Return to 1997 CHRISTMAS Index
Return to 1997 CHRISTMAS Index
By Mr Goose Despite becoming a nation of new men, er, I mean lads and being blessed with Tony Blair, The Prime Minister of People's Hearts, as our leader it's worth a thought that thousands of innocent geese will end up cooked, served on Christmas dinner tables, all around the planet. Remember, all that goose abuse is taking place under New Labour!
And what a grim old year it's been too. OK so I sniggered a bit when Bernie Ecclestone, of Formula One Motor Racing fame got his million quid donation back from the UK's New Labour Party. He's allowed to continue enjoying the benefits of an estimated £100 million worth of tobacco advertising revenue for his gas-guzzling monsters. (I mean the cars, not the drivers of course.) Meanwhile every other formerly tobacco-funded pastime now has to scrape-up its meagre patronage from elsewhere as a result of new legislation banning tobacco advertising in sport. Of course, the really good news for Bernie is that he gets what he wants – and gets his money back too!
It all turned a bit embarrassing for the British Government when a report emerged in the UK suggesting that adolescent boys who watch motor racing are twice as likely to start smoking as boys who follow other sport. Poor old Bernie and the politicians who traded with him now enjoy an interesting relationship with people's hearts, (and their lungs, kidneys, arteries etc. etc), but kings and queens they'll never be!
No doubt we'll see more of the same in the next few months. Watch closely as Blair and various other members of his High in Hyperbole, Low in Policy Government learn the hard way that running a country is a tougher job that making a load of airy fairy promises at General Election time.
Like many of my country-fellows, I'm rather looking forward to seeing Blair's grinning kisser go metaphorically face down into a tobacco-coloured, BSE-infected cow turd, on a fairly regular basis! Mind you I don't know why it's taken the egg-heads so long to figure out that Mad Cow Disease could be transfrered to humans. As far back as the early 1980's you just had to look at Margaret Thatcher at Prime Minister's Question Time for fairly convincing proof, in my opinion.
Another revelation that caused my otherwise solid beak to turn up at the edges was the discovery that Lupin, the Web's most unpleasant bunny is, in fact a girl Ha! Ha! Ha! It is a most peculiar little beast displaying bizarre behavioural characteristics that can only be explained by some sort of gender crisis.
Talking of bizarre behaviour… I see Earl Spencer – the chap who stood up in Westminster saying that he would personally oversee the moral upbringing of young Princes William & Harry - is in the middle of one of the most mud-slinging divorce cases of the decade. The idea of the pious Earl giving lectures on morality is almost as funny as rock star Pete Townsend telling kids to say no to drugs, back in the eighties. Or in more recent times a certain Mr Clinton advising the world that it ought to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions.
Of course, in the good old days of Henry VIII, the Earl would probably have been executed for his remarks in the Abbey. Today our new, modern Royal Family does things very differently. It lets the media string him up instead! The Earl even brings his own rope and a string of disgruntled concubines baying for blood.
The good news is that the Princes' financial welfare is being overseen by our solid-grey ex-Prime Minister, John Major. Remember him? Yes folks, he was the guy at the helm whilst his Chancellor of The Exchequer, Norman Lament – er I mean Lamont lost us £20 billion, in one day trying to peg the Pound Sterling to the Deutsche Mark! It's reassuring to know the Princes' fortune lies in such competent hands!
Mind you, in the true spirit of the great Earl Monty of Python, I'd like to see a lot more silliness in politics. Why not go the whole hog? Let's start by getting the Tellytubbies write the Queen's Christmas speech. Then we'll con some old beardy wierdy with more money than sense, who crashes hot air balloons for a hobby to run our intercity railways - er, someone's just told me the Tories have already taken care of that.
Ah well, we'll just have to get the boys in the Department of Daft Ideas to come back from the pub. Mind-you, poor lads, they'll need a bit of Dutch courage before they have yet another crack at the Health Service and our ailing education system. If they're suitably intoxicated they might even figure out how to outlaw fox hunting without having to ban lots of other much more popular and equally cruel sports such as fishing and shooting. Like many in the goose community, personally I'd like to see shooting banned, whilst fox extermination becomes compulsory - but I'm biased!
The final word comes from Minister without Portable Computer, Peter Mandelbrot.
He tells us that there are definately no more loony-lefty think tanks with New Labour. It's freemarket all the way! Apparently, he's already in preliminary discussions with Dipsy, Tinky Winky, La La and Po, regarding implementation of the minimum wage... Uh-Oh!
May your Christmas be less grim than it is for the average goose under New Labour. I'm off across The Common to see if anyone has fallen in the duck pond lately.
My opinions don't necessarily reflect those of the rest of the team – and I don't care! So there!