Today we learned that David Cameron thinks that the correct response to legitimate criticisms about his government’s woeful handling of the NHS in England is to tell his critic that his mother would expect him to put on a proper suit and do up his tie. Because, obviously, criticisms are more valid when they issue from the mouth of a man dressed in a smart pinstripe suit and a perfectly knotted silk tie from Jermyn Street, whereas if the man happens to be wearing a jacket and some polyester neckwear from Oxfam then he’s not worth listening to. In that one off the four button cuff remark from the Eton educated PR boy to Jeremy Corbyn we learned all we need to know about the attitudes of Cameron and the Tories. It’s not about the content of things, it’s about the packaging. As long as it’s as shiny and glossy as Cameron’s face, it’s good and true. Yer maw would approve. Never mind the smell of decay, look at the shiny.
This is British politics nowadays, reduced to jibes about yer maw. Next week in PMQs David Cameron will be telling the Labour leader that his da is bigger than Jeremy’s da.
It might be true that wearing a nice suit helps you get taken seriously. The South African anti-apartheid campaigner Steve Biko, who was murdered by the apartheid regime, once said that if you want to say radical things, you should dress conservatively. But then Biko had style as well as content and the content was what came first because it’s the content which is important. Biko had important things to say and the style was a means to imparting it. Corbyn has content but no style, and he is proof that how a person dresses is no guide to the veracity or worth of what they say. But for PR man Cameron it’s all about appearance, there is no content in the vacuum of Davie’s politics. His definition of politics is a show for the talentless, with Davie’s ego as the star. Cameron is unfit to polish Jeremy Corbyn’s scuffed shoes.
For a very long time now PMQs has been an exercise in pointlessness. It was supposed, once upon a time, to be the means whereby the leader of the Opposition held the Prime Minister of the day to account by asking questions about government policy and obliging the Prime Minister to give detailed answers. In the British parliamentary system of elective dictatorships it was pretty much the only means of holding the government of the day to account. These days you can watch the Prime Minister, or indeed any government minister, being questioned in the House of Commons and your wait for something that’s an actual answer, as opposed to a deflecting retort, will be longer than the wait for Donald Trump to say something sensitive and thoughtful.
Our politicians could just swap the entire sorry process of questions to ministers which they have no intention of answering for swapping jokes about your minister, which would at least provide the rest of us with some amusement if not government accountability. It would also have the advantage of being considerably more mature and witty than the sub schoolyard crap that passes for a debate in the Commons.
Your minister’s so stupid that if he got locked in Asda he’d starve to death. Your minister is so stupid that he stares at a glass of orange juice for two hours because he was told it’s concentrate. Your minister is so stupid he sits on the telly and watches the sofa. Your minister is so nasty that the MoD uses his bath water as a chemical weapon. Your minister is so nasty he only gets clapped in a clinic. Your minister is so nasty he takes away the money from disabled people and lets them die. Oh wait, that one’s true. Your minister is so stupid that he steals bread from a food bank. Oh, that one is probably true. Your minister is so stupid that when playing Monopoly he gave away all the community chest to Google. Damn, that one’s true too.
Prime Minister’s Questions will continue to be a waste of time until the Speaker of the Commons actually insists that politicians answer the questions that they are asked. There’s no sign that’s about to happen. The Speaker is quite happy for the pantomime charade to continue because the Speaker is a part of it. He’s got his own fancy suit to wear after all, and as long as Westminster remains in thrall to fancy costumes and pseudo-mediaeval traditions invented by Victorians we’re going to continue to get questions and no answers and insults about what the leader of the Opposition is wearing. Westminster isn’t ever going to change, it’s not capable of reforming itself. The only thing that you can be certain that Westminster will take seriously is that it will fights tooth and nail against anything that threatens its absolute power. We saw that with the farce that passed for the Scotland Bill, and how Westminster treats Scottish devolution as a means to screw over the SNP and not as a response to the demand of the Scottish people for home rule. You don’t get home rule in the yo mama’s house of childish retorts.
Davie’s attitude to Jeremy Corbyn’s choice in neckwear is much the same as his attitude to Scotland. We’re expected to dress nicely in a smart kilt and a tartan tie, to sit down and shut up. We’re colourful Caledonian window dressing in the Great British pageant, passive onlookers as the British establishment exchanges bad jokes at our expense. Davie can wear his Savile Row suits, the rest of us are stuck in the toxic mess that he’s creating. We can put on our hazmat suits and sit down and cry, or we can get out of this excuse for a state and start afresh in a Scotland where content is more important than style, where what a person says is more important than what they wear when they say it. I vote for the latter.
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I’d vote for the latter too, anytime. However, I’d feel considerably better if our MPs could understand that if they ask a question about helping out the oil industry the answer is going to come straight back and smack them between the eyes. Don’t they understand that if they lob that one up, that Cameron is going to go back to the ‘black hole in an independent Scotland’s budget’ pallaver? If I can figure it out, why can’t they? Can’t they come up with something better to ask? I’d like a bit more from our guys, if at all possible.
Spot on Irma. Naive.
Yup – pish politics in a charade of democracy. Welcome to Westminster rule. And to think a simple three letter word could have changed all that forever…
*sigh*
I watched that charade with a growing sense of unease & anger. That man is a total embarrassment to his position. Is he trying to out-trump Trump? Other EU politicians must be looking on in amazement and hoping we vote to leave! Every day my admiration increases for our SNP politicians. I could not be in the same space as DC without offering violence, at the very least!
Aye. I was actually shocked at the amount of rage that shallow, vacuous bastard stirred in me with that arrogant display.
I think if he’d said that to me I’d be in the jail right now!.
Yeah, he’s gonna set his Big Brother on you …
He can try…
“If most of us are ashamed of shabby clothes and shoddy furniture, let us be more ashamed of shabby ideas and shoddy philosophies.”
That Einstein fella was a bright lad.
‘We dare be poor for a’ that! For a’ that, an’ a’ that. Our toils obscure an’ a’ that, The
rank is but the guinea’s stamp.’
The man’s the gowd for a’ that.
Camron, on the othr hand is dross.
A face you’d never tire of slappin’ for sure.
What he did yesterday went beyond childish, playground crap. He’s a sound bite bully who believes himself untouchable because of rank and entitlement. He offers respect to none yet expects it for himself… simply because.
To be fair, few who have passed through the front doors in that house who want the job have been fit for it, but yes he’s a particularly loathsome specimen of the breed.
Couldn’t have put it better. He has all the depth of a saucer.
Spot on as ever. Great read.
Like annelawrie I too have a growing sense of unease and anger. Cameron’s behaviour is out of control. Perhaps his Maw should be doing something about his manners.
I was appalled at the sneeringly personal comments by Cameron to Corbyn.
I can’t imagine the Scottish Parliament MSPs resorting to such rank class snobbery.
Corbyn should have replied mildly, ‘My shoes are genuine PIG skin leather, old chap.’
Actually, the Scottish Labour Branch do exactly the same thing.
As Thatcher said
“If they attack you personally it means they do not have a single political argument left.”
Reblogged this on Bampots Utd.
Not only all of the above but the hilarity displayed by the clowns behind him – we are in a madhouse.
The trouble is circus clowns make do with water pistols … these guys have nukes at their fingertips … maybe, just maybe we should be very afraid?
If they did, we would be very afraid but it’s America who controls them. Oh, wait a minute…….
Guid eane WGD. Needed said.
There was some changes today in favour of the SNP in both the Scotlands Fiscal Framework and the Transitional State Pension Arrangements for Women debates.
Since Tommy Sheppard’s point of order last week regarding the lack of SNP questions allowed in Scorrish debates there were plenty of Scots on today.
Ian Blackford and Mhairi Black were particularly strong on the Pensions debate.
http://tinyurl.com/oq2nt3f
Stronger for all of us.
I also watched the pension debate and although the SNP spoke many times it was more to do with the lack of Torys in the chamber. Someone had to talk and if there were only 12 Torys available then the number has to be made up from somewhere. The few Torys that attended and talked at the debate was woeful although their cohorts piled out of the pub for the vote and the motion was defeated. It’s is an absalute travesty that MPs should vote in a debate they neither attended or were involved in. We need to be free from this completely undemocratic system now.
Ian Blackford from 2.38pm & Mhairi @ 3.43.
I’m no great fan of Corbyn (or any Labour politician) but it was disgraceful the way Cameron spoke to him.
Do the majority of people in Scotland still feel we belong in this poisonous pantomime?
The House of Lords needs keeping an eye on as well.
Lord Forsyth a real sneak with his amendments
http://tinyurl.com/zcek9by
Yes well worth watching….
‘sic a parcel o’ prorogues in a nation’
He better watch out … he may break out in a plague of boils if he continues on his tack..
I am sure he would not want to go against Lord Smith and the Smith Commission…. and of course the wishes of 56 elected MPs representing the People of Scotland… and the People of Scotland who are watching.
My Amendment 4 provides that, on page 1, line 17, we should leave out “Scotland” and insert “the United Kingdom”. As currently drafted, the Bill provides:
“In view of that commitment it is declared that the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government are not to be abolished except on the basis of a decision of the people of Scotland voting in a referendum”.
… maybe he should be moving that Scotland gets devolved Corporation Tax powers as are heading to N. ireland – and not to Scotland
Ex-Uruguayan president, Jose Mujica (2010-2015) definitely had the right idea.
So speaks the finely dressed Mr Cameron, enthusiastic wearer of pig’s heads.
Mr Cameron, your are indeed a finely polished turd.
I wish the rather slow Corbyn had had the wit to quickly answer Cameron with a dressed pig joke. The house would have been in uproar. 🙂
Camoron illustrated his complete lack of manners and breeding in castigating Corbyn on his wardrobe. His Ma obviously fell down on the job in that regard. She should have been the one thrashing him, rather than his school chums at Eton.
Perhaps Camoron would like to give us all a lesson on the correct clothes to wear when porking a pig’s head. I am sure we would all be fascinated by that; though I would imagine his American masters might not find it as hilarious as we do, especially the American Zionist lobby.
I wonder if his mother, poor woman, knows about his performance with the pig’s head. Cameron is most certainly a despicable creature – to behave in such a way, simply to be incorporated within an equally despicable group of people.
And now he considers it fun to mock another’s attire.
We MUST get our MPs out of there and back to an independent Scotland before they become immune to the unacceptable behaviour in Westminster.
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/features/agony-aunt/ask-holly-my-work-colleague-makes-fun-of-my-clothes-20160225106575
You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear – or a decent human being out of David Cameron 🙂
David Cameron: all top hat and no brains.