We would never normally stoop so low as to celebrate someone's defeat but, in one case, we are prepared to make an exception. As they say, 'Don't let the door hit you on the way out!'
There is one thing I shall miss about him: the fact that, according to in the conventions of headline-speak, his utterances are all reported thus...
Labour not anti-business - Balls
or
Balls - Labour Government will 'balance the books'
...and somehow I find myself mentally adding an invisible exclamation mark of disbelief each time. I admit it may be somewhat below the belt to poke fun at a chap's name but you have to agree that there has been a rich vein of satire to be mined here.
Given his previous appearances in this blog, there is, of course, only one possible victory song today...
As Labour takes a drubbing in every counting hall, Let's raise a toast to seeing Brown's old enforcer fall And cheer as Morley suffers the unkindest cut of all; Who'd have believed it? Labour have lost their Balls!
Demetrius, as always, hits the nail squarely on the head:
"The sweltering heat in the South and East of England arises from a plume of high pressure caused by hot air movement unusual for this time of year. This is due to a surge of political manifestos."
Foremost among the noxious emissions is the flatulence emanating from Harriet Harman's Big Pink Battle Bus under the guise of a 'Women's Manifesto' - surely as clear an illustration as white facepaint on black celebrities of the principle that discrimination is, for some at least, definitely a one-way street.
Among other gems, this document apparently promises guaranteed childcare from 8am to 6pm, to 'set a goal for fifty per cent of ministerial appointments to public boards to be women' - nothing like ensuring you always get the best person for the job! - and to double paid paternity leave.
It also includes the bright idea of four weeks of unpaid childcare leave for working grandparents; having brought up their own children without the benefit of recent childcare subsidies and tax credits, grandparents are now being invited to forego a month's wages so their grown-up offspring can get to work.
This is apparently because grandmothers "give up their work when the kids are little in order to help the mothers and fathers balance work and home" - in other words, to enable mothers to leave their new babies and find career-based fulfilment in the workplace in the approved feminist fashion.
This, it turns out, is less than ideal for the grandmothers, who put their own careers on hold while youth has its day "and then find that they can't go back to work once the children are back at school because once you're in your late 50s and early 60s it's really hard for a woman to get a job then."
Really Harriet? Could this, perhaps, be because the posts for which they are they are suitably qualified and experienced are already occupied by mothers who have farmed out their children on a daily basis in order to get straight back into the workplace?
It all reminds me of 1990s City superwoman Nicola Horlick, interviewed in her kitchen on how she successfully managed her career and family while her mother silently tackled a sinkful of washing-up in the background. According the the Mail, 'Research suggests 1.9 million grandparents have given up a job, reduced their hours, or taken time off work to look after their grandchildren.'
It appears that the 'having it all' generation of career women, encouraged by the likes of Harman, not only want the taxpayer to fund their childcare but also expect their mothers to sacrifice their own careers to take up the slack; how fortunate, then, that Harman's happy compromise means the grandparents only lose a month's salary instead!
As a bonus, this issue has given us a contender for the most meaningless soundbite of the campaign so far - though, as ever, there's plenty of competition:
"When asked about whether he was assuming that older women could afford to work for free, Mr Miliband said that this was "about going with the grain of people's lives" and that the modern workplace needed to reflect "the reality of family life"."
A spot of recycling; the apathy of five years ago has returned with a vengeance, compounded by the occasional burst of suppressed rage, so I've plundered the archives for a bit of music to soothe the savage breast...
It’s not a mystery, we ought to want it;
So much depending and relying on it,
So why on earth should I be feeling nothing,
Wishing it were through?
And I can’t bear this Press pandemonium;
On May the seventh it’ll all be over.
People will vote as they intended to anyway;
Nothing, nothing anyone can do.
We’re in the run-up to a general election,
Each side points out the other’s imperfections,
But all they do to get their message through sounds like so much guff to me.
Recall election night anticipation?
This is more like waiting for an operation;
Will the offending growths be removed
To leave us trouble free?
I’ve just had enough, enough, enough,
I’ve just had enough.
I’ve just had enough, enough, enough,
I’ve just had enough.
Excitement levels couldn’t get much lower;
The whole damn business makes your heart beat slower.
It’s a long time since there’s been any pleasure
Reading Britain’s news.
They’ve all got plans, your future is safe with them,
It’s the same story over and over;
It’s enough to make you want to hide away
Which one’s lying? Could we really care less?
So in the run-up to a general election
I groan and throw away the Politics section;
I’ve heard it all already; there’s no innovation, instead just constant irritation.
And as the juggernaut is set in motion
I start to entertain the dismal notion
It’s too much bother, you won’t win me over
There’s no more left to say;
I’ve just had enough, enough, enough,
I’ve just had enough
Of mock sincerity and fake emotion
Yellow, red or blue.
So here we are, stuck in the run-up to a general election,
Hoping everything will take a new direction,
Or is it all lies... (ad lib)
Honestly! I only leave the country for a week or so and you manage to get yourselves into a right pickle over petrol.
As far as I can see from the reports, it's a national version of the Local Toilet Roll Crisis which I inadvertently precipitated in 2004, when a friend asked me to collect two bumper packs for her from the supermarket and I added one for myself.
I barely noticed the odd looks I was getting as I continued my shopping, but by the time I reached the checkout, every trolley was piled high with toilet rolls and the shelves were starting to look bare; a few days later, the whole town had been denuded of stock.
I have no doubt that the same people who observed the mountain of rolls in my trolley and, drawing their own conclusions, scuttled off to secure some for themselves would react to a petrol station queue in much the same way.
According to the BBC, areas badly hit include Surrey, Berkshire and Hertfordshire - surely toilet-roll hoarding territory if ever there was.
Meanwhile, I see that a certain loose cannon has got himself elected in Bradford*. Galloway, it turns out, has recently published an open letter highly critical of the practice of postal voting which, coincidentally, has surfaced in the French news this week.
The Presidential elections - delightfully celebrated by delit maille (see sidebar link) - taking place during the school holidays, the authorities have realised that some people may be away from home.
They are thus publicising the procedure for securing a postal vote; in advance of the election, citizens must apply in person at their local police station and present proof of identity and address, together with a valid reason for absence.
French bureaucracy being legendary (and the French Police most certainly not an organisation with which to trifle), this is not something to be undertaken lightly; what a contrast to the British system, where, according to the Electoral Commission website, "You do not need a reason to vote by post".
Since the British system relies on self-declaration and the sort of pointless questions you get asked at airports - "Did you pack this ballot paper yourself?" - there seems little to prevent law-abiding citizens discovering that, according to the electoral roll, they are apparently sharing their tiny flats with a dozen or so other people.
*Or Blackburn, according to a tweet spotted by Galloway-watcher Spinoza at Rational Islam?, where the question of postal votes also raises its head. I followed it up: Galloway later dismissed the tweet as a hoax, but as Diane Abbott shoved her oar in at that point, I lost all will to continue reading.
Abbott, incidentally, tweets as HackneyAbbott. On a grammatical hunch, I looked that up too: sure enough, "hackney (adj.): banal, trite". Sometimes serendipity is a wonderful thing.
One of the more bizarre elements of the BBC's Election Night coverage prompted Ross at Unenlightened Commentary to remark, "The things you see when you don't have a U-boat to hand," in a post appropriately entitled 'Ship of Fools'.
He was, of course, referring to the £30,000 party hosted by the Corporation at which dozens of celebrities were wined, dined and occasionally asked to pronounce on the state of the nation. Quite why our licence money should be spent ensuring Andrew Neil could call on the political acumen of Joan Collins or Piers Morgan, I'm not entirely sure.
While the presence of rival historians Schama and Starkey is understandable, it's hard to imagine the reasoning behind the invitations to Bruce Forsyth, Ben Kingsley and Kelly Holmes, whatever their respective merits in their own fields. And why did it have to be on a hired boat on the Thames? Last time I looked, the BBC had a state-of-the-art Election Studio with plenty of room for extra guests.
According to a BBC spokesman ‘As part of our election night coverage, we produced live interviews and broadcasts throughout the night from a boat moored outside the London Eye, discussing the election results with views of the House.' (Translation:"we wanted a load of celebs to upstage the competition but they wouldn't play ball unless we gave them free champagne".)
It's the apotheosis of the pointless on-the-spot report - Robert Peston shivering in a deserted Square Mile at 10:15pm or Nick Robinson standing in the rain outside Number 10 while the PM's in Scarborough. Here's the thing - we already know what the Palace of Westminster looks like. We really don't need you to spend £30,000 so you can sit in front of it cosying up to Piers Morgan.
The party did, however, serve to underline just how far we've moved on since the 70's, when election coverage meant a studio full of union bosses, expense account bellies and chins a-quiver, pontificating on the results. Instead, in an enduring legacy of 'Cool Britannia', the BBC sends its presenters out on election night to fawn on perma-tanned, botoxed celebrities - a sign of the times indeed.
While you're waiting for tonight's results, the tavern regulars thought you might like the chance to revisit some of the musical highlights of the campaign.
The media may be muzzled today but comment is still rife in the blogosphere. This has been, without doubt, the most interesting and entertaining election campaign I've seen, mainly because of the numerous informative, perceptive and sometimes downright hilarious posts out there.
The downside is that, with a new-found interest in constituencies all over the country, I am probably in for a sleepless night - who could settle down for a relaxed kip when there's the potential Morley and Outwood Castration in the offing, or John Walsh's valiant struggle in Middlesborough?
Here at the Tavern, we usually try to preserve at least a modicum of political neutrality*, but the prospect of massive humiliation for the Rogues' Gallery whose machinations have intruded into every aspect of our lives while they lined their pockets at our expense is too much for our impartial stance - the Tavern will resound to loud cheers tonight if any of Labour's High Command are ousted.
Eschewing the BBC's 'Election Night Party pack', we have ample supplies of drink, we're armed with the Telegraph's handy expenses supplement to read during lulls in results and we plan to drop in occasionally on SUBROSA's live blog. See you there!
*ie we're happy to have a go at anyone who deserves it. To quote one of my favourite fictional characters, 'Honey, I have insults for every race, creed, colour and sexual orientation - I don't discriminate'.
There he was on the screen, grimacing away in front of a field of waving corn (prosperity? a subliminal fertility symbol?) while the adoring multitudes howled with delight at every opportunity.
He was pronouncing what you might call New Labour's Beatitudes, listing the achievements of the past thirteen years, claiming credit for anything that could possibly be construed as positive - Olympics, black women peers, the number of teachers... the list went on and on, while the crowd prostrated themselves to touch the hem of his garment.
I see from the news that I must have been watching Brown addressing 'a morale-boosting rally of 300 activists in Manchester' - which raises the question of exactly whose morale was being boosted. By the time I switched on, Brown was grinning manically, which is not a sight you want to be greeted with after a hard day at work.
The reason for this particular self-satisfied smile? 'Under Labour, there are more students at university than ever before and I'm happy to say the majority of them are women'. Cue: whoops and squeals of delight at a level suggesting the entire audience had just won the lottery.
Exactly why is this a cause for rejoicing? I'm all for equality in educational opportunity, but why is this inequality a source of jubilation? the only reason I can think of is a sort of double negative; women lacking education is BAD, so more women than men in university must be GOOD.
So where does this leave my son? Finding a university place is hard enough already: he'll be set impossible targets because his school is above average for GCSE's - and it's not comprehensive and we don't live in a deprived area, so there are quotas operating against him as well. With application forms now asking about parents' qualifications, he'd be better off being adopted by wolves - or possibly urban foxes.
The slogan 'A Future Fair for All' has a distinctly hollow ring to it, in this household at least.
Yesterday afternoon, this bizarrely-titled document was appearing in media reports - by evening, there was scarcely a mention. Did they think better of it? Where did it go? Or was it just killed off by the British weather - the planned photo-ops of Brown surrounded by happy families eating ice-cream failing to materialise.
Still, it seems only right to commemorate it in song...
Seaside Manifesto
Seaside, while the media stroll along with me I'm busy showing them that right is on my side; See how I’ve teamed up with Duncan Bannatyne? (You know you’d like to criticise but you can't) So I’m campaigning madly, Would town regeneration make you vote for me gladly? A brand new angle in every marginal Seaside rendezvous.
I’m getting frantic, three days left to campaign, So it's Seaside manifesto time - you’ll like it, It’s fantastic, you can be an entrepreneur, And there are neighbourhood agreements, Heritage programmes And rebuilt piers - it's so fashionable!
**********
And so Great Yarmouth, where I am today Visiting with Duncan here, In a renaissance Will be the Riviera of the North Sea With just some regeneration and some government cash If you all vote for me.
So we’re here at the seaside For a photo opportunity Maybe things’ll work out right See how I’m posing with Duncan Bannatyne In search of some reflected glory from the man? Though maybe deep down we know The public’s had enough of us and yearn to see me go There’s still a place for Labour’s sensational Seaside manifest-o – it’s adorable Seaside manifest-o–o-o Seaside manifest-o, give us a kiss!
I met her on a walkabout in Rochdale, She tried to make me think she was on my side; She suddenly got tough on immigration, Put me on the spot with nowhere I could hide.
They should never have put me with that woman! Whose idea was that? I think it was Sue’s.
I do apologise and say it’s a pity; I was only trying to be helpful and do it right. The lady’s got it wrong if she supposes I’d have said outright to her face what I had on my mind.
She’s just this sort of bigoted woman Airing what I thought at the time were bigoted views,
(Yeah!) She’s just this sort of bigoted woman And she’s left me looking a fool on the ten o’clock news.
(Yeah!) She’s just this sort of bigoted woman. And I know it will all be her fault now if we lose.
PS: Quote of the day (or week - or year!) from Dungeekin', leaving on holiday Wed 28th April:
Here at the Tavern, we've been considering a political bombshell dropped this week by one of the Offspring currently at University.
Instead of returning to the parental spawning grounds to vote, this wise child has registered in his place of study. This means that a vote has effectively been transferred from a party stronghold to a teetering marginal, by virtue of a term-time election.
And when I say teetering, I mean just that - their present incumbent was elected with a majority of fewer than 500 votes, whereas our sitting MP can, on past showing, expect to secure nearly 50% of the votes cast.
It appears the registration process, facilitated - some might say orchestrated - by campus activists, has been aimed at persuading the 7,500 undergraduates to cast their vote where it will do 'most good' - some will travel home or vote by post while others vote at university.
If the old adage about being a socialist at twenty holds true, a term-time election means a large* unpredictable population of Lib Dem or Labour voters able to select which of two constituencies will have their vote. Combine this with the LibDem's pledge to scrap tuition fees and the student loans fiasco on Labour's watch and things get very interesting indeed.
So if you've tried all the BBC's other interactive toys, why not play 'Spot the University Town' among the target seats and dead certs - bearing in mind that, at the latest count, there are 109 universities in the UK.
*The total number of UK students at British universities is estimated at 2 million.
Looks like the backroom boys at Tory HQ have been busy with a spot of Freudian analysis. Taking advantage of going last of three, they've looked at the competition and come up with a sharp riposte.
Gone is the blasted heath of Labour's offering*, or the litter-strewn cityscape conjured up by the Lib Dems; Dave sits in a modest back garden in the evening sun surrounded by blossoming fruit trees and a climbing frame - and isn't that just a hint of birdsong in the background? Welcome to 'Hector's House'.
Clever. Very clever. The lone figure striding through desolation is replaced by a relaxed paterfamilias in a secure and comforting environment. Instead of the hurrying passers-by who brush past Nick Clegg (one of them twice - check him out at 1.15 and 1.20 in their video), the supporting cast are attentive audiences hanging on Dave's every word.
And if Labour were tapping into the latent fear of Dr Who's monsters, the Tories have produced an evocation of something quintessentially English - Gardeners' World**. Dave's Spring Garden is channeling Geoff Hamilton and Percy Thrower (with a touch of Parsley the Lion thrown in).
Incidentally, the audio transcription which so mangled the Lib Dem offering strikes again; 'That's why we need a new Conservative government' becomes, inexplicably, 'That's why we need the name Saudi Government'. Plenty of fuel for conspiracy theorists there.
*A propos of Labour's PEB, it has since occurred to me that Sean Pertwee - their proxy Gordon - was a memorable Macbeth in a 1998 Ch4 schools production; not a felicitous image to conjure up for a generation of younger voters.
Following a suggestion in the comments, I turned on the audio transcription captions (not available here - sorry), which a pop-up box describes as 'experimental'. Well, they're certainly that. In fact, the entire transcription could probably hide undetected in a collection of modern free verse.
Here is a sample - imagine it being read in a mournful voice to a roomful of earnestly nodding, slightly scruffy intellectuals in the arts faculty of a university near you.
Say Goodbye to Broken Promises Broken promise They've been too many in the last year To many of the lost that Elections be lifted But right
Broken promise You remember them There are taxes But from a stroke But as schools everyone police broke Clean up polls Performers broke
I believe is trying to do things differently I believe it's time for a premise input Well I believe it's fine Promises
I expect to see it on the GCSE syllabus about three years from now, or possibly released as a chart-topping rap single along with the soundtrack music by Clegg's official 'Youth Advisor', the ever-so-slightly middle aged Brian Eno (61).
Other treats include the unexpectedly relevant, 'The week kind of painful for air attacks' ('But we can pay for fairer taxes'), an exhortation to 'Break up the Bronx' - so that's who's to blame for the financial crisis - and my particular favourite, the gnomic closing statement 'Jeanne moos little bit', which surprisingly turns out to be 'And choose the Liberal Democrats'*.
*Which did make me wonder whether there was a saboteur at work - on the other hand, isn't it just so Liberal Democrat to agree to participate in an experimental process? Like when they ask you in hospital whether you mind if a student medic has a go. Sadly, Labour's PEB does not include this entertaining facility.
Update: Latest on the nephew stranded in Sicily; he and his fellow students are now returning to the UK by coach - at least 27 hours on the road. If his generation needed a lesson on our dependence on air travel, this is surely it.
Spot anything familiar about this man? That's right; Labour’s Everyman figure, the stand-in for Gordon Brown, is Sean Pertwee, son of Jon. And for those of us in our forties, that means only one thing.
When he says, "My father always said 'don't give up’. ‘Show resolve’, he said. He was so right", he’s talking about Dr Who.
The bleak rain-washed landscape has much in common with the sort of place the Time Lord used to end up in on a regular basis – give or take the odd alien life-form - even down to the implausible blue roadblock. You expect the Brigadier to put in an appearance at any moment. ‘Is it deliberate?’ we ask ourselves, ‘What are they trying to say?’
When Brown said of Cameron, “I don’t know him as a human”, was there more to the statement than we thought? Why else enlist an actor who is such a chip off the old block that the opening shots had forty-somethings diving behind the sofa as the conditioned reflex kicked in?
There’s a clue too in the use of speeded-up clocks – time, see? And if that were not proof enough, listen out for the final voice-over. Yes, that is David Tennant, Dr Who in person. The subliminal message is clear.
'Vote Labour or the Daleks will get you.'
Update: Many thanks to Demetrius for this - try playing both at the same time (start the Harry Lauder first). Was it the soundtrack they originally intended, I wonder, or is it purely coincidental?
Like one of those magic eye pictures, the events of the past week, when viewed in a slightly different way, suddenly present a whole new political vista. Sir Nicholas Winterton channelling Marie Antoinette, Heseltine's gloomy prognostications and Portillo's doubts, all surfacing at once, add up to one inevitable question.
What if the Tories don't want to win the election?
Think about it - whoever ends up in Number 10 will be tackling a mess of epic proportions with a side order of chaos. It's difficult to identify any area of the public sector which does not constitute a ticking time-bomb, from our unemployable young to future pensions crises, from elderly care to childhood obesity.
Far better to let Gordon et al. return with a perilously slender majority to face inevitable decline and fall, Gotterdammerung and votes of no confidence, after which Cameron can ride in on his white charger and pluck the helpless Britannia from the jaws of disaster to riotous applause.
Meanwhile, Gordon's cronies don't want to have to clear the mess up either. Gordon himself may be clinging on to power with both hands and his teeth, but I can't see his minions relishing the prospect of years of public vilification as chickens come home to roost.
So Gordon and Sarah are given free rein to make use of their organs of choice, Piers Morgan and a supermarket magazine, to court the misery memoir generation. It's hard to imagine the sort of person who contentedly 'shares Gordon's pain' with a nice cup of tea actually getting out there to vote, so no danger there.
And we're likely to end up not only with a hung parliament, but with the undignified spectacle of both leaders trying to avoid power while pretending to campaign for it sincerely. And if that happens, we might even get Clegg for PM.
I wasn't going to post this one on the grounds of taste but when I read this at Plato Says I decided it was probably fair game after all....
IT'S MY PARTY (To be sung in a lugubrious Scots accent)
Nobody knows where my mojo has gone, But Mandy and Ed say it’s time For baring my soul on the Piers Morgan show; Then the hearts of the voters will be mine.
It's my party, and I'll cry if I want to, Cry if I want to, cry if I want to, You would cry too if Ed and Mandy said to.
Say that one fails, then I’ll still be alright, I can still win through with style, Using Tesco’s store magazine And my irresistible smile.
It's my party, and I'll cry if I want to, Cry if I want to, cry if I want to, You would cry too if Ed and Mandy said to.
----------------- To pursue my campaign there’s no loss I’ll ignore, No heartstrings I won’t try to wring, Hoping the voters won’t realise That New Labour’s wrecked everything.
It's my party, and I'll cry if I want to, Cry if I want to, cry if I want to, You would cry too if Ed and Mandy said to.
Macheath, the notorious highwayman, has retired from a life of crime and can now be found behind the bar of Peachum's Tavern, favourite haunt of the rakes, rogues and vagabonds of 18th century Newgate and setting of 'The Beggars' Opera'. Visitors are always welcome; help yourself to a virtual tankard of ale and read on...
