-Douglas Adams, 'So Long And Thanks For All The Fish'

DON'T VOTE ON JUNE 7th

In between, of course, there was the great victory. And the 97 election was a great victory, a victory for the party I belong to, the Fuck no! party: it was the lowest electoral turnout for over 60 years.

This time around, I have almost been tempted to defect from the Fuck no! party, not least when I beheld Blair deified in front of that stained-glass window. I was sorely tempted, am still sorely tempted, to vote for the Tories as being the lesser of two evils. A while ago I was actually considering campaigning for them door to door. True, Hague has threatened to privatize Channel Four and put immigrants in internment camps, but then there is nothing the Tories have threatened to do that I cannot also imagine New Labour doing, only more so. And the Tories are less likely to hand British sovereignty over to Europe. My fear is that if Blair gets a second term he will claim it as a mandate for greater European integration. Once we are fully a vassal state of the EU, it will truly never matter, ever again, who we vote for. Politicians of the calibre of the current generation will rule us forever. If we kick them out of office, they will simply be wafted up to the unelected senate in Brussels where the true power is wielded.

But I think I will stand firm. The cliche that the lesser of two evils is still an evil is true. There's no point in choosing between Crock of Shit A and Crock of Shit B. If we continue to vote for politicians who don't represent us, we will never get politicians who do represent us. Eventually, I think, as disaffection grows, some new political force will come along to sweep away all the tired old swine. It had better do, or we are screwed.

In the meantime, my only hope is for an even greater landslide for the Fuck no! party. The signs are auspicious. Polls indicate a rampant apathy and indifference on the part of the electorate. The younger generation in particular, aware that, thanks to politicians bending over backwards for them, multinationals and global financial institutions wield more power than elected governments, are seeking other ways to make their voices heard. Old party loyalties crumble, and a willingness to experiment is in the air. Recently I talked to a middle-aged neighbour of mine, a natural Conservative I would have thought. He hates all politicians; supported the fuel protests; but would like to see the Greens in power - either them, or a military junta. One of the two.

People have fought and died for the right to vote and blah blah blah. Perhaps it would be more responsible to vote for one of the minority parties to encourage them. But personally I can't resist being part of this great national mood of revulsion against party politics. It is heartening that so many people appear to be of like mind. But the mood of rejection of politicians does not go far enough. It should not end with a failure to vote. There is much more we can all be doing to make our contempt of politicians clear. If you find yourself seated near a politician in a restaurant, ask to be moved to a different table. If your children attend the same school as an MP's spawn, move them to a different establishment, explaining that you do not wish them to be contaminated. If you have a baby and a canvassing politician asks to kiss it, grease the baby before you hand it to them so that they drop it on the pavement.

blair's re-election celebrations 'Judge Caligula' © John Wagner and Brian Bolland

a very incomplete list of unpleasant memories of the last four years

May 1997: Blair pledges government based on compassion and decency
June 1997: Labour attacks single mothers
June 1997: Last British Rail train. (Who'd have thought we'd miss them?)
July 1997: End of free tuition for higher education

SLEAZE...CORRUPTION...

...April-May 1999: Nato bombs civilian targets in Kosovo and Serbia, including over 200 schools, more than 20 hospitals, clinics and day care facilities, dozens of churches and monasteries, refugee camps, refugee convoys, hotels, libraries, hundreds of public housing developments, and thousands of civilian homes, shops and factories. Cluster bombs dropped on Nis marketplace. Headquarters of Serb TV and Radio deliberately bombed, killing and maiming dozens of journalists, technicians, make-up girls... ...Blair's messianic photo-op in Kosovan refugee camps...

JACK STRAW! JACK STRAW! JACK BASTARD STRAW FOR CHRIST'S SAKE! STRAW attacks gypsy travellers STRAW attacks gypsy asylum seekers STRAW attacks lawyers for defending their clients STRAW tries to abolish right to trial by jury STRAW'S Terrorism bill ends legal presumption of innocence, enshrines guilt by association, potentially criminalizes organizations such as Greenpeace, gives him the right to paw through our e-mails (attention sweaty anarchist types: I thought of a great way for you to destroy him: send each other lots of e-mails saying, 'Jack Straw's wife is one of us. She is fucking a gypsy traveller anarchist with a foot-long cock and feeds him information about police operations in return for donkey-sex and weed.' That'll teach him to eavesdrop.) STRAW releases Pinochet and IRA terrorists STRAW'S NUMEROLOGIST Like all Nazis Straw hates gypsies and has a personal astrologer. Well, numerologist. Well, sort of. I can't find this story now but it was in the papers. Apparently when the Home Office had had a particularly bad week in the press once they got this weird-arsed probability theory bloke in to try and predict when they'd get out of the slump. He came up with this abstruse probability equation that basically boiled down to, 'When it rains it pours' or 'Trouble comes in threes' or something and fucked off again, paid for by...who? STRAW attacks beggars (especially gypsy beggars) - whole government tells us to step giving to beggars STRAW proposes £10,000 bond scheme for visitors from India WHERE THE GYPPOS COME FROM, RIGHT JACKY? Cut back to 40 years ago. Young Jack Straw: 'Please let me run away with you.' Gypsies: 'Fuck off, you speccy gimp.' Jack: 'Please, I'm interested in astrology and fortune-telling. I want to live wild and free on the open road, studying penal reform by the campfire.' Gypsies: 'Piss off, you Himmler-looking freak.' Straw: 'I'll get even with you for this.' ...I think Straw ascribes to the Agatha Christie-Margery Allingham rural-policeman school of criminology. Poirot: 'It is a problem of the most difficult. The room was locked from the inside and the victim was killed by a complicated clockwork mechanism firing a curare-tipped dart.' Bumpkin Constable Straw: 'Arr, it be one o' they Gyppos from the common as done it, I'll be baynd.' Straw is the one person who cheers at the end of Carmen. 'That's right, stab the nasty thieving gypsy harlot.' Maybe that's it. Maybe some passionate Gypsy temptress broke his heart on his student trip to Latin America. 'But I was going to give it all up for you...my stamp collection, my degree in Advanced Po-Faced Mingebag Studies...' 'Ha! You cannot tie me down...You and your tweeg-like manhood...I have rolled bigger cigarettes against my thigh...''I'll get even for this.' STRAW takes personal charge of witch-hunts against racism...Now that's chutzpah... JACK STRAW? 'Cack' Straw, more like.

Fox hunting ban. God bless New Labour's vestigial left wing. You don't stop Blair selling arms to the Third World or bombing civilians, but at least you can stop the rural toffs enjoying themselves, eh? Eh? Dead Foxes Bad, Dead Wogs Good. Toffs enjoying themselves Bad, limbless children Good. What happens if you hunt foxes with cluster bombs? Is that OK?

ARROGANCE...CONTEMPT FOR PARLIAMENT...INSANE PARANOIA...

Mo Mowlam! Mo Mowlam! That was hilarious. Mowlam lost her job as Northern Ireland minister after getting a longer ovation than Blair at the party conference. She became persona non grata and government spinmen (paid for by the taxpayer) started briefing against her to the press, saying she hadn't got over her brain tumour operation and was doolally. That's what they do to people who survive brain tumours. More, they took away her special police protection. Anyone who's been in charge of Ulster has special police protection forever - Tory Northern Ireland ministers from years ago still have it - but they took hers away. They wanted her to die. That's how they treat their own. Imagine what they'd do to you.

SPIN...LIES...BATSHIT PLEDGES...

Batshit pledges! Batshit pledges and meaningless targets and insane 1984-style, five-year-plan-style productivity goals, grandly announced at huge press conferences, later stealthily revised. 'We pledge to reduce hurtful sarcasm in the workplace by 16% by 2010.' 'We are proud to announce a target to eradicate Michael Winner by the end of the century.' My favourite was when Straw and the Drug Tsar (Nicholas Romanoff) had a big do to announce a target to reduce teenage drug-taking by 30% by 2007 or something, and then had to admit they didn't even know how many teenage drug-takers there were. They can bamboozle us with all the grandiose targets they like, every time I look out the window I can see the reality - Michael Winner is still hanging round my house being rude to my staff.

August 1999...'Shit' Brown sells off Britain's gold reserves. Pisses part of the money away trying to prop up the Euro. The price of gold has since gone up.

NHS UNDERFUNDED...SCHOOLS AND POLICE UNDERFUNDED...

September 1999: Revelations that £130 million of public money has been used to fund arms exports to brutal regime in Indonesia. British-made jets used to intimidate protesters in East Timor.

75P PENSION RISE...

16 April 2000: 'Labour says the old are racist: The Labour party has written off its hopes of winning a majority of pensioners' votes at the next election, believing most senior citizens to be "Conservative and often racist". (Sunday Times) 'Clive Soley, chairman of the parliamentary Labour party, yesterday admitted he had told a strategy meeting at Millbank 12 days ago that pensioners are "predominantly Conservative" and often "racist". Peter Mandelson, a member of the general election planning committee, made clear his scepticism about Labour doing well among pensioners. According to one participant at the meeting, Mandelson said there was "no mileage" to be had from pensioners. "He said we should be targeting what he called aspirational voters," one witness said. "Mandelson appeared to have written pensioners off as a group who were worth cultivating," said another who attended the meeting and prepared a briefing note on it which has been seen by The Sunday Times. Another witness said: "We were left with the impression that we should not bother with the pensioners." Ministers and MPs yesterday endorsed the Mandelson-Soley message and one condemned pensioners as being "like Alf Garnett", the racist and reactionary television character.'

September 2000: Office for National Statistics report: 'In 1983 14% of households lacked three or more necessities because they could not afford them. That proportion had increased to 21% in 1990 and to over 24% by 1999. (Items defined as necessities are those that more than 50% of the population believes 'all adults should be able to afford and which they should not have to do without'.)'(www.irf.org)

HIGH FUEL PRICES...PUBLIC TRANSPORT CHAOS...

December 2000: Joseph Rowntree Foundation Report says half a million more people classified as living in poverty since Labour came to power; 1 million more than in early 90s; double the number in early 80s. Number of Winter deaths among pensioners has increased. Which is good. Dead foxes bad, dead pensioners good. Eh? Eh?What happens if you hunt pensioners with hounds?

CIVIL LIBERTIES ERODED...SOVEREIGNTY CEDED TO EUROPE...BRITISH INSTITUTIONS UNDERMINED...

October 2000: market trader prosecuted for selling a pound of bananas. Threatened with £1000 fine and up to six months in prison. Why wasn't Blair arrested for announcing his baby's weight in pounds and ounces? (Joke courtesy of Metric Martyrs website.)

NEGLECT OF COUNTRYSIDE...FARMERS IN DESPAIR...UNNECESSARY SLAUGHTER OF THOUSANDS OF HEALTHY ANIMALS...

April 29 2001: MPs are determined not to renew the contract of Elizabeth Filkin, parliamentary ethical watchdog, as they find her 'too intrusive' (Sunday Times). 'When she started duffing up former cabinet ministers she put herself in an impossible position.'

CHOLERA...LEPROSY...BAYWATCH CANCELLED...

'"The trick is to keep doing outrageous things. Thers's no point in passing some scandalous piece of legislation and then giving everyone time to get worked up about it. You have to get right in there and top it with something even worse, before the public have had a chance to work out what's hit them."'
        - Jonathan Coe, What a Carve Up!

One thing they almost got right
(N.B. This is just an excuse to post an old piece
I never got round to posting when it was topical.)

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