• home • about • archives • subscribe • email •

Tariq Ali says Barack Obama’s foreign policy ‘mirrors the ugliness of the Bush years’ and that there has been ‘no fundamental break in foreign policy between the Bush and Obama regimes’. (Via John Brissenden)

Right on cue we get reports that ‘a US terror alert issued this week about al-Qaida plots to attack targets in western Europe was politically motivated and not based on credible new information‘. Obama, it seems, hyped up a terrorist threat in time for the US mid-term elections and as political cover for an expanding policy of assassination and civilian deaths in Pakistan. Remember how we used to spit when Bush pulled the exact same shitty stunt?

Meanwhile, from the scene of one of Western values’ greatest triumphs comes the news that ‘heavy US reliance on private security in Afghanistan has helped to line the pockets of the Taliban‘. It’s the perfect marriage between turbo capitalism (think of Milo Minderbinder’s assertion in Catch-22 that wars should be fought by the private sector) and the kind of Bushite incompetence we came to know and love in the noughties.

ITEM: Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt might have the Daily Mail reading Tory heartlands clapping like seals at his suggestion that the lower orders should limit their breeding if they want to keep the pittance a disapproving government affords them, but has he really thought it through? Just where does Hunt think the people who clean his bog, serve his lunch and maintain his trying-too-hard haircut come from? The people that Hunt likes and seeks to court just aren’t squirting out the ankle biters like the underclass he despises. So what happens when we don’t have enough people here to do the shitty jobs and support an ageing population (you know, the stuff we resent doing)? Some kind of forced upper middle class breeding programme? (Does Hunt aspire to his own son wiping arses in care homes?) No, we import workers from abroad to the accompanying howls of the same crowd Hunt’s trying to impress. How’s that for joined up thinking, benefit claimant and immigrant hating scumbags?

ITEM: I’ve been reading about gladiatorial combat in Ancient Rome and how fights would end… ‘As for thumbs up, there appears to be no evidence for it — or at least, if it was used, it probably meant death, not mercy’. Yes, not mercy.

ITEM: ‘We need to learn some painful truths about where we went wrong and how we lost touch,’ said Labour leadership election loser Ed Miliband in his leader’s speech to the party’s conference. ‘We must not blame the electorate for ending up with a government we don’t like, we should blame ourselves,’ he went on. ‘We have to understand why people felt they couldn’t support us’ in order for Labour to be able to form the next government. So, charged by these words, what does the Labour Party do? Elect to the Shadow Cabinet the same embarrassment of dicks that helped torpedo the last government. Good work.

ITEM: If there was something that induced you to make a face like this you’d avoid it at all costs, wouldn’t you? I mean, Jesus.

ITEM: Here’s a thing. Did you know I played suave superspy Jeremy Trousers in the long-running 1970s television action series The Undercrackers? My moving portrayal of the tortured genius (Trousers battles crippling virginity as well as the intelligence establishment who are revolted at his insistence in using semen as invisible ink) won me several awards.

ITEM: It was interesting to hear David Cameron expressing outrage in his speech to the Tory Party conference about the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi. Of course, like me, many people are angry that the Lockerbie bomber isn’t in prison. That’s because he’s never been caught. Megrahi didn’t do it.

ITEM: Sweet Jesus, what is going on with women in frontline British politics? We’ve got rid of Harriet Harman, Patricia Hewitt and Hazel Blears only to get the perfectly idiotic Baroness Warsi. Talk about losing a pound but finding a penny and then losing a tenner. I have to change channels when she on I’m so embarrassed for her. I don’t doubt there are highly intelligent and non-patronising women in politics who know what they’re talking about. So where the hell are they?

ITEM: Having said that, the men aren’t doing much better. After listening to a particularly vapid George Osborne blithering and flannelling on the Today show the other day I had to have my toes surgically uncurled. I know I’m not one to talk but he’s hardly an intellectual titan, is he? Can we really not do better than him? There should be a ban on calling Britain ‘Great’ until Osborne is fired in ignominy. We don’t want to get done for false advertising.

ITEM: ‘Daveybloke told the British people: “Your country needs you”, a slogan most famously used on recruiting posters for a war in which large numbers of deserving poor endured horrendous conditions while a lot of hard-faced men did very well out of it.‘

ITEM: Here’s a thing. Did you know I played the heart-throb proctologist Gert Finger in the long-running 1970s television medical series Finger’s Progress? My moving portrayal of the tortured genius (Finger battles diphallia as well as the medical establishment who disapprove of his maverick style of endoscopy) won me several awards.

ITEM: It’s difficult to get angry about the Tories dicking with the benefit system. I mean it’s exactly what we expected, isn’t it? When a newly-elected New Labour trashed lone parent benefit in 1997 there was shock and outrage. The Tories booting the poor in 2010? Well, it’s what they do. You might as well expect a dog to stop licking its town halls.

ITEM: Here’s the awful Hazel Blears. You can take the over-promoted fool out of the tawdry, mendacious bullshit but can’t take the tawdry, mendacious bullshit out of the over-promoted fool.

ITEM: I really, really wanted a samurai umbrella before it occurred to me that carrying one in public must present a huge risk of suicide by cop.

ITEM: Amusing as it is to see Patrick ‘bombs in boobies’ Mercer MP peddling yet more alarmist fantasies, can’t someone have a quiet word with him? Obviously he really likes being on the telly and in the papers but isn’t there a more dignified way for him to do it? Like go on Total Wipeout or similar?

ITEM: Here’s a thing. Did you know I played the pipe-smoking polymath Randolph Arglestein in the long-running 1970s television sci-fi series The Arglestein Incontinence? My moving portrayal of the tortured genius (Arglestein battles his incurable vulgarity as well as the British establishment who refuse to believe his disturbing discovery that terrifying alien forces have infiltrated the Variety Club of Great Britain) won me several awards.

ITEM: The shallow, stagnant mind of Nadine Dorries MP craps another brainturd. Her and her hangers-on really do have a consistently misanthropic line in smearing those who have the temerity to criticise her. That someone like her can be elected to Parliament and then onto the Commons Health Select Commitee proves something or other. That there’s hope for rampagingly inadequate, offensively mediocre and small-mindedly vindictive people everywhere, I think.

ITEM: I note with weary dismay that there seems to be a significant overlap between those turning cartwheels over Ed Miliband getting the Labour leadership and the people who lectured those of us sceptical that a ruthless machine politician from Illinois being elected US president was a fresh breeze about to sweep the planet. Oh, well.

ITEM: While we’re on the subject of the same old shit, it’s the Tory Party conference this week. Apparently public champagne drinking has been banned as it sends the wrong message to those living on newly scorched earth. Just what message we’re supposed to take from the Tories’ very public dismantling of large parts British society hasn’t yet been adequately explained. The Tories might be booting the poor, trashing schools and pissing on the NHS but at least they’re not on the champers while doing it. For that we must be grateful.

ITEM: You know, even I’ve ceased to care what I think about this bollocks any more. Somehow, this blog consistently gets more visitors on days I don’t post. This amuses me.

I didn’t watch Ed Miliband’s speech. I can’t listen to him speak. My mind wanders and I find myself wishing he’d just blow his bloody nose. If he’d only had his adenoids when he was a kid, his voice could be two, maybe three, percent less irritating. Did I miss anything beyond platitudes? I just couldn’t face an hour of having my intelligence insulted by him and then by Nick Robinson. Can someone please nudge me when he says something worthwhile? The Guardian’s Michael White says ‘Miliband reclaimed optimism for his party – always a good thing to do.’ I’m reclaiming optimism as well then. Now, what do I do with it? Look at me everybody, I’m the new generation of change and I’m optimistic! There, I feel much better.

And farewell Miliband (D). He’s sore at losing the Labour leadership when in reality he should be thankful that it’s merely the height of the punishment he’ll receive for his torture hiding and war-backing. He’s stepping down because he fears ‘perpetual, distracting and destructive attempts to find division where there is none and splits where they don’t exist’ between him and his brother. In other words, he’s lost his bottle. The media holds too much power over the career of politicians and he’d be shit-scared all the time. This is, for some reason, an acceptable state of affairs under British democracy. Basically, he’s paying the price for the pandering and abasement New Labour has peformed for the likes of the Murdoch press and the Daily Mail. Alastair Campbell, defending Milliband (D) and in the wake of Peter Mandelson’s, Tony Blair’s and his own unsightly soul-baring and petulant self-justification in their memoirs, even had the balls to criticise ‘the constant soap operatic blah that would surround David and every word he uttered as a frontbencher‘. Campbell, lest we forget, was the one who published a story about Mandelson punching him in an argument over whether Blair should wear a tie or not. If there is a soap opera going on it’s because the likes of Campbell helped script it. Miliband (D) along with the rest of his New Labour mates got into bed with the gutter press and now he’s being screwed. He only has him and his mates to blame. One’s heart bleeds.

ITEM: Is anybody else still laughing themselves sick at the idea that Vince Cable and Ed Miliband are some kind of communist fifth-columnists? Is it stupidity or mendacity that fuels this horseshit?

ITEM: Aw, no. Are they really going to let Gemma Arterton (24) play Nicola Six (35) in the screen version of London Fields? It’s a piece of spectacular miscasting not seen since John Wayne ‘portrayed’ Genghis Khan. I last saw Ms Arterton in the impressively dull* Clash of the Titans remake in which she was as charming and charismatic as a room full of Milibands. Read the book before Hollywood ruins it.

ITEM: The International Monetary Fund backing the Tory and Lib Dems policy of scorched earth isn’t really the good news Chancellor George Osborne claims. As victims of the IMF’s misanthropy elsewhere would no doubt testify, the organisation has a real thing for grinding the poor into the dirt. Have a look at what they did to Argentina, Romania and Haiti, among others. When the IMF says you’re doing a good job, you can be pretty certain that someone undeserving is getting shafted and hard. The ‘recovery’ is ‘under way’ apparently but for who isn’t adequately explained. Is that the sound of champagne corks popping across the sink estates of Great Britain I can hear? No. No, it isn’t.

ITEM: Bee!

ITEM: Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson is a bit of a dick, isn’t he?

* It takes a special kind of perverse genius to make giant scorpions, Liam Neeson barking ‘RELEASE THE KRAKEN!’ and Greek mythology in general so stupefyingly tedious.

Ed forgets to bring his long spoon.

So, Ed Miliband is the new New Labour leader. Excited? Feeling an Obama moment? No? How can you be so cynical? The membership and the parliamentary Labour party came within a gnat’s chuff of elevating his torture-hiding war criminal brother so I suppose we should thank heavens for the unions who put the brakes on that bout of collective nasty pragmatism, for all the good it will do them.

Ed, let’s not forget, is a machine politician who owes his entire career – intern to Tony Benn, speechwriter and researcher for Harriet Harman, special adviser to Gordon Brown, safe seat in Doncaster North (not exactly a local boy) – to his father’s name and the patronage of the Blair/Brown/Mandelson/Campbell axis. He did Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford which has produced more supervillains over the years than the Marvel Universe.

Any attempts at ‘I feel your pain’ will be worth hearing. Listen to him speak and he even has the Blairite speech patterns and glottal stops (as has his brother) that have made our blood boil since the sainted Tony arrived on the scene back in the 1990s. They gave Tony and crew the boys and Tony and crew gave us the men.

Look at his victory speech: ‘Today a new generation has taken charge of Labour, a new generation that understands the call of change’. Like, what does that even mean? Change to what? Who’s doing the calling? Ed certainly hasn’t understood the call of change that pleads for a little less meaningless, platitudinous bullshit in New Labour leaders’ speeches.

There’s hilarious talk of Ed dragging the Labour party to the left. It depends what you mean by ‘left’. I don’t think we’re going to hear words like ‘socialism’ bandied about, do you?. Ed doesn’t look like someone to challenge the neo-liberal consensus that the three major parties all cling to, giving us such a stunningly diverse choice at the ballot box. If you’re a millionaire City boy, I doubt you’re too worried.

Bear in mind that those spreading these theories are supposedly dead-ender (yeah, right) Blairites like Mandelson who are to the right of a swathe of the Tory party on many issues let alone Ed Miliband. Ed wouldn’t have to edge very far leftward away from them for them to regard him as Trotsky reborn. Getting on the right of them would be quite some stunt.

In summary: Meh. Electing this grown-in-a-laboratory berk doesn’t bring me any closer to taking my vote back to New Labour and I doubt I’m alone by a long way.

ITEM: A historic moment this week when it was revealed that, for the very first time, The Sun had sent its senior political editor to the Liberal Democrat party conference. ‘Hello – I can see you. We know who you are. You are particularly welcome,’ swooned the party’s Deputy Leader, Simon Hughes, in his speech. It was The Sun, lest we forget, that outed Hughes in 2006 with the fragrant straplines ‘A second Limp-Dem confesses’ and ‘Another one bites the pillow’. Nice to see political expediency trouncing homophobia. Maybe the Daily Mail could send Richard Littlejohn next year.

ITEM: Using the voice of John Humphrys ‘to scare off hungry deer from eating gardeners’ prized fruit and vegetables’ is a great idea. His voice certainly scares me away from listening to Radio 4′s Today programme. No doubt the voices of the programme’s other presenters could also be put to good use. When I hear Justin Webb’s voice, for instance, it always scares off feelings of wanting to be alive.

ITEM: The upper echelons of the Obama adminstration have never been that keen on discussing Hamid Karzai’s deep-running corruption and whether it precludes him from being from being Afghan president (here’s a clue: for reasons never adequately explained it somehow doesn’t but it bloody well should should). Karzai’s mental health however is fair game for Washington tittle tattle and public discussion, it seems. It turns out Karzai’s depressed (and let’s face it, who wouldn’t be in that job) and suddenly now he’s a liability? It’s another insult to all the people who cope with depression on a daily basis but have never rigged a national election. It’s a strange world we live in.

ITEM: I notice from the photographs accompanying the story about boorish waste of carbon Chris Moyles whining about not having been paid for two months that he is hugely overweight and a smoker. If he’s not careful his money troubles will soon be behind him. Just one letter away…

ITEM: The six men arrested for burning two Korans will be punished in a novel fashion if convicted. Their own holy texts (collections of SAS fiction and Razzle) will be confiscated and incinerated while they are made to watch.

ITEM: ‘The Lib Dems never were and aren’t a receptacle for leftwing dissatisfaction with Labour. There is no future for that, there never was,’ said Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg on the eve of his party’s conference. Which makes you wonder why, during the run up to the General Election, he spent precious time campaigning in places as far apart as Redcar in the north east and Streatham in south London – places hitherto regarded as rock solid safe seats in Labour ‘heartlands’. Maybe it was just that he’d never been there and fancied a look. Yes, that must be it.

ITEM: The Daily Mail reports on Russell Brand attacking a photographer attempting to get upskirt shots of his fiancé Katy Perry. The readership are torn over outrage at the violence and disappointment that they’re not getting any pictures of Perry’s underwear.

ITEM: Dear media dickheads, it’s only day one of the Liberal Democrat conference and I’ve already seen or heard three references to sandals (Jackie Ashley in the Guardian, some herbert called Matthew d’Ancona, and the hateful Justin Webb on Radio 4). How about you read this and try to find a cliche of your own to milk to death, you lazy, lazy bastards.

ITEM: A few years ago this blog was languishing, dying. In my despair I prayed to the venerable Tim Ireland and only a few months later the blog had a Google Page Rank of six. It’s certainly way more miraculous than Deacon Jack Sullivan’s regression to the mean. But where’s Tim’s parade?

ITEM: A cautionary tale for Nick Clegg and his flock from none other than Johnny Cash.

ITEM: More excellent news for lovers of decency and moral standards – from next month the News of the World website will be behind an online paywall.

ITEM: If there’s one thing you learn as a blogger it’s that anyone, in a debate or argument, who compares their opponenents to the Nazis is a soft-headed moron whose hysterical and unjustifiable hyperbole rules them out of consideration as a serious thinker. In other news, the Pope graciously thanks the non-believing British taxpayers who’ve helped fund his state visit.

ITEM: ‘I’m not a Tory,’ says Nick Clegg. No, and in The Empire Strikes Back, Boba Fett isn’t a stormtrooper.

ITEM: Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama has a written a children’s book. Isn’t that sweet? Of Thee I Sing: A Letter To My Daughters ‘pays tribute to 13 Americans, from the first President George Washington to baseball legend Jackie Robinson’ as well as the men who invented the unmanned drone and brokered the largest arms deal in US history.

ITEM: ‘Is Carole Caplin set to blow the lid on Tony and Cherie Blair’s sex secrets?‘ asks a visibly priapic Daily Mail. For the sake of the country’s sanity and ability to keep food down, one can only fervently hope not. His tale of how he ‘devoured’ her and her tale of him knocking her up at Balmoral have already extorted a high price from our collective emotional wellbeing. No offence to Ms Caplin, but surely a whip-round to hire a hitman is in order?

An athiest has not pulled out of his boyfriend after saying arriving at the Vatican was like landing in “12th century”.

Joe Bloggs reportedly told his mates the Vatican was marked by “a new and aggressive idiocy”.

Bloggs said he had intended “any kind of slight” and had not pulled out of his boyfriend because of none of your damn business.

The UK Cabinet Office said his views were personal and were representative of rationalists in the UK.

The British-born athiest was quoted as saying to a few mates that “when you land at the Vatican you think at times you have landed in the 12th century”.

‘Talking sense’

Some other bloke said, said Bloggs was “obviously talking sense”.

“I think he believes Britain is in the grip of secular atheism, and he should have said so,” said Mr Bloke.

“They are saying it is sexiness [that has forced Bloggs not to pull out], but I wonder if that is the fact. I wonder if what he does with his penis is none of anyone’s damn business.”

The Vatican said Bloggs had been “seriously informed” in his claims about the Holy See.

“It is completely true that we discriminate against homosexuals and women,” it said in a statement.

ITEM: A spokesman for George Osborne’s deputy assistant sommelier denies the Chancellor is blasé about the impact of government cuts on society’s most vulnerable.

ITEM: Tony Blair denies plagiarising passages of his memoirs from the film The Queen. ‘I am not a plagiarist,’ said the former Prime Minister, ‘and if anyone says I am I will fight on the beaches, I shall fight on the landing grounds, I will fight in the fields and in the streets, I will fight in the hills; I will never surrender.’

ITEM: On the eve of the Liberal Democrat party conference, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has given an exclusive interview to The Times about how his government is hammering the poor and the vulnerable. Fortunately for Clegg the article is behind The Times’s paywall and so only a small number of people are able to witness his depravity for themselves. By neat coincidence, the number of people who have paid to have online access to The Times (27,500) is the same as the number of voters the Lib Dems can rely on at the next election.

ITEM: Susan Boyle is to sing for the Pope during the Pontiff’s state visit to Britain. In tribute to the work of many of the Catholic Church’s priests, she will perform a version of Nino Tempo’s (Hooked On) Young Stuff.

ITEM: In his 12th unmanned drone strike this month, the current holder of the Nobel Peace Prize killed 12 people and injured many more. His officials ‘declined to comment on the identity of those killed and wounded’. Oh, and he’s flogging $60 billion worth of weaponry to Saudi Arabia.

Or so they say. That being the case, what foul kind of collective evil did we commit to deserve Phil Woolas?

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

ITEM: That strange sound you can hear is the female population of Britain ovulating at the thought of Chris Moyles being back on the market. Get in there quick, ladies.

ITEM: Isn’t the world a nicer place with The Times behind its paywall? If nothing else now only a few thousand hardcore masochists are having their mornings spoiled (either directly or indirectly) by David Aaronovitch’s brainfaeces. Once Rupert Murdoch finishes shovelling the rest of his offal behind the paywall we can get on with finally founding Utopia. In fact, in the last few weeks I’ve been conducting an experiment by erecting my own mental paywall. The results have been astounding. Imagine a world without Richard Littlejohn, Nick Robinson, Victoria Derbyshire, Jon Sopel, Nicky Campbell, Justin Webb, Stephen Nolan, John Rentoul, Guido Fawkes banging on incessantly about gays, Adam Boulton, Peter Allen, John Humphrys, Kay Burley, Nick Cohen and Richard Bacon. I’ve been there. It’s beautiful.

ITEM: The man who killed the otter with his spade at the end of Ring of Bright Water is to advise David Cameron on animal welfare issues.

ITEM: Dear media dickheads, if you’d spend five minutes with a Shakespeare study guide (obviously I’m not expecting you to read and understand the actual plays), you’d know a winter of discontent is a good thing. Try and find another tired cliche to milk to death, eh?

ITEM: What should a Strictly Come Dancing widower do on the long Saturday evenings between now and Christmas? The drop in the stairwell isn’t deep enough to hang myself.

Jesus Christ, was any of it real?

Sometimes, Blair explains, deception is justified for reasons that any Metternich would understand… like pretending a non-existent friendship, buying ice creams for himself and Gordon Brown from a van in order to seem “together and normal”, and then being told not to put a chocolate flake in his cone because he might appear “greedy”. Blair, we discover, does not like his soft ice cream without an accompanying chocolate bar, and boldly he describes himself putting truth before appearances, in that respect at least.

I remember smiling at the sight of Blair buying Brown an ice cream during that election campaign, the two laughing together in a seemingly spontaneous, unguarded moment. Unredeemingly cynical as I am, I took at it face value – evidence that Blair had an element of knowing humour to his makeup. At last, you thought, a small and rare flower blooms from the dark, stinking cow turd of his diseased sociopathy. Who guessed that Blair had got the flower arrangers in?

(Via Jamie)

Primark are selling some fantastic Star Wars underpants at the minute. They have a picture of an AT-AT across the back. If you put them on and jiggle your arse cheeks it looks like the AT-AT is walking. Seriously, I’ve never been happier.

ITEM: Tony Blair cancelled his victory party at the Tate Modern for fear it might be ‘frightening‘ for his guest to run the gauntlet of a few people shouting. Not exactly Shock and Awe though, is it Tony? If only he’d shown the same sensitivity to people’s fears back in 2003 he’d have been able to have his pretentious piss-up with no problems.

ITEM: On the cover of this week’s Radio Times – the one with Stephen Fry astride a motorbike – if the wind is blowing his tie why is his stupid haircut untouched?

ITEM: Politics is built on compromises. Nick Clegg’s personal road to Hell are paved with them. Did he ever dream, on that day in May as he offered his alabaster throat for Tory wolves to feed upon, that he would one day find himself standing in the House of Commons offering political cover for tabloid scum?

ITEM: More atrocity in Iraq as details of a finger-collecting US death squad come to light. No doubt these are just more ‘bad apples’. There have been so many of them though. Is it any wonder nobody wants to buy All New Iraqi Democracy Cider?

ITEM: I deleted my Twitter account. It just stopped being fun or useful.

ITEM: Congratulations to Tricky and Martina Topley-Bird for winning the 2010 Mercury Music Prize award with their album Maxinquaye. At least I think it was them. The lighting wasn’t great on the night so it might have been some lifeless, uncharismatic dopplegangers.

ITEM: Many, many congratulations and commiserations to America for taking Piers Morgan off our hands. A major drag-factor has been removed from Britain’s cultural progress. Our gain is America’s loss.

ITEM: I’m thinking of a change of direction. Up next on Chicken Yoghurt a 120,000 word thesis on why the Russell T Davies-era Doctor Who series are this country’s very own Star Wars prequels. And how the Steven Moffat era is even worse.

The people who can help make this go away know who they are.

His kids, for God’s sake. What does it take to attack them or stand by idle when you can help?

Can’t we find Liam Fox something to do? You know, like run a war or something?

Britain’s Defence Secretary Liam Fox has defended his comments calling on retailers to ban the forthcoming Medal of Honor video game from their stores. On Sunday, Mr Fox said he was “disgusted” by the game, which allows players to adopt the role of the Taliban in the Afghan war. [...] On Sunday, Dr Fox said that it was “shocking that someone would think it acceptable to recreate the acts of the Taliban against British soldiers”. [...] An Electronic Arts spokesman said the game “does not allow players to kill British soldiers”.

“No British troops feature in the game,” he said.

So there we have it. The British defence secretary going off half-cocked and issuing factually incorrect, ill-informed bobbins about computer games while there’s a war on. Has anybody told him they’re not actually real soldiers? Presumably non-British virtual combatants are fair game. Sorry, computerised Americans, Liam just doesn’t care about you.

No mention either from Foxhole of any disgust about the civilians killed by NATO and attempts to cover those deaths up, but what are you going to do? What about the foul crimes of Henry Kissinger? Oh sorry, Liam’s a big fan actually.

Anyway, we now get an insight in to Fox’s character. Here’s his updated profile:

NAME: Dr Liam Fox
AGE: 48
LIKES: Proper killing
DISLIKES: Pretend killing

It’s not like me to kick a man when he’s down but I think today just might have been the day when my abject pity for Nick Clegg finally slipped over the border into contempt. He goes on Sky News and says that talk of benefit cuts is ‘speculation’. Ten minutes later, Downing Street is announcing that it is reviewing benefit cuts. His bosses clearly think he’s a dickhead, willing to soak up absolutely any and all humiliation.

Then, in the afternoon, he rocks up at the Shepherd’s Bush Village Hall to wax lyrical about Tory ‘plans’ for ‘social mobility’. The twist? Clegg and his entourage were completely ignorant of the fact that the Shepherd’s Bush Village Hall is targeted for closure thanks to the Tory-run council. Brave little Nicky Wicky – according to the Fulham Chronicle – despite being ‘given two cards made by children begging him to save their playgroup’ and ‘confronted by worried parents over the council’s plans’, didn’t even have the balls to answer questions about it.

When they come to make a satire of his time in office, they sure as shit ain’t going to call it ‘In The Loop‘. It’s starting to look pretty pathetic.

Nick’s first day in the big chair and he’s laying some morality:

Clegg refers to problems in Greece and Spain and says it is “morally wrong” to hand over debt from one generation to the next.

He might be right. The thing is, going by previous experience, when the Deputy Prime Minister talks of morality it’s time to turn on the bullshit detector. Nick is very good at slating the lack of morality in a given outrage but not very good at measuring the moral content of whatever replaces that travesty.

It’s like the war in Iraq (which Clegg was against, of course). Yes, Saddam Hussein was a bloodthirsty tyrant (you still have to say that out loud in case some passing knob thinks you supported him) but those who had a little grasp of history knew that the American military under the command of someone like George Bush Jnr wasn’t the trojan horse in which to smuggle liberal values in Iraq.

It’s the same with Tory policies drawn up to replace Nick’s moral wastelands. We’ve already seen that the moral outrage of child refugees being imprisoned is looking like it will be replaced by another.

It may be morally wrong to hand over debt from one generation to the next but look at what the Tories, with Clegg’s silent acquiescence, are doing in what they say is an attempt to stop that happening. The demonisation of the poor. An attack on vital public services (despite promising during the election campaign that this wouldn’t happen). And so on.

Those of us who didn’t support the war were asked often by those who did, ‘what would you instead?’ The answer was, generally and in the first instance, ‘don’t replace one atrocity with another’. In this current context of Tory government, the leader of the Liberal Democrats needs to decide which end of that argument he’s on.