Obiter Dicta

Wednesday, November 30^th.

Gather round friends, pull up an attitude and relax, while the ol’ Hot Chestnut Man tells you a story.

Once upon a time there was an Election, and the pople voted in the Tories, something they had been too clever to do for years and years and years. But, some people said that it wasn’t really the Tories because they had joined hands and got married to the Liberal Democrats. But, says the old Hot Chestnut Man, anyone that sleeps with a Tory automatically becomes one. Like in a magic spell. Oh, they may twist and they may turn, and try to protest that what they said earlier was said because they didn’t know enough then, but nothing is ever of any use. The Tories have them in a very powerful spell called ‘Gotchaby Rabollox’. And they become Tories too. So that, really, theTories won. Even though they didn’t. And all because the people of Liberal Democratia, who are a simple people, believed what the Tories told them.

And the people who voted saw that the leader of  the Liberal Dems was no more than a political courtesan. For the price of a ministerial salary for himself and a hand-picked bunch of his confederates, he sold his birthright to a cadre of sneering toffs. Tuition fees, alone. That’s what people should have shouted when they saw him in the street: “Tuition fees alone! Ya lyin’, two-faced, hypocritical, phony, insincere, duplicitous cad!” And the ol’ Hot Chestnut Man said, “I hope he enjoys his place in prosperity – as the man who buried the Liberals once and for all, the man who hammered the final nail in their political coffin. For, make no mistake about it: they’re gone. They’re History - Ancient History. They’re fucking Geology. Palaeontology. From here on in. They’re with the snaw that fell last year, and the glory that was Grease.”

But lo, some said that the ol’ Hot Chestnut Man had lost his marbles. Until the strike. And then they saw that the Tories, the Bullingdon boys  - ‘I’m Bullingdon Bertie; I rise at 10.30 and sneer at the Proles when I do. For they all smell of cabbage, and working-class garbage and old socks and urine and poo’ – David and Boris and Gideon, had inherited all the haughty and disdainful genes of their ancestors. And the Bullingdon Boys thought that it was fair enough that certain lower orders should work longer than they had agreed should be the case; contribute more to their pensions than had been contracted; and then should get less at the end than had been agreed by all parties. Because were these people not schoolteachers and nurses and council employees and such conniving sluggards as these?

And the people said to themselves, ‘Well! Next time there’s an election, we know what we have to do.’

And the ol’ Hot Chestnut man said to himself, ‘Let’s wait and see, shall we?’

* * *

I’d like to talk briefly about Twitter too, this week. Oh yes. The old Social Networking Sites.  I’ll be brutally honest; I went on in the hope of punting my book. I’d been footering about the margins of Tweeting before and almost died of inanity poisoning but, on the advice of my agent and my daughter, stuck with it.

I’m glad I did. There are some woofling bores out there, and some barking madmen too. But there are some genuinely amusing people and some genuinely smart and interesting ones too. Like life, I suppose. In 140 characters or less.

There’s an idea in there. Somewhere.

Here’s to the next time.