Toby on Monkeys… Mondays… erm… Tuesday.

 

 

A very happy New Year to you all!   These holidays are a time for laughter and during the past week I’ve read two of the funniest pieces of fiction enjoyed for a long time.

The first was a political satire called ‘Melincourt’ by the early-19th century humourist Thomas Love Peacock.   Anticipating Charles Darwin by half a century, he tells the story of a naturalist’s experiment with putting up an orangutan as a candidate in one of the old pre-Reform Bill rotten boroughs.   All goes well and the monkey is duly elected until, in the excitement of the moment, he goes berserk and rampages through the constituency until “in a few minutes the ancient and honourable borough of Onevote was reduced to ashes.”

An even funnier piece of fiction was “A contract between the Conservative Party and you” sent out by our Dave Cameron shortly before the 2010 General Election.   In this our Dave wrote, “We go into the general election on 6 May with trust in politics and politicians at an all-time low.   And I can understand why:  the years of broken promises, the expenses scandal, the feeling that politicians have become too remote from the people – they’ve all taken their toll…So this is our contract with you.   I want you to read it and – if we win the election – use it to hold us to account.   If we don’t deliver our side of the bargain, vote us out in five years’ time.”

Now, here are some of our Dave’s broken promises:

• “Control immigration, reducing it to…tens of thousands a year.”

• “Act now on the national debt.”

• “Give you the right to sack your MP…to get rid of politicians who are guilty of misconduct.”

• “Cut the number of MP’s by ten per cent, and cut the subsidies and perks for politicians.”

• “Cut ministers’ pay by five per cent and freeze it for five years.”

• “Give local communities the power to take charge of the local planning system and vote on excessive council tax rises.”

• “Take immediate action to start cutting government waste – things like…the millions given in aid.”

And here are some of the things Dave did not tell us he would do:

• Try to bomb Damascus in an unholy alliance with ISIS and risk a Third World War against Syria, Iran and Russia, a blunder which only a vote in the House of Commons prevented.

• Create an existential threat to our country by trying to bring Turkey, with its porous borders onto Iran, Iraq and Syria, into the EU and its policy of free movement.

• Introduce same-sex marriage without making civil partnerships available to heterosexual couples.

• Squander some £12 billion a year on overseas aid while our deficit with the rest of the world, at 6% of GDP, is the very worst since records began.

• Squander around a further £20 billion a year gross on EU membership while our National Debt is rising by some £100 billion a year.

• Fiddle our official statistics to include revenue from illegal drugs and prostitution in our GDP figures, something that even the French do not stoop to do, and pay huge additional EU contributions as a result.

• Force millions into fuel poverty through a deeply-flawed energy policy.

Now Dave, I’m a great believer in the sanctity of contracts and yes, let’s stick to the terms of your offer.   You’ve treated the British people as fools, you’ve failed on your side of the bargain and on 7 May next we’ll vote out your tawdry, dangerous and decadent government and replace it with something more honest and vigorous in the form of UKIP, the great new force in British politics!

Until next Tuesday!

Toby