A vote for real change!

Well hello there my friends I do so hope you’re keeping well. I, if I’m honest, am a wee bit frazzled at the moment but I’m presently rocking out to The Jam’s “Down in the tube station at midnight” I’m no Paul Weller fan but considering he wrote it at 17….. he was a talented little oik!

Now talking of oik’s segues rather nicely into todays capsule rant, or at least if you’re a little dyslexic and think “oik” read “oink” it does anyway! Now unless you’ve been living in a cave or just happen not to watch the news you can’t help but notice we have an election coming up which, thanks to our quite frankly bizarre electoral system, could finish up with the party who comes third in the vote being in power, work that out if you can! Now all parties are advocating electoral reform of some kind or another, most favouring some kind of proportional representation system, though why advocate this when you’ve got parties bleating about the horror of a hung parliament – when proportional representation leads to a constant hung parliament I’m not certain. Anyway I thought rather than just going for the boring old “regular” voting systems maybe if we have a referendum we could actually vote for a properly fun system, several variants of which I shall lay out for you below:

1. Celebrity Top Trumps

Now this genius idea came to me today while reading the wonderful story that a Labour party press event featuring terrifying children’s character “Peppa Pig” had to be cancelled on the grounds of impartiality (You know how the under-two’s are absolutely massive voters!). I say embrace these celebrity endorsements but make the leaders play off against each other, for example Gordon Brown could play Peppa Pig and choose “scariest face” for his category (One Gordon himself could win hands down if we’re honest!), now Peppa is pretty creepy with her strange non-moving eyes (Again just like Gordon!) but of course Cameron could trump that because he has Gary Barlow (Aaaargh! Avert the children’s eyes!). Maybe Gordon might instead like to play Peppa on the “Least safety conscious” category, after all Peppa was recently rapped for being in a car without a seat belt on. Though of course Cameron could again trump that, after all he has Sir Michael Caine who risked his neck saving all that gold in “The Italian Job”, makes Peppa’s stunt look like an advert for Mothercare! See what I mean, hours of fun!

2. First past the post – literally

Now bear with me on this one, if anyone has ever seen the glorious spectacle that is the Mascots Grand National run at Huntingdon every year the week after the actual Grand National will know how fun it is to watch creatures ill fitted for the purpose trying to run a steeplechase course. My suggestion is to make all three cabinets compete in various races to see who is the best. I mean really who wouldn’t want to see George Osbourne, Alaister Darling and Vince Cable trying to leap fences or a 100 metre dash between the prime ministerial candidates being won by Nick Clegg because Gordon has no depth perception and inadvertently charged straight into David Cameron?

3. Retro games night

Forget leaders debates, who wants to watch that? I’d far rather watch a game of prime-ministerial Monopoly! Just imagine the fun that could be had watching someone like Gordon who has always prized his handling of the economy having to open his frugal Scots purse to hand Nick Clegg £1,400 for landing on Bond Street with a hotel and then next go landing on David Cameron’s Mayfair and having to fork out £2,000 all the while cursing his decision to buy The Angel Islington which, from my vast experience of Monopoly, nobody ever seems to land on! Or even better to watch that creepy smile come onto Brown’s face when he finally gets the “Go back to Old Kent Road” card when he already has Whitechapel and just completes the Brown set. Alternatively how about prime-ministerial trivial pursuits? After Christmas lunch the pursuit of that final wedge gets intense, imagine how much more fun it would be if the first to get all the wedges became PM and both Cameron & Brown were stuck trying to get that elusive pink “entertainment” cheese-wedge and trying to decide between having a guess at what they think is the correct answer but being concerned for the humiliation of it not being the right answer or the worse humiliation of admitting they knew that Harold and Madge from Neighbours released a song called “Old fashioned Christmas” in 1989!

4. Debates with better hosts

I mean so far we’ve had Alaister Stewart bellowing like Roy Hattersley after too much Pernod “MR BROWN! SHUT UP MR CLEGG! MR BROWN!”, Adam Boulton with quite simply the most bizarre tie I’ve ever seen and this week David Dimbleby who I enjoy though mostly because he chooses someone to ask a question or give a comment because he’s noticed something strange about them like a giant beard or electric blue hair but can’t identify them by that characteristic so tries playing it safe by saying “The lady in the….erm…. the red blouse yes you there, oh I’m so sorry sir!” which admittedly is funny but come on we have got a chance to put these men really out of their comfort zone. Now for me there are only two men who could really host a great debate like this, they have already shown they have the skills to put off even the most professional of people in the most intense environment, I speak of course of the brilliant Masterchef hosts Antipodean human-greenfly John Torode and Gregg Wallace the Peckham greengrocer who you get the impression would really love to wander round the kitchen with a rolled up wet tea-towel just flicking the contestants for a laugh then bellowing “FIVE MINUTES!” in their faces. Now come on can you seriously tell me you wouldn’t like to see the prime-ministerial candidates say trying to write a speech with those two buzzing around like they do in the Masterchef kitchen whispering conspiratorially about how terrible the contestants Boef Bourginon is but whispering just loudly enough so they know the hapless contestant can hear them and feels terrible. Or even better setting those weird tasks like identifying obscure root vegetables (How can you fail someone for failing to identify a French Breakfast Radish? If they don’t know what it is they just wouldn’t cook with it would they! People don’t tend to come into restaurants and then tell the chef to cook something that’s not on the menu!), but in our prime-ministerial debate we could have some fun like making them try and identify some back bench mp’s: John: “Ah now of course this is Margaret Moran the Mp for Luton South who claimed the bill of treating dry-rot in her husbands flat (in Southampton) on expenses!” Gregg: “It is John but given that Gordon defended her will he know who she is? FIVE MINUTES LEFT! (I believe he adds that to most of his sentences)”

Now come on people who could really fail to be enthused by electoral reforms such as these?

This week Matt:

· Watched “The bad shepherds” live in Birkenhead, incredible gig, their version of “Up against the wall” by the Tom Robinson band is incredible – and on youtube in fact, check it out!

· Saw Alan Bennett’s new play “The habit of art”, if you ever get a chance and you have any kind of acting experience just watch it, Richard Griffith’s performance as the tetchy “Fitz” is just perfect.

· Has been shockingly organised and saved £15 by booking my train ticket to Aberystwyth a fortnight early!

Scrabbling for ideas

Well evenin' all as my idol Andrew Neil might say were this the Daily Politics/ This Week, please pull up a stool put on your favourite comfy slippers enjoy a glass of vintage Blue Nun and purvey my latest installment of fruitless ranting about the world.

Now if you run in the same circles as I do (And I mean run strictly in the metaphorical sense here having not run since the great Guardian shortage of 2002) you cannot have failed to notice the shocking news that has torn the world of board gaming asunder. I talk not of the idea of a pornographic Cluedo (Though how fun would that be, always thought that Mrs Peacock had a naughty side!) but for the new Scrabble rules that have been brought in allowing gamers to use such hideous proper nouns as "Jedward" "Beyonce" and maybe even the ancient Persian king "Xerxes" (Though obviously only if you have a spare blank, we're not cavemen you know!) - For anyone wondering who Xerxes is he was in the hit film 300 leading an army of rhinos and elephants against Gerard Butler whilst wearing only a bejewelled codpiece.

Anyway back to the rule changes, this new ruling has inevitably led to an outcry from the dedicated Scrabble fanatics..... erm I Mean "Devotees" rather than fanatics obviously. Many are threatening to boycott the game, though given most of them play as I used to, after downing a very pleasant bottle of merlot so your vision is a bit squiffy anyway (it's amazing the words you can come up with when the letters are all sort of smushing together and you have to turn your head on one side and close your right eye just so you can focus on your tile rack (And no that is NOT a euphamism for the filthy among you!)) it's not really going to make a huge amount of difference if somebody puts down "Zambia" on the triple word score other than to increase the risk of violence which, lets be honest, would improve scrabble no end. Who wouldn't like to be sat watching the national scrabble championship and suddenly see somebody put down "JayZ" (I believe he doesn't punctuate) across the treble word score only for his opponent to thwack him round the head with the tile bag and proceed to try and gouge out his eyes with a tile-rack.

I mean why even stop there, Monopoly has thousands of permutations (Hotel on Brixton gasworks? That'll be £250 plus parking charge please!) so why shouldn't Scrabble move with the times as well? They already have Welsh scrabble with extra L's and D's why not, say, have dyslexic scrabble with additional Y's and X's and penalties for anyone spelling a word correctly. Or maybe have reverse Scrabble whereby all the values on the tiles are reversed once the bag is empty so suddenly A's become worth ten points and the Z only one, it'd be great to see the smug git who has the Z towards the end saying "Oh bollocks I got the Z" and actually bloody mean it rather than knowing full well he only needs a blank O and he can just get Zo (Tibetan cattle breed) or worse the smug git with the X who has loads of options, lets see how he reacts under my rules when the bag empties and I have 60 points worth of vowels sitting in my grid!

Maybe even have a variation whereby once the bag empties you have to switch tile racks with the person in last place getting to choose which of his opponents racks he wants first, then we would even see who really was right to be groaning over a bad vowel hand and who was just bluffing, or even more hilariously maybe has a great word like my favourite "Azulejo" (Portuguese tin art and 119 on a triple word score if you were wondering) and hadn't realised it. I reckon if Hasbro take my suggestions on board we can really make Scrabble good fun, although the purists might try and stone me with Scrabble tiles for my heresy!

This week Matt

• Inadvertantly wiped his mp3 player and had to spend most of his Sunday re-adding songs manually.
• Finished his final easter egg (Oh the humanity!)
• Wrote his first letter of complaint to my wine club for smashing my wine two months in a row and leaving me short a bottle both months!

The gift of gifts

Well hello my friends and welcome back to my bloggy world, I should start by apologising yet again for my shocking lack of updates of late, though as anyone who works in an office can tell you when you’ve spent all day working at a computer it’s difficult to motivate yourself to then come home and work on a computer again, not that I call this work of course, it’s just bile!

Anyway for those of you who didn’t forget (looks around with an accusing glare) this week saw my birthday, 24 years of depression and boozing, but while I was at my desk pretending to work while surreptitiously dismantling a bar of mint aero I got to thinking about birthdays and how we deal with them. Now don’t worry I’m not going to end up going into a discourse of the pain of ageing and how depressed I am about ageing because, to be honest, I enjoy getting older and more crotchety! No the thing I hate about birthdays, and I’m not going to shock anyone here, is the presents.

Now as any of you who have nothing better to do than facebook stalk me (and you know who you are!) will know this year I was really amazed by how thoughtful some of the gifts I have been given are but buying gifts is something I absolutely hate – and am terrible at!

Now I’m fully aware that my policy of only buying presents for ladies I wish to “Get to know better” (which is why one day I will buy the hot girl on the train a gift!) annoys a lot of people and I do hope people have realised that for the last few birthdays I have rescinded my “No chance? No gift” policy and bought a few gifts but I really do hate it. I have spent a while thinking about what it is about gift giving that I hate so much and I think I’ve come to a realisation. I am not slightly opposed to gift-giving what I dislike is the regimented fashion that we’re forced into it, nothing else in life is so regimented. For example if I have to go and see my dentist and don’t feel like it I can call up and feign gout or something and just simply re-arrange having my dental areas prodded for another time but can you imagine calling someone and saying that you haven’t been bothered buying a gift for their birthday and would you mind moving your birthday to a different day?

Maybe I’m being a little facetious but I have always found that the gifts I have enjoyed giving the most have always been spontaneous ones that I have got for someone purely because I thought they’d like it not because I felt under pressure to dash around Liverpool One desperately searching for something suitable and just in the end grabbing a voucher, the gift that surely just says “I couldn’t be arsed getting you a gift so I just found the shop with the biggest collection of stuff you might like and essentially put some money behind the counter for you”

Anyway I came to a realisation whilst musing on this thought and I have a new plan for the future of gift giving. Instead of having a situation whereby you have set days for birthdays why not just have a rolling birthday and that way you can spend the whole year looking for a gift someone would like? Of course that does sort of come unstuck when you need to have a rolling Christmas which frankly sounds a hideous idea where you are constantly bloated with too much turkey or in an egg-nog induced haze for most of the year!

I am, however, certain I can’t be the only one who feels this way, I mean who among us can honestly say they’ve never told someone “Oh no I did buy you a present but I……. left it at work” or something? The whole thing, however, is totally pointless because you know full well that person hasn’t bought you a gift yet but you let it slide because you know full well that at some point you’ll end up doing the same thing to someone else and like the proverbial flatulence in a lift nobody ever wants to confess to having started it and even if they did there’s no point because we’ll all have done it sometime and if we haven’t we’ll do it at some point in the future.

So my friends (and casual acquaintances) I say to you embrace the idea of gift-giving but don’t feel so pressured, buy that voucher but at some point in the year you’ll find a perfect gift and buy that too because nothing in the world is better than the feeling you get when you give someone a gift that you know they absolutely love!

This week Matt

• Had an exhausting week of work but a brilliant birthday thanks to you all!
• Realised University Challenge, Only Connect & Masterchef have all finished and wept.
• Almost flung his new Macbook out of the window because the bloody caps lock needs beating before it comes on!