Top Tories and LibDems against VAT rise

Leading figures from within the government explain why increasing VAT is wrong.

David Cameron:
"You could try, as you say, to put it on VAT, sales tax, but again if you look at the effect of sales tax, it’s very regressive, it hits the poorest the hardest. It does, I absolutely promise you." (April 2010)

Conservative Home:
"Higher VAT is an unacceptable tax on the poor. [It] costs the poorest twice as much" (December 2009)

Nick Clegg:
"Liberal Democrats have costed, in full, our proposals for tax cuts. We can tell you, penny for penny, pound for pound, who pays for them. We will not have to raise VAT to deliver our promises. The Conservatives will. Let me repeat that: Our plans do not require a rise in VAT. The Tory plans do. Their tax promises on marriage and jobs may sound appealing. But they come with a secret VAT bombshell close behind." (April 2010)

Vince Cable:
"A big, sudden jump in VAT would stall any early recovery and hit shops hard. Also, some companies have learnt how to dodge VAT". (September 2009)

Yesterday in the Commons

Did anyone notice?

The Daily Mail Song

Whoever made this is an absolute genius (link).

The Daily Weight- Part 2,249

Imagine if Gordon Ramsay slammed celebrities who swear on telly. Or Kerry Katona called someone a media whore...

...Well, if the Daily Mail can express outrage at skinny people being "appalling role models", then anything is possible.

Last Saturday we listed a small selection of what the Daily Mail wrote in the last month about weight: too-fat-too-thin, oh-my-god she's put on weight, oh-my-god she's lost weight.

It was a pathetic roll call of "trim figures", "slim new figures", "enviable figures" and "overweight people who can't taste fat in food".

Like clockwork, there comes the "opinion column", courtesy of Liz Jones (the one who hates Mankind).

"Skinny girls are appalling role models", it reads. Along with "Why stick thin Girls Aloud make me so angry" and "the Government's hysterical diktat on obesity" (...coming next, Tony Blair slamming "George W Bush's hysterical pro-war stance in Iraq"...), it's the usual display of soaked-in-hypocrisy Mail-like venom.

But the best bit is this:

"The only winners in this cycle are the slimming pill manufacturers and makers of 'foods' (relentlessly and mercilessly marketed at the type of women who buy into the whole Girls Aloud high-maintenance ethos) such as Muller Light and Special K".

Yes, Liz Jones. Yes. Content courtesy of WeightWatchers Online, right?

Gordon Brown's got bad breath

Right in the run-up to the general elections, the political world has been hit by a storm that has shoved every other issue aside.

Forget public debt, unemployment, inner city poverty and the future of manufacturing. The issue that matters is another.

Following previous rows about the Prime Minister's favourite biscuits, as well as speculation over his use of anti-depressants, the state of his eye sight and his chewed fingernails, Gordon Brown has now been accused of using his breath to intimidate staff.

It all started when senior Observer columnist Andrew Rawnsley, anxious to plug his new book The End of The Party, quoted a number of staff at No.10 Downing Street accusing the Prime Minister of making their life a misery with his pongy mouth.

This ignited a political battle over whether Gordon Brown suffers from halitosis or whether this is simply a Tory conspiracy aimed at discrediting the Prime Minister as recent opinion polls indicate Labour is making up some lost ground.

According to one of Rawnsley's sources: "the air in our Downing Street office is really unpleasant. Each time the PM opens his gob we recoil in horror. It's like being hit in the face by a rotten onion". "Needless to say", the source adds, "the whole thing's ruining our lives. We dread coming into work".

A senior adviser complained of getting "routinely shoved aside" by the Prime Minister's breath. "You get this stolid stench lingering on. It's just beastly. Something is rotting inside that man's guts", he noted.

According to a civil servant who's a regular visitor to No.10, Gordon Brown's breath is "rank". "There's something rectal about it", he added.

A junior aide who spoke on conditions of anonymity said: "What's most tragic is that the PM doesn't even want us to open the windows. He's got this obsession with draughts, but we end up being the victims, having to work surrounded by this constant, pungent stench. We're actually getting paranoid that our clothes are starting to reek of the Prime Minister's breath".

Richard Littlejohn added his bit in his Daily Mail column, calling the Prime Minister "a Scottish sociopath" and describing "volcanic, irrational outbursts of cock breath".

However, the row got out of hand when an executive at the National Halitosis Helpline disclosed that "at least three or four staff at No.10" had contacted the charity in distress. A Downing Street spokesperson slammed it as "an inexcusable breach of confidentiality".

Peter Mandelson stood up for the Prime Minister: "There's a difference", he said, "between a boss with halitosis and one with a temperamental mouth". "What comes out of his mouth may be demanding, but it's not halitosis", the Business Secretary noted, rejecting calls from the Conservatives that the Prime Minister should submit himself to an 'Halimeter Test', a clinical device which is very effective at determining levels of certain VSC-producing bacteria.

According to an editorial in today's Times, "Mr Brown should not be pilloried for crimes that he hasn't committed" and the Independent too stuck by the Prime Minister:

"Recent revelations certainly paint an unappealing picture of daily life in Downing Street. [...] Mr Brown stands accused of unbecoming breath, but not malicious, and certainly not criminal. Unpleasant though it may be, this is not what most people would consider to be halitosis".

Sarah Brown weighed into the row about her husband's breath insisting he doesn't suffer from halitosis. The Prime Minister's wife followed a string of senior Labour figures in defending him, saying "What you smell is what you get".

"I know him as a hard-working decent man and he isn't anything else". In what's been interpreted as a coded swipe at David Cameron, Mrs Brown added: "At least he doesn't conceal his real breath with chemical stuff like Airwaves or Fisherman's Friend. What you smell with my husband is what you get. It's all genuine and natural".

In the meantime bookmakers are taking bets on which issue will be raised next in an attempt to bring Brown's political career to an end. Stinky feet and sweaty balls are current favourites at 2/1.

Labour can win: the Express explains why

This is the gist of what Leo McKinstry, Britain's most paranoid and right-wing columnist writes in today's Hypochondria Gazette Daily Express. One of the most stunning pieces of political lunacy ever produced.

Even though Labour's presided over the biggest economic crisis in decades as well as the most oppressive, smelly and incompetent government since Bloody Mary, Gordon Brown and his henchmen are still in with a chance of winning the next general elections.

It isn't David Cameron's fault. OK, he should say it loud and clear that barbwires should be put up along the coast and that we should all do a Lost and propel the island away from Europe. But, truth is, Labour can still win because in the last thirteen years they have socially engineered the country.

The fact is that Labour has developed several large voting blocs which guarantee that its vote will not fall much below a third of the electorate, no matter how dismally the government performs: amongst them public sector employees, immigrants and welfare claimants.

Look at the amount of quangoed consultants that we've got. And don't get me started on GPs. Those lazy, rude fucks whose job is to scribble sicknotes in illegible handwriting, who else do you think they're going to vote for? Or staff at the clap clinic. Apparently chlamydia has quadrupled since Labour came to power. Haven't you twigged it yet? More clap, more staff, more patients - all indebted to Labour.

Then there's the students. Ok, maybe not students cos Labour tripled their tuition fees. Actually though, Labour also introduced 24-hour-drinking...so yeah, students too, they'll feel nothing but gratitude for longer and better piss-ups and vote for Gordon Brown. See what I mean?

Not to mention the dole scum. Why else do you think unemployment went right up in the last couple of years? Right when Gordon Brown clocked that he weren't gonna win, he engineered mass unemployment so that a million extra people would sign on and get £180 squazillion a year. And if you're a welfare claimant, you're automatically a Labour voter/activist/supporter.

Then there's the immigrants. They were all ushered in so that they could vote Labour. What you saying about the Muslim vote being lost after the Iraq war? Nah. According to the University of Authoritative Studies, around 80 per cent of migrants and ethnic minorities back Labour, so stuff it.

Then there's the specs wearers. The NHS are still dishing out glasses for free, so that's millions of short-sighted people cajoled by quangoes and the state to vote for Big Labour.

And how about staff at the Millennium Dome? Why else do you think Mandelson wanted that monstrosity built? How many workers can that enormous thing guzzle? But this is exactly it. They owe their job to Labour and that's precisely where they'll put their cross. And just to show you what conniving bitches they all are, they even tried to rebrand it (it's called the 02 Arena now) so as to cover their tracks!

And then there's the anti-smoking lobbysts, those who got longer holidays and those on the minimum wage, BBC newsreaders and union leaders, the park rangers and the Welsh. And also the Scots. There are at least 16 million people in Labour’s client groups. When combined with corrupt postal voting and the £220million a year spent on state propaganda, it is no wonder that Labour is feeling confident.

Contemptuous of democracy, Brown - and Brown alone- has built a system that could help him cling to power.

(ed. it's precisely articles like McKinstry's that scare the pants off people when they picture a potential Conservative victory)

Comedy heroes

#10 Edmund Blackadder (Blackadder 1982-1989)

#9 Pop (The League of Gentlemen 1999-2002)

#8 Albert Steptoe (Steptoe and Son 1962-1974)

#7 Rick (The Young Ones 1982-1984)

#6 David Brent (The Office 2001-2003)

#5 Inspector Blakey (On the Buses 1969-1973)

#4 Basil Fawlty (Fawlty Towers 1975-1979)

#3 Victor Meldrew (One Foot In The Grave 1990-2000)

#2 Alan Partridge (KMKY, I'm Alan Partridge 1994-2002)

#1 Del Boy (Only Fools and Horses, 1981-2003)

Ghost goal of the century!

Forget the 1966 World Cup final, Diego Maradona's 'hand of god' in 1986 or Thierry Henry against the Republic of Ireland last November.

Look what happened during Duisburg v Frankfurt in the German Bundesliga2 and decide for yourself whether the picture on the left was a goal. The referee had no doubt.

(Click here for the full video).

Poles Apart

Officially 60,000 Polish people have come to Britain to seek work since 2004. Two British lads, Dan and Mark, reversed the trend to get work in Warsaw; this is their story.

[A guest post by D.Hoffmann-Gill]

Last year, sick and tired of the endless dirge of bigotry, lies and anti-Polish sentiment coming from the right-wing press, me and my mate Mark decided to go to Poland. We wanted to get a job; to put our money where our mouth is and garner a small taste of what it means to be an immigrant. We wanted to single-handedly reverse the Eastern European immigration trend.

So we got our CVs and covering letters translated (badly as it turned out) into Polish, put on our best interview clobber and made our way to Poland in a Vauxhall Astra.

We spent over two weeks as immigrants in Warsaw, ate a lot of lard and pigs feet and attempted to get any job we could, whether it be as a lift operator, a porn film star or a guttering and flues salesperson.

It was an amazing adventure that taught us much on the realities of life as an immigrant.

We eventually returned home and made a comedy show about our experiences that covers not only our time as economic migrants but documents the history of Poland, it’s 300 year relationship with the UK and the highly charged immigration debate in the UK.

The show contains Poland’s brightest new stand-up comedy star: Dariusz Drag, with jokes about Russians and Jews, a beginner’s guide to Polish culture, Political Correctness being wrestled to the floor and made to gag, the 1973 World Cup qualifier between England and Poland brought to life in front of your very eyes and Poland’s leading avant-garde theatre cooperative re-creating the invention of the Keroesne Lamp via interpative dance and extensive harmonica use.

Plus, Nick Griffin, avec eye patch, may be appearing to stroke his mandolin and sing his favourite ballad: “I’m Not Racist But…”.

It’s on at The Lowry in Manchester on the 26th November at 7:45pm and the RichMix theatre in London on the 27th and 28th November at 7:30pm, so why not pop along and support us?

Watch the Poles Apart trailer here.

What really happened on Question Time

The whole country has been talking about Nick Griffin on QT, but very few know what happened behind the scenes. This is what the BBC didn't want you to see. Hats off to cassetteboy.

"Have asylum seekers had sex with your house?"

"Have the French given the Royal Family cancer?"..."Could the Poles impregnate house prices?"..."Could Alistair Darling give your mortgage diabetes?"..."Could Facebook have sex with your pets?"..."Have gypsies stolen the identity of England?"

These and others can be found at the genius Daily Mail-o-matic, an automatic generator of Daily Mail headlines.

Obama: Kanye West "a jackass"

And he's right!

Just before Barack Obama went on camera to do an interview with CNBC, he started chatting about Kanye West’s antics at the MTV Video Music Awards. The President nailed it right on the head when he said: "I thought that was really inappropriate" adding, "He's a jackass". [Click here to hear the audio clip].

It's not the first time that the egomaniacal rapper gets all the attention he craves for. In 2006 he made a complete arse of himself at another MTV award (see it here). Another outburst a year later grabbed some more headlines and, only the other day, he made people laugh as he comically stormed onstage when country singer Taylor Swift accepted her Best Female Video award.

"Things aren't the same..."

You've got to read this excellent piece by Jamie Sport. It is posted on the genius Daily Quail website. Here's a small extract:

"I remember with a melancholy fondness the days when you could call a spade a spade without fear of the PC brigade jumping down your throat, telling you not to use such words for fear of offending all the other garden tools (of course, when I say spade I mean paki), or those dizzy summer afternoons spent hunting down the queers and playfully bashing their little heads in with pebbles from the village pond.

It was the only way to keep the gene pool healthy. Those magical times existed before silly, bureaucratic words like 'hate crime' and 'bigotry' were even invented"... (click here to read it all)

Swine flu and changing habits

Nanny state and ZaNuLabour in action, right?

Hitler's reaction to Oasis split

Who knew that the Führer was actually into Britpop? Look at this rare video showing Hitler's reaction to Noel Gallagher's announcement that Oasis are no more.

Cameron sings 'Common People'

Hilarious Rory Bremner doing an impersonation of David 'Dave' Cameron singing Pulp's Common People.

Cristiano Ronaldo & pricks

This video is worth watching, an excellent opportunity to commemorate Man Utd's defeat in the Champions League final at the hands of Barcelona. Look at Cristiano Ronaldo's look of surprise.

"Sex with big, brawny, hairy, PROPER men"

This quality piece by Tanya Gold in the Daily Mail was a top way of rounding off the Easter break.

It's called 'Goodbye skinny metrosexuals, the beefcake is back' and it contains a number of absolute gems such as:

"Do you remember the Blitz? (note that Tanya Gold was born in 1973- ed) Everyone had great sex in the Blitz, even my Auntie Marie, who hated men. And who do you have sex with? Big, brawny, hairy men, proper men, that's who".

"In this sexless world of money and style, beefcake was nowhere. Because you don't need a beefcake if you live in a penthouse with blinds that go up and down at the touch of a button. Better to have a girl-man who looks like Keira Knightley and can discuss all your consumerist junk with you".

"But things have changed. Our economy is splintering, our seas are rising and house prices are falling. [...] So what do we do? We should choose beefcake. Fashion has decreed it. In times of hardship and uncertainty, what sane woman wants to cuddle up to a man she knows she could beat in a fight?"

Noel Edmonds loses it

Noel Edmonds's own Alan Partridge moment on Sky TV's Noel's HQ.

They say television makes history and those four minutes on Noel's HQ certainly will. When the genius Knowing Me Knowing You With Alan Partridge came out, many wondered which presenter or particular programme was behind Coogan, Marber and Iannucci's inspiration. Fifteen years later, we find out they were simply looking into the future and foresaw this hilarious, pathetic, cringeworthy piece of egomaniac TV (read more about it here). "This country really is in a shocking state. See you after the break".

Rory Bremner's review of 2008