Jacqui Jumps

Preferring not to wait until she's pushed, Smith has jumped from the Home Office cabinet post she so richly didn't deserve. Presumably she's decided to spend more time with her bath plugs and to tackle the thorny problem of weaning her husband off his porn habit.

What are the implications of this surprise resignation ahead of the Euro and local elections on Thursday? Well, the Spectator called it yesterday, with James Forsyth prophesying:

Whenever word gets out that a reshuffle is underway, the rumour mill goes into overdrive—no speculation it too outrageous or too thinly sourced to make the rounds. So there’s a danger that Ministers could think, wrongly, that they’re going to be dropped or demoted and decide to get their retaliation in first.

I'm not sure this is quite an example of that - she was an epically useless Home Sec and wanted to quit anyway - but given that Number 10 appears to have totally lost control of not only the news agenda (Queen's snub over D-Day, for instance) but also their own economic policy on the car industry (LDV re-enters administration), it is true to say that it is the first sign of that 'chaos' to which Forsyth referred.

The fact, for instance, that they have another dead man walking in Alistair Darling coming out on Sky this afternoon to try to explain why Smith had gone speaks volumes about how limited Brown's scope for change in any reshuffle now is. Better than half his cabinet, including his Chancellor, are tainted by the expenses scandal, with Geoff Hoon the latest double claimer forced to pay back the cash he nicked. He is also one of the Labour ministers who benefited so richly from the 2004 rule change on flipping that Brown denied all knowledge of in a bizarre exchange during an interview with Adam Boulton yesterday.

As Fraser Nelson says this afternoon, what Smith's departure really does emphasise is Brown's helplessness. He goes on:

This gives her a bit of dignity, and will frustrate Gordon Brown who would have liked to announce this himself. The reshuffle is one of the few weapons left in his arsenal - with Labour's poll rating now below room temperature, he is about to lead the party into what will doubtless be its worst-ever defeat. And he'll look more helpless now; given he can't control his own reshuffles in a timely way.

As it all begins finally to unravel only one question really remains: can Brown hang-on as leader? Now that he has lost what was, apparently, his only 'unique selling point', (however mythical) - his control over his party - I still maintain he will be knifed in the back, shown the door, quietly asked to leave: whatever the method of his removal, he will be removed. Why? Because there are strong signs that it is finally dawning on the Labour donkeys that there is one, consistent, unifying feature of this vortex of national tribulation and political chaos they (we!) are having to suffer - and he lives in Number 10.

Not for much longer.

Desperation!

Guess who's coming back into government. Yes, the mastermind behind Nannygate himself, Dave Blunkett. Brown's desperation is now total. As the Speccy concludes:

...the overwhelming message that bringing Blunkett back would send would be that Labour is tired and that there is no fresh talent to bring in. There is also a risk to retuning him to the Cabinet at a time when political anger about political sleaze is so high.

No, really? You think?

Simply desperate.

Car Crash 3: Crash Gordon

After Limp Opik and Shahid 'million percent' Malik's car crash interviews on Five Live and Sky respectively (only a week ago - seems like months!), we've now had the blockbuster press conference sequel: Car Crash 3: Crash Gordon.

The Spectator live blogged it, I watched it. I could not believe what I was hearing. As the Speccy says, this was Gordo's 'me' moment - and it was a huge pack of inadequate dishonest, wriggling partisan claptrap and lame posturing from a lame duck premier. 'Floundering' is not a strong enough work for it. Here's the lowest of the low points (mostly from the Spec with a few notes):

1. He called for "immediate action" - which kinda contradicts his "wait for the Kelly Review" stance of last week.

2. Brown really struggled to make it seem like he's taken the lead on expenses. He says that he's "really pleased" that his "proposal" for more independent scrutiny has been met with "broad agreement" from the other party leaders. It's horse poo, too. These were Tory proposals made last week.

3. The key problem with Brown's approach: he says that Hazel Blears hasn't "broken the rules of the House of Commons". I think it's safe to say that those rules have been discredited by now. And his submission for quote of the week: "Hazel Blears' actions were unacceptable, and she's accepted that". Priceless. And er, Gord old boy, doesn't that mean she has to resign?

4. "It was me who put forward proposals before the Daily Telegraph articles were published; it was me who proposed a new system for expenses ...." As lies go, this one's a doozy.

5. Brown, when asked whether he'd pay any of his expenses back: "I believe that I've done the right thing." No, what he's done is 'nothing'.

6. He said that the public will appreciate him "putting party politics to one side". So it's all the Tory's fault, then. Attack, attack!

7. "You're making this an issue of government, when it's an issue of Parliament." In other words, the Muck Martin line: nothing to do with me. It's the system. Wrong, Gord, the system works fine as long as honest people are operating in it. In fact, it's a bloody good system in that it sorts out the honest and the dignified from the troughers, thieves, cheats and liars. Keep the system, change the personnel!

8. More "me, me, me" from Brown. He says that "Prime Ministers haven't tradtionally involved themselves in [the expenses system] ... I'm the first to put proposals directly to the House of Commons." Er, not true. What is true is that you caused Cameron and Clegg to walk out because you were so rude and then published a weird, unilateralist video on YouTube which spectacularly backfired.

So, a car crash, a train wreck of a press conference and one which has simply raised more issues about, and created more contradictions in, Brown's on-the-hoof, pisspoor approach. All that really emerged with any clarity from this is that he remains utterly, existentially terrified of the 'E' word. So shout it out as often as you can: ELECTION!

He's nearly gone, folks. Hallelujah.

Liability Brown

Brown: What Do I Say Now, Dave?

Sky News tells us that Gordo has now said he is "appalled and angered by this week's revelations" about MPs' expenses and apologised on behalf of all parties! Bullshit.

How the hell does Brown think it makes him look when he insincerely claims to be 'appalled' by the fraudulent behaviour of his naff MPs, and then 'apologises' for everyone, regardless of whether or not this falls within his purview (it doesn't)?

You can say what you like about him following Cameron like some sort of dumb animal, bereft of individual moral thought, bovinely waiting to be led by the nose; that his delayed, faux outrage which smacks of cynical calculation casts an even worse light on his party and his premiership; that his pathetic attempt to deflect criticism by exceeding his authority (does he understand he can't do this?) in apologising on behalf of parliamentary parties of which he is not a member and which he does not lead.

You can say all that and a hell of a lot more besides and you know what, you'd be dead right on all counts.

Me, I think it just makes him look a total and utter fool - and a dishonest one at that.

I've heard his message to me tonight. Now he can hear mine:
Brown: just shut the f*ck up and RESIGN, you epically useless gobshite.

==Lumley Screws Brown Live On Sky==

Troubling image.

Joanna Lumley is on Sky News sticking the knife into Brown over the Gurkhas and roasting little Philly Woolarse live on air after he apparently betrayed those 'personal assurances' of the prime mentalist that Lumley cleverly referred to yesterday on his orders!

She's livid and little Woolarse is having his little Woolarse handed to him. Brilliant.

Apocalypse Postponed (Again)

The Stand (everyone dies from flu): Fiction

Apparently swine flu is "a much milder virus" than previously thought. Really, though? You don't say.

I thought the worldwide healthscare professional industry wouldn't have given up quite so easily. This thing must be less threatening than a baked bean fart. But the pharmaceutical companies will be happy because they have sold hundreds of millions of doses of flu palliatives (like Tamiflu) and had umpteen hours of free, indirect advertising.

Meanwhile the government is happy because it's been able to (try to) deflect attention from its own total incompetence and waste vast sums of taxpayer cash it no longer has. Cost of leafleting every house in the country? Well, no one anywhere has reported it - or the cost of 33 million face masks (remember, the ones that only work for healthscare professionals because they are a different species of human being).

Even if we forget about the cost of printing the leaflet and just take a conservative number for postage through Royal Mail bulk services, you are left with a bill of roughly £5 million. With printing costs this is invariably much higher. Thirty-three million face masks? Well, a correct standard of mask costs between £4 and £5. Allow a (generous) saving per unit for a bulk purchase order of, say, 40% and you are left with a cost to the taxpayer of between £79 and £90 million. For face masks that no one will wear (at least to protect them from a non-malicious flu virus that just wants to be friends).

Poverty in Mexico: Fact

Total cost? My upper, but still very conservative, estimate is about £100 million - for 27 not-very-sick people. 27.

Now that's how to waste money.

Next time, WHO healthscare professionals, you find out what really happened to the poor bloody Mexicans living in abject squalour in their animals' shit with no money, no health care provision and no official interest in their suffering, who died. Because it seems, idiots, that what these people died from was poverty, not flu. Flu was a symptom of their poverty.

And after our God awful government has just pissed away another few squillions for a few sniffles, that sort of makes me rather mad. That hundred million (assuming it was not pissed away by an equally incompetent Mexican government) could have been put to good use. It could pay for 10 magnificent free health centres in Mexico City, for instance. Or five new schools here, if you don't feel like helping the world's poor.

Finally, with clockwork predictability, of course the Arab-Egyptians have seized on this opportunity to launch a jihad against pigs (yes, the animals) in their own country. That's 300,000 healthy animals being slaughtered for nothing. Well, not quite.

In reality, it is merely a bigoted crackdown on the Christian minority of Copts. You know how it goes: "Mohammed said pigs were dirty and look, he was right. And Christians are dirty. So let's kill them all." "The Christians?" "Hmmm. Er, no. No. Better not. Just the pigs." "Will do, boss."

That's what a 'health scare' can do to the ignorant. That's why causing one is criminally stupid.

'We're innocent!'

And all the while the poor, innocent, healthy pigs are caught up in the middle. No animal rights groups have batted an eyelid about this. No noise, also, from the Left media or Labour's Foreign Office about the crackdown on Christians in Egypt. Why?

Because they are bigots and hypocrites, too. Didn't you know that?

Prescott Deviance

I've just read something so funny on John Ward in Medway's blog that I just had to steal it repeat it:

"From Patrick Hennessy at The Telegraph, on John Prescott's Radio 4 performance on the Today programme this morning:

"I undressed 450 students yesterday with Ed Miliband and Eddie Izzard and I did 300 last night."

Fellow sex addict, Russell 'Manuel' Brand,will be furious.



Brand: Sex Addict

This Week's Number 1!

Old Holborn has tipped the wink to this frankly hilarious bit of news: The most popular petition on Brown's Frasier-impersonating "I'm listening" pisspoor Downing St website is, you guessed it, the 'Resign' petition.

YouTube Censored by Labour

Who Farted?

According to the Times, Brown's internet management team, or whatever the Labour morons call themselves, are so sensitive to criticism they're disabling viewer comments.

For myself it's not so much that they're telling potential voters to shut-tf-up - that's fairly common practice with UK political party tube channels - it's their wonderfully dumb spin on their whole, utterly shambolic New Media 'strategy'. For example, from the article:

“We have changed our approach. It is right that the PM gets his message across new channels and engages with the public in ways that suit them, in addition to using traditional outlets.”

Priceless. As Paul Staines is quoted as saying in the same article:

“They put a load of pictures of him up on Flickr [and] every Friday morning I scan through the photos on there and find the most stupid one I can. You can just use it to make him look like even more of an idiot.”

Well, that sounds like fun. We should all be having a go...

So, they've changed their approach all right: make Brown look as weird as possible as often as possible through every internet outlet in existence, alienate the viewers and then watch him crash ever lower in the polls. I think this must be that part of Labour political canvassing theory called the 'kamikaze technique'. Someone should tell them Please, no one tell them it didn't work for Tojo - and it isn't working for Broon.

Budget Caption Competition

No one reads this fantastic blog (except my brother, of course - when I ask him to) so I suppose I'll have to have a go...

"Beautiful, Darling."

"I want a divorce."

The End?

What a lovely holiday I've had! And now it's nicely rounded off by the news that Guido Fawkes is about to nail the liars of Labour once and for all tomorrow. If one man will ever be credited with taking down one of the most flawed and destructive governments in our history, then it will - and must - be Guido. He's done us such a powerful service, I'd give the man peerage (expenses and all).

Is this a little premature? I think not. This latest poll in the Sunday Telegraph (the only version of that organ worth the wonga these days, the DT having finally succumbed to the poison of lefty lobbyist infiltrators) reveals what amounts to a collapse in support for Brown's tarnished gathering of cads, thickos and pocket-liners.

About time! And we have Guido to thank for opening the eyes of the general public to the horror show at the heart of this unrepresentative, incompetent government without a mandate: Brown's government of all the malcontents and misanthropists, masquerading as honest public servants.

I am sure that this is finally it for them. So many appalling revelations about the venality, spiteful venom and overall naffness of this regime are emerging so close together, you have the ridiculous spectacle of the party leadership lying directly to the public to cover for the sins of their boss, while their backbenchers scramble over each other as they try desperately to distance themselves from their own front bench, desperately praying they aren't contaminated by what has rapidly become the utterly toxic brand-Brown. The ones that haven't given up completely are now saying they're doing it for their constituents and for the "Labour Movement" (whatever that might be now). All the Tories and the rest of us who hate this disgrace of a government have to do is sit back and enjoy the show.

There is one thing to be said about the ratty unravelling of this knotty fleece of a regime, the more the nincompoop criminals are tormented by the process of the truth outing (as truth sometimes does) the more entertaining it becomes. Schadenfreude? No.

It's pure catharsis for the audience (we haven't been an electorate since Brown's coup d'etat) - and after years of breathtaking hubris, it's going to be a major purge! All that was needed was the nemesis. Guido's is better than I could ever have hoped for. The only question remaining for me is this: when the dust settles, will any of them, particularly Brown, experience a little of the traditional anagnorisis?

Fat chance. And that's why they've got to go.

++update++
While the ST poll puts the Tories 17% ahead - with Labour down five on 26%, I've just learnt from a comment on order-order.com that there's another, unregistered one in the Mail on Sunday that puts the Tories 19 points ahead! Sort of supports my argument really. A summer election is now very definitely worth the punt.

Brown Gives His Response to Hannan

"W***er!"

Hardly a high-browed rebuttal of the great speech, but exactly what we've come to expect from our devalued, cuckoo PM.


Superb comment from an American Youtuber underneath the Hannan video:

"There was once a great bumper sticker in California when Pat Brown was running for Governor "if it's Brown, flush it""

I think I might get a few of those printed-up.

Banking Donkeys

These are the donkeys they've put in charge of - what is it now - £300bn of our treasure and rising?

*speechless*

Universally Challenged

'Romeo' the French Donkey (2006)

I've never been a huge fan of the BBC's version of University Challenge for two reasons. First, the huge ass that is Jeremy Paxman and second, that they allow post grads to compete, some of whom have no hair.

But as if that wasn't enough I now learn that the British Bolshevik Cooperative can't even tell whether the participants of their flagship (only) student quiz show are actually students - or can't be bothered to find out.

I have three quickfix solutions to this shocking shet of shircumstances:
1) Fire Jezza and bring back Bamber Gascoigne - even if you have to dig him up.
2) Only let undergraduates compete.
3) Abolish the BBC

Sorted.