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but to be fair, yesterday was a bit of a treat for anybody with even a passing interest in uk politics … which really should mean all of us.

twists and turns have been the order of the past few days and yet yesterday’s denouement did not disapoint.

the way that clegg tweaked the tails of both main parties and so came away with a much easier deal than he could have expected suggests he’s not as green as he looks.

but with others of his party apparently destined for senior cabinet posts i’ve wondered all along where clegg expected to fit into the line-up. he surely wouldn’t want a none-job like deputy pm?

step up nick clegg, deputy pm! swipe me, i nearly passed my fags round! (easy boy, i said nearly)

so what does he know that i don’t? not much surely maybe as a long-time liberal he has developed a taste for warm piss? maybe he’ll even tell us? well perhaps not.

either way he has surely taken the shortest route to power in uk politics that i can call to mind. five years flat. and it’s hard not to be impressed with just that.

but as with so much in life, timing is everything and however well he’s played his hand it was pure good fortune which gave him fair a wind and his place in the pound seats.

has anybody told him the real tricky stuff starts today?

see ya later, mould breaker

the bbc news commentator yesterday outside 10 downing street, waiting for new pm, cameron to arrive observed solemnly

“a new microphone has been put in place…”

how could one resist “… has it not?”

well, i expect you’re all relieved to see the back of the general election; for a few months at least.

how did you enjoy the wall-to-wall tv coverage? sadly, with exit polls achieving unnerving levels of accuracy, it soon became clear that almost all the excitement of the event had come and gone in the four week run-up. shame ;-(

to make matters worse, as if there wasn’t enough hot-air around at election time, sky tv subjected us to the nauseating spectacle of adam bloater’s repellant burp-fest, this time in glorious hd. cut down on the nose bag and ditch some ballast fat boy.

(surely high-time he was replaced by the lovely ‘botto’ of whom i caught no more than a tantalising half-second glimpse in some media melee)

at the bbc we were at least spared any repetition of the now-infamous ‘surreptitious mars bar incident’ which is widely believed to have set an incurable rot into election results reporting worldwide.

we were however forced, once again to endure repeated spasms of the ludicrous jeremy vine, lurching around like some deranged stick insect with his virtual toys.

mr mugabe called the bingo. mrs banana-republic and mrs lockout made the sandwiches and we sang ‘things can only get better’, which they probably won’t in a hurry, if ever.

miss bugger-off-home-now accompanied, one-handed on the harmonium and a good time was had by all.

looking forward to october’s return match already.

catch you later couch-potater :-0

as polling day in the general election gets closer the unnattractive notion of a so-called ‘hung parliament’ looms ever bigger in the rear-view mirror.

of course, most users of the interweb will be blissfully-unfamiliar with the concept. (in the uk we have not endured anything of this kind since the depressing, so-called ‘lib-lab pact’ of the late 70′s).

for the benefit of those lucky enough not to have been around to witness it, this tragic passage of politics amounted to little more than a fractious and unholy alliance with the clapped-out, unreconstructed socialist donkeys of james callaghan’s labour party clinging desperately to power at the hands of the long-marginalised liberals, under david steel.

so what kind of parliament or indeed government would likely emerge if no party wins an overall majority next week?

well, much against their hopes and preferences, no matter who wins most seats, no liberal democrat will be occupying number 10 downing street.

and yet, the other senior departments of state having been progessively stripped of importance over recent years, it seems the only cabinet position worth fighting over would be that of chancellor, in this situation surely the prime target of the admittedly over-rated vince cable.

but could or would his party-leader countenance such an appointment while he himself was consigned to some bit-part? hardly.

so some hard-bargaining is on the cards before long: and no doubt some hard words.

if only i could be a fly on the wall; or some sap would forget to take his microphone off. sadly, he won’t be there to assist.

what a sad debacle brown’s campaign visit to rochdale turned into. better still it was all his own work.

boy but he’s a dismal, preaching, boring, self-satisfied arse! on top of that he’s got a face like a robber’s dog.

(oops, sorry if i said anything like that, i forgot i was typing. find me somebody to blame. oh and make a note so i don’t forget to rip her head off later. oops am i still typing? shit! again.)

i can barely wait for tomorrow. why? because if the charmer’s decades-long record for re-announcing stuff if any guide he’ll give us this screw-up over again until his already lousy poll rating goes negative.

go on, pretty boy. give us a smile.

i note with suitable disgust that gorgeous, pouting elliot morley, quondam mp for scunthorpe, and his vile co-religionists have been granted legal aid to defend themselves against the indefensible.

if a picture of morley (to the best of my knowledge the only mp whose constituency name includes a description of themself) is not enough to make the hard-pressed taxpayer puke, this surely will.

we can only look forward to the day they are sent down for the stretches they so richly deserve, and, i trust, are obliged to disgorge these (further ill-gotten) public funds.

(if guilty, obviously. none intended, obviously)

giv’em the rope

on a lighter note, i see that one of the few discerning members of the italian general public has seen fit to gob his fearless and irreproachable duce in the mouth with a die cast model of milan cathedral.

despite reports that the attacker is a nutter i cannot but heartily congratulate him on his choice of both target and missile.

Barack Hussain Obama — Nobel peace prize laureate? What’s that about then?

whilst i trust and believe that Obama is a different, and altogether more palatable kettle-of-fish than his deranged predecessor, this award, apparently the result of a nomination submitted to the committee only nine days into the recipient’s presidency seems, shall we say if not over-generous, then at least somewhat premature.

perhaps with no other worthy candidate to hand they simply lobbed it his way to avoid the inconvenience of having to record excess inventory in the peace gong department for this year. who can tell?

to his credit, i note that he has already pledged the prize-money to charity and hope that despite its unfortunate timing the award will in due course prove to have been well-merited.

mine’s a pint of creme de menthe Barack.

well we all like a laugh, but the report on the demise of mg rover takes the cake on so many levels i barely know where to start.

first: this toothless piece of tat has cost the hard-pressed taxpayer £16 million and yet has failed to finger a single wrongdoer.

second: the most strident critic of the report, and its subjects is lord mandelson, a guiding light in moral probity and my very favourite arbiter of truth and goodness. and the best he can do is tell them he thinks they should apologise.

third: this third-rate bunch of spivs, under the gaze, nay with the assistance of the government achieved a feat usually reserved for the more-gifted though similarly morally-bankrupt operators known as asset strippers.

to strip assets on this scale from a company long-recognised by it’s german owners to be a vast liability is a feat which almost by definition suggests impropriety. (how much is a car company which you can buy for £10 and get a vast interest free loan to run it worth? come on; the clue’s in the question.)

so how do these maggots justify taking over £40 million out of it while it’s dying on it’s arse?

hilariously, throughout the day, national news channels have referred to mg rover as the uk’s last remaining volume car manufacturer, whilst assorted industry pundits have sought to justify this plundering by suggesting that these “rewards” were consistent with the industry norms.

in reality, by contrast with the world’s genuine volume car makers, decades of woeful mismanagement had left the group looking like something under a railway arch. depressing to say the least.

how fortunate then that we now have such genius at our disposal in the financial services sector that we need no longer concern ourselves with such grubby enterprises as making things that others want to buy.

“where you been boy? oh, down the job centre?” ‘yeah. all centre, no job! but they’ve got new chairs; and a yucca plant. oh, and uniforms. musta cost a fortune!’

“come across john towers or any of his lousy cronies down there? no, thought not.”

in a world of filthy greed, vaulting ambition and human frailty it’s never a surprise when the biter gets bit.

and so it is that after weeks (or was it months) of revelations of the disgraceful house of commons ‘expenses’ culture by the telegraph, the spotlight now turns on the lousy world of journalism over claims of wholesale illegal phone tapping by news international ‘reporters’.

as they used to say in old money: ‘people in glass houses should get out of the kitchen’.

paradoxically, almost before this story is out-of-the-blocks it backlashes into politics due to cameron’s ill-advised choice of press guru, andy coulson, the man who knew nothing about these offences but purely out of a sense of honour, resigned anyway, before he could be questioned on the matter.

sweet dreams, david. (i know: you’re relaxed already).

bring out the tumbrills, again. (if wet, in the church hall)