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!
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