We Brits are sooooooo wacky!

[T_i_B]

Great article from the UK Guardian. Yes it is more than a little crazy that Blair and the rest of the "new" labour liars are still in office but they do have a landslide majority and they don't have too many qualms about abusing it.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1017367,00.html

I'm just back from a spot of work abroad - sorry, the Source of all UK Crime, Bad Driving and Childcare - and after days of European public speaking, cream-based sauces and nude swimming my fettle is fine. Not least because - although my nation's leaders consistently behave like a troop of sub-standard baboons - in foreign parts, there still lingers a fondness for our wacky little island full of lies.

Despite our ever-closer links with the world's most unconvincing Texan psychopath, many Europeans still want to see us as simply the generous purveyors of madcap humour and weirdly suppressed sex. We're also acknowledged to be only slightly less terrifying than the Americans, but there's a lingering suspicion that, safe in Barbados, Tony Blair will dress up as a woman and hit himself with fish while, at home, Gordon Brown dances in stockings and leather suspenders.

I'm beginning to see Europe's point. For example, I left Britain expecting I'd return to find those lovable rogues Tony and Alastair had been hung upside down from lamp-posts and nibbled by dogs. Only a population with an immeasurably advanced sense of humour would continue to allow them free run of their national budget when 99 out of 99 toddlers wouldn't trust them with a bag of crisps and they're both blatantly pawning our future while converting us to a murder-based economy.

But we Brits get wackier than that. Take the transformation of cautious, informed reports from various spies and inspectors into what we in Scotland call utter shite, as spouted and still spouting from various government representatives. Rather than be tedious and declare those involved irretrievably corrupt before sacking them, we prefer weeks of music-hall banter about sod all.

[ozymandius]

1. So, are you glad to be home?

Really.


I honestly believed that the opening salvos from the Kelly inquiry would have blasted holes in the hull of New Labour. What gives?

[T_i_B]

3. I wish I could be genuinely Thankfully_in_Britain

But I don't see how anyone can be thankful for the mess Blair is making. That is a pity as I really do want to have a good reason to take pride in my government. As to an explanation as to why Blair is not been hurt more, I would argue that yes, trust in Blair is declining as a result of all this, that the most pressing issue for most people in the UK seems to be the heatwave at the moment and finally, the explanation I gave in the original post. I only wish we could force Blair out with ease but he is in an ivory tower whose foundation is a landslide parliamentary majority.

Yes it is more than a little crazy that Blair and the rest of the "new" labour liars are still in office but they do have a landslide majority and they don't have too many qualms about abusing it.

[AP]

4. Take pride in record high employment numbers

http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1059478966699&p=1012571727201T

[T_i_B]

5. Should I take pride in...

...Blair's press spokesman describing Dr David Kelly as "a Walter Mitty character" before his funeral had even taken place?

[AP]

6. I'd be much more interested in record high employment

Do you realize how silly your question sounds?

The first step to real democracy is a wealth, healthy and happy middle class with the resources to influence policy.

The first hurdle to social justice -- a tipping point -- is when a critical mass people have at least 500 pounds in discretionary income to spend on a solicitor. Once you reach that level, you start to see some real democracy.

[T_i_B]

7. Since you are trying to evade my question

I will ask it again

Do you take pride in Blair's press spokesman describing Dr David Kelly as "a Walter Mitty character" before his funeral had even taken place?

[AP]

8. The horror of having a press secretary referred to as a Walter Mitty

character by a guy who sense of self-importance is stoked by leaking his opinions to the press. The shame, the horror of being British. Excuse me while I eat worms.

Like I said, you sound silly.

[T_i_B]

9. You sound silly because you are not telling the truth

It was Blair's press secretary who said that Dr Kelly was a Walter Mitty, not the other way round

Shame on you AP for trying to smear the UK's leading expert on WMD's. Now might you be trying to hide something by your lies and your smears?

P.S Read my original article. I'm the one on topic here.

[rman]

10. wealth + lies = not democracy

The first step to real democracy is a truth.

[T_i_B]

12. Now I am loathe to say this

But Britain has become essentially a one party state, a democracy in name only. The tories and "new" labour are virtually identical and that is a big part of the reason why Blair felt able to go to war against the overwhelming wishes of the people and why Blair has not been driven from office as should have happened by now. This article should explain more.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,821179,00.html

On the surface, Britain is a country politically doing what it should. The government has a big mandate. It continues to be tolerated by an unecstatic but untroubled public. The prime minister is better regarded than any of his predecessors at a similar point in their second term. The polity is evidently working. Yet in reality it is diseased. It lacks conflict. Britain has evolved into a mental as well as political one-party state. There's a uniformity of allegiance, under which the absence of organised disagreement legitimises, or at any rate readily accepts, a culture of easy opportunism.

The government rejoices in this, but the Tory disintegration is just as responsible for it. We see that the failure of the Tories stretches far beyond the party. It taints the entire quality of British life. For there is no alternative magnet of power, no competition for Blairism, and this means that contention is mostly futile. The establishment, whether in politics, in business or in intellectual life, is all of one colour. There is little point in being anything else.

This is an unhealthy, ultimately repellent, national condition, not found in any other western democracy. The one-party state of mind as well as politics doesn't seem to be making the country happier, or better governed. It is a direct, pernicious consequence of the collapse of the Tories as a political force. It has pretty well the entire establishment, for reasons of opportunism or comfort or idleness, in its grip.

[Spentastic]

11. Er

So with full employment what is the current per capita debt average for the U.K?

Most people haven't got 500 pence.

Record unemployement? Whoopee de do. Would you care to prodive any data regrading the quality and security of the jobs involved?

[Paschall]

2. Nice piece by Kennedy

"Obviously, it's deeply funny that anyone at all is dying in Iraq for no good reason, that US veterans' benefits have been slashed and that the loyalty of so many has been manipulated so magnificently by so few."

[Bandit]

13. Be careful you may end up in prison

Whacky sounds an awful lot like Paki and if you call someone that you go to jail I hear. I agree with your premise though.

[sybylla]

14. "murder-based economy"

I like that. Excellent little puke-style discriptor.