Pease pudding and saveloys

Can’t fault the latest intel about Charlie’s activities up the Mewrong Delta over at House of Dumb.

It seems that the Coalition’s school food advisers are worried about too much fat at lunchtime for the nation’s tots.

Contrariwise, the DC is quite happy to raise the poor kids’ potential gristle consumption at bedtime. 

Now that the Coalition has recently increased the statistical probability of, um, innovative adoption , what are the chances that listening to ‘The Adventures of Little Nutbrown Hare: Guess How Much I Love You’ will be a  longer-lasting experience for Little Orphan Andy when it’s read to him by one or both of his dads?

Mind you, if just one child can be saved from the horrors of full-fat Coke served with a white bap full of Laughing Cow and a side order of Walkers then oceans more government coercion and billions of pounds that we just don’t need for anything else would be a small price to pay… And at least the innocent, stylish Bruce and Wayne will be sending their new ward Robin to Gotham Academy with sustainable food storage containers packed full of salt baked sea bass with pesto and crispy pancetta pasta - which should prevent all kind of digestion problems as he heads off to the school counsellor’s office for that Little Talk about what not to wear.   

And just look at The Telegraph’s commenters; they’re in a conservative  newspaper?

It looks as though the inter-species genetic experiments have been successful as Comment is Free ratchet-jaws have been fused with the ‘graph’s NuTory  bedwetters.

There does seem to be an enchanting troll or two adding much-needed irony into the mixture. I especially like the thread about giant pencils ;but then trolls have reason to be sensitive to such matters.

Say, is there some kind of theme developing here?

Picture from here.

Warp Factor Twelve to Mongo, Mister Sulu

Sunday just got better with Dumb Jon’s thoughtful 7-word précis of Her Majesty’s current ministry.

Cameron's not the fireman, he's the arsonist.

That’s one word for each midden-like two month period.

But I’m a simple-minded chap and I like to spell things out for myself so there’s no misunderstanding.

Here’s what the often right and then again often staggeringly deluded Matthew d’Ancona (why do I think of a saintly snake squeezing a coffee pot to death when I see that name?) writes about iDave’s little local difficulty with The UK Sixty Million:

By empathy, I mean the visceral connection between politician and voter, the strand of communication that makes the latter believe – or half-believe – that the former grasps what life is really like for him.

You know, speeches that nations wait months to hear and then respond to and thereafter change or confirm their actions and beliefs accordingly aren’t properly made by democratic politicians in peacetime at all.

You might wait for a Pope or a philosopher or a panel of the wise and the good to speak and give a pronouncement on some moral matter such as, sorry, abortion is a big nix now and forevermore ( or okay if the mother’ life is threatened as here in Britain) or we’ve decided that slavery is just so totally poo and we’re going to do X, Y and Z about it, or you might just about eagerly await the speech from some learned government-backed science committee’s chairman (back in the days when it was reasonable to expect a government-backed science committee to produce actual science rather than government science) pronounce on some important and manageable discovery, such as expectant mothers taking Thalidomide caused their babies to be born limbless, or that post-natal sepsis in mothers was indeed the result of microbes passed from infected mother to a doctor’s hands to the next uninfected mother, or that all the evidence indicates that the speed of light is it: so it’s get to Pluto and stop or cryostasis or multi-generation ships between solar systems for the human race from now on. Or some fictional hyperdrive gizmo.

In war there’s nothing so befits a man as to say how we got in this mess and what the stakes are and what it’s going to be like clearing it all up, so pledge to one another your lives, fortunes and sacred honours, and bring on the “fight them on the beaches” and the “evil empire” thing and actually do it… and people did, mostly, buckle down and cooperate or at least go along without actually shooting their leadership because it was obvious that the bad guys were a few miles of by sea away and resources would by God be found to do the job. It was possible to argue with this detail or that policy (and it was allowed, within reason, to dissent from it without prison or other official persecution) and a place allowed for you if you didn’t entirely go along with the programme and shut up. But the big stuff: the principled stuff: the make-a-difference-to-our-lives-followed-by-concerted-action is centred around some really very simple choices such as we govern ourselves or we’re serfs or we’re dead.

In peacetime, now, democratic politicians nned to speak about the present and what the future will hold for policy and the lives of the governed. Dissent is endless, often confused, mendacious, wholly unconnected with the lives of other people, and society is so splintered and atomised thanks to cultural Marxism that not only can’t the BBC allow nation to speak unto nation, it won’t allow farmers or soldiers or victims of crime to speak at all. But despite media bias council house residents just can’t understand what private homeowners are going on about and hospital patients awaiting the wrong treatments (or none) in dirty wards or in beds on corridors simply can’t understand what the anti-immigration lot mean, and the jobless can’t imagine life being better for them outside the EU because, well, it’s nothing to do with them. Or Earthlings in general.

New Labour’s repeated electoral triumphs was in large part due to this; when they spoke (often insincerely) the big abstracts about love and fluffiness and caring and whiskers on kittens and it confirmed peoples’ prejudices about how loving they all were and especially if it personally benefitted them in the short term then fine; they’d go along with it and millions of others would join the queue waiting for their own hand-out, whilst also feeling both warm and cherished for the raindrops-on-roses loveliness that they shared with New Labour.. .along with higher house values, natch.

“Education. Education. Education” was believed and voted for and its awful results were endured by parents of ignorant and bullied pupils despite New Labour cabinet Ministers’ children from Day One heading for the selective and private educational sector like lemmings heading for the hills after being given Satnav gear and having been shown the two-hour Director’s Cut of I Know Where The Other Lemmings Went Last Summer because folding money was available for other stuff, such as a lifetime on benefits for one’s own kids and their kids, and giveaway laptops and jobs self-motivatingly coordinating proactive outreach initiatives for the offspring of the middle class parents who were too stupid to get onto Art history degrees.

Cameron can’t do any of this, and he can’t do this for two reasons: one is that he’s dafter than a jelly frisbee and the other is that he doesn’t mean any of that Tory smallish government stuff anyway. Smaller than the Solar System, at least.

Which is his quandary. Now many of those houses aren’t worth so much and the Council’s laying off secretaries and clerks and some previously indispensable £30K+ middle managers and not hiring replacement bin-men. Today all those funny shops and warehouses and pharmaceutical companies and farms and ghastly fast-food outlets and the mine and both of Britain’s factories and that lovely comfortable bookshop where nobody ever grubby-commercially pressured you into actually buying anything and where they always had lots of copies of the latest Will Hutton (isn’t he simply marvellous?) that government didn’t notice (except by the Inland Revenue and health committees recommending that they be regulated to hire health and safety professionals in organisations larger than basketball teams) or painted with skull-and-crossbones health warning signs) aren’t hiring either so much. Nor are they sending out for coffee and sandwiches so much. Or buying furniture at British ‘living wage’ production cost prices or taking interns for the Business Studies to do their ‘work experience’ years signing for the coffee and sandwiches.

So Cameron could hire Orpheus and consult the shade of William Shakespeare. He could come up with Big Society and broken society buzzwords and ‘passionate about’ all in this together slogans that would make Draco weep and cuddle puppies to match new Labour’s snake-oil and stakeholder and liberal imperialism and glasnost and doodledandy and whatever, but the The UK Sixty Million aren’t capable of understanding or learning the worth of any big new abstracts  because they haven’t been taught how to think in abstracts much more mature than the cosy, sensuous platitudes necessary to the work of infant school teachers and dinner ladies. How do you connect viscerally to that and take theri pocket money away?

It’s going to be impossible for him, given the Liberal ball and chain, to dig up the big old Tory abstracts of patriotism, respect for the law, prudence, civic responsibility and so on on their own, even if he could speak them with a straight face. It’s not that the instincts or the appetite for such things have completely gone – they are still there in the hearts and imaginations of more than a few of us. But. They’ve been demonized or so-opted by the Left as to be unrecognizable and anyway explaining them may take a little time. He doesn’t have much time before those who write our opinions decide it’s time for him to go where his pal Hitler went, and go he will; with a weakened Tory press and no chance of a UK Fox TV from the defeated House Harkonnen, ie, Murdoch, to speak for him.

He could show them, though. People can see, and think, a bit, and act accordingly. Not after some speech the BBC will show at 4.30 on a Friday afternoon and spend the weekend asking Labour and human right activists and Greens and trade union representatives to interpret.

He could do a thing that people liked and explain it as a Tory idea or belief. Simple

He could do it all, and save money he hasn’t got, but he won’t :not on this planet.

“Respect for law is a Tory ideal, which I followed when I ordered that the immediate resumption of all suspended and reduced sentences in full to be the mandatory consequence of further convictions for crimes of violence, theft or property damage.”

“Parental control over their children’s’ education, including the disciplining of bullies and other troublemakers, is a Tory ideal, which is why from next September funding will follow the choice of school contracted between parents and head teachers and why local education authorities have been abolished.”

“Defence of the realm is a Tory ideal, which is why I have reversed the spending and personnel cuts in the armed services and will be stationing much of the then-existent Royal Air Force on the two new aircraft carriers when they are built, and ordering more combat and intelligence aircraft and sacking the defence procurement bureaucracy in Whitehall.”

“National sovereignty is a Tory ideal, which is why I am to hold a referendum on European Union membership and making the Party’s resources available to the Get Out camp.”

“The notion that idleness breeds crime is a Tory idea, which is why I am backing work for benefits for all able-bodied adults from next April. Why should there be a single dirty street or dangerous wasteland in any of Britain’s cities and towns, and why should prisons not be built cheaply and any of our city streets remain unrepaired?” 

Picture from here.

Resistance 2: Fall of The Man?

Well, my UK Independence Party membership pack has finally arrived, complete with its top-secret cipher key to send clandestine anti-EU information to their ultra-high-tech underground headquarters in Newton Abbot - a name heavy with the grisly redolence of clandestine fanaticism and byzantine global webs of conspiracy well-funded by sinister military-industrial conglomerates and men in cardigans named Colin.

The covering letter explained that the delay in sending me the stuff was because under the Party’s constitution new members must not be recruited during leadership elections for obvious reasons and the person who posts out the membership packs was himself standing for the post of Grand Dragon and Supreme Arch-Pencil Monitor.

I’m sure I’ll be able to contribute something to the Party’s publicity activities for next year’s General Election and have ticked several volunteer boxes on the prepaid return card:

# Stuffing envelopes.

# Canvassing both of your best friends at the bowling green clubhouse.

# Leafleting council housing estates at 5 AM the day after Benefits Thursdays.

# Phoning the barmy granny who promised to vote for us just as long as Enoch said it would be okay. (And he did too. Enoch’s the best-spoken parrot I’ve ever trained.)

I’m not so sure about some of the other suggested activities, and there’s a box of matches and a very detailed plan of some large building with the word Reichstag crossed out and Louise Weiss Building written above it in green ink.

To complicate matters, it appears that the towering glory of the European Parliament has not one but two venues so there’s also a Michelin Guide map to the Espace Léopold and the first four chapters torn from a distance-learning manual called Piloting the European Airbus for Fun and Prophet.

I’m definitely not going in for those two options - not with my back. But let’s face it, if they asked for a Vodka-Soused You Tube Heroic Last Stands Movie Montages Browser And Suicide Late-Night Amazon Cheesy War-Film DVD Shopper then by next summer my name would be as famous as…well, that chap who was entirely innocent of attacking the World Trade Centre despite what his martyrdom video, his father, his organisation and hundreds of thousands of cheering but offended moderate men, black-masked women and beardless youths dancing in the streets throughout the Middle East and Asia 11/12 September 2001 seemed to indicate, but which you never see on the BBC these days for some reason.

The lapel badge they’ve sent is the smallest party political badge I’ve ever seen in my life. I imagine that The Nazi Paedophile Kitten-Drowning Accordionist Front sports larger slogan buttons than UKIP. Still it’s quality schmutter, if tiny.

I also have a UKIP nom de guerre, which is Vangor the Vengeance-Wreaker which goes with my other aliases rather well. Of course when I’m at work or using my credit card I’m known by my true name, and when I’m describing the seedy, corrupt and criminal life of North Britain I go by North Northwester. When, on the other hand, I’m chronicling the lives and times of a galaxy-wide space civilisation I go by North N. Wester, and in the evenings and weekends and I let my hair down and relax with a few friends it’s Mistress Agonista, Queen of Pain.

Very soon I’ll have to email the local Party boss and offer my services under the name that’s written on my birth certificate.

And that’s the time I was really dreading: the point when I finally had to commit to actually doing something to persuade the residents of Castle City to come to their front doors and listen to the possibility of voting for someone other than The Statist Super-Taxing Federast Slushy Party - now available in four almost identical flavours: Mint, Raspberry, Banana and Blueberry.

All that time spent away from hearth and home and actual conservative thought and people with a discernible belief-system wisdom…to come home weary one hot Thursday evening to fall asleep exhausted and then awake to a Cameronian ‘Conservative’ victory and the knowledge that it had all been wasted and that nothing in the results would indicate to dim-bulb marginal Tory MPs that Callmedave’s Ted Heath deracinating corporatism 2.0 had been the final sellout and that they’d better damned well shape up and practice something actually resembling conservatism or else face electoral obliteration next time.

That would be the last nail in the coffin for national self-government, justice, genuine freedom and the possibility of honest administration in Britain for another generation.

But now…

David Cameron not taking election victory for granted

David Cameron has made it clear he is not taking an election victory for granted and slapped down a senior colleague for suggesting a Labour win would be better for Britain than the uncertainty of a hung parliament…. A new poll showed that Labour had cut the lead over the Conservatives to just six points, raising the prospect of no party being able to secure a majority at next year's general election.

Mr Cameron publicly disowned comments from Ken Clarke, his front bench colleague, for suggesting recently that a Labour win would be preferable to a hung parliament. The former chancellor and current shadow business secretary argued that at a time of grave economic difficulties the uncertainty it would create could be disastrous.

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,

But to be young was very heaven.
Works fine with ‘middle aged’, too.

Bring it on.

Illustration from Ripten here.

China in your hand

Over at Conservative Ho they’ve been busier than Carol Decker’s drycleaners in whitewashing David Cameron’s betrayal of his ‘cast iron pledge’ to hold a referendum of the Lisbon Treaty if it was in force by the time he was elected Provincial Governor.

This:

"Today, I will give this cast-iron guarantee: if I become PM a Conservative government will hold a referendum on any EU treaty that emerges from these negotiations. No treaty should be ratified without consulting the British people in a referendum…"

should in fact have read:

“The Conservative Party campaign for a UK referendum on the Lisbon Treaty was over after the Czech Republic became the final EU member state to sign the document on Tuesday. It's no longer a treaty, it's been incorporated into EU law,"

It’s a simple typo. Anyone can see that. Miss out an insignificant little word such as ‘not’ and all of a sudden everyone’s on your case. Sheesh.

Melanchthon presents a sophistical argument why this egregious u-turn is in fact a victory for those of us on the Right who do not want our country to be subsumed into a European super state. Firstly the dear ancient Proddy establishes his unimpeachable eurosceptic record:

I have been a Eurosceptic since the late 1980s. I remember challenging Leon Brittan in 1989, asking him what an entity with its own Executive, civil service, legal space, Parliament and supreme court was supposed to be if not a state. If it waddled like a duck and quacked like a duck, I said, it was probably a duck. I made my first speech against the Single European Currency in 1991. Throughout the 1990s I argued in favour of Euroscepticism, that we should be in Europe but not run by Europe. After Maastricht I was in favour of renegotiation. Neither of these views was code for anything. My belief in renegotiation was not code for "get out of Europe". My belief in "in Europe but not run by Europe" was not code for "join the Single European State by stealth". I was a Eurosceptic.

In those days, it seems, ‘eurosceptic’ meant wanting to stay in but to make the project better, and to guarantee national sovereignty within the EU.

Or EC. Or EEC. Or Roman Empire or whatever the hell its real name is.

The plan was to enshrine our freedoms and nationhood in law by some kind of phrasing, clauses, or constitutional instrument to uphold the following key principles:

That Britain's membership of the European Union should be clarified as an international agreement of a sovereign state, not the pooling of sovereignty into a newly sovereign entity of Europe…

The dear boy doesn’t seem to have noticed that Lisbon is self-amending and essentially an enabling act for EU institutions to extend their already considerable powers without further getting of peoples’ dander up by asking them anything about it. See this one of several Irish sites explaining it in detail. (We don’t need such sites and explanations in the UK because, well, you know.) Such a clarification would surely have to be, um, gold plated, or copper-bottomed, or something. The ‘something’ being either A: ‘Let’s get out now,’ (unlikely), or B: a lie.

That Britain should state that it would not join the Single European Currency.

This is unlikely now that Labour has reduced the Pound’s prestige and value as an international currency to about that of the Matabele gumbo bean, and the EU would have to break almost all of its qualifications criteria to let us into the Euro…

Ah. Yes. I see.

That Britain should have no participation in any future aspect of the European Union encompassing criminal law.

The European Arrest Warrant being, er, some kind of chocolate treat from Belgium, or a flirting website belonging to an Italian porn-star MEP, yeah? Clearly, Melanchthon believes that giving foreign fuzz the power to insist that our coppers send British subjects to lands where a criminal trial does not have to be speedy, or conducted by juries of one’s peers rather than inquisitorial magistrates, or free from laws passed by former Soviet-era Communists doesn’t count as any future aspect of the European Union encompassing criminal law.

Phew. With a single bound he was free.

Maybe not us, though.

The Boy from the Black Stuff then turns to the matter of referendums.

I was always opposed to the idea of referendums. These are a device of dictatorship, fundamentally incompatible with Parliamentary democracy, an appeal to the Will of the People over the heads of their elected representative…Unlike his glorious leader until very recently it seems.

Let’s look at the dictatorships that have used this device incorporating the Will of the People (Who dey? Ed.) to overcome Parliamentary democracy, shall we?

The Mosleyite UK, who got it right.

Fascist France, who got it wrong.

Quisling Norway, who also got it wrong.

The Apartheid-originating Dutch, who, strangely, also got it wrong.

These dictatorial rejections of the Constitution led to the Irish to abandon their referendum, until the potato-munching bastards got it wrong on Lisbon too, but who later got it right, the lambs.

You know, if I was going to suggest that the welfare of the British people would be improved by some kind of international league or confederation of countries, I surely wouldn’t want it to include nations governed by such rally-addressing, Rhine-crossing, Champs-Elysees strutting populist Right-wingers as: Harold Wilson; Jacques Chirac; Centre Party Reichsleiter Anne Enger; all the major parties of the Netherlands (I know, I know); and those Dark Lands forged by that notorious Jew-bating paper formally known as The Irish Constitution, but which will soon grace the bomb-proofed walls of the Jyllands-Posten Comedy Document Archive.

He goes on: Of course, I hope that in renegotiation lots of matters of detail come up - things to do with the CAP, CFP, the Social Chapter, and much else. But these are all matters of detail, of the policy of the moment, things that can be negotiated away one day and taken back the next if the basic constitutional principles he proposes are established.

By the same token, I hope that my formerly spiteful ex-wife will reverse a decade-long vendetta against me and restore our daughter’s lost childhood happiness, but I imagine that it’ll take some pretty fancy footwork on my part and a time machine, and I doubt that Cameron is much of a hoofer and he’d look silly in a police box.

In his wisdom, Melanchthon goes on:

Our EU partners will certainly accept the measures Cameron proposes - how could they object, since these are all amendments to our own domestic constitution, other than by ejecting us from the EU? But if they were to object to them in some way, we would be ejected from the EU, and the issue of a referendum on renegotiation would not arise. I just think that idea missed the point.

These are small quibbles. The key thing is that November 4th represented the triumph of Euroscepticism. I really think most of those that have taken these proposal badly either failed to understand them or have actually long been get-outers rather than Eurosceptics at all. For those of us that are, indeed, Eurosceptics, this is our moment.

Oops, M.

And so black is white. Up is down. Slavery is freedom. War is peace. All this is the topsy-turvy, caucus race world of the Tory ‘eurosceptics.’

I remember being proud of being a Conservative and Unionist: canvassing and leafleting and public speaking and envelope stuffing and telling outside the poling stations and driving the little old ladies to the polling booth in the rickety Northmobile and prompting the late voters to go and cast their ballots in what was, back then, credibly a sovereign nation inside a trading bloc.

Mrs Thatcher and her colleagues promised to sort out Labour’s inflationary economic mess, re-equip our armed forces in the face of growing Soviet empire outside of Eurasia, fight against terrorism and tame the over-mighty trades unions. Ah the 1980s! I remember them well: The New Wave. Blondie. The BBC's CND week. Spitting Image. My Nuke the Whales for Christ lapel badge. The International Symposium of the Open Society. The Alternative Bookshop. Guns 'n Roses. Wham! Club Tropicana. Slipping out for a quick pint with Marc Almond.

And as Maggie said, so she did to a large extent. She promised A and, within reason, she achieved A. Nothing and no-one’s perfect but she tried, and we could understand what she was trying to do and we could connect that to our beliefs about our country, the world, and the future security and prosperity of our families. Later, of course, this rot set in.

The sophistical modern Tories, however, are forever changing the words, their meanings, the meaning of the meaning of their words, and the order in which their words are presented.

It’s like some crazy, meaningless charade that resembles a real game, but which has no rules and no purpose except to resemble a real game.

And in that spirit here are some messages for some of our friends in Occupied London - Wimbledon, Pontoon Dock, Marylebone, Marble Arch, Cannon Street, Cockfosters, King's Cross, Westminster, Mornington Crescent. Thank you, and good night.

Yes. WE can.

There’s bad news, and then there’s good news.

OWENS TAKES ELECTION

23RD CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT: Hoffman admits defeat shortly after midnight DEMOCRAT'S SUPPORTERS GLEEFUL: Conservative candidate's backers stunned to see him concede

By NANCY MADSEN

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2009

For the first time since the mid-19th century, a Democrat will represent Northern New York in the U.S. House of Representatives.

William L. Owens, the Democratic and Working Families candidate for the 23rd Congressional District special election, won a tight race Tuesday night.

Mr. Owens garnered 61,666 votes, or 49 percent, with 90 percent of the precincts reporting at 1 a.m. Conservative candidate Douglas L. Hoffman came in with 57,073 votes, or 45 percent. Republican candidate Dierdre K. Scozzafava, who dropped out Saturday, had 6,976 votes, or 6 percent.

The local Republicans put a wringing wet liberal up for their candidate and she quit in ignominy and then endorsed the official party of the Left, and then the candidate of the Conservative Party of New York for crying out loud was the third party candidate and he earned 45% of the vote.

Get that? The establishment party of the Right quit; scattered and unloved because they put a deep-down Leftie up for their supporters to crown, but all the GOP supporters bar a few utterly faithful ones voted for someone who stood up and said what he believed in and he connected with the electorate and he gathered in a coltish 45. The CPNY isn’t even the third party in the USA, nor the fourth.

The Republican Party has been one of the natural parties of government in the USA since anti-slavery became the big issue of the day.

The Democrats grew out of the American Revolution itself. And it won with a four percent majority. Four percent. Whatever their platforms, those two parties are twin colossi; eclipsing all other parties by orders of magnitude.

The Conservative Party of New York? The Freedom Party of Basingstoke? The Tory Party (Provisional) of Kensington and Chelsea? The Tooting Popular Front? Finchley Crusaders?

We have nationwide freedom-loving parties of the Right in this country, and there is talk of more on the way. I’ve been a bit of a wet blanket over here at James’ place, (partly because of the strange cul-de-sac that my suburban odyssey has brought me to perhaps), and the bickering isn’t always good-natured, but still and all, if the American freedom movement can mount a damn close-run thing at the height of their Gramscian Left’s glory, there’s hope too for the two-and-a-half freedom-loving and patriotic parties of the Right to hurt the equally hollowed-out ‘Conservative’ Party here in the UK.

It’s already begun to dig deep locally in England, and there’s no reason, even with our comparable first past the post system, not to hope for both revenge on the caponservatives in the short term, and for actual representation in the medium to long term.

"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."

Now, where did I put my combinations?

Smartly-dressed bachelor...

...taken to the cleaners, dry-cleaned, ironed flat but possibly not dried out.

A joy.

Where's Maggie?

Tory Politico publishes a word cloud for David Cameron's conference speech here.

It's inconceivable that any mainstream conservative politician of the Thatcher/Reagan generation would make a major portfolio policy speech without mentioning a certain abstract noun which is one of several necessary conditions for civilised life.

Just try your browser's 'find' facility and search Mister Cameron's speech for the tiny little word that no longer fits into the Tory leader's speechifying to his party faithful.

(Hint, it's the particular virtue of civil society that put Spitfires into the air and sometimes led them to the bottom of the Channel in the 1940s, along with numerous other non-risk-assessed, non-focus group recommended activities for large numbers of young people in various generations over the centuries.)

Well, I guess that just about wraps it up for the Conservative Party for a while.

Blue Berets

Paper Tories from the sky
Spineless men who cringe and lie:
Men who mean not what they say
Hollow men of the Blue Beret.

Pale blue rosettes on their chest,
These are men, the EU’s best.
One hundred men will drink today,
But only three on the chardonnay.

Changed to live in Labour’s land:
Run from combat, hand-to-hand.
Men who chat by night and day'
Double-talk from the Blue Berets

Pale blue ties upon their chest
If these are men, they’re PR’s best.
One hundred men will trough today
All but three eat the canapé.

Back at home a young wife waits
Her Tommy brave has met his fate.
He has died for those oppressed
Leaving her his last request:

Who will help the small platoons
Whose pay was swapped for silver spoons?
There'll be a man we’ll raise one day.
He’ll need more balls than a Blue Beret.

With apologies to Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler and Robin Moore, the US Special Forces, and of course the actual conservatives still surviving and bravely doing their best in the Tory party.

The Mayor of Casterbridge

I'm speechless regarding what seems to be the final victory of form over substance.

Fortunately, I’m alone in this.

Here are a couple of my favourite optimists, i.e., actual conservatives who don't feel quite ready to reach for the razor blades and bubble bath.

Goodnight Vienna says: "A few years ago I'd have been jumping up and down, applauding a speech like this but we've been tricked and cheated so much that it's hard to trust - in fact I don't think I'll ever trust a politician again: question, question, question. Until I see the small print and the action to match the words I'm going to keep my hat handy."

David Duff is still more upbeat, thinking that there might be an outside chance, with some parts even worth an A: "I had my caveats on certain points, and I wouldn't trust that bunch of scrounging crooks who sat behind him further than I could piss into a gale, but the overall ideology, if you like, the philosophy, that drove the speech was entirely sensible, honourable and proper. Within a few months words will give way to deeds and then shall we see "power being power what our seemers be."

It goes downhill a bit after that.

Sue, being Sue, is brief and forthright, and if England had bullfighters...

Well, I pity the Nu Labour/Blu Labour 'Brit' who finds his way into her sights any time soon. "It doesn't make any difference whether Cameron gave a rousing speech. After all,..."

EU referendum consigns all my fellow-Tories’ promises to a bin somewhere in Brussels, but, hey, this is a victory speech by Britain’s’ brightest and bluest– it’s supposed to be a happy event; not marred by facts or any form of truth. On some Tory luminary talking the talk: “Has this dumb cluck heard of IGCs and treaties? Because nothing can be repatriated without the treaties being rewritten and that cannot be done without a unanimous agreement at an IGC.”

Peter Hitchens puts it all in an historical context: and it’s the culture war that really decides it, in his eyes.

You can say what you like about public debt, or rearmament, or Europe, but in the end the C&UP is never going to deliver conservatism because it’s accepted the Liberal Left’s culture.

“The Tory Party went into administration, where it remains, controlled by the trustees of the establishment and the thought police of the media — who ensured David Cameron's succession.”

Powerless but office-seeking, apostate and apologetic, authority-spurning and long since bought off the auction block by the political class, I wish my old friends and comrades in the Party good luck and happiness of their time in the “Government.”

Maybe their rulers will let them keep something shiny when it’s been decided that they need to be replaced.

The road not taken

As a result of our add-the-next-paragraph-story posted in a blog in a parallel universe where the political parties offer contrasting and mutually opposed platforms of policy and legislation for the electorate to choose between, and in which our weirdly inverted counterparts were invited to imagine an insane reality where this wasn’t the case, we have received a winning entry from someone bizarrely named ‘South Southwester’ who added the following in his antimatter kind of way:

Customer: “I’d like a dog flop smoothie, please, Mister fruit squeezer.”

Fruit squeezer ; “Certainly sir. Would you like raspberry, banana, or blueberry flavour?”

Why, I think blueberry would be a nice change. I’d like one of those, I think.”

Meanwhile, back in our lovely world here, Theodore Dalrymple lays down a delightful and schadenfreudey few paragraphs describing Albion's fallen and indeed thrust down and prostrated status while leading up to the shock diagnosis that there's nothing much other than soft tissue, lymphatic fluid and Carlton Club Two-For-One table d’hote lunches between David Cameron's skull and his coccyx.

Illustration from here.

Commercial break

Lenin boasted that capitalists would sell the communists the very rope with which the Reds would hang them.

Libertarians proclaim that the market can meet almost any demands if left alone by government.

They’re both right, and it’s almost impossible to parody. Er…
It does look, however, as if some very specialist businesses have been helping the pols put the boot in on our country all over the shop…

Are you the Leader Of The Opposition?

Is the governing party abject and in disarray at your feet and on its way out? Are you looking forward to a happy life in office: the interview with the Queen; the house; the flashy cars; the armed policeman standing at the door?

But do you still worry about underarm ideology?

Did you know that only B/O can keep you from office?

Are you aware that a last-minute accusation of political belief/opinion might steal that reward for your lifetime spent climbing the greasy pole and keep you out of Downing Street? B/O is bad because everyone knows that only bad people raise their arms; bad people and housepainters. And even some house painters were bad. Don’t be tarred with their brush.

Richard and Judy can protect you from accusations of controversial (or indeed any) ideas. The bland leading the blonde have interviewed over 1000 mediocre politicians in all the major parties and the top fifty interchangeable mainstream media pundits, and we think that under controlled conditions, no-one will be able to tell you apart from them either.

Let our middle-of-the-road gang give you a nonentity makeover and polish your image so brightly that it becomes the perfect mirror of the undifferentiated who govern Britain.

Don’t delay; call Richard and Judy on the freephone number or visit our website at www.richardardandjudy.co.uk

Richard and Judy: politics without punch for 20 years.

Are you dyslexic?

Take our easy test and discover the truth.

Which of the following is the correct spelling:-

A. Targetting women and children.

B. Going out of your way to avoid innocent deaths up to and including informing non-combatants well in advance about the targets of planned air attacks.

A. Militants.

B. Terrorists who deliberately attack civilian homes and businesses to cause the maximum death and injury by suicide bombings.

A. Pro-democracy demonstrators.

B. Nepalese Communist Party.

A. Independent watchdog.

B. Left-wing pressure group now given devolved legislative power by Parliament.

If you chose any ‘B’ at all, then you are dyslexic.

Let BBC English help you.

Once renowned worldwide for its stolidly impartial broadcasting and its high standards of spoken English, the BBC has diversified into learning support and can help you with your vocabulary issues. Let us expand your nomenclature and gild your perceptions with our 24/7 online English tutorials, and soon you’ll know exactly why it’s the correct thing to refer to all of the following: Soviet reactionaries opposed to democracy in Russia; ultra-purist Islamic theologians in revolutionary Iran and last-ditch Afrikaner proponents of apartheid as ‘conservatives,’ and why members of the British Conservative Party must always be called ‘Tories’.

BBC English: be the biased.

Work For Life.

It’s time for you to get on in life and get busy.You deserve a cosy little starter home of your own with its two or three bedrooms, a shower for cleaning the sick off and a nice big living room to keep your 50 inch Panasonic and unwrap your tea in.

You’ll need an independent income for up to three decades so you can grow (sometimes literally) as a unique and beautiful person and avoid becoming rigid and conformist in your thinking (if any). You’ll be provided with rent free accommodation (starting at the two bedroom rate of Local Housing Allowance when your career is just starting out but up to £2,100 per month when you really start to produce) and a tax-free income for the rest of your productive life, and then some.

So what are you waiting for?

Visit The Stork and Gooseberry Bush’s Under-16s Nite where we’ll provide you with cheap vodka shots and enough potent Alco pops to make our charming resident staff of Darrens, Lees and Kevs - whose surnames you’ll never need to know – potent and briefly acceptable to you down in front of your mum’s plasma screen on a bed of celebrity magazines and kebab wrappers.

Warning: sometimes the filth raid the place and card the punters so make sure you bring one of your sister’s Child Benefit books and remember to use her name. Join the mummy army and get work for life.
www.onyyourbacknotyourbike.co.uk

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Do you suffer from too much blood in your veins? Have you too few body orifices? Do you dread seeing your family at Christmas? Well, worry no more! Just stay in uniform and Ministry of Defence Procurement will make sure that nothing stands between you and life in a better world.

If you can’t find enough time to clean your moat or sell your publicly-financed houses to relatives at a paper loss because dreary old things like Magna Carta, national self-government and scrutinizing legislation just take up too much time, then simply subcontract your work to the European Union and you can get on with life.

The European Union: making MP’s lives simpler at no cost to themselves since 1973.

I stopped worrying about the high cost of stair lifts, hip replacements and funeral payment plans, noisy neighbours and intimidating young thugs hanging around Booth’s car park. Ask me how, or visit www.nhswillendallyourworriesrealsoon.org.uk