You wanna get high (dependency)?

The director of a major "front-line service" and champion of the “big state” tells us what the public sector means to him...

“I believe in government that endows its citizens with front-line services from cradle to grave.”

“I believe in government that spoon-feeds children from an early age, by force if necessary, and that is always on hand to pick up the spoon if it drops, or even if it does not.

“I believe in government that’s always there to wipe the noses and the arses of ordinary men and women, even if they are perfectly capable of wiping their own noses and arses.

“I believe in government that offers its citizens cosmetic surgery on demand simply because it cares about their insecurities. I believe in government that offers fat people stomach stapling so they don’t have to undergo the rigours of dietary discipline and forbearance.

“I believe in government that tells ordinary men and women where they’re going wrong, when they’re going wrong, even if those very people neither know nor care when nor where they’re going wrong.

“I believe in government that obviates the need for stoicism when the going gets tough, because front-line services like my own are always there to pick up the pieces when people screw up, even if we are totally incompetent at doing so.

“I believe in government that will fund my beliefs. I believe in government that’ll let me roll my ideas out to the whole of society, that’ll let me hire armies of generous, caring men and women who want to give, give, give until it hurts - and hurt, hurt, hurt until it gives. I believe in government that'll pay me three times as much as the Prime Minister and that’ll let me build an empire of generosity and empathy and hope.

“And finally I believe in government that I can tell where to go, even though ordinary punters want to tell me where to go nowadays... And, I'll tell you this: If you miserable lot, you the public, are simply too miserly to give me what I believe in and what I really want, then you can all go to hell the lot of you, because I’ll simply up sticks and join the private sector.”

“And that's... that's, cos’ I believe!”

A year ago today...

As the day of reckoning for the banking industry approaches, we turn the clock back one year to what this site was saying back then...

Prime Minister Brown says: “I told you so.”

Gordon Brown wishes people had listened to him back in the 80s when he warned investment bankers were a bunch of greedy, reckless gamblers.

“Over recent years people probably thought I was a champion of these casino capitalists as they created their toxic mortgage-backed securities that almost brought the Western economies to their knees. But nothing could be further from the truth.”

“It was only for the eleven years I was Chancellor of the Exchequer that I labelled the City of London “a creative hotbed and a centre of wealth generation.” It was only for eleven years that I gave these charlatans free rein to bleed this country dry.”

“But may I remind you, before this, back in the days of the evil Maggie Thatcher, I used to call these pinstriped terrorists a bunch of dodgy geysers who would sell their own grandmothers - or words to that effect.

“I say to you now: It is the other people who told me to make friends with these fat cats who actually bear responsibility for the financial meltdown that occurred in 2008. I, Gordon, fought long and hard against the off-balance sheet vehicles that these bankers and their creative accountant buddies in America employed to hide the true nature of debt, of their liabilities. And I did this by appropriating these very off-balance sheet vehicles and by putting them to good use hiding my own government’s debt instead.

“But sadly, it was to no avail.”

“I stand here before you today and I say with my hand on my heart: I, Gordon was right all along. Everyone should have listened to me when I said how bad these greedy bastards were. And as for all my old mates at Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, and as for the Goldman bankers currently advising my government, I say simply this: Repent! Repent! Don’t be stupid, be like Gordon. Become a penitent sinner.

“Indeed, as the son of a Manse, and as a deeply, deeply religious soul, I will remind you that it was Jesus himself who threw the money lenders out of the Temple. Now, I personally think that this was going just a teensy-weensy bit too far. I would have let them stay in the Temple and even allowed them to carry on advising Pontius Pilate for the time being. And yet I still say unto these money-lenders: Repent! Repent! Or at least, please try to show that you are thinking about repenting. Could you? Please?

“And indeed when I Gordon Brown leave this office of No.10, I will no doubt go back to the very Manse where I was born and where I grew up. And verily will I re-examine my religious roots, those roots that gave me the moral compass that I possess even unto this day.

“Yeah, verily. That is what I Gordon, Son of Manse, shall do. Unless, of course, these banking scoundrels, these Satans, put temptation my way and offer me a lucrative job in the City of London, trying to sort out the total hash they’ve made of things. And, of course, I will not abandon them in their hour of need - but only because I possess an extremely charitable nature.

“Yeah verily.”

“The bastards.”

If you want to know the time ask a pollster...

We're inundated with polls nowadays: Are NHS reforms good or bad? Do you support AV? Is Iraq intervention more justified than Libyan? D'you care about Arts Council funding? Is Lady Gaga a genius?

Of course the answer you get depends on the question you ask. So we commissioned a poll on polls to see how the public at large views them.

a) Do you hate being rung up by pollsters?

b) Do polls make good headlines but are otherwise meaningless?

c) Do respondents give any old answer to get the polling organisation off the line?

d) Should you be asking who commissioned the poll in the first place and what they want out of it?

e) Do pollsters load the question to get the answer they want

e) Should you get paid as much for responding to a poll as the pollster does for asking the questions?

f) Do you give a damn?

Answers coming shortly....

Ten most visited pages...

 Click on the links below to see what really got people going...

Thursday, 3 March 2011 - A doctor a day keeps the Apple away

Sunday, 27 February 2011 - Weapons of mass extraction

Thursday, 24 February 2011 - Twilight of the Oligarchs (Act Three)

Monday, 17 January 2011 - Leveraging and facilitating the collaborative envelope

Wednesday, 16 February 2011 - Bankers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but cocaine!

Sunday, 13 February 2011 - BAFTAS! The Thing's Speech.

Tuesday, 8 February 2011 - Charity begins off-shore

Saturday, 5 February 2011 - LOCAL COUNCIL NOTICE: Library closures

Sunday, 30 January 2011 - Twilight of the Oligarchs (Act Two)

Tuesday, 4 January 2011 - The End of the Beginning of History

I know what you did last summer...

... and the summer before that... and the summer before that...


Posting too much information on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook has its downsides. Comments made in jest or whilst enebriated can come back to haunt us...

Here's the transcript of a "recent" interview. It was for the role of a "Press Officer" and it took a turn for the worse, when the candidate's networking history was discussed. Names - and sites - have been changed to protect the identities of those involved...


Mr. Holloway: I have to say, Mr. Porter, we were very impressed by your resume.

Mr. Porter: Thank you.

Mr. Holloway: First from Oxford... Treasury, two tier-one banks, Saatchi. Exquisite references.

Mr. Porter: Thanks.

Mr. Holloway: But...

Mr. Porter: But?

Mr. Holloway: We thought it appropriate - due diligence being what it is these days - to take a look at your net foot-print.

Mr. Porter: My net foot-print?

Mr. Holloway: Your net foot-print, Mr. Porter.

Mr. Porter: Okay...

Mr. Holloway: You have a curious web-profile.

Mr. Porter: I do?

Mr. Holloway: Yes. You do.

Mr. Porter: Right.

Mr. Holloway: Can I ask this? Do you think it wise, from a broader networking perspective, to "love ramming hot comatose, dumb Aussie bitches too pissed to string two words together - they talk shit even when they're not comatose anyway - but boy did she love a good fisting, my fist was still so fucking exhausted after last week's outing with that Mandy tart from the Covent Garden event." That's the kind of profile you, a publicity officer by trade, are happy to leave on the web?

Mr. Porter: Not exactly but when I posted it the next day I was a bit...

Mr. Holloway: You were a bit: "So fucking ass-holed I chucked huge billowing waves of chilli pedigree-chum dog-food kebab all over my keyboard and..?"

Mr. Porter: Hold on...

Mr. Holloway: Yes. Hold on. And can I ask whether there actually is a restaurant - or bar - called "Madame Dildo's Anal Lick-Fest?"

Mr. Porter: Not exactly but where did you..?

Mr. Holloway: Never mind where we found it... You're quite a regular, I see... March 23rd... July 10th... September 19th... Good place to hang out?

Mr. Porter: Hold on!

Mr. Holloway: Hold on to what?

Mr. Porter: Oh! Come on!

Mr. Holloway: And do you make a habit of "emptying bollock-milk over Irina's d-cup?"

Mr. Porter: You what?

Mr. Holloway: ... you were "going through a bad patch at work" perhaps?

Mr Porter: Yes, but.

Mr. Holloway: ... And did you actually tell your colleagues it was you who "whacked the fuck out of Mike's fucking Apple after the Powerpoint fuck-up"

Mr. Porter: That was an exag...

Mr. Holloway: You didn't tell them?

Mr. Porter: Come on!

Mr. Holloway: Thing is, Mr. Porter, as an experienced Press Officer, it appears the one thing you don't give a good press is... yourself.

Mr. Porter: I didn't exactly know...

Mr. Holloway: We'd find out?

Mr. Porter: What can I say?

Mr. Holloway: Do you see the point I'm making? One thing one never wants, in any firm, company, institution, what-have-you, especially one like our own, is for the press officer to become the story.

Mr. Porter: Yes, but...

Mr. Holloway: Yet it appears that's exactly what you're in danger of doing - judging by your foot-print.

Mr. Porter: Hold on just one goddam moment! Just take one look at this. This is the guy I'm supposed to be working for... Assuming I were to get this job...

(Mr. Porter takes a piece of paper from his inside pocket and unfolds it. He passes it to Mr. Holloway. It reveals a prominent businessman who's shaking hands with a recently disgraced Dictator.)

Mr. Holloway: Yes. I was coming on to that.

Mr. Porter: I bet you were, Mr. Holloway. We all leave foot-prints that can come back to haunt us, do we not? Surely, that, to some extent, is what this job's about? No?

Mr. Holloway: To some extent.

Mr. Porter: So, perhaps I understand, better than anyone some of the pitfalls of transacting... in the public arena... as it were.

Mr. Holloway: (Furtively) Yes, so then... what you're trying to tell me is that this role of "press officer" would be better described as one of ""spin doctor? Is that the way you see this role?

Mr. Porter: You could say that, Mr. Holloway. You could indeed.

(to be continued...)

UN if you want to...

What if -
As the world agonises over whether to impose a no-fly zone over Libya, we ask what Neville Chamberlain's declaration of war might have sounded like if the UN had been around in 1939 and all humanitarian intervention had to be referred to the security council...

"... Hitler's action shows convincingly that there is no chance of expecting that this man will ever give up his practice of using force to gain his will. He can only be stopped by force.

"We and France are today, in fulfilment of our obligations, considering going to the aid of Poland, who is so bravely resisting this wicked and unprovoked attack upon her people. We have a clear conscience - we have done all that any country could do to establish peace.

"That being said, we must first secure the backing of the UN security council before we can come to the aid of Poland. We hope in the meantime that Herr Hitler will not do anything precipitous and that this aid can be in place before the Polish people capitulate.

"I urge those brave people who resist the actions of this vicious tyrant to hold on for as long as is humanely possible. It can only be a matter of weeks, months at the most, before we put a framework in place to offer some kind of assistance, whatever that assistance may be..."

In Beeb we trust?

The committee appointing Lord Patten to the post of BBC Trust Chairman is apparently "surprised" how little he knows about the Beeb's output.

Although Lord Patten, who is also Chancellor of Oxford University, has heard of Eastenders, it's not clear where the gaps lie in his knowledge. Here are some suggestions:-

- Homes Under The Hammer, Wreck Or Ready, Cash in the Attic, Bargain Hunt, Escape To The Country - dismal property or antique programmes currently showing every day of the week on BBC1

- To Buy Or Not To Buy, Flog It, Cash in the Celebrity Attic, Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is - dismal property or antique programmes currently showing every day of the week on BBC2

- Snog, Marry, Avoid, Hotter Than My Daughter - dismal "reality TV" programmes currently showing (almost) every day of the week on BBC3

Perhaps Lord Patten's ignorance is no bad thing...

Breast is best

There was surprise last week when an ice cream parlour announced its latest offering - a breast milk variety. We asked the distinguished elder statesman, Lord Creamer, who spent many years working at the Milk Marketing Board, to write a few words on the subject.

"When the Mumsnet organisation originally offered me the post of "Honourary Child-Feeding Advisor", I have to admit I was somewhat taken aback. Despite the many happy years I spent at the Milk Marketing Board in the 70 and 80s, I felt somewhat under-qualified for this particular undertaking. 

But the fine, upstanding ladies at Mumset assured me the post was, as the title suggested, purely an honorary one. Their "mothers' council" required a male member who might, in their words, "lend an air of impartiality to an otherwise partisan organisation". They had apparently looked very closely at a number of other male members - chaps who'd taken it upon themselves to apply for the post - but none of them were "up to scratch" and were of perhaps "dubious motive and repute." After some breast-beating and various consultations with my good wife I said I would be delighted to take up their offer.

"So it is in my capacity as Honourary Advisor that I would now like to comment on the issues surrounding the introduction of breast-milk ice-cream.

"I do feel breasts - or, at least, I have a sense that breasts - are a feature of female anatomy that lend themselves to one, at a stretch two, well-defined functions. I believe it is not necessary for me to elaborate here on the precise nature of those functions. Suffice it to say that they are largely for the benefit of man - and woman - kind. I might add that it also ill-behoves any man - or indeed any woman - to confuse those functions, especially if they do so at the same time.

"Now when I learnt that a certain organisation, through the Mumsnet web, was about to offer the public a new breast-milk based product, I have to say I was initially just a touch intrigued. I even considered putting in an order for a couple of tubs - being open to new ideas as I am. 

"On reflection, however, I am not so sure. As someone who has dedicated his life to high standards in food production, I have always had to consider not just the processing but also the sourcing of any product under consideration. Now this is straightforward enough in the case of most dairy products. If it derives from the udders of the sheep or the cow then it is deemed generally acceptable. But if it comes from the humble Tibetan yak, say, then far greater scrutiny is required. For it is not immediately apparent that the Yak is a suitable source for this nation's dairy products.

"It is with this in mind that I have looked long and hard at female breasts. As a rich source of nourishment for the developing infant, breasts have indeed proven themselves eminently useful. But I do not believe we should look at breasts - common though they may be - as something to be taken for granted, that is to say, as merely a tool of this country's food production. That can never be right, surely?

"And on International Women's Day of all days, should we not be contemplating what society still has to offer the fairer sex - by way of, say, equal pay - than what the fairer sex has to offer society? From the dawn of time, women have been viewed as a vehicle - and an extremely useful vehicle, I might add - of reproduction. But are we now, in the Twenty First Century, to start viewing them additionally as the vehicle of production? No, I really hope not.

"And anyway, would it not indeed be so much simpler for this "milk parlour" to deliver a "breast-milk flavoured ice cream?" That is something, I am sure, most ordinary men and women - myself included - would think about buying."

Blessed are the bankers...

Banks that are "too big to fail" have no place in a market economy. So says Bank of England governor Mervyn King. A "spokesperson" for the banking industry offers her "take".

"I have no personal interest in this debate - not directly, at least - but I speak on behalf of certain men and women the world over who are misunderstood, vilified, perhaps even abused. I speak for those who have no voice - precisely because they think and transact only in numbers. I speak for those once considered key to the economic wealth and well-being of this nation, but who now, through no fault of their own, have fallen on hard times. I refer, of course, to the bankers.

"Now, when I say "hard times", I speak not of such trifles as money in the bank, cars in the garage, number of houses spread round the globe. No, what concerns me far more is the thorny issue of reputation. For as we all know, in this, as in any other world, reputation means far more to ordinary men and women than any number of villas in Tuscany or Provence or the Caribbean, than any number of horses in the paddock, than any number of Porsches in the garage, or indeed any number of dollars in the various off-shore accounts. For reputation is that without which (according to certain philosophers) men cannot truly be men (unless they're so flush they don't give a damn). And is it not time we allowed bankers, once more, to take back their reputations?

"The Bank of England governor Mervyn King suggested today that the banking industry has not reformed since the bad old days of 2008. He claimed that structurally it is much the way it was when it "almost destroyed the entire fabric of Western society" (whatever he means by "fabric"). But nothing could be further from the truth.

"The banking industry has changed considerably in recent months, both structurally and otherwise. Banks have a wonderful new range of structured products on offer. No more "collateralised debt obligations" or CDOs as some jesters still refer to them. In their place we've introduced "collateralised vulture re-structure funds", "re-collateralised quantitative-easing obligations", "de-collateralised sub-prime re-purchase profits-only structured investment obligations", "multi-collateralised structured inflation no-loss winner-takes-all re-obligations", "quasi-collateralised de-structured off-shore multi-obligation obligations", and, most important of all, "re-balanced and un-reconstructed massive-bonus re-newal obligations".

"So please don't tell me the banking industry hasn't changed! Don't tell me it hasn't developed new structures. Take one look at the formidable range of structured products on offer and then, and only then, look me in the eye (when my eye has stopped shifting) and tell me banking hasn't changed nor re-structured!

"And finally, can I ask one last thing: What more do you want of us? The shirts from our backs? The bonuses from our bank accounts? The Porsches from our garages? Is ultimately what you want from us (or rather, from these bankers to whom I refer and simply represent) nothing less than those very reputations they have proudly held, and have indeed deserved to hold, through time immemorial?

"Is that what you really really want?"

A doctor a day keeps the Apple away

Advertisement: 

Every so often we give a leading tech company a free plug. We hope this'll encourage it to shove loads of advertising our way. Failing that it fills column inches. Today we look at the iFad2, released yesterday to universal acclaim by a man wearing jeans and a black turtle neck jumper.

"Hi. Do you ever get edgy as weeks go by without the release of a new piece of hardware? Do you crave the fanfare that accompanies the arrival of a new gizmo that's like the old gizmo but has a different feel and one or two added features you don't need? Do you wake every morning thinking life could be so much better if I could do what I did yesterday but I could do it faster and with enhanced functionality?

The solution's arrived -

- With iFad2, you get the same touch-screen interface and virtual on-screen keyboard but you get it in a box that's noticeably lighter, slimmer and way more sensual.

- With iFad2, you get two cameras - one front, one back - in case you want to film "a friend" masturbating while you yourself masturbate over hard-core erotica.

- With iFad2, you get more processing power and greater speed, so your life can descend faster into a maelstrom of frustrating texts and angry emails.

- With iFad2, you get a screen cover that auto-attaches in perfect alignment to the front, and folds to support the iFad2 while you type. Why spill the contents of your latte over your shiny new screen when you can spill it over your type-pad instead?

Come on guys! Don't torture yourself with yesterday's technology, when today's is just round the corner. If you crave a life that's going to keep you craving, be sure life keeps up with technology - not the other way round. And that's the key: In this day and age, who needs a life, when lifestyles are always changing? So, why settle for second best when you can have something that'll be second best in a few months time?

Weapons of mass extraction

An academic gives us his "take" on the oil crisis currently facing the West

"I'm told certain people have started referring to oil as a weapon of mass destruction. Mischievous wags in the media - they know who they are and where we academics can find them - claim the Gulf oil spill of 2010 was a "crude" and wanton act of Eco-vandalism. These wags have the temerity to suggest the spill wreaked more havoc than any "chemical weapon" Colonel Gaddafi of Libya could have dreamed up.

"As a learned gentleman and one who knows something about these matters, we, or rather I, would like to set the record straight.

- Oil is NOT a weapon of mass destruction. What kind of person would consider it desirable to flood the Caribbean and all its pleasant little tax havens with the proceeds of "black gold"? What a terrible waste that would be!

- No Libyans were hurt at any time during the making of the BP oil spill

- Not one single off-shore bank account in the Caribbean - or anywhere else in the world for that matter - was under any threat whatsoever during the crisis

- The Bermuda Triangle has been responsible for more deaths and disappearances than the BP oil spill and Colonel Gaddafi's security forces put together (according to official figures knocked up by my undergraduate gophers on their Apple-Macs using internationally accepted algorithms).

I trust this sets the record straight


Professor Cant, Emeritus Professor of Lies, Damn Lies and Algorithms, The London School of Economics

Twilight of the Oligarchs (Act Three)

We ask a Libyan oligarch to give his take on events currently unfolding in "his" country...


"My peoples, I speak to you as father of the nation. I speak to you as father, mother, supreme leader, as the only leader, as the judge, the jury and executioner of the nation.

"We see again how dirty Western imperialist, in league with Al Qaeda and mad dog Obama Bin Barrack, are fermenting troubles in small pocket of the East of our great country. We see how they sow seeds of unrest and unhappiness and are wanting to undermine everything that you, the people, and that I, your leader, love and cherish.

"The vile alien dogs, they are engaging in these cunning stratagems of theirs and they are deliberately and willfully intoxicating the young peoples, the ordinary citizens, with hallucinatory drugs. These drugs, that are known to make men crazy, they have given the ordinary people the delusion of grandeur and are making them think they all should be free and powerful like their great leader, like the dynasty-family of their great leader. These drugs make people heady and make them think they make decisions. They make them think they will know how the oil in this country of ours, how it must be produced. These drugs, they make them think they know how the money that come from that oil, how it must be distributed. These drugs, they make people think they own the oil - as if it did not come from the land itself. But the land itself, as we all know, only the land itself does own the oil and the people need great leader, who can talk to the land, and who can to tell the people how to distribute the oil. And if they do not do that, all that will happen is they use this oil money to buy more drugs from that dog Obama, which then make them more heady and more hallucinatory and then make the ordinary citizen think he can even own the sands of this country and then he will want to eat the sands and then, because of these hallucinatory drug, he will almost want to eat the camels one day, all the camels in Libya, even the brother sister's camels, and after that he will want to eat the tent in which he live and the tent in which I live too. And soon after that, all the camels in Libya and everywhere, they too will want to eat all the tents. And after that happen, President Osama, he will send his dogs into Libya. And he will have given them guns and hallucinatory drugs as well. Those dogs, they will then want to shoot the camels and eat them. And then the sands, they will swallow up the camels and the tents and the peoples. And all of Libya will disappear into nowhere. I ask you: What kind of hallucinations is that? Not my kind, peoples. Not my kind.

"So, as your leader, I ask you, the peoples to ignore these despicable Western capitalist Al Qaeda peddlers of drug hallucinations filth. I ask you to join me and to get heady with me and my hallucinations instead and with my grandeur instead. For these things are far better for the peoples of this nation who have known little else but my leadership and my fatherhood of this nation. I urge you to fight the Western Islamist capitalist semitic Trotskyites anarchist agitator-oppressors of our peoples. I ask you to fight, alongside the foreign mercenaries who support our peoples' will that is to shoot protesters and to support the democratic engine of our peoples. For we have created that democratic engine in our own likeness and we will fight to the last drop of blood to defend it.

"Finally, I ask you, my peoples, your peoples, the world's peoples, the everybody's peoples, to listen to these words of mine. For I am not just the judge, the jury and the executioner of this nations, but I hope, I might be, and God-willing, the caretaker, hereafter...

"For, everybody, he need a caretaker. Or maybe do I mean an undertaker? Probably both.

"Probably both... My peoples."