Opinion: Mili-Bandwagon Blues

Picture the scene.
You have to travel somewhere.
The trek may be difficult, but it is possible.
You come to a station, there are two choices of transport.

Would you go for:
1) 'The beautiful people of your Gender preference who just happen to have no sexual inhibitions and pockets full of cash and non-fattening chocolate... oh and there are Unicorns as well, and REAL transformers... and your very favourite food and drinks are provided and Kurt Cobain and John Lennon are alive and Jamming with Keith Moon and Jimmy Hendrix on the back seat' Bus Company?

or

2) 'The Seats are made of vinegar and barbed wire, and drills and things, oh and they're all rusty, the driver is a blind lunatic with chronic spasm syndrome and every five minutes a concentrated stream of sewage is jetted into your eyes, ears, nose and mouth, at least until we plunge off a cliff and into a slowly closing scrap-crusher' Bus Company?

 Seems obvious doesn't it?

Ok, now imagine you're Ed Miliband...
 Right, now after you've come back to your senses and towelled off the horror sweat I'll explain.

Today Ed had a choice of two bandwagons.

The first was rolling along nicely. PM D-Cam had condemned Jimmy Carr's legal tax avoidance strategy, but ignored the Gary Barlow (And God Knows how many others, and since he never existed he isn't telling) Open net there surely? It's an uncomfortable one for Cameron, tax avoidance/evasion. I mean, I bet with some digging plenty of donors and pals of the PM could be implicated in this sort of scheme, if not the PM himself. Combine that with the perceived 'Singling out' by the PM of Carr, which probably has nothing to do with his jokes... But could look like it does.

So does Ed come out swinging on this today? Does he leap on this rocket powered, chrome plated, bandwagon and ride it straight down D-Cam's throat, through his insides and out to electoral glory, shaming all tax avoiders into paying up, saving the U.K economy and perhaps causing England to win 'That Football' and saving us from hostile aliens who like Fruit Pastels with the face of Jimmy Saville?

Well... No.

 Instead, he decided to drag a Bandwagon out of a sewer. Nobody is using it at the moment. And the wheels are broken. And the seats are all Razor blades.

This Bandwagon is called. 'Migrants dun it' and for some reason this is the one he decided to ride today, and instead of going down D-Cams throat he went straight up Nick Griffen's flabby, racist arse...

What?
Don't you want to win Ed?

Lots of people are working hard on your side and this is how you thank them? Not to mention the Government themselves, who appear to be doing the best to get you in... Maybe it's a Bullingdon bet or something... A forfeit for not getting your round of Prozzies in after the Swan's blood.

Look at Twitter Ed, look at the Tories now revelling in their chance to look 'Not Racist'... See how many loyal Labourites are trying to contextualise your words, not only to make you appear less like a closet 'Mailer', but also to shield you from your own, (Seemingly obvious to all observers) lack of strategy. It isn't the speech itself that is the problem, as it appears to be fairly thoughtful, it is the perception of the speech, but far worse it's your choice of battles.

Today, you look like a thoughtless rookie at the absolute best. A racist at worst... And from worst to best you almost certainly come across as 'a bit of a bellend'.

Unless of course this is a 'Plan' and Labour has their own Tax Rats about to stream out of the woodwork and this is your own version of a 'distraction'.

If that is the plan, look at D-Cam for guidance... The 'master' of such puppetry, trained under the ultimate Dark Lord Blair... He'd never sacrifice the queen to save a pawn.

The lesson here is simple. No matter how distracting you need to be, never dress the leader up as Hitler. He'll just end up looking a Twat.

Opinion: New Gove in Town, Good 'O' Levels

Michael Gove is a Man on a mission. This Mission is either to: Restore Britain to a period of perceived Glory, based on a fusion of traditional values and standards with modern methods... Or.... Or perhaps he's just staking a future place in the Bojo/D-Cam/Gove/Osborne leadership face off. A contest that could easily be decided by totting up the policy ideas each candidate has suggested that looks like a direct plagiarism from the Daily Mail Letters Page.

 Gove, who previously took the humble step of issuing copies of the Bible with his name on them, has chosen a real doozy here. This one will have reactionary neophobes tugging/flicking themselves off in a 'Everything was somehow both better and worse and harder and better and better in my day' frenzy.

He's bringing back O-Levels. Hurrah! "Because GCSEs are too easy and in my day it was all grumble grumble moan...."

 Firstly I hope that he remembers to thank the pornography and phone-box card industry for keeping the 'Good A and O level' Terminology in current usage, in fact he may have even been passed one of these card's by Gideon... Who will have found it... Only found it... Not called the number on it after using it to measure out a gigantic line of 'chop' 

Yeah.. So... Bringing back an old qualification. Then? Well I have to say, my first thought when I heard this was an exclamation from Alan Gordon Partridge. 'They've rebadged it you fool'
Maybe that's just cynicism...

So let's see what a 'new O level' is going to be like? Well apparently there will be higher and lower tiered papers! Not like the Higher and Lower Tiered papers you used to get with those Stupid, Modern, Lazy, Whorish GCSEs. Different ones. Oh and some higher papers will be 'Closed Book' but not 'Closed Book' like those Crack-Smoking Happy-Slapping Sex-Tape-Making GCSEs. Priestly 'Closed Book' Papers, like in the past... One's that might teach you Latin poetry and not something modern like Dogging on Mcat...

Best of all though they will be harder. Because they are O-Levels. Which were harder because they are what Mail Readers did in their day. (Which must mean they are harder, because surely kids, with access to information and technology lightyears beyond our wildest childhood dreams, could NOT be smarter than we were.)

 Incidentally, the perception of exams getting easier based on increasing results is nothing to do with making schools and examining boards entirely target dependent and encouraging them to basically give up education entirely for the last two years in favour of 'Exam Training'... and you'd be a fool, or a Trotskyist to say otherwise... (Still not entirely sure what that means)

Since I wholeheartedly believe this is possibly the best policy ever, here's a few other school things Gove could rename in order to make your average real world school more like a historical 'public school' that should only exist in fiction about boy-wizards, but sadly doesn't...

Canteen - Refectory. Inside the meals could all be renamed so they sound like Dickensien slop... Oh and since it's in the 'Past' you can ban 9 year olds from whistleblowing your shitty meals on a blog by simply insisting th internet doesn't exist yet, then giving her 'The Cane'

Teacher - Pedagogue. Serves a double purpose this one. Firstly it's a suitably archaic term. Secondly, it is close enough to paedophile that if the teachers start getting uppity about your wonderful changes, you can start a tabloid campaign against them and have their houses burned down.

Detention - 'The Cane'. I.e. "I was caught writing 'Is a bellend' after Michael Gove's inscription on that stupid unrealist book and I got the Cane'. Watch the Mailers foam at that one, you'd almost think that the idea of a youngster being forced to bend over and present their innocent, quivering buttocks for several hard swots from an older man/woman gave them some kind of pleasure wouldn't you?

So you can have those ideas...

And of course when all of us who have, suddenly worthless, GCSE qualifications get old enough to actually read the mail without sicking up our intestines we promise we won't get you to change it back out of our own, uttely misplaced, sense of nostalgia.

Opinion: The Breakdown of Greek Democracy? The answer: A Talent Show!

Has Democracy gone back to it's Cradle in order to have it's Breakdown in Comfort?

As strange as it seems, this may well be happening. There is a possibility in this election that nobody will win, or everybody will win... or a whole load of somethings like that. Maybe the 'Caricature Nazi Party' will win seats and be able to enact whatever bats-ass crazy policy they can dream up in their 'Extras in Mel brooks The Producer's Wannabe' Heads. Perhaps they'll just split it up into tiny bits and give some to each party, or even allow the whole kit and caboodle to be bought by a leading Olive manufacturer, sales of which have been booming since I decided they didn't like salty eyeballs filled with bin juice. Maybe all, Maybe Nothing. We'll find out tonight.

Or perhaps not. Maybe they'll just decided to run it again and again in an effort to create the world's first economy solely based on the 'ballot-counting' industry

As Greece is mainly credited with developing the democracy experiment, perhaps it's time for them to try something new. shake off the dustiness of the age old system, that in theory gives every man a voice, but in practice can give you Cameron, Miliband and... and.... the other guy... you know... the one person in Cameron's outbound text box who didn't get 'LOL' texts and is unlikely to be bussed to Glasgow to meet those Crazy, 'Facebook Loving', Polis they have nowadays.

Some ideas to get them going.

1: Turn the Tables

Take a few random ballot boxes, take a few Random Votes from them. Make these people run the country.
Kind of a Democracy in reverse. Instead of getting a representative for the people, just pluck a representative out of them, put them behind desks and leave them there until they manage to either stumble upon a solution, or, try to escape, fail to escape, realise that armchair punditry is all very well but there's actually a hell of a lot of reading to be done in order to even begin to understand what the hell global finance is about and finally die a natural and humane death from despair before being replaced by another luckless voter.

Of course anyone who does manage to sort out this situation, whether fisherman or stripper, should then be made Emperor for life.... they will have earned it.

2: Sim City Competition.

An obvious one. Why they don't already do this is beyond me. Sim City, for those who don't know it, is a Simulator, of a city. Still with me. It's a game that goes right back to the early days of computing. (Not Retro like you think it... Sonic isn't Retro, Street Fighter 2 isn't Retro... If it didn't come on a tape that was duplicated in somebodies bedroom, legitimately, because that's where the company was actually run from, it isn't Retro Gaming, ok?)

It tests your ability to run an economy, deal with finance, face down ecological crisis and environmental change and manage populations. Sound good?
I know I know, it's just a computer game, a simulation, but is it really a worse indicator of how good you will be at running as country than how good you are at spitting soundbites out of the front of your head without looking like something made up by parents to frighten children? (Poor, poor Gordon)

Maybe if more of our political class had been forced to spend more time in their teens staying in and playing lonely games of Sim City on tear soaked 8-bit machines instead of taking cocaine (or of course, not) and smashing places up for fun we'd have better politicians... or more likely just many more inadequate bloggers, only with richer parents.

3: Talent Show.

Ok... You don't like the computer game idea. Not real world enough, but there are very few other ways to test how good someone is at managing something as large as a country, except to just, you know, let them get on with it... elect them... and allow them to say they are staying put for the next 5 years so yah boo sucks to you and your oiks objections'

But have you ever noticed how people with one talent, often tend to be good at other things?

So why not choose people that demonstrably have at least one talent. Who knows, perhaps the years of concentration required to be a fire juggler is actually the perfect preparation for being a foreign minister dealing with angry German Creditors. Maybe the unflinching, inhumane cruelty of teaching a poor dog to prance on it's hind legs is exactly the sort of uncaring, emotionless mindset that you would need to decide which areas of a health service need to suffer cutbacks.

The upside for this is the people would still get a vote, and since the traditional way to hold this kind of vote is through premium rate calls and texts, if it proved popular it could save the Greek Economy. If it became a genuine hit the 'Greek Election Weird Talent Show Selection Thing' might become an exportable format, franchised around the globe. Then the Whole world could take part in deciding which 'Singer Who looks more Frumpy than You might be used to seeing', 'Unthreatening Multi Racial Street Dance Group' or 'Pitifully mewling and staring up at it's owner with fear filled eyes just five minutes before coming on stage, Dancing Dog Act'

I'm sorry if you think I'm being flippant, or uncaring about the plight of the Greek population, I'm not... Reality is doing that already... and of course democracy itself, which is, metaphorically, waving it's bare-ass in the face of the Greek Population and laughing... and weeping... and pissing itself...
Best of Luck to all of them.

Opinion: ... Is it Bullying to think that someone very rich and successful is shit?

No.
Question answered, on with your lives....
Well... While you're here, I might as well give you my opinion on the subject.I was a scrawny computer nerd as a teenager...

I was hardly girl-bait and I got my fair share of scuffles and damage, mainly because I was a southerner, and a 'Boff'* transferred to a Northern school that has since been rebadged several times and now has the kind of name you might associate with North Korean education facility, e.g: 'Super Happy Smiling Education for Productive Citizenling learning superquest brainytime Facility'

(* Boff was a piece of slang for 'swot', which nobody other than me remembers)

Yeah, I had a fairly rough time, but having two older brothers, and softening my 'Ice-Pick through the skull' Essex accent meant that I got off fairly lightly...
Well... Considering.

Now, I have a fairly unpopular view on 'bullying', but unfortunately it seems to be born out by observation and study. I believe our conception of bullying stems from a 'natural' process, something that occurs to some extent in all social animals... The barn yard has the pecking order, the Wolf pack has a hierarchy of dominance. It is how a society forms itself. One competes against another, one wins and rises, the other doesn't... It's evolution... It strengthens us... Or at least the 'winners'. In nature, the 'losers' eat less, breed less and die quicker. It strengthens the species at the cost of the individual unit...

(which is what evolution is by the way)

A barnyard pecking order is established in the way it sounds. It's a linear hierarchy, top down... And they peck. They peck those on either side. They jostle for position. Then they stop. The order is established. You peck those close to you maybe but the order is formed and rarely changes... And crucially a 'low' bird would never dare peck the top and 'top' bird would never deign to peck the lowest. The order works.

And maybe that's how we'd work in nature, but we aren't in a terrified primate band anymore, trying to make sure the strongest lead so we can survive the winter. Like so many of our old protection systems it is archaic in the modern world and may even be doing us more harm than good. Particularly since physical and mental attributes are less likely to cause hierarchical advancement these days than accidents of birth like: location, wealth, education opportunities, having the surname 'Bieber'...

Is any campaign against 'Bullying' winnable, since it is stacked against an evolutionary process?

Now, I'm not going to trash well meaning people trying to convince others that it would be nice if everyone was a bit more pleasant to each other, or who are campaigning for better protections for the vulnerable... As I say, we aren't that fledgling species anymore...  We don't need to toss anyone out as a sacrifice to evolution any more...

No, I'm, going to have a 'Gentle pop' at those who seem to want all criticism, name calling or douche-baggery to be thought of as bullying, usually using the justification that they 'were bullied before and won't take it now'

"Newsflash" everyone has been 'bullied' at least once, and they've all exhibited some bullying behaviour (maybe a friend, someone younger, a pet or even a bashed up old teddy). Perhaps you disagree... Look honestly back into your own childhood... When you've done that, read on...

Fearne Cotton, a very rich and successful broadcaster has been hitting out at critics of her presenting style in this way. The crux of the matter is that some people didn't like what she did for the BBC Jubilee broadcasts. I have no opinion of her, as I can't remember ever having seen her (although I am told she is fairly ubiquitous on 'yoof shows')

I also didn't see the broadcasts in question and can't judge the comments... What I can say to her, and all those like in a similar position is this:

If you equate being a rich person, 'unfairly' being criticised (in your view) in offensive terms with say: a teenage Christian being hounded to suicide by the jeering of his peer group over his confused sexuality*... You devalue their experience and present the 'Bully' as someone who you can't escape... Someone who can follow you round and keep tormenting you... Someone who can't be beaten.
(* he was a friend of mine)

The word 'Bully' is rightly considered a strong term. It has specific meanings.
1. A person who is habitually cruel or overbearing, especially to smaller or weaker people.

2. A hired ruffian; a thug.

3. A pimp.

So unless that's what you mean, why use it?

It should be reserved for those who actually need it. Bandying it around for any and all criticism renders it meaningless, (like what has happened with the internet term 'Troll'). If you're vulnerable and someone is attacking you to raise their status and self esteem, feel free to accurately label them a 'bully', and as long as the term still holds meaning the world will hopefully understand your plight and offer the support you need....

For everyone else, there are plenty of terms for these people: Bellend is a good one, Twatbox, or perhaps wankathonic bumfingerer...

Anything really that doesn't falsely paint you as a defenseless victim and turn them into a towering colossus.