Friday, May 30, 2008

Expert Witness

Writing about Nick Pope, self-appointed UFO-expert, set me to thinking about the whole issue of media 'experts' . It seems to me that just about anybody can set themselves up as a so-called expert these days and pontificate on all manner of subjects. The proliferation of 24 hour news channels and online news outlets means that demand for 'expert' comment and analysis of current events is growing, Indeed, I'm thinking of setting up in business myself and offering my services to the media. I've yet to decide what I'm going to be an expert on exactly. It doesn't really matter if I actually do know anything about whatever it is I comment on. All you need to be able to do is demonstrate some kind of connection to the subject you want to hold forth on, and the media will fall over themselves to ask your opinion. Your connection to the subject can be pretty spurious - a onetime colleague of mine regularly turns up on TV and in the newspapers billed as a 'former government intelligence officer'. The reality is that he was a regular army officer who once had a temporary posting to the Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS). To be honest, I can't actually remember exactly what it was he did in the DIS, except that the rest of us actual (civilian) intelligence analysts thought that he was a bit of a joke.

Clearly, I'm in the wrong business and should be billing myself as an 'intelligence expert'. The trouble with that is, I might actually know something about the subject. Highly dangerous in the world of media. No, I clearly need to become an expert in something more peripheral. I was watching Time Team the other day (I was feeling masochistic), and they happily trotted in some guy saying he was a local historical expert. Hell, I thought, my degree is -at least partly - in history and I've even taught some history, I should be doing that! I could just see myself wandering onto the site of their dig (probably a caravan park in Essex, where they're trying to uncover evidence that Julius Caesar once parked his van there whilst on holiday in 55BC) and spouting absolute bollocks. I'd just love to see how long it would take any of the programme's other so called experts to challenge me. But if they did that, they might risk exposure themselves. Frankly, I think that it is about time we banned these 'experts' outright. Fill the dead air time left by their absence with a juggler, or something. It would be just about as informative as anything the 'experts' might say.

Labels: ,

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

The Ex X-Files

As ever, I'm right on the ball here, with my finger on the pulse of current events, so I've finally decided to comment on that topical (two weeks ago, at least) issue of the MoD's so-called 'X-Files'. For those of you who might have been in a descending into a drug-fuelled personal madness for the past few weeks, the Ministry of Defence released a load of its old files which concern UFO reports to the National Archives, making them, for the first time, accessible to the public. Not surprisingly, the press descended upon them, hoping for some revelations. After all, Nick Pope, former MoD civil servant who claimed to have once manned the Ministry's 'UFO desk', has pretty much made a career out of implying that all sorts of things were being covered up. Not surprisingly, the files revealed only the usual collection of vague sightings by lunatics.

Not that it surprised me, of course. Many years ago, I met the then occupant of the so-called 'UFO desk' whilst on a training course. Not only was this individual not Nick Pope, but he explained to me that dealing with UFO reports was actually only a tiny part of his work. According to him, all that he had to do each time a UFO report was sent in, was to send out a standard form letter in reply, thanking the sender for their letter and assuring them that the matter would be looked into. He would then 'file and forget' the report. This had been the standard procedure for years. The fact was that UFO sightings were of no interest to the MoD unless it could be shown that the defence of the realm was being threatened. Now, I don't blame Nick Pope, a subsequent occupant of the post, for trying to make something out of this very minor part of his job - I know how soul-destroyingly boring being an MoD desk officer can be - but don't think you can fool me, my friend. There are no 'X-Files', there never were any 'X-Files' and the MoD doesn't give a toss about UFOs. It certainly doesn't investigate them. You've had a good run, Nick, but the game's up - give it up!

Labels: , , ,

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Requiem for a Smut Peddlar

It has come to my attention that one of the internet's pioneers has sadly died. I speak, of course, of Robb Douglass, the man behind the amazing Robb's Celebs site, where he collected together nude photographs of various female celebrities, culled from magazines, newspapers, screen captures and the like. This was a seminal site, in more ways than one. A tremendous resource, Robb's site was your first port of call if you saw some female celebrity on TV and wondered what their knockers looked like. Many was the time that I had the satisfaction of sitting back and saying "Ahh, I knew I was right",as my musings about some starlet or other's nipple type were confirmed. It was also your one stop shop if there was some TV actress you wanted to whack off over - your masturbatory fantasies could be stoked by the pictures on the site.

The site was also great for just browsing. Many times I was surprised by the actresses I found naked there. Not a visit would go by without me exclaiming: "I never knew that she'd got her norks out on screen". Yet, no matter how obscure the film or TV series, Robb would always have screen captures of the interesting bits. A truly remarkable site that will be sorely missed by sad voyeuristic bastards like me. Robb Douglass was undoubtedly a pioneer of on line smut and his loss will be keenly felt. In an age when greed and avarice are commonplace, Robb was to be commended for making his site freely available to all - no registrations or subscriptions were ever required. Truly, a prince amongst pornographers.

Labels:

Monday, May 26, 2008

"Royale-Unis - Zero Points"

So, another humiliation at the Eurovision Song Contest. Hardly surprising, really. Even if a lot of the voting wasn't politically motivated (and I'm not entirely convinced that it is), the fact is that with the preponderance of Eastern European nations taking part now, the kind of music favoured by Western European countries like the UK is less and less likely to find favour with a majority of the audience. Either we enter established acts with a track record of selling records across Europe (and even this might not work, as I doubt very much that the average Eurovision voter falls into the same demographic who buy singles), or we follow the Irish example and enter utter joke acts to show our contempt for the whole process. Indeed, it is my greatest regret about this year's Eurovision that Dustin the Turkey didn't make it past the semi-finals. Believe me, if that puppet had appeared in the final, then I'd have broken the habit of a lifetime and phoned up to vote for him. Several times. Maybe next year we should enter Pinky and Perky, or Cliff Richard on strings, perhaps. The great thing is that, unlike Ireland, whatever shit we enter gets automatic entry to the final!

Of course, there's always another solution. Perhaps it is time to follow the example of the Roman Empire and decide that the whole contest has become to big and sprawling to easily manage, and instead split it into two. Separate Western and Eastern Eurovision Song Contests could provide the answer we're all seeking, allowing everybody a reasonable chance of winning. Indeed, they could even have a Super Cup-style run off between the two winners. This way, countries like the UK would at least have a chance of winning something. As it stands at the moment, even entering the contest seems pointless as we clearly have no prospect of even getting into the top ten. That's the thing about the Eurovision - it might be a bit of a joke to us, but it's only funny as long there's a theoretical chance that our crap song will beat the other crap songs. Without an level playing field of crapness, it's just a bore.

Labels: ,

Friday, May 23, 2008

Sex and the Shitty

According to the Romans the Spanish rinsed their mouths with their own urine in order to whiten their teeth (something to bear in mind the next time an A-list celebrity flashes their gleaming smile for the cameras). Even today, hundreds of thousands of people in India and China drink their own urine in the belief that it can cure common ills. For some bodily waste products can even be a source of sexual ecstasy. Supposedly radical and zany musician Frank Zappa, for instance, was often referred to as ‘Frank Crapper’ due to his enthusiasm for having hookers let go a black bass on his face. He was also actually a closet knee-jerk conservative reactionary who secretly worked as a snitch for the FBI. Indeed, he used his friendship with FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover to further his bizarre fetish by amassing an incredible private collection of secret surveillance tapes of various celebrities and politicians taking a dump. Whilst most of these were destroyed by Zappa’s family following his death in 1993, several survived and have recently surfaced on the internet. These include incredible footage of both Elvis Presley and Judy Garland expiring of heart attacks on the toilet as they strained to pass gargantuan turds - Presley looks as if his head is about to explode with his face turning crimson and his eyes bulging out of their sockets, whilst Garland’s face contorts into a rictus grin as her lips curl back and purple veins stand out on her forehead. In another tape President Johnson - who regularly conducted affairs of state from a toilet cubicle - is seen making the decision to commit tens of thousands of additional troops to Vietnam as he passes a stool so massive that it wasn’t completely flushed away until Nixon was in the White House. Amongst the destroyed videos is rumoured to be sensational footage of Jack Kennedy squatting over Marilyn Monroe and blowing mud all over her ample breasts, then licking it off.

Zappa managed to keep his excrement fetish out of the public eye for most of his life, although in his 1971 film 200 Crappers Keith Moon (dressed as a nun) is seen licking out a soiled lavatory bowl. “Frank just loved crap - the taste, the texture, the smell, everything about it,” recalls ‘Smoky’ Joe Dookie, one time drummer with Zappa’s band the Mothers of Invention. “Often, when we were on tour, he’d hire a hooker and get her to take a fast acting laxative before taking her up the arse - as she crapped all over his whang he’d climax, but instead of ejaculating he’d crap himself instead. They’d end up rolling around in a pool of thick brown bum soup - it was Frank’s idea of paradise, but it cost him a fortune in laundry bills to get the sheets clean!” The goateed musician is also rumoured to have produced a number of ‘fudge porn’ movies, which featured buxom young actresses variously being given enemas, wrestling in vats of excrement and flinging their own crap at each other. However, whilst highly flamboyant, Zappa and Berry were by no means the only celebrity excrement fetishists. Their fellow enthusiasts have included Robert Mitchum, who was fond of smoking his own bum cigars - an activity for which he was arrested in 1947 - believing that their fumes had hallucinogenic properties, Noel Coward, who paid prepubescent schoolboys to urinate over him in the belief that bathing in virgins’ piss was the secret of eternal youth, and Ava Gardner, who used her own excrement as a facial moisturiser.

Labels: , ,

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Learning Experience

I certainly had an interesting day. I went to my first interview for a teaching job. Whilst I didn't get the job (which didn't surprise me), it was an interesting, not to say slightly surreal, experience. Along with six other candidates I found myself as part of a rota moving from room to room, performing various tasks, including a formal interview, a presentation and a teaching session. of course, the system inevitably broke down and various of us found ourselves high and dry, or suddenly being ushered into a room to be faced by a class of seventeen year olds waiting to be taught, when you were expecting an interview. It was a bit like the way they test trainee doctors (if I'm to believe those hoary old Doctor films with Dirk Bogarde and James Robertson Justice), shoving them into a consultation room where they find themselves confronted by a 'patient' presenting all manner of bizarre symptoms, which they have to diagnose.

Anyway, it all seemed like a pretty way to select teaching staff to me. Indeed, I was somewhat reassured by the fact that those candidates who had attended other interviews reckoned that today's experience was more complex than the norm. Personally, I would have expected more emphasis and time to have been devoted to the teaching exercise, and quite frankly I really didn't see the point of the presentation we had to give to other teaching staff - the information would have been bettered conveyed as part of the formal interview. But hey, what do I know? If this is the way they want to do things, I don't have much choice but to go along with it! I've got another interview at a different college in a couple of weeks - I'm bracing myself for another day of fun and games. At least this time I'll be prepared!

Labels:

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Clean and Tell (Part Two)

During the 1980s Brickham cleaned regularly for Queen frontman Freddie Mercury. “Freddie was such a sweet man”, she says. “But he had terrible toilet habits! His aim was terrible when he peed and the carpet and floorboards around his toilet were quite rotten as a result!” Brickham also claims that Mercury frequently neglected to flush after using the toilet, leading to huge build ups of shit. “It was terrible”, she declares. “The things I saw in that toilet bowl! Not to mention the smell! I sometimes wondered what he’d been eating! It wasn’t so bad when it was just solid turds - you could dislodge them with the toilet brush before flushing - but when it was the liquid stuff there was no option but to dredge it out!” The absent-minded Mercury also had an extremely bad habit of wiping his arse on pieces of tissue paper which he then left lying about the flat. “I remember that Brian May once inadvertently blew his nose on one when he was visiting”, Brickham remembers. “He had Freddie’s shit all over his face. It was very comical.”

According to Brickham, the versatile vocalist’s greatest passion was collecting his own farts. “Whenever he cracked one off in the bath, he would trap it in a glass jar”, she explains. “Then, at parties, he would harmlessly explode them by dropping a lighted match into the jar. According to the particular qualities of the fart and the size of the jar, it would make a different musical note as it ignited. I once saw him play “Bohemian Rhapsody” using over a hundred jars!” Mercury built up a huge collection of bottled farts. Unfortunately, disaster struck one morning as Brickham was cleaning: “They must have been leaking, because when I lit up a fag, there was this huge explosion which wrecked the entire building. We were lucky to survive, poor Freddie’s moustache was blown clean off!” The force of the explosion shattered windows for a two mile radius. Suspecting a terrorist bombing, police sealed off the area for six hours. Even before the book - Dirty Work - has reached the bookshops, doubt has been cast on its authenticity, with a spokesman for the Spice Girls denying that Brickham had ever worked for them and describing her colourful claims as “total fabrication”. He added that the group’s laundry could easily pass the 'Daz doorstep challenge' with flying colours.

Labels: ,

Monday, May 19, 2008

Clean and Tell

The autobiography of former cleaner to the stars Edie Brickham is set to rock the world of showbiz with a series of completely unsubstantiated allegations about the unhygienic habits of the succession of top stars that she claims to have cleaned up after for over thirty years. Fans of the Spice Girls are bound to be shocked by what 78 year old Brickham claims to have seen whilst cleaning for them during 1998-99. “I know exactly why that Victoria Adams said that her husband was like an animal in bed”, she gleefully told us. “The state he left the sheets in, it was disgusting - I’ve never seen skid marks like it before! Mind you, she’s no better - they wouldn’t call her Posh Spice if they’d seen the state of her underwear!” Speaking of Mel B she says: “No wonder they call her Scary Spice - the state of her knickers is shocking, you’d think that with her money she wouldn’t be wearing panties with the arse worn out of them!” Dealing with Emma Bunton’s laundry provided Brickham with some insights into the so-called Baby Spice’s private habits. “I thought it a bit strange the number of nappies she put out for washing, as she didn’t have any children, but then I noticed that they were adult sized and realised that she must be wearing them!” Brickham speculates that Bunton might actually gain sexual gratification by dressing up as a baby. “It wouldn’t surprise me if she had an oversize high chair in which she sat whilst being fed baby food by a strapping black leather clad man”, Brickham says. “Although I never actually saw any such thing. I also wouldn’t be surprised if she enjoyed having her nappy changed by the same bloke - having her bottom sensually caressed by moist baby-wipes, before being powdered. Again, I never saw anything like that actually happen.” The silver-haired septuagenarian also has devastating news for fans of Sporty Spice Mel C: “I regularly used to find jockstraps and men’s Y-fronts amongst her washing. Moreover, splash marks around her toilet bowl looked distinctly like the type left by blokes when they “shake the snake” after having a pee. Obviously, she has a penis!”

Edie Brickham’s career as a cleaner to the celebrities began in 1971 when she worked for the late Jim Morrison during his final days in Paris. “Jim was such a nice boy”, Edie recalls. “But he did like getting his bald-headed bandit out and waving it around a lot - it could be very distracting!” She also reveals that throughout his Paris period Morrison suffered badly from ennui and, having temporarily forsaken drink and drugs, turned to masturbation for relief instead. “He was at it up to five hours a day!” She says. “He did it everywhere - in bed, on the sofa, in the bath, in the kitchen, on the toilet - everywhere! The problem was that he didn’t toss himself off cleanly enough. In my experience most men will cleanly soak up their ejaculations with a tissue or cloth, but not Jim. He just used to flick it off - you’d find it running down the walls, or dripping off of the ceiling or a lampshade - very unhygienic. If you don’t clean it up while its still fresh, it can become a real problem - congealed jism is one of the most difficult things in the world to shift. I ended up having to paint over one particularly large deposit on the skirting boards!” Eventually Brickham persuaded Morrison to modify his habits - he took to tossing his ejaculations out of the open window instead. “That was fine until poor old Mrs Leclerc got splashed in the face. Apparently it was still warm. Luckily, through force of habit, she didn’t swallow!” In a final attempt at hygiene, Morrison was persuaded to toss his jism off into handy receptacles - usually coffee cups. Unfortunately, on at least one occasion, this led to it being mistaken for cream, and coffee being poured in on top. “Poor Ray Manzarak, that was the only time he came to visit Jim in Paris, and he ended up having to be stomach pumped at the local hospital”, recollects Edie. Luckily, the former Doors keyboard player made a full recovery. After this incident, Edie suggested to Morrison that he go back to drink and drugs, as these would cause fewer problems than his wanking.

Labels: ,

Saturday, May 17, 2008

Disable Bodied?

Do you know what the biggest menace on Britain's streets is today? Those bloody electric invalid carriage things which increasing numbers of supposedly disabled people are zipping around in. They apparently have to pass no tests whatsoever to be let loose in the damned things and seem to think that they have the right to drive them wherever the bloody well please - on the pavement, through shops, parks, pedestrianised areas, the bloody lot. You try telling them any different and you'll find yourself labelled a 'fascist', or worse. I've lost count of the number of times that I've nearly been knocked off my feet by some lunatic in a motorised invalid carriage. They're an even worse nuisance in shops - I once had an altercation with some old git who thought I should vacate the aisle so that he could speed past. The fact that I was in the process of lifting a heavy item down from a shelf seemed irrelevant to him. What's worse, you can't even avoid the bastards when you are out on the road in your car. Have you ever noticed how slowly they drive across pedestrian crossings? Whilst they are prepared to knock you flying when you are on foot yourself, at crossings they just can't seem to muster sufficient speed to get across before the lights change, leaving you fuming as you have to sit there at a green light whilst they dawdle their way in front of you. Of course, by the time they've reached the other side, the lights are back to red and another one has started across from the other side.

I've even encountered these pains in the arses driving their contraptions on the open road! I kid you not - mile-long queues of traffic crawling behind some bastard in an invalid carriage. I wouldn't mind, but as they trundle along in their leisurely fashion, they are usually also busy flicking cigarette ash all over the road - is it any wonder they're short of breath and can't walk? Of course, you're always in the wrong if you try to argue with these people - they're disabled, therefore they're always the victim. Now, before you all start labelling me an insensitive and callous bastard, just stop and think - haven't you ever wondered if they're really disabled at all? Come on, you know you have! Just like me, you've noticed that the only disability the people in these carriages seem to be suffering is that they're grossly overweight. The fact is that I really don't have anything against really disabled people, you know, with missing or paralysed limbs, degenerative diseases, spinal injuries and the like, using these things. What I object to are people who are incapable of walking six paces without suffering a coronary due to their self-inflicted obesity, or left breathless because of their hundred a day cigarette habit, bloody running me over in invalid carriages and leaving me a sodding cripple.

Labels:

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Law and Disorder (Part Three)

Some members of the judiciary agree with Tory Law and Order spokesperson Harry Johnson. Judge Henry Cleat, a District Judge at Eastleigh County Court, for instance, believes that modern British society is morally corrupt and on the verge of collapse. “I very much fear that there will be a complete breakdown of civil order, anarchy will reign and a new dark age will descend upon us,” says the bespectacled railway enthusiast. “A strong hand will be needed to reassert the rule of law and mete out justice.” To this end, Judge Cleat has prepared a contingency plan. For the past ten years he has been preparing his ‘Justice Train’ inside a blast-proof engine shed built on his private siding on a well-known preserved steam railway. Consisting of several armoured coaches hauled by a restored steam locomotive, Cleat plans to steam out onto the mainline in the event of civil disorder, dispensing instant justice to wrongdoers - Judge Dredd style. Arriving at trouble spots, Cleat will roar off of the train on a powerful motorcycle, wielding a shotgun. “I will give on the spot rulings and punish the criminals there and then - with death, if necessary”, the fifty-four year old judge, who currently presides over debt and divorce cases, told us, as he pulled on several bandoliers and a black leather outfit, in order to demonstrate his plans.

Sir Adam Splitrump, a former High Court judge, also believes that the criminal justice system needs urgent reform, to the extent that he has opted out and set up his own court for ‘immoral offenders’ - including prostitutes, homosexuals, social workers and young people in general - and his own correctional institute. “Private individuals can bring offenders the system can’t touch before my court,” says Splitrump, who has converted his lounge into a courtroom and his cellar into a prison. “Rest assured that they will be properly punished - with the whip, the cane, even the gallows where necessary.” He is currently on remand, awaiting trial on several counts of assault and attempted murder. “This proves the law is an ass,” says Johnson. “This man should be presiding over the court, not appearing before it!”

Labels:

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Law and Disorder (Part Two)

Judge Cundy’s embarrassing exploits come hard on the heels of sensational newspaper reports about the conduct of his colleague Judge Berkeley Hunt, who had taken to cross-dressing in court. “We first became suspicious when he told us that he’d got a new wig,” says a Court Service source. “Next thing we knew he was presiding over an attempted murder trial wearing a long blonde woman’s wig - he was flicking his hair back like a model in a shampoo advert all through the opening arguments! It gave a whole new meaning to the term Queen’s Bench!” Judge Hunt claimed that the traditional horsehair wig had been bringing up a rash on his scalp and that the blonde wig was far more comfortable. However, on the second day of the trial the judge turned up in court wearing an off-the-shoulder evening gown, black stockings and high heels. He proceeded to clash with one of the prosecution’s expert witnesses, telling her that her shoes clashed with her skirt and that large women should avoid stripes.

During his summing up he dismissed the evidence of another witness, saying that anyone so totally lacking in basic dress sense couldn’t possibly be trusted. “For far too long British courts have been hidebound by tradition - the wigs and the gowns are archaic and make us seem out of touch,” Judge Hunt later claimed at a disciplinary hearing. “I was merely seeking to put the participants in this case at ease by dressing in a natural and non-intimidating manner.” Politicians have been quick to condemn the judges’ conduct. “Its a bloody disgrace, I blame the permissive society,” says Tory law and order spokesman Harry Johnson. “These judges are a sad reflection of the degenerate society created by the liberal ‘anything goes’ values of the 1960s and 1970s. What we need are more good old-fashioned hanging judges who are not too afraid of the wishy washy human rights lobby to crack down hard on offenders.” Johnson believes that the criminal justice system needs a thorough overhaul and non-custodial forms of punishment, such as public floggings and the stocks, should be brought back. “Its the only way to bring society back from the kind of immoral decadence represented by degenerate judges like Cundy and Hunt,” he says.

Labels:

Monday, May 12, 2008

Law and Disorder

The British criminal justice system has been rocked to its very foundations by a series of scandals involving high profile judges. In the latest appalling development a High Court judge was caught having sex with a defence barrister in his Old Bailey chambers during a recess. A shocked court clerk surprised His Honour Judge Thomas Cundy and Molly Kinchin QC as they banged away on the judge’s desk. Investigations have revealed that this was not an isolated incident and that, for some time now, Judge Cundy has been offering lenient sentences in exchange for sexual favours from female defence lawyers and defendants. “Apparently he had a sliding scale,” says one Ministry of Justice insider. “Hand relief - or ‘banging his gavel’, as the Judge himself preferred to describe it - could get up to three years knocked off a sentence, longer if they let him ejaculate over their breasts, a blow job could result in anything up to seven years off, whilst full intercourse might result in a suspended sentence. It is rumoured that one defendant was discharged completely after a four in a bed romp involving the defence barrister, solicitor and the defendant herself.”

Unconfirmed rumours suggest that His Honour insisted upon wearing his full wig and gowns during his sex romps, referred to his penis as ‘Exhibit A’, or sometimes ‘the blind instrument of justice’, and would shout “the court will rise” as he got an erection and “case dismissed” as he climaxed. In several cases it is alleged that the judge bribed court officials to allow him to use the court room out of hours for his sex games - the female barristers would be brought before him in chains as he donned the black cap and sentenced them to “death by my hanging salad”, before ‘taking them down’ and shagging them senseless on the bench until they begged for clemency. “Hardened criminals were queuing up to appear before him,” says our source. “Word quickly got around that the best way of getting off was to get an attractive young female defence team with short skirts and lots of cleavage. He wasn’t known as a hanging judge so much as a well hung judge.” The judge has been suspended pending a psychiatric report.

Labels:

Friday, May 09, 2008

Dirty, Dirty Tactics

Perhaps a footballing analogy is in order. With regard to the situation the Labour Party finds itself in, of course. Cast your minds back to the 1973-74 season. It was when Leeds United won the old First Division title. Nobody doubted their ability, but everyone (outside of Leeds) hated them. 'Dirty, dirty Leeds'. Under Don Revie Leeds were noted for their gamesmanship, for their dirty tactics, for intimidating match officials to try and get decisions go their way. Basically, they weren't prepared to just rely on talent to get then what they wanted. Now, what has this got to do with politics? Well, back in the 1970s and 1980s, the Tories were like Leeds United - they were willing to use any and every dirty tactic open to them in order to win elections. Labour, by contrast, always seemed obsessed with its principles, even where these got in the way of winning elections. But then Labour re-styled itself 'New Labour' and its slick new management seemed to decide that image was everything and that the best way to beat the Tories was by playing as dirty as they did. The end result is that whilst they still hold power, everyone now hates them.

How can they rectify this situation? Well, they could do a lot worse than turning to Revie's great rival, Brian Clough, for inspiration. As well as being a staunch socialist, Cloughie was a great football manager who believed that success was not the result of luck, but rather the triumph of talent. He hated the kind of tactics employed by Leeds United, his title-winning teams (Derby County and Nottingham Forest) won fairly. He also believed that the key to being a good football manager was making out sure that you always had the right players in your team. You always had to be on the lookout for fresh new talent and always be prepared to drop old favourites when they faltered and bring in new talent to replace them. This ensures a constant influx of new ideas. Now, I'd venture that a lot of Labour's problems currently stem from the fact that Gordon Brown doesn't have the right players in his team.. He needs to ring the changes, get of those bloody 'New Labour' barristers and other middle class professionals. Bring in some new faces - people from different backgrounds. People more representative of the party and the public in general. People with new ideas. People who aren't obsessed with spin. People who have principles. People who have risen due to talent, not patronage or privilege. But hey, what do I know? I'm just some old socialist dinosaur who still gives a damn about things like integrity, fairness and liberty. The sort of things 'New Labour' seems to have forgotten about.

Labels: ,

Thursday, May 08, 2008

Beached Whale

Just occasionally in life, someone gets their just desserts. This week, for instance, I was delighted to hear that James Whale had been sacked from his job as an on-air bigot - sorry, talk show host - on Talksport Radio. Ah, how long I've waited for that ignorant, obnoxious loudmouth to get his comeuppance. Apparently he finally over-stepped the mark when he urged listeners to vote for Boris Johnson in the London Mayoral elections. I was shocked to learn this - has the fat berk gone soft? I'd have thought that Johnson wouldn't be right-wing enough for Whale. Mind you, I doubt very much that Whale's endorsement would have influenced many voters - the kind of people who listen to radio phone-ins are simply there to have their prejudices reinforced. Frankly, I find them impossible to listen to - a parade of ignorance and bigotry.

Anyway, getting back to Whale, I see that he's quickly found new employment. Apparently he's going to be presenting on a shopping channel - Bid TV. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, people eventually find their level. Trying to sell kitchen utensils to two insomniac viewers at 2am is just about Whale's level. It'll be interesting to see if he works any of his trademark knee-jerk reactionary invective into his sales pitch. Perhaps he'll refuse to sell Chinese-made goods on the grounds that they're immigrants. Maybe he'll berate buyers on air for the stupidity of their purchases. With any luck he'll get sacked from the shopping channel too...

Labels:

Tuesday, May 06, 2008

Who Dung It?

Ever had one of those stonking great turds which simply won’t flush away? No matter how much toilet paper you put down there, or how savagely you batter it with the bog brush, it just sits there, mocking you. I must admit that I've been experiencing such problems over the past few days. During my ever more desperate attempts to clear the pan, my thoughts started to wander, and I found myself asking whether I was the only one with these problems. Most crucially, I wondered, do celebrities also have serious u-blocker problems, just like ordinary mortals? Well, rumour has it that at the 2000 Q Awards someone dumped a log so huge that it blocked the toilets and caused severe flooding. Before they knew it, celebrities of the magnitude of Davina McCall and Chris Evans found themselves ankle deep in jobbie-infested brown water. Obviously, the question on every celeb's lips was; who dung it? Who laid the lethal log?

The list of suspects was immediately narrowed down as the blockage occurred in the men’s toilets, ruling out the likes of the Spice Girls, Billie Piper or Kylie (anyway, such a petite frame as Kylie’s surely could not have produced such a devastating brown trout). Heading the list of suspects was Liam Gallagher. The Oasis front-man had previously boasted of his toilet prowess , claiming to have once left a four-foot long chocolate log in the wash basin in rival Damon Albarn’s dressing room during the Brit Awards as a joke. Another prime suspect was Liam’s rival Robbie Williams. The ex-Take That star is known to like his pies - always a good basis for producing those really hard and stodgy turds that bung up the waste pipe. Suspect number three was Liam’s elder brother Noel. He too had often boasted of the number of toilets his turds had destroyed, claiming that he once produced one so long that the last two feet of it were sticking out of the toilet bowl. Indeed, a former Dynorod operative once told the tabloids that he had been called to “Supernova Mansions”, Noel's former London home, at least twelve times in a year to sort out unspecified “blockages”.

U2’s Bono was also suspected, having often boasted of his toilet exploits. His extremely noisy shits have been heard all over the world, although a former girlfriend claimed that they were actually mainly wind and Bono could usually barely manage a light pebble-dashing. Last and, quite frankly, a real outsider, was Badly Drawn Boy. Whilst a rising star on the pop scene back in 2000, he had no record in the poop scene. However, it has been suggested that he was behind the monster turd which wrecked the toilets at the 2000 Reading Festival. Sadly, the awards' organisers were never able to pin the mystery turd on any one person and the culprit went unpunished. So, I'm throwing it open to my readers - which of those five do you think did it? I’ve managed to obtain samples of the offending bum , and had them analysed by Thaddeus Cacker aka Dr Dung, Britain’s leading expert on celebrity crap, and he claims to have identified the culprit. If your guess matches his findings, you could win a fabulous prize! But probably not. Good luck and happy flushing!

Labels: ,

Monday, May 05, 2008

Highway of the Driving Dead

Well, it's another stellar evening of Bank Holiday viewing on television, so I'm dipping into my extensive DVD collection again. This time it's a low-budget British cult horror classic:

From the outset, this low-budget British horror flick makes clear its no-holds barred approach. The opening scene will surely become a classic of the genre - a car full of youths speeds along the M25 orbital motorway, pulling alongside an old Rover carrying an elderly couple, one of the youths lowers his window and moons at the oldsters. In response the elderly woman passenger of the Rover winds down her window, leans across, and bites a huge chunk of the guy’s arse. The mooning youth’s agonised flailings cause the driver of his car to lose control, resulting in a fiery fatal crash. This reviewer has no doubt that this sequence will one day be considered on a par with the shower sequence in Hitchcock’s Psycho as a masterpiece of shock-horror. This picture marks documentary director Haldane Burke’s first venture into feature films. His background shows in the flashes of social comment that pepper the film - a motorway service station staffed entirely by the undead, and the revelation that zombified car-crash victims are being used as cheap labour on road-building schemes due to an unrealistically low bid being made to secure the contract, for instance.

The film is generally well served by a cast which includes the obligatory minor American star in the lead role -Rusty Waters of cult US cable TV sitcom Throttlin' the Turkey. Indeed, Waters gives a creditable performance as the American private eye who comes to Britain in search of his missing hitch-hiking younger brother, who teams up with a young woman (Muffy Diver) who is searching for her runaway teenage sister. Despite these strong performances, the film does suffer slightly from the curse of novelty casting which blights so many current British films. In this case almost forgotten TV “comedy” duo Little and Large are cast as the evil road builders, Morrison and Cunningham. Nonetheless, sometimes this type of casting does pay dividends - who wouldn’t pay good money to see the multi-untalented Brian Conley (as a police superintendent) being eaten alive by a pack of ravening zombies? The climax - set in a car scrap yard - is well staged, with shotgun-toting Waters and a group of Brixton Rastafarians attempt to stop Cunningham and Morrison’s voodoo priest from sacrificing Diver and her sister on an altar made from a 1978 Opel Manta - more satirical imagery from Burke. Overall, Highway of the Driving Dead indicates a refreshing revival of the British horror film.

Labels: ,

Sunday, May 04, 2008

Night Mayor in London...


"Oh my God, you finally did it! You voted him in! Damn you! Damn you all to Hell!" I'm telling you now, this is the future for London now that you've elected that buffoon Boris Johnson Mayor. How could you do it? The man is so clearly a useless tosser, a political opportunist who couldn't care less about the city. Well, on your own heads be it. The immediate consequence will be that deposed Mayor Ken Livingstone will retreat to his secret lab deep beneath the Thames and start breeding those giant radioactive newts hew intends unleashing on London as revenge for his defeat. If that doesn't work, don't worry, Boris will wreck the place himself, it'll just take a little bit longer.

That's the only solace I take from this farrago - the fact that a couple of years of Boris Johnson destroying London might remind voters of just how awful those Tory bastards are when they're in power. Believe me, whatever terrible shit Boris visits upon London will be just a foretaste of what a Cameron government would do to the whole country. Trust me, if those asset-stripping, elitist bastards get into power, we're fucked. Truly fucked. Really, I despair of the stupidity of the country's voters, particularly the ones in London who've elected an imbecile as their Mayor...

Labels: ,

Thursday, May 01, 2008

Political Bias

Well, I exercised my civic duty and cast my votes in today's local elections. Sadly, as I don't live in London, I wasn't allowed to cast an anti-Boris vote. Really, if that tosser is elected as London mayor, the end times really will be upon us. More seriously, if Johnson does become Mayor, it will be another victory for the power of the press in this country. There can be little doubt that his poll standings are solely the result of the relentless anti-Livingstone campaign waged by the Evening Standard. Whilst the Standard's owners and editor might claim that their exposures of the incumbent mayor were 'in the public interest', these claims would hold more water if the paper had similarly held other candidates - Boris Johnson, for instance - to account in the same way. But they didn't. Of course, the right-wing bias of the Standard wouldn't matter so much if there were other daily newspapers in London which presented alternative viewpoints.

But there aren't, and this situation is reflected nationally. The print media in the UK is predominantly conservative - it's a miracle that non-Tory governments ever get elected. Still, at least we're not in the position of Italy yet, where a right-wing press baron can not only use his newspapers to gain re-election as Prime Minister, but his TV stations as well. Now that he's back in power, Berlusconi will doubtless also try to employ the state-owned TV stations as propaganda tools, just he did the last time he was in power. At least in this country we still have (relatively) independent and unbiased TV news reporting. However, I fear that alone might not be enough to stop that old Etonian buffoon Johnson from stealing the election against Livingstone.

Labels: ,

Blogger is Shit Again

OK, once again, a whole fucking post lost when I tried to publish. Again, the shit about having to log in again (how could I be composing a post if I wasn't logged in?), and then no post when I do this. ThHe amount of time I am wasting is ridiculous. Why do I fucking bother? I might as well just give up and start again on a reliable platform. Once again, thanks, you utter wankers

Labels: