Day 3481: Hard Labour Gets an "F"

Tuesday:


So Harriet the Harminator suggested that Hard Labour's Election Campaign be brought to you by the letter "F"*.

Oh, how quickly Hard Labour went from DOWNING STREET to SESAME STREET.

Let's look at all the MUPPETS: there's Oscar the Grouch in Number 10; his predecessor as self-styled superstar Miss Piggy; the Millipede podlings are so Bert and Ernie; Lord Prescott of Flummery just IS Cookie Monster; and Mr Mandelbrot is the Count Von Count. At least I THINK they said "count"!

And… HOLY CREPE SUZETTE is that Lord Mandelbrot appearing as the Prince of Darkness in his own fairy tales???

Once Upon a Time…



[Rubs button eyes!]

The King Who Couldn't Smile…



If REALITY has a FOURTH WALL I think it's just been BROKEN!


Yes, this is the news – if you can call it "news" when we've already read all of this in Mr Andrew Yawnsly's "The End of the Party" – from the former First Lord of Everything Else that all was not cute and fluffy in the Hard Labour bunker.

Other "revelations" include that Captain Clegg told Mr Frown he had to go, and that Lord Blairimort thought Mr Frown was "mad, bad, dangerous and beyond redemption".

Lord Blairimort himself – busy between bouts of getting paid millions of pounds writing his own book, "The Journey" (no doubt destined for the "romantic fiction" shelves) – is said to have been FURIOUS at being GAZUMPED by his former spin doctor and is alleged to have tried to pull strings to get Mr Mandelbrot's book dropped, thus totally disproving any stories about him STEWING in IMPOTENT FURY and then DOING NOTHING.

None of which has prevented the Former First Fractal from getting his retaliation in first in "The Times". We can't link to his serialisation because it's behind the firewall; that's not Murdoch – it's the flaming River Phlegethon that wards entry to the Seventh Circle of HELL!

Lord Blairimort's OTHER hired killer media spokesperson, Mr Alistair Henchman, has been QUICK to open his OWN diaries claiming that these REFUTE the word of the Dark Lord. These of course would be the same diaries where the entry for 24 September 2002 reads:

"absolutely did not sex up any dossiers today"

So, a totally credible historical document there, I think we all agree.

And I am SURE that Lord Mandelbrot will have appreciated the suggestion that he should have cleared his diaries past Mr Henchman before publication in the spirit in which it was offered.

Of course, the MAIN fallout from these radioactive reminiscences has been the response from all the candidates to inherit the Crown of Frown (slightly dented; it may have been thrown across the room). Finally, the infamous five have something to unite them. As well they might. After all, as Mr Yawnsly himself points out, they're all implicated up to their eyebrows.

Well, except from Ms Diane Abbott-and-Portillo. Though as Hopi Sen – the "Iain Dale you've never heard of" of the Labour movement – puts it:

"She was not up to her neck in the battles of the Blair-Brown era […] She was up to her neck in the battles of the Kinnock era instead."

That's "hypocritical", "fratricidal" and "past it", all in one put down; finally someone on the left with a grasp of "economy".


I really AM going to have to stop shooting these fish in a barrel and talk about some of the RUBBISH things that my own side are doing – stares hard at the Home Office, and the gap where funds for the Green Investment Bank are supposed to be, and the VAT rate – but you just CAN'T pass up material like this!

PS:

*Insert your own jokes here. Mr Alistair Dalek certainly did.

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Day 3394: Could Labour Go Bankrupt?

Sunday:


So Mr Frown wants to talk MORAL BANKRUPTCY?


As Ms Sandy Topsywig announced on the News Quiz, Nick Clegg received 61% public support after Thursday's debate and goes on to play Dorothy in the West End

As for Mr Balloon, only the LORD can save him now!

But the big loser was Mr Frown.

If Hard Labour CRASH in the polls, why would Unions pour good money after bad?

After Iraq we all KNOW that it's Hard Labour who're MORALLY BANKRUPT. After "no more boom and bust" we KNOW that they're INTELLECTUALLY bankrupt. But might they go ACTUALLY bankrupt?

What are the states of the Parties finances?

Well, we'll know just in time for the election, because the Electoral Commission have promised to report on the first quarter 2010 by 4th May, i.e. two days before.

But we CAN look at the end of December 2009.

Hard Labour owed over £16.8 million pounds, including £4.9 million (29%) to the Co-operative bank and another £1.7 million (10%) to the Unity Trust Bank. Almost all the rest of Hard Labour's debt (£8.8million or 52%) is made up of six loans from individuals at a million or two million pounds each, and all at the slightly odd-looking interest rate of "0% until 31st July 2010 then 6.5%"

This compares with the Conservatories who owed over £14.4 million pounds, of which £10 million was owed to three private banks, and another million – at least according to the Grauniad – to Lady Rothchild through a front company, Ironmade Ltd.

While the Liberal Democrats only have debts of a frugal £1.4 million, mostly a million pound loan from – ironically – the Royal Bank that We Own of Scotland. ("Ironically" because if we DID end up in Government we'd probably have to repay that to avoid a conflict of interest!)

So the serious question is, how can Hard Labour continue to fund its borrowings?

The Banks certainly WON'T pull the plug DURING a general election campaign. Because Labour could tell them to get STUFFED. Just about the ONLY thing that might restore Hard Labour's flagging fortunes would be if they could announce a "conspiracy of bankers" threatening to "steel the election".

But what happens afterwards?

The two Labservative Parties notoriously waste a huge gush of cash during general elections in the hope that they can recoup the money from kickbacks generous donations from faithful supporters in interested industries after the election.

And can anyone see ANY other way out of the HOLE that Hard Labour have dug for themselves than going begging to the Unions?

But just one of the Liberal Democrat's pledges for a new, fair, clean politics is to introduce a limit of £10,000 for donations to political Parties. Leaving Hard Labour with NO WAY OUT.

The INTEREST alone on a one million pound loan at 6.5% amounts to £65,000 – so Hard Labour's donor loaners wouldn't even be able to waive the interest payments!

(And it’s their own fault – we TRIED to negotiate limits to donations but the other Parties weren't having it!)

Hard Labour are DESPERATE to avoid REFORM of politics. Because it will RUIN them.

This weekend, the First Lord of Darkness waltzed into the struggle with some good old Labservative attacks on the Liberal Democrats – claims we're soft on immigrants (yes, the Conservatories are trying that one too), claims that Britain needs a Strong Government not a Hung Parliament (yes, the Conservatories are trying that one too), claims that a Hung Parliament gives disproportionate power to a third Party… look, Lord Mandelbrot, our PRINCIPLES say that you deserve a fair hearing even though you are in third.

But then he tells us that only one Party is "offering the real deal – radical reform of the Commons and Lords and the chance to vote for a new, fairer voting system" except he follows this with the HILARIOUSLY INSANE assertion that it's the LABOUR Party!

Forgive me, I may damage my stuffing if I laugh much harder.

Seriously, it's just politics when he says the Liberal Democrats will cut tax credits – I mean, it's NICE that Hard Labour want to waste money giving tax credits to the better off while making the lowest earners pay an increase in NI, but Liberal Democrats want to make the tax system FAIR and give a tax cut to millions of low- and middle-income earners.

It's just politics when he says that the Liberal Democrats will cut the child trust fund – I mean, it's NICE that Hard Labour want to waste money on a tiny gift to people when they turn eighteen, but Liberal Democrats want to spend that money on a Pupil Premiums for kids who need it when they need it most.

And it's just politics when he says that the Liberal Democrats would give an amnesty to illegal immigrants – I mean, it's NICE that Hard Labour want to leave people to ROT or to be TRAPPED in the underground jobs market on slave wages or in prostitution, but Liberal Democrats want to give them the chance to EARN their citizenship and to CONTRIBUTE to Britain through working and paying taxes.

As for claiming that the country needs "strong government"? Don't make me laugh any more! It is thirty years of "strong" Thatcherite Labservative Government that got us into this mess in the first place!

But saying that Hard Labour is the Party offering REFORM.

You had THIRTEEN YEARS – if you meant it, you'd have done it by now!


Hard Labour are ALREADY BANKRUPT – morally, intellectually, and by the looks of it financially.

They've already flogged off Transport House. But never mind their Headquarters, Hard Labour sold their SOULS to buy their way in to power – they've got nothing left to mortgage.

It's just another shocking twist of this election: that a Party that hasn't been bought and bribed might suddenly break through.

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Day 3148: Pillock's Progress aka Mandy v Gideon round deux

Friday:


This week Master Gideon dabbled with a new philosophy: he said that the Conservatories are the "progressive party" now.

"Progressive" means "wanting things to CHANGE", but I'm sorry, Mr Oboe, just wanting "a change from the current lot" doesn't really count.

"Progressive" is the OPPOSITE of "conservative", wanting things to stay as they ARE or HOW THEY USED TO BE.

So "Progressive Conservatives" OUGHT to be the very definition of an OXYMORON. An OXYMORON is, of course, an IDIOT from one of THOSE universities. Which, come to think of it, ought to be the very definition of Master Gideon…



In POLITICS "progressive" usually means wanting the GOVERNMENT to effect change while "conservative" means wanting the Government to impede or reverse change.

Look how much of the LANGUAGE of Conservatories harks BACKWARDS to some (usually-imaginary) Golden Age, whether it's the 'Fifties (before all that "permissiveness"), or the Age of Empire (before all that "European Union") or from "bring back Matron" to good old Victorian Values.

The notion that Master Gideon and the Conservatories are "conservative" goes back even further to the idea of what they are FOR, namely: to preserve, defend, entrench and generally stop anyone else getting their hands on the POWER and PRIVILEGE of those who are already very, very RICH, starting with the King (specifically Charles II).

Bringing this right up to date, Master Gideon's ONLY tax policy (that we know of) is the tax cut for dead millionaires. This is "preserving the privilege of the already-haves 101" and people are QUITE RIGHT to call him on it.

So far so very mildly-amusing: look how the young Oboe makes a fool of himself AGAIN.

But there is clearly something about Master Gideon that brings Lord Mandelmort out of the woodwork; he just can't help rising to the bait. And so it was this week, as the First Prince of Darkness felt compelled to respond in the Grauniad.

"Crass political cross-dressing", he called it – and remember, Lord Mandelmort has seen Master Oboe in the cabaret on board Russian Billionaire Oleg Deeply-Suspect's yacht.

Lord Mandelmort and Master Gideon.

You know that bit in King Kong, where the giant ape fights a T-Rex? Sinister pre-historic reptile versus heroic gorilla? This isn't like that at all.

It's more like the bit in Jurassic Park where the T-Rex finds the rubbishy lawyer quivering on the loo and swallows him whole.

(Credit, in passing, to Mr Evan Davis of the The Today Programme, for trying gamely to get Lord Mandy to answer the question during their interview on Wednesday. Unlike some of his co-presenters, Mr Evan was not trying to get his interviewee to say some "thing that he wanted them to say" – presumably to then spring an "ah ha!" gotcha – but instead he had a genuine question and wanted a proper answer. And since the question was "now that you've got us a trillion pounds in debt, how are Hard Labour going to pay it off?", which is quite a GOOD question, it was certainly one deserving of an answer. Not that he got one. Lord Mandy is just as frustrating to interview as Master Oboe, only much, much cleverer at not looking like a total spork.)

But just how "progressive" are Hard Labour, anyway? Saying that they've poured billions into schools and the National Health Service isn't actually "progressive": we HAD those things under Queen Maggie too. Hard Labour is just doing the same but paying for it.

So what have they actually CHANGED?

Well in the PLUS column, there has been genuine devolution to the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and power-sharing executive in Northern Ireland. We've had the Human Rights Act, which more people ought to say is a GOOD thing. At the point of a European Union gun we've had some equal rights for gay daddies.

But, in the MINUS column, we've had special rights for RELIGIONS and a huge increase in FAITH schools: that's handing a lot of power BACK to one of the OLDEST PRIVILEGES in town, divine right and never mind the king!

The power of a TINY minority in the PRESS, in particular the Emperor of the Airwaves, Mr Roger Stavro Moredick, has been amplified more than ever before, and the ITV companies have been allowed to merge Shoggoth-like into a single massive loss-making entity, while the only institution standing between us and the full Faux News – the BBC, yes I get the irony – gets SPANKED at every opportunity.

We've seen a freezing of social mobility thanks to an education policy biased to the privileged and a yanking up of the ladder after all those cabinet ministers who benefitted from a free university place.

We've seen some very, very highly overpaid bankers have their jobs saved at the cost of trillions of pounds, and we've seen some very, very averagely paid workers made redundant rather than save their electric van plant or windmill factory.

And by far the BIGGEST change they've effected, from section 44 of the Terrorism Act to the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and all the rest, is a MASSIVE entrenchment of the powers of the state to spy on, arrest, abuse and generally intimidate its citizens. That's a really, REALLY big "preserving powers of the already powerful".

Oh, and of course we fought an illegal war that reduced a Middle Eastern country to the Stone Age at the whim of a pampered billionaire playboy who just happened to have bought and cheated his way into the Presidency of the richest nation on the face of the Earth. Well done on sticking to the progressive principles there, boys.


The old left-right axis has always been about "privileges for the privileged". The "right" believe that the privileged few who control the usually-inherited wealth know best and should be in charge. The "left" believe that the privileged few who control the State's central committee know best and should be in charge…


…which – daytime TV link – reminds me, Lawrence Miles (read it before he deletes it) has an actually-positive review of the recent series of Torchwood, though in his usual style he finds a way to be abrasively confrontational about saying so.

However, in the middle he goes into a MIND-SHATTERINGLY ill-informed rant about what he perceives as the "evils of Liberalism"©theLarryverse:

"…there's a difference between "left-wing" and "liberal". To be a liberal means to believe that tolerance is good and global warming is bad, but also to believe that you can save the world simply by not using the word "poof". S/he may have good intentions, but doesn't seem to appreciate that all the things s/he considers to be civilised - democracy, universal suffrage, the right to exist without having the shit kicked out of you for having long hair or skin that's a bit on the dark side - were achieved through the effort of rather more pro-active people, who fought and occasionally died in order to create a less appalling version of humanity. To be a liberal means to shield yourself from the full horror of your society, to have a veneer of civic responsibility while still approving of a system that's wholly founded on exploitation. Tennant-era Doctor Who is liberal."

It's difficult to grasp how someone normally so well-informed and erudite can be so gob-smackingly wide of the mark here.

Yes, there IS a difference between "left-wing" and "liberal", it's just that you have absolutely no idea what it is, or indeed what you are talking about or, for that matter, the history of the country you are living in.

"Left wing" means a belief that capital should be controlled by a (presumed benign) central state. "Liberal" means a rejection of arbitrary authority, whether based on heredity, religious mandate, inherited wealth, or "happening to be in government".

Scary Charlotte (now with even scarier kittens!) could NEVER be described as "left-wing", but she is CLEARLY a Liberal.

But to fisk this clause by clause:

"to believe that you can save the world simply by not using the word "poof". "

– that would be "political correctness" a not-actually-bad notion (assuming such a thing was not wholly made up by the Hate Mail just so that people could claim "it's political correctness gone mad") that being POLITE to people would result in a "less appalling version of humanity", but definitely a "leftist" notion rooted mainly the alternative comedy of the early 'Eighties (who, ironically, felt that racism was beyond the, pardon me, pale and so had to make jokes about homosexuality instead – if you don't believe me, try watching the terribly "right on" first episode of "Black Adder II" again).

"democracy, universal suffrage, the right to exist etc, etc, unlimited rice-pudding…"

– well bless my muffins, who was it who brought in all those great Reform Acts in the nineteenth century? Who campaigned for religious tolerance for Catholics and Jews? Who invented the pension? Who wrote the People's Budget? Who came up with the idea of the NHS?

And if it comes to "fighting and dying" for a better kind of humans you can only possibly mean World War Part Two, and frankly that was ALL of us in it together, Liberal, Conservatory, Labour, probably not Sir Oswald's lot, I certainly don't recall that War being a "leftists only" affair.

Or perhaps you think that the Marches against Fascism in the East End were only leftists? That the campaign against Apartheid wasn't led by the Young Liberals (yes, even Mr Vain)? That the Stonewall Riots were fought by Marxists and not a bunch of drag queens?

Basically HOW DARE YOU, how dare you deny the others who fight and die and then condemn them because you claim they weren't there. They were there. And you were not.


"To be a liberal means to shield yourself from the full horror of your society, to have a veneer of civic responsibility while still approving of a system that's wholly founded on exploitation"

– whereas to be a "leftist" is to claim credit for all the advances ever made while denying any responsibility for the actions of your party, the Labour Party, and whine on the sidelines doing nothing, claiming that you are being a realist about the system while still fully taking advantage of it. It is to be a hypocrite.

All of us in this country are part of the "system" that at least in part contributes to exploitation in other countries. It's not just shopping at Primark – how easy it is to scorn the poor in this country for their impact on the far more poor abroad – your bank, your telephone company, your local council, any of them may have shifted call centres or supply offices overseas to take advantage of cheaper labour. The only people who can truly afford to step out of "the system", grow their own food, make their own clothes, generate their own electricity for the computer on which they post their blogs (and by the way, do you refine your own oil to make the plastic and semi-conductor components?) the only people who can do that are the independently wealthy – i.e. the ones who inherited a fortune and are therefore screwing the rest of us from birth.

Seriously, which philosophy will actually one day help people out of Third World poverty? "Leftist" "don't you worry your pretty little head about it, the State knows best" or Liberal free trade and opportunity? Because every single example everywhere of countries escaping poverty is thanks to Free Trade and not State Intervention.

"Tennant-era Doctor Who is liberal."

– this is supposed to be an insult???

News for you, Larry: HARTNELL era Doctor Who is Liberal: the Sensorites are people, the Rills are the nice ones (crass as that message is), religious intolerance leads to "The Massacre"; Troughton Era Doctor Who is Liberal: "why?" is the unanswerable question for Daleks; Pertwee-era – yes, Lord help us, even the Twepee Era is Liberal: green scaly people are people too; the Baker-era is Liberal; the Davison-era, Liberal; the Baker, McCoy, McGann and Eccleston-era Doctor Who IS ALL Liberal.

You cannot get away from it: the series is ABOUT a person who opposes the arbitrary power of bullies.

He's not ever a "leftist": he doesn't believe in the centralised state. He's not a Conservatory: he RAN AWAY FROM traditional inherited power. Time and time again he is FOR the individual, for science and discovery, for freedom. He's the OPPOSITE of the DALEKS for fluffy's sake. DOCTOR WHO IS A LIBERAL.


Hang on, Larry's got a caveat:

"…much of the previous paragraph was informed by various encounters with Doctor Who authors over the years. Most particularly, an argument with Paul Cornell - Grand Poobah of Liberals and unapologetic Blairite…"

Sorry? You think supporting New Labour makes you a LIBERAL???????????

This can only be the cognitive dissonance speaking: "I am a leftist. Leftist must be GOOD. Labour is EVIL. Labour cannot be leftist. DOESNOTCOMPUTE DOESNOTCOMPUTE Must… pick… term… at… random… Labour are Liberals. Ahhhhhh, brain feel better now."

Words MEAN things, and being in denial about the Labour Party being "of the left" does not give you an excuse to go all Humpty Dumpty on us.


Which, to cut a long story short, brings me back to Master Gideon.

Who would have expected the Shadow Tuck Shop Monitor and the author of "Alien Bodies" to have anything in common, and yet here they both are redefining away to let them feel good about themselves.

"The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They change the facts to fit their opinions."

That's a quote from Doctor Who. Being a Liberal.



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Day 2985: Humility or Humiliation?

Wednesday:


So, it was Mr Frown's big day. He got to address a joint session of both houses of Americaland's congress. This is, apparently, an honour previously only bestowed on two MANIACS, a NOTORIOUS DRUNK and the man who managed to lose a general election despite polling the most votes Hard Labour has ever won.

So he was understandably PEEVED that Chancellor Sooty had another of his inconvenient bouts of HONESTY and said that maybe a little HUMILITY was called for, and maybe the Government should admit to getting a few things WRONG.

"Will I ARSE!" was Mr Frown's reply.

…I PARAPHRASE! Speaking on the The Today Programme, what the Prime Monster ACTUALLY said: "There's always a need for humility and there's always a need to accept collective responsibility."

Before going on to say: "I'm just not going to accept that any of this is MY responsibility." Okay, I made that up too, but it was the ESSENCE of his reply.

"I don't think I would run away from responsibility for what happens," he asserted. Before doing EXACTLY that, blaming the banks, the world economy, the Secret Conspiracy of the Illuminati and the DOG for eating his homework.

"No, no, the sub-prime mortgage lending happened in America, not here," said Mr Frown; "and I think you'll find that ABM Amrose, that was in Holland, not in Great Britain at all. You're not pinning THIS one on me, sonny."

Well, I seem to recall that the Northern Rock – or Northern On the Rocks – managed to gamble and lose on the money markets with no help from anyone. Their business plan relied on cheep lending always being available, overlooking the most basic "interest rates can go up as well as down" rule of banking. And the Halifax managed to get quite heavily into its own sort of sub-prime lending, as the British property market went through the stratosphere like an overheated balloon… right up to the point where the bubble, and the balloon, burst.

But setting aside the geographical quibbles, is it not the case that Mr Frown WAS the man in charge of the economy for the last DECADE? Wasn't he terribly, terribly PROUD of this fact? More to the point, didn't he spend much of that time courting, wooing, positively sucking-up-to and encouraging the banking sector to do pretty much all of the things that got it into so much trouble?

The CULTURE of banking in Great Britain is defined from the top down. It's a culture FERMENTED by the Hard Labour attitude of "being intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich". And it leads to the sort of WILLY-WAVING where "Fred the Shred" is egged on to buy a busted bank just so that he can shout: "Phwoar! Just look at the size of my… pension!"

Later Lord Mandlebrot appeared on the Newsnight show. He was in Washington at the Ambassador's reception – mmm, nice chocolates – but his shadow was able to join Mr Paxo in the studio to defend the Hard Labour record on regulation. Great Britain, he told us, had had excellent regulation, but it was overwhelmed by an unprecedented event. And the airbags worked perfectly until the car crashed too.

Mr Frown does not suffer from an excess of humility. HUBRIS, on the other fluffy foot…

It we are going to LEARN anything from where we've got to after the last ten years, if we are going to build a BETTER FUTURE from the rubble of the economy, then we've got to face up to the mistakes that were made. Too much easy borrowing; too little restraint; too much money spent on useless things, from management consultants to middle-eastern wars; too little investment in returning opportunity to ordinary folks.

It's no good living in DENIAL – you only get BITTEN by de CROCODILES.

It's a pity Mr Frown didn't say THAT to the US Congress.


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Day 2936: Is it just me or are the banks taking over the government?

Wednesday:


Call me old fashioned, but I thought that the banks were now owned by US (i.e. the Great British taxpayer).

But it seems that the directors of OUR banks think that they're going to carry on treating us with the same amount of CONTEMPT with which they usually regard their shareholders.

Far from accepting that they've trollied the economy and now ought to JOLLY WELL DO WHAT THEY ARE TOLD! and help put things right again, it appears that they have to be BRIBED to lend money.

And the Hard Labour Government are so CRAVEN that they'll cough up!

As Mr Dr Vince "the Power" Cable says:


"…the Government seems to lack the bottle to break the banks' lending strike."

The nub of Lord Mandy's wheeze is that he will put up the cash to cover any debts that go bad. So the bank can go ahead and loan out the money, and if the debt goes bad then WE will pay up.

Some people might think that this means that we take all the risk and the bank takes all the reward… and they'd be right!

Of course, the POINT of the plan is to get the banks to do EXTRA lending. But do you think that the crafty bankers are going to go along with that? Or do you suspect (as I do!) that with the right fluffy foot they will extend shiny new loans to get the benefits of the Governments free cash offer, while with the left fluffy foot they are foreclosing on as many loans NOT covered by the guarantee as they can get away with. Net effect: little or no new lending (so no boost to the economy); bankers get mink-lined one way bet.

(Did I say "mink-lined"? "Oooh, that's real cat, Mr Lord Mandy!")

That's the BAD news; the WORSE news is that this is exactly the same as the Conservatories plan. So we know it's not going to work!

Actually, the Conservatories have a fancy claim that THEIR scheme wouldn't cost the taxpayer any money, because they would allow the bank to charge a FEE for the guaranteed loan. Or "charging a higher interest rate" as we used to call it before suggesting that putting up interest rates during a credit crunch became an obvious sign of being a MORON.

Which reminds me… Mr Lord Mandy's new announcement has left young Master Gideon Oboe reduced to whinging that "Hard Labour stole my loan scheme". Welcome to OUR world, Lib-Dem-Policy-stealing Tory-boy!


And now, to add further evidence of a banking takeover, Mr Frown's appointed replacement at the Cabinet table for Lord Pigby Jones is to be… yet another merchant banker.

Never mind poacher turned gamekeeper, surely this is letting the lunatics take over the asylum!


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Day 2835: Egoiste, Obsession or Pure Poison… The Fragrant Mr Mandy Returns

Sunday:


Who leaked the details of THIS conversation?

Well, like Mr Former-Lady-Deputy-Mayor Stephen on the Lib Dem Voice, I hardly think it's a THREE PIPE PROBLEM, Holmes.

So it's lovely to know that Master Gideon can, on the one fluffy foot, be SHOCKED and APPALLED that anyone might reveal a private conversation when it's the one where HE makes himself look a total NANA by telling Mr David "Liberal" Laws to defect to the Conservatories, and yet PERFECTLY HAPPY, on the other fluffy foot, to leak the all the gory details when he's doing the dirty on Mr Mandy Mandelbrot.

"Which Batman Villain Are You dot com" suggests that The Shadow Minister-for-being-less-respected-on-the-economy-than-Mr-Vince-Cable's-comb should look up Harvey TWO-FACE.


As for Mr Mandelbrot, the fractal at the heart of the NuLabour project, he's provoked a huge storm of media interest – and successfully distracted EVERYONE from the question that dominated the summer: "when will Mr Frown resign?" replacing it with a whole NEW question: "when will Mr MANDY resign?"

To be fair – and it is JOLLY DIFFICULT to be fair to Mr Mandy – the reason he's so DIVISIVE is because he is DIVIDED himself. There are really TWO Mr Mandelbrots: there's the one who is the dedicated pro-Free Trade, pro-Europe negotiator who worked enormously hard to make the Northern Ireland deal work when it had very nearly fallen to bits under the Sainted Mo, and who laboured tirelessly to try and make the Dohar Round of the World Trade Talks actually work; and then there's the one who uses his Sith Powers to get the Labour elected for no reason or purpose other than to be in power because "that's where it should be" even though it has completely sacrificed its traditional platform on the altar of a Thatcherite agenda and no longer serves any purpose other than to be the Conservatories-lite.

From Mr Frown's point of view it is PERFECT: he gets a talented operator with super-star charisma (I mean really, when the biggest names in the cabinet before this were Mr Man O'Straw and Mr Buff Hoon, you can see why they needed some of that Ol' Mandelbrot Black Magic*) who will take over the Labour's election campaign (no, Mr Mandy, we really do know that "I'm only going to give a word or two of advice" means "I'll only change one thing: the WORDS"), heal the rift with Lord Blairimort's faction and at the same time replace Mr Frown as "most hated person in the Cabinet".

From Mr Mandy's point of view, though, he gets a peerage (that robe's trimmed with real cat-monster, Mr Mandy) and a seat in the Cabinet for the price of a huge copper lightning rod strapped to his fluffy bottom.

What WAS he thinking?

Apparently he asked Lord Blairimort's advice.

"Yes, I did pray," confirmed Mr Mandy.

Lord B is reported to have said it was a "no-brainer". Presumably he meant you'd have to have NO BRAIN to join Mr Frown's Cabinet but that may have been lost in translation.


As for his OWN thoughts, well my guess is that it is a toss up between: "ooh, lovely guacamole" and "just when WAS the last time the country had a Prime Monster in the Lords?"




*Yes, Mr Sir Cliff sang "Devil Woman" while in fact it was Mr Barry Manilow who sang "Mandy". Make of that what you will.

PS:

Joking aside, get well soon, Mr Mandelbrot!