The IPAD...again...

You will soon see that this post has got feck all to do with the ipad...this is simply my cunning plan to garner some new visitors to my blog. I’ll report back in a few days to see if it worked. If it doesn’t I may have to go back to random mentions of naked women. That gets them here by the droves.

They arrive with their mouths hangin’ open, using their left-handed mouse and what they get is little ol’ me. What a bummer.

Anywho, the real reason for the blog – apologies for the minor distraction – and hello new reader if you have stayed on – was that I wanted to talk politics. Kinda.

You see there is so much apathy concerning politics these days I was afraid that if I alluded to this in my title you would all have moved on.

For the benefit of all my overseas (and wise) readers, we in dear old blighty are just about to go through a General Election. The members of our parliament have downed tools, set aside their mistresses and dodgy expenses claim forms to try and win the hearts and minds of the great unwashed. And while they put forward their winning manifestos, slag off their opponents, weave spin into smoke and mirrors I’d like to take this opporchancity to remind you of how crushingly stupid and self-serving some of them can be.

(I love Billy Connolly’s comment regarding politicians when he said that the desire to be one should be the very reason they get barred from doing it.)

Seeing as this is a UK election I wanted to relay some quips from the UK but our people here appear to more coy when it comes to displaying their Stupid Qualifications, so I’ve quoted a few from America to get us kicked off.

Don’t blame me...maybe it’s just that the interweb community in the US is better at recording the foot in mouth moments of their public servants.

George W is always good for a quote. Someone once said that it was better to remain silent and appear stupid than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. Mr Bush Jnr is a man who should have listened.

Perhaps if he had made more of a study of politics he might have come across those wise words of the British war-time PM, Winston Churchill who is reported to have said – “We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.”

Between you and me, I seriously doubt that all of the daft things that were attributed to him really did escape from his gob. Surely no-one is that obtuse? Whatever the truth of it – and see, I am prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt, he is still good for a laugh...

"This thaw -- took a while to thaw, it's going to take a while to unthaw." --George W. Bush, on liquidity in the markets, Alexandria, La., Oct. 20, 2008

"I didn't grow up in the ocean -- as a matter of fact -- near the ocean -- I grew up in the desert. Therefore, it was a pleasant contrast to see the ocean. And I particularly like it when I'm fishing." --George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Sept. 26, 2008

"Anyone engaging in illegal financial transactions will be caught and persecuted." --George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Sept. 19, 2008

"We're fixing to go down to Galveston and obviously are going to see a devastated part of this fantastic state." --George W. Bush, Houston, Sept. 16, 2008

"Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter." --George W. Bush, in parting words to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy at his final G-8 Summit, punching the air and grinning widely as the two leaders looked on in shock, Rusutsu, Japan, July 10, 2008

"Amigo! Amigo!" --George W. Bush, calling out to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in Spanish at the G-8 Summit, Rusutsu, Japan, July 10, 2008

(This one is my very favourite – cracks me up every time. You can just see him – yuhoo, amigo. Oh, that’s, like, not Italian?)

And finally displaying a modicum of self-awareness he is reported to have said...

"I'll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office." --George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., May 12, 2008.



And now for some Palinisms...

"I think on a national level your Department of Law there in the White House would look at some of the things that we've been charged with and automatically throw them out." --Sarah Palin, referring to a department that does not exist while attempting to explain why as president she wouldn't be subjected to the same ethics investigations that compelled her to resign as governor of Alaska, ABC News interview, July 7, 2009


"How sad that Washington and the media will never understand; it's about country. And though it's honorable for countless others to leave their positions for a higher calling and without finishing a term, of course we know by now, for some reason a different standard applies for the decisions I make." --Sarah Palin, July 4, 2009


"It may be tempting and more comfortable to just keep your head down, plod along, and appease those who demand: 'Sit down and shut up,' but that's the worthless, easy path; that's a quitter's way out." --Sarah Palin, announcing her resignation as governor, July 3, 2009



Dan Quayle did well in the stupid stakes, didn’t he?


'A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the polls.' - Dan Quayle

'I was recently on a tour of Latin America, and the only regret I have was that I didn't study Latin harder in school so I could converse with those people.' - Dan Quayle

'It's not pollution that is hurting the environment, it's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.' - Dan Quayle

'If we don't succeed we run the risk of failure.' - Dan Quayle




Boris Johnson is the Mayor of London. He was an MP but he resigned, I assume because he was tired of dragging himself through a hedge backwards before going to work. Whatever the case, dear old Boris is always good for a quote. Provided you can actually make out what he’s saying what with those posh leather shoes in his mouth.

Pyramid of piffle [no, not his views on Liverpool but a report Petronella Wyatt was his mistress]

Tremendous, little short of superb. On cracking form. [after being sacked from his role in the Tory shadow cabinet]

My chances of being PM are about as good as the chances of finding Elvis on Mars, or my being reincarnated as an olive.


I love tennis with a passion. I challenged Boris Becker to a match once and he said he was up for it but he never called back. I bet I could make him run around.

Boris Johnson



Here’s a random one – just because I like it and because I feel I need to put in more stupid Brits...

Because it was quite dark in that corner I was being pushed towards shaking hands with somebody just as a matter of courtesy and then it transpired it was President Mugabe.

Jack Straw (former Foreign Secretary) tries to explain away a huge political faux-pas.



Mine is the first generation able to contemplate the possibility that we may live our entire lives without going to war or sending our children to war.

Tony Blair quote

Now is not the time for sound-bites. I can feel the hand of history on my shoulder' - On the signing of the Good Friday Agreement

Tony Blair quote


Conflict is not inevitable, but disarmament is... everyone now accepts that if there is a default by Saddam the international community must act to enforce its will.

Tony Blair quote

Tony B is of course the former British Prime Minister. He started promisingly (who can forget the optimism of his theme tune “Things Can Only Get Better”?) but whose abiding legacy after his ten years of leadership was probably going to War in Iraq. The day he resigned as Prime Minister he also gave up being an MP (never having liked the House of Commons or Britain for that matter, hence spending most of his time as leader abroad or covering foreign matters) and was appointed, perhaps with a soupcon of irony, as a peace envoy.


And you can’t quote British politicians without name-checking the master of the barb...the man whose face is the measurement of every ugly baby born in the UK in the last century...I give you Winston Churchill.


"It is impossible to obtain a conviction for sodomy from an English jury. Half of them don't believe that it can physically be done, and the other half are doing it."


"In war, you can only be killed once, but in politics, many times."


"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."
(And now you know what they really think about us.)


"He has all of the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire. "

"It is a fine thing to be honest, but it is also very important to be right. "

"History will be kind to me for I intend to write it. "

"I'm just preparing my impromptu remarks."

Winston gets the last word too. Bear this thought in mind the next time you are considering just whose name to give that little tick to. Assuming of course you can be arsed.

“A politician needs the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn't happen.”