Control

[Malcolm Robinson]

USA or Bedlington its just the same!

[threegee]

Bread and Circuses! As always you get the government you deserve - and it sort of looks like the country deserves Miliband & Balls!

Listening to Any Questions last night the argument was dominated by Miliband's so called fuel price cap. It's the only idea he has had so far and it amounts to £120 reduction in fuel bills over 20 months. Woweee we are all gonna be rich under Red ED! The practical effect of course will be negative. It will reduce investment and competition, and after the 20 months the bills will rise even more than they would have otherwise. But Ed thinks that his elector's time-horizon is less than two years, and wants it all forgotten about as soon as possible after the election. At least the Tories election bribes are generally before elections, and they don't directly steal other people's money to make them!

However, I for one would rather see a no-agenda Red Ed in power than a hidden agenda Cameron. I will never forgive him for his secret attack on marriage or his two-faced attitude on Europe. We'd be better off with incompetent clowns like M & B than someone at the helm who is secretly undermining our country.

[Malcolm Robinson]

Flipping heck GGG, I can hear Sym sharpening his pencil ready to gloat now.

I think the whole lot are as incompetent as each other. Its about reactive government these days whereas what we need is proactive government, but for that there needs to be some working grey cells, or at least some not asleep due to over indulgence of the white stuff!

[Symptoms]

Pencil my ar*e!!! Only the finest goose quill will do for 'Wise Owl' Sym. We rely on false promises from the lot of them but what's important is the illusion of 'clear water' between to two of them so that when we're led by the nose to the ballot box there appears to be a meaningful choice.

Anyway, back to what really matters ... an article in the beloved Guardian this morning. The Thoughts of Chairman Mao are being republished (The Little Red Book). When I was in the 6th Form some of us wrote to the Chinese Embassy in London requesting free copies of the original imprint ... these duly arrived; I'm glad to say that I still have mine ... it lives on my bookshelf alongside, among other seminal works, 'On The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union' by J. Stalin, 'Mein Kamph' by A. Hitler.

[threegee]

Goodness! We actually agree on something?! Except The Guardian being the fount of all wisdom - of course.

I have a near-pristine copy of TLRB somewhere too; brought back by evil, exploitative, British hand, from the den of the slitty-eyed commie, Peking. (Sorry Guardian readers: Beijing). I also have a MK - though I bet different paragraphs are highlighted. Sadly lacking are any of the works of Uncle Joe. Must include such an acquisition in my next five year plan!

[Symptoms]

GGG ... "Peking" is fine but "slitty-eyed commie" is probably in race crime territory. However, MK should always be read in the original German.

[threegee]

I will have you know that some of my best friends these days are fully paid-up SECs - the ones I small-trade with in Stirfry Wokland on Alibaba.com (a devilishly clever Chinese joke in itself)!

Anyway, come the Euro-gestappo I'm planning to use the well proven Chinese tolerance defence. Like those jolly decent long-nosed capitalist Brits you can crack a joke about (and with) them without inviting mass hysteria, or worse: a death sentence doled out by an old geezer in a tea towel. There's still Guardinistas to reckon with of course, but they have no mass to their hysteria.

On the other hand I'd imagine that it's a criminal offence to possess a German copy of MK in Greater Euroland, so I'm sticking to my English language - and thus partially sanitised - copy, danke mein herr.

[Maggie/915]

Maybe we could write our very own equivalent booklet.

'The Sayings of The Bedlington Forum'