the brilliantly leaping gazelle

Remember the good old days when the Green Party was actually the Green Party? Was made up of ex-hippies, cranks and the sort of people who were proudly on the fringes of the political mainstream. Those Greens combined the idealism of Tom and Barbara Good with the relentless optimism of a ‘Blue Peter’ charity appeal.  Wherein the foil from milk bottle tops could turned into guide dogs in Britain or drinking-water wells in Africa 

Probably not, because the Greens have betrayed most of their principles in much the same way that Labour has done. But Carolin Lucas does. ‘Focus on the environment, former Greens leader tells Polanski’, ran a headline in ‘The Daily Telegraph’ last week. It was wonderfully ironic that even when the old Greens are berating the new Greens for not being Green enough, the old Green mantra of ‘reuse and recycle’ was still be used to fight the Good fight. Not only had ‘The Telegraph’ lifted all of Lucas’s quotes from an interview she’d given to ‘Politics Home’. Its that her idea of what ‘environment’ means differs greatly from what Repulsion understands it to mean. He’s not just ‘reused or recycled’ it. He’s totally reimagined it.

His idea of ‘environment’ is a narrowly political one, as opportunistic as it is short-sighted. An environment in which disaffected Corbynista’s, transgender ideologues and anyone else that hates Israel can can call home. An environment in which him being both Jewish and gay are used as political cover.  The fact that numerous Green Councillors and parliamentary candidates have been suspended after social media posts praising the October 7 massacre, calling Jews ‘cockroaches’ were unearthed are nothing more than an internal disciplinary matter. ‘How can the we possibly be anti-Semitic, we’ve got a Jewish leader! This is simply the right-wing press attempting to smear us’ is essentially their defence. 

And the fact that he’s gay is also weaponised. ‘The notion that support for transgender rights could possibly undermine gay rights is offensive. Our leader is gay. Do you really think he’d go for that?’ Then there there is the inherent contradiction of them entering into a loose alliance with British Muslims for electoral advantage.

As Rakib Eshan observed in an article for spiked last year ‘The problem is that the two camps were never remotely aligned on other key issues. These include rights and protections for sexual minorities (such as same-sex marriage), the degree to which queer rights and queer theory should be taught in school, and the sanctity of life – both in terms of abortion and assisted dying. It is no secret that British Muslims are more conservative on these issues compared even with the general population, let alone the progressive left.’

And therein lies the fundamental flaw in the Greens thinking. They imagine themselves to be ‘progressive. It’s everyone else thats divisive. Spreading lies and hate, promoting extremist narratives, and thus stoking resentment and inflaming tensions. Repulsion is worrying oblivious to the fact that charges he levels at Reform might be more accurately used to describe the Greens. 

If he thinks that trans-women are women, or that you can be anti-Zionist without being anti-Semetic, then he’s really putting the mental back into environmental.

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If there remained a shred of doubt in my mind that Farrago is by a wide margin the shrewdest political operator since Milk Snatcher, his decision earlier today not just to resign as the MP for Clacton-On-Sea, but to also stand as a candidate in the by-election it triggers demolishes it. Its a fucking genius move. 

Embroiled by recent scandals as he has been involving donations made to him personally, allegations that he’s profited from products he promoted without disclosing this at the time, and the more long-standing one of him being him, he’s wrong-footed his accusers and changed the narrative. He’s put his  money where his mouth is.

He’s throwing down the gauntlet. He’s standing for election so why doesn’t Andy Capp do the same?  In October 2020, after Lettuce stepped down, he tweeted ‘Election now!’, correctly anticipating that Tory MP’s would simply anoint a new leader and avoid the brouhaha that followed Boris’s Johnson resignation. 

If he hasn’t got a leg to stand on, what about the press? They can hardly impugn Farrago’s integrity and avoid mentioning Capp’s lack of it. Farrago has dared them to their job. 

It’s a bold move by him, certainly. But we all know what fortune favours… 

Even if I wasn’t in the chipper mood I am right nowon account of watching England beat Mexico in the World Cup this morning, this news story would’ve cheered me right up.

‘Australian prime minister says he would ‘shag’ Kylie Minogue’ was how’ The Daily Telegraph’’ chose to put it. Which, if you only read the headline before moving on, might leave you thinking that he was addressing their Parliament, giving a speech at a conference somewhere or prize giving at his old school when he just blurted this out.

What actually happened was this. Anthony Albanese, the Australian PM was appearing on a podcast. He was asked who he would “shag, marry or date” out of the pop star, or actresses Nicole Kidman and Rhonda Burchmore. I’ve idea who she is either.

After being asked the question, Mr Albanese was initially reluctant. “I just got married,” he said, “I’m only six months in.” But the host insisted saying: “But if it goes tits up, let’s just pretend,” the prime minister replied: “Kylie, clearly.” “You’d marry Kylie and shag her and date her?” Mr Albanese replied “all of the above”, adding: “She’s terrific.”

Which is the correct answer. It’s a no brainer. If you happen to be heterosexual male with normal eyesight, that is. It just is. Not, it seems, if you’re an opposition MP keen to manufacture a controversy out of someone not taking themselves to seriously. Sarah Henderson, shadow minister for communications and digital safety, said his comments “demean the office of prime minister”.

She then added “Australia’s Anthony Albanese’s whisky-fuelled comments are disrespectful to women, embarrassing to Australians and demean the office of prime minister.” Creating the impression that he’d been totally shit-faced when he said it, as opposed to the more sober reality of him having sipped occasionally from a glass of whiskey and water. And even if he had been totally shit-faced, do we really think it would’ve been ‘embarrassing to Australians?’

She is latest in a long line of politicians who seize on what was clearly a light-hearted comment and turn it into an opportunity to parade their highly censorious morality and get a jibe in at the same time. “Rather than politely decline to engage, Mr Albanese got into the gutter with his grubby remarks, which show extremely poor judgement at a time when trust in Labor is collapsing.”

The only Australian she’s embarrassing is herself. As she herself says,’ Australians deserve better than this.”

Proof, if any were needed, that football is a massively more popular sport than rugby was evidenced earlier this year by ITV’s decision to screen adverts during the Six Nations rugby thing. No surprises there. ITV is a commercial broadcaster after all and derives all of its income from adverts. Except these adverts didn’t appear during the regular scheduled advert breaks. They appeared whilst the play was actually happening. 

‘How is that even possible?’, one might reasonably ask. Well when a scrum is called, there is a bit of a kerfuffle while everyone gets ready, there is some some jostling and general fannying about. So some bright spark at ITV had the idea that if they screen split in two when a scrum was called they could show both the kerfuffle and show a 20 second advert as they did so. The screen thus returning to full screen once the advert had finished. Which is exactly what they did.  

Apparently there was a backlash. I didn’t notice. But what I did notice, like everyone else watching the football World Cup, was the absence of any adverts during the ‘hydration breaks’ of any of the matches shown on ITV.  How galling for them, to see all of that potential advertising revenue wasted. 306 minutes worth spread out over 51 games. Not all of it primetime given the time difference, but a guaranteed audience nonetheless.

But potential was all it ever was. Ofcom – the broadcasting regulator – stipulates that all of the UK’s  commercial broadcasters can only show 168 minutes of adverts a day and no more than 12 in any hour. That means that any extra time ITV dedicated to adverts during a ‘hydration break’ break would need to be taken away from other programming.  Meaning that if they were already using the maximum 12 minutes during a game, they would need to show shorter ad breaks before the game, at half time, or at full time. And because of the contract agreed with FIFA for the rights in the first place, they could only show adverts for the sponsors of the World Cup anyway. And they’d have deals agreed with FIFA anyway, so FIFA would take a slice of that action. Reducing still further the revenue ITV would get. All of which is why ITV is one of of the few global commercial broadcasters not to screen adverts during the ‘hydration breaks. 

So whatever guff ITV comes out with ‘about respecting the game’, ‘not wanting to take fans out of the moment’, or some other piffle, the fact is that they’re trying to spin things to their best advantage. To turning the legislative shackles from which they find themselves into a noble gesture of selflessness. Which makes me wonder; why did they do it at the rugby? Did  it not occur to them that there might be a problem. Or maybe it did, maybe they thought ‘Try it out at the rugby and if all goes well, we’ll do it the proper World Cup.’

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And on the subject of the ‘hydration breaks’ one can’t help but notice the incredible restraint that both the BBC and ITV are showing when mentioning them. The commentators have to mention the loud booing that greets such a break, mainly because as it is so loud, they have no choice. But aside from that, apart from the occasional reference at the start of the completion of ‘we all know why they’re there’ – without actually mentioning what is is we all know – there has been nothing. 

Sure, the pundits have discussed the effects that the breaks are having on the games. The disruptive nature of them and the ability it affords managers to change tactics and the fact that for some games they aren’t needed at all. The ones that take place in the rain and those that take place in covered stadia with the air-con on. But not the reason for them. They never draw the obvious conclusion that a 3 minute ‘hydration break’ is uncannily similar to the length of a commercial break.

What do I think is behind this? Basically, that both the BBC and ITV are terrified that FIFA will award the UK broadcast rights for the 2034 World Cup to either You Tube, Amazon or Netflix. League. Terrified that legislation which has been in place since 1991, which ensure that the ‘crown jewels of sport’ – of which the football World Cup is one – must be shown on the BBC, ITV, C4 or C5, might be watered down or otherwise circumvented. Actually, Amazon would be the more likely. They already own the rights to the all the Premier League matches and the UEFA Champions League.

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And briefly, it can’t go unremarked that football commentators have some truly wonderful euphemisms for fouls, brutal tackles on display at this World Cup. Not to forget the various theatrics that accompany them both.

For example, ‘Leaving a early marker’ or ‘he left something on it’ and its variant ‘letting him know he’s there’ are used to describe the kind of foul that leaves the hapless recipient of it writhing in agony on the ground. Everyone knows the part that they have to play. The commentator will use a tone of voice more reminiscent of a 1950’s Ealing comedy. Picture Lionel Jeffies or Bernard Cribbins shaking his fist and his head in a ‘just you wait until I get my hands on you, you cheeky scamp’ kind of way and you get the idea.  

The player whose committed the foul will affect air air of outraged innocence at being so unjustly accused. This despite knowing that there’s an instant replay showing the incident in slow motion over and over again on the large screens inside the stadium. The player whose fouled meanwhile, is giving the impression that he’ll never walk again or that his dreams of moonlighting at a ballet company are forever shattered. This impression is undercut a few moments later, when after having been awarded a free kick or getting the other player booked, he miraculously springs to his feet and resumes playing. He does at least have the good grace to pretend to have to walk it off, sometimes throwing in the occasional wince for the aforementioned camera’s 

Quite what euphemisms commentators will use to describe Englands dismal performance against Mexico early tomorrow morning remains to heard. They could always recycle the one’s they used to describe Scotlands unsurprisingly execrable performances, I suppose.

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The fact that Labour think that Andy Capp is the answer to anything proves only that their asking themselves the wrong questions. Instead of asking themselves ‘How can we defeat Reform?’, they’d better off asking themselves ‘Why have so many former Labour voters switched to Reform?.’ And more crucially, ‘What can we do to win them back?’ Before asking themselves ‘But anyway, are the sort of people who’d vote for Reform the kind of people we’d want to vote for us?’

As has been noted by many others many times, changing leader may offer Labour MP’s, councillors and party members an illusion of change, but the real problem isn’t the leader. They’re just the figurehead. The problem is the Labour party itself. It has ceased to be what is was created to be; a vehicle through which the working class could effect political change for their betterment. Now it seems to view the working class, well the white portion of it anyway, with a contempt bordering on loathing.

And the single root cause of the reciprocal loathing which the working class feel for Labour is best expressed in a single word; Brexit. No other issue in British political history has had such a polarising effect upon quite so many people. The betrayal still smarts, passions may not be so inflamed but they’re still smouldering nonetheless.  It is the prism thorough which every most every political action since then can be properly understood.

Sick of all the judicial attempts to thwart it, the political reluctance to properly enact it and the widespread fury of every elite towards those who had voted for it, they majority who voted for Brexit had had enough.  The 2019 general election triumph of Boris’s Johnson was proof of that. And when that didn’t work, when the wheels finally came off that bus and the general election of 2024 happened, Reform UK got nearly 15% of the votes. Not bad for a party that a month and one day earlier – June 3rd – had basically never existed. However, on June 3rd, Farrago announced he’d be standing for Reform UK and from that moment on, the battle lines were redrawn.

Whatever charges might be levelled at Farrago, no-one can question his steadfast refusal to betray his beliefs. One might disagree with them, but he’s never wavered from them. And they all stem from a single proposition; that uncontrolled immigration was ruinous for the British people. And because membership of the EU meant we longer controlled our borders, we should leave it.  Simple and not confusing in the least. The people that hold him single-handedly responsible for Brexit are conveniently overlooking the fact that the EU we voted to leave was not the EU we joined.

For a start off it wasn’t called the EU. It was the European Economic Community (EEC). The then PM signed a treaty with it in 1971 and after three years of ‘associate’ membership of it, the British public finally got a vote on whether to join or not. Which they did. As well they might. Back then the EEC was, as the name implies, focused on almost exclusively on economic ties; trade harmonisation, closer co-operation and loads of other stuff that normal people tended to ignore in favour of having a life. 

Then in 1992, the EEC suggested a radical expansion of its remit. Not content with being just an economic trading entity, it sought to become a social, judicial one and financial one. Did John Minor, the then PM have any qualms about surrendering a a large part of Britains sovereignty to Brussels, for their courts and laws to supersede ours or to allow loads of European workers to flood in and undercut  British ones? Or was he just as terrified by their reaction as he was of his own ‘Eurosceptic’ backbench MP’s – who he called ‘bastards   Did Minor put this proposal to a public vote, or did he just nod it through? The fact that we had the referendum vote in 2016 answers that.

The fact that that result was stymied answers why Farrago made the decision he on June 3rd. By then vast swathes of the electorate, regardless of their previous political allegiance,   had come to realise that a vote for any of the existing parties was a vote for the existing state of affairs. Quite why Reforms success shocked anyone was shocking. From nowhere to almost 15% of the vote in a month is a clue as to the deep-seated mistrust of a sizeable minority of the British people of the Westminster elite.

And how did the Westminster elite attempt to prove them wrong? What efforts did they go to that might indicate that they were finally addressing the grievances which Brexit had revealed? What strategy did they employ to bring that 15% back into the political mainstream? By demonising them, of course. Calling them ‘far right’, ‘bigots and ‘racists.  Denigrating them, questioning their motives, making all manner sinister inferences. Ironically, doing all this while calling for unity, for tolerance, and other brazen hypocrisy’s. 

The only unity that the Labour Party achieved in securing was that a new leader would be the solution. That it was Emu alone who bore all the responsibilities for their dismal standing. However, if the Labour Party believes that the answer to restoring public trust in politics and the democratic process is to impose a new PM on the British public without calling a general election first, it just proves why people distrust it all in the first place. 

Well, the majority that voted for Brexit and who now vote for Reform, anyway.  

I caught the weather report at the end of the BBC News yesterday, and it cheered me right up. I’m not joking. It really did. I was smiling my best Cheshire Cat smile, proper ear to ear action. So much so, that by the end of it, my face was aching. The reasons for my reaction can best be summed as amusement at humans capacity for self-delusion. Because with every weather warning, with every school closure because of the hot weather and with every death that occurs because of it, the more it is revealed to be the nonsense it is.

The weather report started off with the UK. Hottest day since records began, all sorts of records being broken, still more to be broken, weather warnings, hosepipe bans….blah blah blah. Then the map zoomed out to reveal what is happening in Europe. The same there too. Some parts better than others, but its only a matter of degree. The cheery takeaway I got was that whatever we do in the UK, no matter how important we think what we do is and no matter how urgent the need for action is, it won’t make a flying fuck of difference. We can all believe all manner things to be true, but believing in something, no matter how hard you want it to be true, doesn’t make it so. What the UK does only matters if the rest of the world does it too and as the weather map detailing the extreme heat engulfing the rest of Europe proved, the rest of the world clearly isn’t.

Conversely, the first part of the global warming self delusion was predicated upon discrediting research which proved it existed. That the research that discovered it in the first place, proved it was real was commissioned by the very same people who then spent years challenging its veracity. This is not some a fever-dream bought on by the heat either. ‘Big Oil’ knew. The dates may be disputed, the earliest I’ve found goes back to 1959, most go with the mid ’60’s, the more charitable plump for the late ’70’s but at any rate, it was long before any United Nations sponsored snout jamboree.

I refuse to call it climate change. Global warming had a honesty to it. It was all right there in the name. It was’t difficult to understand. Things are getting warmer and the whole world is affected. Action was needed. Unfortunately, that action was a name change. Climate change makes me think of a wealthy Victorian consumptive who retreats to the Swiss Alps for a year on the orders of her doctor. It reminds me of the mayor in ‘Jaws’. Mindful of the need to protect the towns tourist revenues, he wants the first victims death certificate changed because, as he puts it, ‘When you say barracuda, people say ‘what’, but when you say shark, you’ve got a panic on your hands’

So of course people continued having children because thats what people do and thats what capitalism needs. It doesn’t matter if one consumes less of this thing, more of that thing and starts consuming a new thing, its still consuming. Whatever it is that being consumed, no matter how ethically sourced its components are, no matter how well the workers that turn those components into the finished product are treated, that finished product will still have to be manufactured, packaged, and transported before its sold. And it follows that the more people there are to buy things, the more things will be bought.

The continued growth in the global population is yet another example of self-delusion. I can understand my parents thinking when they had me. To them, my life would be better than theirs. That was always the thinking of all parents, ever. since always. But now? Who could look at the state of the world now, full of myriad uncertainties and unforeseeable problems, full of dangers known and unknown and think, full of disease, scarcity and the wars they cause, and think ‘Yeah, I’ll bring a child into all of this, they’re bound thank me for that!’

I think we can all agree that is hot. We might not all agree on what the causes are or if there are any changes that we can make that will have long term effect in reversing them. But in the short term, the very short term I mean – like the next few days, weeks and months – we can all agree on that at least.

But I can’t be the only person who thinks that the advice given as to how to keep cool during this hot weather is as patronising as it is flawed. I’ll get the patronising out of the way first. To this end, The UK Health Security Agency published ‘How to keep cool and stay well during hot weather.’, a few days ago.

‘Avoid the sun when it is strongest, typically between 11am and 3pm. If outdoors, apply high protection sunscreen regularly, wear a wide-brimmed hat and seek shade.’ Did anyone really need to told that? Avoid the sun? How is that not basic fucking common sense? How is that not taking the piss?

More piss taking follows. ’Limit strenuous physical activity, or plan physical activity for times of the day when it is cooler, like the early morning or evening.’ Just In case anyone was thinking of running a marathon, scaling Ben Nevis or anything like that. Because, you know, that might happen, if people aren’t told.

They then follow it up with this humdinger ‘avoid hot, closed spaces like stationary cars.’ This is why we pay taxes, to pay the salaries of these geniuses. Money well spent. Makes you proud to be British.

If anyone needs to be told any of this then why have they got the right to vote, why aren’t they prevented from having children? These are the people who should be on a database, who should be removed from society and placed under house arrest. For our good, because of the risks they pose to everyone else. And for their good, denied access with to any sharp objects, anything glass, tinned or ceramic, and rope. Or anything that might be re-purposed as a rope; shoelaces, bedsheets or electrical cord. Plastic cutlery only. Natural selection is being reversed. People are now being protected from the consequences of their own stupidity in a way that would’ve seen their ancestors regret trying to keep a wooly mammoth as a pet.

If the government had, in an act of the utmost cunning, published this information precisely so they could identify who exactly was in need of such advice, like a modern day Trojan Horse, prior to removing them from society for the common good, then I’d take my hat off to them. A ‘wide-brimmed’ one, obviously.

See? The plan works! Just as it was reported over the weekend that Emu would resign as PM on Monday morning, he actually did. Not quite, well not immediately anyway. In a move that to me sounded like it was cooked  by a trans activist who masquerades to as political adviser to Emu, there’s going to be a transition phase.

Of course there is. Except this to enable Andy Capp to become fully aware of just how much poison the chalice can hold. It will need to be a big chalice. And not so he can become one of 0.01% of women that Emu once claimed had a penis.This transition, will be weirdly appropriate, inasmuch as it typifies his instinctive approach to being PM. Obsessively managerial. I’m not sure if this smooth transition, organised handover period or whatever it is their trying to tell us it is, is a good thing or not.

On the one hand, it avoids the interline warfare that any leadership contest necessarily entails. One only needs to think back to the last Conservative government for not one but two examples of how wonderful that turned out. 

Oddly enough, the same demands that Farrago is making for a general election are the same calls that Emu made after Boris’s Johnson stood down. And in much the same way, they are being ignored, as all concerned know they will. Gordon the Gopher ignored similar calls after I’m Tory Plan B stepped down and he was only following in John Minors footsteps when Milk Snatcher was ousted. Once again, the plan reinforces itself; we know from experience how the story goes. The government carries on governing whilst the opposition opposes.

It is also sensible to at least have a sense of the some of problems Andy Capp will have before he has to deal with them. And equally to be aware not only of the resources he does – and doesn’t – have at his disposal to try and sort them out, but also by that spending more on this and spending more on that, he has less to spend on the other. It allows him the time to get his ducks in in row, to consider what his priorities might be. 

He might well conclude that the Chagos Island deal is not one of them and that the estimated £3.4 billions a year the taxpayer will handover for 99 year of them might be better spent here at home.

Alternatively he might, after realising exactly how dire the situation really is – national debt almost £3 trillions, the interest on that being £112 billions a year or £320 millions a day – think ‘fuck it, give everyone what they want.’ Well not everyone, not the financial markets, but the everyone that has gotten used to the government shelling out for everything. Which, quite fortuitously, also happens to be the demographic Labour needs to woo back from the Greens and Reform. He might emulate what a friend of mine did some years ago. Because of illness, they’d accumulated a large amount of debt. They discovered that if you didn’t reply to any of the threatening letters demanding payment, answer any of their phone calls – they had a code to identify which ones to answer – for a period of seven years, you were free and clear. So they didn’t and eventually, they were. 

Obviously banks, credit card companies and all of the other financial parasites that rely on debt to keep them in profits, don’t make this widely known. Indeed, when my friend told me about this and that they were planning doing it, my first thought was ‘this sounds too good to be true.’ But bizarrely, it was. Totally legal. But if Andy Capp tried it, he’d have to give it reassuringly sensible name. 

Remember how after the financial crash of 2008 just printing off billions of new money wasn’t just printing off billions of new money. Quantitive easing wasn’t a Chinese herbal laxative. No, it was an exceptional economic response to exceptional times. Might ‘radical financial restructuring’ sound more plausibly obfuscatory than simply blanking it out and hoping for the best?  Or maybe thats what the transition phase is all about, moving from government borrowing on the global financial markets to a programme of radical financial restructuring?=