Dawn of the dickhead
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.
Posted on May 3rd, 2008 at 9:21 am
| See also • Something to hide, Boris? • A few little things to get through quickly • Just wondering |
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Oh god. Oh god. Oh god. I voted Labour for the first time in my entire life so this utter tit wouldn’t win. Oh god. Oh god. How could this happen? Oh god.
The thing about the Olympics is that, with any luck, he wont be Mayor when they get under way, because we have another election in 2012, before the Games. (The up side of this is that, if he does get kicked out, we can blame him if it goes wrong, but give all the credit to the new guy if it goes right. Don’t you just love politics.)
A simpler solution would just be to wipe out the Bromley and Bexley areas of London (see the vote breakdowns for reasons)…
D-Notice’s latest blog post… Oh fuck!
Hey, not *all* of us in Bromley voted for the muppet (Paddick/Livingstone here).
Simstim’s latest blog post… Tradition maintained? Tickety-boo!
Oh come on… If he proves to be the disaster that all this hyperbole from the centre-left is making out, I’ll eat my hat. It’ll be business as usual. Neither Boris nor the Tories are stupid enough to do anything too dangerously radical.
Even if you don’t believe that Boris is actually fairly sensible, but buy the whole “he’s an evil racist toff who burns poor people for fuel” thing, the major thing to remember is that the Mayor of London doesn’t have anywhere near as much power as people think.
Nosemonkey’s latest blog post… Mayor Boris, eh?
What the Monkey said. Sure, he’s a toff, and a bit of a prat, but he can’t do a huge amount of damage, and the fuck ups’ll help hurt Cameron.
It’s just one bloke, not the end of the world.
MatGB’s latest blog post… Text reactions to those elections
I suspect the old adage of being careful what you wish for in case you get it will come to roost with a vengence over the next few years.
But Boris is, like that other clown across the Atlantic (as well as Blair), just a front man there do do what he’s told and provide a fig leaf, an ersatz image of democracy.
The real issue which needs to be addressed is hinted at but not tackled head on:
“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.”
The post war paradigm of a mixed economy followed by both Labour and Tory administrations at least avoided the level of social disparities which existed before the war and provided a safety net and in many cases a leg up for the vast majority of the population - even if the prosperity which drove it was still based very much on third world exploitation.
The point being that even a Tory administration up until Thatcher was not a disaster taking us backwards to the disparities of previous era’s.
As an aside the Tory/NULab (what’s the fundemental difference other than the brand name - a bit like being forced to choose between Coke & Pepsi/Zoo & Nuts etc.) argument that anybody can be well off if only they knuckled down to it - the deserving/undeserving poor argument if you like - has always struck me as fundementalist bollocks in as much as that whilst it’s accurate to say that anyone can make it its not possible for everyone to “have it all”.
Reading some of the arguments across the blogs on this issue its obvious that the old tribal politics is still there, albeit you can’t weight the votes for either side anymore like you could forty odd years ago. Mainly because the brands are so indistinguishable and the system represents more a supermarket free for all then a real democratic choice in most cases.
The comment boards are still full of crowing about how one group are going to stuff it to another group - or in more academic parlance force the other group of citizens/voters/consumers to do things their way whether they like it or not.
There are still different fundementally incompatible paridigms followed by different people. Unfortunately, as you hint at, Justin, there is since Thatcher broke the post war mixed economy paradigm, no space or opportunity existing for that section of the population to live by a different paridigm to that of the privatised, PFI dominated, centrally controlled monertarist, exploitative begger my neighbour approach. Those who did not vote for this, or who did not vote because the limited consumerist brand style and substance of post modern capitalist democratic practice offers no realistic choice, have no option but to suffer the consequences of the actions of their so called fellow citizens - although we don’t call them that any more because we are now mere consumer drones.
And this is why the New Labour project, with its triangulation strategy, is imploding and was always going to implode. Blair et al were always mere baton carriers for the real tories until they could get their act together and a suitable period of time could elapse to persude the consumer drones to change brands to “the real thing.”
The reality is that the likes of you and me and millions of others have bugger all in common with the smug, selfish, self-satisfied section of the population that Nu labour and the Tories are interested in. We just happen to have been born and live in the same geographical space of an artifically created nation state.
Personally, unlike many of this particular group of people, I’ve no wish to impose on them a paridigm they mistakeingly, in my view, find abohorrant. Unfortunately, that feeling and that approach is not reciprocated. Until the political economy and entity of the current artificial state is demolished and we can go our seperate political ways, following our fundementally and incompatible different paridigms there will be no way out of the situation you describe.
One day We Will Look Back On This & laugh…………………..
tony.’s latest blog post… things can only get better…………….
I love the other reason given for voting for BJ: he deserves a go.
WTF?
He doesn’t ‘deserve’ anything and anyway it makes it sound like a day out at the go-kart races.
Mike Power’s latest blog post… Saturday PaperRound 03/05/2008
I’ve been listening to the radio today, and from his supporters comments it’s clear that I have misunderstood Boris Johnson up until now. The man is a living genius; we now have the equivalent of Dr Johnson, Albert Einstein and Leonardo Da Vinci all rolled into one running London. The people of London are lucky to have spotted such talent! (I’m lucky too, because I don’t live there :o)
[...] And so it came to pass. A city of grown men and women elected their leader for a laugh. That, in a b… [...]
My God! do you want the thirties back when politics and who got in to power was a matter of literal life and death? If voters can afford this kind of frivolity then it demonstrates that on the whole their lives are prosperous and peaceful.
KB Player’s latest blog post… Persepolis Perceived
[EDITED: Let's try and keep this slightly entertaining if we can't keep it civil, eh? Let's try and elevate it above 'X is a fucking Y'. Only cunts use the word 'mong' in this day and age. Also, if you're going to leave comments under varying aliases, remember that I can see your IP address and know that you're the same person. Sock puppets be gone from this place. ]