- Why Britons Cannot Save the Environment Alone - 23 November, 2013
- The Place of UKIP in British Politics - 25 September, 2013
- Defendant Anonymity: A Barrier to Judicial Transparency? - 18 September, 2013
Honestly, who gives a damn about politics? So long as the Sure Start nursery round the corner doesn’t get closed down, our garden isn’t obliterated by a high speed rail line and no one goes hunting for weapons of mass destruction, we’re all fairly content to shrug our shoulders, stick our heads in the sand and just let Parliament do what Parliament does best. What that is exactly, well – your guess is as good as mine. Best to just keep shrugging them shoulders and sticking that head.
However, my interest always peaks when someone says something they shouldn’t. It was big news, big walk-through-the-door-and-ask-if-you’ve-heard news, back in 2010 when Gordon Brown called the little, old lady from Rochdale a “bigoted woman”. How could a public figure, the Prime Minister no less, forget that his microphone was on?! Textbook error! But what’s really great about these unforgiving faux-pas moments is that we get to see that politicians are in fact humans – and bitchy humans at that. And guess what… it’s happened again.
Now that Brown has retreated back to his constituency in Scotland, there’s a bit of a muddle as to who we should watch for these embarrassing incidences. Nick Clegg seemed the likeliest suspect. The dejected, whimpering puppy dog of Cameron, he was almost obliged to one day get caught calling his Conservative colleagues “toffee-nosed shits”. Sadly, we are still waiting for that news to break. Don’t get me wrong, Clegg has provided us with entertainment. The autotune remix of his student tuition fees apology now has 2.5 million views on YouTube, but listening to that today just makes me cry and consider sending him a condolence card from Moonpig. “With deepest regret: Your 2015 election prospects are now in a better place. Sorry for your loss. Sorry, sorry, so so sorry. xx”
Praise the Lord, then, that we have UKIP. Apparently not satisfied with referring to less economically developed countries as “Bongo Bongo Land” (which sounds like quite a pleasant musical-themed amusement park to your humble author), Godfrey Bloom MEP has now called a room full of female activists “sluts”. Finding any footage of the event proved futile (no Brown-esque lapel microphone this time!) but not to worry, as his run-in with the press a quarter of an hour later proved to be equally, if not more, exciting.
Interspersed with inappropriately disturbing smiles, Bloom defends himself by asking “was there a single woman in there who didn’t laugh at the joke?” immediately prior to calling the reporter a “sad little man”. Even more thrilling are the bizarre comments made by his female assistant (read: slut – UKIP term, not ours), who peculiarly suggests that us proles confuse slut with slag. “Maybe it’s something to do with the lack of grammar skills in our education?” she ponders. Well, the slut might be onto something. Where’s my dictionary?
slut n a slovenly or immoral woman.
Just for clarification, and to ensure this article was perfectly accurate, we perused the dictionary further to determine the proper meaning of slovenly. Apparently, it has something to do with being messy and dirty. In the interests of good taste, we’ll take that to mean just generally unkempt as opposed to having any connection with some sort of sexual taboo. We assume this was the idea Mr Bloom’s ‘entourage’ (wink, wink) was going for. Credit where credit is due, she’s creative if nothing else. Ten out of ten for effort but let’s face it, you hussy, you ain’t gonna win this one.
hussy n a cheeky woman; a promiscuous woman.
We don’t want any aggravation at this publication, so we’ll go with the first definition there. If you think I’m being a tad defamatory, that’s maybe something to do with the lack of grammar skills in our education.
The incident wasn’t over there, though. When another journalist points out that the UKIP party brochure features no black faces, Bloom calls him a racist. “How dare you, that’s an appalling thing to say,” remarks Bloom, complete with gaping mouth and wide eyes. He then storms off, but not before slapping the reporter over the head with the brochure in question. Indeed, all this seems too comical to be true and you’ll be forgiven for thinking the video below was scripted. But alas, no. There couldn’t be anything more serious. This, after all, is politics.
UKIP is to be applauded, then. They have taken the baton of debacle from the dying days of the Labour government and are doing what no other party can manage: letting the electorate know that politicians do exist even outside of election season. Make no mistake, I am no voter for UKIP. God only knows, no constituency should ever be permitted to return a UKIP MP, in my opinion anyways. Nigel Farage, UKIP party leader, wasn’t too keen on David Cameron’s description of party members as “fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists” but Cameron really was onto something. When a bafoon like Bloom makes such a show of himself as he did on Friday, it’s incredibly hard to defend him – although, as we’ve seen with his remarkable assistant, some people really will try.
Stripped of his connection to his party, Godfrey Bloom has made a sacrifice. Like a proud army general, he has fallen on his sword for the good of his people, insomuch as that he has made us take a little peek out from that sandpit our heads are sticking in. There’ll be no emotional apology – not because there’s no easy way to say that I’m sorry… I’m sorry… I’m so so sorry… – but because he doesn’t want to apologise. And we don’t want him to either. Instead we’d rather invite him down the pub and have a nice, long bitch about all the people we dislike. He’d call us liberal faggots, but we’d laugh and laugh, sipping our cosmopolitans, buying him pints and fuelling further stereotypes that should have no place in modern Britain. And what to do when we’ve had enough of him? Well, just hit him over the head with a gay porno mag and see how he likes it.
