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14th August 2008
North and South. And a giant inflatable turd
Comedy is all about timing. If you look the work of any of
the great comedians – Richard Pryor, Billy Connolly, erm, Tom O’Connor – you’ll
see that timing is everything. And now a new name can be added to that list:
David Cameron. Whilst on a visit to some of the more delicately balanced constituencies
of the North, Cameron was hard at work trying to help people to forget that it
was his political Grandmother that pulled the still-beating heart from many a
Northern industry. What he didn’t need whilst munching on a tripe sandwich with
the local pigeon fancying group was a report from, reputedly, his favourite
think tank recommending that vast numbers of Northerners should head south
before they and their lice-ridden cities are sucked down to the tenth level of
Hell.
The report from Policy Exchange is ludicrous on so many
levels its hilarious. The findings have been summarised as declaring cities
such as Sunderland, Liverpool,
Bradford and Hull fail their inhabitants as ‘beyond revival’,
meaning people become 'trapped'. The solution? People from these areas should
move en mass to Oxford,
Cambridge and London to achieve the
standard of living they desire. So where do you begin picking holes in a plan
even Baldrick would distance himself from?
1. The reason Oxford and Cambridge are nice places to live is because they are not full of people from Sunderland.
2. Yes, wages are lower out side of the Valhalla of South
East England. But in the North of England you can get a 3 bedroomed semi with a
garage and gardens for your lower wage. Even with London weighting, the same kind of job will
afford you a tarpaulin-covered shoe box with optional pot to piss in. But there
is a Starbucks just round the corner…
3. What would happen if everyone did bugger off from, say, Rochdale and leave it deserted? Could it be re-opened as
a giant Northern-themed adventure park for affluent Southerners to come to?
People could ride the roller-coaster akin to Disney’s Big Thunder Mountain,
only based on the towns industrial history – Mega Mill Mound: deadly yet
educational. Visitors could see the 40 foot effigy of Lisa Stansfield and the
Town Hall that impressed Hitler so much he wanted to have it shipped over brick
by brick for use as a tool shed. You could have one of those olde-worlde photos
taken at cast cost, with the family decked out in flat caps with a stuffed
whippet in the shot…
4. Once again the picture is painted that everyone down
south has a successful job in The City, earns a six-figure salary and has
children called Pascal and Sicily.
But surely the long-running documentary Eastenders has taught us different?
Otherwise, who is it that eats all the jellied-eels and murders the English
language? Are those greasy cockneys simply fictional propaganda? Let’s have a
butchers at the ruby with apple and pears up then pony and kettle. Or some
shite.
And so, the report caused such a ruckus that it was given coverage
on the main TV news bulletins where one of the authors sought to defend the
conclusions. Whilst not wanting to judge a book by its cover (meh, bollocks),
or indeed a tosser by the way that he looks, it was difficult to avoid
stereotyping the chap on first viewing. Looking about as immersed in real life
as Paris Hilton’s Shiatsu, he sought to defend his argument with a
charisma-free whinge. Kudos to the chap for supporting his bollocks (so to
speak), but it will have done him no favours with the people who live North of Bedford.
And thus, the North-South divide debate, from which we’re
only ever a quiet news day away, is reopened for the billionth time. Cameron
may have called the report barmy and people all over the country with the
ability to count without using fingers and toes will have concurred, but it
still doesn’t stop the slanging match between the Laandanars and the
Northerners. Of course, we at the BoF are above all of that…
Isn’t it just typical? You’ve been on the Xbox for 5 hours
straight, recording what will surely go down in history as the greatest score
ever on Guitar Hero when a giant inflatable turd wipes out the power lines,
interrupts the electricity supply and all your game data is lost. And,
amazingly, only half of that is made up. And that’s the crap about Guitar Hero,
not the bit about the inflatable crap. Yes, Swiss Museum The Zentrum Paul Klee
lost temporary ownership of their massive blow-up chod as is set off on a 200
metre rampage of death and destruction. Well, it broke a greenhouse window. The
artwork, know as ‘Complex Shit’ (honestly), has safety features that mean it
should have deflated. This has caused some local residents to fear that it’s
possessed*. In response, the museum has been ordered to ‘securely tether their
shite to the ground’ or face invasion by the Russians.
The Olympics are in full flow! The BBC have a monkey! Steve
Redgrave has a pac-a-mac! But it’s all happening when only the manically
depressed or unemployable are watching. Damn those Chinese and their Communist
daylight hours. Damn them I say!
* - maybe
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