debate2.3

cameron says an independent nuclear capability is important and necessary.
clegg makes the sensible point that terrorists seem to be the enemies and they are not someone you can target with nuclear bombs.
brown tells clegg to get real.
blimey charlie cameron agrees with him.
scary.

debate2.2

failed states and uk participation. will we go in?
clegg says yes - if it is about keeping us safe (us being the uk, rather than the united states). he goes on to say that has to be done with the right kit and right strategy. which makes sense.
brown - says that afghanistan is necessary as it because of a chain of terror and we have to take it on wherever it is found.
cameron - what will make us safer. bring all policy together in order to make ourselves safer. oh he supports afghanistan, but not doing it right.

clegg argues for a real defence review. don't renew trident. can't argue with him there.
(am already bored with him going on about 'old' style of politics, almost as much as cameron and his 'change'.)
brown pays tribute to forces.
cameron talks about being 'blown away' by the forces in afghanistan - perhaps a poor choice of words. his joke falls flat. (oh get him he has been out running with someone who served in afghanistan.)
(amazing how they have all been over there, shame none of them have served.)

debate2.1

got to the debate late (again) (no shock there).
will be interesting to see whether or not gordon and david agree with nick tonight. i doubt it.
interestingly sky have not let the bbc air the debate on 5live like itv did. who knew murdoch and co. could be so petty.

europe first question up.
looks like david is on his own. no surprises there. will europe be the chink in the tory armour.

have just noticed clegg's chin. crikey that is a big thing.

brown makes the economic point: europe means job.
cameron says there is a real difference between the parties because he will in europe and but not ruled by europe.
crikey clegg has gone about nutters and homophobes, and brown gets a laugh - and then goes on about jobs.

cameron is all about standing up for britain in europe.

lost

i know you will find this hard to believe but there are many things i can’t do. i can’t translate latin into greek, quadratic equations leave me scratching my head, juggling while riding a unicycle is beyond me and as for splitting the atom let’s not go there. among the other things i can’t do is read a map.
yup i can’t read a map. i am the benjamin netanyahu of road maps.
normally it isn’t that much of an issue; i can muddle along and get to where i need to get to. that is occasionally my downfall.
the election is coming up fast. been looking at my local candidates, weighing up the choices. made my decision. oh hold on a minute i don’t think i registered to vote. blinking heck better check on that. ooops nope haven’t done it. no worries have a couple of days to sort it out.
first stop the local idea store to get a voter registration form. don’t have enough time to post it, so i will have to drop it off, not a worry. time to do that. form filled in. easy peasy. will drop it off in the morning. checked the map and it looks like a bit of a trek, but a good way to start the day.
form in bag. sleep.
wake up. check map again. shitaboogey but i got that wrong. it is much further away than i thought. ok check buses. the 15 gets me close, the 115 gets me a little closer, the 135 is no good. make notes as to where i need to get off and then walk to. all going to plan, but plan is going to have to change because i have to be somewhere else, will go in the afternoon.
afternoon now and time to get a move on. will pass on the first bus, too many people. get the next one. blimey timed this wrong, too many school kids going home. why do they let them out so early? why do they let them out at all?
not been this far down the commercial road for months.
check my notes as to where i need to get off. be on the lookout for cotton street. curse myself for not bringing my a-z with me.
there goes all saints dlr station.
getting there.
hold on this is canning town. too far for sure.
get off. look there is a community centre – they should be able to give me directions. they can, but they are as good as mine: “catch the 115”. hold on there is a library next door. find an a-z there. make notes. how stupid have i been? overshot by a fair bit. still just a straight walk back. back along the barking road onto the east india dock road and just try to find nutmeg lane.
what is the time? cripes getting close to 5.30 and they will be closed. pick up the pace. mmm this is an ugly part of town. oh just what i hate a road that doesn’t have a name on it. is it the one i want? no idea. look there is a security guard. he confirms it is nutmeg lane – can get to clover crescent from here. (could also go to saffron avenue, coriander avenue and oregano drive – if i wanted to. who know jamie also did town planning).
get to the town hall. hand in the voter registration just before 5.30pm. receptionist says she will mark it as if it came in at 5pm. i thanked her (didn’t bother pointing out that i have until midnight to get it in – that would have been churlish of me).
job done. relief.
let's go to canary wharf. not been there in a long while. walk? nope. catch the dlr. not been on the dlr for an age, i still love it. mmm lots of nice looking ladies. gotta love office hours. grab a coffee at canary wharf, watch the world go by. go into tesco – fancy some of their very nice pasta. look at the queue. will pass on that. jump onto the dlr that is at the platform. oh piss it is for stratford. get off at west india and wait for a bank train. there it is. homeward bound.
plan carried out. aims achieved. labour vote sorted.
if gordon brown gets in it is down to me.
i am labour and labour 2010 is my idea.

ash

bloody typical.
won't pay us back what they owe.
will send us all their ash.
sodding icelanders. bastards.

debate1.11

the public are talking about the debate.
one of the more annoying criticisms is that they didn't mention the concern that the particular member of the public was most interested in.
someone has complained that clegg had his hands in his pockets.
no one seems to have changed their minds about who they are going to vote for.

someone has mentioned that it was well rehearsed - i suspect that they would have preferred it to be more on the lines of a 'it's a generation game knockout on ice factor' game show, the leaders would have no idea of what game or task they had to do, but while they were doing it (in a large cartoon comedy suit) they would also have to tell us their policy on health and education.

some bod from ukip has described the event as boring. i guess that really does sum up just how important ukip is: not very.
though it does point to brand extension of the debates - the second stringers- ukip, the greens, respect, bnp and the pirate party (yes there is one) can all have their say about the important questions of the day.

bring on the second debate.

debate1.10

clegg has been announced as the 'winner' of the debate by the first yougov poll.
how come they never ask me?

debate1.9

closing statements.
clegg - oh thank you for sticking with us. patronising or what? cleverly he is mentioning all the people who have raised questions. nice touch. reminds us all that he is there and that you don't have a choice between two there is a third way (to quote blair).
give real change a chance - is what clegg said.

brown - picks on one question. highlighting how to get through the crisis. money in the economy. secure the recovery. fair to nhs and schools.

cameron - hope over fear, well that cuts you lot out then doesn't cameron as we all know what you are going to do. values is what he is about. crikey he has moved on from thatcher, he has gone straight to major.

oh mr stewart has given us all his heartfelt thanks for the questions sent in but not used.

it is all over.
i think it was a draw.

tony livesey on 5live said 'did you recognise that? it was history.'

debate1.8

last question - about looking after the elderly.
one thing that has come from the debate is that we all want things and they all cost money, we are less keen to pay for these things.

cameron has provided his idea - put £8k aside at 65 and there will be help for you to ensure that there is no need to sell your house.
clegg - says why don't the politicians all come together, drop their differences and come up with a solution. hell clegg why not do that for all problems and issues.
brown - less airy fairy than the others and more details. perhaps that is his problem, he gives too many details. maybe a few jokes would have helped him. surely there are some oap jokes out there?

clegg banging on about his week off for carers. says none of them have a perfect solution.
cameron also on about a consensus.
there is a danger of a group hug here.

debate1.7

growing old and getting ill.
brown - more home helps. personal guarantees.

cameron - i am never going to believe him and his 'love' of the nhs.

clegg - goes on about wasting money. look at what has been spunked away on the computer system. very true it isn't working, but that is more a sign that private companies can be very shit at doing what they say they will do, but are quite happy to take the cash for their inability to do their job.

clegg and cameron - go on about managers and administrators. like somehow it works itself.

cameron again bangs on about the national insurance - don't increase and then all of a sudden there will be lots of money for cancer drugs.

clegg reminds cameron that he can't do everything with that extra money. cameron tells him that the nhs is an exception.

if i am honest clegg is coming out on top, with cameron coming second.
but brown was never going to do well, as he isn't a natural orator.

debate1.6

armed forces.
not paid enough. not well equipped enough.
none of the leaders will give the sensible answer: we need to look at how we commit the forces and quite what we expect them to do.

pull them out of afghanistan. no longer follow america's lead. we shouldn't try to punch above our weight anymore.
there needs to be a serious re-evaluation as to what we want the armed forces to do and then cut our cloth accordingly.

all three of the leaders have managed to call the forces brave.

debate1.5

protecting economic growth.
cameron - economy moving and growing. save £6bn. stops the tax on jobs (national insurance increase). he has quoted the business leaders who support him, if they had their way they would drop the national minimum wage. funny thing is cameron would agree with them.

clegg - he can save £15bn. he wants to scrap trident replacement. he is right.

brown reminds everyone that it is a global crisis. something that cameron seems to not know (or just lies about, guess which one i think it is).

when it comes to the economy and the recovery i am with brown, with a smidgen of clegg. cameron is a tory and so he is a lying tosspot. simple analysis.

crikey clegg is talking about a unified government to deal with crisis.

cameron says we are all going to have to come together on this to share the pain - that means the poor suffer, while the rich sit back and go 'oh we are the wealth creators love us..'

brown is right the private sector isn't going to make the difference on their own.

cameron asks why do bosses say the national insurance hike is wrong? simple they don't like paying more - which is why your idea of referundums on council tax is stupid. we don't like it when these businesses put their prices up.

clegg also made the point about getting rid of id cards. again simple and sensible idea.

debate1.4

education up next.
oh a student doesn't want to be examined - he just wants to learn for learnings sake.
strangely cameron agrees with him. oh no he mentioned red tape. again. his bugbear. schools to be set free to do what they want. nice.

clegg. sweden has a national ciriculum of 16 pages. not very detailed then is it. he repeated the 4000 pages that cameron has just mentioned. no more micromanaging from a liberal democratic government.

they all talk about higher and improving standards.

cameron - it starts with discipline in the schools. i would agree with him, but really it starts with the parents. schools shouldn't be made to be the parents. find a way to make sure that parents are responsible.

clegg - smaller classes. again simple idea. clever idea. means more money, but money well spent.

cameron wants those who administer schools in whitehall to work in sackcloth and to sit on milk crates.

alastair stewart cuts in every now and then to try to make it look like he is keeping control. he should be allowed to administer electric shocks, especially when cameron does his saving £1 in every £100.

come on gordon you don't have a kid in a state school - the others are telling everyone how their kiddies are in the state sector. they are beating you on that.

debate1.3

cameron - cut the size of parliamnet? what the fuck. no. how can you talk about people power and then go on about cutting down the number of people who represent us. more members of parliament not fewer.

oh gordon has come in with house of lords as to be cut down. much better than cutting than members of parliament.

cameron has done his - which company hasn't had to cut to get more for less? well not virgin trains, not british gas - all they do is put up their prices.
a stupid analogy cameron.

debate1.2

i think they are going to scratch each other's eyes out.
handbags at dawn.

it is speed debating.

(what does it matter what people do when it comes to asking questions?)
(groan mp's expenses have been raised.)

debate1.1

debate between the leaders is on.
i missed the start. immigration. done in a few minutes. perhaps the debates are not going to be all they have been cracked up to be.

law and order now.
cameron - more police on the streets and less paperwork. have to say i have never had any problems with them doing paperwork. i want to know that they are accountable.
all three of them talk about more police on the street.
no shit sherlock.

cameron - is close to saying that drug addicts might as well be chained up and go cold turkey.
clegg - stop youngsters from becoming future criminals. he makes the point that prison is an academy for criminal training. change their behaviour.
brown - oh dear what his dad did!
seems to come down to kids being bored. maybe it is that kids don't have respect for authority or adults anymore. perhaps the answer is less in 'young people' and 'youth mayors' and more in discipline. just a thought.

power

thanks to the new marxist leninist version of the conservatives with their wolfie smith cry of ‘power to the people’ the country knows that we are all in this together.
well when they say we are all in it together and we are all going to share the pain – they really mean that the public sector is going to feel the pain, because private companies are the wealth creators and innovators (these would be the same wealth creators and innovators who have been responsible for some of the very large overspends in government information technology programmes – capitalism at its very best: taking the money and laughing all the way to the bank as you provide a shit service).
it is ok though. just as the conservatives kick the public services they are offering ordinary people the chance to take over their local services and run them the way they want to (the money will, of course, still be coming from the state). see more people power.
even better they are promising to remove bureaucracy and red tape. true they are offering us the chance to have endless referendums about pretty much anything as long as enough people sign a petition. in the era of facebook that is hardly a challenge. expect the first of every month to be referendum day. and look they are going to let us vote on council tax raises – oh well i can tell you how that will play out – no, no, no and no again. (see mr. cameron i have bought into your scheme – and my contribution has saved local councils wodges of cash – no need to have that vote on the council tax i have told you the results for the next 10 years in every council in the land).
(don’t hold your breath for a vote on whether or not the national minimum wage should increase.)
there is something wonderful about the ‘big society’ idea. there is also something impractical about it. in the hands of the conservatives it is just another way to make sure that the state does as little as possible to protect the weak while helping the rich line their pockets.
the cordial invitation that david cameron has issued for us all to join the government is akin to a carnival game – you know it is fixed and rigged but you can’t help yourself you want to give it a go. it sounds a noble project – government of the people, by the people, for the people – can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t sign up for that sort of thing. it is just that under the conservatives you just know what the invitation amounts to is a long letter that basically abdicates responsibility on the part of the conservative leadership.
my rsvp won’t be in the post.

helicopters

i love helicopters. i know nothing about them. i couldn’t tell a chinook from a lynx if your life depended on it. my love of them has nothing to do with knowledge or recognition – it might be the noise they make, it might just be that they have big whirly things on them or it might just be that they look oh so cool.
there isn’t an action movie that hasn’t been improved by the appearance of a helicopter or three. i am pretty sure that even citizen kane would have benefitted from at least one scene with a chopper in it. hell even stockhausen got in on the act with his helicopter string quartet.
helicopters were in the news again today.
during the last prime minister’s questions of the current parliament david cameron used some of his questions to talk about helicopters. or more accurately the lack of helicopters for the british armed forces in iraq and afghanistan. it was a clever ploy that continues cameron’s strategy of sowing doubt over gordon brown’s competency as prime minister and (as an added bonus) as chancellor. fortunately for cameron such attacks are aided by brown’s hubristic weakness of never being able to admit to a previous error. all too often brown has lost ground by not admitting there had been mistakes in the past, but like all governments errors will occur and labour under brown will provide the right solution. do that a couple of times and cameron would have been so wrong footed he would now be chasing the liberal democrats rather than looking like the next prime minister.
another outcome of never saying mea culpa is that you can’t go on the attack and ask: “well what would you do?” so in the case of the helicopters brown couldn’t very easily ask cameron where he planned on magicing up new helicopters from, especially as the prospective tory government is all about cutting spending. (unless the conservatives favourite helicopter maker, westland, still owe them a favour or two? i doubt it very much).
ask that of cameron and i think you have him in a corner. brown couldn’t and didn’t.
yet david cameron has given gordon brown the perfect election present – if he would but take it.
it is a winning strategy; it is a dyed in the wool, solid gold vote winner. much better than giving each soldier their own helicopter and the electorate their own pony.
oh i can hear you cry – what is it pat, just tell us.
it is simple. all gordon brown has to do is announce that he is radically cutting the british presence in afghanistan and he is going to do it on an accelerated schedule. eat your heart out mandelson, pure fucking political genius on my part. just a shame it is not going to happen.
there was a time when the ‘war on terror’ sort of made sense. not sure that holds true anymore. britain entered the war standing shoulder to shoulder with the usa, a show of faith, a show of trust, a show of common beliefs in what was right. it was the ‘special relationship’ writ large. all the relationship seemed to get us was a lot of dead squaddies and a severe financial crisis. in short: we got shafted.
with a change of prime minister and a change of president it was obvious some things would change. it seems that president obama doesn’t like gb – the country or the prime minister. the special relationship isn’t special any more. president obama is off courting other allies. let’s not look at this as a set back, instead let’s look at it as an opportunity. time to get out from under. time to reassess our place in the world and time to stop trying to punch above our weight on the international stage.
start with pulling the troops out from afghanistan. let the new american allies take up the slack, that is what allies do.
the benefit to gordon brown and new labour is that it shows that that can be daring, that they can make the difficult choices. if you are not fighting an unwinnable ‘war’ you are not spending lots of cash – all of which goes towards cutting that deficit. if you are not fighting the war your troops are not getting killed. while putting clear distance between us and the americans brown shows he is different from blair by not shadowing the americans while showing the rest of the world that we are not going to blindly follow the american lead on everything.
it is a vote winner.
best of all: if you don’t get elected as prime minister you have really put a spanner in the works for david cameron. come on gordon that alone has got to be worth it.

(coming soon: pat reforms the united nations and publishes his new diet book: ‘you are fat and it is his fault’.)

50p

did you hear it?
the sound of fury that swept over the city and echoed through the countryside.
did you hear the billowing cry?
the siren song of misery and self pity that shook the nation.
did you hear it?
were you woken by the thunderclap of anger?
yes today was the day when the highest rate of tax was raised to 50p for those earning more than £150,000 a year. crikey how the experts moaned and whined.
hear them cry, hear them sob, hear them whinge. such a commotion you would think that they were being asked to work for minimum wage.
why us they asked? we are the wealth creators they told us. you can’t treat us like this they opine, we are special, we are the wealth creators. love us. if you tax us too much we will leave, we will take our money and wealth creation and go somewhere else.
do you know what my reply is? fuck off then and don’t let the door hit your arse on the way out.
funny thing about most of these globally mobile wealth creators they all seem to be in the financial industry and are ready to up sticks to geneva at the first sign of a tax hike (poor switzerland we give it phil collins, lewis hamilton and now some jumped up greedy accountants – does little to spruce up their already dull image). now correct me if i am wrong but isn’t the reason why the tax has been increased is because there were some shifty dealings going on in the financial industry to start with?
oh it was.
can’t expect them to bear any of the pain. that is for the little chap, the poor chap and the chap who is just doing ok.
seems that if you can claim to be a wealth creator it entitles you to take a big steaming pooh on the heads of everyone (that was just for cliff: politics and shit).
so how many people are affected by the new tax rate of 50p? well not me for a start. i would be doing naked cartwheels down the street if i were in a position to have to pay that much tax (and i promise now that if i am ever in a position where i have to pay the top rate of tax then i will indeed do naked cartwheels in the street for charity – you can take that to the bank). according to the bbc it is 300,000 people who will pay the top rate of tax out of the 29 million tax payers in britain.
oh my heart bleeds for them.
now i may have said this before, and i am sure i will say it again, these so called wealth makers can fuck off if they so wish. they may like to think that they are as rare as unicorns but we all know that really they are not.
in each of the offices that these people are in there is some young studly dudley who thinks that they can do the job cheaper and better. in any other set of jobs these roles would have been outsourced to india or china by now. it is a fallacy to believe that these people are irreplaceable: they are not.
for the time being they will squeal like stuck piggies, claim that their wealth trickles down to the rest of us and argue that raising their tax is disastrous for the rest of us.
still i have a solution.
they are rich, they like to spend their money (after all that is the only way it can trickle down to rest of us), so let’s raise vat on very luxury items. you want a pair of jimmy choo’s? then have a dose of 20% vat dear girl. you want to deck yourself out in something or another from stella mccartney, well pay that 20% vat. you want a tag heuer watch that may are may not have been made with left over parachute material from suez crisis and a bit of chocolate some bloke nibbled on while in colditz, then it is time for you to pay 20% vat. if you are going to sit down in one of gordon ramsey’s fucking restaurants to eat some of his fucking expensive food then you can fucking well pay the 20% vat.
meanwhile the rest of us who are buying our clothes from primark and our food from tesco don’t have to worry about vat being imposed on food or clothes.
not only have i made vat progressive but i have also allowed the rich to shop till they drop knowing that they are helping the rest of us to come out of recession.
they get to stay here (ok that is a downside to it).
they get to spend their money on pointless luxury goods.
they get to tell us all how their wealth trickles down. .
they get to remind us how they are wealth creators.
money comes into the treasury.
we are all happy.

just another simple reason why i should be in charge.

squits

it started with a moment of near disaster.
a small fart that hinted at a follow through, and stopped short of kissing cotton. the smell just shy of hell's sewage, enough to singe eyebrows and choke cows.
it should have set alarm bells ringing.
it didn't.
a good night of sleep. waking up the sun in the sky, and all is well with the world.
oh spoke too soon.
a rumble in the tum.
a small parp.
another rumble.
a clench of cheeks and a 'oh no!'
dash! dash! dash! rush! rush! get to the toilet, don't stop, get to the toilet.
nooooooo - the seat is down. don't panic.
quick. quick.
sit down.
shit down.
gushing out. who knew you could evacuate that much stuff in so little time.
oh wow get a whiff of that, gag me with a spoon as frank zappa once said (well actually it was moon who said it, but frank wrote it).
have to say feel much better now. time to get on with the rest of the day.
oh no.
hold on.
bombs away.
more coming out.
and out.
and out.
and out.
crikey who knew that shitting out half your body weight could be so tiring? after all super-models do it all the time (see i can even make this social commentary).
nose hairs have been burnt away by the stench.

phew glad that is all over.

hold on, there is another rumble.
another trip to the toilet.
splash down.

by the fourth trip there i have developed a ring of fire. mmm that might be what it feels like to have deep heat rubbed into your arse (not that anyone would want that - though it used to be a jolly jape to smear it onto a rugby player's jock strap, another of those things i never really understood about rugby humour).

those of you have gotten this far will be pleased to know that i am back to just defecating at a regular rate and a regular consistency. let me tell you: it is bliss.