Category Archives: Gordon Brown

Back to You in the Studio

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So how long did you stay up? I went into this evening with such a great determination to see it through til the early hours. After all this is the most exciting of elections in living memory, isn’t it? Well that’s what the BBC kept telling me. Tight as a gnat’s chuff, apparently. As I start this post it’s 11.15 pm and I’m already wilting. At 10 o’clock the exit poll was announced and it declared that, after all that had gone on over the past four weeks, the Tories and the Labour party had run away with it, with the Liberals in a poor third. Maybe the Beeb has it all wrong (again) but it does seem depressingly familiar.

10.49 brought the first result from the constituency of Sunderland Somewhere. They’d employed an army of small boys, running like the wind, to carry the ballot boxes to the counters, (bank tellers, I’m told) who ripped through the piles of votes at the speed of light to ensure they declared their result before any other count. If you lived in Sunderland, wouldn’t you want a little more care spent over your precious vote? I know I would. Bloody annoyed me. Felt the whole system was being trivialised. How wrong I was. I was peaking far too early. When Dom Jolly, Kelly Holmes, Bruce Forsyth, Fern Britton and Don Logan from Sexy Beast were asked to contribute to the night, I knew that this was the time when serious political thought and coverage was crashing down to earth like a UKIP Nazis in a PZL-104 Wilga 35A Polish fixed-wing aircraft.

The one thing keeping me awake is the appalling news that large numbers of people have been locked out of polling stations, the system seeming unable to cope with the late rush from the night workers, the Dog and Duck or wherever. Who the Hazel bears is running this debacle? Robert Mugabe ?

Anyway, not wanting to go on like an extended Twitter, I shall leave you to watching the coverage. And anyway, Eric Pickles has just come on the TV and I feel like being violently sick.

More as we get it.

Kevin Philips Bong

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Oh fuck it! I wasn’t going to, but why not ? Haven’t watched it for a while, it doesn’t do any harm, and certainly no more silly (or even slightly silly) than the BBC coverage. Fuck me! They’ve just had Sir Ben Kingsley standing next to Bruce Forsyth in an interview about the exit poll !! Jesus H Christ. So glad the BBC isn’t dumbing down ! (apologies for all the exclamation marks) (!)

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The Conveyor Belt

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If you’re sitting at home, trying to remember what the last batch of Tories were like, help is at hand. I can bring all those memories flooding back:

Now, doesn’t that give you a nice warm feeling all over? Like the time you tried to slit your wrists in the bath ?

But never fear, dear reader. Just put your cross in the wrong box tomorrow and, on Friday, you can start to enjoy the class of 2010: Same old lovely, trustworthy, salt-of-the-earth sort of chaps.

I say you can enjoy it, I shall be under the duvet crying into my bottle of scotch. Put the cat out for me, would you ?

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Yellow Lines

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Unlike me, Nick Clegg spent his Bank Holiday Monday in Blackheath. I, of course, was stuck in the office. I’m not saying he has any influence in the rotas in my office, but it seems strange to me that the one bank holiday Monday I’m not banging on the door of a pub in my village, urging it to open, Mr Clegg took to the streets of SE3 to drum up support for his party at the upcoming election. All very exciting for the people of the village, I’m sure ,and proof that everything is to play for in the hotly-contested constituency of Lewisham East, which covers our little part of London.

I don’t suppose he missed me much, though I have seen several snaps of Mrs C anxiously looking around to see if she might catch a glimpse of me. Oh well, she’ll catch me next time. By the way, if you do what I did the other night and close your eyes as Nick Clegg speaks, doesn’t he sound like Jimmy Carr?? Honestly, try it. It’d be a much better election if Jimmy Carr, Alan Carr and Johnny Vegas were the three candidates, at least the debates would be worth listening to.

Anyway, I have no real problem with Mr Clegg, and it’s about time someone prominent in this whole debacle turned up to tell us our votes actually matter. BUT. How the fuck does he get to park his dirty great bus on the Blackheath one-way system without getting a ticket ? Surely this is a politcal scandal of Profumo magnitude. A man of the people? My arse! I haven’t seen any footage of him as Mrs C looking for loose change in the well by the gearstick, then legging it up to the parking meter before the parking wardens slap a post-it to his windscreen.

Blackheath has, I believe (though I’m sure some pedant will put me right) a couple of lads employed as traffic wardens (by whom I know not), beautifully adorned in lurid bright blue uniforms, and woe betide anyone who pops into the newsagents for a lottery ticket of a packet of gaspers. On their return they can consider themselves rather fortuitous if there isn’t a little note pinned under the wiper blades, asking them to cough up. These blokes are swift and determined. One suspects a lucrative bonus scheme is in operation.

And why the hell not? The village is congested enough and the little streets can darely deal with traffic and the legal parkers as it is, let alone that lovely breed of double-parkers who feel the laws don’t really apply to them (but surely not our politicians).

So anyway, Cleggy saves himself a quid or two (he better not claim for it !!!!) and the poor sods in the Everest Inn nepalese restaurant were treated to whopping great photos of Nick and his uncle Vince beaming at them from the back of the bus as they prepared the lamb tikkas and the mismas for today’s punters. There did seem, having studied the photos, a large number of nepalese and/or gurkas cheering Clegg on. I wonder what the connection is? Does he double-tip when he leaves The Saffron ? Do they give him extra After Eights and hot towels ? Does he declare this ?

A pal tells me (and I believe him) that Clegg pledged that, if elected, local hostelries would never again be short of lemons, the introduction of a cap on estate agents in the village, and a unilateral ban on green foam top-hats on St Patrick’s Day. A Blackheath border patrol would limit the numbers of Eltham Nazis coming into the village on a Friday night and standing in my spot at the bar, and he will fund a high-speed bus link to Greenwich (or anywhere else, come to think of it).


You can see what another local lad thought of it all here (he has the slight advantage on me of having actually been there)

Well nice try, Nick, but I’m sticking with Gordon. He pays his parking fees (I’m pretty sure), I could never vote for a Jimmy Carr impersonator and I can’t trust a man in a yellow tie. Last time I wore one was at my wedding, and we know what a balls-up that was !

Gordon Bennett !

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FOR FUCK’S SAKE, GORDON!

DON’T start smiling at old women when they moan about “all these East Europeans”.

DON’T ask her, afterwards, how her grandchildren are and thank her for talking to you.

DON’T smile out of context and wish her a fond farewell.

DON’T carry your radio mic into your car and spout off about what a disaster that was and ranting about what a bigoted old bag she was.

DON’T go onto a prime-time radio show and hold your head in your hands when they playback the tape of what you said in the car.

DON’T THEN go back to that bigoted old woman and apologise (in private) to her about what the press told her you said.

DON’T THEN come out of her house and tell the massed hacks (again, smiling out of context) that you “misunderstood what she said”

AND DON’T keep looking like a PRAT.

DO tell old bags like this, TO HER FACE, that she IS a bigoted old woman, if that’s what you think, and that a socialist (small ‘s’) society has no time for views like hers and that you’re sure the BNP will enjoy her support.

DO tell her to stop reading the The Mail, the The Express and The Sun

DO explain what European immigration has done for the economy and why the ebb and flow of immigration benefits us all.

AND DO stop telling people what you think they want to hear, NOT what you what you actually believe in.

AND DO get rid of the arseholes who are currently advising you on this Oozalum campaign of yours.

THEN you will definitely get my vote.

But for Christ’s sake give me a decent excuse. I’m trying my best, mate !

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I’m All Wrong, Jack

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I read with interest that they’re going to let cyclists travel the wrong way up a one-way street. Brilliant! I have enough problems crossing the road and avoid being mowed down by these bastards as it is, never mind getting rammed up the arse by one of them cos I was looking the wrong way. No, I’m not gonna start again, I have nothing more to add to what’s gone before (see previous rants) . Suffice to say I am considering buying a Renault and may be Piquet-ing myself across the road should I see any of the lycra fascists peddling towards me against the traffic. I’m not sure if Lewisham council employs a safety car, perhaps they can buy one out of the cash from all the parking tickets they dish out around Blackheath. Hurrumph.

16_09_2009 - 17.15.10 - TIMNEWS - mail_unknown

I don’t know why I am surprised at this news as I have the feeling I’ve been looking the wrong way at life in general for some time. It’s all gone a bit how’s yer father, hasn’t it?: The Tories, if and when they get in, are gonna make massive defence cuts, while the Labour Party are attacking the BBC and wanting to “cut it down to size”. How are we supposed to know who to vote for (or indeed if)? Gordon’s been trying to please all sides for two years now and managed to please no-one. Osbourne enrages his natural allied voters by dropping schemes for aircraft carriers and fighters, while Bob Ainsworth (yes, isn’t he?) wants more nukes.

Under this supposedly socialist (small ‘s’) government, nothing is built without private money sticking it’s snout in, the poorest are still getting a kicking by the tax man and Gordon Brown courts big business and tabloid newspapers for their support next election (small ‘chance’). I was once at a press awards ceremony when the then Chancellor Gordon appeared, live by satellite, to laud praise on Paul Dacre, the editor of The Daily Mail. That’s The Editor of The Daily Mail. I felt distinctly bilious, it nearly put me off my champagne and canapes. The writing was on the wall there-and-then. Blair had already wooed The Sun and here was his McHenchman cuddling up the The Mail. Stone me.

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Time was when you knew who was who and where you stood. Tories cut taxes to save their rich mates, Labour upped the rate to pay for schools, health and a cheese sandwich and a warm bottle of light ale for any passing Trades Unionist. Unelected Peers were given seats in Tory Governments, while the honest working man rose up through the (elected) ranks to become a lowly, humble, under-paid Labour MP. What now?:Baroness Mandelson even ran the country for a brief period this summer with four fewer votes than Hamid Karzai raised in Afghanistan (none).
Back in the day public spending soared under a Labour administration and those of us on the right (or is it left) side-of-the-tracks were happy to pay more for the common good. Tories would hack away at the Welfare State and sod anyone who couldn’t afford private hospitals or education. They defended and invested in the military and weaponry and invaded anyone who so much as look at us in a funny way, while Labour cut the Services budget, were the party of Ban The Bomb…and invaded anyone who so much as looked at us in a funny way.

And bikes rode the correct way up the street.

During the war….