There's nothing the Daily Mail's Richard Littlejohn hates more than the Labour Government, Prime Minister Gordon Brown (who, on Wednesday, started to walk out of the Commons after Prime Minister's Question as he forgot that he had to make a statement which, inevitably, led to howls of laughter and guffaws from opposition MPs), political correctness, Elf N' Safety, illegal immigrants and Islamists.
In this column, he gives us his hilarious views on Gordon Brown (who's had yet another bad week and is, politically, a dead man walking), illegal immigrants, swine flu, a triumph for British democracy to allow the Gurkhas to live in the country, sherbert fountains and gobstoppers.
If Gordon was a dog he'd be put down!
By Richard Littlejohn
1st May 2009
The last time I saw anything like it was when I worked at the London radio station LBC in the early Nineties.
Legendary DJ Pete Murray had forgotten that his morning show had been extended by one hour.
As the newsreader was coming to the end of the midday bulletin, he looked up from his script and peered out of the window, only to see Pete’s car pulling out of the parking lot — the Great Man oblivious to the fact that the programme wasn’t scheduled to finish until 1pm.
With the help of the radio vet, who was waiting to take calls from listeners, the newsreader managed to hold the fort for the last hour.
Gord needs to be put out of his misery
I couldn’t help thinking of Pete’s senior moment as I watched Gordon Brown start to wander out of the Commons chamber at the end of Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, after failing to remember that he was supposed to be delivering a statement on his trip to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
There being no Parliamentary equivalent of the radio vet to hand, Gordon had to be hauled back to the dispatch box as the House dissolved in gales of laughter.
When I took over Michael Parkinson’s daily LBC show, Parky warned me that the pressure of five-days-a-week live broadcasting was like having permanent jet lag.
Dear old Pete Murray had obviously succumbed, and after a few months in front of the mike I, too, would wake every morning feeling as if I’d just got off the red-eye from Hong Kong.
So, although this column is not noted for its sympathy towards the Prime Minister, I can understand how Gordon lost the plot so spectacularly this week.
He wasn’t suffering from synthetic jet lag, he was suffering from real jet lag. In the course of the previous 48 hours, he’d managed to fit in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Poland on the way home.
That’s where the sympathy stops, mind you, because this was all entirely self-inflicted. The trip was utterly pointless.
What was the Auschwitz business about? I’m all in favour of Holocaust remembrance, but why Gordon and why now?
Like his wholly unnecessary jaunt to Brazil a few weeks ago, it’s as though he is trying to rack up the Air Miles before the men in white coats come banging on the door of Number 10.
He seems to be frantically filling the scrapbook while he still can, if only to prove that he really, really was Prime Minister.
You can imagine him in a few years’ time, sitting in front of the fire in some Scottish council care home for the terminally bewildered, brandishing the book at his nurse and shouting: ‘See, there’s me and Barack Obama. And look, there’s me and Nelson Mandela. I really did save the world.’
Yes, of course you did, dear. Now take your sedative, there’s a good boy, or I’ll have to send for Matron.
Ever since he was about eight years old, becoming Prime Minister has been Gordon’s Holy Grail.
Eventually, he bludgeoned his way into Number 10, without a proper mandate from either his party or the country.
Gordon didn’t care about the democratic niceties. The job’s mine, I tell you. All mine!
And that’s when it all started to go horribly wrong.
Now, as he surveys the wreckage of his administration, he has to come to terms with the fact he is not just an abject failure, but has become a laughing stock. It wasn’t supposed to end like this. To paraphrase what Norman Lamont said of John Major, Brown’s in office but not in power.
With no coherent answers to the nation’s economic and social woes, he buries himself in a demented programme of displacement activity.
The backbenches have given up on him, and his Cabinet underlings are jockeying for position until he is led away, dribbling and howling at the moon.
While the country goes to Hell in a handcart, Gordon sits in his bunker issuing insane five-year plans. He is determined to do as much damage as he possibly can before the time comes to swallow the suicide pill.
The implosion of this Government resembles the Nazi retreat to Berlin at the end of World War II. The bridges have been blown, the art treasures looted, the cities reduced to rubble.
Gordon is huddled underground with his generals pushing models of non- existent tanks and regiments around a giant operations board, seemingly unaware that the army has deserted and the forces of liberation are at the gate.
As I wrote on Tuesday, I’ve run out of invective. To be honest, there’s something quite unpleasant about watching the lingering political death of Gordon Brown.
I feel like a rubber-necker slowing down to gawp at a motorway pile-up.
The trouble is that while the Prime Minister lives out his excruciating personal tragedy, we’re going to have to suffer this zombie horror show for another year and endure the consequences for generations.
If Gordon was a dog, he’d be put down. Where’s the radio vet when you need him?
Prepare for tap-dancing asylum seekers
Rising unemployment has prompted the Government to cut by a third the number of work permits issued to immigrants.
Ministers say this will reduce the number of non-EU migrants coming to Britain by 270,000 over the next year. Believe it when it happens. There’s always a loophole.
Although we don’t need any more quantity surveyors or construction workers, apparently there is still a shortage of orchestral musicians and contemporary dancers.
Stand by for an influx of asylum-seekers arriving at Victoria coach station clutching violins, clinging to the roof of Eurostar with one hand while playing a clarinet with the other and tap-dancing their way through immigration.
Who ya gonna call: Flu-busters?
The health-scare ‘experts’ are having a field day with their Doomsday predictions.
One virologist, on the basis of precisely nothing, said swine flu could become crossed with bird flu and mutate into an ‘ Armageddon’ strain.
I suppose we’d have to call that ‘flying pig flu’.
Meanwhile, every family in Britain is being sent a leaflet on how to cope with swine flu.
Why? What a complete waste of time and money. We’re capable of reading the papers.
Is there anyone in the country who isn’t aware of this alleged pandemic?
This patronising pamphlet tells us to remember to wash our hands, and to ring our doctor if we experience ’flu-like symptoms.
Who else do they think we’re going to call? The AA? Ghostbusters?
Anyway, this mailshot won’t start landing on doormats until the middle of next week — by which time anyone with swine flu will either have died or, much more likely, got better.
It’s right that the Government stockpiles anti-flu drugs. But spare us the wasteful, infantile ‘advice’.
Here’s another tip. If you do contract swine flu, you can always use this ludicrous leaflet as a hankie.
************************************************************
The Gurkhas - a triumph for British democracy
The Government’s defeat over the Gurkhas is a triumph for democracy and the British sense of fair play.
I have always maintained that Labour has treated these brave men so shabbily because they remind them of a Britain they’d rather forget — one of Empire, duty and honour.
They’d rather lavish hospitality on foreign terrorists, murderers and child-molesters than acknowledge our debt to those prepared to lay their lives on the line for this country.
Well done Joanna Lumley, Nick Clegg and all those MPs who voted to do the decent thing. And shame on those 246 Labour crawlers who voted disgracefully to keep the Gurkhas out.
Yet again, I’m gobsmacked
On Tuesday, after hearing that sherbet fountains had fallen foul of the hygiene police, I wondered how long it would take them to get round to banning gobstoppers.
I ought to know better by now. Reader Clive Whichelow writes to tell me that he has discovered a marvellous vintage sweet shop in Broadway, in the Cotswolds.
It is well-stocked with pineapple chunks, aniseed balls and flying saucers.
But when he asked about gobstoppers, he was told they weren’t allowed to sell them.
You guessed — elf’n’safety.
Another reader, Mike Whitehorn, emails to remind me that gobstoppers were multi-layered.
Once you sucked the first layer off, you passed it on to someone else. And so on, until it was gone.
Goodness knows what elf ’n’safety would have made of that.
dailymail.co.uk
In this column, he gives us his hilarious views on Gordon Brown (who's had yet another bad week and is, politically, a dead man walking), illegal immigrants, swine flu, a triumph for British democracy to allow the Gurkhas to live in the country, sherbert fountains and gobstoppers.
If Gordon was a dog he'd be put down!
By Richard Littlejohn
1st May 2009
The last time I saw anything like it was when I worked at the London radio station LBC in the early Nineties.
Legendary DJ Pete Murray had forgotten that his morning show had been extended by one hour.
As the newsreader was coming to the end of the midday bulletin, he looked up from his script and peered out of the window, only to see Pete’s car pulling out of the parking lot — the Great Man oblivious to the fact that the programme wasn’t scheduled to finish until 1pm.
With the help of the radio vet, who was waiting to take calls from listeners, the newsreader managed to hold the fort for the last hour.
Gord needs to be put out of his misery
I couldn’t help thinking of Pete’s senior moment as I watched Gordon Brown start to wander out of the Commons chamber at the end of Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, after failing to remember that he was supposed to be delivering a statement on his trip to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
There being no Parliamentary equivalent of the radio vet to hand, Gordon had to be hauled back to the dispatch box as the House dissolved in gales of laughter.
When I took over Michael Parkinson’s daily LBC show, Parky warned me that the pressure of five-days-a-week live broadcasting was like having permanent jet lag.
Dear old Pete Murray had obviously succumbed, and after a few months in front of the mike I, too, would wake every morning feeling as if I’d just got off the red-eye from Hong Kong.
So, although this column is not noted for its sympathy towards the Prime Minister, I can understand how Gordon lost the plot so spectacularly this week.
He wasn’t suffering from synthetic jet lag, he was suffering from real jet lag. In the course of the previous 48 hours, he’d managed to fit in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Poland on the way home.
That’s where the sympathy stops, mind you, because this was all entirely self-inflicted. The trip was utterly pointless.
What was the Auschwitz business about? I’m all in favour of Holocaust remembrance, but why Gordon and why now?
Like his wholly unnecessary jaunt to Brazil a few weeks ago, it’s as though he is trying to rack up the Air Miles before the men in white coats come banging on the door of Number 10.
He seems to be frantically filling the scrapbook while he still can, if only to prove that he really, really was Prime Minister.
You can imagine him in a few years’ time, sitting in front of the fire in some Scottish council care home for the terminally bewildered, brandishing the book at his nurse and shouting: ‘See, there’s me and Barack Obama. And look, there’s me and Nelson Mandela. I really did save the world.’
Yes, of course you did, dear. Now take your sedative, there’s a good boy, or I’ll have to send for Matron.
Ever since he was about eight years old, becoming Prime Minister has been Gordon’s Holy Grail.
Eventually, he bludgeoned his way into Number 10, without a proper mandate from either his party or the country.
Gordon didn’t care about the democratic niceties. The job’s mine, I tell you. All mine!
And that’s when it all started to go horribly wrong.
Now, as he surveys the wreckage of his administration, he has to come to terms with the fact he is not just an abject failure, but has become a laughing stock. It wasn’t supposed to end like this. To paraphrase what Norman Lamont said of John Major, Brown’s in office but not in power.
With no coherent answers to the nation’s economic and social woes, he buries himself in a demented programme of displacement activity.
The backbenches have given up on him, and his Cabinet underlings are jockeying for position until he is led away, dribbling and howling at the moon.
While the country goes to Hell in a handcart, Gordon sits in his bunker issuing insane five-year plans. He is determined to do as much damage as he possibly can before the time comes to swallow the suicide pill.
The implosion of this Government resembles the Nazi retreat to Berlin at the end of World War II. The bridges have been blown, the art treasures looted, the cities reduced to rubble.
Gordon is huddled underground with his generals pushing models of non- existent tanks and regiments around a giant operations board, seemingly unaware that the army has deserted and the forces of liberation are at the gate.
As I wrote on Tuesday, I’ve run out of invective. To be honest, there’s something quite unpleasant about watching the lingering political death of Gordon Brown.
I feel like a rubber-necker slowing down to gawp at a motorway pile-up.
The trouble is that while the Prime Minister lives out his excruciating personal tragedy, we’re going to have to suffer this zombie horror show for another year and endure the consequences for generations.
If Gordon was a dog, he’d be put down. Where’s the radio vet when you need him?
Prepare for tap-dancing asylum seekers
Rising unemployment has prompted the Government to cut by a third the number of work permits issued to immigrants.
Ministers say this will reduce the number of non-EU migrants coming to Britain by 270,000 over the next year. Believe it when it happens. There’s always a loophole.
Although we don’t need any more quantity surveyors or construction workers, apparently there is still a shortage of orchestral musicians and contemporary dancers.
Stand by for an influx of asylum-seekers arriving at Victoria coach station clutching violins, clinging to the roof of Eurostar with one hand while playing a clarinet with the other and tap-dancing their way through immigration.
Who ya gonna call: Flu-busters?
The health-scare ‘experts’ are having a field day with their Doomsday predictions.
One virologist, on the basis of precisely nothing, said swine flu could become crossed with bird flu and mutate into an ‘ Armageddon’ strain.
I suppose we’d have to call that ‘flying pig flu’.
Meanwhile, every family in Britain is being sent a leaflet on how to cope with swine flu.
Why? What a complete waste of time and money. We’re capable of reading the papers.
Is there anyone in the country who isn’t aware of this alleged pandemic?
This patronising pamphlet tells us to remember to wash our hands, and to ring our doctor if we experience ’flu-like symptoms.
Who else do they think we’re going to call? The AA? Ghostbusters?
Anyway, this mailshot won’t start landing on doormats until the middle of next week — by which time anyone with swine flu will either have died or, much more likely, got better.
It’s right that the Government stockpiles anti-flu drugs. But spare us the wasteful, infantile ‘advice’.
Here’s another tip. If you do contract swine flu, you can always use this ludicrous leaflet as a hankie.
************************************************************
The Gurkhas - a triumph for British democracy
The Government’s defeat over the Gurkhas is a triumph for democracy and the British sense of fair play.
I have always maintained that Labour has treated these brave men so shabbily because they remind them of a Britain they’d rather forget — one of Empire, duty and honour.
They’d rather lavish hospitality on foreign terrorists, murderers and child-molesters than acknowledge our debt to those prepared to lay their lives on the line for this country.
Well done Joanna Lumley, Nick Clegg and all those MPs who voted to do the decent thing. And shame on those 246 Labour crawlers who voted disgracefully to keep the Gurkhas out.
Yet again, I’m gobsmacked
On Tuesday, after hearing that sherbet fountains had fallen foul of the hygiene police, I wondered how long it would take them to get round to banning gobstoppers.
I ought to know better by now. Reader Clive Whichelow writes to tell me that he has discovered a marvellous vintage sweet shop in Broadway, in the Cotswolds.
It is well-stocked with pineapple chunks, aniseed balls and flying saucers.
But when he asked about gobstoppers, he was told they weren’t allowed to sell them.
You guessed — elf’n’safety.
Another reader, Mike Whitehorn, emails to remind me that gobstoppers were multi-layered.
Once you sucked the first layer off, you passed it on to someone else. And so on, until it was gone.
Goodness knows what elf ’n’safety would have made of that.
dailymail.co.uk
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