Most Superfluous Notice Of The Week

Evening Standard, comment section, page 12: "Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is away."

It Asda Be A Joke

In 1992, a senior correspondent on a national newspaper earned, I am told, around £40,000. Someone of my acquaintance has just taken a job on a national newspaper, in a specialist role, for £35,000. 14 years later. Now, that is more than a lot of people, but that is not the point. Even underestimating inflation, the £40,000 would now be £60,000. Clearly someone, somewhere, is having a laugh. I think we know who it is. The Asda-isaton of our society continues apace. There is nothing wrong, on the surface, with low prices, or low wages if they still give spending power. After all, it is all relative. The first packet of fags I ever bought cost 37.5 of your new pence. However, this concept will always be skewed in favour of the boss class. Low prices, they say, mean lower wages are acceptable. But the gap is inherently biased against the worker/consumer. Not to mention the child making trainers in China or Bangladesh. Something for three pounds is expensive if you only have £150 a week to pay for everything. In America, $30,000 dollars is considered to be a middle class salary, which even there is arrant rubbish. Anyway, back to the newsroom. We all know the printers were bastards, particularly the National Graphical Association president, a Mr M. Mouse, and his deputy, Mr B. Bunny, but I am sure you will recognise the phrase that if you tolerate this, your children will be next. And, my scrbbling friends, they have been.

Doctor Fucking What

I am fucking seething. I am angry beyond words. I cannot articulate my fucking fury. But I will. I have just watched the latest episode of Doctor Who several days late, thanks to Mr Rupert Murdoch's Sky + systemy thingy. What a pile of shite. How dare they do this? I have loved the new series but suddenly whoever this twat is who used to write Shameless, who has grandly written this episode about a bunch of Doctor Who fans, taking the piss, diverts it into a post-modernist ironic load of bollocks. Do not take the piss, you useless gay twat. Sorry, generally. Bollocks, bollocks, bollocks. Oh sorry, politics.....shit I can't be bothered.

Do I Really Need To Say Anything?

From Alastair Campbell via the capitalist interweb thingy:

Tomorrow England kick off their World Cup campaign. And you can follow their progress on Labour's website with myself and Sadiq Khan, MP for Tooting. Sadiq and I will be watching all the drama and excitement from Germany and will be blogging exclusively on the site. You never know... there might even be a bit of politics along the way. Please join us online and send in your comments. We'd be delighted to hear your views.
Labour.org.uk/worldcup
Alastair Campbell , one of Labour's World Cup bloggers

Re views: bet you wouldn't.

Two Jags Three Shags Two Dinners

John Prescott in Newcastle. Surrounded by his security men from London in a curry restaurant in the centre of town. Outside are the local plod, alert as ever to any violent mobs demanding he stop shagging his secretaries or playing croquet. The London rozzers shepherd the great man out of the restaurant, he having demolished a platter of rogan josh, pilau rice, vegetable curry and all the usual accoutrements. "Where we going sir?" says local plod. "Back to the hotel?" "Nah mate," says Bodie or possibly Doyle, the guys with the big bulges in their jackets. "Know a good Italian? He wants a pizza now." Tis true, promise.

I Really Like John Reid, I Really Do, Honest

John Reid, the newly appointed Home Secretary, has my deep and unalloyed admiration, he really does. Not only has he gone into the Home Office, his 27th Cabinet job in as many years or something, and told them they are all a bunch of cunts, which is palpably true, but he is an old Stalinist tankie of the first order. "Red" Reid does not mess about, and is just the comrade to supply the sort of smack of firm Government that this country needs. Thank heavens he does not drink, and is no longer the man who once consumed possibly 10 whisky and lemonades at lunch. And no food. The lemonade, I think, was a very stylish touch. And his deep admiration for the Bosnian Serb freedom fighter Radovan Karadzic (whereabouts, I believe, still unknown - I'd suggest starting at John's house - if they can find a sliver of cannbis, they can find a large former pyschiatrist, surely?) is something that can only affirm one's awe for the man's judgement. If only he would rename the Home Office the Ministry of the Interior (MiniTer) then we could all certainly sleep safer in our beds. A friend of mine once asked Red John what attracted him first to his new-ish South American wife, apart from the raunchy films she auteuresses. "Her ahss", he replied, at which my pal leaned round and had a look, opining, "Yeah it is quite nice, actually". A fellow Scot broke in to say, in a mock-English accent : "He said her eyes, ya fucking twat."

All Men Are Rapists

In a "refurbished" Central London pub last night, cheap wood and brown paint, with those awful laminated menus on every table offering fish n chips and nachos "to share", with bar staff who seem puzzled by the concept of actually pouring a full pint, I had occasion, as you do, to use the gentlemen's conveniences. Walking past the obligatory condom machine, I noticed it was plastered with official messages, a bit like cigarette packets are now since the European Union put cancer in tabs. Under the coin slot was the exhortation "Don't put it in unless you have permission", and I don't think it meant the £2 coin. Although it may have been a knowing, post-modern, ironic joke, and very funny for it. Further down potential purchasers were warned "Intercourse without permission can lead to prison ". More direct and thanks for the reminder. Now, this is fucking (oh, the sparkling wordplay) ridiculous. One minute we are all supposed to carry condoms in case we give eachother unpleasant, or indeed life-threatening, diseases. The next minute we are being warned only to buy condoms if the partner in question has signed a formal, legally-binding agreement to sexual intercourse on the back of a beermat. Fortunately, being out with work colleagues and not being John Prescott, this was not a dilemma I faced on this particular evening. However, it made me think how totally ridiculous things have become. Personally, I believe the relationship between the sexes is more open than it has been for a long time. Perhaps it is because I am ageing rapidly, but in my youth political correctness (not the nonsense liberal PC of nowadays, but true political correctness) seemed to mean that nobody could make a move. That, thank fuck (see what I did there again?) has passed into history. But to start putting warnings about rape on a condom machine is such arrant nonsense that I would claim to have been left speechless if I had not spent the last few minutes writing this. Have you ever heard of a rapist who fumbled around for change for the johnny machine first? I really don't think so. It is, as ever, a mad world, my masters.

Down Among The Z Men

Alternatively, out and about with the halt and the lame. I had occasion, further details of which you will not want to know, to visit my doctor this week in deepest South London. Now, for historical reasons, this is my doctor - but his practice is in a part of the capital which I would not normally choose to visit except in a very fast car. Which was not going to stop. It is not that it is dangerous, or even particularly diverse. It is just shit. And what stunned me, in the mid-morning time when I was there, was the horror of what must be daily life for the bulk of the population. Strip away all those who were at work (probably not as many as we are led to believe), and you are left with people either wearing hoodies and don't-fuck-with-me expressions or those needing some sort of aid with which to ambulate. Sticks, frames, prams containing the future people using sticks and frames. The third world with a veneer of semi-civilisation. Children pushing children probably 15 or 16 years younger than they are and to whom they have recently given birth. Get on a bus and you enter a Breughel-like hell of disability, despair and pain. I tell you, I had to give my suit a particularly vigorous brushing afterwards. Oh, and Tony, I thought things could only get better?

A Right Hash Of It

John Reid is a bit of a folkie who is no bad hand with an acoustic guitar. Cool in a kaftan as well, perhaps. And is there anything else they would like to get off their chests?

It's Been A Bad Week For The Government

But will things be looking a little rosier for them, and particularly for John Prescott, by the weekend? Not if a lot of people working hard right now have anything to do with it......

My Telly Blew Up Last Night

No, honest, it did. There I was watching 1973, the Rock and Roll Years, on Sky+ from last week or thereabouts, and Bryan Ferry is singing In Every Home A Heartache, which was quite prescient of him bearing in mind the dickhead his son turned out to be, and the f..king thing goes bang and smoke starts pouring out. I did not think they (ie TVs) were supposed to do that anymore. I thought they were supposed to quietly expire and then take themselves down to the recycling centre or whatever and be gently made into plastic pots and Dell computers. But no, this one went out with a, er, bang. And smoke. Now I have to buy a new one. Bastard capitalists.

I Have Been Told Off For Swearing

.......by a number of my co-respondents who feel that occasionally this blog goes too far on the toilet-tongued end of things. Henceforth readers, I hope, will recognise the following abbreviations.
MCW means middle class wankers.
FLC means fucking Labour cunts.
TFD means Tory fucking dickheads.
And Who? means the Liberal Democrats.

As for the BNP, I cannot begin to express it. Although I think the word Nobhead might be involved.

The Big Apple

I am sitting here with the iPod routed throught the stereo listening to a stream of allegedy random music but which does not seem to be. The iPod on shuffle seems to automatically theme, ie you get a stream of 70s, then a stream of 80s etc. Don't really do 90s meself. And the point about iPods is that they go wrong. Mine goes wrong if I try to listen to it through headphones but works fine in my palatial home, apart from the streaming bit. Is this a matter to do with using Windows? Dunno. But the point is that how much are we prepared to let these massive corporations - and Apple, though allegedly hip cool or whatever the street word is, is a massive corporation - rule our lives? They want us to download their music so we don't really own it except through them. And then their stuff doesn't work. So we have to buy a new one. Now I do not want to return to the age of 78s but at least you had it in your hand.

Go On, Ask Him Why He Looks 14

The Europe Minister, Mr Dougie Alexander, has graciously consented to answer questions from the plebs by means of the British Broadcasting Corporation. Tony and Gordon have let him out of school specially.

From the BBC website: "What do you want to know about the European Union?
More than 60 per cent of people surveyed in the UK do not understand the workings of the EU.Initial findings of a study carried out by Eurobarometer on behalf of the European Commission also found people want more information. The minister for Europe, Douglas Alexander MP, will answer your questions on BBC News 24 at 1130bst on Thursday 13 April. What would you like to know about the EU? Do you have a question about how it is structured, staffed or funded and how it affects your life? Send you question for the minister by clicking the button below. This debate will be available on the website later in the day."

Who Do You Love?

Fantastic piece today in Private Eye - despite the fact that they are a bunch of middle class wankers - about the Blair-Brown local government launch love-in. The cheeseyness of it, the pathetic attempts at orchestration, the sheer self-delusion of the main players, which all shows that Blair still has not realised he must simply fuck off and quickly and Brown thinks the people will love him. He must be mad. They will hate him for his detachment, his stealth taxes, his creepy bachelorhood, his terminal gaucheness and his eventual catalogue bride. And the people charged with organising that fiasco (the local goverment launch I mean) all think they are professionals, do they? The Lib Dems and the Tories must be creaming themselves. Professional is not being seen doing it. Ask Charlie Whelan, and mention the Red Lion. Lib Dems again. Also loved the tale of Ian Kirby, alleged political editor of the News of the World, being called in to interview the ridiculous pair and hearing Dave "Over the" Hill, press secretary or something apparently, instructing Tone and Gord to talk to eachother as Kirby approached. Play nice, children, eh? Blair is a vacuous self-seeking wannabe popstar and future celebrity who should have been in Coldplay and hijacked the party of the people, betrayed a generation who yearned for a Labour government under Thatcher and is prepared to get in bed with Bush and Berlusconi. Gordon Brown is a man who makes David Miliband look interesting. Give me Alan Milburn any time. And I hate to say it, but give me call me Dave? Also, the only good thing about David Hill is he is not Alastair Campbell. Which is probably why Campbell effectively sacked him before Hill returned. Still, I wonder how the Kirby story got into Private Eye. Kirby, who has not had a real story in his entire NoW career, was probably boasting in the Press Gallery, and some dreadful snitch told it on. Poor soul. Still, he can always commission another poll. That will give him a story. I hate to say this as an alleged blogger, but the quality of political reporting in the newspapers is at an all-time low compared to what you can find with the judicial use of a mouse (and I do not include myself in that). What a load of bollocks, and if you think that means I do not have any answers, so what. I would not have started from here.

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