COLUMN: February 25, 2016

THE greatest trap a man can fall into these days is the mansplaining trap. And here I am, falling into it, because I am now going to mansplain what mansplaining is.

Mansplaining is the act of telling a woman how to do something, or why a thing exists, when she is perfectly capable of working it out for herself because she is a person with a brain and access to the facts, solely because she is a woman.

It is a terrible thing for a man to do, because, no matter how helpful you are trying to be, it shows women that on some level you believe them to be second-rate.

And it is no good saying that you were just trying to be helpful, because you are then mansplaining your mansplaining, and you are sucked into the mansplaining vortex from which you can never escape.

It is part of what makes it quite difficult to be a decent middle-aged man these days, because mine is the first generation to be brought up with the idea that it is a good thing that women can vote and work and choose with whom they sleep.

But we also have thousands of years of conditioning bred into us telling us that women are the weaker sex, and we have to look after them because they are woolly-headed poppets, who are deranged by their wombs and cannot be left to their own devices.

It is a bit like the way my generation was taught about centimetres and litres in school, but went home to inches and pints, and so has absolutely no idea how heavy or how wide things are. Except instead of weights and measures it is about the historical oppression of half the human race.

The best thing you can do as a man is to shut up sometimes and let women talk until we have paid for thousands of years of making them be quiet.

And yet… And yet…

I was waiting in the queue at Britain’s Biggest Struggling Retailer with a £3 meal deal. I had calculated that I had saved 23p, so I was feeling pretty smug, although I do not know what you can pick up for 23p these days. You can’t even buy five carrier bags.

I had taken my colleague Barrie with me because sometimes you need a wingman when you are buying lunch. I approved his choice of crisps. “Does this small bag of grapes suit me?” I asked him. He sniffed in accord.

We reached the checkouts at the same time and he decided to join the long queue awaiting human operators, while I opted for the robots. There was only a single woman in front of me. “Ha, you massive chump,” I told Barrie in my head, and I imagined what I would do during the glorious time I would have to myself while waiting for him to be finished.

It was my great misfortune to be behind a young woman whom I can only assume was a time traveller from the late 19th century such was her confusion.

She kept placing her four – ONLY FOUR – items on the Platform of Preparation instead of the bagging area. She rang up her bag of ready salted twice, which meant she had to call upon the assistance of one of the humans dealing with customers. She could not find the bar code on her yogurt…

I was clenching so hard the person behind me in the queue was in danger of being stuck.

When she had finally bagged her items, she pressed the number 1 on the keypad to inform Big Grocer that she had taken one carrier bag, but then did not press Enter. Instead she just stood there, looking alternately at the screen, and then at the card reader, as if she were watching a tennis match between fairies.

“Don’t mansplain,” I kept repeating in my head. “Don’t mansplain. Thousands of years of oppression. Don’t mansplain.” Out of the corner of my eye I saw Barrie being served.

It was too much. “Press the…” I started, stepping forward. “Stop!” I thought. “Would you do this if the person in front were a man?”

And the truth is, I did not know.

So I left it, the woman in front of me resolved the issue on her own, and I waited another two minutes while she then failed to press the contactless payment button, thwacking her card fruitlessly again and again on the sensor, proving herself to be as inept as I am in most circumstances, and thereby striking another blow for sexual equality.

COLUMN: February 18, 2016

I HAD to go on a long train journey on a Sunday. Those of you who have been on a long train journey on a Sunday will currently be making me a hot tea with six sugars and preparing one of those foil blankets they have at the end of marathons.

But those of you who have not been on a long train journey on a Sunday, or an LTJOAS, as we seasoned travellers prefer, might not understand the weight of this statement. “Oh,” you will say, “so you had to sit in comfort for a couple of hours, perhaps devouring a Georgette Heyer and an iced spiced bun from M&S, while somebody actually took you at high speed to your destination? Boo-hoo. Pass me an onion.”

What people who have never been on an LTJOAS need to understand is that Sunday is the day the rail companies of Great Britain just give up, as if the strain of charging £1.60 for a can of Coke for the other six days of the week has caught up with them.

“Oh,” they say, “you’ve paid for a ticket to travel on a train, have you? Yeah, well, it’s Sunday. Here’s a bus, sucker, and don’t lean on the bell.”

For Sunday is the day the British rail infrastructure is dragged into the late 20th century, causing significant delays just outside Crewe, as slaves hammer the track into the ground, watched by Colt 45-wielding baddies with black hats. I am not sure that is exactly what happens, as my knowledge of rail engineering works is entirely restricted to Western movies, but the technology cannot have changed that much.

By the time I arrived at the station to change trains, I was already 90 minutes late because of weekend engineering works. This was really cutting it fine. There was a Premier League match that had taken place in the city where I had to change, and the away fans would be travelling on my route home. But they would not have time to go from the stadium to the station in time for this train.

I was at the platform first, and anticipated a quiet trip home, perhaps drinking a pina colada with an umbrella sticking out of it. But the train was delayed by other engineering works, the football fans started to stream onto the platform, and then there was a platform change.

My excellent initial position became a disadvantage, and I was stuck at the back, like the heel of a loaf. The last time I had been so far behind the front of the queue was when God was handing out luck.
When I was able to board the train all the seats were taken by people smugly checking their phones, people who claimed their good fortune by right, even though it was only an accident of fate that they were in the right place at the right time, like baby boomers, or Manchester United.

I took my place in the aisle, my bag between my feet, which I had planted in an attempt to prevent myself from ending up face first in a Pumpkin Cafe chocolate-style muffin, and adopted the stoicism for which I am noted.

The train began to move, and the football supporters began to explain to the rest of the carriage their strong belief that the team they supported was very much the best at football. After a while I was able to block it out, and then I became aware of a conversation being conducted across my bottom.

Two young women were seated on opposite sides of the aisle, and were chatting about whatever it is young women chat about – shoes, I suppose, or casual sexism – leaning back so that they could see each other without having my posterior in their way. I suppose the football fans in my carriage would have called it “restricted view”.

Then one of them, frustrated by my presence, looked at me and tutted, actually tutted.

And instead of me saying, “Oh, I am so terribly sorry. Is the fact that you have a seat and I do not inconveniencing you? How very inconsiderate of me to want to go home and, indeed, exist”, I bent myself backwards, forming a sort of crescent for the next 45 minutes, just so that my buttocks would not interrupt their conversation.

Apart from accepting the appalling service on the Sunday rail network, it was the most British thing I have ever done.

COLUMN: February 11, 2016

I DEVELOPED a headache in the office, which, frankly, is the only rational response to life in 2016. But, because I work for a living, I was unable to take to a darkened room with a cold compress on my forehead while being sympathetically nursed.

Consequently I had to buy tablets and struggle on like the hero I am. But the problem with headache tablets is that they are so damn cheap these days, and all my shrapnel was in the pocket of my other trousers. Nor did I have any folding cash about my person.

I did, of course, have a cash card, but it feels wrong to buy anything that costs less than, say, £1.50 with a piece of plastic. You can almost hear the electronic card reader sigh: “Really? I have to contact his bank for the sake of 49p? It’s going to cost us 50p for the transaction. Can’t we just give it to him? He obviously needs it more than us. Look at him. He only has two pairs of trousers.”

And so, in order to avoid annoying an inanimate object, I made my way to a cash machine, my head throbbing like a speaker at a Foo Fighters gig.

There was a single person at the machine when I arrived, peering intently at the screen as if it displayed one of those magic eye patterns and if she looked hard enough she would find that she had enough money in her account.

Good, I thought, she is the only person here and there are only six options on the menu, so even if she goes through each one of them I still have a fighting chance of buying tablets before this headache spontaneously ends.

I took up position behind her, leaving an appropriate gap between us, finding that sweet spot which allows people to pass between us, and prevents me from reading how much is in her account, but is still close enough for it to be obvious I am next in the queue.

For I have been burned before, when a complete idiot took up position in the gap before me, and I was reminded of this as I waited for the woman to just flipping hurry up. Honestly, I thought as I reminisced, what sort of utter buffoon would step into the gap between the person at the cash machine and the next person in the queue?

Somebody tapped me on the shoulder. “Scuse me, mate,” he said, in a tone which suggested that he did not really consider me his friend. “I’m next.”

“Sorry, mate,” I said, persisting with the fiction that we were BFFs. What with this and last week’s hugging ordeal, which occurred on the very same street, I have had quite a lot of difficulty with imposed and unexpected intimacy recently.

I could not let it go, probably because I had a headache. “To be fair,” I said, as I stepped aside, “you were standing quite a long way away from the cash machine. I’m not sure how I was supposed to know. I didn’t even see you.”

“You need better glasses, mate,” said my new friend, and he stepped forward to the machine. While I waited I resolved that, when I am inevitably put in charge of everything, I would place some sort of holding pen, with a queuing system, at every cash machine to prevent arguments.
Eventually I reached the machine, intending to withdraw £10, but Friendly Terry The Inept Queuer had taken the last one, which meant I had to withdraw a £20 note.

I went into the shop, picked up a 49p box of ibuprofen, and joined the lunchtime queue curling around the shelves. Slowly I shuffled forward, my head banging, as if my brain were trying to escape through my right eye socket, and five minutes later I arrived at the checkout.

I handed over the small box of tablets. “Do you need a bag?” the assistant asked. I sized up the small pocket-sized box. “No thank you,” I said.

“That’s 49p,” said the assistant. I pulled the £20 note from my wallet. “Ooh,” she said, as she opened the till, “have you got anything smaller?”

I felt a tear prickle my eye. “No, no, I haven’t,” I said. She started to look in the drawer, and proceeded to remove 19 pound coins. “I’ve… I’ve got a cash card,” I said.

She shoved the drawer shut. “Yeah, that’s fine,” she said.

COLUMN: February 4, 2016

I AM not really a touchy-feely person. I am more a shunny-shunny person. I guard my personal space as enthusiastically as the Israeli army.

If you take up position within 12 inches of me, I will lean back, if necessary taking up the pose of an expert limbo dancer. My theme tune is the Police song “Don’t Stand So Close To Me”, but only the chorus.

Incidentally, none of this applies in lifts or on public transport, because it is clear the people around are not standing next to me by choice. We are all in it together, and it is horrible.

All of this is by way of setting the scene of last Monday night. On the way home, I remembered that I was down to the last sheet of kitchen roll and penultimate squirt of washing-up liquid, and called in at the late-night tiny supermarket opposite my office.

“Would you like a bag?” the man on the checkout asked. Yes, I thought, the last thing I want to do is walk through the city centre carrying kitchen rolls and washing-up liquid in my hands, appearing to all the world like a crack freelance cleaner who is always ready for action. It is definitely worth five pence to avert that eventuality.

“Yes, please,” I said, because even when I am ruining the environment I like to be polite.

But, as I left the shop, my bag swinging by my side, I began to feel annoyed about The Bag Of Bags, the bag for life in my kitchen, whose only purpose is to house about three pounds’ worth of carrier bags I have previously bought.

A sensible person would always have one to hand, but I do not want to be that person. I am surely too young to be the sort of person who has an emergency carrier bag tucked away – I was born after the Beatles split up and I barely remember James Callaghan, let alone Harold Wilson.

It was this line of thought which distracted me and made me not see the couple in the street until it was far too late. Had I seen them earlier I would have crossed the road and got on with my life.

Their voices were raised. “Oh, good,” I thought, as my every muscle tensed, “What I need now is to have to intervene in a violent argument with a man who is roughly three inches taller and 15 years younger and the only weapon I have is concentrated washing-up liquid.”

But, as I got closer, I realised that it was not an argument so much as a concentrated haranguing by the young blonde-haired woman. It was a relief. I veered to avoid them, when she said: “Excuse me, can you settle an argument between me and my boyfriend?”

I doubted that very strongly, but I turned around, dreams of catching the 25-past bus ebbing away.

“I reckon people don’t hug each other enough,” she said, as she swayed towards me, clearly drunk on something, probably not hugs. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know, I mean…” I began. “Oh! Can I hug you?!” she said, and before I could react she flung her arms around me.

I stared terrified at her hulking boyfriend and shrugged, my palms raised. He, equally bemused, made the same gesture. We had bonded, brothers in bafflement.

“See, you feel much better, don’t you?” said the woman as she clung onto me. No, I thought, please stop doing this. “Yes,” I said, “Can I go now?”

She did not let go, and, so much worse, her boyfriend said: “Oh, I’ll join in.” And he made it a triple hug.

Two young men approached. I turned my head and said: “I don’t know what is happening.” I was concentrating hard on my wallet and my phone, in case this was some sort of pickpocketing scam.

They were with the couple. “Oh, group hug!” one of them said, and they piled on too. I was in a sort of scrum.

“Well, this has been very nice,” I lied. “But I must get my bus.” They peeled away, leaving only the woman, who planted a smacker on my actual mouth.

She dislodged herself from me and sent me on my way. “Don’t forget you are loved,” said the drunken angel.

And, as I walked away, I realised that I had learnt a valuable lesson. Always have a carrier bag in your coat pocket.

COLUMN: January 28, 2016

I WAS given a belated birthday present a few days ago, and I would like very much to give it back.

I had been for a run and done the exercises I normally do in a futile attempt to stave off my inevitable decline. If I live until 88 – which is unlikely, given my luck in all areas of life – I am now halfway there.

Consequently, I was feeling pretty fit, in the sense that I was exhausted and wanted to die but was not yet dead. As the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said, what does not kill us makes us stronger, although it is possible he had never heard of polio.

In any case, exercise puts me in dire need of a shower, and after I had attended to this need I walked into my bedroom and bent slightly to pick up a towel from my bed. “Slightly” in this case would be roughly equivalent to a Jeremy Corbyn Cenotaph bow.

And I felt a gentle pop in my back, like a single cell in a sheet of bubble wrap. “This is not good”, I told myself. “Popping within the context of backs is more than likely a bad thing. Mind you, it doesn’t hurt, so perhaps it is just one of those things that happen from time to time.”

So I picked up the towel and stood up and immediately dropped to the floor as if I had been shot. “Ooyah!” I cried, like somebody from the Beano. I felt a juddering, shuddering cramp, the sort of pain I usually only feel when I have to type in the long number on the front of my cash card.

I was kneeling on the floor at the side of my bed and could not move without being in excruciating agony. “This really is a sub-optimal experience,” I thought.

“I might be stuck here forever and die of exposure in my post-shower towel-requiring state. And when, in a month or so, the coroner delivers his verdict on my death he will not be able to rule out the possibility I died in a bizarre auto-erotic experiment. This really is pants, which, ironically, I am unable to retrieve.”

I refused to die in such circumstances. I struggled to my feet, the pain in my back white-hot. If anybody had seen me they would have said that I was a brave soldier and also that I should put some clothes on because I was making them uncomfortable.

When I stood, the feeling ran from my back and down my legs. I walked the couple of steps to my wardrobe, each step as painful as if the floor were as hot as the tomato in a cheese toastie. I struggled into some clothes. It is difficult to explain how I managed to put my socks on without bending over or lifting my foot, and so I will avoid doing so.

But when I closed my front door on my way to work, and hobbled along the road to the bus stop I realised that for my 44th birthday I had been given the gift of lifetime membership of a not very exclusive club – The People Who Get Backache Club.

Obviously I have had backache before. I am not Superman. In many ways I am very much the opposite. But the point is that previously I have had to do something extreme to earn it.

For example, I have had to dive for a football (which I then missed) or move a bookcase from IKEA 20 miles away to my home using only public transport. My backaches have been the result of Herculean, heroic effort.

But this? Had I been asked to itemise the activities of my day and pick out the one which would floor me, I doubt strongly I would have pinpointed “picking up a bathtowel from my bed”. It is not even a particularly heavy bathtowel.

The solicitous among you will be on pins by now. You will be asking: “How are you, Gary? Has the pain abated, you massive moaning girl’s blouse?”

I am better, still a bit achey, and I am walking a little gingerly, but much better.

But I know now that almost anything can give me backache, and that is something I can no longer avoid. My age has become a pain in the neck. Which goes well with the pain in my back.

COLUMN: January 21, 2016

THERE has never been a time in my life when I have not had to prove that I was better than I am.

When I was young, I had to prove that I was as good as an older man. Now I am old I have to prove I am as good as a younger man, and I am not entirely sure when that changed.

There must have been a time in my life when I was exactly the right age, but I completely missed it. This is my tragedy, along with all the others.

The main way I prove I am as good as a younger man, now that I am in my late-early-40s, is by walking. I walk very quickly, my scarf flapping behind me as if I am in the cockpit of a Sopwith Camel.

There are, no doubt, benefits to my health and heart associated with walking everywhere as quickly as I would flee if somebody asked for a volunteer. But that is not the issue in this case. I do not wish to have the body of a 25-year-old, I just want to appear to have the body of a 25-year-old.

I suppose if I took it more seriously I would adopt the gait of the walking athlete, with sharp elbows flying and bottom shimmying.

But it must be an awful life to be an Olympic-level walking athlete – all those early mornings training, eating the right foods, all the time they in the gym, and then they turn up at a stadium and speed round a track, and every spectator is thinking: “Ha! Look at those chumps! That is exactly how I would walk if I were half a mile from home and really needed the toilet.”

Nevertheless, often, while tearing along the street, I will pick up the pace in order to pass somebody who is also walking quickly ahead of me, unleashing the sort of competitive spirit which eludes me in all other arenas.

Usually I win these impromptu races, mostly because I have the advantage of being the only competitor who is aware that a race is happening. But occasionally my opponent will work it out and speed up, and before long we are Seb Coe and Steve Ovett in the Moscow Olympics, passing each other several times without acknowledging our joint participation, and hating each other for the rest of our lives.

This is all to explain that my behaviour is compulsive, and, therefore, what happened was not my fault any more than a lion is at fault for preying on a gazelle. If any factors should be blamed, they are the schools of architecture in this country and the laws of physics.

I was heading to work, walking at my usual speedy pace, and talking to somebody on my telephone, behaviour which had I observed it in another person would cause me to hate that person. In my defence, I am wildly inconsistent.

There was somebody walking ahead of me, and I switched without thinking into competition mode. My pace quickened, and gradually I approached the man. I was just about to overtake him on the right when he too veered to the right.

I slowed down to avoid a collision, and then started again, building up pace. I moved to undertake him on the left, and he moved off to the left.

Maybe this always happens, I surmised, and I would normally adjust, and on this occasion I was merely distracted by the phone call. But maybe this man knew he was in a race and he was switching lanes intentionally to prevent me from beating him, in which case I had finally found a worthy opponent.

I redoubled my efforts, and careered to the right. A burst of speed and I was past him. I was triumphant, just as I was reaching the end of the road.

My triumph, as ever, was short-lived. No sooner had I hoisted my victory flag than a woman came around the corner at a speed matching my own. We collided, as was inevitable.

“Sorry!” I exclaimed. The woman glared at me and continued on her way, no doubt constructing elaborate revenge scenarios in her head.

“Why are you apologising?” asked my telephone interlocutor. I could not explain adequately.

It is moments like these which mean I have to prove I am better than I am. I should really learn to act my age.

Mistletoe & Whine

FOR complicated reasons I spent Christmas Day on my own this year. I do not wish you to feel sorry for me – unless it somehow leads to me gaining financially – and I know there are many people worse off. For example, I know there are those of you who had to spend Christmas with your relatives and loved ones.

I decided to make the best of it. On my way home on Christmas Eve I picked up the last chicken in Tesco, and I had a cracker left over from last year, so I was pretty much set for the best Christmas since the one before Ebenezer Scrooge was visited by the ghosts.

In the spirit of the season, I put a wash on just before noon, and started peeling some potatoes. Yes, I was a case study for some sort of charity and will probably appear, played by an actor, in an advert which is shown in the afternoon on one of the channels in the bottom half of the guide, but I was not going to let it stop me from having a good Christmas.

“This isn’t so bad,” I thought, the smell of a roasting chicken wafting from the oven, the Christmas tree lights twinkling by the window. It’s possible I hallucinated the carol singers carrying lanterns out in the street, we will never know. I am sure I saw Cliff Richard walking past.

I took a sip of sweet sherry, and started to wash up as I cooked. “Delia Smith never has to worry about this,” I thought. I ran the hot tap to fill up the bowl. “Hmm,” I thought, “This hot tap is taking a suspiciously long time to heat up. It is almost as if it is the cold tap.”

I waggled it to make sure. It was not. And so this Christmas became The Christmas I Spent On My Own With No Hot Water Or Central Heating.
Christmas Day is the very worst day of the year to have your boiler break down, even if you do not have a house full of people, because nobody wants to come out to fix a boiler when there are sprouts, purple Roses, and arguments on offer at home.

Then if the plumber does come out, the chance that he or she will have the part required to repair the boiler is so small that you could hide it behind the bit of Piers Morgan’s brain that deals with self-doubt. And there is no way he or she can obtain the part because nowhere is open for days, because it is Christmas.

The first thing that happens to you on Christmas Day when you have no hot water or central heating is that you immediately feel cold, even if you did not have the central heating switched on anyway.

The second thing that happens to you is you remember that 200 years ago, people managed perfectly well without hot water and central heating and modern day standards of sanitation, and they were all right apart from in the fact in those days if you were 20 you were considered middle-aged.

After my lunch – and one good thing about eating Christmas dinner alone is that you are guaranteed to win the paper hat in your cracker – I became overwhelmed by the need to have a bath, to prove I was not yet a barbarian. Surely that would be all right. I had boiled a kettle to wash the dishes. Admittedly I would probably need a few more kettles to warm up a bath, but how hard could it be, I wondered as I filled the bath with cold water…

I had my answer 56 minutes and 27 trips from the kitchen to the bathroom later. It turns out warming up a bath with kettles and pans is like taking out a jumbo jet with a peashooter.

Eventually I climbed in. It wasn’t really hot enough but I didn’t want to die in my own filth. “This isn’t so bad,” I thought, as I began to relax in the waters. “It’s not so cold outside, and I can manage for a few days. This is nice. I should have a bath instead of a shower more often.”

And with that, I decided the water was not warm enough. I leaned forward, and turned on the hot tap.

And that was why, on Christmas Day, just after the Queen’s speech, you heard that blood-curdling scream.

An Uncanny Look Into The Future

EVERY so often I like to take the FutureScope 3000 off the top of the cupboard, where it sits next to that juicer I bought that time, blow the dust off it, and take a look at what the days ahead have in store for us.

One day I will use it to find out what the lottery numbers will be – and hang the ethics. But for now, let me tell you what I discovered, and what you can expect during 2016.

JANUARY
Hundreds of thousands of families are hit by the Christmas Tree Tax, as, covered in needles like disgruntled hedgehogs, they take their denuded decorations to the shredder.
“Yeah, mate, £3,000 a household, £5,000 if you’re on benefits. Sure I mentioned it during the election campaign,” says George Osborne. “We put out an announcement at 5pm on the Friday before Christmas. Look, there it is, halfway down page 378, underneath the Membership of the Labour Party Tax.”

FEBRUARY
EU legislation specifies that Valentine cards now constitute legal contracts. Cards carry messages like I’ll Be Your Sexy Valentine Up To And Including May 31, 2016, and Be My Valentine Until Trevor Is Back On The Market.

MARCH
Hundreds of thousands march on Whitehall in protest at the Christmas Tree Tax. It is the lead item on the BBC Six O’Clock and Ten O’Clock News and Newsnight. They even mention it on The One Show. People on Twitter still complain that the “Bliar Broadcasting CorpoREDTORYation” has completely ignored the march.

APRIL
Apple announces the iWheel, a “hoverboard” which the user steers using an iPhone. Everybody you hate announces their intention to buy one.

MAY
Opponents and supporters of Jeremy Corbyn are equally delighted by the local, Scottish, and Welsh election results. “This just goes to show exactly what we have been saying about Corbyn,” say both opponents and supporters. “We’re still going to win the General Election,” says George Osborne.

JUNE
It is the Wettest June Since 2015. “Huh, and they say there’s global warming,” says an idiot who doesn’t understand basic science in a pub near you. Andy Murray wins the Men’s Singles title at Wimbledon in a kagoule after hurricane force winds take the roof off Centre Court.

JULY
Britain sees the very first hoverboard wedding, at a pop-up weddingorium in Shoreditch. There is hardly a dry eye in the house as the bride trundles slowly up the aisle towards her rotating groom. The occasion is only marred by the intervention of a fanatic, who rushes to the front when the registrar asks if there be any lawful impediment, and screams that they aren’t hoverboards because they have wheels.

AUGUST
All of the goodwill and belief in British competence inspired by the hugely successful London Olympics is undone, as Team GB arrive in Rio without their kit and have to do the Olympics in their pants. On the bright side, Jessica Ennis-Hill becomes the first woman to win the heptathlon in successive games in a Snoopy vest.

SEPTEMBER
Summer finally arrives just as the schools return for the new term. Secondary schools up and down the land issue compulsory cans of Lynx to boys aged between 13 and 17.

OCTOBER
The Apple iWheel is withdrawn from sale after somebody answers the phone while trundling, and flips straight into a delegation of nuns, knocking them over like nine-pins. A spokesperson for Apple says: “How could we possibly have anticipated that the worst people in the world would buy this product? Anyway, look at the new Apple iDrone. Isn’t it shiny?”

NOVEMBER
Donald Trump is elected the 45th President of the United States of America. “No, wait,” says President-elect Trump. “I was just kidding. Somebody bet me that I couldn’t run for president. I don’t want to be president. That’s why I said all those stupid things. Are you people insane?!” Jeremy Corbyn sends a message of sympathy.

DECEMBER
Santas across the country collapse from heatstroke under the strain of their false beards, as Britain struggles through the Warmest December Since 2015. Luckily, Britain’s army of kind-hearted hipsters step in, spraying their beards white, and sit in grottos up and down the country drinking sweet sherry from screw-top jars, saying “Ho! Ho! Ho!” ironically, and telling children that their Christmas lists are hilariously 2015.

Friday Interview: The Socialist Magician

One from my old Graham Bandage blog…

In the latest of an occasional series of interviews, Graham Bandage talks to Declan Blunt, one of only two socialist magicians.

Graham Bandage: Declan Blunt, you’re one of only two socialist magicians, aren’t you?

Declan Blunt: That’s right, it’s a small niche, but there’s room for the other chap. That’s what socialism’s about, sharing. And magic, of course.

GB: What makes a socialist take up magic?

DB: Well, of course, there’s a long tradition of magic on the left. Marx himself came up with the three-ring trick as an allegory for the separation of legislature, executive and judiciary, then Lenin himself came up with the three-ring trick as an allegory of legislature, executive and judiciary, and Stalin used to cut men in half.

stalin-provda

GB: That’s amazing. How did he do that?

DB: Oh, he had a massive saw. I mean, he didn’t put them back together, but it was probably a relief after the gulags. That’s the thing with Stalin – a showman. He used to wear a fez when he did his tricks. That’s where Tommy Cooper got the idea.

GB: Can you take us through your act? I mean, I’m really interested to find out how a socialist magician differs from, say, a conservative magician like Paul Daniels.

DB: Well, for a start, there’s no oppression in my act. I don’t use a magic wand for starters as it’s a phallic symbol and the colour is unnecessarily divisive.

GB: Well call me Thick Jack Clot if you like, but how can you do magic without a wand?

DB: You do know it’s not real don’t you.

GB: Er, yes.

DB: I don’t use animals, so, for example, I would never pull a rabbit out of a hat.

GB: You shouldn’t even put one IN a hat in the first place. That’s just cruel.

DB: Yes, anyway, I don’t put women in boxes and stick swords in them.

GB: Well, yeah. I mean, that’s dangerous. Clearly.

DB: Right, so I don’t do anything that’s oppressive…

GB: You could have a tiny little hat and put it on the rabbit. That’d be OK, but it wouldn’t be much of a trick.

DB: … and I don’t do anything that glorifies capitalism.

GB: So what tricks do you do, then?

DB: Well, I only really have the one. It’s mostly polemic.

GB: One? It’d better be stonking.

DB: Oh, it is. I get an expensive watch from somebody in the audience and wrap it in a handkerchief. Then I smash it with a hammer.

GB: Yeah?

DB: Yeah, and then I take all the pieces and hand one each to every member of the audience. Makes ’em think.

GB: Declan Blunt, thank you.

Defending the Indefensible

I’m staring at my Twitter stream at the moment with a sort of baffled horror as my left wing chums rend their clothing at Labour’s betrayal of the poor and the halt and the lame.

Labour’s stance on the second reading of the welfare bill was not edifying. It made me feel queasy, quite frankly. Anything which makes the lot of the poor in this rapidly fracturing society worse goes against the instincts of any decent Labour politician.

But here are two things you need to consider.

First, even if every Labour MP had voted against the bill last night it would still have been carried. The Tories have an ABSOLUTE MAJORITY in the House of Commons. There is some dispute over whether pairing practices had an effect on the vote, based on the numbers on the Government benches who voted, and how that number was less than the total number of opposition MPs. But if Labour had announced that it was going to vote against the bill rather than abstain, do you seriously think the Tory whips would not have enforced a maximum turnout?

Second, England has swallowed the Tory line that welfare is about sponging off decent taxpaying people. It just has. The country has moved to the right. (Scotland is a special case. I ain’t goin’ there.) Combine Tory and UKIP support across the country and it’s just shy of 50%. Add the Tories’ coalition partners, the Lib Dems, and it’s about 58%. Represented in that 58% are hundreds of thousands of people who used to vote for Labour. And Labour cannot win until it gets all of those people back. Remember, even if Labour had retained all its seats in Scotland, the Tories still have an ABSOLUTE MAJORITY.

So if Labour had voted against the bill last night it would have been a futile gesture, and not only a futile gesture, but one which put it on the opposite side of the majority of British people. It would have been used as ammunition by Osborne for the next five years. “Look at them,” he would tell the British public, “even now they still want to take your money and give it to the feckless.” It doesn’t matter that he’s culpably wrong about that. It doesn’t matter that he was culpably wrong about the cause of the deficit being Labour’s fault. It speaks to voters’ prejudices about Labour and reinforces them. And in the end it prevents people who would benefit from a Labour government from voting for one.

Osborne dealt Labour a bad hand last night. He’s really good at doing that. He knew exactly what he was doing. At worst, he’d split the parliamentary party. At best, he’d paint the entire party as reckless spending addicts. And somewhere between those outcomes, he’d have overwhelming support for the Welfare Bill. He couldn’t lose.

By abstaining on the bill, Labour played that hand the best way it could. It was never going to win – especially with the party’s base howling “betrayal” – but it achieved the best losing outcome. Was it high-principled politics? No.

But politics can’t always be like The West Wing – which, you have to remember, featured an idealistic Democrat president, while during its run in the real world the American public voted for Bush TWICE.

It would be lovely if the Labour Party were a beacon of hope for the nation, giving our consciences a healthy glow, making us feel good inside.

But it doesn’t matter how brightly your beacon shines if the country is looking the other way.

Labour has to use the low politics of the Tories against them, to show them up as the short-termist, family silver-selling, make-it-up-as-they-go-along merchants they truly are. If it does it right, it can replicate the success of the SNP, which is the master of using low cunning in the service of high principles.

And it has to go TO the voters who abandoned them where they are right now, and gently lead them back. You don’t do that by telling them they’re evil or wrong. You show them how their own lives would be better under a Labour government. You show them that you’re just as concerned as them about where their taxes are spent. And you show them, above all, that you’re competent enough to deliver on your promises.

Because the only thing that will make the lot of the poor in this rapidly fracturing society any better is the return of a Labour government in 2020, leaving nobody behind.