This here referendum thingy is going on a bit too long for me. I made my mind up months (read years) ago about whether we should leave or not and I’ve already cast my vote.

The referendum was painted as the opportunity to have a proper debate about the issues. What we have, however, is the usual childish mud-slinging contest. The latest to chuck his rattle out of the pram is John Major with his charges of “deceitful and dishonest”. Well, and both Norma and Edwina will back me up on this, his honesty is definitely not without a fucking great big stain on it!

I despair!

We have an elected chamber that conducts much of its business at the level of a lower school playground. Our elections are carried out fortissimo as yah-sucks-boo shouting matches. I suppose it was too much to hope that, for once, we would be able to take a major decision with our politicians acting like sensible informed adults rather than participants in the early stages of Monty Python’s argument sketch. Sadly not! We are destined for yet more “we’re right, you’re wrong, ner-ner-ni-ner”-ism

Research places politicians as the least trusted of all occupations, below even estate agents and journalists. And rightly so – they are, as a breed, disingenuous and dissembling. They trade in false promises, unreliable predictions and vacuous soundbites. Apart from a handful of honourable exceptions they serve no purpose but their own. Believe me, I have seen them in operation close up. They are not pretty people and should not be trusted with the running of a sweet shop let alone a country.

It is, in part, the very fact that so many of these Music Men are still trying to sell me the idea of a marching band that has helped to convince me that it’s time to leave failed experiment that is the EU.

Scameron is set to use a visit to Singapore to make an anti-corruption speech on Tuesday in which he will express concern that some properties, mainly in London, “are being bought by people overseas through anonymous shell companies“.

Would that be like 73 Chester Square, owned for many years by a shady little company based in the British Virgin Islands?

I only ask because that’s where Thatcher lived. Mark and Carol must have been so grateful for mummy’s foresight – not to mention her abolition of controls on what money could be sent abroad – as they avoided about four million smackers in inheritance tax.

All in this together? Piss off!

Nigel Farago has a problem!

He has been on TV earnestly trying to convince us that UKIP is not a racist party. However, scarcely a day goes by without another of his bonkerati stumbling into the news because they opened their mouths and out popped something about “johnny foreigner” that wouldn’t be out of place in a 1970s sitcom, what, what!

The latest in this long line is Rozanne Duncan who was filmed on BBC documentary Meet the Ukippers saying that she dislikes “negroid features.” She said a great deal more than that, but I don’t regard it as worth quoting. Farago said Ms Duncan’s comments were “horrible and “unacceptable”.

Bravo, Farago, you tell ‘em. Although for a party that claims it isn’t racist you DO seem to have rather a lot of racists!

Just saying …

I was chatting a few weeks ago with a friend. I will spare their blushes and just say that they work for one of the major political parties. They admitted that this election campaign is going to be the nastiest in living memory. I am inclined to agree, if only because it will be carried out at the intellectual level of the playground insult.

We used to argue about issues in this country. Say what you will about Thatcherism (and I have – and at very GREAT length!) but at least the rows were about policy. Nowadays we seem trapped in a Monty Python sketch:

“Argument is an intellectual process. Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes. (short pause) No it isn’t.”

Prime Minister’s Questions is the nadir of this dumbing down, the excellent Grauniad cartoonist Martin Rowson summing it up nicely here:- http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2015/feb/11/martin-rowson-british-democracy

But worse than this puerile, public schoolboy crapulence is that we are constantly presented with a false dichotomy.

A few nights ago I put up something on Facebook to the effect that we needed to rid ourselves of the out of touch, millionaire chancellor who thinks that rooting out tax dodging is not his job. This got the, sadly, very predictable response that “the alternative is worse”. I’m sorry, but that’s like voting to be rogered up the arse with the rough end of a pineapple because the pineapple’s opposite number is a porcupine.

There are other alternatives, it’s just that, as a country, we’d rather watch Strictly Dumb Prancing than have a proper political debate. “The alternative is worse” only because politics in this country is conducted at the “Yah Sucks Boo” level, which means we get fed facile platitudes by lowest common denominator mediocrities.

Until May the 8th, therefore, you all stink of poo!

It’s been reported today that the President of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, thinks Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is possessed by the devil and has called on Pope Francis to exorcise his demons.

You could not make this stuff up!

There is an exchange gag in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas in the the state Governor is asked what he thinks about the situation in the middle east.

He replies “I was sayin’ just this morning at the weekly prayer breakfast, in this historic capital, that it behooves both the Jews and the Arabs to settle their differences in a Christian manner!”

News comes this week that Richard Benyon MP – net assets aprrox. £110 million – rents a constituency office from Sir John Madejski – net assets approx. £250 million. Sir John is a major donor to the Tory party.

What is there to comment about in this? Well, Bendon has been charging the “rent” of 8,000 smackers a year to his expenses. Sir John has returned this favour by funnelling some £97,500 into the Newbury branch of the Conservative party since 2005 when Bender was first elected.

Now, I don’t expect MPs to work pro bono, despite their claims of almost saintly altruism, but this must also be viewed in light of the nearly £120,000 a year that Bender is raking in from housing benefit from tenants in Berkshire. And that despite him blasting the something for nothing welfare state.

What a scumbag.