Judge Dreadful

At a time when victimised celebrities the world over are coming under sustained attack from the "Freedom of Information League" one man defends the rights of those celebrities. His name is Judge Dreadful - though he sometimes operates under the aliases "Judge Needy" or "Judge Dodgy".

He, and he alone, safeguards the right to engage in hypocrisy. He alone safeguards the right to sleep with prostitutes and deny it. He alone safeguards the right to screw people left right and centre, to lie, to cheat, to deceive and generally to undermine the fabric of society... and yet, still appear the picture of respectability.

He is a man on a mission. Here is his charter:-

- Everyone in the legal profession, in Parliament, in society despises me. Therefore I take it upon myself to defend those who, through no fault of their own, find themselves despised (assuming they are wealthy enough to afford a lawyer).

- You can wake me up at any time of the day or night and ask me to issue a super-injunction - so long as you have huge amounts of cash at your disposal.

- I am the guardian of the hypocrits, the fakes, the bullshitters, in their basic requirement to be defended from those investigative journalists who march under the banner of "truth".

- If you are poor and you cannot afford a good libel lawyer, then fuck off.

- One day I might need the European Convention on Human Rights to defend myself from the "truth-seekers", so I am probably onto a good thing.

- You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours.

- I might bring the legal profession into disrepute, but if you say as much, I'll sue your arse.

- Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? I reply: Who gives a damn?

(NB. All of the above is subject to a super-injunction, so it's illegal to read any of it.)

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....