Soapbox Derby

Election time is rolling around once again in the UK. This time, the competition is much more ferocious than ever before as an eclectic bunch of Eton schoolboys compete in a month-long dick-waving contest to determine who is the most popular. As ever, the smear campaigns are out in force, but considering that the reputation of politics was shattered to begin with (placing even the most charming of MPs as slightly less likeable than Piers Morgan if he admitted to child abuse), what can politicians do to persuade the braying masses?

Not much, frankly. As it turns out, most people you speak to are already sick to death of the election debates. The main problem appears to be the lack of understanding that people understandably have. When mainstream media would rather report on the deformed hooves of the PM’s wife than any of the actual policies, you can appreciate the reasons why people are frustrated with the current political system.

But the electorate as a whole can be a raucous rabble themselves. Mass blanket statements such as “No wonder this country is going down the pan”, “Britain is going to the dogs” and other such nonsense don’t help. It’s unbelievable how many times in one day you can overhear someone declaring the end of Britain as a country, usually over the most trivial of matters. These people have the fortuitous circumstance of living in one of the richest, fairest, most powerful nations on the planet, yet they carry on as if they are forced to forage for mutated bulbs growing in Chernobyl-like soil just to etch out an existence. I can’t imagine we’ll see a starving Ethiopian child weeping over the fact that people in Woking have to negotiate potholes anytime soon. Perhaps African AIDs victims could perform a charity gig to provide grit for our icy roads in the winter? I wonder if orphans in war-torn states are concerned about Woolworths closing down?

On a slightly different note, these are usually the same types who want to pull out of the EU and always complain about political correctness. They often suggest that our “politically correct” society is bringing our fair lands into decay, despite the fact that we have one of the best human rights records in the world and comparatively low poverty rates with other nations. It’s all gone mad, I tell you!

If you think that voting for a particular political party will plunge your country into the dark ages, then you’re probably the type of person who believes that a terrorist might be living in your attic, or that having childhood inoculations might give you syphilis. Seriously, if Brown, Clegg, or Cameron get in next time, the four horsemen aren’t going plunge your peaceful suburb into an urban inferno of torment and woe. No, that’ll take at least a couple of years for the policies to go through. When I hear people talk about how this country has been “ruined” by Gordon Brown’s recession, it makes me wince. Now, forgive me if I’m wrong, but I don’t necessarily see our society in a collapse. Sure, some people may have lost their jobs or not been entitled to a pay increase this year, but how else do you expect to maintain 17-18 years of gigantic growth? The good times can’t last forever; there does come a point where everyone suddenly realises that whilst the economy has been great and inflation has risen exponentially, you’re paying nearly twice as much for a Mars bar, and your children can’t afford to buy a home whilst you idle away your retirement years in your Tuscany holiday villa. It’s just not sustainable. Also, if you reckon that Britain is the only country that has been affected, take a look at the rest of the world. Everyone has gone through the same turbulence. If you think the current government has handled the situation badly, then fine, vote for someone who you feel is more able, but please don’t bemoan your plight to the point where you’re actually insulting those in poverty-stricken countries with real problems. I’m tired of hearing people say “We need to sort our own country before we help others”, whenever there’s a mention of supplying aid to another nation. Call me a limp-wristed, skirt-wearing lefty, but where’s your compassion? Just because people don’t have the good fortune to have been born on your noble soil doesn’t mean they don’t deserve the same freedoms and rights that you so belligerently gorge your self-absorbed, blinkered, opinionated arsehole upon. Let’s get a sense of perspective up in here.

That’s enough about idio-I mean people, let’s move on to the politicians themselves. I’m sure that I’m not the only person who is starting to get a little annoyed by the amount of leaflets that I have to wade through when I enter my house at the moment. It wouldn’t be as bothersome if they didn’t all contain the same things; a large picture of a grinning stranger stood outside a school/hospital/library, then the rest of the white space taken up by insults against the other candidates. Our local MP who shall remain nameless (we’ll refer to him as Mr P.Holmes. No, wait, that’s too obvious. Let’s go with Paul H.) is determined to slice down entire woodlands to produce leaflets which only slag off Gordon Brown and “his recession”. The Liberal Democrats have been elected in this area for the past 9 years, and I don’t even know what their policies are. Perhaps their only local policies involve throwing insults at all other rivals until they collapse crying in a sodden heap of worthlessness. In fact, I’d like to take the opportunity to write an open letter to Mr Holmes, if you’ll indulge me:

“Dear Mr Holmes,

I would be grateful if you would take my name off of whatever mailing list you have me on. After receiving enough flyers to make a life size origami Jumbo Jet (complete with working engines and everything), I am becoming concerned for my own health. I find that I am battling for my own life whenever I enter my house sometimes as I am unable to traverse what is now known locally as “The Sea Of Slander”. Not being a strong swimmer means that the sheer amount of leaflets on my doormat threatens my very existence. Also, the paper cuts are an absolute bitch.

Although I appreciate the time it took to create these masterpieces of misanthropy, they are simply killing me. I would be grateful if the council would come to dispose of this wasteful heap. I suggest that you recycle it into something useful, like some more money after your leadership almost bankrupted the entire town. Of course, you were entirely blameless in this incident; it was Gordon Brown who failed to magically appear and fill all of the town’s pot holes with chunks of solid platinum.

On another note, I was sorry to hear that you had to repay nearly £10,000 from a rather shady second home scam that you no doubt fell victim to. I’m sure a man such as yourself was unaware that us, the taxpayers, would have to pick up the tab of literally thousands, otherwise you wouldn’t have done it.

Judging by the contents of your leaflets (or what I could read of them before I passed out through inhaling too much ink) you are a man who cares so much about his constituency that he will vigilantly attack all other parties and blame them for his own failings. I mean, their failings, obviously. We don’t need to know the ways in which you will make our town a better place. We don’t need to know what you stand for. All we need to know is that you are not Gordon Brown.

Coincidentally, do you know what else you should include on your campaign posters? More pictures of Brown looking less than his best. The sweatier the better. Get a picture of him mopping his brow next to a caption saying “BROWN FEELS HEAT AS HERO HOLMES PUTS ROCKET UP HIS SOCKET!”.

Look forward to you winning in this area again.”

Anyway, that’s the mentalist’s guide to the 2010 election. Who are you going to vote for? I don’t care, honest.

People Who Are Bafflingly Popular

Shakespeare once said " Celebrity is never more admired than by the negligent", which is a statement that rings as true today as it ever has done. As we've covered on more than one occasion here at Muppets For Justice, celebrity culture is a soulless and often disgusting media circus in which a new set of barely recognisable cardboard cutouts are rolled out every two years to populate our TV shows and magazine covers. But that doesn't mean we can't have a bit of fun at their expense, right?

As time goes on it becomes harder to tell if some people are in the public eye because people around them are deluded enough to think there is something to them, or if they promote them out of some kitch irony. Anyway, let's take a sneaky peek at some of the more vapid wombshits that have graced the turgid rim of our entertainment industry. Why these people are revered and celebrated I have no idea.

10. Fearne Cotton

Fearne Cotton has managed to get into more places than Hugh Hefner's cock. How she finds the time to present everything on ITV2, have a daily radio show on Radio 1, do every telethon that comes her way, jet off to spend weekends with a different hollow camerawhore every week, and still find time to tattoo another "unique" fairy, or a rose, or a fairy covered in roses on her leg is a complete mystery. Technically, Fearne Cotton is busiest person on Earth; even more so than our respective leaders who carry the weight of the world on their shoulders. What is even more of mystery is why people seem to think she's worthy of all this.

Being a Spack Of All Trades, Master Of Nothing, you'd have thought that her career would have been over long before she graduated from showing children how to do potato prints on daytime TV, but she's the gift horse that keeps on blathering. Watching her interview someone is like trying to hold a conversation with a teenage girl after buying her a new iPhone and inviting the entire cast of Twilight to stand around in the background. She couldn't even focus on a High Definition picture of a pair of contact lenses. Her interview technique basically consists of repeating what the interviewee has already said, and asking stock questions such as "How do you feel about that?". If she interviewed a holocaust survivor, she'd probably still ask that same blindingly obvious question, leaving you as having gleaned absolutely nothing from what could have been an enlightening experience.

9. Danny Dyer

It's not that Danny Dyer is an awful man; he just strikes me as a bit of a smug cunt. Whether you feel that he deserves his success or not, he doesn't exactly hide it modestly as he swans around like Guy Ritchie's kid brother. The man looks like Daniel Beddingfield engaged in illicit liasons with a Dolmio Puppet. Apparently, this felt-lined baboon of modern excess is something of a pin up amongst some women, even though he looks like the spoilt, chubby child of a sweetshop owner after falling into a teleporter with a member of the cast of Hollyoaks. Also, everything I've ever heard him say has been insipid, misogynistic, or downright idiotic.

8. Kate Moss

Drugs are usually a common leveller when it comes to mass media hype. In the bleary eyes of the standard tabloid-gobbler, drugs are mostly a fast track to hatesville, but Kate Moss managed to ride that slippery, greased-up bucking bronco all the way to the bank. No sooner had the story emerged that she had been snorting cocaine (which, up until the story broke, I assumed was as normal as having a bowl of cornflakes for the likes of Kate Moss. It came as quite a surprise to me that everyone else found her drug abuse to be surprising), she had already checked into rehab, had fully recovered, received several more products to endorse, and been visited by God himself who furiously masturbated himself into an angry climax at her bewildering recovery.

Why you'd want someone such as Kate Moss to advertise your goods is beyond me. Genetically, Kate Moss has more in common with a clothes horse than you or I.

7. Philip Schofield

We've had a pop at Schofield before, but he really is the most evil man that has ever existed. He is a cauldron containing all the evils of the world, bubbling away whilst the devil himself perches himself over the rim and curls off a cheeky poo, allowing Lee Harvey Oswald and Harold Shipman to stir the rigid stool into the mixture whilst cackling to the tune of Ride Of The Valkyries. The fact that he has chosen the fuzzy, inoffensive This Morning as his fortress of deception is the most heinous of his crimes. There's something so hideously unbearable about his cheery optimism, his satsuma themed flesh, and hair that is so prematurely grey that it looks like papier mache stuck onto a broom handle. As a host for the show, he is required to feign interest in real life stories, but deep down you know he's plotting to brutally slay The Clangers and feed them to The Wombles, or something equally as diabolical.

6. Coleen Rooney

Coleen is famous for doing a bit of shopping and being so detestable that even her ork-trapped-in a-car-crusher of a husband cheated on her with a prostitute. From these essential points on her CV, she's extrapolated an entire career which includes a show called "Coleen's Real Women" where Coleen teaches young women how to deal with fame. The show basically consists of a bunch of nobodies stood around listening to Coleen reciting less than stellar anecdotes about being blinded by cameras and being nervous when walking down a red carpet. Then they try on some shoes and call it a rap. Television gold!

5. David Gest

The man is either so dull that he is essentially a black hole, sucking up and regurgitating any celebrity stories he can find like a vacuum cleaner nozzle poked down a drainpipe, or he is the most brilliant walking piece of satirical celebrity culture ever to have been created. I'm ultimately undecided, but I'm leaning towards the former considering I've never heard him say anything of interest.

4. John Barrowman

Despite making the ovaries of many middle aged women clang together whenever he waltzes onto screen, John Barrowman is a hideous example of modern celebrity. He sums up everything I despise about the world of "variety" and looks like David Cameron after absorbing the entirety of Tom Cruise through his anus. Even though he'd have been a reject on The Generation Game, Barrowman has managed to force himself into mainstream television presenting.

The strangest element of the Barrowman Boogeyman is the way in which he sprang to stardom in the first place. I used to meander around not knowing who John Barrowman was, and life was much simpler back then. Then I woke up one day and there he was grinning at me from a television screen whilst the whites of his teeth burned small holes through the wall behind me. The worst part was that everyone else seemed to have heard of him, as if I had somehow gone to bed, slipped into a coma for several years, and woke up in the future where everyone had watched Barrowman grow up from being a cheeky child scamp in a west end musical to the multinational broadcasting force that we see before us today. It's like when you go on holiday for a fortnight and all the news you've missed whilst you've been away, no matter how inconsequential, always seems drastically life changing, and home never seems quite the same again. That's the nausea that Barrowman creates. He's the human equivalent of jet lag.

3. Jack Tweed

Jack is from the same fame school as Coleen Rooney, only he's much worse. The man literally has no personality. I've dug lint out of my pockets with more charm and charisma, and probably had a deeper, longer, more meaningful relationship with that lint than Jack Tweed has ever managed in his life. He may have married the celebrity pork scratching known as Jade Goody, but I doubt that Jack was even present in the relationship, and the marriage was probably consummated by a cardboard box with his face glued to it.

Jack has staggeringly achieved everything possible to make himself as detestable as any human can be without resorting to mass murder or paedophilia. He assaults cab drivers whilst his dying wife is at home, he has been remanded on charges of rape, he's constantly on a tag, has allegations of drug abuse, and he is also incapable of saying or doing anything when a camera is pointed at him. He freezes to the spot as though he's some sort of terrible spirit that can only move when no one is watching, only I doubt there's an evil agenda at work in his head. In fact, I doubt that anything is at work in his head. He's just a synaptic shell roaming the lands as an unprogrammed android who's mission it is to distract attention away from anything remotely interesting.

2. Piers Morgan

Do I really have to spell out how awful a man who fakes prisoner abuse photographs is? If so, just watch an episode of Britain's Got Talent and witness how a man can be both sycophantic and condescending in equal measure. The whole show is an elaborate ploy to try and gain favour with a public who was largely unaware of him during his heyday of shittery. This was back in the days when he used a national newspaper to besmirch the names of anyone wittier, more talented, or generally more likeable than he was. His hate campaigns were legendary, but nothing could save him once he decided to engineer a bunch of doctored photographs that allegedly showed Iraqis being abused by soldiers. All so he could sell a few newspapers. I can't think of anyone worse than that. Oh wait, here's one...

1. Cheryl Cole

I suppose the best thing you can say about Cheryl is that by contracting Malaria, she managed to stop someone else from contracting it, if you believe in karma. If you don't believe in karma however, she has no redeeming qualities.

5000 Views Office Party!

Bong thang dudes, and welcome y'all to ma crib.

Now that the multicultural opening is over and that you all feel included, I am pleased to announce some rather exciting news for MFJ. We are fast approaching 5000 views, and also now have a grand total of five followers!

Obviously, MFJ is beginning to hit its stride, which some skeptics might say is two years too late. I, however, declare that this is a glorious day to be a writer for Muppets For Justice. In order to celebrate these rather meaningless milestones, I have decided to treat you to an inside look behind the scenes at Muppets For Justice, and some of the events that have made this Blog the rollercoaster ride of hellzapoppin' fun that it is today. We start our story right at the beginning of MFJ via the medium of a bullet point list:

• Addman, whilst feeling slightly under the influence from eating an out of date yoghurt, conceives the original concept for Muppets For Justice. The surviving blueprints detail an interdimensional multimedia experience with newsfeeds, podcasts, t shirts, strobe lights, blimps, and retina detaching laser light shows.
• Budget cuts force Muppets For Justice to settle on becoming a Blog, hosted by the wonderful people at Blogger, who now owe me commission.
• Fort is discovered at a Mexican hat dancing festival. Addman convinces him to join after sampling some of his tasty chilli.
• MFJ becomes a sleeper hit across the world with its witty banter, sharp observations, and egotism.
• The people of the world conveniently forget about MFJ in what was, according to Addman, "A great big electromagnetic storm that kills your braincells and stuff!".
• The Blog continues as usual for a while, until Fort has to take exams and Addman gets pulled onto other projects.
• A year passes in the MFJ office without a new update. The pair recruit one George Broussard of 3D Realms to coordinate and motivate the team and start outputting fresh content.
• George is fired after showing a lackluster Duke Nukem Forever trailer as his presentation for how to get the Blog back on track.
• Barack Obama is elected as President Of The United States. Not sure how this is related, but no timeline is complete without it.
  
• Addman finally makes a comeback after stringing along yet another scammer! MFJ is back on track!
• Toast is proved to be tastier with jam rather than marmalade.
• Piers Morgan lodges a complaint against MFJ.
• His complaint turns out to be against the Nazi Superweapons post, and the not the one which details him as a tedious cunt. He conceeds that most of the points raised against him were true, and in fact, helped his reputation somewhat.
• This list is produced.

And there you have it! A timeline which details every significant event that happened along the way to the present day. Here's to another 5000 views and another 5 followers.