So Mrs McBride works for Goeballs, does she?

Outed here.

He hardly 'knew' Damian but he knows the wife. All right, not quite wife, but same difference.

The 'lady' sounds almost as charming and disingenuous as her other half.

Another not-an-actual-lie to Goeballs's account.

Gone and good riddance

... but just in case...

Nelson's famous victory

Over at CoffeeHouse, we learn that Ed Balls is throwing his toys out of his pram. He has had a go at Fraser Nelson who is not, we now see, one to keep quiet about a major victory. Well, what else would you call it when the Cabinet Minister closest to the Prime Minister phones to object to your scoring a direct hit on him? Do read it all. It is beyond delicious. Fraser revealed all and asked for readers' comments. Here's mine. ______________________-- Friendly word to the wise, Ed, old boy. Don't be a bigger arse than you have to be. Try not to get caught in public with your shorts around your ankles which is what your little outburst today amounts to. It shatters one's dignity which, in your position, may be all you have left. Yelling at an industrious media-blogger makes you look like a thuggish twerp. It alienates other journalists just when you are running short of friends in that quarter. If you really can’t help yourself, try to remember that although the Speccie’s readership is dominated by Tory anoraks, your target may have other readers, such as the C2D types who lap up Fraser Nelson’s thoughts over at the News of the Screws on whose votes you may have to depend for a few votes. As to the substance of the thing, you might want to think about picking a fight with a bloke whose figures are all public domain and verifiable when the gist of his point is that your own figures are not quite… well, d’you see what you did there? Oh, and I lied about 'friendly'.

In case you're looking for it...

... that quote...

“We don’t care if the commentators or the economists turn against us,” said one minister. “This is all about shoring up the base in the northern heart-lands, which we lost in the European elections. We don’t want or need them to understand the nuance of the argument. We just want them to hate the Tories again.”

... is from here.

Words, words, words

And now, a dedication, in honour of my Irish grandfather, long dead, and may God rest his cantankerous old soul.

_____________________

A Limerick radio station is running a competition: words not in the dictionary but which would make sense in a sentence.

DJ to caller: Hullo, there. What’s your name?

Caller: Hi there, me name’s Sean.

DJ: Well now, Sean, what’s your word?

Caller: Me word’s G O A N, pronounced ‘go-an’.

DJ: Hey - Sean, a great start. Goan is not in the dictionary. Now let’s hear you put it in a sentence.

Caller: ‘Goan fuck yerself.’

The DJ hung up on Sean and took some other calls. Later…

DJ: Hullo there. Tell us your name, caller.

Caller: Hullo. Me name’s Mick.

DJ: Tell us your word, Mick.

Caller: S M E E, pronounced ‘smee’.

DJ: Nope, cannot find that one, Mick. For the big prize, then, put it in a sentence for us, will you?

Caller: ‘Smee again and yers can goan fuck yerself.'

The Gord dog's new D word

Balls has a new one, to add to debt, deficit, deceit and... oh, come on. You can think of a few more, I'm sure.

'Deft.'

He slips it into every presentation, every interview. It's how he describes Labour's management of the economy since 1997 and into the future that they haven't got. He means his management of the economy, of course, since he has been the economically literate eminence grise to the economically illiterate Brown, and he intends to be around after the last echo of Brown's obsequies have died away.

'Deft.'

It's his own personal little dividing line, distinguishing himself ('deft') from the Camerosborne, his two-headed Nemesis. He sneers at the Camerosborne as a clumsy, ignorant, pseudo-educated, soft, two-headed, ToryBullyBoy who could not possibly comprehend macroeconomics as well as he does (stop laughing) and who anyway must be permanently barred even from candidacy for high office (the cheek of those Etonian bastards!) on the grounds that it is a Toff.

In a sense, of course, Balls is right. There is no-one to rival him, save his Gordonian keeper, in the class-war-driven ruination of a thriving Western national economy. To find anything remotely similar one has to dig up the corpses of the old monoblocs of the Soviet union and its analogues.

I cannot offhand recall any politician in British history, save his Gordonian guardian, to rival our never-gonna-be-Chancellor in the infliction of pain on the many, not the few.

At 07:50 this morning, the lying hound was lying about growth in the British economy, having mentioned, kinda sotto voce, that his promise of continued growth in spending under Labour after the election (will you please stop laughing?) will be made possible by growth. And then - whoops! At 10:00 the ONS announced that growth had fallen yet again, way past Gordon's Ball's Darling's Labour's most pessimistic Budget estimates, and is accelerating downwards.

Deceitful? Yes. Determined? Yes. Dogged? Yes. Dangerous? Yes.

But deft? Er, no.

Your economy in their hands

Building Britain's Future

Wind of change? Nope. Just wind.

Even Naughtie gets it. This morning on the Today programme, he gave Osborne a fair hearing on banking regulation and ridiculed Liam Byrne, Secretary of State for Wind, on Labour's new election strategy: Talk like the Tories.

The Secretary of State for Bowlocks and Contortionism wanted to lay out Labour's latest project which is to differentiate Labour policies from Tory policies by making them sound exactly like Tory policies.

It's not a matter of U-turns and abandoning everything the Great Incompetent has forced upon the Labour party and the poor bloody country - at the cost of almost incalculable damage to our society, our economy and the cohesion of our nation - for twelve long and terrible years. It's not that the country has noticed that constantly devising cunning new ways of weighing the pig has signally failed to fatten the animal. Of course not. It's just that Gordon's strategies have all worked so brilliantly that they can now be retired with dignity. We are going to hear a lot more of that phrase.

The idea is to fool us stupid voters into giving Labour another chance because they are uncannily like the increasingly credible Tories without actually being horrible Tories.

Labour's last desperate hope, on the time-honoured basis of if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, is that we will decide not to chuck out this bunch of lying, snooping, arrogant, half-educated, patronising, ignorant, inexperienced, incompetent, ruinous Labour socialist-theorist tossers because they are very like the Conservatives but just not as ghastly. Labour does 'hard choices' but the wicked Tories do 'cuts in essential services'. They desperately hope that we will not decide in favour of government by pragmatic, un-doctrinaire people with knowledge and experience of industrial and commercial management and of real-world responsibility who plan to reduce the powers of the state to interfere with our rights and privacy and who do not view us as pig-shit ignorant ants to be manipulated in the name of discredited sub-Marxist central planning crap which the more successful nations of the world long ago abandoned with relief. Labour tell themselves that we can be re-educated to believe that Brown is really as likeable as the polls suggest people find Cameron. And given his visceral hatred of Cameron, how that must stick in Brown's craw. Well, good. I hope Brown chokes on the knowledge that the British people reject him and his Neanderthal, Scottish-Socialist tribal hatred and the proposition that only Labour is entitled to, or fit for, office. Your lies are laughable, Byrne, and are even demolished daily by your own colleagues. You hadn't noticed? You have lost the plot and lost control - of all of it. Your ship is holed below the waterline and sinking even as your lunatic captain steers it on to the rocks. Fuck off and take Gordon with you.

Speaker Berk in bid for Naffest Comment of 2009

Hat tip to ConHome for pointing the world to Bloomberg where this gem from Mr Speaker Berk turns up:

I confess for somebody who’s historically and perhaps even legendarily independent-minded that [leaving the Conservative Party] is frankly something of a relief.

The horrible little clamberer-upper (on to a Chair far too big for him which he'll doubtless have cut down to his size - because he can, you know. He has The Power!) actually speaks of himself as a legend.

Unbelievable.

And he expects his overwhelmingly Conservative-leaning constituents to vote him in unopposed after telling them that he is relieved to quit the party under whose colours he accepted their votes for several years? That he was a fake all along? That he was just using them?

Has success completely addled what passes for Mr Speaker Berk's brain? Does the House really want a prat who blithely and unthinkingly (one assumes) insults his own constituents telling government ministers and their shadows in HM Opposition what they can and can't do?

What a very stupid little bastard this Berk is.

Kindly FOAD before I throw up again

Is there no respite from the global outbreak of server-breaking crapology about some saddo weirdo pop bloke who's died of a heart attack? I expect it's all very sad for his folks and all that, but no, this is not my 'Diana moment' (WTF?) and I will not remember where I was today. Matter of fact, I can't remember where I was yesterday.

Guido wins my headline of the day award for Wacko Jacko Heart Attacko.

Apart from that, only the great Mr E's post on the subject has caught my imagination.

Brace yourself for the obits and, oh God, the funeral. There's going to be a run on sick bags. Picture the processions: Jesse Jackson, Liz Taylor... they'll need a mega venue if they're going to fit all the weeping luvvies in. The mayors and half the population of Detroit, Philadelphia, Nashville and Los Angeles. For starters. The Hollywood Bowl, maybe? Or Texas?

Maybe they'll let Phil Spector out of chokey for the day. Maybe Obama will inaugurate a new Wacko Memorial Day Holiday. (He'd better be quick or Gordon will beat him to it.)

The worldwide viewing figures: 'All records broken...' '90 per cent of the people on the planet...'

Then there's the tribute Specials.

• Jonathon Ross wearing his Solemn and Respectful face.
• Phill Jupitus and Paul Gambaccini 24/7 on Radio 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7.
• Jim Naughtie on 'if only he'd had a classical music education, one can imagine the operatic triumph...'
• Iain Dale Remembers Jacko on Sky News.
• Jenni Murray's Woman's Hour Special on pushy showbiz parents.
• You and Yours on getting your ticket money back (whoops - already been done)
• Kirsty Wark on the philosophical dimension.
• Yasmin on the black-boy-wannabe-honky-boy story and how it's all whitey's fault (mine, probably) that the mad bastard messed up his face and how he was the Peter Pan of Hollywood only not really at all weird unlike the J M Barrie character... imperialism... slavery... yadda yadda... oh, God.

Still, the funeral alone will bring the advertising industry out of recession sharpish. Not to mention the memorabilia. Every cloud, et cetera.

Comic cuts

Slow news day. Some freaky pop bloke has kicked the bucket. Details on all media channels whether you care or not.

Iran revolution? No idea. I'm listening to WATO whose editors think Wacko is much more important than Balls abolishing a flagship Labour policy** and making Crapita's eyes water as he hacks off one of their limbs, allegedly worth £100 million. Not that Crapita will feel much pain given that the taxpayer Gord puts £2 BILLION p.a. their way.

**Abolishing the literacy and numeracy teaching programmes 'delivered' by Crapita. Ah, me. I remember when teachers 'delivered' education and with better results than we have now. I speak as one who has, despairingly, interviewed countless school leavers seeking the jobs for which their 'teachers' had assured them they were 'qualified'.

Funny, that, though. Nothing to do with the fact that many teachers are warming to the Gover. No pressure, Balls.

I predict that this is the first of many Labour cuts we'll see before the election. But what shall we call it? 'A reallocation of essential investment'? Yeah, that'll do. I can hear it now. 'This is not a cut! FFS - what do you think we are? Tories? Under Labour, expenditure will rise and rise and rise...' Yep, whatever. You're finished anyway, Ed. Get used to it.

What's that noise? Ah yes. The teaching unions cheering as they finally get their way in something.

Tsk. Now, what's THAT noise? Ah, yes, the election clock ticking...

Teachers’ tendency to vote Labour is of recent origin, and may not last.

In the run-up to the 1979 election that brought Margaret Thatcher to victory, most teachers told pollsters they intended to vote Conservative. When in 1987 they defected, disillusioned by low spending on schools, they turned first to the Liberal-SDP Alliance, the third party, before coming round to the charms of Tony Blair. In 1997 59% intended to vote Labour, nearly four times more than fancied the Tories. But fewer have voted Labour in each subsequent election. In 2008 the Times Education Supplement, a trade newspaper, found overwhelming disapproval among teachers of Labour’s school policies and a shift in voting intentions (albeit towards the Liberal Democrats rather than the Tories). The Economist

The TES’s survey of 5,832 teachers - carried out to coincide with this year’s conference season - involved a “blind taste” test of the three main parties’ education policies which indicates that the Liberal Democrats are most in tune with the profession’s thinking. The Conservatives came next, with the Government trailing a long way behind. - TES

More fun to come, then.

Speaking for myself

Some entertaining remarks on Speaker Bercow from the saner commenters at Harry's Place.

We might forgive him if he was truly witty, charming and impartial. But he is none of those things. He just thinks he is.

... and

1. He had his hand in the expenses till. Apparently he couldn’t quite recall whether he had paid capital gains tax on the sale of one of his houses.

2. He is not a figure to bridge the party divide. Labour know his election is a smack in the face to the Tories, just as - say - Frank Field’s election (were he standing) would have been a smack in the face to the Labour benches.

3. He is a jokey figure lacking in gravitas, a grinning clown who will no doubt be at ease on the daytime TV sofas but will add nothing to the institution of Parliament.

At the very moment when our democratic assembly needs an injection of integrity, impartiality and gravitas we get someone who represents personal enrichment, party division and a fatal lack of seriousness.

The best in the Commons was this, from Cameron:

I also noted, as all colleagues did, what you said about casting away your past political views, and I think that on the Conservative Benches we would say, “Let’s hope that includes all of them.”

Heh.

Bumptious teacher's pet made Head Boy

So it's a victory for Gordon Brown, then. He has inflicted the most annoying possible candidate on the House of Commons as his parting gift so up yours, Cameron, you Tory toff bastard. Brown had visible difficulty keeping a straight face during the Approbation proceedings in the House of Lords. Git.

Could have been worse. It might have been 'Hanging Basket' Beckett.

John Bercow is a pompous, attention-seeking shortarse with delusions of adequacy and an exemplary record of flipping and CGT-avoidance. He has won the Labour Government's absolution of all his sins (spookily similar to their own) and successfully promoted the cause of his own Beatification by an assiduous campaign of unashamed Brown-nosing. In so doing, he alienated something close to half the House of Commons for whom he is very much on probation. To be continued...

Full Canonisation as attained by St Betty of Boothroyd is not a foregone conclusion, however, since yer actual Sainthood requires two miracles which we have yet to see. What might they be, I wonder? Learning to speak like a human being? Stopping Tories wanting to slap him on sight? Getting Nadine Dorries to chair his fan club?

Mr Bercow has long had his eye on the Speaker's Chair and why wouldn't he? If annoying everyone without fear or favour is a qualification for the Office of Speaker, his ghastly, orotund speechifying and giggle-making pomposity certainly fit him for the job. Oh - and the troughing opportunities are mouthwatering. Before collecting the £40k p.a. index-linked pension for life, the Speaker takes home a ministerial salary, lives free of charge in the best apartments in London, takes first place in the queue for almost everything and ends up with a peerage with benefit of troughing and droning opportunities for life. Yes, one way or another, we are now saddled with Bercow until he drops off his little perch.

Don't get me wrong. I am all in favour of our most important public offices being furnished with appropriate honours. Appropriate to the office, that is, not to the office-holder. And it's with the office-holders that the problem so often, as in this case, lies. Some people are just too small for their ceremonial boots - or silver-buckled court shoes.

But let's be fair. Our new Speaker has made an excellent start with this ringing declaration:

As a matter of principle, I believe strongly that the post of Speaker should not be a job for life. John Bercow's campaign letter to Conservative MPs.

Indeed. Remember that, Mr Speaker.

Blood pressure up again

Real life is interfering with blogging at present but while I'm away from the keyboard I'm reading Bower's biography of Brown.

It's a real page-turner for a political addict like your humble servant. It's a horror story about a pathological megalomaniac who is also a compulsive liar. The old one about hiding behind a spiral staircase springs to mind.

The coldly calculated lies. The extempore, panicky lies. The petty lies. The gigantic lies. The lies which he instructed his gofers (especially the cockroach Whelan, now Brown's man controlling Unite, Labour's proprietors) to tell, to enhance his reputation, cover his arse, or to damage or destroy those he wished to be rid of or destroy, from honourable civil servants to Cabinet Ministers.

It is positively mediaeval, reminiscent of the Medicis and the Borgias, and at the same time, Baroque, in the literal sense of 'over the top', excessive in its mendacious viciousness.

Fucking moral compass? All I can say is, I hope the bastard reaps some of what he has sown.

Gordon Brown has told every kind of lie before and since coming to office, all of them arising from his unadulterated hatred of, oh, pretty much everyone. His lies are both eye-watering and sick-making.

And there's almost one per page! At every turn, his recourse is a lie or a moral stabbing of some hapless victim. Unbefuckinglievable.

If ever a man was unfit for public office, it is Gordon Brown. And his treatment of women, including the woman who has become his wife, is beyond description. The man is no gentleman. He is an out and out cad, a boor and a complete bastard.

He is a narrow-minded, parsimonious, class-obsessed, vicious political monomaniac with no life beyond his obsession. If he is ejected from office, and I say 'if' because it is clear there is almost nothing he will not do to retain the power for which his whole life has been one long anger-fuelled manoeuvre, God alone knows what he will do to occupy himself.

If he goes to the IMF, he cannot pursue class war in the fashion to which he has been accustomed all his life. He cannot gloss over his ignorance of economics and blame his minions for his gross misjudgements. He will not be able to consort with thugs and immerse himself in beery football jocularity with hand-picked blokes, as his sole recreation.

The man is barely house-trained, as his eccentric, eyebrow-raising behaviour at numerous EU summits records. Heaven help the diplomats of the world of international economic politics, for whom class war is not the issue, if they find Gordon Brown in their midst. It will be like working with Shrek.

He will not listen to anyone whose personal loyalty to him he doubts or suspects. He gets rid of them. That may work in Downing Street. I doubt it would work in Geneva or Washington.

'Flawed' is a familiar description of Gordon Brown but, reading Bower, I wonder about his sanity. I really do. Besides which, seeing the Etonian Cameron voted into in Number Ten may actually cause him a fatal seizure.

And I am really, really angry that this maniacal liar was permitted to take control of the government of my country. There is one consolation. He has made many deadly enemies and has destroyed many people. His path in government has littered the place with bodies. Many are senior civil servants but most of them are Labour Party 'colleagues' who are keeping schtum so as not to damage the party in government. Once Labour is out of office, though, they will be free to write their memoirs. And there is fuck all that Gordon 'Bastard and Ruiner' Brown can do about it.

To Editor, the Daily Mash.

Sir,

Having a delicate stomach, I regret that I shall have to forego the pleasure of your organ as long as this remains on your front page:

Clarification: The image on the video-still at the Mash is far, FAR worse than the one on this post.

Iran cyberwar - DOs and DON'T

Here.

Lest those who govern should forget

Today, 15th June, is the anniversary of the death of the leader of the 14th Century English Peasant's Revolt, Walter Tyler.

Six centuries later, who can remember the name of the ruling despots who felled him?

Lunch. Yum!

Minced Balls resting on a Brown coulis of Byrned confusion, lovingly served by the Gover.

Delicious. I can heartily recommend it.

So can Waugh.

Second helpings available at WATO.

Tony Benn: still wrong after all these years

The old cynic lies when he says ‘Politics is about ishoos, not personalities.’ Political theory and political philosophy are about ‘issues’. The business of politics in the real world is about people and very little else, as the current columns of the heavies demonstrate. Politicians, no matter how lofty, want to act but they cannot do it alone. All political action results from agreement and disagreement between politicians. People. That is why politics is as fascinating as a novel to those of us who watch closely the doings of those in or aspiring to be in -- or to control -- government. The sole purpose of Benn’s nonsense is to raise himself above the fray in which he played an enthusiastic and malign part when this Man of the People was active on the hard left of politics rather than, as now, sneering down at those who still are from his luxurious patrician’s mansion in Holland Park. He shores up his image as the Great Sage on the one-man-show circuit, at the same time promoting his own Cause for Sainthood, with endless repetition of ‘Of course, I entered the House in 1950, so… ’ and tales of how he was dandled on the knee of Robert Tressell, William Lovett and John Ball. I think I've got that right; Benn tells anyone whose lapels he can grab, 'I'm terribly old, you know.' Politics can be all about now or about then. With some understanding of then, now becomes even more exciting. The connoisseur reflects with a grin on similarities between today's Number Ten Bunker and the courts of Julius Caesar and Simon de Montfort, Lord Stanley and Cardinal Wolsey, Lord Burghley, Lord Salisbury and Lord Beaverbrook. The characters may even be fictional like the denizens of the West Wing or the House of Cards. The denouement may take place in Dunsinane, Chinon, Number One London, the cabinet room of Margaret Thatcher or the elegant salon of Lord Mandelson of Everything. The threads and patterns remain unchanged as they recur in every generation. Contra the father of the future Lord Stansgate, of course politics is about people. It’s about the making and breaking of alliances, plot and counter-plot. It’s about who will silently and secretly support whom against which enemy, who will succeed in placing their man (or woman) in the key position as informant. It’s about loyalty and treachery; who will have the courage to slit the throat of whom. Cromwell’s denunciations of his enemies are retold more often than the details of his actions in government; likewise the downfall of Neville Chamberlain about whose honourable political career one hears almost nothing. We speak of the assassination of Margaret Thatcher even though the Lady is, mercifully, still with us, and more often than her radical, transforming modernisation of Britain. And now we are gathered like grinning ghouls around the stricken Gordon Brown, rubbing our hands as we watch power haemorrhaging from a latter-day petty tyrant. Vulture-spotting is become the new national hobby as scavengers wheel in from Left and Right to circle above the twitching remains of a man once feared, readying themselves for the dismemberment of the once-revered party which Brown and his horrible henchmen continue to destroy even as political death steals o’er them. If politics were about issues and not people, Macbeth would be forgotten and Shakespeare would have been short of one of his best plots. If politics were about issues, Tony Benn would be forgotten, too. But it isn’t and he knows it. He adverts briefly to the issues of his days in government in the mendacious rhetorical terms which he calculates will spice things up nicely and enhance his reputation as a controversialist. Knowing better than to bore the punters, he then sets about chanting the names of the people he has known, right back to when he was five years old. He gives the punters what they want. Benn is a small figure who once held some sort of office in a disreputable, failed Labour government which left the country in ruins. He cannot forget that he never had the sort of power which he craved and thought he deserved nor that most of the electorate hated and despised him back in the days when he was a politician. Now, blessed with longevity – a matter of luck and not of any virtue of his own – Benn will settle for your admiration of him as Parliamentarian and (God help us) soothsayer. That is, as a person. If you’re foolish enough to fall for the dishonest old ham’s nonsense, that is.

All over by Christmas?

Mike Smithson is surmising that Brown is to be eased out with some sort of dignity by Christmas.

Eased out is good. With dignity is not. Still, half a loaf...

Suppose he does go. What will he do then? What could he possibly do? (Not that I care.) Sit in the Lords, glowering? Or bugger off to a sinecure where he can show all the other boys his Moral Compass behind the bike sheds and bore them all to death with tales of his great achievements and his sainted father? God help us all if the IMF should give him a job from which he could pull Britain's economic strings, in the operiod of maelstrom he is about to bequeath to the next government. But he'd think himself in Heaven to have a job from which he could lecture and persecute and (he would hope) humiliate Cameron, ordering him about on economic policy while he's up to his arse in the crocodiles which Brown has bred and installed in the swamp especially for the purpose of making Dave's life a misery. I wouldn't put it past Brown to be negotiating just such a job for himself right now. The IMF could send him to Africa, of course. Plenty to occupy his moral compass there, sorting out political corruption just like he did back... oh, wait. No, he didn't. Seriously, though, they wouldn't hire the idiot, would they? Are they *that* economically la-la in DC? Oh.

Catching up

Time flies, doesn't it? Suddenly you realise it's been a while since you heard from them. Or indeed about them. And that your life went on perfectly fine without them. Improves, even.

You have finally got the beer, wine, tea and coffee stains off the soft furnishings, replaced all the small china and glass thingies with which you destroyed a few TV sets which you have also replaced.

Then...

Oh, shit. No. Please...

One of them hoves into view, eyes glinting, her hand reaching out towards your wallet and your credit card, salivating as she surveys the possibilities. This is 'our most eminent European' (copyright 'Shorn of all Integrity' Woodward). Her new brief, now that she is a Lady occupying an office to which you did not elect her courtesy of the most unpopular, anti-democratic and anti-English Scotch Ruiner in modern British history, is to destroy British (and especially English) identity with all convenient speed and make the fuckers, i.e., you, pay for it. And for her.

And horror of horrors, she flourishes photos of her ghastly offspring under your nose.

One of them is embedded in the Dear Leader's Bunker, closer to actual power than either her sire or dam. There is a small grain of comfort there for you, in knowing how it will gall the Ginger Git to know that she has access to all the areas robustly denied to him, at the height of his hubristic ambition, by intelligent electors. So, just like Ma and Pa, she has managed to eschew 'work' and attach herself to the public teat from the beginning.

Her sibling is a quasi-diplomat, a wannabe-aristo with the British Council (well, of course, darling) whose contortionist mission is to patronise, brown-nose and further corrupt the world-champion corrupt dictators of the benighted continent. This is another work-free job carrying immense troughing privileges and offering excellent opportunities for making close personal connections with a view to obtaining future sinecures. It is the perfect career for an ambitious International Socialist, paid for by you of course, for which his musical Welsh Windbag parents began tutoring him from the beginning, teaching him N'kosi Sikelele Afrika when he was still in the cradle. He is married to a European Socialist, as instructed by his tribe, to carry on the traitorous International Socialist work of the Kinnocks unto the last generation. Which we can only hope is this one.

Taxsucking Socialist bastards, the lot of them.

Isn't it funny how they proudly wear the label 'Labour' when they have never soiled their delicate hands with anything like, er, labour?

Who's this?

And a pair of what is hidden behind the white cotton?

Clue.

Another clue.

True, Denis, true

'Anyone with no life outside politics makes a very bad politician.' 'Better that people wonder why I was never Prime Minister than wonder why I was.'

- Denis Healey

Far too long

The Right Honourable the Baron Mandelson of Foy in the County of Herefordshire and Hartlepool in the County of Durham, First Secretary of State and Lord President of the Privy Council and Secretary of State for Business and Secretary of State for Innovation and Skills... Too long. This covers it: The LORD PROTECTOR of Gordon.

Credit facility withdrawn

This is what the Commons is for.

Warning

The Flint Mysteries

BOOK ONE

How did a semi-coherent, whining, whingeing offence to my intelligence become an MP? Wait - I think I may know the answer to that one... she's Labour, right?

Wiki: She began her career with the Inner London Education Authority, as a management trainee from 1984-85 and a Policy Officer from 1985-87. She was head of the Women's Unit at the NUS from 1988-89, before joining Lambeth Council as an Equal Opportunities Officer from 1989-91, and then Welfare and Staff Development Officer from 1991-93. From 1994-97 she was the Senior Researcher and Political Officer for the GMB Union.

How did she become a government minister?

(As Planning Minister, she made a visitation to the area affected by the proposed 'Double Heathrow in Rural Essex and sod your mediaeval villages you Tory-voting fuckers' that is Prescott's proposed Stansted Airport Mark II (which ain't gonna happen). She gained the undying hatred of just about everyone hereabouts by her contemptuous dismissal of our arguments and the democratically-made unanimous decisions of all our local authorities to oppose the airport expansion. If it hadn't been lashing with rain there would have been street parties in every Essex village at the bitch's downfall. I had an extra couple, meself.)

Why did Brown give the job of 'Europe Minister' to a negligent cow who openly admits that she has neither read nor understood the Lisbon Treaty? Why did he allow her to keep the job? Was it because she had powerful girlfriends in the Cabinet?

Why did he sack her? Was it because her powerful girlfriends in the Cabinet weren't around to protect the contemptible over-promoted motor-mouth from the cold wind of reality any more?

When will it be safe to turn on the radio without hearing the Flinty whine?

If I tell her to find a job suitable to her lack of talent, or failing that to fuck off and die, will I be called a sexist Tory bastard? Yes? Really? Look at me. See how worried I am.

BOOK TWO

How many more derelicts like this woman have power over us?

How much does piano wire cost these days?

To be continued...

Labour Lexicon

EFFICIENCY SAVER Completely safe. Suitable for all ages from 0-95. Manufactured in Fairyland especially for you by lovely little Labour elves. Buy your toddler one for Christmas! INVESTMENTS Not sharp or horrible in any way. At all. Build shiny new schools and hospitals on sunlit uplands. Magically conjure up Hospital Angels and Laughing Policemen. CUTTER EXTREMELY DANGEROUS! MURDERS NURSES! SLAUGHTERS TEACHERS! SLITS THE THROATS OF DEAR LITTLE KITTENS!

The sketchwriter's lot is not a happy one

Brown can hype faster than I can type.

Lloyd Evans

Parliamentary language

OK, so Dave can't call Brown a liar to his face. Not even when he lies to the House as he did today, not for the first time.

But how about...

'Bearing in mind the analysis of the Institute for Fiscal Studies which I daresay he knows by heart since he respects the experts of that august body and indeed quotes them regularly in support of his arguments, would the Prime Minister care to reconsider what he has just said and perhaps correct his egregious error of fact, an error which must surely have been inadvertent?'

Words, words, words

For millennia, Prodicus has urged the careful use of language in the struggle to maintain the integrity of public discourse and honest politics. I am not one of those who complain about the development of language. Indeed, I take great joy in the poetry of neologisms. Well, some of them.

destabilist emailism

shameless flippism

These nuggets appear in Prime Ministerial Decree (No 46) from the Desk of the Supreme First Secretary of the (sic) State, Lord President of the Supreme Soviet Council and Supreme Spokesman for the Supreme Leader (currently G.Brown). Private Eye.

Reading it, I realised how privileged we are to be allowed to read such a lucid condemnation of the ludicrous concept called 'democracy'.

We are indeed fortunate in having such and enlightened government, are we not? G Brown and the First Lord are colossi who would stand head and shoulders above the greatest minds of ancient Athens and Rome. In centuries to come, people will wonder who the fuck were these bastards? laugh until they cry read of their mighty works with awe.

I think I shall retire now, to offer a quiet prayer of thanks to the Time Lords for sending us the Saviour of the World. And his First Lord, of course. Mustn't forget him. He knows where I live, apparently.

Gordon's cheerleaders for electoral reform

I think we should be told

This Mister Brown who has announced his proposals on electoral reform by press release this evening - would he by any chance be related to the Mister Brown who, upon taking office as Prime Minister, promised to make important announcements in the House of Commons instead of by press release, in order to distinguish himself from his predecessor?

Don't panic!

Gord has promised us a referendum on electoral reform.

That makes you feel a LOT safer, doesn't it?

Hang on a minute lads, I've got a great idea...

Gordon Brown is in as perilous a position as this, only more so:

Sadly, Gordon Brown does not make me laugh like Charlie Croker. I am reliably informed by the lady of the house that he's not as good looking, either. In fact, we agree that he is singularly unappetising.

He has obviously decided to keep me on the edge of my seat, though. In fact, he had me leaping out of it earlier this evening which was not a good thing as I was driving at the time.

I made the mistake of turning on the news to hear Brown's first announcement after being put on probation.

He intends to change the voting system. Change. The. Fucking. Voting. System.

See why I nearly crashed the car?

The effrontery, the vanity of the man is cosmic. Breathtaking.

So, let's get this straight. At the fag end of the most unpopular government for a century which he led (with his ex-mate Blair restricting himself, as agreed between them, to the international stuff and the showbiz stuff), after twelve years of ignorantly, petulantly and destructively arsing about uninterrupted and unchallenged with

• the constitution (half-fucked)

• the economy (utterly fucked)

• the health service (chronically fucked)

• the education system (ufdeck...er...)

• the central bank (castrated)

• the banking system (fucked and nationalised, for fuck's sake... is he in a time machine?)

• the justice system (fucked in the ear)

• the armed services (told to go fuck themselves)

• the liberty of the citizenry (fucked to death and then fucked again because he enjoyed it)

- after turning everything in our country which he has touched to dross and ash, from the position of the Head of State to the national football team's chances; above all, after a colossal, record-breaking thrashing by the electorate indicating beyond any doubt that he and his party are about to undergo electoral destruction, what does the cosmically unaware, deaf, dumb and blind, politically autistic, megalomaniac wannabe fucking dictator do?

He tries to alter the voting system.

Because it is the means by which the people will otherwise liberate themselves from his tyranny and that of his godawful sub-marxoid party of inadequates, sycophants, time-servers and unemployable troughers.

What can one say? What the fuckety fuck does one say to a recidivist arsehole of a politician like Gordon Brown, who has been lashed to the naughty step and told to behave nicely because he has no more chances left? Advised that he has used up 8.999 of his nine lives? Informed that the big shiny metal thing suspended above his head by a single hair and pointing directly at his cranium is a gigantic, lethally sharp sword?

Well, that's easy. Here's what you say: Come on, Brown, if you think you're hard enough. Step this way, my son. It'll be a pleasure. No, seriously. It really will.

'Throw the cat another canary, Gordon. Now.'

What did I tell you? Here's the new vision we are all supposed to be getting excited about.

The new schools minister [totalitarian oik] Vernon Coaker is a member of the Socialist Educational Association. The SEA campaigns, among other things, for 'the Government to end the setting up of academies'. - CoffeeHouse.

Much more of this and Polly will change what passes for her mind back again and ask her Big Viking for a reconciliation.

Plan B

Brown Cabinet

An ancient tradition

Houdini. Not.

h/t TractorStats

El Cid and the government of the Unsackables

The politically dead Labour Leader, masked and gauntleted, propped upright in a shiny new suit of armour and strapped to his horse, is being sent into the final battle against the hated Tories.

To his left, Brown has the powerful-because-unsackable Balls. To his right, the powerful-because-unsackable Darling. In any dispute between the two, and oh, there will be disputes, Mandelson will back whichever of them is indicated by his silky pragmatism in the context of his own power game.

These three will spend their days fighting for position and for the implementation of something like their personal brand of socialism in the months left before the electors take them down for the last time.

More than ever before, the Cabinet agenda will have no connection to the good of the country. All resources are to be harnessed to the election engine, now operating at run-up revs. The prime aim is to damage the Tories. Much work is needed from these doomed but clever men, if only because there is no money.

If El Cid should by some miracle revive, he will not have time to govern at all, let alone in the new way he 'promised' the farcical PLP meeting which his henchmen packed with so-called Brownites. There is no such creature. The species is now extinct.

All his dwindling energy will be needed to keep those excluded from the PLP meeting who will now find themselves outside the Cabal battle-tent from hearing the sound of the inevitable fighting inside it. They must believe that El Cid is still alive and in command. They must believe in something.

If the Brown corpse should slip in the saddle, the rebels currently stockpiling their arms and sharpening their blades will pounce.

This is by no means over.

Poor, pathetic old Polly

"Most people want Labour to win..."

Most people.

Where does she get them? She really is priceless.

Wait a sec. Who bullied whom into submission?

For all the naive talk of Brown's boys and their bullying and arm twisting, Gordon Brown is now his Party's hostage. And whichever way you cut it, now it's shit or bust till election day.

It's not Gordon. It's the policies, d'you see? So let's draw a line, unite behind the leader (wake up at the back) and have some nice new policies. No distractions like leadership contests or general elections, for God's sake.

"Certainly," says Gordon with suspicious alacrity, in his soft but firm new voice. Smiling. "Absolutely. New policies all round. Exactly what I was about to propose. Anything you like. As long as I can stay Prime Minister with the big car, country house, flunkeys, lots of big policemen and red carpets wherever I go, etc. And the power, of course. Well, some power. Just a little... Well, the title. Deal? OK. Deal."

The Labour Left sees this crisis of Prime Ministerial ineptitude and failed leadership as their last and best opportunity since 1994. They have their party leader captive. In the last months of their time in office he must do their bidding or depart in ignominy.

They want Post Office privatisation scrapped - and sod the viability of the business. And sod the EU. "Certainly. There will be some tricky negotiations but I'll get right on to it."

The back room rows will require huge shipments from Nokia. The rows with Brussels will run up to and beyond the date of the next election, the only event on the Labour PLP's calendar - and it's not for a good while yet. And let the Prince of Fucking Darkness earn his sodding corn and take on les Commissars. He spent long enough drinking champagne with them. He wants a big job? Well, there's one.

They want scorched earth, left-wing spending from Chancellor Darling and sod the cost. That will fuck the Bullingdon bastards who will have to spend their term of office wading through a swampfull of shit and end up being hated more than Thatcher. The electorate are such stupid fuckers. They won't remember whose fault it was...

They want an Old Labour Queen's Speech. Or else. The delusional bastards honestly believe that it would make them more electable come May 2010.

(No, don't. Really, don't.)

So tonight they demanded changes of policy as their price for not changing the man. In addition, they insist that a middle-aged, life-long misogynist start being a ladies' man. They want a lifelong cabalist to become a consensus man overnight. That he stop plotting and smearing after a lifetime of using no other language, no other methods, knowing nothing else.

Brown said yes.

Did he even understand the concepts? Was he in genuine dialogue with them, or merely calculating what he needed to do and say in order to survive win this round in the game?

The Labour PLP should not make the fatal error of believing Brown means it, even if he were capable of changing any of it.

Like them, Brown knows he's finished come the election. He, too, has only one event on his calendar. He, too, wants just to survive until May 2010. Nothing more. That's it. Whatever he has to say, he will say. Now as never before is the time for a meaningless gesture or two.

He's lying. They know he's lying. He knows they know and they know he knows.

They're all in it together. Brown saves face and his job, and the backbenchers get another year of troughing and merrily yelling abuse at the wicked Conservatives from their comfy seats on the green benches before they have to go out and find work. And until then, they will have a ball and salve their little marxoid consciences by building what they intend shall be Cameron's funeral pyre.

And now it's over to Voldemort to try to convince the electorate that of course leopards change their spots. It's a well-known fact, that. And pigs can fly. And it's on to a fourth victory starting from the lowest point ever in the history of the Labour Party.

And when Brown does not change because he cannot... and when the policy changes do not materialise because Darling and the IMF and the EU and the capital markets will fight back against his weakness... and when the polls continue to augur badly... and when his enemies finally find a pair, take a deep breath and strap them on... then... something else will happen.

Tonight, Brown will heave a sigh of relief and make himself believe he's done it. Tomorrow, he will wake up shaking with fear. And his anger, when the scale of his humiliation dawns on him, will be awesome. It'll be a brave man (or woman) who gets in the way of New Gordon over the next few days.

Hobbies

My new hobby is Art. Here is my new portrait of Mrs Prodicus who, as you can see, also has a new hobby.

All the main parties are suffering, huh?

– Labour is now the third party of local government in England, with fewer councillors than the Liberal Democrats for the first time since the First World War

– Labour secured the lowest vote share ever recorded by a serving government in both elections

– Labour fell under 20 per cent vote share for the first time since 1910, when the party was four years old

– Labour controls no county councils

– Labour lost a poll Wales for the first time since the First World War

– Labour have no MEPs in the South West region for the first time ever

– Labour were beaten by four parties in two regions of the country

– Labour recorded an 8 per cent vote share in the South East

Source: FT Westminster Blog

An awful one-eyed threat

What's in a name?

Tim Montgomerie wants the BBC to stop calling the BNP a 'far right' party.

How can they? 'Enemy' (theirs) and 'Right(wing)' are synonymous in Beeb group think. The BBC is as likely to designate (correctly) the Greens a 'far Left' party.

Not going to happen.

Not that the Greens' sensibly-shod, organic cake-selling, nice-lady useful idiots are allowed to know about the far leftery. It's better hidden, especially from the children it seeks to control and turn against their parents, than the racism of the national socialist BNP party.

When you look at jolly nice gel Caroline Lucas, think 60's agitprop warrior and wannabe dictator Daniel Cohn-Bendit. He issues her orders, after all.

Dear Labour Party,

Your party is about to be destroyed.

Not by Gordon Brown. By you. By your cowardice and self-serving cynicism.

Oh, you may think the electorate is angry now, after the expenses storm, but this is only the beginning. The beginning of your end.

Whereas: By forcing us to accept the continuance in the office of Prime Minister a man you know to be an incompetent tyrant you are effectively leaving our country ungoverned but presided over and represented in the councils of the world by a ridiculous petty dictator;

Whereas: Loath to lose the salaries and expenses which you might receive, for a little longer, from tax paying electors, you are knowingly collaborating with Brown and his ruling cabal who, contemptuous of us and concerned solely with their own power, are devoting themselves entirely to their frantic attempts to hold on to power against the vociferously expressed will of the people;

Whereas: It is clear to us that, severally and collectively, you are without conscience and care not for country, party or even the 'class' for which you have traditionally professed to fight but which must now fend for itself because you care only for yourselves;

Therefore: We will show you no mercy.

Yesterday was your final warning.

Heed it or pay dearly for your cowardice and cynicism.

Heed it or the electors of Britain will wipe your Labour Party from the political map of the United Kingdom. It will become an historical curiosity. Your names will be infamous.

Yesterday was your final warning. From now on, you will receive only statements of intent.

Britain's Labour 'government'

Adam Boulton live on Sky this morning:

No, Lord Mandelson is not running the Government. Gordon Brown is still making the decisions of government, such as they are...'

Bruce Anderson in the Indy:

This government is run by a dithering tyrant who will neither allow his ministers to take decisions nor take them himself. Often, indeed, he will not even take his ministers' phone calls. The crucial papers are stuck on a desk as the mobile phones fly overhead and Secretaries of State have to cajole and flatter junior No 10 advisers in order to find out what is happening.

Harriet 'Unite' Dromey, Jeremy 'Mad' Corbyn, Lord Voldemort and all remaining government placemen on all media outlets :

Gordon is the only man capable of taking our country through...

Live coverage from the assassination scene!

With an unexpected yell, Purnell springs from the stationery cupboard at the Department of Work and Pensions – and his rubber dagger spangs harmlessly aside. Caroline Flint closes in for what is meant to be the terminal embrace, armed with the spiked attack bra of the scorned Labour women...

Read all about it!

Does he take Sugar?

Possibly not, it seems:

It sounds like his peerage is not in the bag yet. Asked why he was getting a peerage if he was not joining the government, the spokesman said "it is our intention to nominate him for a peerage". It will have to be approved by the House of Lords Appointments Commission. The spokesman did not have a particularly good explanation as to why he need to be in the Lords to advise the government. The spokesman said it was in recognition of his experience. Peter Riddell suggested at the end of last week that his nomination could get refused. The spokesman also said Sugar would be putting his businesses at "arm's length" to prevent any conflict of interest.

Guardian, Andrew Sparrow.

One of them will go down in the public's estimation. I wonder which?

Jane Kennedy MP

'It's the culture... smearing... bullying... MacBride... the people around Brown are behaving as Militant did... We are now fighting for the life of the Labour Party.'

Brown is not governing. He is not doing his job. 100 per cent of his agenda is concerned with clinging to power.

Tessa Blackstone has told the Labour Party rebels that they need not fear** an early election. What are they waiting for?

** The people may think that the matter of a moral mandate comes into it when a political party has sunk as low as Labour has ...

'I know where the bodies are buried'

Marta Andreasson is the former EU Commission (and Price Waterhouse) public accountant who was fired for attempting to expose the skullduggery of the EU's never-approved accounts and the corruption of the highly political, powerful, unelected, anti-voter oligarchs of the European Commission.

The lady has been sent back by the electors to Brussels where she plans to persecute her persecutors, picking up where she left off before she was so ruthlessly interrupted.

At this morning's UKIP press conference, she said:

I am delighted to be going back to Brussels. I know where all the bodies are buried and I will not give these people a moment's peace.

All together now: 'Hell hath no fury...'

EU-enforced proportional representation

It's enough to make the BNP a Europhile party.

Be careful what you wish for.

How very singular

Britain's two most hated politicians each have one glass eye. Adolf Hitler had one gonad.

Discuss.

It's Gordon. No - it's Elvis!

Quote of the night from Fraser Nelson:

I'm in a Five Live studio now with Tony Travis and John Pienaar and we've just worked out that, with the low turnout, the BBC's prediction would mean just 6 percent of those eligible to vote have gone for Labour. That is, if my memory serves, smaller than the percentage that thinks Elvis is still alive.

Ask not, Gordon, for whom the bells tolls...

Our mole inside Plaid Cymru HQ discovers the truth

Quote of the New Labour era

Ruth Lea:

Gordon Brown never was fit for Number 10 and, given the wreckage of the economy, the public finances and the financial regulatory system, was never fit for Number 11 either.

The very wonderful Dr Lea writes a stonking piece over at ConHome. Do read it all.

Popcorn shortage!

I stocked up days ago.

Election results tonight.

Where true power lies

Mandelson planned to wheel Gordon in to a love-in with party loyalists in front of TV cameras for 4 o'clock this afternoon.

Then Guido told the world about the meeting, and the flashmobs started to organise.

The Prime Minister changed his diary to avoid facing them.

The Tribunes are in control.

How much longer before the mob is in control, Gordon?

Would YOU employ HIM, Sralan?

If Brown can be persuaded to relinquish the fasces, what on earth else would or could he do with his time?

He has only ever worked obsessively towards having power and exercising it. There is nothing else.

Can one imagine him in someone else's cabinet, loyally running a department? On the back benches, loyally supporting a Labour government? Even more unlikely, supporting a Labour Opposition? Or doing either from the red benches next door?

Touring the speech circuit? He only has one speech. It's about himself and his political dreams.

Teaching in a university? Teaching what? Economics, when his theories - borrowed from others, and all of them increasingly discredited - are failing? Oh, the East Coast Ivy League might take him in out of pity. How would Sarah like life on sufferance in the USA?

On the board of some company? Who'd have him? Bell Pottinger? Amstrad?

Directing a think tank, restricting himself to commenting on politics rather than actually politicking? Using his well-known detachment? To do what? Plan his resurrection?

For what is he qualified?

What about his post-PM social life? All his friends are political. Once the fasces is knocked from his hand, who will want to be his friend then? And why?

No, Brown will cling to office until he is removed by force. There is nothing else in life for him.

I pity his family.