

HOWEVER, AS IS ALWAYS STATED each time a new pope is "elected", he may well bring something new to the Roman Catholic Church.

 

THE MOST OBVIOUS FACTOR which differentiates him from the last cluster of popes is that he is the first one for over fifty years who is not openly a war criminal, given the fact that he has not been a member of the Curia, which, when not helping the Nazis outright at the time of World War II, did their best to conceal the fact that the Vatican either concealed, contrived to conceal or in fact destroyed documentation detailing the papacy's involvement in the horrors of the Holocaust and other sundry mass executions in Italy.

 

ONE IMAGINES THAT A FURTHER feather in his mitre might be the fact that -- to date -- there are no widespread stories of priests buggering young boys in Argentina, unlike the churches in Europe.

 

YET AS I WRITE I AM WATCHING a news item suggesting that our good Francis I was not, as one might state, wholly forthcoming in his defence of the thousands of people who disappeared during the ruthless, bloody dictatorship in Argentina. Everything changes but everything stays the same.

HUGO'S THERE?

ONE SHOULD NEVER SPEAK ILL OF THE DEAD, I have always heard; and I am perfectly prepared to stick to this maxim, which means that I should, in theory, not have anything off-colour to state about the manic, histrionic, corrupt and shameless "politician" who was the leader of the sub-third world banana republic that was generously called Veneziola (in homage to its being similar to Venice) by over-optimistic Tuscan explorer Amerigo Vespucci in 1499.

 

HUGO RAFAEL CHÁVEZ FRÍAS is as I write being given a send-off that makes many people think of Lenin, although I personally tend to think of Stalin. I am currently being reminded that Chávez is "not dead", but that "all Venezuela is Chávez". (Which, of course, allows me to speak ill of him.)

 

I MUST CONFESS THAT I HAVE NOT spent a great deal of the last fourteen years trying to find out what President Hugo Chávez of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela has been up to; and I am prepared to listen to arguments on both sides of the divide. Occasionally I have seen bits of what he has been saying on TV, and my attention has been lost very quickly.

 

I HAVE READ ACCOUNTS of his raising the standard of living among the poor of the country, and ones which state that the homicide and robbery rates have never been so high in Venezuela, particularly in Caracas, as during his period of tenure. I have also read that he managed to build up a personal fortune of over 200 million dollars.

 

AND SO I SHOULD LEAVE IT AT THAT. Were it not for the fact that when a leader dies and has literally millions of toothless and apparently brainless supporters prepared to take a week off work in order to traipse past his rotting corpse I tend to imagine that something is rotten in the state in question.

 

(My picture shows Jack Parrot, from the film "Robbers of the Caribbean")

MEAT YOUR MAKER

THE METEOR WHICH CRASHED TO THE EARTH in an unpronounceable town somewhere in the shadows of the Urals is obviously yet another sign from above that Heaven is not very happy about the shenanigans going on down here at the moment involving the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church from the top to the bottom -- all equally at fault in their non-fulfillment of their Lent and Easter duties.

NO SENSIBLE PERSON will believe that this extremely unusual event is not a sign of displeasure from on high. According to NASA, the European Space Agency, CNN, SKY NEWS and all of the observatories spattered about the globe and manned by bearded loonies who see nothing in their lives other than "stars, man, it's just like flickering lights, man, but there's life there, man", no one saw this coming. How does a two-ton object hit the ground without anyone noticing beforehand?

SIMULTANEOUS TO THIS CURIOUS EVENT, we have the "meat scandal", as the BBC News team terms it. It has now been discovered that a considerable part of our diet over recent years -- not everyone, of course, only those who ate in pubs or hamburger restaurants, or bought hamburgers, meatballs, sausages, frozen foods, pies or pasties in supermarkets, football grounds or dodgy cafés -- may have been affected by eating Arkle, Red Rum, Black Beauty or Noddy the Blackpool Donkey and even may have otherwise been scoffing on the equine unbeknown.

TIME HAS A LOGIC OF ITS OWN. We are now in Lent, when we should not, in all conscience, eat meat except on Sundays until Holy Thursday after early evening mass. My good lady wife and I have decided to give processed meat a wide berth for the next 36 days, and I imagine that in terms of health it will do us no harm. Whether this brings us closer to our Creator or not remains to be seen. So we will see.

(My photo shows the famous portrait of Pope Benedict XVI by Francis Bacon)