The Friday Joke: Booooo!

I was going to apologise for posting this great joke for it being slightly dated. But I decided to plough ahead because, frankly, there is an added poignancy in watching this.

It seems now to belong to an earlier, more innocent age when all we had to worry about was the Tory-Lib Dem Coalition's ideologically driven austerity drive, with its sombre repercussions here in Barnet in the shape of the 'One Barnet' privatisation programme.

Since those halycon days, all of a week ago, when we enjoyed brilliant weather, brilliant sport and a warm, fuzzy sense of all quite liking each other (apart from the Government, of course), it feels like something significant has changed.

We have seen ambassadors killed and embassies burned over some stupid film that some deservedly anonymous fool made in the US; harrowing revelations about the Hillsborough disaster and cover-up including the shameful role of South Yorkshire Police; a miserable reminder of the pathetic preoccupations of the mainstream media in the furore around the contemptible invasion of privacy of a nice enough, middle-class woman aka the Duchess of Cambridge, who happens to be married to the future King (the what?!).

Etc.

I'm sure I've left something out, oh, yes, the return to prominence in Barnet (small pond? Turn left at Hampstead Heath) of one of the most venal, arrogant and insensitive excuses for a bourgeois 'politician' ever spawned. I don't even have to say the name.

Gosh, if he were handing out the medals now, Chancellor George Osborne should think himself lucky only to be booed. Oh, yes, I nearly forgot, the 'joke':

Q. Why did 80,000 people boo George Osborne?
A. Because that's the maximum capacity of the Olympic Stadium. (Kevin Mcveigh)

Imagine there's no NHS...

Imagine there's no National Health Service. Obviously, we only want you to imagine. It's not going to happen. But what if...? How much of it would we actually miss, if it went?

Ditto schools and universities. Policing. Public transport and infrastructure. Pensions, social services. Homes... Shave a bit off, here and there. 20%, 30%, 40% - the sky's the limit.

Obviously, it's just a hypothetical, but... Well, we can dream...

The return of the smooth man

I try not to base my blogs on unkind personal observations, but sometimes one can't help noticing things about people. My mother (this post is not about my mother), like most human beings, had descriptions for people based largely on their appearance. And made value judgments based on that.

Sometimes she would describe a man as 'smooth'. 'Oh, he's a bit smooth.' Sometimes she would describe someone as 'smarmy' - this is worse than smooth, but smooth is bad enough. Smooth men played golf, they never travelled by bus, they had glass decanters of sherry on their sideboards. They almost definitely, inevitably, to a man, voted Conservative.

That's what they did. What did they look like? They had smooth, rounded jawlines, with just a tiny bit too much fat on them, and tidy hair, probably parted, with the hint of a quiff.

Anyway, why I'm thinking about this now is because I can see the return of the smooth man in politics, they are waiting in the wings, crowds of them, waiting to move back into the centre of our television screens... because the Tories are coming back into power.

I really hadn't taken much notice of the Tories for years, but now I will have to, I suppose. I will try not to judge them by their appearance, and only by their deeds, but, in honour of my mother's judgment, I cannot resist compiling a small picture gallery of smooth, Tory men. This lot just make me shudder. The last gentleman is David Pugh, the Conservative council leader for the Isle of Wight, where I have spent some time this summer.