Cameron and Clegg - the 2 C words.

The 2 'C' words.

I'm at Heathrow Airport at the moment; my word processor, OpenOffice, has Heathrow down as a spelling mistake with a red line underneath it. OpenOffice is great apart from it's limited spell check and I much prefer it to Microsoft Word which costs money – OpenOffice is free and even though I have Microsoft Word now too I much prefer this.
There are lots of free hot spots here for wi-fi but when you log on you can't get any service and the ones that are there too cost something like £11 per month to get on.
One thing about £ signs and $ signs: there are dollar signs on all keyboards in the UK and no pound signs on the keyboards in the USA; why not?
So I am sitting in the middle of the waiting area surrounded by workers from Pret a Manger which is some kind sandwich retail chain of the UK.
One of the workers told one of his girl work mates “I got a BMW now.”
“Have you?” she says “bring me a photo tomorrow and you can take me out for a zoom!”
“Not working tomorrow” he says “It's my day off!”
“Well you had it then incha?” she replied.
Then he says “what's that white haired bloke doing there? Taking down everything we say?”
“Which white haired bloke? This one?” and she pointed at me.
“Yes” he says “what's he saying now?”
“What's he saying now.”
“What is it?”
“What?”
“What he's saying.”
“What's he saying?”
“What's he saying now.”
“That's what he's saying” she says.
“What?” he says.
“What's he saying now.”
I'd better get up and go type somewhere else.
I've got to know a few quirky characters here in the news – one of them being the deputy Prime Minister; a man called Clegg; he went to a very privileged school called Eton where the very rich people of the world send their kids – rich Americans, Africa leaders and the Neauvo Riche but not the sons of the royal family I hasten to add - until Diana came on board.
After he left Eton, Clegg's dad managed to pull a few strings and get him a job in a merchant bank – well an internship which to a millionaire's son is the same thing. The Prime Minister, Cameron, was also at Eton and he got his first job at Conservative Central Office.
The day before Cameron's interview somebody from Buckingham Palace called Conservative Central Office and told them that Davie (Boy) Cameron was a good egg and that they should give him the job.
The pair of them – the two C words (Clegg and Cameron) - have very annoying vowel sounds. They don't have an upper class accent like Prince Charles or RP (received English) like, shall we say Laurence Olivier or Alec Guinness or even Christopher Lee, they have terrible grating whiny and nasal kinds of voices like blunt pieces of chalk being scraped across blackboards and you have to throw cushions and pillows at the screen every time they come on television.
It has been a shot in the arm for the British economy with many television sets being smashed by people who didn't have something soft to throw at the screen when they came on, and smashed their sets by throwing furniture at them.
It seems Mister Clegg wants to pull the ladder up behind him – if you know what that expression means. He wants the old boy network to stop; he wants some kind of legislation or employment guidelines to stop the privileged few from getting a gee up from their influential mummys and daddys; or even their nepotistic Uncles.
He spent the day yesterday (Tuesday or even the day before yesterday as I notice it Thursday here) answering questions to the news media and talk shows and being pummelled by even the light weight pundits – of course his hoppo, Davie Boy, the other C word, is in Pakistan at the moment and will probably make as big an arsehole of himself as he did the last time he visited the sub-continent.
He was last seen in a punkawallah's hut looking for a dictionary so he could spell the word legacy for his memoirs.
I am now on the plane heading for Washington DC.
Maybe I'll write from there or just post this as it is -
In DC now – the same as any other airport on earth – or the planet, as people say these days which I hate – I hate some things, don't cha know!
The post of Deputy Prime Minister didn't really exist till Tony Blair gave the job to John Prescott to throw a gesture to the left. John Prescott came through the union ranks and was active in the Seaman's Union and was part of the old Labour Party; the party of Harold Wilson, Clement Atlee, Bevin, Bevan and Tony Benn!!!
That's one of the reasons Thatcher was voted in 3 times, even though more people voted against her than voted for her; as Kenny Everett used to say:

You will vote for her again
cos you won't vote for Tony Benn.
Another reason why she was voted in 3 times was because the 80s in the UK was a very greedy decade – Give me the money was a famous phrase from Harry Enfield.
But back to John Prescott; there used to be a famous fighter in the 60s or so in Britain called Johnny Prescott; no relation to the former Deputy Prime Minister, who kind of harked back to Johnny, the no relation pugilist, on one occasion; on the hustings, during one of the election campaigns, a member of the public threw an egg at Mister Prescott's face; Mister Prescott, with a right cross, chinned him and sent him sprawling into the crowd. It was headlined in all the newspapers, TV news and Tony Blair called him and asked him to apologise; he refused! He said he would sooner resign than apologise and Blair had to accept that – it is also thought that it won him a few votes.
What would it take for one of the C Words to throw a punch? Maybe they'd have you hauled away by one of their subalterns first!!

The Mojave Cross and the prospect of Proportional Representation

Well here we are and still no sign of an agreement in British politics and I bet people are loving it – maybe not David Cameron who must be getting very impatient as I'm sure he can't wait to be Prime Minister; he has that kind of look and body language but Tory Boy Clegg must be loving his moment in the sun.

It's the same over here when one congressman holds the most important vote and you can see them loving their moment.

I see the phrase 'Tory Boy' for Mister Clegg is nothing new as they were calling him that in 2007 but he is the same as the congressman who is the deciding vote; someone of insignificance suddenly being thrust into the limelight.

To draw very broad strokes about British politics there are people who know nothing about politics at all, as there are in every country, who vote, if they vote, for the status quo; in other words Conservative and when they come to America they vote Republican; they say it's the party of big business and big business must know what its talking about; some immigrants will also vote for the status quo because they think that it's the right thing to do.

The Labour Party is traditionally the party of the working classes or the working class movement and sponsored by the trades unions and, there again, some people will vote for Labour just because they are working class.

And then you have the Liberals.

I have honestly thought that the people who voted Liberal, except for the wooly hat eccentrics, are the people who can't bring themselves to vote for either of the two main parties.

I know of people who have gone from Labour to Liberal and from Conservative to Liberal because they just can't go all the way; they are called the Liberal Democtrats now, of course, but I still don't know what they stand for.

I hear, at 10.43am Pacific time as I write this on Tuesday May 11th that Tory Boy Clegg is back talking to the Tories – living up to his name.

Of course there are people who know and follow politics who vote for the two main parties because they believe in them and the policies of their party.

The newspapers in Britain are very partisan and influence the population and they are mainly Conservative.

There was an advertising copy writer who assessed the British Press as follows:

The Times is read by the people who run the country
The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country
The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country
The Morning Star is read by the people who think the country ought to be run by another country
The Independent is read by people who don't know who runs the country but are sure they're doing it wrong
The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country. The Financial Times is read by the people who own the country.
The Daily Express is read by the people who think the country ought to be run as it used to be run
The Daily Telegraph is read by the people who still think it is their country.

There was an extra one was put in, I think by Jonathan Lynn in Yes Prime Minister which is that the Sun's readers don't care who runs the country providing she has big tits.

That's a broad caricature of British Politics and the newspapers which is not without a grain of truth.

The phrase I never heard in British Politics was 'the separation of church and state' which we hear over here all the time.

In Britain religion is taught in schools by law – at least it was when I lived there – and here it is against the law to teach it and yet the majority of the people in the USA are religious and the majority of the people in Britain are not; what does that tell you?

I am not religious at all – I am heathen and an agnostic at best. As an Irish Catholic religion was rammed down my throat as a child; I couldn't go to a Catholic school where we lived in Birmingham (UK) so my brother and I had to go to the convent on Saturday mornings for our religious education; by the time I grew up I had had enough of it and I started thinking for myself.

I think that's the case with the majority in Britain and it's the opposite here; maybe more than 85% of the population here attend church on a regular basis and in Britain, where religious education is a must, maybe 85% of the population don't go at all.

In the 1930s a cross was erected in the Mojave Desert to commemorate the dead of the first world war. The Mojave Desert is between here, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas and I've driven through it a few times. I don't think I have ever seen the cross though.

The land where the cross stands is government owned and there was a movement to get the cross taken down as the cross violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment; I believe someone wanted to put a Buddhist shrine erected near it.

It was decided to transfer the land to private ownership to satisfy the law.

The case went to the Supreme Court, recently, and in a 5-4 decision the court sent the case back to the district court, saying the lower court used the wrong legal standard in deciding to invalidate a transfer of the land on which the cross sits to private ownership.

As I have mentioned I am not religious but what harm is it doing? Are they (the protesters and a certain Frank Buono who brought the case in the first place) so anal that they can't just let it go?

This is cut and pasted from something I found on the Internet today:
MOJAVE NATIONAL PRESERVE, Calif. — Authorities say a 7-foot-tall cross in the Mojave Desert that sparked a U.S. Supreme Court dispute has been stolen.
The National Park Service says someone cut the bolts holding down the metal-pipe cross and made off with it late Sunday or early Monday.
Veterans groups say they're outraged at what they consider the desecration of a symbol that was erected in 1934 by the Veterans of Foreign Wars to honor World War I dead.
The cross was challenged by critics who say a religious symbol shouldn't be allowed on public land but the U.S. Supreme Court last month refused to order it removed.

This has nothing to do with Nick (Tory Boy) Clegg who has stated he doesn't believe in God (he wouldn't get voted in here) and who, at 11.19 Pacific Time, has lived up to his name and backed the Tories as Brown has just quit as Prime Minister and at 7.19 pm BST from The Guardian will advise the Queen to invite the leader of the opposition (Cameron) to become Prime Minister – he wished the new PM well.

So it looks like a Proportional Representation referendum.

I wish Gordon Brown well.