Category Archives: satire

Backto60 takes The Great Pension Robbery to the Edinburgh fringe

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Backto60 brought their campaign for full restitution to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe over the Bank Holiday weekend with the help of two Scottish women actors and comedians.

For half an hour at Edinburgh’s St Andrews Square Sandra McNeely and Julie Coombe, who are well known on Scottish TV, tell the tough story of the fight for 3.8 million 50s born women to get full restitution for their lost pensions when successive governments increased the pension age from 60 to 66 with all the facts, interspersed with songs, poetry and jokes.

Sandra McNeely (top) and Julie Coombe

The no holds bar performance castigated everyone from George Osborne, the former Chancellor to Guy Opperman, the current pensions minister, and of course, Boris Johnson. It gave a really good synopsis of injustice facing this group of women ending with the sad fact that during the half hour performance two more women would have died without ever receiving their pension.

Sandra McNeely has appeared in the TV series, Taggart, Happy Hollidays, Scot Squad, and the drama Ashes available on Amazon Prime.

Julie Coombe has appeared on TV in Hope Springs and on stage recently in Lena! and Hormonal Housewives.

Both are very supportive of the Backto60 campaign and gave pro bono performances with the aim of spreading the word to festival fringe audiences. You can watch the video above.

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After sending up Boris Johnson, Joe Politics turns on Keir Starmer

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The honeymoon must truly be over for Keir Starmer as Labour leader. Out today is a biting satirical video from Joe Politics on Keir Starmer and his move to shift Labour to the small c conservative right to attract back those “Red Wall ” voters. Corbynistas must be enjoying this one. Indeed Tommy Corbyn has already tweeted lol.

Boris Johnson’s and his Cabinet cronies real Christmas message to you all

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I am looking forward to a wonderful Christmas. Click on the link below.

This is a revised link using You Tube after someone who did not like this got Facebook to take down the original. I wonder why and who did it.

There is not much more I can say about this except it is beyond satire. Some of us might just think it is really what goes on in their minds.

Murder at the laundrette: A Cunard experience not in the brochure 

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Anybody on a world Cunard cruise cannot but be charmed  by the civilised behaviour of the crew and fellow guests. A day does not go by without any guest being encouraged to enjoy themselves by the large crew and fellow guests.Everybody is very considerate and helpful to each other. 

But there is one room in Queen Victoria where all this breaks down. It is called the laundrette. Here the genteel atmosphere throughout the ship evaporates in a mix of soap suds and wet clothes.

The laundrette is one of the few free services on board but there are only two or three machines for 100 or more cabins. And with 700 people going on a 108 day world cruise plus a turnover of some 1300 people at major ports demand is high.

To get a machine normally polite men and women are transformed into duplicitous schemers resorting to any ruse to get their hands on the machines.

When wiley women and aggressive men get going to grab a machine anything goes.

One person even came armed with two fake ” Out of Order ” notices to  attach to a washing machine and a dryer so she could get exclusive use during the voyage. The ruse was discovered when other suspicious guests tried using the machines and found they worked perfectly.

More direct action has involved taking other people’s clothes out of driers and washing machines when the guests using the machines are out of the laundrette.

One poor guest who had just loaded a washing machine and went out to get more dirty clothes came back five minutes later to find another guest had emptied her machine and replaced it with her clothes. By then she had started the machine and the first guest could do nothing about it.

As for men aggression can spill over. One man furious that another guy had taken out his washing turned to the other and said ” How dare you run your fingers through my wife’s knickers “. A fist fight broke out and it is said that Cunard threw both of them off the boat at the next port.

No wonder when you visit the Cunard laundrette you find a line of grim faced men and women guarding their machines with their lives and warning you there is a two hour wait before you need to come back.

So far the ethos of take no prisoners has not yet led to any deaths. But there is still another month on this voyage so anything could happen.

In the meantime nobody has copied the iconic Levi jeans advertisement where a  young guy goes to the laundrette to strip off and put all his  dirty clothes in the machines. But perhaps Cunard’s strict dress code of smart attire after 6.0 pm and a dinner jacket and cocktail dress on gala night puts off people from going to the laundrette in the nude. But again there is still time…

Where’s St Helena? It’s off Jersey isn’t it?

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St Helena Pic Credit St Helena government

St Helena: in the South Atlantic not off Jersey. Pic Credit: St Helena Government

CROSS POSTED ON BYLINE.COM 

A rather amusing aside was missed by the national press and the BBC when they reported on the scandal last week of  St Helena’s  spanking new £285m airport which can’t be used by jets because it is too windy to land.

True they had fun with the video of a British Airways  jet having to abort a landing because of the wind. So no chance yet of a new tourist boom because the only way there is by a six week journey on an ageing mail boat.

But they missed an extraordinary table hidden in a report commissioned by the St Helena government about where the island was located.

The National  Audit Office reports  that a marketing company- Acorn Tourist Consulting – asked lots of savvy long haul tourists where  is St Helena.

Extraordinarily 19 per cent put the island in the Mediterranean – perhaps near Malta or Cyprus.

Another 15 per cent put the island in the English Channel – perhaps confusing Jersey’s St Helier with St  Helena.

Another 8 per cent thought it was a tropical paradise in the South Pacific – perhaps near Fiji!

And another 5 per cent thought it was in the Indian Ocean – somewhere near Sri Lanka perhaps.

And 15 per cent admitted  honestly they hadn’t a clue.

This left just 38 per cent who correctly identified it as a rocky island in the South Atlantic.

Mind you it might be as well that the Department of International Development has mucked up the project. Not only will it give it time for the island to find a jet that could land safely there but it will give isolated  St Helena a bit longer to prepare for the tourist hordes.

For the same company which discovered the ignorance of British tourists has issued another health warning about going there.

It warns: “There will be new expectations of St. Helena as a destination. In just over 4 hours the tourist will have flown from South Africa to the Island. No time to adjust, reflect, read, and prepare for arrival as they do at the moment. This is likely to make visitors more demanding and less forgiving. They will start to lose sight of the remoteness and challenges an island 1,200 miles off the coast of Africa and 1,800 miles from Brazil faces.

Today, very few tourists leave St. Helena disappointed, but this may change once tourists start arriving by air. St. Helena then runs the risk of over-promising and under-delivering, and this will lead to some tourists returning home and not passing on in a positive way that most effective form of marketing – word of mouth.”

 Perhaps it might be better to look for St Helena off Jersey after all.

St Helena

The report’s findings in the National Audit Office report

Have a laugh and watch tonight Rory Bremner and the mandarins

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rory bremnerDepressed or elated about the election result? Have a few laughs tonight and watch Rory Bremner’s election special about  who was holding the real power in Britain while the country was going to the polls.

I have been working as a consultant to the one off programme  which will explore the growing power of private companies running Whitehall and the role of mandarins. I know he has talked “off the record” to some pretty well placed political and Whitehall sources. You might be surprised to find out who is running the country and where we are selling our Whitehall wares. The programme is produced by the Vera – the company that has twice exposed MPs in lobbying stings – the latest being Sir Malcolm Rifkind and Jack straw.

Plus of course the inimitable impressions and the usual stuff from this comedian. It’s on BBC 2 at 10.0pm. It’s called Rory Bremner’s Election Report.

Boris Johnson’s unlucky dirty tricks on the No 13 bus

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The Number 13 bus - not to be used by Boris for a dirty tricks! Pictire Credit: Commons

The Number 13 bus – not to be used by Boris for a dirty tricks! Picture Credit: Commons

Is there no desperate act a politician will stoop if his mate could lose his seat on may 7? Well Boris Johnson is prepared to do it to save Mike Freer, his Tory colleague standing for Finchley and Golders Green even it means telling porkies in the seat that once returned Margaret Thatcher and has a large Jewish vote.

Threatened according to another Tory peer and now eminence gris of the pollsters, Lord Ashcroft, with losing his seat to Labour’s Sarah Sackman on May 7, Boris thought he could perform a minor miracle and save a much loved bus route,the number 13 from Golders Green to Aldwych and swing the vote.

Unfortunately for him his success turned out to be a lie – because he has no power to do so particularly under the purdah rules in a General Election which forbids politicians ( and Boris is of course a Parliamentary candidate elsewhere) from taking controversial decisions for electoral gains.

This didn’t stop Mike Freer – see below – posing with Boris on his website announcing he had saved the Number 13.

As he says on his website:

” London Mayor, Boris Johnson, has today announced that the Number 13 Bus from Golders Green to Aldwych has been retained. The Mayor’s announcement follows a long-running campaign by Mike Freer to save the much loved service. Mike raised the issue of the 13 bus during the Mayor’s visit to Golders Green last week.

Mike comments ““I’ve already had a meeting with TfL and told them they were wrong and when Boris came to Golders Green recently I told him he needed to go back to the drawing board.

The proposals have been dropped and the number 13 is going nowhere. I’m very happy about it. It’s always useful when you can get things done.

“Being an MP you don’t always get your own way but sometimes you can get a result like this. Under Boris’s mayoralty, the number 13 is going nowhere.”

Err Unfortunately not true Mr Freer. That is not the story Transport for London are telling the people as this letter shows:

Dear Stakeholder

We recently consulted on proposals for changes to bus routes along Finchley Road and Abbey Road, which included the replacement of route 13 with alterations to routes 82 and 139. We received over 3000 responses to the consultation which is now closed. However, concerns have been expressed that the consultation has been partially undertaken during the pre-election period which runs until 7th May.

It is therefore our intention not to progress the scheme at this time.  The comments received from this consultation will however be used to inform future bus network planning in the Finchley Road and Abbey Road areas, and any resulting proposals would be subject to further public consultation.

 Yours sincerely

Peter Bradley

Head of Consultation

Transport for London

All that has happened is that Transport for London has already postponed the consultation until after the election – when it will come back again. No doubt Mr Freer hopes he will have been safely re-elected by then and of course will have no interest in any cuts that follow for his constituents.

Tweet Wars: How humourless Jobcentre Plus was humiliated by bolshie bloggers

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People queuing outside Jobcentre Plus. Pic courtesy: The Guardian

People queuing outside Jobcentre Plus. Pic courtesy: The Guardian

For the last year an extraordinary war has been going on between the Department of Work and Pensions and  some of Britain’s  tweeters and bloggers.

The battle has been over the centuries old right to free speech, to send up self-seeking bureaucrats and insult and satirize government ministers and the heads of private companies profiting from public services. This example is very modern, the battleground is Twitter rather than over some pamphlet.

 The row began over a year ago when the Department of Work and Pensions used Twitter’s complaint procedure to lodge a trademark complaint against @UKJCP, a satirical  account attacking Jobcentre Plus.

The application came from one Jon Woodcock, calling himself brand and information manager – his actual title is senior public information publishing manager – objecting to the site using the Jobcentre Plus trademark.

 What was extraordinary was his reasoning. I quote from the document :

 “The @UKJCP account has been set up with deliberate and malicious intent to devalue and criticise the work of Jobcentre Plus. In addition, there are a number of rude and potentially libelous tweets aimed at UK government, elected politicians and the heads of large private sector organisations who are committed to working with government on reducing unemployment.”

Not surprisingly Twitter quite rightly rejected such a request.

But the ministry came back – this time I am told using a discreet phone call – specifically objecting to what are called PTs – parody tweets – which were frankly taking the Mickey out of Jobcentre Plus – but where quite clearly linked to information that showed it couldn’t possibly have come from them. Some were true. One was a link to an article showing Jobcentre Plus backed sending claimants to work at strip clubs and for porn film companies – providing they didn’t participate- which I ‘m afraid is correct.

There has been storm of protest from bloggers and tweeters who used Twitter’s appeal process to overturn the decision. The  account was restored on February 8 after ten days.

An official spokesperson from the DWP Press Office told me :

“The changes we’re making to the welfare system to ensure that work pays are important to many people, and we work hard to make sure claimants have access to correct factual information. 

 “We alerted twitter to an account that was falsely sending out tweets claiming to have been published by our official account. It’s for twitter to decide what action is appropriate – we have not asked for any account to be taken down or suspended.”

 An official spokesperson for @UKJCP told me:”I am sure @DWPgovuk has no basis to complain about anyone who does a Parody of a Parody Tweet …Some of what was tweeted by me after 9/1/14 was focused on letting followers know what DWP and Jobcentre rights they have. I take the view that the DWP inspired suspension of @UKJCP was not only to censor Freedom of Expression and criticism of the Government but an attempt to suppress the sharing of rights based information.”

What is interesting is that I have been told that NO minister – not even Iain Duncan Smith – asked for Jobcentre Plus  to close down this Twitter account,. The idea that ministers, MPs, and anyone running a big private business should be immune from rude comments or libelous views seems to have been taken by managers at Jobcentre Plus’s HQ in Sheffield

Sorry DWP there is a very long tradition in this country from John Wilkes and Liberty to Hogarth,Steve Bell and comedians like Mark Thomas, to poke fun and be rude and tear the governing classes apart. David Cameron is regularly portrayed by Steve Bell as a condom ( he doesn’t like it and has complained to no avail to The Guardian).

If Mps and big bosses don’t like it they should take out a writ and sue. But they know that under the coalition the cost of a writ has risen to £1600 and legal fees are phenomenal. And they know claimants aren’t worth suing because they could never recover their money. That’s why they would love the government to resort to censorship, particularly if they haven’t even asked them to do it.

The Duck House: From MPs expenses to Whitehall farce

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ImageThe MPs expenses scandal exposed by the Daily Telegraph nearly five years ago  did more to damage the reputation of Parliament than anything else in recent history. There were hardly any MPs who had not put in some dodgy  or dubious claim and the repercussions are still being felt today as an ex Labour minister starts a six month jail sentence.

This spirited production of The Duck House now running at London’s Vaudeville theatre captures the panic felt by MPs at the time but  turns the whole proceedings into a series of jokes and a Whitehall farce in the tradition of Brian Rix before he became Lord Rix and a great campaigner for the mentally handicapped.

 Ben Miller, as the greedy money grabbing turncoat Labour MP,Robert Houston, with thousands of dodgy expenses receipts heads a cast often caught with their trousers down.

His wife  Felicity,is played by Nancy Carroll, a woman who can’t wait for hubbie’s defection to the Tories and gives a wonderful performance showing how inadequate she would be as an Mp’s secretary even if he is claiming for her. While their son James Musgrave, gives a remarkably good performance of as a gangly student staring at his laptop for much of the performance repeating the word ” fuck” as he reads his latest threatening emails  from the hoods because he can’t meet his gambling debts

There is also a  very loyal  Russian cook, Ludmilla, played by Debbie Chazen, who ends up campaigning for UKIP after being exposed for being employed without a work permit. Life has imitated art tonight (Feb 8) when Mark Harper, the immigration minister, resigned after it was revealed that he was employing a cleaner who had no right to stay in the UK permanently.

Then there is the straight man – David Cameron’s go between – Sir Norman Cavendish, played by Simon Shepherd. He is the man who gets covered in manure  as he negotiates Robert Houston’s switch from New Labour to the Tories. He is also found to have a secret life meeting a modern Miss Whiplash who improbably is also the girlfriend of the MP’s son. This might need updating now- Westminster gossip has  it that it is some  young Tory government advisers who like to visit Madams at the moment.

Spiced with a few up to date jokes – including a risque reference to David Cameron and Rebekah Brooks,( hacking trial lawyers please note,) the show is more farce and political banter than a contribution to the current debate.

Don’t go if you expect to be enlightened about MPs expenses, though all the examples are based on fact. Do go if you want a rollicking, funny, evening and enjoy farce. The subject was MPs’ expenses but  they could put together a farce on anything.

The review on this blog follows free press tickets. The theatre staff are also very helpful to disabled people providing transport to get wheelchair bound people  down to the stalls. Unfortunately they do not have a disabled toilet but have made arrangements for people to use one at a theatre next door.

 

 

 

 

Hating Britain with the Daily Mail: A song medley

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It is a Saturday night and the row over the Daily Mail, Ed Miliband and now Mehdi Hasan continues unabated. Here is a collection of anti Daily Mail songs. Who says satire is dead in Britain.The one below is bv Peter Bickerton The Daily Mail Song (a daily dose of hate).

I have just been sent by @BBCRadioForum another song by Amanda Palmer at the Roundhouse. Dear Daily Mail. Avert your eyes Paul Dacre, Ed Miliband and perhaps Mrs Angry from Barnet, this is a bit risque and contains female nudity.

And now Steve White has added his own song based on a Daily Mail story of an Ecstasy Death Girl. You can both listen to it and download it free here.
From Beastrabban Weblog here is a Chris Cohen number on the Daily Mail in 2009.

Finally so far – for those with long memories- here is a song from Irish band Blackthorn- on the Daily Mail’s 1920s coverage about another Sinn Fein rising. Some joker suggests they reported it from Holyhead, don’t know whether it is true.

Some And for those interested in more see Mike Sivier’s Vox Political website for ” You Hate Britain” by Mitch Benn which name checks Paul Dacre. I hope Paul Dacre has a sense of humour. Tom Baldwin, Labour’s chief media spokesman, tells me that a medley of these songs will be played at next year’s Labour Party Conference before the singing of the Red ” Ed” Flag.