A Confederacy of the Spineless?

D. Cameron slopes off on holiday, N. Clegg takes nominal command of the Ship of State and suddenly, British waters are invaded by jellyfish. Coincidence?

Crazy doesn’t begin to describe it

After all the floods we’ve just had, as a result of a month’s rain arriving in a few hours, the government is still planning to let developers build new houses on flood plains. And then it will look surprised when it has to raise taxes to build new flood defences.

Now, here’s a good one!

Rumour of the day: New Labour’s decision to double GPs’ pay has put the NHS into a terrible staffing crisis because doctors feel too rich to work in the evening and at weekends. So the Coalition is going to halve their pay to see if that fixes things.

Talk about a month’s rain in an hour!

We’ve had some real old downpours today, including one with half-inch lumps of hail mixed in with a real deluge of rain. And thunder rumbling for most of the day. Black skies at the back of the house and brilliant sunshine from acres of bright blue sky at the front. And butterflies zooming round the lavender within minutes of what should have been a lethal downpour for them.

Well, he would, wouldn’t he?

The boss of pay-day loan outfit Wonga reckons that his company is “a powerful force for good in the financial world”, so the Church of England shouldn’t try to put it out of business. With interest rates around 6,000%, it’s certainly a powerful force for shoving cash into his pay packet!

Maybe he wouldn’t want to be

The Scottish Nationalists are saying they don’t want Prince George of Cambridge to be their king. What makes them think he’d want the job?

Am I being a bit dim?

Friends of the driver of the Spanish train, which derailed at 120 mph on a 50 mph-limit bend and killed 80 people, think he’s an okay bloke. So are we expected to assume from their endorsement that he can’t be to blame and just put it down to another random and vicious Act of God?

Get a grip, Dave!

Dave the Leader has announced that he will now make it his mission in life to export homosex marriage to the rest of the wold. Any old excuse for not doing the job you’re paid to do, eh, Dave?

Is it a crime? Depends who’s doing it

A lot of people are wondering why journalists have had their collar felt at dawn for doing a little bit of hacking whilst Top People and Blue Chip Firms (including legal firms) have been allowed to get away with hacking and spying on an industrial scale by SOCA for at least the last 5 years. There’s nothing to wonder about, really. Journalists give members of the Establishment (including politicians) embarrassment by exposing their crimes. Blue Chips give members of the Establishment money.

Germs are much tougher in Africa?

Supplies of Dettol have been binned in South Africa. One of the regulators there found that the disinfectant wasn’t killing 99.9% of the local bugs in tests. The British manufacturer is reported to be baffled – having found that the product does see off 99.9% of British bugs.

Royal Baby Bad News for Dave?

It’s a boy, which means that Dave the Leader has less of an excuse for messing about with the order of succession to make sure that a girl can’t be bumped by her brother(s). Maybe the useless lump will now decide to get on with something which is of actual use to the British people. And then again, maybe he won’t.

The Olympic legacy they don’t mention

70 athletes and coaches, who either claimed political asylum from mainly African regimes or just disappeared into our equivalent of the L.A. Underground. Not to mention an unknown proportion of the 70,000 hangers-on, who were issued with a Family Member visa.

It didn’t happen by accident

President O’Bummer gets the hump because Americans lock their car doors if they see African-Americans lurking nearby. It clearly hasn’t occurred to this victim of reflex racialism to wonder how come African-Americans have such a strong car-jacker image.

A fair question!

If Wii is sponsoring the TV coverage of the Tour de France on ITV4, why do we have to put up with advert breaks? Or is the alledged “sponsorship” at the cheapskate level?

Another good rumour . . .

. . . is that the newspaper industry is lobbying vigorously for an investigation into the ethics and standards of the legal profession, SOCA and the police following the institutional cover-up of illegalities (such as hacking and bugging) commissioned from private investigators by top firms, including top legal firms, and top people.

“Nurse, he’s out of bed again!”

If Dave the Leader gets serious about sending British troops to Syria, would someone kindly bash him over the head and stick him in a deep, dark hole until he gains a sense of responsibility?

Wimmin vs Men

Another waning politico sounds off. “Harridan Harperson” is trying to get herself noticed by stamping her foot and demanding that men-only sports clubs be made illegal. Not a word about female-only clubs, or clubs which restrict by religion or other criteria, of course. But Labour never was about real equality.

The way out is over there, love.

How can you tell when a politician realizes she’s for the bullet at the next reshuffle? When she has to pick a fight with a men-only golf club to get a mention in the newspapers.

Best rumour of the moment?

The one that says all the Health Secretaries of the New Labour era are in line for an OBE in the next honours list – for services to funeral directing!

How to sort the insinuators out!

It has been suggested that Chris Froome should start press conferences with an announcement like: “Allow me to introduce the bloke on my right. He’s a libel lawyer, who will be checking your questions for insinuations about doping. And the bloke on my left? You don’t want to know what the bloke on my left is going to do. Now, first question?”

St. Swithin? Boo!

So we’re now threatened with 40 days like this? Terrific. My grass is going brown and there’s rather a lot of it. Good job I can use the emergency lakes if the water company tries to stop me using theirs.

The most heart-warming story of the decade . . .

. . . has to be the news that a company believes that it can make an extra profit out of the debris swept up by street-cleaning machines. Veolia Environmental Services reckons that it can find enough bits of gold and silver shed by jewellery, shoes and clothing, and metals from vehicle catalytic converters (palladium, platinum, rhodium), to make their balance sheet even healthier.

Minds made up everywhere

“We could release our . . . data but we know there are people who have made up their minds. Then they look for evidence they can manipulate to support the decision they’ve already made.” Is the context for the quote the Sky cycling coach refusing to release telemetry from the team’s bikes? Or is it someone talking about what Global Warming Swindlers do? It’s hard to tell.

Tell it like it is!

That’s a good one – the bosses of the NHS are going to rename the Liverpool “Care” Pathway to the Harold Shipman Pathway so that no one is in any doubt that it leads straight to the grave.

SPADs have been around for years

These people who are accusing the Tories of politicizing the civil service and pretending that bringing in their own special advisors and picking the staff they want to use is something new – where were they between 1997 and 2010?

It’s one way of doing in the opposition

Was that an interesting tactic we saw in the Tour de France yesterday? Get your lead-out man to slow down and drift into the path of a rival (M. Cavendish) to make sure he can’t challenge you for the stage win? How diabolical these foreigners are.

How innocent is innocent enough?

The case of Barry George casts further doubt on the quality of much-vaunted British justice. He was convicted of the murder of broadcaster Jill Dando but released on appeal. When he applied for compensation, he was told that he was “not innocent enough” to qualify because a jury could reasonably have found him guilty on the “evidence” cooked up by the prosecution at his original trial. So if the state does a good job of stitching you up, even if it does so wrongly, you’re not entitled to compensation!

And now, the unbeautiful game?

They certainly have interesting football matches in Brasil. At an amateur match, a player got into a barney with the ref, who pulled a knife and stabbed him to death! So the deceased’s family and friends hunted down the ref, stoned him to death, chopped him into quarters and stuck his head on a pole in the middle of the football pitch. Shove some adverts around that, if you dare!

Talking about believing in fairies . . .

An historian is worried that televising pre-election debates between party leaders will give us a “plausible tart” for prime monster rather than someone who is up to the job. How strange that an historian doesn’t remember that we had three doses of Tony Blair.

Having a title is no guarantee of quality

The chairman of the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority thinks that giving MPs an extra £10K per year will stop them from making fraudulent expenses claims! Does Sir I. Kennedy also believe in fairies?

What’s new about it?

Why is everyone upset (or pretending to be) because Unite is alleged to have done some vote rigging? The union has bought the Labour party so it’s perfectly entitled to puts its own choice of people into Parliament as Labour MPs.

Where can we send Berco on a one-way ticket?

We could give the Squeaker of the Commons a free trip to Afghanistan, the badlands of Pakistan, Romania, Bulgaria, Libya, Iraq, Iran . . . Further suggestions on a postcard to the usual address.

The Truth Will Out

It has been pointed out that Winston Churchill lied for us whilst Tony B. Liar and his dodgy dossier inventor, A. Campbell, lied to us. There is a difference, you know.

Nice work if you can get it

Where do our tax-pounds go? Well, 100,000 of them have been wasted on sending the Squeaker of the Commons, J. Berco, on globe-trotting jaunts over the last 3 years. He seems to be trying to be as rude to people in as many different countries as he can manage before he’s evicted from the post he’s currently disgracing. Maybe we can get the Egyptian army on the job if they’ve finished with their non-coup.

Come on, Tim!

Well, that’s Mr. Gobsworth Murray doomed. Dave the Leader has sent him a good luck message, so he’s bound to crash out of bloody Wimbledon at the next hurdle.

Quel Horreur!

Things are not going well for the French. Everyone’s laughing at their president for throwing a wobbly because the Americans are spying on his government – and just about every other regime on the planet. Now, they’ve found out that they are eating snails from Eastern Europe because French producers, being French, aren’t up to the job of breeding enough of them and snails don’t have to be labelled with a point of origin.

Planet-killers!

Canadians have a reputation for being rather pleasant, sensible people (apart from the ones who play ice hockey, of course), but I suppose there are a few exceptions. Like the wife of the new Gov. of the Bank of England, who thinks teabags are actually harmful to the planet. As a member of the mansion’s staff remarked: “The world has a lot more to worry about than teabags, and maybe she should shut up until she has something sensible to say.”

What’s in it for them?

You have to wonder what the allegedly Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority would get out of awarding a totally undeserved £10K pay rise to MPs. The Westminster Blunderers will be laughing all the way to the bank with the cash, especially as they will be able to claim that their hands are clean, and you don’t get something for nothing.