April 29, 2005
Winchester General Election 2005: Part Nine
On Wednesday I went to a forum where all the candidates at this year’s General Election in Winchester made their case and took on questions from the public. It was the first time I had ever ‘blogged a political event. It was also the first time in many years that I had been in a church, as the venue was the United Church in Jewry Street. I was five minutes late when I got there, but it took a bit longer to get going. Still, I was lucky to get a seat, at the rear and with a view from the right of the panel.
The United Church itself was a grand building. It was spacious and airy with good acoustics and was well lit. It had big white plaster walls and a wood panel ceiling lined with green border planks.
But the main attraction was the table where the candidates were. From left to right there was Patrick Davies, the Labour candidate, then George Hollingberry, the Bishop Of Winchester – who was chairing the forum – then Uther Pendragon (druid and enviromentalist), Mark Oaten the sitting Lib Dem MP and, finally, David Abbott, the UKIP candidate.
Davies was a pleasant and inoffensive man with a mild voice, a bald head, grey hair around the crown and glasses. He would have been quite likeable if it were not for the New Labour demon that seemed to take his mouth over at times and made him spurt out the snide, bullying and smug cant of Blair and all he represents. His argument was the same as his party – which can be summed up as “put up or shut up”, “we’re always right”, “we’re wonderful” and “tough shit if you’re middle class”.
Both Oaten and Hollingerry had thinning hair, medium builds and reasonably good looks for men in their early 40s. They looked quite alike, but George had more of a tan, and they both had the same knack of playing to the crowd with loud, clear voices. They both lived in Arlesford too, which suggested some odd parallel universe there, where a lib dem and tory version of the same man fought for supremacy. Their views were similar – reasonable and moderate on issues ranging from abortion to immigration. They both had charisma, with powerful stump speeches and an urgency and passion you can only really have if you think you’ve got a good chance of winning a seat.
Uther was the oddest looking of the lot, in full druid robes, and he had the most hair too – hanging down to his shoulders. Despite this he was surprisingly sober and laconic – reasonable even. His views turned out to be as pragmatic and as sensible at times as Oaten and Hollingberry, if of a more radical bent. He needed a big of practice with public speaking and had to read from notes. But as the forum went on, he seemed to get more confidence and even got some claps from the crowd. Far from being a buffoon, Uther turned out to be nobody’s fool.
No, the real side-show prop was David Abbott - a bombastic middle-aged man with almost as little hair as Davies. He epitomised the archetypal UKIP man, having that mix of monomania, self-righteousness, bombast and self-pity that will keep his party as no more than a fringe outfit for some time to come. Every answer to every question somehow related to Brussels and all those awful Polish potato pickers coming here and forcing up our house prices. He described Europe as the ‘Elephant In The Room’ – the harsh truth that dares not speak its name. For some reason, to press this point, he had a member of the local party go about Winchester in an Elephant suit. Quite how that was going to wreck the European project was anyone’s guess – but that’s a single issue, fringe party full of odd, angry middle-aged men for you.
Overall, the forum was entertaining. All the participants were surprisingly polite to one another and it was clear that the election will be a two-horse race between Hollingberry and Oaten – they really did give their all in making their case. Abbott was too scary and silly at once. Uther was doomed perhaps to lose his deposit, which seems a shame as he really does seem to giving it his best shot, lurid robes or no lurid robes. Davies is doomed too – and only reminded everyone that Labour is threatening to take over from the Tories as ‘the nasty party’.
My vote will be going to Oaten, simply because he really is hard-working and has answered many of my panicked e-mails about ID cards and so on. Hollingberry, though, might have got my vote if he were head to head with a Labour candidate – he looked like he knew his stuff and was willing to put pragmatism before ideology or petty party tribalism. Alas, Davies was not and must know he’s gonna get stomped on the 5th. Whether his party will get a similar mauling is not certain right now, but it could become quite likely in the last week of campaigning. Uther? If – and I mean IF - I think it’s going to be a shoe-in for Oaten, then I’ll give him my vote simply because I think you should encourage variety in politics. (“Eeeek!” shriek the Blairites.) Also, because he doesn’t seem to be just a joke candidate, but had some good points to be made about the environment. As for Abbott - err…
The United Church itself was a grand building. It was spacious and airy with good acoustics and was well lit. It had big white plaster walls and a wood panel ceiling lined with green border planks.
But the main attraction was the table where the candidates were. From left to right there was Patrick Davies, the Labour candidate, then George Hollingberry, the Bishop Of Winchester – who was chairing the forum – then Uther Pendragon (druid and enviromentalist), Mark Oaten the sitting Lib Dem MP and, finally, David Abbott, the UKIP candidate.
Davies was a pleasant and inoffensive man with a mild voice, a bald head, grey hair around the crown and glasses. He would have been quite likeable if it were not for the New Labour demon that seemed to take his mouth over at times and made him spurt out the snide, bullying and smug cant of Blair and all he represents. His argument was the same as his party – which can be summed up as “put up or shut up”, “we’re always right”, “we’re wonderful” and “tough shit if you’re middle class”.
Both Oaten and Hollingerry had thinning hair, medium builds and reasonably good looks for men in their early 40s. They looked quite alike, but George had more of a tan, and they both had the same knack of playing to the crowd with loud, clear voices. They both lived in Arlesford too, which suggested some odd parallel universe there, where a lib dem and tory version of the same man fought for supremacy. Their views were similar – reasonable and moderate on issues ranging from abortion to immigration. They both had charisma, with powerful stump speeches and an urgency and passion you can only really have if you think you’ve got a good chance of winning a seat.
Uther was the oddest looking of the lot, in full druid robes, and he had the most hair too – hanging down to his shoulders. Despite this he was surprisingly sober and laconic – reasonable even. His views turned out to be as pragmatic and as sensible at times as Oaten and Hollingberry, if of a more radical bent. He needed a big of practice with public speaking and had to read from notes. But as the forum went on, he seemed to get more confidence and even got some claps from the crowd. Far from being a buffoon, Uther turned out to be nobody’s fool.
No, the real side-show prop was David Abbott - a bombastic middle-aged man with almost as little hair as Davies. He epitomised the archetypal UKIP man, having that mix of monomania, self-righteousness, bombast and self-pity that will keep his party as no more than a fringe outfit for some time to come. Every answer to every question somehow related to Brussels and all those awful Polish potato pickers coming here and forcing up our house prices. He described Europe as the ‘Elephant In The Room’ – the harsh truth that dares not speak its name. For some reason, to press this point, he had a member of the local party go about Winchester in an Elephant suit. Quite how that was going to wreck the European project was anyone’s guess – but that’s a single issue, fringe party full of odd, angry middle-aged men for you.
Overall, the forum was entertaining. All the participants were surprisingly polite to one another and it was clear that the election will be a two-horse race between Hollingberry and Oaten – they really did give their all in making their case. Abbott was too scary and silly at once. Uther was doomed perhaps to lose his deposit, which seems a shame as he really does seem to giving it his best shot, lurid robes or no lurid robes. Davies is doomed too – and only reminded everyone that Labour is threatening to take over from the Tories as ‘the nasty party’.
My vote will be going to Oaten, simply because he really is hard-working and has answered many of my panicked e-mails about ID cards and so on. Hollingberry, though, might have got my vote if he were head to head with a Labour candidate – he looked like he knew his stuff and was willing to put pragmatism before ideology or petty party tribalism. Alas, Davies was not and must know he’s gonna get stomped on the 5th. Whether his party will get a similar mauling is not certain right now, but it could become quite likely in the last week of campaigning. Uther? If – and I mean IF - I think it’s going to be a shoe-in for Oaten, then I’ll give him my vote simply because I think you should encourage variety in politics. (“Eeeek!” shriek the Blairites.) Also, because he doesn’t seem to be just a joke candidate, but had some good points to be made about the environment. As for Abbott - err…
April 27, 2005
Winchester General Election 2005: Part Eight
'Just found out my polling card hasn't arrived, but I am still eligible to vote in Winchester. Good. But where's the bleedin' card gone to? Still, at least it's not a postal vote form...
April 25, 2005
Winchester General Election 2005: Part Seven
And now things get interesting.
Never mind the war. People have adopted this self-serving position whereby they can mutter how awful it all was, but still vote for the party that got us into Iraq for the sake of the precious public services and how much money everyone gets... The phrase "fuck you Jack, I'm alright" leaps to mind.
But remember when, in 2000, mass fuel protests actually put the Tories ahead in the polls for a brief while? This time round, these protests could be the real wild card in this election... After all, dead Iraqi kiddies are all very sad and tragic. But a drop in the supply of petrol? It will simply not do!!!
(Not that I want Michael Howard to win though. This General Election seems to come down to whether you want hot lead poured down your throat or squirted up your bottom.)
Never mind the war. People have adopted this self-serving position whereby they can mutter how awful it all was, but still vote for the party that got us into Iraq for the sake of the precious public services and how much money everyone gets... The phrase "fuck you Jack, I'm alright" leaps to mind.
But remember when, in 2000, mass fuel protests actually put the Tories ahead in the polls for a brief while? This time round, these protests could be the real wild card in this election... After all, dead Iraqi kiddies are all very sad and tragic. But a drop in the supply of petrol? It will simply not do!!!
(Not that I want Michael Howard to win though. This General Election seems to come down to whether you want hot lead poured down your throat or squirted up your bottom.)
April 09, 2005
Let's give PJ O'Rourke a good punching
‘Just heard professional cynic PJ O'Rourke on Radio 4 puke out another tirade about why America is ‘adult’ (read: ‘good’) and everyone who does not agree - mainly the British - is a 'child'. (Missing the point that the person who has to proclaim to be an adult is often nothing of the sort.) It was the usual barrage of smart-arse quips and put-downs masquerading as a good argument. What do you expect from an embittered ex-hippy? And if America is really 'the adult' then someone had better call social services. We have a welfare state and this makes us 'children', yet in Rourke's 'Adult America', maimed Iraq veterans are destitute and the sick face crushing hospital bills. If that’s maturity, roll on the second childhood. Still, at least O'Rourke's tax bill is low - and wanting to get your way all the time is surely a sign of maturity, right? Just ask the Republicans, and the tantrum they threw when the rule of law prevailed and Terry Schiavo was finally allowed to die.
Like most insecure, petty, resentful (wo)men, Rourke likes to berate, belittle, write loud and big, mouth off and use rhetoric to hide his lack of anything other than the bitterness and the spite of the wrong sort of Conservative. The fact that he uses ‘child’ as an insult suggests he resents being so middle aged too. He also has the cheek to invoke 9/11 as proof of his rightness in being Right. Seeing that this outrage took place during a Republican administration and that the chief perpetrator is still at large, perhaps he ought to learn not to exploit the memory of the dead? Better still, perhaps someone could give him a slap. But as long as he can hide meaning with clever huckster words, O'Rourke can keep on serving the same old foetid salesman's bullshit. Or perhaps he could ‘grow up’ himself.
Like most insecure, petty, resentful (wo)men, Rourke likes to berate, belittle, write loud and big, mouth off and use rhetoric to hide his lack of anything other than the bitterness and the spite of the wrong sort of Conservative. The fact that he uses ‘child’ as an insult suggests he resents being so middle aged too. He also has the cheek to invoke 9/11 as proof of his rightness in being Right. Seeing that this outrage took place during a Republican administration and that the chief perpetrator is still at large, perhaps he ought to learn not to exploit the memory of the dead? Better still, perhaps someone could give him a slap. But as long as he can hide meaning with clever huckster words, O'Rourke can keep on serving the same old foetid salesman's bullshit. Or perhaps he could ‘grow up’ himself.
April 05, 2005
Winchester General Election 2005: Part Six
And they're off!
From now on, I'll try to cover what's going on in Winchester. But don't be surprised if national news creeps in from time to time.
By the way, the grunting Glaswegian chimps at the Student Loans Company are rude, aggressive and need a good punching. They also charge a fucking fortune on their rip-off 0870 phone line. Don't like it? Fucking sue me.
From now on, I'll try to cover what's going on in Winchester. But don't be surprised if national news creeps in from time to time.
By the way, the grunting Glaswegian chimps at the Student Loans Company are rude, aggressive and need a good punching. They also charge a fucking fortune on their rip-off 0870 phone line. Don't like it? Fucking sue me.
Winchester General Election 2005: Part Five
Like I said, Tony Blair had a good reason to delay announcing the election by a day. That is, he needed enough time to run about like a headless chicken, panic and then get Gordon on the 'phone.
Speaking of twats, Joerg Haider is at it again in Austria, forming a new party for spiteful, blinkered, pig-ignorant bigots everywhere (but only if they're Austrian)... Ah, democracy.
Speaking of twats, Joerg Haider is at it again in Austria, forming a new party for spiteful, blinkered, pig-ignorant bigots everywhere (but only if they're Austrian)... Ah, democracy.
April 04, 2005
Winchester General Election 2005: Part Four
No doubt, you'll all know that the Pope is dead. A major story and a turning point in history - but I shan't regurgitate what lots of other sites have already done and with greater expertise.
Rather, my main concern is how Tony Blair has used this event to put off his announcement of the date for this year's General Election. It was due to be announced today, but the death of the Pope has put things on the back burner. Some may have swallowed his spin that this is 'out of respect'. (Isn't it strange how the Mafia and the dead have the same ability to intimidate you into silence?)
But what it really suggests is that Blair is playing for time - a convenient stalling tactic. It's not the first time he's used a major event for political gain. Remember how he milked the death of Diana Spencer in 1997? Or the Foot And Mouth outbreak in 2001 to delay the General Election then? Or how he always turns up wringing his oily hands whenever a celebrity snuffs it?
One gets the impression that his keeness for Military Adventures (always the last resort for bankrupt regimes) is another diversionary tactic - a way of bloating his ego without having to actually deal with the country he's paid to run.
In that context, it's easy to see the Pope's death is just another opportunity for his old tricks - not that I haven't noticed. And, I'm glad to say, it seems I'm not the only one.
Rather, my main concern is how Tony Blair has used this event to put off his announcement of the date for this year's General Election. It was due to be announced today, but the death of the Pope has put things on the back burner. Some may have swallowed his spin that this is 'out of respect'. (Isn't it strange how the Mafia and the dead have the same ability to intimidate you into silence?)
But what it really suggests is that Blair is playing for time - a convenient stalling tactic. It's not the first time he's used a major event for political gain. Remember how he milked the death of Diana Spencer in 1997? Or the Foot And Mouth outbreak in 2001 to delay the General Election then? Or how he always turns up wringing his oily hands whenever a celebrity snuffs it?
One gets the impression that his keeness for Military Adventures (always the last resort for bankrupt regimes) is another diversionary tactic - a way of bloating his ego without having to actually deal with the country he's paid to run.
In that context, it's easy to see the Pope's death is just another opportunity for his old tricks - not that I haven't noticed. And, I'm glad to say, it seems I'm not the only one.
April 02, 2005
You can tell it's April Fool's...
How many muppets will get the joke this time around? Doubtless, not that many. (In case you didn't know, such spoof pages are how this site honours the one time of year where lots of Americans are made to look even sillier than usual by other Americans.)
April 01, 2005
The Alternative Media Diary
Think the so-called 'bitchy' media diaries and gossip columns are for wimps, girls and the Untrue? Well, think again - here is the sort of petty, vindictive media diary we could all live with!*
MON: Somebody accidentally buys a copy of The New Statesman, boosting its circulation by an amazing 2% and allowing it to raise its advertising rate by a staggering 1p per double page colour spread.
TUE: A gang of gibbons escapes London Zoo and storms the nearby offices of Metal Hammer magazine, whereupon they ruthlessly bugger the staff several times in one hour. While not able to sit down for the rest of the year, the brave staffers find solace in the fact that it was still more fun than Korn's last album.
WED: Polly Toynbee finally undermines several key laws of Thermodynamics by producing an even more anodyne, gormless and painfully naive article than even she has ever written before. As space-time fragments around them, the poor subs who have to rewrite this huge, steaming rhetorical turd discover there is no god and kill themselves en masse.
THU: Everyone at The Sun gets a particularly virulent strain of Ebola and so they all die screaming and in pain as their intestines blast out of their anuses in a high velocity jet of effluvia. Everyone else laughs.
FRI: Mark Steyn finally comes to terms with his inner child, learns to love Jesus and vows to spend the rest of his life spreading happiness, joy, rainbows and gay Unicorns called Ted.
SAT: In a parallel universe somewhere, talentless ex-cokehead and gobshite-for-hire Julie Burchill dies. Unfortunately, this is a Universe where the Nazis won World War II and she was leading a worldwide rebellion against German oppression at the time. All seems lost... until the Hamsters rise up in her name.
(Meanwhile, back in our own timeline, Chris Horrie finally learns how to use an iron.)
SUN: Yet another silly 20-year-old vows to become a Journalist after he/she/it finishes their Contemporary Dance/Princess Diana studies Joint Honours degree. Drunk with smug notions of jetting across the world, snorting coke at the Groucho Club and interviewing what's-his-face off Eastenders, they are blissfully unaware of how, five years later, they will be sub-editing the deaths and marriages section of their local rag for 27p a month while their obese, age-warped, emotionally dysfunctional parents mock them at the dinner table, asking why they just didn't go on the game instead.
* Allegedly.
MON: Somebody accidentally buys a copy of The New Statesman, boosting its circulation by an amazing 2% and allowing it to raise its advertising rate by a staggering 1p per double page colour spread.
TUE: A gang of gibbons escapes London Zoo and storms the nearby offices of Metal Hammer magazine, whereupon they ruthlessly bugger the staff several times in one hour. While not able to sit down for the rest of the year, the brave staffers find solace in the fact that it was still more fun than Korn's last album.
WED: Polly Toynbee finally undermines several key laws of Thermodynamics by producing an even more anodyne, gormless and painfully naive article than even she has ever written before. As space-time fragments around them, the poor subs who have to rewrite this huge, steaming rhetorical turd discover there is no god and kill themselves en masse.
THU: Everyone at The Sun gets a particularly virulent strain of Ebola and so they all die screaming and in pain as their intestines blast out of their anuses in a high velocity jet of effluvia. Everyone else laughs.
FRI: Mark Steyn finally comes to terms with his inner child, learns to love Jesus and vows to spend the rest of his life spreading happiness, joy, rainbows and gay Unicorns called Ted.
SAT: In a parallel universe somewhere, talentless ex-cokehead and gobshite-for-hire Julie Burchill dies. Unfortunately, this is a Universe where the Nazis won World War II and she was leading a worldwide rebellion against German oppression at the time. All seems lost... until the Hamsters rise up in her name.
(Meanwhile, back in our own timeline, Chris Horrie finally learns how to use an iron.)
SUN: Yet another silly 20-year-old vows to become a Journalist after he/she/it finishes their Contemporary Dance/Princess Diana studies Joint Honours degree. Drunk with smug notions of jetting across the world, snorting coke at the Groucho Club and interviewing what's-his-face off Eastenders, they are blissfully unaware of how, five years later, they will be sub-editing the deaths and marriages section of their local rag for 27p a month while their obese, age-warped, emotionally dysfunctional parents mock them at the dinner table, asking why they just didn't go on the game instead.
* Allegedly.
