Kobayashi Maru

A hung parliament?

Dave?

Ther Broon?

The other guy?

Someone tell me what democracy was supposed to achieve again?

After all of the votes are counted, parliament is considered "hung" if no one party ends up with enough seats to form a majority in Britain’s 650-member House of Commons.

Britain and the rest of the world won't have to wait much longer. UK election results should start to trickle out shortly after 10 pm in the UK (5 pm EST), when the polls close. While surprises are possible, opinion polls ahead of the election showed David Cameron's Conservative Party in the lead, but about 20 seats shy of a majority.

The last time the UK had a hung parliament was in 1974, when the two largest parties (the Conservatives and the rival Labour Party) lost considerable shares of the nationwide vote, thanks largely to a surge by a third force, the Liberals. The Liberals later merged with another party to become the Liberal Democrats, who are currently running third. If parliament is hung this time, the Liberal Democrats may enter into a coalition arrangement with one of the "big two."

Yee Haw!

It's Election Day!

Big fun.

It's not looking good for Labour, not matter what else.

You know you're in trouble, Gordo, when even the Guardian is baying for your blood.

Take me to your lizard...

Ford and Arthur discuss politics when a robot steps out of a spaceship and asks to be taken to their Lizard.

The robot, said Ford,

"comes from a very ancient democracy, you see..."

"You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?"

"No," said Ford, ... "nothing so simple. Nothing anything like to straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."

"Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy."

"I did," said Ford. "It is."

"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't the people get rid of the lizards?"

"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."

"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"

"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."

"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"

"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?"

"What?"

"I said," said Ford, with an increasing air of urgency creeping into his voice, "have you got any gin?"

I'm told this is making the bloggie rounds.

I also understand that there is an election expected soon in Yookay. It is, I am also informed, going to be a doddle for Ther Cameron.

Ther Cameron seems to want us to believe that when he takes over from Ther Broon, it will be because we picked him and like him best. He has promised that things will be Different under his thumb than it was under the thumb of Ther Broon. But this promise seems to have nothing to do with Ther Cameron's actual policies which he is also promising will be exactly the same. Because in the land of the Lizards, The Same is the same as Different, which is different from The Same.

I have only one thing to say...

got any gin?

Labour suffered its worst post-war election result as it gained just 15.3 per cent of the vote, even worse than party bosses had feared, and was beaten into third place by UKIP.

Oh. My.

UKIP!?

Imagine the horror!

Polly Toynbee must be burning her bra in incoherent rage...

...

(That falling-off-chair thing again...)

On Notice

I'd say that Gordon's time is up.

Gordon Brown's labour government, already rocked by disastrous local election results, ministerial resignations, backbench plotting and persistent undermining of the prime minister's authority, could disintegrate further when European election results are announced on the evening of June 7.

...and Nick Griffin is an MEP.

...


Ooopp!

Sorry,

fell of my chair laughing for a second there.

"Pathogens"

There is no more distasteful spectacle, morally and aesthetically, than the annual gathering of the Great Uncleanness that has debauched our country since 1997. Among the swarming pathogens at Manchester can be observed every strain of totalitarian, anti-British, anti-Christian prejudice that has undermined our civilisation for the past 11 years.

Oh come on now, Gerald, stop holding back, and tell us what you really think.

Quite simply, the governing party is alien to the nation, is now perceived as such, and there is no road back from that fundamental schism between all that is British and everything that is Labour.

Or so I most fervently hope.

On Bended Knee

I hope that Mr. Brown's aides have remembered to buy him some knee pads. They must be getting rather sore by now.

One way of dealing with the problem

of an aging population is to have a cull of the elderly.

Can't think of a better way than a 40-70 per cent increase in gas and electricity prices.

I wonder if there are still any people left in this country who remember how to knit a woolie.

"Gordon Brown’s fortunes have now slumped to the point where he is not so much living in Number 10 as lying in state."

"Any further decline will take Labour out of the province of psephologist Tony King and into that of historian Andrew Roberts, whose responsibility it will be to discover equivalent ratings for the Whigs after the defeat of the Exclusion Bill. If Gordon continues in freefall it will then be the mediaevalists’ turn, when some comparisons may be found with the popularity of, say, Richard II at the height of the Peasants’ Revolt, or Henry II immediately after the murder of Becket.

Well Duh...

Research shows conservatives nicer people than lefties...

George Orwell once wrote that politics was closely related to social identity. 'One sometimes gets the impression,' he wrote in The Road To Wigan Pier, 'that the mere words socialism and communism draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, nature-cure quack, pacifist and feminist in England '.

Orwell was making an observation. But today a whole body of academic research shows he was correct: your politics influence the manner in which you live your life. And the news is not so good for those on the political Left.

There is plenty of data that shows that Right-wingers are happier, more generous to charities, less likely to commit suicide - and even hug their children more than those on the Left.

John Muggeridge and I once worked out why. Lefties, John maintained, are interested in the grand movements of history, in The Good of Mankind, in altering and improving Humanity and Society and Peoples, etc. They think in terms of theories, of mass movements, of political ideologies being applied (usually forcibly) to entire populations and damn the realities of people's day to day lives. This was the effect of the various social and cultural, agricultural and industrial revolutions in Maoist and Stalinist states. The "land reform" concept that looks good on paper but in reality destroys lives, ruins economies and results in mass famines. The theory is all, and reality be hanged (along with anyone who objects). Being focused on the Macro means that individual people do not matter as long as your Grand Scheme is implemented.

For example, the left is interested in the Grand Overarching and Absolute Principle of "A Woman's Right to Choose" and insists that the law be changed to reflect it. The fact that individual persons are harmed by this is considered immaterial, or at least an unfortunate but essentially unimportant side effect. The principle is all, whether it hurts people or not.

The left is interested in Mankind. The right is interested in this particular person.

My own discovery, after a lifetime of total immersion in the world of the hippie left, was that outside the Southpaw Matrix there is such a thing as kindliness. I grew up in the little hippie universe where everyone was focused on "finding themselves". Oh yes. The Me Decade. The ME generation. Dream therapy workshops, gestalt weekends, doing your own thing, getting in touch with your inner narcissist. The talk was all about "compassion", but when everyone you meet is walking around with a metaphorical mirror strapped to his chest, it is difficult to tell what is meant by the word.

The trouble with communicating this is that most people have no idea there is another world, the world of The Real, outside their bubbleworld. How can you explain colour to a man who has been blind since birth?

"Aslan," said Lucy through her tears, "could you -- will you -- do something for these poor Dwarfs?"
"Dearest," said Aslan, "I will show you both what I can, and what I cannot do. ... You see," said Aslan. "They will not let us help them. They have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their own minds, yet they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out."

Day Dreams

Still slightly giddy from last week's politics. It's just that it's been so long since my team has won a major game.

-----Original Message-----
From: Hilary White
Sent: May 7, 2008 3:28 PM
To: Canadian political buddy
Subject: BTW

I know someone in London who was also a member of the Bullingdon club
who told me last night that the reason he is happy that Boris and Dave are
shortly going to be running this country, is that they will absolutely for
sure bring back the fox hunt.

I LOVE this country!

Hilary:

Went to see Mark Steyn perform, er, speak last night here in Toronto.
Wonderful, wonderful speaker. He said but did not elaborate much on Tony
Blair defending British values abroad but not quite getting it at home. I
used to blog that Tony Blair had no authority to wage a war in defense of
western civilization in the Middle East while deconstructing it at home; no
rhetorical defense of liberty while robbing Englishmen of their right to
hunt fox. Very, very few of my readers seemed to appreciate the point but I
find it all part of a whole. One normally conservative correspondent asked
what I had against foxes; I asked what he had against fox hunters. Banning
something simply because you don't like it sounds so Islamic too me --
Taliban on the Thames was briefly my name for Blair's Labour government. --CPB

From: Hilary White
Sent: May 8 2008 3:28 PM
To: Canadian political buddy
Subject: BTW

When order is restored, and Dave and Boris have put me in charge of cleaning things up in Cheshire, I've got a detailed plan to turn Liverpool into a re-education camp for southpaws, homosexuals, vegetarians and people who are sentimental about animals. One of the things they will be taught is that foxes are bad for farmers. They will be forced to attend the horses at the Tarpoley Boxing Day hunt, a few miles from here.

and "John Lennon" airport is going to be changed to the Admiral Lord Nelson airport.

and sanity will be restored.

Kick him when he's down

Overheard this afternoon in WH Smith from a respectable betweeded sensible-shod lady between 60 and 70 speaking to a man about the same age, probably her husband:

"Oh I've just had enough of Gordon Brown. I'd like to kick him. Kick him really hard."

Happy Day

I was all snug, covers pulled up around my ears, cat sleeping as usual in the exact geographic centre of the bed, and the sun streaming between the slats of the blinds. The radio clicks on at the dot of seven and the first words I hear are,

"Labour has suffered a crushing defeat in yesterday's national election..."

Without opening my eyes, I begin the day with a smile.

No, Prime Minister...

An entertaining fifteen minutes can be wasted quite easily just Googling the keywords "Gordon" "Brown" "psychological" and "condition".

Right now there is a mini boom in rumours about the PM's psychological condition. He's variously said to have taken a wobbly after the election-that-never-was, plunged into depression over Christmas, and brought in the New Year by kicking chairs across the room.

"Labour Revolt"

Google is interesting.

I put "Labour revolt" into the news search and came up with some interesting findings.
Ones we already knew about:245 articles on Brown's headaches over the Embryo bill.

and the Gurkhas,

the Lisbon Treaty and the referendum,

and two I haven't been following very closely:
Post office closures,

Dozens of Labour MPs and Ministers who campaigned against closures in their own constituencies were accused of hypocrisy and betraying vulnerable constituents after refusing to back the Tory motion to suspend the programme, the first time MPs have voted on the issue.

But the revolt by Labour backbenchers was embarrassing for the Government, whose majority was slashed to only 20 as Ministers felt the strength of feeling over the closures.

Early indications were that 20 Labour MPs joined the revolt by backing the Tory motion. It was defeated by 288 votes to 268.

The vote came after a succession of MPs from all three main parties condemned the closures in the Commons and criticised the consultation as a "sham" and a "farce" that has seen busy and profitable branches close as well as those with few customers.

and a proposal to allow police to detain terror suspects without charge for up to 42 days.

Brown has a Commons majority of 67 which means the government could be
defeated if 34 Labour MPs rebel, assuming every opposition MP votes no.


The Guardian contacted all 205 backbench Labour MPs. Of the 78 MPs spoken to, 27
said they were planning to vote against the government. Twenty-nine said they would
support the government, while a further 22 were undecided or would not
comment.

See? I knew I wasn't a racist

Not only do I think they should be here, but if they're not getting full pensions for their service to this country, someone ought to be strung up.

Daily Mail:

Gordon Brown was facing a growing Labour revolt last night over the Government's "pathetic" treatment of Gurkha veterans.

More than a dozen Labour MPs are calling for an end to the "arbitrary" rule which bars retired Gurkhas from taking British citizenship if they left service before 1997.

Plus a bonus. Anything that involves a "growing Labour revolt" against Brown is music to my ears.

Telegraph:

The grievances of the Gurkhas are legitimate and long-standing. You could be forgiven for imagining that they were resolved in September 2004, when Tony Blair, then prime minister, announced after an 18-month Whitehall review that Gurkhas who had served with the British Army and wanted to settle here with their families would be allowed to apply for citizenship.

The Government confirmed it would change immigration rules to let them stay. Prior to that decision, they had no pension rights, no leave to remain in the UK, and could not apply to become British citizens. David Blunkett, then the Home Secretary, said: "We have put together the best package to enable discharged Gurkhas to apply for settlement and citizenship. I hope this decision makes our gratitude clear."

But note the weasel word "discharged" in that statement; and, indeed, the devil was in the detail. The change meant that only Gurkhas who have served at least four years and were discharged after July 1, 1997 - the date at which the brigade's headquarters moved to the UK from Hong Kong - would be eligible for "fast-track" citizenship.

Wiki:

Gurkhas are best known for their history of bravery and strength in the British Army's Brigade of Gurkhas and the Indian Army's Gorkha regiments.

Gorkha is one of the 75 districts of modern Nepal.

The Gurkhas were designated by British officials as a "Martial Race". "Martial Race" was a designation created by officials of British India to describe "races" (peoples) that were thought to be naturally warlike and aggressive in battle, and to possess qualities like courage, loyalty, self sufficiency, physical strength, resilience, orderliness, the ability to work hard for long periods of time, fighting tenacity and military strategy. The British recruited heavily from these Martial Races for service in the colonial army.