A quick Fiddle

I love the MP’s expenses row.

It is all so marvelously Victorian. And I imagine that give it another turn of the screw in government in another 50 to 100 years time, and we will be doing it all over again.

You see the whole point of our political system is that it is – in essence meritocratic.
Candidates do not stand with slogans that imply that they are just like us – they stand with slogans that imply they are just enough like ‘us’ to be likeable, but essentially better than that really.

If we thought that they really were just Jo Blogs from down the road, you can bet your bottom dollar that they wouldn’t get a single vote. Why? Because Jo Blogs from down the road IS just like you and me - and let’s face it – we are apathetic and lazy.

So we vote people into power, with the belief that they are above the norm, that they alone are fit to be running out country because of some indefinable quality that lifts them above the hoi poloi.

Unfortunately this indefinable quality has turned out to be arrogance. Perhaps confidence does make them more capable of government – yet is also makes them more capable of… well believing themselves more capable of government.

If they are allowed to believe this, then I image they could not for one second believe that taking liberties with expenses was wrong. After all – where it not for them, the whole country would be in chaos.

So when the rich were elected to power because they has money – they used their power to get some more. And now that the ‘worthy’ are elected into power they use their influence to have possessions worthy of them.

I can think of only two solutions either me or Joanna Lumley as an all powerful dictator.

Waiting for the theatre

As I don’t really like eating much in the evenings, I am technically what you would call a ‘cheap date.’ Therefore I feel people should take me to go and do expensive things that do not require food. For example:

Diamond mine shopping
Mink farm purchasing
Couture dress procuring

Etc etc – you get the picture. Just think ‘Santa Baby’ lyrics.

I would however, “make do” with an occasional trip to the theatre, the opera or the ballet. It appears, however, that a distressing number of my acquaintances seem to be going with their ‘family’ and ‘friends’; Snubbing me and my perfect theatre etiquette for some plebs that they may be related to.

The injustice of it all.

It has culminated in a friend going to see Waiting for Godot – yes the one with a least two knights of the realm and actors that are legends in their own time – without me. A play that is made by the actors more than almost any other piece of theatre – acted by Charles Xavier and Magneto, and I am not invited – sniff sniff.

There is nothing to be done – I shall have to watch tv to keep this terrible silence at bay.

A little bit of Bass

Today we are feeling very sorry for oneself. Having weighed up the possibility of going home and not doing all of the much work that needed to be done against dry wretching in the work toilets for the next 3 hours – I decided that coughing up bile would win every time.

But I have found something that made it all go away. Rainbows appear in the sky and a choir of kittens sign halleluiah in perfect 9 part harmony. Chuck Bass will be in London tomorrow.

Yes – I know that he is a fictional character.
No - I don’t know that actor’s real name.

But I just don’t care.

Such is his perfection that angels weep as he passes by. He is an utter bastard, emotionally repressed, has issues with his father, is utterly sublimely beautiful and has loads of money. Could there be a more perfect man?

All i have left to say is Chuck Bass... I'm Louise Nathanson.

A Right Royal...

So Prince Philip has managed to make it to the slightly spurious honor of being the longest reigning ‘consort’ this week. I say spurious, as what I think that this technically makes him ‘biggest sponger’ in the history of our royal family. While the wife goes out and does all the important work, he has pioneered the way for house husbands everywhere.

On the plus side I am glad to see that Prince Philip appears to be rubbing off on the Queen (not like that you sick minded people). The other day at the G20 Phil managed to get in there with a cheeky racist jibe about how impressive it was the Mr. Obama could tell the difference between all the world leaders. This was a fairly classic racist comment by the Prince there and one that is characteristic of the style of his inappropriate comments throughout his reign.

However the Queen, in her more subtle and infinitely regal manner, swiftly delivered the biting phrase ‘why is he so loud?’ about Burlusconi. Something we have all wondered ma’am. Something we have all wondered – camping holiday indeed.

Son of a Mon

How exciting was the Grand National the other day – horses everywhere running very fast as then being shot and turned into glue at the end of it. Short men in brightly coloured vest, so that you can see then clearly and don’t accidently step on them. Women with no class being paraded around the paddock, trotting around in their high heels and showing off their dresses which demonstrated ever so well that money doesn’t buy you a sense of taste or decency.

And then the winner turned out to be a wild card – the real 100: 1 deal. I have decided that this means that I must immediately start betting on things that have a hundred to one shot. Like it not raining the one day in April that I have left my umbrella at home. (man I think I just made a weather joke – I must be ill) It just goes to show that the universe likes a good round number as much as anyone else – none of this unpoetic 7:2 each way shit.

Perhaps I should now therefore be more sympathetic to things that had seemed like the ‘long shot’ beforehand. For example the chance of me not eating all 6 crème eggs on my desk in the next hour and a half and then vomiting heartily in the toilets at work.

Do not stand at my grave an weep

Eddie Izzard - "I'm interested in death - in a morbid sort of way."

Excuse the deeply depressing nature of this - but it seems impossible to escape thinking of our mortality at the moment, with a picture everyday in the papers of someone who is not long for this life. It is a ever present reminder to all of the fragility of life - however since anarchy has yet to take hold, I must surmise that the human condition is still firmly in place.

Realising this and looking at the scenario, it appears to me that the way that we as a nation are dealing with this is by making it into a 'story.' Do we any longer believe that the reality that we see on reality tv or in the papers is truly real? Are we able to watch someone die in front of our faces because we think that at the last minute it will all turn out OK? That behind he scenes it is in fact all a big joke? A PR stunt?

I have always thought of death as the greatest adventure - but this idea is not my own, but first voiced, but the Peter Pan - the boy who never grows old, and has surely one of the strangest relationships with death of any literary character?! However - he will now never be forgotten, and perhaps this is what compels people - like Jade Goody- to act the way that they do. The more infamous their lives, the longer they are spoken of after death. And in this a form of immortality if gained. Comforting thoughts when you know that you end is near. 

In years past rich people would pay monks to pray for them after their death. Granted they believed that this would lessen their time in purgatory, but it was also as a form of remembrance. Their name being read out in church ensured that their parish did not forget them, and hopefully more people would then pray for them. Perhaps now, we still do this, but we have made The Sun our Church and Rupert Murdoch out Priest. Gosh - i think that might be more depressing than actual death! 

Unlucky 13

The story to have elicited the most euphemistic phrases from the paper in a good few weeks has be the hilarious story of the boy of 13 who knocked up his girlfriend. People have taken this as a symbol of a ‘Broken Britain.’ And I for one could not agree more. A 15 year old girl going out with a 13 year old boy? What has the world come to? At fifteen I would rather have been seen dead than dating someone younger than me.

So this wee young lad has been described alternately as “very young looking” and “who is 13 but looks more like 8” and even “barely four feet tall.” All marvelous euphemisms for the fact that no-one can quite believe that he managed to get a girl pregnant. As looking at the lad, he for all the world looks like his balls haven’t quite dropped yet.

It is also rather disturbing that they have called it Maisie – as they may well still watch the eponymous mouse orientated programme.