Demonstrations start at 11am under the following guises;
* Moorgate
Red horse against War;
* Liverpool St
Green horse against Climate chaos
* London Bridge
Silver horse against Financial crimes
* Cannon Street
Black horse against land enclosures and borders in honour of the 360th full circle anniversary of the Diggers

My initial reaction was that due to the syncronisation of the ‘parades’ people looking to be involved will have to chose between anti-war, anti-climate, anti-finance or whatever the fuck the last one is supposed to be. Wouldn’t it be embarrassing if, say it was just Black Horseman was left on his Jack because everyone else threw their weight behind the other causes?

For those of a less civilly disobedient bent, there’s a timely exhibition at 187-211 St John Street, called “Affluenza” - which should go someway to highlight some of the causality of our current predicament through the medium of art.

I’m more sanguine about the whole scenario to be honest, I think we’ve been living large for the last 10 odd years and could do with a period of sleeve-rolling in order to put things in perspective (I’m a firm believer in the importance of Schumpter’s theory of Creative Destruction or as Sombart put it “again out of destruction a new spirit of creativity arises” – according to Wikipedia anyhow).

However, what I’m less than happy about is reading that the government are planning to spend £3 million of taxpayer’s money on a funeral for Margaret Thatcher. This has baffled me completely. The Labour government have shown time and time again that they have the foresight of Russell Grant when it comes to policies and particularly the economy, yet now when it comes to burying the plundering former leader of the opposition they are all over it like some avant garde dance troupe. What astounds me is that she’s not even dead yet! Can you imagine how the minutes of a meeting of the cabinet must go:

• Economy: action – deferred until Q4 (we haven’t got a scooby on this one!)
• Knife crime: action – take perpetrators to hospital to see victims (minute updated: actually don’t)
• Eco-Towns: action – employed Wayne Hemmingway (yeah the fashion designer) as a designer (what the fuck!) to add some credibility to the cause.
• Obesity: action – appointed a new Tzar of Chips & Fizzy Drinks, John Prescott.
• Death of Margaret Thatcher: action – eagerly anticipated, so much so let’s plan a £3m party/funeral!

The government has clearly run out of ideas and conviction, it’s a sad State of affairs, quite literally.

Have a look at this clip from the satirical genius of Spitting Image…spot the difference between then (the early 90s) and now.

Click moar for the lyrics

Dad believed what Maggie (Tony/Gordon) said
Get a mortgage buy a home
So dad took out a great big loan
For a while there we were chuffed
Now the market has collapsed
And we’re absolutely stuffed

Our house, in the middle of a slump
Our house, no one wants to buy this dump

Dad is desperate to sell
But now our homes worth even less
Than a pension from Maxwell (share in Northern Rock)
Our living room’s a mess
Full of magistrates and bailiffs
Trying to repossess

Our house, in the middle of the boom
Our house, it was worth a small fortune
Our house, left us in a dreadful state
Our house, why the hell’d we decorate

We really caught a cold
Nowhere we can go to now
All the council houses have been sold
Our dads taken some stick
He’s still voting Tory (Labour) though
By God he must be thick

Our house, didn’t work out like we planned
Our house, prices dropped by fifty grand
Our house, threw us out and changed the locks
Our house, it is now a cardboard box

an old acquaintance of mine has taken exception to the Irregulars stance on Boris. Which I feel is so unassuredly correct that I shall not waste the effort dispelling his misconceptions. But he also makes allusions to the difficulty of being in a suit for the week, and out with a skateboard on the weekend. A problem I can more than empathise with as I am on a skateboard for a ocuple of the days of the week as well, and, as a scruffy web geek, have little need for the niceties of suits.

Indeed.

But also:

Which, as you can see, often leaves me adrift in a world of suits. I wrote a haiku in appreciation of this, but it is so bad I wouldn’t even put it on my blog.

And it got me thinking, when our own City Boy finds that

When the weekend finally arrives, I throw on my jeans and my hoody, sling my skateboard under my arm and jump back on the tube where I sit open-mouthed in amazement as mothers scoop up their children and move along the carriage careful to avoid making eye contact with me.

that I often find this; and I get it from guys in suits more than most. So I’m not sure here, perhaps our learned reader, evidently possessed of great taste, is not perhaps missing the lack of wearing a suit?

They seem to like the skateboard in the office, though.

Which brings me to another point, which is that I have a new job. It’s a great job, but irrelevant to the this article.

Sometimes, I think, when I am skateboarding, I might be expecting a little disdain. My essentially liberal demeanour gives everyone around me the freedom to express their opinions (there’s a funny story about holocaust deniers here), but perhaps I give a bit more freedom of expression to them then they really deserve…there are definitely more socially worrying things than skateboarders in London, vis:

I emerge bleary eyed at 10 o’clock every night and stumble onto the tube where I have been spat at, called names I don’t even understand and threatened with a knife.

Boris is not Jack Bauer

The tory spin in this election has played heavy on the fear, for once; the immediate ban on drinking on the tube is surely a sign of things to come, and it’s clear that Boris will rule with heavy hands. To paraphrase, the future of london is being pawed ineffectually by Boris’s fat, pink, heavy hands.

It’s clear enough to me that the whole ‘broken windows’, zero tolerance approach to crime that Boris is coming in on (and Lib Dem hero Brian Paddick was anti) is not going to help with the situation. On the most important side, will it deal with hoodlums?

Oh my, there’s a wikipedia article on the crack epidemic

Short answer is , maybe, even probably. New York is certainly doing better, but there has been a big backlash from the citizenry. On the other hand, the jackass who wrote Freakonomics puts the dropping crime rates down to the onset of access to legal abortion many years ago. What a jackass; I mean, “hello, causal fallacy!?!”. Actually, it’s basically as good a theory as broken windows, I just didn’t like the book. Still, I’m hazarding a guess that populations on average get happier when you legalise abortion than when you crack down on hoodlums.

But I would guess that.

Because what I really, really care about is not having police in the street with various powers over me. I’m unhappy I’m supposed to give my name in various circumstances, and things like the ID card make me so angry I stamp. I don’t want people spitting, mugging, or stabbing any more than the next guy, but I’d like to think that there’s enough decency in the huge majority of Londoners to make this an expectable, and acceptable risk. I live in the centre of one of the busiest cities anywhere; I encounter more people in a day, I suspect, than someone in the 1700’s would in a year (such an awesome metaphor). I get in a lot less fights, per day, than they would in a year, though. Glass half full and all that, yeah?

I think this was testement to the simmering sentiments that linger around the East like nerve gas post-BJ day (the day Boris Johnson was elected as London Mayor). If you get a chance on this fine, fine Sunday afternoon, pick up a copy of the Independent for the article on Bozza’s move to surround himself with his family in top positions. If there’s anything worse than having one bumbling toff Johnson loitering around, then it’s having a whole cadre of the floppy-haired morons.

Anyway, I saw the results shown on a map and the penny finally dropped as to why I never leave East London…surely the strongest evidence yet of an autonomous political regime in East London…

I think we cut the rest of London loose, what is the West actually good for apart from being the way to get to the West Country?

I can’t begin to tell you, dear reader, how dissapointing I find this. The man’s is an epic buffoon, and simply not fit to run London. Not fit, indeed, to iron my shirts, so I will be retiring that meme after today, in favour of something rather more strongly worded.

I will be taking the opportunity to burn Boris in effigy this week. I strongly advise you to do the same.

]]> http://worshipstirregulars.com/2008/05/our-new-mayor-let-me-show-you-him/feed/ 0 http://worshipstirregulars.com/2008/04/obligatory-boris-bash/ http://worshipstirregulars.com/2008/04/obligatory-boris-bash/#comments Sun, 20 Apr 2008 12:22:44 +0000 kingmug http://worshipstirregulars.com/?p=290

Could this man be anymore of a cunt?

Anyway, read on if you’re as committed as me in making sure bumbling, brain-bothering Boris doesn’t get in as Mayor. If you are one of the people wanting Boris to get in, what are you doing here? Surely you should be over at Max Mosley’s house?

If you still require evidence that the guy is an absolute imbecile, here is an chronology of his media fuck-ups. If you want an example hot of the press, check out this dubious shit he came out with about homosexuality this week. As Brian Paddick pointed out at the start of the year, the fact is that Boris has had to curb his drinking to avoid more horrendous gaffes.

To add to his gaffes, the man is all wind, postering (badly for that matter) and piffle. He clearly worked out his one policy of any granularity on ancient Greek prices. His idea of ditching bendy buses (which I happen to think are fine), bringing conductors back on buses and digging up Routemasters (which is clearly a ploy to spark rose-tinted memories of the “good old days”) has been outed as being complete and utter bollocks. The maths is so far off you have to really wonder if he could deliver anything other than a paper. That being said, perhaps he’d be more suited to delivering milk in view of his “the milkman always knocks twice” escapades on the extra-marital front.

For those unaware, this mayoral election will utilise a Single Transferable Voting system, something that frankly the other half of our editorial team is much more of an authority on. However, I find that if you’re an idiot, it’s sometimes better to have things explained to you by an idiot, or at least a clever person pretending to be an idiot, ergo, we should get on just fine.

The nuts and bolts of it are simple, you vote for who you want to win (durr). However, it gets a little niftier when people get knocked out assuming that no-one has already won. Basically, as people get knocked out, the electoral committee will look at who the second preference was of any individual who voted for the candidate that has been eliminated and apply that vote to the second preference. This cycle of eliminating candidates and applying their votes continues until someone wins.

So indulge me in a simple practical example. If you vote for Brian Paddick (Lib Deb) for example, ensure that you put Ken second, Hulk Hogan third and Jeremy Beadle fourth…and Boris as low as humanly possible.

My sentiments expressed here are of grave importance. We cannot let this man become London Mayor. If is does happen, I will probably leave the country before the end of his term. I implore you to change your facebook status’ to anti-Boris/pro-Ken slogans, to drop into any conversation how much of a jerk-off he is and wear vaguely ironic t-shirts expressing either of these sentiments. Here are some examples of ways you can drop his shortcomings into conversation:

Work Colleague: So, where are we on the Q1 figures against targets?
You: Well do you want the good news or the bad news?
Work Colleague: Hit me with the bad news first..
You: Boris Johnson is a cunt and there’s a chance he might become Mayor of London. If that happens I may have to get Michael-Douglas-Falling-Down up in this motherfucker, and you don’t want that, capiche?
Work Colleague: So what’s the good news?
You: We made the beast with two backs all over the Q1 targets and I’m not going to whup yo’ ass today.
Work Colleague: Cool.

Whilst Ken is clearly no perfect candidate and is also suffering from somewhat of an incumbent malaise, he is light years ahead of Boris as a politician, a man, a leader, a visionary, a liberal (clearly) and above all, a Mayor.