the international languagage of sarcasm

Council elections tomorrow. All very exciting. I reproduce, for posterity,  the statement from our Labour Candidate in the Harrogate Advertiser last week -

“Pope Francis demands that we must look after ‘the poorest, the weakest and the least important’. Archbishop Welby states that ‘when times are hard, that duty (to the vulnerable and those in need) should be felt more than ever, not disappear or diminish”. Quakers seek a ‘just and compassionate society’. The leaders of the other churches and faiths place similar demands upon their followers. And I’m sure most atheists have a similar moral code, too. My point is this: judge the parties and their candidates by these eternal principles.”

Now when I read this, the first thing I thought was that’s all very nice but are you actually going to get the Council to fix the pot holes I have to cycle through every day on my way to work? And didn’t New Labour abandon having principles in 1997?

As an atheist, I am pleased that my existence has been acknowledged, although the concept of atheist eternal principles is an interesting one. Still coming fifth in this hierarchy (unfortunately below the MISCELLANEOUS RELIGIONS category) is a rare act of tolerance from someone I’m guessing is a Catholic.

Alistair Campbell famously told Tony Blair to not to do God, and he won three elections. It will be interesting to see if using the phrase ‘Pope Francis demands!’ proves as successful.

And case your wondering, I intend to vote UKIP and then write ‘only joking’ on the back.

I’ve been feeling blue for a while now. I went to my doctor and he said I was a surrealist.

When I was seven, my parents gave me a Mr Potato Head and threw all my other toys in the bin. They said it would be character building.

Why did George Osborne cross the road? Because his refusal to believe in Keynesian economics meant that his local Council did not have sufficient funds to repair the pavement

There is a video doing the rounds on Facebook of a hippopotamus doing a noisy poo. And it is amusing.

I watched this video and was about to click ‘like’ but then I realised the terrible social implications this would have. Obviously I’m not ashamed of enjoying watching a hippopotamus poo, its not like I’m admitting to having sex with Phillip Schofield or eating a Fray Bentos pie. The problem is that ‘liking’ that video would set a bar that all future videos would then have to clear.

If I ‘like’ the hippo poo film but then don’t ‘like’ a video of someone’s wedding or kids, I may as well be saying, “your kids/wedding are/was not even as good as a hippopotamus having a really long shit”. Even if I just hadn’t seen the video. Whilst that might help make some people try harder (you know who you are) I think the majority would take offence.

Sometimes you can think about things too much.

The Catholic Church finally joins the twentieth century…

The government is proposing to cap child benefit at a maximum of two children if you are unemployed. This will apparently save the country two hundred million a year that can then be spent on more important things like management consultants and killing badgers. Presumably, the only reason the government hasn’t gone even further and proposed to fit unemployed women with actual caps is because the forcible insertion of contraceptive devices wasn’t included the coalition agreement.

Picking on the unemployed in the middle of a recession gets good headlines but isn’t going to get the economy moving again. You may as well blame the bloke selling the Big Issue for a lack of affordable housing. The real reason the government wants to cut benefits (the over hyped deficit notwithstanding) is to make the few jobs out there more appealing. Most unskilled jobs are insecure and/or part time roles where you’re treated like a cross between a convicted thai drug smuggler and a Ryanair passenger. For six pounds nineteen an hour. No-one with any self-respect would agree to that for an extra twenty pounds a week.

The fact that there are so many long term unemployed is clearly a problem but it isn’t one that can be solved by taking money away from them. Its not like that money is then sent off-shore to be hidden from the tax man, that money is spent within their local community keeping other people in employment. Obviously, the money eventually ends up with Tesco or Starbucks, and is then sent offshore to be hidden from the taxman but the systemic problems of 21st-century monopoly-rentier-capitalism (tm) are unfortunately a topic for another blog. 

Andrew Mitchell has finally resigned as chief whip of the Conservative Party. As the chief whip’s main job is trying to stop MPs saying what they actually think, the fact that he couldn’t stop himself from saying what he actually thinks meant he was clearly unsuitable for the job.

Being chief whip of the tory party is one of the most difficult jobs you could have. Its similar to being a prefect at a boarding school, except all the pupils have been replaced with insane homophobic racists. Andrew Mitchell couldn’t do it, and I doubt if even Grant Mitchell could.

The media have dubbed the saga ‘Plebgate’, which sounds like something a tory would probably buy to keep poor people away from their house. And then claim on their expenses.

Cameron is now desperately trying to prove that the tories are not the party of privilege but they cannot help themselves. George Osborne bought a standard train ticket last week but because he’s as popular as John Terry presenting the MOBO awards, he still decided to sit away from the plebs in first. Clearly, we are all in it together, but in separate carriages with comfier seats.

The main difficulty for the government trying to prove that they are not out of touch millionaires who don’t give a damn about anyone else is that they unfortunately are out of touch millionaires who don’t give a damn about anyone else. Still, there is hope for them. If we have learnt anything from the Jimmy Saville scandal its that you can get away with evil if you do a lot of work for charity. Something to bear in mind when you next see your MP on every page of the local paper.

Sir Jimmy Saville walks into a bar. The barman says “Sorry, we don’t serve thirteen year old girls.”

Four backbench Conservative MPs have written a book called ‘Britannia Unchained’ that is due to be released next month. The title of the book sounds like a BBC Three documentary about a bondage (something Tory MPs would no doubt feature quite heavily in) but it is actually a detailed right-wing prescription to fix ‘Broken Britain’. Basically, if you like the idea of a ‘Where’s Wally?’ book where you have to find the words ‘politically correct guardianistas’ on every page, this is the book for you.

There is a strong argument against allowing politicians to write books. His name is Jeffrey Archer. As this is a non-fiction book, however, it would be childish to make reference to him here.

A book by four right-wing MPs is unlikely to end up top of anyone’s Amazon wish-list. Maybe there is a gap in the market though, since Jeremy Clarkson appears to have emigrated to South African to advise the police on dealing with striking miners.

The main quote from the book so far is that…

The British are among the worst idlers in the world.

This is pretty standard talk radio stuff but still a bold statement for a bunch of politicians to make. It’s like Azil Nadir deciding to call everyone in the country corrupt or Philip Schofield referring to someone as a weird shrieking freak. I suppose if you take ‘the number of company directorships currently held’ as your measurement of idleness, the public are going to look a bit lazy in comparison with your average MP. If, however, you use ‘the number of days paid holiday per year’ or ‘time spent in the bar next to the office’, the public don’t come off too bad.

Apparently…

We work amongst the lowest hours, we retire early, and our productivity is poor.

Britain only has low working hours if you compare us with those countries where factories have to put up nets to catch suicidal workers. Our average working week is still over seven hours longer than Germany’s, yet their economy has recovered from the financial meltdown and ours keeps on dipping like a sherbet addict with a season ticket for Alton Towers. Anyway, isn’t people working less hours and retiring early is a good thing? At least with all that free time they can join the Big Society and help the disabled and infirm find Christ.

In true backbench Tory style, the quote moves on from sweeping generalisations to casual racism

Whereas Indian children aspire to be doctors or businessmen, the British are more interested in football and pop music.

I’m pretty sure that if you gave an Indian child the choice, they’d rather play for Manchester United than set-up a company making recycled toilet paper from pulped copies of ‘Britannia Unchained’.

The central argument of the book seems to be that British workers are over protected, and employers should be able to fire people without having to justify it (so-called no-fault dismissals). It stands to reason that the best way to get out of a recession in a consumer economy is to make it easier for companies to fire all those consumers. Genius. Presumably, if we had an export economy, or they’d be recommending we start bombing everywhere again to achieve the same result.

Worryingly, these MPs are supposed to have the ear of George Osborne. And not in a good way, like in a box or a jar. Still, at least whilst the economy is in such a mess, the Government can’t allow no-fault dismissals. We wouldn’t be able to afford the welfare payments.