| Thank Gord there's not an election by Dominic Hilton Monday, November 5, 2007 Personally, I was so very grateful to Gordon Brown when he decided recently, after lots of umming and ahhing, to not call a general election. I was thinking of calling a general election myself, but, like the Prime Minister, I decided against it at the last minute. The polls were not favourable (my mother said, “Don’t count on my vote, sonny”) and I guess I just didn’t feel, in my gut, that the people of Britain were ready to make any decisions for themselves, about their own lives, that involved me. What’s more, I’ve been extremely busy picking apples off the trees in my back garden – so really, the timing was just all wrong. Elections can be such a pain. For starters, at election time, you have to shave at least once a day. Now, that’s fine if you’re living next door to one of those Turkish joints where some sweaty man with gold chains and a big black moustache uses a burning hot scimitar to scrape off your stubble as you lie back and think of how you can best screw up the country over the next 24 hours. But for those of us who don’t live anywhere near Turkey, like I don’t, it’s a real pain in the neck to take a razor to your own face every morning just because it’s in the public interest. What people who aren’t in politics (like women, or me) don’t understand is that shaving really hurts, like a motorcycle accident, or childbirth. Also, it takes time. You can’t just do what they do in shaving adverts and glide a triple-bladed razor across your face at 400mph. If you do this, you’ll emerge from the bathroom looking like Ralph Fiennes in The English Patient after he’s been horrifically burned because he stole Colin Firth’s wife and plane and got shot down by Nazis. And even though he still seduced Juliette Binoche in that film, it’s important to remember that it was just a movie, with actors, and stuntmen playing Juliette Binoche, and in real life no sexy French woman called Juliette is going to fondle, caress or kiss you – like they always do in shave adverts – if you emerge from the bathroom looking like The English Patient. More likely, they’ll scream, “Oh my God!!! You look like you’ve been horrifically burned because you stole Colin Firth’s wife and plane and got shot down by Nazis!” which is rarely a prelude to sex. The other thing about shaving that nobody outside of politics sufficiently appreciates is that a future leader like me can’t shave every day, because there’s not quite enough beard on my face after just one day to warrant stripping my skin down before work with a Gillette power tool. I usually don't like to give away personal information, but it’s much better for me if I shave no more than once every two or three days. Of course, this will never do for an aspiring politician who is supposed to care more for the general welfare than he is for his own wellbeing. Say I shaved on Monday morning after a weekend of successful beard growth. Well, by Tuesday evening I look like a real scruffy herbert, and people start mistaking me for an average citizen, instead of their future leader. When they find out who I am, they say, “Why should I vote for someone who can’t even be bothered to shave?” I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “But surely a successful winner like you can hire a personal barber to escort you around on the hustings and shave you every 36 hours or something – and he can even be Turkish if you want.” Fair point. But you wouldn’t believe the sorts of things you cannot get away with anymore as a public servant. For some deluded reason, voters just aren’t willing to pay for your face – which never stops grinning out of their TV screens – to be smoother than a baby’s bottom after a particularly fluid number 2. We should all be greatly concerned about this yawning chasuble that has opened up between a cynical, disillusioned, apathetic citizenry and their caring, sharing, elected representatives. Pretty soon, voters will refuse to stump up for our limousines. And while it sounds good in textbooks, anarchy like that just won’t do. Anyway, the point is that I am glad that Gordon Brown chose to carry on governing Britain without a mandate and without wasting our time by asking us what we might want. “I will not be calling an election,” he explained, “because I have a vision for Britain that I want to implement.” Isn’t that great? I mean, if we’d had an election, we might not have experienced being implemented upon by Gordon Brown, who has a vision. I also have a vision for Britain that I want to implement. Strangely, however, no one lets me get on with implementing it. Perhaps it shouldn’t involve quite so many swimsuit models in Jacuzzis filled with baked beans. After the Prime Minister had finished making vague statements about his plans for vision implementation and had been rushed off in his limo to start implementing his visions into your jobs, homes, families and, of course, bank accounts, a woman called Caroline Flint, who apparently serves in Gordo’s Government, popped up and said, quite openly, “We are looking into what more we can do.” The thing to remember about people like Ms. Flint and her cohorts is that they are always wanting to do more things, even when most of us – ordinary people like you and your friends – are fed up with having things done to us, especially given how most of the things being done to us are being done to us with our own money, which is taken from us by people like Ms. Flint so that she can do more things. And the reason all of this is so important, in case you were wondering, is that I was in Boots the other day buying shaving gear and it turns out that one pack of 4 razor blades now costs £9.99, a good whack of which goes straight to people like Ms. Flint so she can keep on doing all those things to us. This is just one reason why I’ve decided to screw you all and grow a protest beard. The only trouble is that baked beans keep getting stuck in it. © lizardmagazine.com, 2007 |
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