Wednesday 22 December 2010

I don’t believe it!


There is no fool like an old fool. Sorry, let me qualify that: there is no fool like an old male fool (apologies for the sexism!) Oh, I’m going to go one step further: there is no fool like an old male fool in politics. Forget all of that; let me just cut to the chase: there is no fool like Vince Cable.

Who is he, you might wonder, if you live anywhere firth of Chiswick, or you are not a member of the Liberal Democrat Party. The short answer is that he is a British politician, a leading member of our present coalition government. If you’ve ever seen One Foot in the Grave, the British sitcom, he is the spitting image both in appearance and attitude of Victor Meldrew, the show’s grumpy old man, forever saying ‘I don’t believe it’ when confronted with the outrages of contemporary life.

Uncle Vince is the Business Secretary, a man with extensive powers. More than that, he is the king maker, the power broker, the man who could exercise the ‘nuclear option’ and bring down the government. At least that’s how he likes to depict himself to young female reporters from The Daily Telegraph, who rather caught him with his metaphorical trousers around his scrawny old ankles, secretly recording some of his more pompous and impolitic assertions on tape.

Today the poor old King Maker is just a little less powerful than he was, having been stripped in a rather humiliating fashion of his responsibilities for overseeing media, telecom and broadcasting companies. This comes after he told the girls (cue the giggles) that he had ‘declared war’ on Rupert Murdoch, the media tycoon, and that he was ‘going to win’.

Sorry, Vince, you lose and you lose big style. His remarks were a response to the attempt by Murdoch’s News International to acquire a majority shareholding in British Sky Broadcasting. It’s a move that would have to be sanctioned by the Business Secretary but in an impartial fashion, without obvious political and personal bias.

Now Cable has made his politics and his bias all too obvious. In any normal circumstances the stupid old man would have been rusticated, but this would only upset the balance of power in the government to the detriment of the Lib Dumbs, something David Cameron, the Prime Minister, is clearly anxious not to do.

It’s the same old story, it truly is. It comes not long after Mike Hancock, another Liberal Democrat, another silly old man in public life, was revealed to have employed an alleged Russian spy as an aide, while asking all sorts of sensitive questions about national security. The individual in question was a forty-year old man called Boris. No, he was not; she’s a twenty-five year old woman called Ekaterina! There is only one lesson here: keep old men out of politics or keep them away from young women. Which is the easier? Let me just leave you to make up your own mind. :-)

32 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Adam, I can't make an awful lot of sense out of this. I wish you would stop moving in such rapid extremes, first one passionate cause, then another. As far as your general observations, politics has always been a treacherous, back-stabbing business, even more so in the past than it is now. Ludendorff's remarks about Hitler were spot on. After all, who but he was in a better position to know a man he had supported and helped at the time of the Munich Putsch, and continued to support right up until 1928. Therefter he sank in to the political and philosophical craziness that always had been part of his character, blaming the problems of the world on Jews, Christians and freemasons. He forgot to add short men, though Hitler might serve here.

    ReplyDelete
  6. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  7. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  8. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  9. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Let's hope dear old Vince has asked Santa for a pair of bullet proof shoes for Christmas :-)

    I happen to agree with his views on Murdoch though.

    Glen

    ReplyDelete
  11. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  12. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  13. You have a "thing" for short men do you ?

    ReplyDelete
  14. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  15. FYI: WW2 English Freemasons V German Jesuits.

    ReplyDelete
  16. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  17. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  18. I feel that this is rather a bit tough on Mr. Cable.

    Firstly, what The Daily Telegraph did will change the relationship that MP's have with members of the public that meet them during surgeries.
    I have meetings with my Local MP & they express personal opinions that if expressed in Public would have them either 'Whipped' or expelled from their Political Party.

    So, the blame needs to be on The Daily Telegraph for going so low in the name of investigative journalism.

    Secondly, we the British Public constantly moan about MP's not having an direct opinion on an issue. Instead of using very careful deliberate language that can be taken as two meanings / open to interpretation.

    Just last week a former Labour Cabinet Minister declared that Illegal Narcotics should be made legal under NHS Control; as the money is going to Psychopathic Gangsters whom will soon take over large sections of major British cities.

    The Media gave the impression that he was a nutter & the Labour Party did the same.

    The problem isn't with Vince Cable but with our Media, the Whip System of UK Politics & how we as British people deal with self-expression.

    A significant percentage of people around the world agree with Mr. Cable's feelings about Mr. Murdoch.

    I personally want strong leadership rather than this measured approach that's simply making UK Society worse taken by our Politicians. Am fed-up of the term 'The Middle Ground of Politics'.

    ReplyDelete
  19. we (in indonesia) have a lot of old male fool in politics. believe me. it's feel like i want tu put their face to the garbage bags, or to the pigsty, or send them to the never never land. or u have another idea anastasia.. :D

    ReplyDelete
  20. Adam, honestly, you mustn’t worry about this sort of thing, or take life quite as seriously as you do. Also it’s a really bad idea to generalise in such a sweeping way. People are just people, good, bad and indifferent. Nobody is absolutely all one way or all the other. I , too, have my prejudices, likes and dislikes, sometimes with no rational grounding; it's all a matter of taste. Who on this imperfect earth does not?

    There has always been a cruel edge to comedy, in finding amusement in the differences or the defects of others. I certainly do, though in a specific, not a generalised way. I made fun of Nicholas Sarkozy not because of his shortness, William Hague not because of his baldness and Vladimir Putin not because of his dress sense- I made fun of all three because of their vanity, the common link. Your own Tony Hancock makes vulnerability and gullibility – his own- an object of humour, which is probably deeply offensive to vulnerable and gullible people! I’m blonde and female, so I have to live with jokes about dumb blondes, not that it bothers me in the least. I will continue to use humour as a weapon in any way I see fit, and if it offends people, well, in the words of someone or other, that’s too fucking bad. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  21. Glen, yes, I probably do as well but neither you nor I have to maintain a position of detachment and objectivity.

    ReplyDelete
  22. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Lonely Nobody, hello and welcome. I tend to be tough on politicians, no matter their political complexion, especially when they are quite as silly as dear old Vince. I share your distaste of that expression!

    ReplyDelete
  24. Maya, an excellent suggestion. :-))

    ReplyDelete
  25. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  26. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  27. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  28. @Adam:How about asexual reproduction ? Then we could literally screw ourselves.

    ReplyDelete
  29. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  30. Thanks, Adam. I'm too bushed for politics tonight. :-) Oh, I've ordered Douglas Hurd's biography of Peel, which I shall read in rapid order. There, a little politics!

    ReplyDelete
  31. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete