Weasel Defusing

STOP!

Now - very carefully - and as calmly as possible, take seventeen and a half steps back.

Slowly!

Don't do anything that is going to upset the weasel. Don't make any sudden movements, noises or display any Introduction To Calculus text books, you may have about your person, to the weasel. You must - especially - not show your working.

If I am any judge, and you don't get to be my age in this business, if you are not, then that weasel is about to blow. The tuppenny rice/treacle mixture is - I would say - at almost critical mass. It could go off at any moment.

Good.

Now that you are at a - relatively - safe distance, move slowly widdershins around the weasel cage. This is a very critical moment. If the weasel pops now, it could start a chain reaction with all the other weasels in the cage.

What we need to do is carefully tempt it away from the rest of the weasel horde. Luckily, I have here a DVD of Eurovision highlights (1970-1986) which it will certainly find it very difficult to resist, especially as it contains a commentary from Tony Benn on the socio-political implications of a Europe-wide song contest from a hard-left position. That should be enough to cause ANY weasel, fully loaded with the tuppenny rice/treacle mixture to self-ignite, once we have it far enough away from the rest of the weasel horde to prevent a chain reaction, that is.

CAREFULLY!

Good, now that the weasel is isolated, we can place him securely in this pop-proof cage whilst we continue with our repeated entering and exiting of the Eagle until the time of detonation.

Thank you for your time.

Prime Minister Should Be ‘At Least A Bit Competent’, Peers Say

Political power in the UK is ‘left in the hands of idiots and fools’ a committee of Peers, that stayed awake long enough to notice, has said.

The House of Lords Snoring and Drooling Slightly Committee also said that:

Even the appearance of the current Prime Minister is wholly inadequate, especially on the international stage where the official photographs of various intergovernmental summits made him look like a terminally-bewildered tramp some kind official had let in out of the cold.

The report went on to say:

On no account should any Prime Minister, especially this one, be allowed anywhere near anything to do with running the country, no matter how big a mandate they claim to have (or not – as in the case of the present incumbent).

As soon as a new PM arrives in Downing Street, senior civil servants should, gently but firmly, sit him down in a nice warm corner of the PM’s office with a brand new tub of Play Doh and leave him to it.

The report continues:

The Cabinet Office would make an ideal… er… ‘dustbin’ for all those MPs in the governing party deluded enough to think that they could run a department of state. We suggest perhaps if civil servants put in there some things like, for example: a Wendy House, a handful of bright shiny things, a selection of dressing –up costumes (police and army ones are always popular with cabinet members) and so on that could keep them entertained until they are thrown out on their ears at the next election.

When asked to comment on the report, a Labour spokeswoman said:

Obviously the conclusions of this report are a bit awkward for us. After all, we already have a cabinet full of incompetent tossers, many of whom have deluded themselves into believing that when Gordon Brown eventually gets locked in a stationery cupboard, then they can take over.

Luckily though, Harriet Harman is introducing legislation in her ‘equalities bill’ to ban discrimination against the incompetent getting any job they apply for, right up to and including Prime Minister. So, obviously when that bill comes into law there would be nothing to stop even Harriet Harman becoming Prime Minister herself. No… come on… I’m serious… honest.

A spokesman for the Conservative party commented:

This isn’t fair. With reports like this it seems more and more likely we’ll never get our turn. We’ve finally got a leader now that doesn’t frighten children, or who makes everyone giggle uncontrollably, and now they say we have to find a competent one as well? Don’t these people realise these are politicians we are talking about. If any of them had any competence at all then surely they’d be doing a proper job.

When someone could be arsed to ask the Liberal Democrats, their spokesman said:

Competent, eh? Well, we are the Liberal Democrats – need I say more… really?

UK Government Warns Local Councils

Some non-entity from the government with an obvious make-work job title from a department you’ve never heard of before, yesterday warned local councils that:

If local councils do not screw as much money as possible from their local tax payers then the government would have no alternative but to take action against them, up to and including an in-depth investigation into each councillor’s claims for expenses.

However, the local councils were quick to respond, with a spokesman saying:

Look we already screw as much as we can out of our local taxpayers, fining them for all sorts of things like: leaving their wheelies bins slightly too far to the left, having the audacity to own and use a car, using pavements, breathing our local air, and all sorts of things.

It is easy for this government mouthpiece to claim we aren’t taking enough of taxpayer’s money, but the trouble is that the national government already takes most of the people’s money in national taxes, leaving very little for us to get our hands on, if we take much more of their money off local people for our so-called ‘local services’ then we run the risk of them not having enough money left to even feed themselves. Then who will pay to have all the starved, emaciated dead bodies swept up from the streets? I bet the national government will say it is all our responsibility as usual.

UK Government ‘Is Knackered’

A group of former Whitehall senior officials have woken up long enough to notice that, according to a report issued yesterday: ‘The British government is a complete and utter disaster’ and that government ministers should not be ‘allowed out on their own’ or ‘allowed to play with sharp objects’.

A spokesman for the authors of the report said, at a press conference, yesterday:

It has become obvious over the last few years that getting elected as a MP is no indication at all of having any intelligence, competence, or even integrity, which in any other walk of life would be regarded as – at the very least – career-limiting, but - perversely – in politics they are the very qualities that allow someone, no-one else would trust to hand round the biscuits at a village hall committee meeting, to be given control of a vast government department with a massive workforce and an immense budget.

Frankly, though, what we really need in much, much less government for these people to cock up. Most things that need to be made illegal are already illegal, the vast majority of the rest of the government’s legislation is poorly thought-out knee-jerk responses to the latest bout of tabloid-provoked hysteria, that if ignored would die out within a few days, or even sooner if some celebrity’s tits fall out of her dress in front of a nearby photographer.

The report goes on to say that the people of the UK must either realise that government is too important to be left to politicians, or that we must severely limit the power of governments to damage our society.

However, the authors of the report go on to conclude that:

Quite simply the only conclusion we can draw from our study of the UK government is that it would be best to rip out the green benches from the House of Commons debating chamber and replace it all with one huge sand pit.

In other news, the Association of British Brewers yesterday confirmed that – after the forthcoming election – they would not offer any former government minister a job as a Social Events Organiser.

Call For End To ‘Anti-Religious’ Hostility

The Council of Righteous Uttabollux Dhaftghits today echoed the sentiments of some other religious organisations in the UK.

A CRUD spokesman said:

We too, have suffered discrimination and hostility because of our religion and – consequently – we urge the UK government to enact legislation as soon as possible to force people to like us, whether they want to or not.

For some reason our beliefs seem to make other people hostile towards us and our way of life. Just because we believe that a woman should spend her entire life within the confines of a cardboard box in order not to tempt men into evil thoughts of a sexual nature, and that we insist on either stoning to death, or setting fire to, anyone who even slightly disagrees with us, people seem to take against us. Quite simply, we cannot understand it.

When asked about the situation, a government minister said:

You want more new laws! Lovely, great. We’ll get on to that as soon as we can. Obviously we are doing our best to make everything we can’t tax, illegal, but there are only a limited amount of legislative hours available to the government, and no matter how half-arsed, or even downright incompetent we are about framing the laws, we still occasionally quite simple run out of time. Quite soon too, there has to be an election we’ll need to stitch u… er… win, which will also have an effect on how many new laws we can introduce over the next few months. Er… what was it you said we need to make illegal now, then?

However, a man, who did not wish to be identified, who had some strict Uttabolluxers recently move in to the house next door, said:

I don’t care what religion they are. Live and let live, that’s my motto. However, his wife seems to have no end of trouble hanging out their washing from inside her cardboard box.

Still, anyway, just to be sociable, a good neighbour, like, I went round there and asked him if he fancied coming out for a pint, get to know each other, like, and then maybe we could go on to check out the new lap dancing club in the town centre. But he just glared at me and slammed the door in my face. That’s not very neighbourly, is it?

Some In UK More Equal Than Others

A new report issued by the so-called National Equality Panel, has found plenty of justification for the panel’s own existence by gathering some data to support the conclusions it was set up to confirm. The panel was set up by ‘Dirty’ Harry Harman in 2008 to give a spurious justification for her prejudices and middle-class leftie self-loathing by giving a sheen of authoritative respectability to Harman’s prejudices and assumptions and her almost pathological need to interfere in the ordinary daily lives of everyone in the UK.

The report goes into tedious detail to show that despite all the Labour government has done over the last 12 years to discourage and prevent them; it seems there are still people in the UK prepared to work their arses off for the betterment of themselves and their families.

As most people know, ‘equality’ can never be achieved, both because of the almost infinite variety of humanity and our need to both fit in with, and create a distinct individuality different from, everyone else, and the inventive subtly we can bring to grading those distinctions, as well as the fact that the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune mean that no-one’s life can be packaged up and measured with any degree of accuracy or meaning against anyone else’s.

However, despite it seeming a hopeless and pointless activity, the thought of all the inequality still left out there to conquer brings a surge of orgasmic joy to the heart of a true Leftie.

So, rather than seeing this as a total condemnation of all their interfering, social engineering and the complete failure of their attempts to remould unwilling humanity into their own ideal, those such as Harman will seize upon reports such as this as proof that they have ‘not gone far enough’ and that ‘more needs to be done’.

You have been warned.

Charity Worker Of The Year

Beaujolais Stalactite - this year's winner of the Charity Worker Of The Year award is now only really seen at the celebrity parties and other shindigs associated with her charity Young Ladies For The Relief Of Exceptionally Wealthy Older Men (YLREWOM). Of course, Stalactite herself is no longer such a young lady, but she does - unselfishly - make herself available to advise any younger woman feels a need to offer some kind of executive relief to the wealthier older man.

Stalactite was - in her younger days - so devoted to her cause that she would often marry a wealthy old man sometimes only mere days after the funeral of her previous husband. That was, of course, providing any greedy and selfish relatives of her late husband had not instigated any legal proceedings over the provisions the wealthy elderly gentleman had made in his final Will - which invariably seemed to leave the entire estate to his grieving young widow. This was proof, stalactite often claimed, of just how good she was at providing the necessary relief for the elderly gentleman in his - all too brief - final months.

Although only one of her twenty-seven marriages to wealthy older men lasted longer than six months, the Billionairess Stalactite does not feel she has wasted her youth in her devotion to her charitable cause. So she still works tirelessly to seek out as many exceptionally wealthy older men to introduce to the many young ladies who selflessly devote themselves to working on behalf of her charity.

Survey Of ‘British Social Attitudes’ Published

The People of the UK, it seems, are more and more coming to the conclusion that there is little point in voting for yet another self-serving, self-enriching political opportunist to ignore the wishes, wants and needs of their constituents in order to inch their way further up the greasy pole of political careerism.

The Telling You You’re An Abnormal Weirdo Oddball Freak For Even Thinking That survey, by the National Office for Pretty But Meaningless Graphs, questioned a number of people about their political and social views in various pubs and in the streets around the NOPBMG offices one slow Friday afternoon at the end of last year.

In politics, according to the survey, it seems that – for some reason the BBC finds hard to fathom – the majority of people have turned against the idea of the government constantly taking more and more of their hard-earned money to piss up the wall on projects that seem always to make things worse rather than better.

Unfortunately though, the survey discovered that the overwhelming majority of people still wanted to be sheep, following someone else and being told what to think, rather than working it out for themselves.

However, it seems people’s attitudes towards politicians seems to have become much more realistic, where a strangely massive 2% of the population still apparently believe that politicians are not in it for personal enrichment, self-aggrandisement, over-inflated ego, or the desire for top class naughtiness of the flesh.

In social attitudes, the survey suggests there has also been a decrease in the number of over-opinionated busybodies who think that what other freely-consenting adults do with their genitalia is any of their business.

Other statistics are less surprising:

Apparently nearly 65% of British people believe that aliens are from another planet.

Over 70% of British people think that Princess Diana was - quite possibly – female.

According to the survey too, just under 75% of UK citizens believe they have a head, while the overwhelming majority of the over-55s like to point at ducks.

 

The Telling You You’re An Abnormal Weirdo Oddball Freak For Even Thinking That survey, was produced by the National Office for Pretty But Meaningless Graphs and was commissioned by the UK government, using your money.

Monday Poem: Headstones

Headstones

The headstone fallen, broken and then lost
In high forgotten grass, the brighter weeds
Where only busy insects and the occasional fox
Wanders by. There is only distant birdsong
And the sudden flash of butterfly wings.

Even the body is long gone, bare bones
Only the bones, the dry bones in clean earth.

Who knows the right spell to cast, to tell
The lost story of how these bones lived,
And this is how she once danced all night
A teenager in her first white ballgown.
And here is the old woman clutching
A frightening bible to her faded breast
Waiting for that final knock
On the half-closed door of her heart.

Should we remember them all?
Recite the ancient names around a fire?
Tell stories to keep the night away?

Tell stories; all we can do is tell stories
And hope to remember all the names.

 

First published in Interpoetry issue 15
[Website no longer available]

Mandatory End-of-Year Marmoset Nipple Inspection Time.

Now it just so happens that today is not quite the day for Mandatory End-of-Year Marmoset Nipple Inspection. Her Majesty's Marmoset Nipple Inspectors, however, are all poised and ready to begin investigation into any dubious claim they suspect of attempting to defraud the government of its statutory right to know the exact number of marmoset nipples currently in the country. So, if - by this time next week - if you haven't filed your form 45b, form 1290, form 2 and for this year - because this year is the Chinese year of the Marmoset - form 34356712345689d, especially sub-section 45b, c, d, and f, then you can expect a visit from H.M.M.N.I fairly soon. If - on their visit - they do discover any unclaimed marmoset nipples then you can face a fine of at least 35p and/or - depending on the severity of the offence - up to 47 minutes in prison.

Of course, many critics of the system have claimed that the revenue raised by the tax of marmoset nipples - £17.56 last year, for example - is greatly outweighed by the cost of administering it - £19.46 billion last year. But, Tentacle Brainleecher, the government's Secretary of State for Marmosets (with special Nipple Responsibility) said, in an interview in the House of Commons, "The cost is not the issue and… hey, look over there! Isn't that the MP who put his duck house on expenses?" before running away from our interviewer and hiding in the Government's private toilets.

Asked for his view, Inept Placeholder, the opposition spokesman for Marmoset Affairs said. "Er… well obviously, this government is doing everything wrong and we would do it all far better, of course. That is if the ungrateful bastard voters of this country ever actually come out and vote for us." When asked if the policy would change under their new policy initiative, he replied. "New policy? Have we got another one? Only I came in a bit late this morning… is it still the one whatshisname - the young one with the hair - announced the other day - or have we got another – newer - one?" He immediately wandered off; looking for someone who knew which policy initiative was the current one.

The Liberal Democrat Spokeswoman for Marmoset Affairs, Airyhead Inconsequence, also had something to say, but our reporting team decided they would much prefer to go home early rather than waste time bothering to interview her, or to even keep up the pretence that anything a Liberal Democrat says matters in any way.

Terrorist Leader Releases Audio Tape

In a Audio tape released to the Al-Jolsona media network yesterday, Old-Sam Binge-Drinka, the self-proclaimed 'leader' of the so-called Uttabollux 'terrorist network' Al-Ka-Hollix directly addressed the leaders of the West, proclaiming 'Come on then! I’ll have the lot of you!’ to all the leaders of the Western nations.

[Old-Sam Binge-Drinka]

In a poor-quality audio tape that often slipped in and out of audibility, the Al-Ka-Hollix mastermind singled out the United States for his spleen, pointing out that he had seen the US ‘staring at his bird.’, before going on to accuse both America and Israel of spilling his pint, ending the tape with the words ‘Come on, then all of you! Outside!’

'Let him come and try, if he thinks he's hard enough!' Mrs Clinton, the United States, Secretary of State yelled, before an aide pulled her back by the arm saying, 'Leave it, Hilary, he's not worth it!'

When finally coaxed out from under the Oval Office desk after receiving assurances that 'the naughty man had all gone away now', the US president said,

'Listen we both had a few drinks, you know, some things were said, a few things got out of hand and a few things happened which we all regret now. So, how about it then?' Finally adding, 'You're my best mate, you are.'

The Uttabollux terrorist grouping, Al-Ka-Hollix, have claimed sole responsibility for many recent of the most recent terrorist outrages caused by heavy drinking and claim to be the force behind several of the biggest post-closing time drunken brawls that have taken place in the Western world over recent years. Also, anti-terrorist police have pointed to several pools of suspicious looking vomit as evidence that Al-Ka-Hollix may be developing an offensive chemical capability.

Friday Poem: Dead Leaves

Dead Leaves

The trees are bare, skeletal,
Their leaves toyed with by the wind
Floating free like loose pages
Torn from photograph albums.

Leaves are memories that fall
To the ground, around our feet
As we go down muddy paths
Leaving only footprints behind us.

Forgetting is slow, poised
Always on the edge of falling.
When time grows too heavy
We begin to learn how to fall.

Like angels who no longer believe
In the possibility of flight,
We cannot expect to fall
As gracefully as the easy floating leaves.

Alternative Energy Sources

As you well know, the theoretical critical mass to start a chain reaction in a fully-rice-and-treacle-primed weasel horde is 27, which is just what we have here in this cage. According to theory, the weasel horde reaction should be self-sustaining, providing easily enough electricity - once plugged into the national electricity grid - to recharge three mobile phones whilst at the same time providing enough power for your toaster to char two slices of toast enough to set off next door’s smoke alarm on their upstairs landing.

Although, rice and treacle charged weasel power generation is still very much at the prototype stages, there is enough confidence within the scientific community as to its long-term prospects, and its relatively benign environmental impact (producing only trace quantities of carbon emissions from the treacle burnt in the weasel explosion) for the government to invest heavily in its further development.

Once the chain reaction is initiated, the popping weasels have to be confined within a strong spherical vessel capable of withstanding the enormous amounts of energy created when the weasels explode. This vessel also has to be quite easy to clean, as the remnants of the popped weasels have to be hosed out of the vessel at fairly regular intervals, otherwise the mixture of popped weasel, tuppenny rice and treacle will - eventually - impair the operation of the device and, ultimately, cause the chain reaction to fizzle out.

With a half-life of twelve and a half minutes, weasel-popping power generation has none of the long-term waste storage implications of either nuclear power, or - even - immolating the elderly* to produce electricity.

 

*Currently, this government's preferred option - allegedly.

Annual World Do Something Quite Rude With A Friend Or Close Colleague Day

And so the great herds of shopping trolleys swept majestically down the slopes of our hillsides into the fertile valleys below, there to sweep across the great open plains of our out-of-town- shopping centre car parks, go twice around the Wrekin and then apply for jobs in the very call-centres of our souls.

But despair no longer, for not once should such vicissitudes deter us from our overwhelming desire to pour lukewarm custard over the naked knees of our nearest work colleague, for today is – as you should all know – World Do Something Quite Rude With A Friend Or Close Colleague Day. For it was the massive worldwide success of Worldwide Admire Your Own Genitals Day that led to the governments of the world - at their last International all-expenses paid shindig summit – to get together to create another such international holiday: A special worldwide holiday where the many and diverse peoples of the world could take a few moments from their hectic schedules of trying to discover even more ingenious ways to kill or maim each other, and – instead - to go about being rather rude with each other in as many interesting – and quite naughty – ways as possible. For not only is it generally nicer for all involved to be rude with each other, rather than attempting to slaughter each other, it tends to leave slightly fewer unpleasant stains on the tarmac for someone else to clean up.

Of course, due to the nature of the festival few, if any, strict Uttabollux countries will be taking part in these events, preferring instead their traditional method of celebrating their – and, presumably, their god’s-given – sexuality by gleefully stoning to death anyone even slightly suspected of deriving any pleasure at all from even contemplating, let alone doing, it.

Badgers and TB

According to sources at the government’s Department for Ignoring Rural Affairs, the number of badgers infected with TB (Tony Blair disease) has increased significantly over the last few years, even though the Prime Badger known to be infected with the disease was supposedly eradicated from the UK a few years ago.

Recently, vets had to put down one badger fatally infected with Tony Blair disease, which had started to form a focus group to endlessly discuss NHS reforms. While only a few years ago, a badger in some nearby woods claimed that the recent attacks by suicide weasels ‘filled with cheap rice and dubious treacle’ had ‘nothing at all’ to do with that badger’s decision to launch a pre-emptive attack on some water voles living on a distant farm. These water voles, so the TB-infected badger claimed, would be able to lunch a massive assault using specially-trained overly-flatulent cattle ‘within 45 minutes’ of the farmer opening the gate to their field.

Some years ago too, other badgers tried introducing identity cards for all woodland creatures, ‘so we can tell which birds are indigenous and which are merely migratory’. This was seen as merely a sop to some of the indigenous woodland creatures who claim that the migratory birds are using all the scarce nest-building materials in some areas, leaving ‘British birds’ with no material for constructing their own nests.

In one area, another TB-infected badger decided that ‘failing hen houses’ should be put under the management of outside consultants – certain ‘specially-selected’ foxes. ‘Time and again’ the badger claimed, foaming at the mouth slightly, ‘foxes have shown that they are the ones who really know how to turn around failing hen houses.’

A badger, diagnosed with Tony Blair disease, was also under investigation for allegedly receiving money from certain wealthy cuckoos who wanted to become owls, and therefore sit in the higher branches of the oak trees, passing rules, judgments and laws concerning the activities of the other creatures in the woods. This badger had said, when taking office that it would change the privileged status of the owls as lawmakers for the woodlands, but like so many other promises made by TB-infected badgers, it came to nothing.

A couple of years ago it seemed that the disease had died out naturally in this country, when the Prime Badger carrying the disease was removed from office.

However, since then, there have been a few rumours of outbreaks of Tony Blair disease in the Middle East, but despite this there have been no confirmed sightings there of the former , TB-carrying, Prime Badger. Recently, there were warnings of an outbreak of this TB disease in Europe, but luckily it was eradicated before it could take hold.

Although, certain sources close to the current Prime Badger – a self-certified TB-free badger - have indicated a cure for Tony Blair disease had now been developed and we should have see the total eradication of this menace from our lands, it seems, however, that there are some signs this deadly disease could return to our shores in the very near future.

Government Training Scheme Was 'Mismanaged'

A government scheme intended to train members of parliament in basic human competence was branded a complete failure last night, when it was revealed that it had only managed to train MPs to fill out their expense claims and nothing else.

The scheme was intended to train MPs, so that they – at least – have some vague idea of why they turn up at the Houses of Parliament beyond submitting expense claims and seeing how many freshly-oiled and naked ‘researchers’ can be squeezed into a house of Commons stationery cupboard with an upstanding member.

However, a member of the government pointed to the massive increase in the number of MPs, jetting off to foreign climes on all-expense paid ‘fact-finding’ missions, saying:

Look, at least when they are abroad they are not in the Houses of Parliament screwing things up for the rest of the population. Research has proved that when MPs are out of the country, then there is far less chance of them doing any more damage to it.

A similar scheme, called The Train to Govern Scheme, set up to train those MPs who became members of the government was also criticised in the report, which concludes that:

…there is little or no evidence that anyone in the government had any real idea what they were doing, how to do the job they were given, or, in some cases, that they were supposed to have the first clue about the department they were – at least nominally – in charge of.

In summary, it seems ridiculous that someone, by mere dint of being elected by a small proportion of the electorate, will have any idea about how to run something like a huge government department, and despite the extensive training they were given – apparently in how to use a paperclip, how not to stab themselves in the eye with the pointy end of a pencil and how to smile and wave at the TV cameras without falling arse over tit – it did little to prepare them for joining the cabinet, and – Lord help us – trying to run the country.

The report recommends that trying to train MPs, and – by extension – members of the government to be anywhere approaching competent is a futile and pointless task, and that most politicians could easily be replaced by empty cardboard boxes on the benches of the Houses of Parliament without anyone in the electorate noticing, or even caring that much. The report also says that the government itself could be improved; made more effective and efficient, by replacing all cabinet members with a troop of monkeys from a Safari park.

The Heyday Of The Cultural TV Documentary

Portakabin Weaseldefuser has become England’s most influential televised pointer at things of interest since the heyday of the TV cultural documentary back in the late 60s/early 70s. In recent series he has been filmed going around the country pointing at some of the UK’s most important aspects of cultural heritage for the benefit of TV viewers, mainly in order to save them the trouble of getting off their arses going to look at things themselves.

Pointing at things in TV documentaries is, of course, a very specialised field, and few have managed it with the finesse and dexterity of Weaseldefuser, who is capable of pointing at important things with either hand, depending on which part of the screen the important thing is when he needs to point at it. Not only that documentary directors have praised the way Weaseldefuser can look completely natural during those seemingly obligatory shots of him travelling from pointing at one important thing to a different place where he will point at something else, despite the fact that the two pointing episodes will have been filmed days, weeks, or even months apart and the actual journey filmed supposedly linking them was filmed completely separately on a entirely different day. Just why we need these bits, and other oddities like Weaseldefuser and an interviewee pretending to meet each other when Weaseldefuser apparently turns up out of the blue to knock on their door, when the interview was planned months in advance is anyone’s guess, but a highly prized – and seeming obligatory - part of the documentary maker’s art, along with so much of the obviously pre-planned spontaneity that litters these programmes like the droppings in a poorly-maintained rodent cage.

However, for as long as TV companies feel it is worthwhile interspersing these documentaries between their trailers for their more vapid offerings intended to keep the nation’s couch-potatoes in the mollified stupor that so many now regard as their birthright, then it seems presenters like Weaseldefuser will be encouraged to go out to point at things in the hope that – just maybe – there is someone out there in TV audience land who finds it even slightly interesting enough not to change the channel for a moment or two longer.

Halting the Terrorist Threat In The UK

Over the last few years, the world has grown wearingly familiar with some fundamentalist Uttabolluxers who promote the use of terrorism in order to bring about a world united in Uttabollux, where everyone worships the one true Skhighhibhoss and his prophet, Nhigel (May His Plums Dangle Mightily).

[An Uttabollux terrorist cell in training]

These terrorists, known as the Al-Ka-Hollix, led by their mysterious leader Old-Sam Binge-Drinka, have caused chaos and mayhem throughout the world with their many terrorist attacks on clubs, bars, pubs and off licences, with the suicidal amounts of heavy drinking that are the mark of the true Al-Ka-Hollix terrorist. As the head of the Metropolitan Police’s counter-terrorism unit said:

When one of these people sidles up to an innocent person in a pub and begins talking about the match, or last night’s TV, most people are unaware that they are chatting to a committed Al-Ka-Hollic, at least, that is, until the following morning where – if they are very lucky – they wake up naked in a skip with a splitting headache and a strange new tattoo on their genitalia.

The Ladhifeah, the Uttabollux Holy book, in the Mhahdehupstuff (the Uttabollux Holy Law) claims that any one who dies in the holy service of the Skhighhibhoss, or the prophet Nhigel (MHPDM), will when he ascends to heaven be awarded with 72 pints of beer, bought personally for him at the bar by the prophet Nhigel, with each served to him by a different Uttabollux angel, all of whom will declare themselves sexually aroused by the martyr’s prodigious alcohol consumption ability, and demanding that he satisfy her carnal needs then and there.

The UK authorities have introduced many anti-Uttabollux terrorist measures into the vulnerable pubs and clubs of the UK in an attempt to reduce the threat of an attack, such as: Alco-pops and cheap lagers – which taste too foul for even a committed Al-Ka-Hollic to sup in suicidal quantities, an excessive tax on alcohol in order to make a suicidal drinking binge ludicrously expensive, especially for Uttabolluxers who are well known to have short arms, deep pockets and religious beliefs which prohibit them ever volunteering to get their round in.

The head of the Metropolitan Police’s counter-terrorism unit added:

It seems like our only remaining option to curb the threat from committed fundamentalist Al-Ka-Hollix terrorist is to bring in a law to make dominoes and cribbage once more compulsory in British pubs and clubs in an attempt to reduce the possibility of one of these terrorists engaging in a suicidal amount of drinking and encouraging all the other patrons to attempt to keep up with him, resulting in the carnage of totally wrecked punters knee-deep in their own vomit smashing up the place before collapsing in a big puking heap outside the door.

The End of Innovation?

These days we often find that our marsupial spanners no longer fit the lug nuts on the underside leading edge of the manifold. Not only that, the access panel that used to allow access to the internal working of our bank manager is no longer accessible without a specialist tool only available to dealers and other authorised repair outlets.

Even a once simple job like adjusting the sparkplugs on your movie starlet now has to be undertaken at a recognised repair facility. No doubt, this makes economic sense to the manufacturers, but it does mean that generations are growing up with no idea of the fun, educational possibilities and even economic value that can be had from youngsters learning to build and maintain their own stockbrokers.

For it can be strongly argued that the experimenters, the inventors, the innovators of tomorrow are those teenage boys (and it is - despite all these years of sexual equality - still mainly boys) who learn the workings of their school French mistress in the privacy of their own bedrooms.

What is more, now that so many spare parts consist of little more than units that are discarded and replaced, plugged and unplugged, how is any young Henry Ford, Benz, Rolls or Royce, Sinclair or Gates going to learn just what makes a dental nurse tick?

Soon there will be no inventors, visionaries or idealists left, for how can you invent a better nude unicyclist if you have never taken one apart to see how they work?

FBI Issues New Digital Images Of Terrorist Leader

The FBI in America has issued fresh digitally-enhanced photographs of Osama Bin laden in an attempt to discover his current whereabouts.

The new photograph shows the terrorist leader with wavy grey and black hair, wearing western clothes and without his trade mark ‘naughty foreign-person’ beard.

The terrorist leader who blames America for all the world’s woes is believed to be hiding in a fortified bunker deep within the secret terrorist enclave of Downing Street in London, where - intelligence sources believe – he is planning the downfall of a leading western nation through the use of his terrorist organisation the All-Krappilabour-party, which he has used to create havoc throughout Great Britain over the last few years.

Several western intelligence agencies are keen to discover the whereabouts of this man as soon as possible, so they can bring about an end to his reign of terror in the UK, where this terrorist leader has been personally responsible for several fundamentalist attacks on the liberty of ordinary people, the destruction of the British economy, severe damage to the social fabric of the country as well as his deadly use of the well-aimed Nokia, which - anti-terrorist sources say - makes him a real and present danger to the world.

Explicit Marmalade Contemplation

Labia Minora was the sort of woman who was not afraid to engage in explicit full-frontal marmalade contemplation, even in front of total strangers. Touching, fondling, each jar, holding each one up to the light in her long delicate fingers, for Labia, marmalade contemplation was almost an art. She would even - but only on special occasions when the mood took her - daringly read the ingredients list whilst still in the supermarket aisle.

Of course, such open, frank, sensuality even in this so-called enlightened age of full-on sexual openness, did far, far, more than raise a few eyebrows.

Labia Minora lived in the small village of Ignorant Bastard-on-the-Piss in a small cottage converted from a hole in the ground during the property boom of the 80s.

Ignorant Bastard-on-the-Piss was a traditional English village where such - seemingly quaint - photogenic rural customs as well-dressing, Morris dancing, bestiality, incest and an almost-paranoid suspicion of strangers was still very much the norm. It was generally accepted in the village that for anyone, especially single women, marmalade contemplation - if indulged in at all - would take place, discreetly, at home behind closed doors and drawn curtains.

But Labia thought herself beyond all that. She saw herself as too urbane, too sophisticated, too fashionable and far beyond such rural petty-mindedness - no matter how traditional - to be bound by such conventions.

So, one night, after Labia had, that same morning, once again engaged in public marmalade contemplation in the local shop, the villagers got together and - once the pub closed - took her down to the river where - in keeping with local traditions dating back to before the Norman invasion - they drowned her in a sack.

Monday Poem: The Sculpture

The Sculpture

The rusted tank by the roadside,
grass, even a few flowers, growing
around and up through the turret.
Its broken-backed gun barrel reaches
like a pleading, dying hand.

Two skeleton-thin children,
dressed in rags, clamber over it
as though it is a rock formation
rising up from the ground,
or some playground apparatus
donated by wealthy benevolence.

It has lost its meaning as a weapon,
the children no longer run from it.
It is an obstacle, an item, a landmark.
It could even be a sculpture.

Did the teenage boy who fired
the missile that blew it apart,
destroyed its meaning,
the knight that killed the dragon,
ever realise that he became an artist?

 

First published in Interpoetry issue 15 (website no longer available)

Strategic Gap Exists At The Heart Of Gordon Brown's Government

In a report issued over the weekend, an independent body said they had discovered a ‘strategic gap’ at the centre of Gordon Brown’s government, but despite this the politicians were still somehow managing to screw things up.

As one civil servant from the cabinet office said:

We do try our best to stop the politicians buggering things up, but occasionally one or two of them will – somehow – manage to escape from the janitor’s cupboards where we usually keep them locked up, and sometimes they can cause significant amount of damage, or – ‘running the country’ – as they like to call it, before we can get the net over them and drag them back.

We would like to stress though, at no time is the general public ever at risk from being seriously bitten by a politician, even if they do manage to evade their keepers.

However, just as a precaution we would strongly suggest that during the forthcoming election campaign that no-one allows a politician to shake their hand – or, even worse - kiss their baby. Our scientists are working on an anti-politician vaccine, but they fear it will not be ready in time for the election.

A senior political correspondent for the BBC said:

It has been a long-standing tradition in the British civil service for them to always do their utmost to protect our society from the various lunacies of the politicians, from whatever party, and though it is reassuring to see that the current crop of civil servants still see this as their central purpose, it is very worrying to see the number of times politicians have managed to escape and cause such chaos over the last twelve years.

The problem is that politicians these days don’t seem to understand that most of what happens in this country – and even abroad – is just none of their business. They just can’t seem to stop interfering, and - we must admit that - if it wasn’t for these civil servants selflessly devoting their working lives to preventing politicians bollixing it up even more, then things for the rest of us would be far, far worse.

Friday Poem: The Shores of Morning

The Shores of Morning

I

The hesitancy of waking
surfacing from the depths
up and through the dreaming sea
out onto the surface of sleeping.

The desire to remain floating here
just drifting where the tide takes me.

The dream reaches out, clutching
at the slow fading memory,
wanting to drag me back down.

The calmness of drowning.
The insistence of temptation.
The desire to end all desires.
The destruction of need.
Never needing to surface again.

II

The day calls to me from the land.
I break the surface again, look ashore
at the strange familiarity of my life.

Safe from the whimsical logic of dreams
the ordered insanity of daily existence
is protected from the charms of fantasy
by the prosaic rites of normality.

Slowly, I swim for the shore.

The fingers of the mermaid clutch
once at my ankle, then are gone.

As I wade toward the beach of morning
I turn, glance back over the sea
to see the dream, floating away
on the receding tide of the night.

I see the mermaid wave, only once
before she dives back into my seas.

III

With my mermaid I could swim forever
as we explore the depths of my dream sea,
together over rocks, reefs and my sunken wrecks.
Never again surfacing for the dawn
Or to return to the shores of daytime.

Out in the deepest of the dark seas,
far from the headlands of dawn,
the mermaid is waiting for me
and she sings her morning song
about how I no longer need
the ground, solid underfoot,
or to breathe the morning air.
We can float forever
together on the tides,
let the currents take us
flow with the shifting shoals of fish.

IV

It would be easy to swim
in the eternal dreaming sea.
Go where my seas take us
far from the day's shore.
But the shore always drags me,
as it drags the reluctant waves,
back towards the waiting shore.

I sigh and slowly climb
the steep beach of morning
back over the shifting dunes
to the land of ordinary life
where time always waits for me
to turn moments into useful days.

The Ocean-Going Goat-Powered Cheeseboard

Encumbrance Stoatdisorder became famous as the first woman to circumnavigate the globe using a single-handed goat-powered cheeseboard. Of course, the sheer pointlessness of anyone attempting such an 'adventure' in this day and age, when global travel is such a commonplace affair, was overlooked in the media's headlong rush to find something outside its usual mundanities to over-inflate.

The very inadequacy of the goat-powered cheeseboard as an ocean-going vessel - especially in its single-handed version seems - in the sheer perversity of its use for such a purpose - designed to extract the maximum amount of publicity and media attention rather than for any other reason.

The sheer number of these pointless adventures taken for no real purpose using more and more outlandishly absurd methods by these increasingly bizarre individuals, can be for no other purpose than some sort of self-aggrandising ego-stroking reasons for their perpetrators. The only noteworthy aspect to all of these stunts is the amount of media attention they seem to attract, often out of all proportion to their worth, and - in reality - newsworthiness.

Someone attempting to reach the South Pole naked on a pogo-stick powered by steam-driven badgers, or whatever, should really only be of interest to mental-health-care professionals, and yet the media - in all its wisdom - seems to think that the perpetrators of these events are to somehow - and for some reason - to be awarded the status of hero. That the notion of hero has in itself become devalued through tabloid overuse is yet another irony lost upon them as they over-inflate the importance of another non-entity for performing deeds both pointless and absurd.

It seems to be yet another iteration of that strange modern phenomenon - akin to the endless parade of surveys and opinion polls, 'brand' renames and re-launches, government initiatives and business 'announcements' that seem only to exist in order to appear in the media and then - just as suddenly - disappear again.

Harman Defends MP’s Break

As the BBC website says here:

Harriet Harman has defended the length of time Parliament will not be sitting in February, saying the seven-day recess is not a "holiday" for MPs.

[House of Commons working at maximum efficiency]

Before going on to say:

Instead, it is a holiday for the hard-working British public, a chance for them to get away from the tiresome antics of politicians and this Labour government’s continued attempt to be the world’s biggest ever fuck-up.

In fact, I would expect most MPs will spend the greater part of the week in their constituencies, most probably hiding from their constituents.

As one voter in a rural community said:

Our MP may think that we have forgotten all about his expense claim for a moat for his duck house, and his three-week ‘fact-finding’ visit to ‘learn more about the working conditions in several of Thailand’s most exclusive ladyboy brothels, but we have not.

We’ve all been sharpening our pitchforks in readiness for his return and everyone in the constituency has donated some wood towards the bonfire.

A seasoned, however, political commentator said:

Quite frankly, this is great news. We could do with far less government in this country. In fact, it would be great if we could stop MPs coming into the Houses of Parliament altogether. They’re just like kids on Christmas morning, as soon as they get their hands on the shiny new toys of government, they start breaking everything, then a short while later you find them sitting stunned amongst all this chaos and destruction wondering what they’ve done.

However, the House of Commons squeaker, Diddy Bercow is believed to be keen for MPs to have much shorter breaks, as he believes that the people of this country can’t get enough of seeing him on TV. But then if he wasn’t completely delusional about his own charisma, abilities and totally oblivious to how the rest of humanity view him; it is unlikely that he would ever have become a member of parliament in the first place.

The Wind That Breathes Us Away

If the world holds its secrets too close for us to see and if time falls around us, leaving us with only empty hands, then what are we to do? Where can we go to escape this world and these times?

It seems as though we have no hold on this world, as though it all slips too easily from the fingers, leaving us to heap into dust and lie forgotten until we are taken on the wind that breathes us away.

Still we walk on, hand in hand, as though we know this road will lead somewhere, as though we will have a destination that we can reach, even though each side of this road is littered with the graves of those we only ever made it this far.

Back In Those Formica-Coated Days

It was back in those Formica-coated days of our young dreams where the idea of instant soup was only just making inroads into the consciousness of this nation. Oh, we had brown paper and string aplenty, but the vacuum pack was not even on the horizon. Therefore, we had no inkling of what horrors were to come and the nightmares of pre-packaging we were about to endure.

Back then we were young and in love and the stationary cupboard was to become our haven from the wide kipper ties, patterned shirts and flares of the office as we stole moments of bliss amongst the manila envelopes and cardboard boxes spilling their paper clips all over us as we clung together pressed hard against the piles of carbonless memo-pads.

Still, though, ours was not just a love of stolen workplace moments we had the pubs, only just now awakening to the sounds of Space Invaders and their relentless march across the cathode screens of our computer-driven futures, whilst off in the distance was the new sound of the microwave ping punctuating our lunch hours with inadequately reheated pies and the lukewarm rubber-like cheese toasties.

We had hours together in the half-light flickering of three channels, and the rumoured whispered promise of a fourth, of TV to ignore as we found our way beneath tights and tank-tops into a wondrous world where pubic hair ran wild and free in the innocence of nudity.

But then the times changed and we did too.

Labour Party Fears Loss Of Client Group

In a speech probably at sometime today, someone you’ve never heard of who -apparently - is in the government, will claim that, in most cases, those categorised as part of a so-called ‘ethnic minority’ are not now as disadvantaged as in the past.

In his speech, the non-entity goes on to say:

If racism is, indeed, on the wane then it will be a major problem for those of us on the political Left. We have, on the Left, since the working class turned their backs on us and opted for aspiration, always presented ourselves as champions of the various minorities, some of which we have had to invent for the purpose, so that we can increase the influence of the state in people’s lives.

So, unless we can reignite this waning racism, perhaps by creating some kind of panic over the BNP, or create some hidden ‘racist agenda’ out of what few Conservative policies there are, we will have to find some other minority that we can pretend to champion, or risk losing some of the massive gains we have made in social control and social engineering of this country throughout the lifetime of this government.

As you know, the last twelve years have shown this to be a very successful strategy for those of us in government, our various quangos and other such bodies, who have insinuated ourselves into the ordinary day-to-day lives of the people in this country on an unprecedented scale.

Obviously, when we claim to represent, speak for and champion these various minorities, it is not – obviously - necessary for us to actually do anything about their plight, especially as in a lot of cases we have invented both the victim group and its apparent plight, disadvantage, and exaggerated the prejudice and so forth it is supposedly suffering, mainly to increase our control over society and the people within it.

Remember, in summation, it is not our business to better the lot of these various ‘minority’ groups, but to keep them in their current positions and increase the tension between the various groups in order for us to have an excuse to increase governmental participation in, and control of, every aspect of people’s lives.

The government is busy trying to get a new ‘equalities’ bill through parliament before the forthcoming election in order to increase its involvement in many more aspects of people’s lives, claiming that it will make society ‘fairer’ and more ‘equal’, despite those two qualities being almost polar opposites of each other. But, as the above speech makes clear, all these measures are really concerned with increasing government control of, and involvement in, what used to be known as people’s private lives.

Once it lost the traditional working class, the Labour party set itself up to as a champion of these various ‘minority’ client groups in order to gain power. As it various client groups competed between themselves, the Labour government set itself the task of arbitrating between them, ostensibly to promote their interests, but in reality to increase its involvement in the lives of those it placed in those various groupings. This made each group more and more dependant on the government to resolve their problems, most of which were created by the increasing government involvement, intervention and meddling.

However, a Conservative spokesman responded to the speech by saying:

Of course, the waning of racism is not just a problem for the Labour party. We on the Right have often used the fear of the other, the outsider, as a way of increasing our control over society too. So we will also have to, as race as an issue becomes increasingly irrelevant, have to look at finding some other dividing line that separates ‘them’ and ‘us’, and how if we - when we are in government – are all that stands between the Great British way of life and these forces of anarchy, disorder, chaos and those mysteriously potent strange outsiders who want to have darkly erotic sex with our wives.

An Empty Road

Here we are again, knowing that this is another day and wondering how many more mornings are waiting down this road for us. There comes a time when looking forward into that distance becomes too burdensome; a time when the weight of the past is a much heavier load than the weight of the future, a time when the horizons draw ever closer while the path to the past stretches back deep into the forgotten woods.

But, what do we know, and what have we learnt as we have made our way down this road? Just that we are here for a while and then we are gone, our shadows fading into the darkness as the sun sets, leaving only an empty road.

When Celebrities Do… Stuff!

When Celebrities Do…Stuff! The outrageous new TV series brought to you by the person who fetched the sandwiches for the production team that made so many other celebrity and reality dirt-cheap brain-dead TV programmes like: Celebrity Nose-Pickings Exposed!, Real Ordinary People Doing Embarrassing Stuff On TV, Celebrity Test Card Trials, Hermit Idol and many, many others.

When Celebrities Do…Stuff! The NEW shocking exposé of just how dull tedious and futile life as a vacuous celebrity REALLY IS.

GASP as you see live-action film of celebrities cleaning their own teeth!

WONDER as you see them trying to do the most trivial tasks - like make a cup of tea - for themselves WITHOUT the aid of a lifestyle coach.

STARE in INCOMPREHENSION as you watch them try to make sense of even the most trivial and mundane articles in celebrity magazines and watch, then fail to understand, the items on the thinly-disguised empty gossip shows that masquerade as news bulletins on their TV channels of choice.

SCRATCH YOUR BUM AND STAR AROUND THE ROOM IN SLIGHTLY EMBARRASSED BOREDOM as they witter on endlessly about surviving an allegedly-traumatising childhood in the obscure hope that this will somehow justify to the couch potatoes too stupid to stop watching that the so-called celebrity deserves this life of fame, riches and pampered comfort.

CURSE as you FRANTICALLY paw through your TV listing mag, in the increasingly forlorn hope of finding a single programme that isn't Celebrity this, or Reality that, or some form of lifestyle-porn.

SMILE IN BLISS as you - finally, in desperation - hit the OFF button and discover that not only is life WITHOUT a constantly blaring TV in the corner actually possible, but it is somehow actually better and far more deeply satisfying than you could have ever believed.

‘Small Number’ Causing Massive Social Problems

The UK’s crime tsar today claimed that a small number of people were responsible for causing most of the social problems in the country. The tsar, Catherine Nottobadconsidering, said she had identified a core of around 650 major troublemakers who were responsible for most of the breakdown in society over the post-war decades.

Catherine Nottobadconsidering said:

The 650, who operate mainly from a central London hideout are split into rival gangs, with the two largest gangs vying with each other to takes turns in causing mayhem throughout the country with each constantly trying to take over the other’s turf and attack each other’s supporters.

Furthermore, my report demonstrates how these main two rival gangs, from their criminal hideout on the bank of the river Thames, have through their constant battling destroyed much of the UK’s traditional societal values and have extorted vast amounts of tax payer’s money to spend on self-aggrandising projects that often cause great harm, or even destruction, to huge swathes of British society.

Nottobadconsidering’s report went on to say:

It seems that if the UK wants to make any progress as a society we will have no alternative but to find some way of removing the influence of these self-styled ‘politicians’ that blight our country, and find some way of neutralising the effect their anti-social behaviour has on the rest of us, right from the smallest claim for biscuits ‘on expenses’ right up to the massive ‘government projects’, such as the infamous ‘ID cards’ scam.

Such acts of cultural vandalism are set to cost us billions of pounds that none of us can afford to have stolen from us any longer by these criminal gangs. Consequently, it is time that these gangs, especially the two causing the most havoc, are disbanded and their members taken into custody.

Winter Morning

The wind howls, cold and lonely, every day blowing us deeper into darker mornings. The colder nights stretch themselves over the daylight hours. Thick dark clouds, like blankets, cover the sky. The weak, ineffectual sunlight, washy as watercolour turns the world pale. The horizon shortens as the world narrows and limits itself.

The gaze is lowered as the body hunches into itself against the cold. The wind blows rain against the face, Ice-needles.

Everywhere is too far to go.

I do not want to go out there, to walk through a landscape made alien by the winter weather. I do not want to go walking over the cold, hard, dead ground, beneath the skeletons of trees that shiver under the dull grey-uniformed sky.

Here we can sit, with a raging fire and hot drinks. We can be cosy together in the artificial warm, under artificial light, as the wind and rain batter futilely at the walls.

We will sit here warm and safe together as wind and rain knock on the window, eager to be let in.

Un-Mollified Small Mammal Awareness

These days it is not that often we have to call out the 24-hour mobile Small Mammal Mollifiers with their pre-saturated transverse small mammal mollifying devices, even in the wild untamed jungle of the public transport system, except - of course – on Tuesdays during the first month after the Christmas holidays.

Nowadays, with such experts always at the ready, the danger of having to deal with any un-mollified small mammal during the course of one’s usual working day has been reduced almost to zero. In fact, recent government-sponsored research has revealed that anyone born after the date of Paul McCartney’s first solo post-Beatles beard will probably never have come across any un-mollified small mammal during their use of public transport, unless – of course – they are resident in one of the outer London boroughs.

Of course, back before the explosion in small portable consumer electronics, any small mammal mollifiyer encountering an un-mollified small mammal would have had recourse to the slide rule, cheese sandwich, plumb bob and portable tensing racket that had been the standard small animal mollification tools from almost the beginning of the Victorian era. Back in those days too, the various small mammal mollifying stances and ritual incantations were a basic part of the school syllabus with even a child of as young as 12 being able to snap into the Crouching Stockbroker, Bewildered Dental Hygienist In A Chinese Takeaway stance as immediately on hearing the standard initial small-mammal mollifying incantations such as ‘Oh shit! What the hell is that thing scuttling around the wainscoting?’ or ‘Run away! Run away! It’s a monster!’

These days, though, small mammal mollification is best left to the fully-certificated expert, unless you want to be sued – or severely beaten about the head and neck with a sharpened portable tensing racquet.

Monday Poem: In The Name Of Blood

In The Name Of Blood

We speak of this blood
As though it has some property beyond
The sheer magic of its redness.
We give names to these dreams and call them true,
Expecting the world to conform.
We have no plan, just vague notions
There is something beyond the mere redness,
Calling our blood home.

Finding it too hard
To accept how a mere ape needs just one
More small step to grow up human,
We search for reasons, we search for more clues
In the dark blankets of the sky.
We want to be greater than this,
Despite knowledge, despite history, we think
We do deserve it.

So now, we search for
Stardust in the lines of our blood as we
Dream of our final redemption.
But, let us go and we will fall
From the sky as we dream of endless flight.
Falling, always falling. We look
Up at the stars, their promise of future
And learn how to wish.

Always falling down.
There is so much distance and so much space.
We fall between the stars and know,
What it really means to be so alone
As blood seeps into the staining
Ground from the still body of just
One more child. And still we do not learn how
All blood is alike.

Political Parties To Have Quotas For Women MPs

Apparently, it seems the UK’s political parties feel that the rest of the British population would despise politicians far less if there were more women amongst their ranks, despite the experience of the last few years of increased numbers of female MPs.
So, despite evidence that most women would much rather chew their own heads off, or – if the worst came to the worst – endure a full-on threesome with Gordon Brown and Jack straw, than even consider entering the mind-numbing, soul-destroying slough of despond that is modern political life, the political parties are seemingly determined to have more female, and other ‘minority’ MPs in an attempt to make their publicity photographs appeal to as wide a demographic as possible. All this despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of voters have no interest in the sex, ethnicity or any other diversity tick-box of their elected representatives, being only really interested in whether the candidate has some competence for the job… for a change.
As one voter said:

The trouble is that politics attracts the kind of people who are interested in politics, with an almost pathological need to stick their noses into things they have very little understanding of, when what the country needs to elect are people who have a deep fascination with whether our bins get emptied on time, or realise that criminals are not just an excitingly exotic subculture, or that the ethnic diversity of the BBC’s weathermen makes no difference to the amount of snow that falls on us.

However, some current MPs have expressed concerns that an increase in the number of women MPs could bring about changes to the traditions of the Houses of Parliament. Consequently, a senior political party figure moved to reassure the current batch of parliamentarians, saying:

There is absolutely no reason why women can’t be as inept, venal, incompetent, or corrupt, as men, as the present Labour government has so overwhelmingly demonstrated.

Unfortunately, though, it seems as though the plans of the political parties will come to naught as women, it seems would much rather do a job that matters than strut and posture on the political stage for at best a few moments of glory, but mostly to see all that they once believed about the world and how it works crushed under the careering juggernaut of reality. As a veteran BBC political commentator said:

Frankly, most women – like most men - have more sense than to waste their time in the petty bickering and backstabbing of political parties when they can get plenty of that at any family get-together. So, in order to meet their quotas the political parties will have to have pressgangs hiding near shoe shops and cake shops ready to pounce on any unsuspecting women who even vaguely represents that party’s demographic. It is the only way they’ll get sufficient numbers to meet these ludicrous targets they’ve set themselves.

Friday Poem: Infestation

Infestation

I warned you about the danger
of letting poems into the house.

Now we have verse everywhere,
sonnets asleep in the kitchen
and bawdy ballads in the bedrooms.

We have cupboards filled with couplets
and villanelles on the veranda.

At night, I hear triolets
scratching together in the walls,
and I found enjambment curled up
asleep in my pyjamas.

There are rhymes without reason
all over this household,
and anapaests in the attic.

There are wild stanzas
performing free verse on the lawn
right in front of the neighbours.

There's an epic hogging the bathroom
and the gasman can't read the metaphor
all the sestinas blocking up the cellar.

The laundry basket is overflowing
with a load of dirty limericks.

Yesterday, I tripped over
a haiku in the hallway.
There's alliteration all around us
It's a pain in the assonance.

Now, we are going to have to call
for a professional prosodist
and have the whole house scanned.

I warned you about the danger
of letting poems into the house.

 

(Published Envoi 131 February 2002)

No Better Than They Ought To Be

Slingback Pencilcase first came to public attention as the world’s first celebrity Rodent Disconcerter on the C4 ‘reality’ programme People Who Are No Better Than They Ought To Be, a programme that purported to be an in-depth investigation into the cleanliness standards of some of the more hygienically-dubious people of this country. The programme, however, instead turned out to be a must-watch for those who like to tut, sigh, and shake their heads at the slovenly habits of those who seem to spend their entire lives eating cold food out of cans whilst sitting in their rather grotty underwear in front of a constantly-on hyper massive TV set: i.e. people not all that far removed from the programme’s intended audience.

However, as the makers of this type of ‘reality’ programme discovered, even these programmes need the stereotypical good guys and bad guys that once populated the simplistic dramas that this new type of ‘reality’ programme eventually replaced in the schedules.

Some of the earliest ‘reality’ programmes were even built around the cold heartless villain who in days of yore would be tying helpless victims to railway lines, but these days callously votes off the less heart-warmingly photogenic of the contestants on ‘talent’ shows, whilst the heroes of these types of programme, like Slingback Pencilcase went out – armed in her case with only a mouse trap and a large bloodied mallet – to do battle - if only symbolically against the increasing yobification of this once great mediocre quite nice all-right-I-suppose nation.

Once Upon A Time

Once upon a time there was a time that had a Once upon it. The time didn't mind all that much, just as long as the Once kept still and didn't keep trying to scratch its ears all the time. But - as we all know - the Once has very itchy ears indeed. Furthermore, the Once always felt as though all it needed was just one more really good scratch to sort out that itch once and for all.

But it never did.

Old Long Since

I had an email from my old friend, Maxine, a few days ago. I didn't even know she was on-line. We used to be in a band together, only a handful of gigs, but it was fun while it lasted.

Once, when we were very drunk - which was not that unusual at the time - she told me about her first lover, Samantha. Maxine was living in London, Hampstead to be precise, when she met Samantha. As they were both living with their parents at the time, there wasn't really a place for them to get together. So they used to take a couple of bottles of cider into the cemetery when it got dark.

Anyway, Max told me about this one particular night when she was particularly drunk and... well... she couldn't respond when Sam went down on her. No matter how long, or how hard Sam tried, Max just could not come. What made it worse was that it was their final night together, they were off to different universities the next day (well, Max was on her way to Wolverhampton Poly - which is how we met, but that is another story - and Sam was off to Kent University). They had promised to keep in touch, but deep down they knew they would grow away from each other.

Whether it was the drink, or the anxiety of separation, or a combination of both Max did not know. But she told me how frantic Sam got, how desperately she tried, how urgently she wanted, maybe even needed, to get Max to come.

Eventually, Max had to get up from the grave she was lying on. She told a now-tearful Sam that it just wasn't working, she was sorry; it was her own fault and all that. But Sam just couldn't accept it and ran off crying into the dark. It was the last time Max saw Sam for a long, long time. Max said that she was so sore, from where Sam had been nibbling at her labia, that she could hardly walk for two days afterwards and couldn't wear her favourite tight jeans for nearly a whole week.

So, when Max told me about this story it was very late at night, we were both drunk and we were in a band together. So what happened next was almost inevitable - we wrote a song about it.

The song was probably the best we had ever written, but unfortunately the band broke up not long after - mainly out of frustration at not getting anywhere, I suppose. Not long after that Max split - she was always restless - and disappeared on her travels.

So, it has been almost thirty years since we last met. She is back, living in Hampstead with a new lover - Jane - and she wants me to go down and visit her in May. She said, in the email, that she wants to show me the actual grave where that incident with Sam took place. In fact, she has sent me directions on how to get to that specific grave, and that is where we are going to meet. Of course, I am going, taking my guitar along, and we will probably get drunk again and - almost inevitably - we will sing that song again together.

So, I'll meet Max by graves when it is spring again and we'll sing again of her chewed lips from Hampstead Sam.