The Grumpy Old Blog

I love when TV interviews people who go to party political conferences. These people fall into three basic categories: a. Someone who has been elected to something in their party b. Someone who wants to be elected to something in their party c. Someone who is out on institutional day-release to attend the conference 1. The Conservative supporter is inevitably a Jacob Rees Mogg clone, in a four, or even five-piece suit, sounding either like Jacob or otherwise sounding like a Gloucestershire country bumpkin who inevitably needs plugging into a slow-speed charger following the interview. 2. The Labour supporter, usually looking like Dave Spart from Private Eye, has great difficulty in pronouncing basic English words. They use “basically” and “essentially” before each sentence, include a “literally” in the middle, and will happily declare Barbara Castle from the Harold Wilson years as the finest Transport Minister who ever was. This, despite the fact that while she was in real life q...

Just back from performing my civic duty, although I was quite upset to see no Monster Raving Loony Party candidates on the ballot. As you can see from the photo, it didn't get off to a spectacularly good start at the polling station. Presumably, it was a helpful prospective local councillor covering all angles . . . or entrances/exits (there was only one, and that was to the left). Managed to pick up the local pedestrian, as opposed to bus, lunatic on the way. Like a fool, when he asked where I was going, I said "to vote", to which he replied "so am I pal, I'll walk with you". He was full of enlightening and vital information, or as it might otherwise be more correctly termed, conspiracy theories. It was a wonderful list. Unusually for me I just nodded and let him get on with it. The breadth of his knowledge on current affairs was fantastic, albeit in a very Captain Fantastic and the Dirt Brown Cowboy sort of fashion. How people reach such incredible heigh...

Well, to all my dear American friends, I have a suspicion you are shortly going to get the President you deserve. A slight saving grace is that the second term for President Obama has meant there is now not so much of a bar, but more of a skewer to be raised by his successor. On the one hand, one candidate seems to have a continual bad hair day, while the other enjoys a continual bad hair do. That the largest democracy in the world has to choose between Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber, seems to make the human pot-noodle, Kim Jong-un, somewhat of an attractive proposition. Of course we in the UK can't talk. We are in the unenviable position of having a leader of Her Majesty's Opposition akin to a school teacher who, despite being a teacher for the past 30 years, decided some 30 years ago at the start of his teaching career that he hated children. One, for the first time in most of our living memories, who is not referred to as the "Honourable Leader o...

Local election day in the UK, where many Britons head off to the voting station to put an "X" beside the name of someone they don't know representing the political views of a party they know nothing about. And that's just the candidates. Just back myself from the high-tech plywood and nails that I believe is officially called a "polling booth". Plainly the local invigilator must have worked in a bank, as the little voting pencils were very technically Sellotaped to a piece of string in the booth. The iPad generation hasn't enveloped the political voting system just yet, despite many councillors spending vast sums of local council tax-payers money on iPads and Samsungs to assist with a larger screen to play Candy Crush on as they attend vital Council meetings. The local school kids have been kicked out of their play-school hall to accommodate this. I was bitterly disappointed that only four names appeared on the ballot paper, none of whom was ...

Ah. As they say in China. Ah so. The approaching General Erection. Ah so. Private Eye is a great (pardon the approaching, unintended pun) eye-opener as to how the 650 of them (minus the really good and great amongst them, for example Jim Murphy and Alan Johnson to name but two - please note MPs from other other parties are also available from the aforementioned 10%) just have an eye on their five-year, £67060-a-year plus expenses cushty job - unless they get a knee up into the Lords, where they are paid to wear extremely silly wigs, sleep or play Candy Crush. They really don't give a stuff about the rest of us, forever saying "I believe" or occasionally, the even more creative "we believe" at every available opportunity, compromising their Saville Row suits just for the mere few weeks of Purdah to kiss the proletariat's snotty babies or to don high-vis jackets and hard hats and pretend they actually know what is going on in a village bakery. After 7th ...

So Big Dave has been to see Her Majesty to dissolve the government. On the suggestion of Anjem Choudary, he used Nitric Acid rather than the usual Astonish products from his local pound shop, although the Duke of Edinburgh did object to him racing up and down the corridors of Buck House on a Domino Pizza motorbike. All the politicians have wheeled out their headache pills - "I believe" (geddit?) - and there are reports that the sales of Johnson wipes have increased dramatically as canvassers head off to kiss dribbling babies and have toddlers throwing up all over their suits. The public will soon be deluged by politicians charging around in their battle busses (National Express 561 to London) knocking on doors shouting, "I don't know who you are or what you do, and I don't really care. Just give me your vote." Labour will say the Conservatives shouldn't blame UKip for the LibDems being so appalling to the SNP who shouted at the Greens for giving out to P...

Launching their election manifesto (which the rather nasty and quite bigoted Green party insist on calling a person-ifesto) Mr Nigel Ferago of UKIP claimed to now be “firing on all cylinders”, unlike local councils that are just firing. Election manifestos are now also on the way from the Monster Raving Looney Party (half a side of A5), the Monty Python Silly Party (written on the back of a fag packet) and Islamic State (written on pieces of human skin, formerly one continuous piece belonging to suicide bomb lecturer Ahmed Shortbrain of Dewsbury). The Dyslexic Party are due to lunch their mafinesto laret this atefrnoon. In an interview with a chap called Evan Davies – who Mr Ferago says he doesn't really want to speak to if he can avoid it because he thinks he might just be an illegal Welsh immigrant on account of his name – he claims that the best way to stop the country’s productive peurility and manufacturing malaise is to ban all imports from everywhere. Mr  Fe...

The BNP announced its Euro election manifesto this morning, despite most members of the party being unable to spell either ‘election’ or ‘manifesto’. Following a European ruling, it has dramatically changed the way it operates, having taken election guidance provided by the Commission specially for totally odious and objectionable political parties. The main BNP party leaders, headed by leader Adolf Griffin, Heinrich Barnpott and Bunny Hitler, gave a press conference earlier this morning. Revealing their new plans, the party has decided the following. Membership is now open to any member of the community, irrespective of their race, colour or creed, providing they are white, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant, although Catholics may be admitted in extreme circumstances. The BNP has totally changed their stance on immigration, saying that neither race, colour, creed nor ethnicity should be a bar to entering the country for social, domestic or employment purposes, provided t...

The preparations for the by-election in Manchester's Wythenshawe and Sale ward to replace popular Labour MP Paul Goggins, who died last month are now in full swing. To help voters choose, I have a summary below to assist: Conservatives - their candidate Justin Ponsenby-Smithers-Farquarson is in ebullient mood despite the possibility he might only achieve 8th place out of the seven candidates who are campaigning. A blue tent has been erected outside the main polling station on the M56 which will be serving strawberries and cream. Unfortunately, no one has the heart to tell Mr. Ponsenby-Smithers-Farquarson that it is in fact a by-election and not a regional heat for Wimbledon and that the main polling station is not on the M56 Labour - their candidate, Mona Ledzeppelin, is campaigning hard on a "Help Bob Crow emigrate" ticket. Proving very popular and could be a potential high vote winner. She has  promised that if she is elected she will campaign hard for the national a...