Posted on May 9th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
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| See also • Swings and roundabouts • links for 2008-04-29 • What’s Your Poison? |
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| See also • Look at her now, she’s starting to yawn • links for 2008-04-30 • links for 2008-05-03 |
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Bollocks to the lot of it. If the blogosphere was a pub you’d be looking for another one less stuffed with wankers.
Back in a bit.
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| See also • Downloadable Palast • Those Scottish election results in full • Set the video |
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Here we go. Yet another generous dollop of ‘masochism strategy‘:
Prime Minister Gordon Brown is set to reassure the Labour Party he can lead them to victory despite disastrous results at local elections.
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Mr Brown is giving media interviews on Sunday as newspapers speculate about various plans to oust him.
I don’t know about you but watching this defeated and defeated-looking, hang-dog, humiliated and hunched, inspiration-free ivory tower-dwelling fool beg for his job is not the way to spend a fresh Sunday morning.
The Prime Minister will once again be insisting that denial is a river in Africa. You get the feeling that he will be closing his interviews with ‘They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dist…’ (It’s certainly something they should consider carving on New Labour’s tombstone.)
It’ll be a miserable, miserable, miserable spectacle, demeaning to all. Platitudes are not a breakfast cereal. Go and find something far more wholesome and nourishing. We’re off car-booting to bring home more crap we don’t need to fill space we don’t have. A bit like New Labour law makers.
| See also • I’m an idiot, you’re an idiot • Somebody pinch me • links for 2008-04-24 |
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| See also • links for 2008-04-17 • Lose yourself in London • Dawn of the dickhead |
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And so it came to pass. A city of grown men and women elected their leader for a laugh. That, in a big way makes them far worse than the deluded souls who voted for George Bush all those years ago.
And like a zombie virus, how do we stop this contagion spreading to the rest of the country? London must be sealed off. Cauterized. Let us thank God that the supply of novelty, racist lightweights is short or we’d all be up to our neck in them, trapped in our homes as they lurch about outside craving our flesh.
If there is a way for these comedy voters to suffer for their levity without those who didn’t vote for Johnson* suffering too, now is the time to start looking for it. They chose their mayor for a laugh.
It’s hard to see the silver lining in these moments. There is a small one. All the hassle and slog of putting on what is almost certain to be a shitty Olympics now transfers to Johnson. May he live in interesting times.
Let’s hope the legion of special advisers who are going to be doing all the heavy lifting of his administration are something really bloody special. The omens ain’t good.
*Let’s have no more of this ‘Boris’ shit. London’s about to find out just how cuddly he is.
| See also • Carrying a torch for propaganda • God help us • Ann Coulter (almost) makes sense shock! |
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So, anybody want to play Fix The Labour Party? What should they do to avoid a thrashing at the general election? I’ll start with:
Rubbish or what? Any more?
Blimey. Will Howells has an unforgettable commute…
| See also • Webjunk: PocketMod • Twitter daily digest for 2008-03-04 • Ideas are bulletproof |
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Gordon Brown in 2000:
Some people might think Ken Livingstone is funny, but saddling London with him for four years is no laughing matter.
And so the irony of the 2008 model Brown having everything crossed that Livingstone might help save his arse is a delicious one. I hope Gordon’s gagging on it. If I was him, I’d start drinking now and not stop until the snooker’s finished.
It was also a delight to hear the now rusting Blair Babes desperately scrabbling around for a silver lining on the radio this morning. Both Harriet Harman and Hazel Blears, spewing smoke and misfiring as they wobble and parp slowly towards the scrapyard, claimed that last night’s Tory successes would mean that the opposition’s policies and positions would now come under greater scrutiny in the run up to the next general election.
Oh, yeah? Like they did in 1997? Back then policies counted for almost nothing so why should they now? You could have pretty much, as they say, put a dog in suit and the voters would have put a tick in his box just to see off the Tories. That voters are now starting to look to an empty suit like Cameron should tell us just how bad things are 11 years later.
| See also • Nearly time to buy that ticket to New Zealand? • Vote Blears • That is the sound of inevitability |
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Politically, then, Gordon was wise to stop the pay rise, because the general British attitude to offenders is as brutal and vindictive as it is pig-headed and self-defeating. If a study were published tomorrow establishing beyond the tiniest doubt that awarding the extra £1.50 would reduce reoffending rates by 60 per cent, and save an annual £6bn for an outlay of £6m, the phone-ins and blogs would still resound to that ritual hunting cry of political correctness gone mad, from representatives of the vast majority of voters who favour the reintroduction of capital punishment, however incontrovertibly proven its worthlessness as a deterrent may be.
If this abject waste of water and carbon wins today I, and many like me, will never ever stop taking the piss.
(Video via Mike)
| See also • Twitter daily digest • Taken for a fluoride • links for 2008-05-03 |
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| See also • Geese and the sauce of freedom of speech • links for 2008-05-07 • The empty threat of a bad example |
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You have to say that Gordon’s a trier. The day before polling in the local and London mayoral elections and he’s spraying treats around for everybody.
It was a Blairite tactic to try and be all things to all people and, while it was all too transparent for those who could be bothered to look, there was at least a veneer of arrogant calm about it. Brown, while using the same methods, comes across as having an air of sweaty desperation.
| See also • Stuck in the middle with you • Depends what you mean by ‘lethal’ • What’s Your Poison? |
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| See also • links for 2008-05-02 • Dirty deeds done desperately • Victory at any cost |
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What’s the libertarian argument for driving whilst uninsured and over the legal limit for alcohol?
| See also • Iraq: a cultural appreciation - Part 1: Alcohol • links for 2008-05-07 • Twitter thingy daily digest for 2007-06-02 |
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Here’s a not-at-all-blackly-cynical Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian on Labour’s prospects after the elections this week:
What else will the Labour faithful cling to if the voters mete out their predicted harsh punishment? I have heard ministers say that a Boris Johnson victory would be a short-term disappointment, but could be a long-term boon. If Johnson makes a balls-up of London, he will serve as a poster boy for Conservative unreadiness for high office.
Can I be one of the first to thank Londoners for their brave sacrifice? You can’t make a general election omelette without breaking a few electoral eggs. And anyway, a Boris Balls-Up sounds so cuddly, doesn’t it?
It was terribly brave of you London types to volunteer for the front line. Let us know how salvaging New Labour’s electoral prospects works out for you. God bless you all. And you too, Reading and Birmingham:
Losses in Reading or Birmingham will be tolerable because they are faceless, so long as Saturday’s front pages show a smiling, re-elected Ken Livingstone.
Ah, the unknown soldiers. They fought for their country and we honour their sacrifice.
| See also • Dawn of the dickhead • Lose yourself in London • links for 2008-05-03 |
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While he was on the GMTV sofa yesterday, Gordon Brown referred to skunk as ‘lethal’ three times. Journalists followed this up at the Number 10 press briefing later that day. Is cannabis ‘lethal’? The government will, of course, have copious evidence to back up the Prime Minister’s claims, yes?
Put repeatedly that the Prime Minister had used the word “lethal” to describe the use of cannabis and asked if there were examples of cannabis being lethal, the PMS said that nobody was disputing the potential dangerous impacts of cannabis and that that was why cannabis was an illegal drug.
That’s a ‘no’ then. Unless it’s some kind of patois in the vein of ‘Wow man, this stuff is lethal!’
| See also • What’s Your Poison? • Swings and roundabouts • Smokescreen |
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David Cameron has admitted he has not managed to keep his pledge to “end Punch and Judy politics” - blaming the fact that calling the Prime Minister a cycloptic psychopath has proved a better strategy.
“I will absolutely hold up my hand…this is a promise I couldn’t be bothered to deliver,” the Tory leader said.
“Look, what would you do? You can spend all day formulating policy and listening to the petty concerns of voters. But when your spin doctors tell you that portraying the Prime Minister as a hapless, lonely weirdo is an easier way to win the general election, you jolly well need to sit up and listen.”
He said prime minister’s question time was “an adversarial system” adding: “Of course we don’t have a policy worth a candle. When standing up and making thinly veiled innuendoes about the Prime Minister’s sanity has proved a sure-fire way to get ahead in the the opinions polls, who needs them?
“I do accept that I take a rubbish approach. It is rubbish. I don’t make any apology for that.”
| See also • The all new PMQs • Mental arithmetic • Liveblogging Prime Minister’s Questions |
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