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...

I have just completed my own exit poll for the General Election , an exit poll based on canvassers entering and exiting my front gate. Results are as follows: CONSERVATIVES - gingerly opens the gate, closes it behind them, gingerly pushes the leaflet through the letterbox ensuring it goes all the way in, gingerly opens the gate once more, exits the garden path and then gingerly closes the gate behind them LABOUR - opens the gate, steams in, noisily forces three identical leaf lets through the letterbox leaving one sticking out, then steams out leaving the gate flapping LIBDEMS - can't actually open the gate so gives up after 18 minutes of trying UKIP - from the public pathway, throw leaflet after leaflet, for a random selection of prospective candidates over the gate at the letterbox, hoping that one might magically make its way through the letterbox. Gives up after 18 minutes and 72 leaflets GREENS - Won't come through the gate as it is imported from Israel ...

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...

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...