Great Fantastic Smashing

Morrisey is looking increasingly like Jim Bowen, don't you think? How long before my gay friends start having Bullseye parties instead of gathering around recordings of the Eurovision Song Contest.....

For The Benefit Of Mr Kite

And the other reader who is not referred to me via Guido, to whom I stupidly offered this little missive, here is wot I reckon the Sun should have wrote about the Budget...

TOFFS' TIPPLE DUTY FROZEN

By Stalin's Gran-Watson

Gordon Brown continued Labour's sucking up to the boss class in his Budget yesterday by freezing the duty on champagne.

Toffs will pay the same for their tipple as before - but the working man was hit with big rises in the cost of beer and fags.

Quaffing his "champers" from a crystal glass, smoking a large cigar and wearing a top hat while grinding the faces of the poor into the dust, Sir Richard Croesus, boss of Amalgamated Amalgamations, the international amalgamations firm, boasted to the Sun: "I've always been Labour, old boy!"

Well, it made Paul Linford laugh.

A Bellyfull Of Sugar

I was nailed to the sofa after a few bottles of Belorussan Pinot Noir (not bad after the first two) late last night and caught something which appeared to involve Alan Sugar shouting at young people. I assume it was on BBC15 or something because, I now learn, it was first broadcast last week. At least a wine bottle falling over had not switched the TV to Channel People's Porn or XXX Amateur Factory Workers as it often does. Apparently, the programme was about business or something similar and called the Apprentice. Anyway, despite my befuddled state, I soon realised what a terrible, terrible thing this was. First, what does Alan Sugar (Sugar, Schmugar, I say) know anyway? Amstrad were crap, weren't they? Secondly, the young people concerned (who all seemed to be called things like Syed, or Mani, or Strange Girl With Big Tits, although that one could have been just in my mind) were clearly all knobheads. Today, Sugar is in trouble in the Mail for saying his televisual school of bearded Jewish capitalism and East End aggression was not a Further Education college "where dumbkopfs come to learn to make mistakes". As the Mail helpfully points out, his new computer firm, Viglen (is that crap as well?), supplies a great many FE colleges. He has been complained about by no less a body than the Association of Colleges. Quite right too. Git.
But I digress. This programme is a disgrace. It promotes the vacuous, meaningless, management-speak culture in which we are now forced to live and which has if anything been encouraged by this poor excuse for a Labour government. The knobheads all described themselves as "management consultants" or some such bullshit, but they could not appear to work out that if you sell a piece of pizza for less than it costs to produce it, you are not going to make money. Even I know that and I think a command economy is cutting edge stuff. Now it might be said that such a programme is actually exposing the ridiculousness of these people, but I fear that may be just false consciousness on my part. In fact the very idea that these appalling wannbes have to give up their proper job (its amazing - actually, perhaps not - that they have ones) to compete for Sugar's approval and a job with the multi-millionaire for a whole £100,000 is capitalism run riot. Add to that the modern media culture where this is entertainment and you have a society gone absolutely mad.

I Am Smoking A Fag (Why Rod Liddle Should Be A Tosser But Isn't)

A lot of people seem to thing Rod Liddle is a bit of a tosser, and it is true that as he gets older he seems perversely to be trying to look more and more like Bob Geldof. At least you can't see the earring any more because of the unkempt, over-long grey hair. But, whatever, he becomes an Honorary Hero of the People for his remarkable appearance on Sky News last night. Somehow, Rod had persuaded Murdoch's televisual minions a) to have someone more interesting on than the usual b-list, brain-dead zombies from the Times and the Sun, ie himself, and b) to allow him to be interviewed in a Westminster pub. As I was in a pub myself at the time, I could not hear a word he said, but I am sure it was good. Anyway, there he was having what I assume was a verbal dust-up with John Lloyd of the New Statesman, when clearly it is signalled by the interviewer that it is Lloyd's turn to speak. Rod, not realising that the screen has been split rather than being filled entirely by Lloyd, reaches nonchalantly forward, grabs a fag, lights it and takes a big draw. A scene unlike anything seen since the 1960s, when interviewees used to puff away freely throughout the programme; and do you know, back then, not one single TV studio burned down? Rod's actions, however, have clearly stunned the producer/cameraman who is aware that Rod is still on view to however many people actually watch Sky when James Rubin isn't on (that was a joke). A hand is seen waggling at Rod in a "what the bloody hell are you doing, you can't smoke on telly" sort of way. Rod thinks for a second, then smirks and takes another puff. A medal for the man, please.

Anatole Kaletsky: What Does He Do? And Why?

Never has the word "tosser" been more cleartly defined than by this patronising, pathetic, arrogant bleat in the Times that their alleged economics guru can't buy nice bread any more. Trees died for that. In vain.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1061-2087780,00.html