Squeals, pouts and plots

Whatever the obvious inadequacies of Dave's Tory party, it is impossible not to contemplate the current chaos, back-stabbing and panic in the ranks of the Labour party without a profound sense of satisfaction. This is not because I welcome a Tory government, or at least not unless Dave gets back to proper Conservative principles – above all setting people free, rewarding enterprise, cutting taxes and detonating the vast, bloated, useless monster government at every level has become. But to see the panic in the Labour ranks is nonetheless a rare pleasure.

First, because the great, brooding, scheming Gordo has been left utterly high and dry. It isn't merely because his claims to economic competence have been exposed, 'our greatest-ever chancellor' revealed as little better than a bullying shyster, a trail of shattered debris in his blundering wake. It is that his obvious personal shortcomings have been so starkly highlighted.

Can anyone doubt that this seriously disturbed, deeply unhappy man is wholly unfitted to be prime minister? Completely without charm, instinctively devious and unprincipled almost as a matter of principle, his laughable attempts to project himself as the grave and wise father of the nation, guided by his fabled moral compass, instantly highlight his every shortcoming. His paralysing horror that he has become an object of scorn, a worthy rival to Anthony Eden not just as modern Britain's most inept prime minister but, potentially, its most short lived, informs his every action. He MUST succeed, he MUST be great, he MUST be wise. Thus he prowls the corridors of Downing Street, grinding his teeth to stubs, obsessively biting his fingernails raw, his tie askew, his eyes deader by the day, his smile ever more bogus, his fate ever more inexorable.

I defy anyone not to take pleasure.

But it gets better.

There is no surer sign of Brown's warped world view than the gang of panting, power-seeking inadequates he has surrounded himself with. To begin with of course, their role was not just to reinforce Gordo's belief that he had been monstrously dealt with by the slime-ball Blair but to undermine Blair in every way they could. It was in-fighting of the nastiest kind, justified by their certainty than when they had, inevitably, done down the man who had won three elections in a row, their own time would come. And how they would then bask in the sun. How they would exercise their new power. How smug would they then feel, how certain of their own invincibility, their vast importance, their brilliant political calculation, their inevitable triumph.

The great election that wasn't was to have been their finest moment, the Tories consigned to electoral oblivion, their own, unstoppable rise emphatically confirmed. Days of destiny indeed.

The catastrophic collapse of Brown's government since his fateful decision not to hold this election, hands hardly shaking at all as he gravely announced one of the most ignominious climb-downs of recent times, a mighty underlining of the cowardice that comprises his core and governs his every decision, has precipitated the most astonishing disintegration of any governing party in modern history. An 11-point lead has been transformed into a 15-point deficit, a 26-point reversal of electoral fortune without precedent. And all in the space of six months.

It isn't just Gordo whose nerve is shot. It those of all the nasty, creeping, scheming non-entities who clung to him. Balls of course is the most conspicuous. But there are plenty of others who, their complacent certainty of electoral victory swept aside, suddenly have no idea where to turn. This was never in their script. It was never supposed to happen.

The result, predictably and delightfully, is a burst of properly nasty in-fighting. Gordo, panicked but clueless, brings in outsiders. The hard-core Gordo camp are suddenly under threat. They revert, instantly, to type. Briefings, counter-briefings, leaks and counter-leaks proliferate. Hints, innuendoes and snears are suddenly the order of the day.

Meanwhile, Gordo, while not lying about 'Britishness' (a concept curiously inconspicuous in any of his earlier political pronouncements), the Lisbon Treaty and the rate of inflation, is also confronted by an economic crisis he is wholly unable to deal with other than by blaming it on everyone else. He blusters, he strikes attitudes, he commands, he splutters and he asserts. And all the while he plummets in the polls. In short, a man revealed for what he actually is: lost, confused, out of control.

Two final points. How long before Gordo implodes, driven beyond the point of sanity by the realisation that he is, after all, Anthony Eden reborn and destined for a similarly humiliating end? And which now is the nasty party?

Charlotte Green: Important announcement

Oh, Charlotte. I think I am in love.

You can hear her here.

God, I wish I'd heard this live.

The ravishing Carla Bruni

I was going to post a side-by-side compare-and-contrast series of images of Sarah Brown and Carla Bruni. But then I thought it just wouldn't be fair. All the nude pictures I have of Mrs Brown really aren't suitable for publication on a blog of such high moral tone. So instead, here, simply, is a picture of the delectable Carla.

Warning: there may be others to come ...

Regulatory reform Mk. 2

There is something properly odd about this attempt to re-introduce what only two years ago was rapidly identified as a profoundly and dangerously illiberal measure and thrown out by even as supine a body as the Commons. So much so that it suggests the work of someone either terminally stupid or suffering from a kind of electoral death wish.

If it didn't get through two years ago when NuLab still had a healthy lead in the polls, how does Gordo imagine he get away with it now with the Conservatives as much as 16 points ahead and his own ratings heading towards single figures?

Attempting to sneak this act through will only further confirm the widespread and already perhaps fatally damaging view of him as inherently untrustworthy, inherently dishonest and strategically cack-handed. Further, more damagingly still, it must raise the question of whether his sense of 'entitlement' is not coming perilously close to active derangement. Could he, seriously, be already entertaining the possibility that the 'national interest' will demand the cancellation of the next election, something this act would allow him to ordain?

He is clearly either desperate – or mad.

My vote is firmly on the latter.

Regulatory reform: the bastards are at it again

The blogosphere is seething with stories about yet another shameless attempt by the government to grant itself unlimited powers. Read about it here, here and here. And that's just for starters.

The Daily Brute is delighted to throw the weight of his immense organ behind the campaign to highlight just how pernicious, nasty, stupid and grasping Gordo's government of all the talents really is.

The word should indeed be spread.

Gordon runs away – again

This story in The Times is exceedingly revealing.

It highlights how, having come to the conclusion that Ken Livingstone has no chance of being re-elected mayor of London, he, Gordo, plans to be in the United States at the time of the vote.

He really is extraordinary. Failures are always someone's else's fault, successes exclusively his. He can never be seen to be wrong, or to have made a mistake. He is always right. Always.

I tell you, there must have been something bloody odd happening in that old manse of his up in Bonny Scotland. One fucked-up childhood.

Why I love the EU

Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.

Read about it here.

Authentically Brown

This appeared in yesterday's Observer. It was written by Andrew Rawnsley. Self-evidently, it reflects an early stage in Downing Street's efforts to regain the high ground to halt the catastrophic hemorrhage Brown has engineered in Labour's electoral prospects. It is, in short, an inside job.

Here is the penultimate paragraph:


The other mildly encouraging development for Labour since the New Year is that Gordon Brown has found an overarching theme on which to hang his policies. The unlocking of talent as a narrative has the advantages of meshing with Labour values and being potentially appealing to both affluent and poorer voters. And the Prime Minister clearly believes in it. This is not just a presentational construct. It is authentically Brown.

Can anyone read this without laughing? Is this seriously the best the 'new' Downing Street can come up with?

The 'overarching theme' – note use of meaningless, aspirational phrase – consists of an 'unlocking of talent as a narrative ... meshing with Labour values' – note use of further vacuous phrase – the whole amounting to ... what? Nothing is specified. There isn't even the coyest hint of what it might mean in practice.

You can read and re-read this paragraph as many times as you like. You can read it standing on your head. You can squint at it from behind the sofa. You can sneak up at it and try to take it by surprise. You can read it to your cat. You can ask your cat to read it to you. You can try it out on your goldfish. You can stand outside and declaim it to the skies.

And it will always amount to exactly the same. To wit, nothing, diddly squat, nada.

It is noise born of a moral compass spinning out of control, inhuman smile in place, awkwardly expensive tie instantly skewiff, hairdo rather more obviously so, desperately seeking to wrench the machine back on course.

It is only too authentically Brown.

Official: cold weather caused by global warming

I have been looking for ages for a definitive statement that apparently abnormally cold weather is the result of global warming. And now, thanks to Mark Wadsworth, I have found it.

Thus, this magnificently deranged claim in the Hong Kong Standard:

'As Hong Kong shivers through its second-longest cold spell since 1885, scientists point to global warming to explain the abnormal cold weather phenomenon worldwide.'

Can we now look forward to volcanoes freezing and glaciers catching fire? I do hope so.

In Which We Serve . . .

. . . was on the telly – again – this afternoon. So of course I watched it. For perhaps the 20th time.

And as per bloody usual I blubbed more or less throughout.

Funny thing is that even though it's my own childhood I'm mourning, even manly tears were frowned on then.

They fall much more easily now.

He is mad

This is from today's Telegraph:

But the Prime Minister will only allow Government MPs opposed to the [embryo] bill to vote against the parts they have a moral or ethical objection to if it does not lead to its defeat in the House of Commons, the BBC said.

In other words, to allow Gordo to pretend he is responding to their moral and/or religious objections provided he still gets his way. I guarantee he will subsequently claim this was a 'free' vote.

Another pig-ignorant and nasty socialist

I have been torn between posting about Gordo's belated decision, born of electoral desperation, to add his support to the 'inspirational' Ken Livingstone, a man he clearly despises, in the May 1 elections for London mayor, and highlighting the grotesque idiocy of a man called Bill Greenshields, president of the National Union of 'Teachers', who has called for private schools to be, in effect, nationalised and brought within the state sector on the basis that 'then we would soon see some urgent improvements in our state system'.

On the whole, Greenshields wins. Just. You can read about this card-carrying moron here.

But I think there will be plenty more about the Bottler's horrified realisation that his own political life – and never forget: clinging to office is all, repeat all, that matters to him – depends at least in part on as bitter an enemy as Livingstone remaining in power.

But I wonder also if it hasn't occurred to Ken that endorsement by Gordo at the moment is akin to an electoral death sentence.

This week's stupidest member of Gordo's government

The competition is naturally keen.

As ever, I am tempted to make a joint award to every Labour MP, all of them (until they stab him in the back) fawningly supporting Gordo as well as self-evidently stupid (because why else would they have they joined the Labour Party in the first place?), and, in the time-honoured traditions of NuLabour, relentlessly greedy (aka hypocritical, smug, fake and deceitful).

Nonetheless, after due deliberation, this week's award goes to 'Jim' Knight, the schools minister, a man who apparently sees nothing wrong in classes of 70.

Except that everything he says on the subject is a lie. And he knows it.

But his grotesque claims suit the short-term interests of his boss, Ed Balls, and, inevitably, those of Balls's boss, the grimly barmy Gordo.

So breathtaking a surrender of principal by Jim Knight in the interests of his career can only be applauded.

It is always reassuring to know that every higher goal will always be sacrificed in the cause of personal advancement, however temporary.

What's so great about gold?

Can someone tell me, please? In these uncertain times, there has been a striking move back to owning gold as the only certain investment– and jolly well done Mr McBroon, Britain's greatest-ever chancellor (until Ed So What, of course), for selling off so much of ours!

Thus, banks in turmoil, stock markets disintegrating, confidence plummeting, recession apparently looming, billions being lost daily around the globe ... and people turn to gold? Because it is the only safe, the only certain option? Because it always holds its value?

Why? I have never understood this. It is just a metal. It has no inherent value. You can't eat it. In fact, you can't do anything with it except put it in vaults with VERY big steel bars. Or make jewellery out of it. This hardly suggests it might be the bedrock of a global financial system, the underpinning of economies across the world, the investment of last resort.

True, it's quite rare. True, it also doesn't tarnish: you can bury in your garden, chuck into the sea or hide it under you mattress and it will always emerge with its dull gleam intact. There is also the matter of what Goldfinger called its 'glorious heaviness'. But then lead is heavy, too. So is concrete. I am not aware of the globe's bigger financial brains rushing to stock up on paving slabs as an investment of last resort.

Christ, if you want 'heavy', to say nothing of dense, take a look at Jackie Baillie (conveniently located immediately below this post). You could hardly get much heavier than her mighty frame. Is she supposed to become a unit of universal global worth (though if she is, I would seriously suggest not hiding any gold you might be hoarding under any bed in which she is sleeping – unless that is your taste is for gold leaf ... and your floors are reinforced).

It's not even as though gold has always been thought valuable. The Incas considered it purely decorative, though admittedly this may be because they had so much of it. They assumed the conquistadores' fanatical determination to get their hands on theirs was because they wanted it as food.

Nonetheless, why should these lumps of useless, inert metal invariably be believed to have such value?

Is this any way for grown-ups to behave?

Is this the most revolting woman in the world?

I know this is old stuff but every once in a while I like to remind myself of just how unutterably disgusting, dishonest, patronising, repellent and repulsive the Scottish Labour 'party' is by watching it.

Well, I say watching it but normally I can only bear myself to see about 30 seconds' worth before running, screaming, out of the room.

My sanity can only take so much.

Baillie is also incredibly ugly, of course. And very, very, very fat.

Am I going mad?

I am still not sure if I have merely imagined this story or if, as it appears to be, it genuinely is in the Telegraph.

Can anyone help?

Nuts

Perusing, as is my well-known wont, a plastic container of Tesco's NEW! Genuine American Mustard, I discovered the following on the back:

Allergy advice
Contains mustard
Recipe: No nuts
Ingredients: Cannot guarantee nut free
Factory: Product made in nut-free area, but nuts used elsewhere

Interesting, no?

Blog advice
This post may, or may not, have been written under the influence of nuts after eating mustard which may, or may not, have contained mustard and/or nuts. I cannot guarantee if any other nuts or mustard were being used and/or eaten elsewhere.

Bullseye from Jenkins

I know he is a bit on the pink side, but Simon Jenkins has hit top form in today's Guardian, ripping into the government's endless stupidity, incompetence and dishonesty. Read it here. A palpable hit, dead centre.

Then compare and contrast with this in the same edition from 'Johnathan' Freedland in praise of Ken Livingstone, congratulated by Freedland for introducing 'an era of socially progressive attitudes', a phrase as meaningless as it condescending and stupid.

Fuck off, Freedland.

No soft landing

I am haunted by an image, highlighted here by the consistently remarkable Wat Tyler of Burning Our Money, of the British economy as Wile E. Coyote in mid-air having just run off a cliff and not yet quite realising that in about a second, however fast he pounds his legs round and round, all that will be left of him will be a couple of plummeting vertical lines. Thereafter, there will be no more than a distant cloud of pulverised and silent dust on the canyon floor thousands of feet below.

It is a brilliant image, Gordo's devious ineptitude, hubris, conceit and deceit precisely summed up and skewered.

When I first read it, I only thought it funny.

Now I find it only properly frightening.

Because there's a catch. It isn't just the Bottler, 'our greatest-ever chancellor', freeze-frozen in that mid-air split-second of horrified doom.

It's the whole country.

Civil Serf trapped in Stasi swoop

I am only partly joking. Here's the story.

Consider this:

"A source in the DWP said it was an extraordinary outlay of resources as the team was told to clear their desks of everything except their hunt for Civil Serf."

Criticism is not allowed.

Balls

It seems positively redundant to say that Ed Balls is repulsive. I think we can all take this as read. Ditto that he is shifty, toadying and a liar.

But what I find truly astounding about this deeply unpleasant man is that he seems to believe entirely sincerely a) that he is enormously clever when he is merely devious; b) that he is a credible contender for PM.

That said, it is no coincidence that Gordo, in the manner of a medieval monarch, should have as good as anointed him as his successor.

Both inhabit a curious, semi-human realm, as notable for its utter lack of charm as for its instinctive dishonesty and inexplicable self-regard.

That they seriously entertain the prospect of the repellent Balls as PM says all you need to know about these two very strange and nasty men.

Tennis Totty

Lady Jane, who I revere and adore in equal measure, has welcomed me back but warned me off more of what she calls Tennis Totty.

It wounds me more than I can say. But I must stay true to Ana, the Serbian light of my benighted life, the six-foot sizzler only the most stony-hearted could not worship, the goddess of the first serve, she of the mighty Balkan thigh.

So here she is again.

Note super-strength elastic round under-skirt garment, here being tested to destruction.

Whang this one up your British bum, Brown

The instant Gordo started going on about Britishness last summer, adopting his most special I-am-being-very-serious-because-I-am-such-a-deep-thinker frown and tone of voice, it was obvious bollocks. From first to last.

Here we had/have a Labour prime minister urgently seeking to project himself as a statesman and man of gravitas who was also:

a) Unelected as prime minister

b) Scottish

c) Near universally loathed across much of England

At the same time, the SNP had just ended 50-plus years of Labour control in Scotland.

There was also the inconvenient matter of the West Lothian question.

Oooh, thinks Brown. This could be tricky.

Dung! Light bulb goes off in said Scottish head! Brilliant idea coming from master political strategist (because he is, you know – or at least so he has to persuade himself: after all, he hadn't just been our greatest-ever chancellor, he was now PM, the biggest of the big beasts)! Stand by!

The answer? BRITAIN!

Worked at Rorke's Drift, after all. Worked in two world wars as well. Think about Adam Smith! Think about the Queen Mum! Billy Bremner! Billy Conolly! Sean Connery!

We need a Britishness Day! We need to swear an oath of allegiance to the Queen, to sing the national anthem, to have children clutching their little hearts with their little fists, to allow a manly tear to slide down our cheeks as we contemplate our great and glorious nation and, of course, our great and glorious leader.

It is pathetic. It is laughable. It is grotesque.

Has there ever been a more transparently self-serving or stupid idea? A more obvious attempt to occupy the apparent moral high ground precisely so as to gain a narrow political advantage?

This is Gordo all over, the clunking fist at his most clunkingly cretinous.

And amazingly, I think he seriously believes no one recognises what he is up to.

It is stupidity and sanctimoniousness on a gargantuan scale.

Legitimate Tangent

With all the fuss and excitement about the sudden disappearance – more than a little Stalinist, on the whole – of the Civil Serf, whose blog I regret I never read, there is another mole burrowing away in the heart of Whitehall who in my view has been unjustly overlooked. You will find him here.

This is Legitimate Tangent, an occasional blogger admittedly (though who am I to complain?), but wonderful.

For an insight into the sclerotic absurdities and wanton waste of government, it is hard to beat, a profoundly depressing commentary on the utter uselessness of the tossers and twats who rule us.

That said, if he gets the exposure he so clearly deserves, no doubt he, too, will suddenly disappear. Grim stuff.

Ohh! Blogging again?

I am not sure that earthquakes, tidal waves and tornadoes will necessarily follow – or even that Guido and Iain Dale will give up in instant despair, hurling themselves over cliffs, sobbing all the while – but there is a chance that The Daily Brute, more brutish than ever, will be back among you in a week or so.

If so, Gordo will be excoriated, Balls destroyed, Blears haunted, Harman tracked to her inevitable demise and both Milibands (to say nothing of the repellent Alexanders, bro and sis), tormented to destruction. (There will be no need to bother with Darling, his being dead meat already.)

Well, maybe.

On the other hand, maybe not.

On the other, other hand ...

I have hopes ...

We shall see.