Musical Interlude: Tonight Is What It Means To Be Young

The 80s weren't all bad.

Pretty much, this all the songs Jim Steinman wrote all being played at once.  Absolutely fantastic.

Seems appropriate for the Greatest Day In Recorded History.

If Dumbarton can beat Morton on Sunday, it will be the Greatest Weekend Of All Times!

And while we'll at it ...

I could watch this all day ...

Good news just keeps on coming today:

Simon Danczuk, the Labour MP for Rochdale, has agreed to repay more than £11,000 in expenses after saying he made an error in claiming extra accommodation costs for two children who did not “routinely” live with him. 

Danczuk said he had made the claims on what he believed at the time to be an accurate interpretation of guidelines from the parliamentary expenses watchdog, the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa). 

“Regrettably, due to the vague wording of the rules, I inadvertently claimed 10% more than my annual living allowance, money which was paid directly to my landlord in London and not to me. I hold my hands up and admit that this was an error on my part,” the MP said in a statement.

The "vague wording" the slimy little toad is using to justify his rip off claims:

A supplement of up to £2,425 a year for each dependant you care for. You will need to certify that the dependant routinely lives with you.

Labour ahead in the polls, Iain Duncan Smith has fallen on the trusty British sword of truth and fair play, and Danczuk revealed to be a turd.  Already, this is the best day of my life.

Iain Duncan Smith resigns, immolating George Osborne in the process

It's a sign of how mental George Osborne is that even IDS has quit rather than impose his plans to harvest organs from beneficiaries and put taxes on breast milk:

Iain Duncan Smith has resigned from his role as Work and Pensions Secretary complaining of Treasury pressure to make cuts to benefits.

In a statement to the media, Mr Duncan Smith said he "incredibly proud of the welfare reforms that the Government has delivered over the past five years" but said he is "unable to watch passively whilst certain policies are enacted in order to meet the fiscal self imposed restraints that I believe are...distinctly political rather than in the national economic interest".

Even Scrooge can't stomach what Osborne intends for the proles!

it is an impressive piece of political shafting by IDS.

IDS might have been a dreadful leader, an awful minister ... but quitting like this just days after the budget, and calling the budget a piece of ideologicaly motivated national sabotage must have put paid to Osborne's leadership hopes.

Nothing in his political life became him like the leaving of it, as Shakespeare almost said.

Tory Leadership Slow Motion Apocalypse Underway

Get in now for front row seats as the Best Show On Earth After The American Election And Most Other Shows Even Cats gets underway.

Who will replace the red faced non-entity bumbler when he finally buggers off the political scene, having accomplished nearly nothing other than squandering a recovery, prolonging a recession and making Britain look stupid for the whole of Europe - even Greece (GREECE?!) - to laugh at?

Will it be Boris, effectively upping the buffoon quotient?

Or George 'Why did 80,000 people boo him' Osborne?

Or someone thing else?

Who will turn out to be the brightness in this dullness of Tories? The fastest in this loiter of sloths? The sternest in this gutter of wet bus tickets?

Relevant stuff:

Earlier this week there was a new YouGov poll of Conservative party members in the Times or, more specifically, two new polls of Conservative party members: YouGov polled the same party members before and after Boris Johnson came out in favour of leaving the EU to see what impact it had on the leadership race. Results are here.

At the simplest level Boris was ahead before, and was ahead afterwards, but there were some interesting shifts. Boris’s approval rating among Conservative party members dropped significantly after he came out (from 83% approval to 76% approval), but his position in the leadership race improved. Presumably he annoyed some members who saw his actions as disloyal or disagreed with his stance, but he consolidated the support from those who did not.

Almost unavoidably Boris coming out was going to upset some members – he has carefully avoided having many fixed political opinions over the years, so I expect many pro-European members would have assumed Boris agreed with them, many anti-EU members would have assumed Boris agreed with them. For once, he is forced off the fence and forced to upset some people – so his overall approval rating among Tory party members fell. However, in the race to be the next Tory leader his position has improved. 

43% now say they’d back Boris, up from 38%, with support falling for Theresa May and Sajid Javid, both of whom were seen as potential “outers” and both of whom ended up supporting Remain. Asked how they’d vote in a match up between Osborne & Boris the figures don’t change as much (Boris 55%, George 36% before, Boris 56%, George 38% after) – the broader balance between those party members who want Osborne as the next leader and those who don’t hasn’t changed much, it’s just Boris is now more clearly the “not-George” candidate.

Only a quarter of Tory party members said that the leadership candidates’s stances on the EU were an important factor in picking the next leader – 4% said they wanted the next leader to be someone who had campaigned for the UK to stay, 20% wanted the next leader to be someone who campaigned to leave, three-quarters picked other criteria as their main considerations. Far and away the most widely picked criteria was someone who will make a competent PM, picked by 67%, followed by someone who has a good chance of winning the next election on 52%.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, but if only Anthony Wells was a girl and there was a sort of heterosexual equivalent of being Gay Married, I'd do that with him in an instant.

Oregon 'Militia' Killing

Sadly, it looks like the very stupid situation in Oregon will be resolved in the traditional American way, with a hail of bullets.

US police say they have arrested the leader of an armed militia which has occupied a wildlife refuge in Oregon, with one person killed in a shootout. 

Ammon Bundy and four others were arrested during a traffic stop. One person was injured. Three others were held in separate incidents. 

The militia occupied the refuge on 2 January to support two ranchers jailed for setting fire to federal land. It says the government has taken land illegally from ranchers for decades. 

Other members of the group were reportedly still at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon, where the FBI was setting up a cordon around the perimeter. 

Only ranchers who own property in the area will be allowed to pass. Journalists have been leaving the scene following advice from the FBI it was no longer safe to stay. 

Oregon Public Broadcasting "was told by FBI that we were on our own - essentially stuff is going down and we need to move," tweeted John Sepulvado.

People being killed, even American fundamentalist bampots, is generally sad.

I'm not sure there are any 'good guys' or winners here, between the imbecile 'freedom fighters' and the bloodthirsty government storm troopers.

In an odd way, both sides are right. The 'militia' are idiots; the US state is an out-of-control, repressive monstrosity.

An apology to the nations of Norway and Sweden

Yesterday, in my post on Alexandra Mezher, I confused Sweden and Norway, not once but repeatedly.  I could explain that this happened because just before the post I was pondering this blog's unsettling popularity in Norway, and had been about to post a whimsical musical clip featuring the Norwegian band DumDum Boys just before I read about Ms Mezher's terrible death.

But the real reason is that I am stupid.

So here's the song.  It's called Englefjes.

It's by DumDum Boys.

Who are from Norway.