Betting Opens for ‘Creepy-Crawly Racing’

One of the competing Millipedes shows its competitive diet.

Chancellor Orders Urgent Fiscal Review

Chancellor George Osborne ponders the profit margins in selling David Laws to medical science.

Cameron/Clegg Coalition Promises ‘New Way Forward’

Cameron/Clegg Coalition Promises ‘New Way Forward’

Celebrity Love Shock Split Triangle Shocker!

Back together again: and she’s brought him flowers.

The celebrity world was reeling in shock today following the announcement that Nicky ‘Jordan’ Clegg, who shot to fame when she came third in talent show ‘Britain’s Got Votes 2010′, sensationally dumped veteran boy-band frontman Gordo Brown just a day after publicly declaring their shared affection.

Sources close to Miss Clegg confirmed the acrimonious split this afternoon, and it is believed she is to rekindle her on/off relationship with method actor Davey ‘Faceman’ Cameron, who recently overcame poor reviews for his performances in Star Trek: DS9 to lead his cast to glory in the Westminster play ‘A Time For Change, Honest’.

The two had originally separated just 24 hours before, after the news broke that Miss Clegg had been having secret trysts with Gordo behind Davey’s back. It was widely expected that Nicky and Gordo were preparing a shock announcement of their engagement – however it now appears that Miss Clegg has returned to her original fiance.

A spokesman for Miss Clegg said, “I just couldn’t handle it. Gordo’s lovely, and when he makes his promises they really sound genuine. But marrying Gordo means marrying the rest of his band, and everyone knows it’s Pete that calls the shots. I’ve got to do what’s right for me, and if I want stardom I’m only going to find that with Davey.”

Gordo, whose boy-band Nu Layba shot to fame in 1997 before a disappointing set of performances led to their decline from popularity in the last decade, shrugged off Miss Clegg’s words, saying, “I binned HER, innit, coz she’s a slag and she’s like been with Tories and that. And she’s frigid.” He is reportedly being comforted by bandmates Pete and Ed at his London home.

Nu Layba are widely expected to announce their own split within the next few days.

Davey Cameron has stayed out of the public eye since the announcement was made by his girlfriend, however a close friend said that he was delighted Nicky has returned to him. The friend added, “Davey always knew she’d come back. There’s no way Gordo will ever get his Cleggover.”

PR guru Max Clifford was unavailable for comment, as he doesn’t want to have anything to do with the power-and-publicity-hungry bunch of vultures.

On why David Miliband (Labour MP) is a cunt

The Diego Garcia outrage remains one of the worst atrocities of British foreign policy; the story commenced in 1971 but it continues under New Labour.

In 1971, Britain commenced the forced removal of the population of the Chagos Archipelago (a British dependency) to make way for a military airbase.

An American military airbase.

The Chagossians were rounded up by force, they were transported over 2,000 miles and dumped, without support, on a variety of islands.

Many subsequently died.

The term ‘genocide’ – an over-used word in most respects – has not been commonly applied to Brtain’s treatment of the Chagossians.

But if what Britain did – and is still continuing to do – to the Chagossians is not genocide, then the word has no meaning.

It has taken many years for an effective lobby to grow up for the small, dwindling and shattered group of survivors of this atrocity. But progress has been made, interestingly, with a lot of effective support from horrified ex-Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Royal Naval personnel.

Gradual progress has been made through the UK courts – despite the tooth and nail resistance of Jack Straw and David Miliband, on behalf of their US masters.

Last year a move was put forward that would allow the survivors and the descendants of the forcibly repatriated Chagossians to have access to *some* of their ancestral homes.

But, forestalling a decision on that course of action, David Miliband has now produced what is one of the most cynical acts in the history of British foreign policy.

Dressed up as an environmentalist move, the waters around the Chagos Archipelago have been declared the world’s largest marine reserve – in which all fishing is banned.

The islanders are, of course, fishermen.

The sheer cynicism of this attempt, by David Miliband, to cloak a genocidal act as environmentalism is simply breathtaking.

If we were really concerned about the environment of Diego Garcia we would not have built a massive airbase and an artificial harbour on a fragile coral atoll and filled the atoll with nuclear weapons.

If we were really concerned about the environment of Diego Garcia we would be telling the Americans to Leave Now.

But we’re not, are we.

This is all about American, not British, foreign policy.

All gone a bit meh

The weather, in these specific parts, has dramatically changed.

Last week we were basking in our pre-Icelandic-volcanic apocalypse. The much trumpeted DUST CLOUDS OF DOOM actually delivered 18c and clear, blue, sun-filled skies for days and days and days.

Fast-forward 72 hours and we’re plunged in to days of dank, cold, greyness, where the sun fails to get seen, the central heating has had to be switched on and everyone in my bubble of the universe has actually been *praying* for a piece of global warming.

And I’ve been fighting a bout of depression. Successfully, I add.

In politics, have you noticed just how weird the language that our media has been using, when discussing the post-election landscape?

‘Thrash out a deal’, ‘horse-trading’ and today I heard one broadcaster use the phrase ‘coalition of losers’.

The media uses these phrases in an aggressive way; this kind of language is not supportive, it is corrosively confrontational.

But step back from the edge while I ask a question.

What’s so wrong with working together for a common goal?

I do that every single day of my professional life, I work to build a consensus, I work to build teams with a common objective, I work – and use people in the teams I have put together – to overcome (or mitigate against) difficulties.

I work to deliver projects in the face of, sometimes, excessive adversity.

But I’m not weak.

It takes more strength of character, persuasive skills and believability than most people could comprehend, to deliver a piece of change in to a complex organisation where elements of the business are actively fighting against that change.

But sometimes I do need to have the buy-in of other people, and to get that I have to be strong, not weak.

Tony Blair, bless him her, had enormous strength in his her majority and yet look at the damage that tosser did to us – and to this country.

Margaret Thatcher, bless her him, also had enormous strength in her his majority, and look at the damage that tosser did to us – and to this country.

And yet both of these people governed from positions of immense strength.

So I feel it’s time to start building a government of consensus in an attempt to mitigate against the kind of abuses that governments of strength have inflicted upon us.

What have we got to lose?

We can’t lose our public transport system, Thatcher sold that and now it is just a money-making machine for private industry that no longer works for us.

We can’t lose our civil liberties, Blair gave those away; we Brits are now subjected to more surveillance than any other nation on this planet.

We can’t lose our international respect, we have none, we run general elections on a level with Zimbabwe (Robert Mugabe must be laughing like a drain at us).

At least we’re not as bad as Greece, but on a scale of 1-10 we are very definitely Meh.

Having a political consensus in power would actually bring two things to our political decision-making process that have been absent for too many years.

Scrutiny and oversight.

And, it occurs to me, a political consensus would bring one more thing.

The power of veto.

So go on, tell me.

What’s so wrong with having these things?

In other news, we have been sent two enormous bricks of chocolate from New Zealand by the lovely Allister of The Sitting Duck Podcast / The Sitting Duck Collection fame.

One is a solid chocolate brick, the other is a filled chocolate brick (Caramel filling),both made by Whittaker of New Zealand.

Sigh.

We’ll just have to endure, won’t we?

Thanks Allister.

It’s LibCon That We Want

Given the ongoing mutual flirtation between Messrs Clegg and Cameron, there’s only one song that really does these negotiations justice. And it is:

NICKY
Tell me about it. . . Prime Minister!

DAVE
I got Bills,
Need ratifying,
Yet I’ve not got control,
But the seats that,
You’re supplyin’,
Could leave Labour cryin’!

NICKY
You better share power,
‘Cause I have the plan,
That gives Downing Street to you,
You better share power;
But you better understand,
Nothing but PR will do,

DAVE:
Got no choice, gotta push that reform through,

BOTH:
It’s LibCon that we want!
(LibCon is what we want), o,o, oo, honey.
It’s LibCon that we want!
(LibCon is what we want), o,o,oo, honey.
It’s LibCon that we want!
(LibCon is what we want), o,o, ooooo
It’s what we need,
A Majority!

NICKY:
If the General Election,
Left you shy of a mandate,
Then our collaboration,
Is your way,

DAVE:
I better share power,
‘Cause you have the plan,
NICKY
I have the plan,
Puts you on the winning side,
DAVE
I better share power,
if I’m gonna prove,
NICKY
you better prove,
that my faith is justified,

DAVE
If we share,

BOTH:
We’ll hang Gordon out to dry!

It’s LibCon that we want!
(LibCon is what we want), o,o, oo, honey.
It’s LibCon that we want!
(LibCon is what we want), o,o,oo, honey.
It’s LibCon that we want!
(LibCon is what we want), o,o, ooooo
It’s what we need,
A Majority!

Repeat Chorus until the Queen’s Speech…

A Voice But No Vote: A Foreigner Watches the UK General Election

Let’s get one thing straight. I’m not complaining. Voting is one area where there really is – and should be – a difference between where you come from and where you are. But this week I have felt acutely the strangeness of my situation, which is that I can influence minute local elections in California (I haven’t been in California for two years) but cannot cast a vote here, where I live now.

It’s good to feel this powerless. I forget not to take things – like democracy, for instance – for granted. I have strong opinions about the general election in the UK. But I’m a child again, watching the adults make the decisions. More than that, I have the sense that I’m witnessing an intimate moment that I shouldn’t see. I’m an American voyeur, peering into the British bedroom, watching the politicians strip their clothes off, bare their fists. Watching the people do the same.

This is not the same thing has having no say. I still have a voice. I simply don’t have the right to tick a box. That box makes a world of difference to me, but the freedoms I enjoy would make a world of difference to much of the rest of the world. I know that. I also know that I made the choice to live here.

And I believe this is just, that my own powerlessness is deserved. But I would be lying if I told you that on Thursday, I didn’t feel just the tiniest bit of resentment. In the morning, reading other people’s accounts of stepping into voting booths, my eyes welled up. I always get a bit like that about elections, but this time there was something else. This was not pure love for the democratic system, or a thrill at seeing it in action. There was a sadness, too. Voting brings people together. There’s a whole community out there this week – a whole country – that I’m not a part of and never can be.

There’s something else, too. There’s anger, I think. This is more irrational. But it has to do with the sense that it had just got started. They didn’t left enough time for us to process everything, let alone decide (I say “we” but I mean “them” – and that’s at the heart of it, I hate that there’s a “them” again, just when I was getting used to it being “us”). This election only really kicked off a few weeks ago; where I’m from elections last years. And that can be exhausting, but it’s what I’m used to.

Here, they’re analysts. I’ve watched my friends and my colleagues suddenly become mathematicians, statisticians, logic-minded advocates. They understand marginal seats and tactical voting but there’s not that same idealistic sense of individual power.

What I keep thinking, really, is this: that I may not have a vote but I still have a voice, and how could I have used it? Why didn’t I use it? My own ignorance left me feeling bound and gagged for too long and now suddenly here we are, and the time for action has passed.

I remember going to a rally for a popular gubernatorial candidate in Boston once. A friend of mine, another politics student, met me outside the Hynes Convention Center and we smiled our way past the security and up into the balcony, where we watched the candidate make a rousing speech. It was raining confetti. Oh, it was a spectacle. It was empty. The fact that this man could rally such an enthusiastic crowd says nothing about his qualifications to lead a state. But it felt good, and now I know why: it felt good because I was a part of it. Because the following week I could go out and make my decision, and have that mean something.

So my challenge now is to learn how to make my voice feel more like a vote; to learn how to translate opinion into action in new ways. And maybe, too, I should consider what I said at the start of this post – that this is one area in which it really does matter where you come from, where you’re registered. That sounds so clinical – to say that I’m registered to vote in California and therefore that’s where I should be voting – but maybe it’s only because I’ve forgotten, over the last few years, how important it is to feel involved.

For Sale:

FOR SALE

One backbone.

One Scottish owner, never used, would suit TV political correspondent with swiftly-changing allegiance.

Quick sale required due to urgent house-clearance.

Also available: one pair unused testicles, one brain and a crash-damaged dignity. Could sell as a job-lot now I haven’t got a job.

Collection from Downing Street, London, probably by early next week.