Public Interest.co.uk

Yes, I said I was waiting till March. But it almost is in Australia, and February 29 comes along every four years to mess things right up. So here I am. And how things have changed: Black Triangle's gone, Vivienne Raper's gone, again, and Jackie too. On the other hand, Cindy's back, under a new monicker, and promising to eschew the political thinking. Good man. Thinking about politics never got anyone very far, did it? And aren't you lucky I've been away, eh? Otherwise you'd have had me going on about Polly:

"Too often the left's over-devotion to individual rights usurps what should be its natural role as the defender of the power of the state - and of its servants".

And you'd have had a vigorous defence of Ann Winterton. Give me bad taste or give me death, that's what I say. What kind of society is it where you can't make bad jokes and offend everyone? So, hats off to the Daily Star, the UK's only paper prepared to defend her. Anyway, I am back, and will be back, though less often than before. I still have work to do. And feeling obliged to blog every working day was becoming a chore. So cherish every pearl that drops from my fingers into this keyboard, peasants, and be grateful. There will be fewer of them. But what pearls!

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Yes, I said I was waiting till March. But I just had to tell you about this one. So this is what she gets up to, the hussy.

"It was the most bizarre sex I've ever had. We had to keep totally quiet".

The shame of it.

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You say it's your birthday, well it's my birthday too, yeah. Who'd a thunk it? Times passes etc. Anyway, this seems as good a time as any for me to take a well-earned rest. So go check out the good people on the blogroll, or bask in the wisdom of my archives. Feel free to make comments on stuff I wrote over the past two years that is totally irrelevent to anything now. Was I really so exercised about Gibraltar? Perhaps. Go on, give me something to read when I get back. Which will be in March sometime, as I've got other stuff to do in the interim. The toad work comes to everyone. See you soon.

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"A question: how many phony, full-of-shit people do you have in your life - ?"

The VomitGod wonders.

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"It might appall sentimentalists to know that nothing I have seen in thirty years as a doctor, from epidemic and civil war to accident, murder and suicide, has ever caused me a moment’s sleeplessness, and that a man could cut his throat in front of me without it affecting my appetite for dinner in the slightest".

Harold Shipman? No, it's Anthony Daniels.

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SFW, believe it or not.

Welcome to a land where men could be Lesbians too.

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Presumably influenced by the fact that his fellow ex-jailbird Lord Brocket has gone down so well with the great British public, it now seems that Jonathan Aitken plans to whip out his trusty sword of truth once again, and return to his rightful place in the House of Commons. There is, alas, the small matter of the fact that this would currently be against the law. But that never stopped him before, did it? And if this man has his way, Mr. Blair could be losing his job soon as well. Aitken and Byers as PM and leader of the opposition? It can only be a matter of time.

UPDATE: You can read the full story here, though you will have to register. Curiously, there is no mention of the legal impediment that the BBC posits, and the Chief Gnome questions it in the Comments, so really it seems like there is nothing to stop him.

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NSFW.

No future,
no future,
no future for him. He didn't wanna holiday in the sun. Nothing's gonna stop Lord Brocket now. Not even these.

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Do you wannabe a British Monica Lewinsky? These people can help.

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According to Policy Exchange, a 'rightwing' thinktank, it says here, 9.7 million people are "living below the poverty line". I hate to think what number the leftwing thinktanks come up with. At any rate Polly Toynbee is in raptures:

"Labour has stamped its imprint on social justice. Labour language is now common parlance among Tories extraordinarily eager to talk about poverty and how to tackle it: not long ago they denied its very existence. The terms of political engagement between the parties are now drawn up firmly on Labour turf".

I find this all too plausible. One of the most depressing things about being a Tory is watching them behave like trendy vicars suddenly announcing how much they like Eminem. First they denounce it, then they grudgingly tolerate it, then they embrace it just when everyone else has filed it away in the attic as being so 2001. Look, if you want to believe that 9.7 million people are in poverty, that's your prerogative. People believe in Santa Claus and UFOs. But should they really be encouraged? It also leaves the Conservatives in a right pickle policy-wise:

"Do they go for tax-cut bribes - or for shadowing Labour? If their polling tells them they must sound as if they really care about social justice, then they can't offer tax cuts as well".

Mind you, Labour mustn't be too complacent about this. After all

"if Labour really wants to abolish child poverty by 2020, it will have to redirect money from rich to poor radically. The income of the bottom 10% will have to rise at three times the rate that it rises for the top 60% of the population for the next two decades. Is that politically saleable?"

I don't see why not. If the Tories have capitulated who's to stop them?

"It can be done: the Nordic countries prove it".

In which case it's in the bag. I wonder what's next for the Tories. Adoption of the Euro, maybe?

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Wolverhampton Uni is offering porn as part of its English degree. The blokes who run the course explain it thus:

"Watching pornography in a classroom becomes a Brechtian experience, causing discomfort and alienation. Porn then reveals not just flesh, but also its formal conventions, its repetitive narratives, its tableaux of power, its cold ideologies, its descent into bathos".

Well that's one excuse. But I suspect a more mundane one: most students these days can hardly get it up any more. And most of their teachers are worried about the demographic timebomb. Or more specifically their future pensions. It's that simple.

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Would you want a second-hand one of these?

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We have ways of making you sing.

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Germaine Greer, the Australian weirdoid and role model, was invited to appear in the latest series of I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here. Unfortunately she declined:

"My nightmare would be having to endure the twittering of a bunch of has-beens and wannabes, interested only in themselves and how they come across".

Explains the great has-been and wannabe.

"I really don't need to know that Jordan is not noisy in bed or that she occasionally likes to be treated rough".

Which is presumably because she is more interested in this sort of thing. Shame, really. I wouldn't have minded watching her eat cockroaches and stick her head in a bowl full of snakes.

UPDATE: I suppose it's vaguely possible that some of you read this while you are at work, in which case, as Mark Holland reminds me, various alarums and stuff might be triggered by clicking on the Role Model link. So save it for the privacy of your own home. Or internet cafe.

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"I have to say, Mr. Cuthbertson, it is a grave shame that you are so articulate and yet so misguided.
Indeed, a true demagogue for the modern times".

so sayeth Anon. Who is this person? Presumably some poor deluded liberalist - probably a pensioner or a social worker - lured from this competition - the Guardian's Best Political Weblog Award. For some strange, unaccountable reason, I didn't make the cut. The Boy Wonder, however, did. As did Harry and his pals. There are ten others, but they are all inconsequential nobodies known only to their wives and boyfriends, so really it is a face-off between, well if not good and evil, toff and prole. Consequently, I would urge you to vote for the Lord Brocket of the Internet. Johnny Rotten may have the common touch, but I think he may blow it in the end, with one temper tantrum too many. Mr. Cuthbertson may offer up a slightly uncharacteristic and unEnglish piece of shameless self-promotion here, in contrast to Harold's typically self-effacing modesty, but nonetheless he deserves to win. As long-time readers of this site will know, I have long-campaigned for him to become that paper's editor. This is but the first step on the ladder. So, come on everybody, vote Cuthbertson!

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