Skip to main content

I do like to be beside the seaside

It's Tory Party Conference time again, politics fans!

HIM AGAIN: good to see David Lee Cameron taking the massive contribution of short haul flights to climate change so seriously that he's put none other than notorious eighties hardman John Selwyn Gummer, Sellafield and diseased beef boy himself, on the case (who he? readers under twenty and americans cry. Google, my children. Then giggle). His squeaking of the facts was heartening to hear, and to be entirely fair he was largely correct. But undermined somewhat by the bellowing of a bellicose Tory at the debate on the subject woefully missing the point by claiming that as his journey to the conference was by plane (amusingly he shoehorned a reference to Ryanair in there too, never a Tory party conference without some pals product placement) it was shorter and therefore less polluting. Sigh. Lets go over this one more time shall we? STOP TRAVELLING BY PLANE OR WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE.

GREEN DAVE REDUX: poor Gummer was also fighting against DLC's insistence that plans for Heathrow's expansion wouldn't necessarily be polluting. Good to see the old policy of saying everything's going to be fine, then shrugging and saying "well, what can you do?" when it all turns into a massive clusterfuck on the assumption that the general population will reply "good point" and go back to watching Ant and Dec's oddly youthful faces (see also road expansion; Iraq; rail privatisation; water privatisation; systematic dismantling of industrial base etc etc).

YOU'RE KIDDING, RIGHT; even funnier than Cameron's stated aim to take the "Centre Ground" of politics (so why should we bother voting for you then? that's what we've got right now isn't it?), funnier even than Gummers witterings about a "Carbon tax" (a what now? and you're going to implement that how, exactly?), funnier even than Osborne's barefaced lie about no tax cuts (so no funding from your city buddies, so no election campaign funds. Sorry George, it isn't going to work) is the same man's intention that the burden of tax will be shifted "away from businesses and famuilies, and on to polluters." Interestingly vague this, and I await his speech agog at how he's going to square the shifting of the tax burden off the (mass-consuming, gas-guzzling) families and (mass-consuming, you get the drift) business and off on to these shadowy "Polluters" whomsoever they may be. Because it certainly isn't you and me. No no no. we have votes, so therefore can do no wrong, I wonder if the polluters are related to Bush's "evildoers?" If not they certainly hang out in the same pubs.

THE CONDENSED POST: the Tories are lying shitbags. The Tories have always been lying shitbags. The Tories always will be lying shitbags.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The last day of the county season

 Look, I never claimed to be cool. As a a cliched middle aged male, I have a number of interests which, if not exactly niche, are perhaps not freighted with glamour. Not exactly ones to set the heart racing. I yearn not for wakeboarding, my cocaine with minor celebrities days are well and truly behind me, you are unlikely to catch me writing graffiti under a motorway bridge. I do cycle, but only as a way of getting from point A to point B, you are unlikely, you will be relieved to hear, to see me purchasing lycra and or/doing triathlons. I like going for a nice walk. I'm fond of a good book. I have a deep attachment to county cricket. Yes, that's right, county, not even the international stuff which briefly captures the nation's fleeting attention once in a blue moon. County cricket. Somerset CCC to be precise, though I'll watch / listen to any of it. The unpopular part of an unpopular sport. Well, that's the public perception, the much maligned two men and a dog. N...

D-Day Dos and Don'ts for Dunces

Oh Rishi. Lad.  You have, by now, almost certainly become aware of the Prime Minister(for the time being)'s latest gaffe, as he returned home early from D-Day commemoration events in France, in order to "concentrate on an interview" which, as it turns out was already pre-recorded. There's been a fair bit of outrage, the word "disrespectful" is being bandied about a lot.  The word I'd use is "stupid". It is often said of the Brits that we have no religion but that the NHS is the closest thing we have to one. This, I think, is incorrect, because the fetishisation of WWII is to my mind, far closer to being our object of national veneration.  I understand why, last time we were relevant, fairly straightforwardly evil oppo, quite nice to be the good guys for a change, I absolutely get why the British public worship at the altar of a conflict which, I note, was a very long time ago. I think it's a bit daft, personally, but I understand it. So you...

The three most tedious food debates on the internet.

 I very much only have myself to blame. One of the less heralded aspects of running a business is that one is, regrettably, obliged to maintain a social media presence, it's just expected. And, if I have to do it, I'm going to do it very much in my own voice, as I don't tend to have time to stop and think when I'm bunging something on Insta. It seems to have worked okay so far. But, as a man better versed on the online world than he would prefer, I should have known better than to stick up a picture of our bread rolls, fresh out of the oven. In my defence, I did preface said picture by saying "one of the most tedious debates on the internet is what these are called...". Doubtless you've seen the argument somewhere, it's one of the workaday tropes that shithouse FB pages use to drive engagement. Need a few thousand clicks to raise the profile of your godawful local radio station/page about how everything was better in the past/shelter for confused cats?...