Accustomed as I am to the dribblings of the World's Worst Op-Ed cartoonist, I had to re-read this twice before I could take in what he was saying ...

http://www.mycomicspage.com/member/feature...

Maybe we should let Spike Lee at him?

The Skin

Quite an improvement, layout-wise. Nice feel to it. Not sure it quite knows where it's going politically but nothing in it I can't live with. And a VERY interesting interview with Boy David of the Macaroons ...

No sae bad.

The Skin

... I was reminded of one of the best showbiz stories I ever heard.

Early in their careers, Mike and Bernie Winters (for younger readers,a "comedy" double-act that made the Chuckle Brothers look like masters of subtlety) were playing in variety in Glasgow, a city notorious for its capacity to strangle new acts (particularly Sassenach ones)at birth.

Mike began by coming before the curtain and playing a doleful air on his clarinet. The audience responded with a slow handclap, a selection of interesting traditional Gaelic invective and the pitching of sundry objects onto the stage.

Sensing imminent death, brother Bernie made his entrance in the usual manner ... by sticking his head between the curtains, giving a ghastly buck-toothed gurn and doing his gormless "Nyyyaaaaahhh",

At which one Caledonian wag called out "FUCKING HELL! There's TWO of them!!!"

Precisely!

The Skin

Am I right in assuming, from the logo when it was shown on BBC and ITV, that it was made by the Mail so that they could screw the money they were paying her out of the TV companies by hiring it out as an "exclusive"?

If so, I suggest that they hire a better drama coach and purchase a stronger string of onions. It was all distinctly unconvincing.

I ended up feeling a little sorry for Prezza - who may well prove to have been screwed in more ways than one - and just a little wary of his Lost Love for whom the affair has turned into a Nice Little Earner.

The Skin

.... that I've seen too many bad prime ministers - and far too many bad presidents - to get too excited about the virtues of an elected, rather than a hereditary, Head of State.

But on so-styled "Royal Occasions," I do get pissed off with the "Wham Bam Thank You Very Kindly Ma'am" brand of public deference and the suggestion that these patently ordinary human beings somehow possess superhuman powers of loyalty, endeavour and fortitude.

Of course, that's at least as much the fault of the royalists as it is of the royals.

The Skin

This one - for which, as old Cyril Fletcher used to say on "That's Life", I'm indebted to a Neocon website of my acquaintance - brightened my day.

http://sundaygazettemail.com/section/Colum...

It's the people, stupid. Or, more to the point, it's the stupid people.

Clearly, like the DDR government in Brecht's poem, the Neocons urgently need to elect a new people!

Enjoy!

The Skin

He and Blair have much in common but Young Dave differs in that his party are even more right wing than he is. A Cameron premiership would feel a lot like Blair's but his backbenchers wouldn't vote against even the worst of any nasty stuff he proposed.

As a doctrine, the free market is as much of a failure as Soviet communism but its hangers-on are a hell of a lot more powerful and influential. They aren't going to give up on it just because it doesn't work.

The Skin

... either as misguided "conservatives" whose heart is in the right place but whose public statements are tactless, or as "socialists" whose racism is an inevitable consequence of their class warfare.

Of course you wouldn't catch Nice Young Dave nurturing sentiments like that. Well, not in public, anyway.

The Skin

... about Labour being funded by Trade Union "special interests".

And it turns out that they've been funded by OVERSEAS political interests.

Big lump of omlette to have sticking to your phizzog, that ...

The Skin

A university lecturer who claimed black people were intellectually inferior to whites was suspended today.

Frank Ellis, a lecturer in Russian and Slavonic studies at Leeds University, said he was an "unrepentant Powellite" who thought the BNP was "a bit too socialist" for his liking in a recent interview with the Leeds Student newspaper.

Dr Ellis said he supported ideas such as the theory developed by Richard J Herrnstein and Charles Murray in their 1994 book, The Bell Curve, which claims that white people are more intelligent than black people.
He also told the Leeds Student paper that women did not have the same intellectual capacity as men.

But this afternoon Leeds became the first university to suspend a lecturer under the new Race Relations Act, in a move that could have major implications for academic freedom.

http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/new...

Sounds good to me. Hope he doesn’t become a martyr to the Neanderthal Right, though.
The Skin

I confidently predict that the Lib Dems will, at the next General Election, mop up all of the Gnarled Scottish Elderly Patrician ex-Athlete votes which don't go to the Tories or Labour.

So who do we fancy for the LibDem leadership in 2009-10?

The Skin

It's a concept made up by conservatives who don't like the idea of anyone but upper- or middle-class whites getting any houseroom.

So when you do stuff which prioritises blacks or asians or jews or muslims or gays or women or anyone else who isn't a testosterone-rich WASP, the "Political Correctness" assholes jump up and down and say, "Ooh! Ooh! POLITICALLY CORRECT! Bad!Bad! Where's mine? I'm a WASP! Why don't I get some of that? Why are you treating this bad person as if they were ME ME ME !!!??? "

Now, this applies to the Ken Livingstone situation how?

Be careful. I've lived in the UK a long time ...

The Skin

A cautionary tale.

My local recently had a total refit, re-opening with smoking allowed in the games room only. For the first month or so, it began to attract new clientelle while losing none of the smoking fraternity. However, the lacklustre tenant has been given the boot because he has failed to make the more stringent profits required by the refit.

It seems the new tenant was warned that the smoking ban "might" have been the problem, so she has re-introduced smoking in the bar area. The result? The new clients have gone and the same smokers have colonised the rest of the pub.

Meanwhile, the new tenant has sacked the (rather good) chef but can't put her own in for three weeks. So many diners are being turned away.

Bet Forest has a good time with that one in their lies, damn lies and statistics.

The Skin

I remember many teachers whose "teaching" consisted of reading out their undergraduate lecture notes then setting an essay and retiring to the staffroom for a ciggie.

And kids who were any less than perfectly behaved were instantly got rid of, whatever their academic prowess.

The Skin

... then any support it has in areas with grammar schools will collapse"

Remind me, how many seats does Labour have in Buckinghamshire...?

Seriously, how many Labour seats would this effect? And are the Labour voters in those areas equally enthusiastic about Secondary Moderns?

BTW, having worked in both the public and private sectors, I would warn folk against the myth that private schools invariably provide "the best possible education." What they do provide is small classes.

The Skin