OUT FOR THE COUNT.

Yesterday there was an election for our State Government. The Labour Party romped home with whopping increased majority. The Liberal (conservative) Party, the Party that started off the campaign in fine style by having its star candidate not being able to stand because he forgot to enrol to vote, was donkey walloped. That was a bit unfair on the part of the voters because the Labour Party stood on policies that were only marginally different from the conservatives. (Don't think Labour wanted kiddies back up the chimneys, but I'll have to double check on that.)

I spent the night of the election at the local Electoral Commission Office counting votes. I can report that Osama bin Laden received only one vote. A disappointing result considering the amount of media coverage his campaign received. One voter had written on his (I'm assuming it was a male voter, but I could be jumping to an unwarranted conclusion) ballot paper "I slept with your wife". This one had to be put in the Informal Vote pile as the voter had not specified which candidate's wife was engaged in this activity to garner votes for her husband. Another to hit the Informal Vote pile informed us that the voter had gone to the real power behind the candidate's would be throne and "had slept with his girlfriend". Again lack of specificity ... and gross lack of taste and judgment.

The ballot paper inscribed with "You are ALL fuckwits' was pored over for a long time by our team before being declared as the only legitimate and carefully considered vote cast in the seat. "No confidence" was scrawled across one paper, the Electoral Commisision has made a public appeal for this voter to come forward and identify him or herself. The Commission offers free psychological counselling for voters with low self esteem.

Our team was led by Colonel Mainwaring's 112 year old idiot brother. So when all the other teams had finished counting at 10 p.m. and were tucking into the takeaway vindaloo and knocking back cans of Fosters we were still up to our lugholes in uncounted votes. The good Mainwaring had told us that he "didn't trust those new fangled automatic counting machines, so we will be counting the votes manually." That on top of the oft repeated "Oh, no. What I meant by that was that you should do it this way." Sitting opposite this man counting and collating Everest piles of ballot papers while he was doing likewise, BUT AUDIBLY, made for much efficiency, accuracy and a crystal clear understanding of the motives of axe murderers.

At 11 p.m. we were done. Not a skerrick of vindaloo to be seen in the kitchen, just a room awash with empty cans. With any luck I will be out of the country by the time they pull up the floorboards and identify Mainwaring after reassembling his body parts.

The Season of Goodwill is finally upon us!

Fantastic festive weather we're having here, although not quite the same as portrayed on the snowy white cards around the shops. In fact it's more of a force ten gale mingled with that disgusting drizzle stuff sort of day today. And it's making the cheap Christmas lights that are strung up down Lord Street like scrappy left-over millet sprays spark and fizz. (Great fun when they explode over old biddies heads though.) Everywhere was full of male shoppers this afternoon looking lost and pathetic. Mainly standing in embarrassed looking groups in lingerie departments.

I love this time of year. Everyone's full of the Christmas spirit, (or in Fleetwood's case...just spirit, mainly rum and vodka) battering each other's shins with their wheelchairs and their baby buggies. Taking each other's eyes out with their brollies (why is that the majority of brollies are owned by sadistic midgets?). There was a queue in Littlewoods earlier that stretched out of the door and over the tram lines. I was going to hang around to see what happened when the bad tempered Welsh tram driver with a distinctly anti-Christmas attitude came hurtling down the tracks, but I couldn't be arsed because of the rain. The little red trains chugging pointlessly round the windows of numerous shops are good fun though. As are those horrible dolls with bandaged umbilical cords and down-syndrome eyes that are being sold everywhere. And the rubber snowmen with American voices that are so entertaining when you've got to wait for three quarters of an hour to buy a pound of sprouts. They're not at all repetitive and annoying and screechy and unpleasant and the one in Woolworth's that ended up wedged down a screaming child's throat had absolutely nothing to do with me.

What I particularly like are the naff presents that people are going to receive this Chrimbo if the baskets full of crap that were being carried around are anything to go off. Vile pottery ornaments of bluetits that look as though they've been eaten by a cat and then sicked up. Tartan socks and Rupert Bear scarves with barely noticeable stitches pulled in them. Bottles of cologne that are made from whale's scrotums...and you can tell. And the amounts of booze being sold! The people round here ought to just fill a trough with meths and go to sleep in it over the course of the winter.

That's what I intend to do anyhow.

MUCH OBLIGED OSAMA.

"What are we to call whatever it is that George W. Bush is figure-heading? A presidency? An administration? Somehow regime seems most appropriate. Anatole Lieven of the Carnegie Endowment in Washington puts it well: "Bush wants nothing less than unilateral world domination through absolute military superiority." So regime it is."

"The regime has all its ducks in a row. The mid-term elections provided much more than a mandate. Almost without precedent, the President's men control not only the White House but the Congress and, most ominously, the Supreme Court. As well, they have a compliant media and, apart from the unmediated flow of protests on the internet, a largely acquiescent population. The regime has bullied and browbeaten the UN into submission and enjoys the unflinching, unswerving, unblinking, unthinking loyalty of two Western governments: Tony Blair's and ***John Howard's. (As in Australia, the fear of looking unpatriotic inhibited the Opposition: the Democrats made exactly the same mistakes as Labor.)"

"Dubya's most effective backing has come from Osama bin Laden. It's al-Qa'ida that promoted Bush from a problematic, derided figure to the man with the mandate – and a mission."

Full article by the estimable Adams.

***Howard backs Santa

(30nov02) Prime Minister John Howard yesterday said he believed in Santa Claus.

"I do believe in Santa," he told Melbourne radio 3AW. "I'm no longer a child but I believed in Santa when I was a kid . . . so therefore I believe in Santa."

A sad but true quote. Little wonder George can get him to believe the line he is spinning.

No doubt the Prime Minister will be dressing up in the big red suit to deliver presents to the little heathen refugee children still on holidays behind the razor wire in the back blocks of Australia. Now that's a continuing disgrace that has been conveniently consigned to the cutting room floor of media outlets in the wake of Bali, inspection teams and Kenya.

The famines, floods and droughts around the world that are usually "sexy" media fare, with lots of you beaut pics of skeletal children with those cute big brown eyes, likewise seem to have fallen off the face of the earth. Maybe they all were "solved" when I wasn't looking, inattentive bastard that I am.

Thank God that a bit of sanity prevails in editorial offices around the globe and we can still get a picture and story of the latest newborn baby Dubbya chimpanzee at a major world zoo. Priority is everything in these troubled times.

My God me 'emmorhoids are givin' me gyp tonight! It's like I've bin sat on a wasp nest all day, which, ironically, I 'ave! Me Zimmer got caught up in a crack on me garden path (I'll be suing the council for that, mark my words) and me poor old arse ('scuse my Bulgarian) ended up jammed in a ruddy great bee 'ive smeared in 'oney and stingin' like Peter Mandelson's ringpiece ('scuse my homosexual). It took the firemen (I don't know why they were dressed in combat gear...must be their new unform) three 'ours to prize me out again and then me piles looked like a bunch of melons they did. I could hear 'em dragging behind me down the doorstep.

Any'ow I went to that Dr Patel for some ointment. Couldn't understand a word 'ee was saying. I don't care if 'ee was born in Preston 'ee still talked curried rubbish. "You're not touchin' me with those dirty brown fingers," I said. "I don't know where they've been. I might get aids up me posterior. You nig nogs are all the same with your arse-stabbin' ways and your crapping in the streets and THIS POSTING HAS BEEN PREMATURELY TERMINATED DUE TO THE AFOREMENTION HEMMORHOIDS EXPLODING VIOLENTLY. GREAT GRANDMA HUGHES HAS BEEN RUSHED INTO FLEETWOOD HOSPITAL WHERE, EVEN AS WE SPEAK, HER COLON IS BEING TUCKED BACK INSIDE WITH A SPECIALLY DESIGNED SHOEHORN AND THEN WRAPPED IN PLASTER-COATED-BANDAGES. WITH A BIT OF LUCK SHE SHOULDN'T BE ABLE TO SPOUT ANY MORE SHIT FOR AT LEAST A FORTNIGHT.

etc...

HERE COMES (SIC) THE PORN DOCTOR

Porn Again Research

Well, I'm back and I'm NOT happy. Imagine, I come out of a 2 month long coma during which I have 67 near death experiences (frigging Doris Stokes ... if I never see her face again it will be too soon) and check out what been going on at this blog and what do I find? Brenda Bulldyke!

Someone has walked on my grave. That bitch was my 34th. cousin (not far enough removed) Terry Sedgwick's first wife! I tried to warn the silly bastard. You can't marry your sister, it's not natural. For one, she doesn't come from a good family. For two, you've got a lot of lovely looking first cousins and if it's good enough for the Royals it's good enough for you. (I really should have been more specific because his second marriage to his first cousin Quentin was a total disaster. Sedgwick was always a soft touch not to say a bit hard of hearing, so when Quentin said "I want to have your Barbies" young Terry fell for it hook, line and sinker.) For three, most of the marsupials around her are better looking than her. Did the silly prick listen? Not on your Nelly, though I think my third point might have sowed a seed or two.

I thought I'd seen that last of her demented face when she boarded the British Airlines Tiger Moth in 1957. She said she needed to find her own space, Australia (and Sedgwick) was not big enough for her. You're right, another of that prune faced germ Greer's disciples! Good riddance to bad rubbish was the feeling around these parts. We'd thought she'd died. No such luck.

I have to tell you the plastic surgery she had done to bury her old identity is a vast improvement on the gurnic gargoyle that left these shores. Mind you the surgery obviously didn't do much for her intellect, the same old rambling splenetic tracts we used to cop ad nauseum at Xmas barbeques in the Farcus backyard. "Don't eat those snags, they're a symbol of male hegemony!" (Whatever that frigging means!)

Anyhow you're welcome to the trollop, I've got bigger fish to fry. I strongly suspect that frigging Very Reverend Steven Gilallen took advantage of my comatose state to have his wickered way. I am waiting for the DNA tests to come back from the lab to see if he's the bastard responsible for getting me up the duff. Jesus! I'm too old to start changing frigging nappies all over again. Gave that on my 75th. birthday after an unexpected arrival. I'm still chasing that frigging John Howard for child support for my young Timmy.

As much as it against my principles I might have to have a termination. One Steven Gilallen is one Steven Gilallen too many and I don't have child bearing hips any more. More like ball bearing hips after the op. Must go, due for a grease and oil change on the new joints.