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I think my general opinion of the election result can be summarised as āoh buggerā.
I used to participate on the Gs Political blogs on occasion until the majesty of Andrew Sparrows politics blogs were ruined by format changes. I hope no-one minds if I info dump my āState of the Nationā thoughts onto here. In keeping with the general philosophy I shall be making more than one or two Doctor who references. Iām also trying to keep an upbeat and positive approach. Iām also just really talking about the trad 3 parties here.
Iāll also be upfront ā as the son of a Miner, a teenager of the eighties (and all that strife) I do not think happy thoughts when confronted with people in blue. My grandfathers were miners. My father was from the North-east my Mother from the North-west. Their fathers were Miners. I have a ancestor who was on the Jarrow March. Paternal family was Scottish descended, Maternal was Irish descended. I was born in a Midlands torn apart by eighties excesses and live in a part of Yorkshire that has never fully recovered from those. I escaped from a mining town to live in another mining town. Before the Mines were closed and the idiotic harmful practice of adding to the Carbon burden of Coal by importing cheap coal from around the globe was implemented to prove a cretinous political point. I went to the University of Bradford (founding father Harold Wilson ā a Labour PM) and I took great delight, while there, of being a voting participant in the downfall of Sontaran look alike Eric Pickles who led a ruinous City Council.
Unfortunately , he was rewarded by a sycophantic Party with a safe MP seat and heās now the Minster of shooting rapid fire Mindwank from the hip in the direction of the Daily Mail.
Just so you know- I have a natural antipathy for the Conservative Party.
āSome Corners of the Universe have bred the most terrible things…they must be foughtā.
That such an inept shower of shite as the current Conservative Party have gained power is truly disturbing. Iām sure the analysis of this one will go on and on. The āquiet conservativesā who said theyād vote one way and jump back to the venal option were a real thing in the eighties and early nineties. Imagine that ā a party that you were embarrassed to admit youād support when asked in an anonymous poll. But you still voted for. The mind boggles.
Here we are though. The PM is David Cameron. With a slim majority and not in coalition. The āDavid Cameron is a lizard personā label is quite common.
It doesnāt quite work in Doctor Who terms because the Silurians (and Vastra in particular) are capable of compassion. Not so David Cameron.
David Cameron in a photo op showing the face of Compassionate Conservatism.
āDavid ā donāt play with your foodā
āVote for me or the puppy gets itāMy āReason to be cheerfulā on this is twofold. Heās announced this will be his final term. What that means in practice is that heāll probably stand down like Blair at some point and a nasty totemic fight for the leadership will erupt. Heās also a lame duck PM with a slim majority just as John Major was in the nineties, held to ransom by members of his own party with some pretty swivelled eyed views. With fixed parliaments in play, I canāt help thinking this is a recipe for a series of huge self inflicted wounds as the Conservatives try to play āWho is the biggest Bāstard of the lot of usā.
Therefore I canāt help but think that the following e-mail has been sent by Conservative Central Office:
āDear MP
Congratulations on being elected/re-elected!
Please donāt die.
A Wonk.
CCO”Because byelections are notoriously bad for Government. Every one over the next five years will be hilarious.
āVote for me! What this country needs right now is a slack jawed buffoon!!āPost Cameron, the replacement Bāstards are potentially Boris Johnson, who has suddenly gone all āFederal states of the UKā on us. A tacit admission that the Tories may as well give up on huge swathes of the UK. He should know, because heās offended and made grovelling apologies to many of them. Letās face it ā the Boris act of appearing as some sort of bumbling toff in a 1950s farce bellowing āoh crickeyā as his pants fall down is not going to play in a huge amount of the country.
The other is George Osborne ā as Chancellor heās been the disaster that only an over privileged toff whose only substantive previous job was menial work in Selfridges could be. He appears to genuinely hate actual people and has spent much of his time in this election (as in the previous) being locked in a cage fed raw meat in case he said something controversial.
Forget the Fourth Doctor adventure ā this is the true “Face of Evil”. George Osborne is so un-ironically evil he readily agreed to pose for this picture.ĀAs I said before. The fact that substantial numbers of people actually looked at this Party (and donāt get me started on other individual members like Hunt and Gove) and thought āah ā theyāre the guys for me!ā makes me think that many of my fellow voters are actual sociopaths.
āYouāre the perfect example of the inverse ratio between size of mouth and size of brainā
In a timey wimey way Nick Clegg has the unusual honour of being satirised before he even joined politics. In the 70s 2000AD the insane right wing Judge Cal was propped up in power by lizard alien āKleggsā. A Case of life imitating art perhaps.
Since they were formed from the old Liberal/Social Democratic Parties theyāve always traded on the image of being left leaning and progressive. Largely, going into power with the conservatives was always going to be harmful to them. It must be said though that Cleggs behaviour in Government in appearing to relish the shared dialogue of victim blaming the unemployed and benefit scroungers was appallingly crass. Also ā admitting that you never believed in a huge part of your electoral manifesto (the economic position, Student loan position, NHS, shit the list goes on and on) live on TV was stunning in itās elegant way. He may as well of announced the death of his party then and there. Clegg could cry a river and I wouldnāt feel any sympathy for him.The Party has started making noises about going back the Social Democratic principles but, letās face it, the many casualties in itās MPs (they have lost four fifths of itās MPs) have taken place in the progressive elements of the North and Scotland. They donāt have many people who are naturally wired that way left. While it was great to see Beaker look alike Danny Alexander losing his seat it was painful to see people like Charles Kennedy, who was so articulate in opposing the Iraq war, going the same way.
I think their next leader is going to be Farron, and any reorientation to āthe leftā is going to be pretty superficial.
āI gave him this big old dream about Dan the Soldier Manā
“Just look at the way he eats a sandwich! Heās obviously unfit to govern.”Ed Milliband. The fact that so much can be made of one guy eating a bacon sandwich (which seemed to be in the news for weeks) is surely a statement of how low weāve come. He became a natural target for much of the press (who generally donāt like lefties very much anyway) when he took up MP Tom Watsons cause on press corruption and led with it.
You canāt get away from the fact that a large amount of his problem was presentation. Heās stilted and doesnāt come over as natural in any meaningful way. Heās said much of value, but it has a habit of getting lost. It really is a shame. The question is now who is going to replace him.
Holy shit ā itās the Auton shop window dummies!The bookies front runners are Yvette Cooper, Andy Burnham and Chuka Ummuna. Each has their own individual problems and all seem like the plastic Auton replicants of elements of past leaders. I think a huge problem for Labour is that it has to get past the whole āAre you a Brownite or a Blairiteā mindset. Frankly ā any of the above seem to have exactly those kind of issue.
One of the names that has cropped up as an outsider is Dan Jarvis. This is astonishing to me as heās the name I put my X next to on Thursday. Heās been my MP since he was elected in a byelection held shortly after the last General election. Yes ā this guy have never served a full Parliament and is mentioned in a leadership race. Astonishing, but somehow very right.
Iāll explain why. Basically Iāve lived for 20 years in Barnsley. An old mining town. Itās MPs have traditionally been deep red and come from the Mining community. Eric Illsley was reelected in 2010 and he was someone I couldnāt vote for at the time. Because Eric had been a naughty boy on the expenses issue and had to resign to take a short holiday at Her Majesties Pleasure shortly after the election. The 2010 election had also seen a surge of support for nasty right wing party the BNP who made a huge gain by painting themselves as the āAnti-Warā party. It naturally played very well because with the devastation wrought on the Mining Industry, the area became a prime recruiting ground for the armed services. Lots of people will have family who serve or who have served and a certain pride in local regiments is evident.
Jarvis was selected and broke a lot of traditions. He was born in Nottingham (not local) and wasnāt really from the Mining tradition. He was a soldier. This annoyed some but he fought an effective campaign, won (this wasnāt really in doubt) but in doing so knee-capped the entire BNP strategy and their support collapsed. As an MP he got promoted to speak on Culture and then Youth Justice. He was pretty effective on both and it was refreshing to see someone admit they didnāt have an awful lot of knowledge of the aspects of the culture role, but was eager to learn.
Putting aside his relative inexperience, I think he has a couple of major advantages.
Firstly, heās not tied to the Brownite/Blairite legacy because he didnāt serve under either of them. While they were in power he fought the wars that are so problematic for Labour. From Kosovo in 1999 through Iraq and Afghanistan. For a party that has to heal from some of those decisions, I think he may be the means to do so.
Secondly, and more importantly perhaps, is that the Conservatives genuinely fear him. He doesn’t fit the narrative of champagne socialist at all, and due to a mixture of circumstances is ironically bullet proof as far as usual Tory attack processes go. His first wife died of bowel cancer. He gave a hugely emotive speech on the NHS praising their care for her. How can you paint him as one of these socialists out to destroy everything you hold dear when heās served for Queen and Country? Heās a difficult target from an aspirational working class background. Heās also got a less practised artificial air about him. Iāll post a rare link to the Daily Mail here. Thatās why the Conservatives really fear him. If he can get that sort of press from the Mail? So ā commeth the hour and all that, are we ready for Dan the Soldier Man for PM?
Constantine, though, is an entirely different kettle of fish
You have to pose the question, on occasion, what certain fictional characters have done to get the treatment that studios meet out.
John Constantine is a hard-drinking, chain smoking magician and ex-punk rocker. In the words of his best mate, Chas, āa twenty-four carat bastardā. Invented by Alan Moore for his run on Swamp Thing to guide the hero of that story through the murky underbelly of the US in American Gothic and lead him to a revelation. In doing so costing the lives of many of his friends and two āGolden Eraā DC heroes.
Everyone loves a bastard, and he was soon back in his own book ā Hellblazer, with Jamie Delano writing a compelling series of episodes that looked at a sickness that had embraced both sides of the Atlantic ā Conservatism. Itās great work and deserves to be revisited. Stock-brokers and bankers as demons, trading on the souls of the greedy? Oh yes, that seems relevant.
All this good stuff was squandered when he went to the big screen and they cast human mannequin Keanu Reeves as Constantine. Appalling. Some lamented the fact theyād made the Liverpool born Mockney an American, but frankly Iād heard Reeves attempting an English accent in Much Ado about Nothing and felt grateful.
For the TV series theyāve cast Matt Ryan who looks more the part (imagine dishevelled aging Sting) and may, in some vague way, sound the part. But boy, the character sucks. Big Time. Because everyone loves a Bastard apart from the studios who constantly seem to undermine the bad boys. Greedo shot first. Dexter really could feel. Pass me the sick bucket.
The episode āFeast of Friendsā actually adapts the first two parter that opened Hellblazer Hunger, and is a case in point. One of Johnās remaining friends has unleashed an African born hunger demon in the developed world. Having been raised on a subsistence diet of famine this demon gets a taste for the more subtle desires that we enjoy, and gorges itself. To trap the beast, John takes his junky friend, straps him into a chair and at the height of his need, his hunger, lets the beast consume him, before sealing the demon within to consume itself. On the TV, his friend suddenly comes to the realisation that this is what must be done, offering our hero a chance to be slightly less of a bastard and for them to share a lovely angst filled moment together.
Just. WHY?! This is not John Constantine. We don’t need any more angsty bad boys. We’re swimming in them. It gets worse when, apparently in all seriousness in another episode, he suddenly proclaims:
āNo price is too high to protect innocence!ā.
John Constantine ā King of the fucking fortune cookie! I canāt imagine him saying that without being pictured with a big, shit-eating grin on his face.
John Constantine is a uncouth brigand. A product of the DIY Punk generation he got into magic his own way. He does the right thing in a surly self preservational way. Heās a cheat and a con-man. Heās the man who got the Devil to cure his cancer before giving him the finger as a sign of contempt. Heās a piss-artist, a womaniser and a dangerous man to know. Heās not an angst ridden do-gooder.
And heās not fucking Keanu Reeves, either.
