Fabio's Blog 2

Apart from a sex scandal or two - only a matter of time, surely - any Index of Capello's tenure as England Don would have to include his increasing resemblance to a less-than-celebrated predecessor. Let's try it....

Fabio          Sven

Overpaid          Overpaid

Underachieving          Underachieving

Tactically Conservative         Tactically Conservative

Team talks have no effect         Team talks have no effect

Predictable Teams         Predictable Teams

In love with Beckham          In love with Beckham

Designer specs          Designer specs

Fan Derision          Fan Derision

I think that's it - I'm sure there's more

The Redefinition of Sin

Wow! No really, wow! Just when you think the Church of Rome has reached the outer limits of its pompous wrongheadedness (blessing Nazi troops, promoting abusing clerics, welcoming Anglican homophobes and misogynists) it scores a double first for sheer out-of-touch, insulting, breathtaking inhumanity. On Thursday 15th July 2010, the Vatican decreed the "attempted ordination" of women to be a "crime" against the sacrament of the Eucharist. So? So, this puts this sinful "crime" in the same category as the sexual abuse of minors by priests. Categorising sins is a favourite activity of the Unholy Roman Church. When I was a kid being brought up in the faith (Faith - there was only one), I was taught that there were two types of sin - venial sins and mortal sins. The former were relatively minor, the later, as their name implies, were deadly. Examples of mortal sin would include murder, the extermination of Jews in concentration camps and missing mass on a Sunday.  Each carried the ultimate tariff - eternity in Hell. But there was a redemption clause - if the mortal sin was confessed in the confessional or on the deathbed to a priest, the slate was wiped clean. In other words a sincere final confession by Hitler could have saved him from the eternal flames whereas the schoolboy who deliberately missed a Sunday or Holy Day mass and failed to get to confession before being fatally injured in a road accident would find himself condemned to an afterlife of limitless heat in the company of Satan and all the other sinners. Really.

I am not making this up.

Fabio's Blog - The First Posting

Thought I'd get in there before the multimillionaire coach of the so-called England team publishes his memoirs. More to follow. (BTW - spot the spelling mistake)

Bish Bash Botch

Hapless, hopeless or just plain unlucky? Is it just me or do we all remember a time when Anglicanism could be used as a synonym for silent compromise or relatively inoffensive muddle? Then, somewhere in the midst of the Bliar years, along came Rowan. And all hell seems to have broken loose. Straight out of central casting, the bearded wonder in sandals, has spent most of his time in office trying to conjure compromises between rabidly homophobic African clerics, mysoginistic ministers and Widdecombe-style defectors and supporters of gay rights and female bishops. We keep getting told how deeply this theological throw-back thinks but the truth is, he's trying to run an organisation that's been hijacked and hung out to dry. So nice one Row - your legacy could be the eventual end of this pointless institution, once and for all. You couldn't do the same for the monarchy while you're at it could you?

DAVE 'n' NICK 2

There's an important thing to know about working with comedy double acts and it goes like this: one of them is quirkier, more eye-catching or just plain funnier than the other. As a producer your initial contact with the Double is via the other one - the pretty/straighter/more accommodating and approachable one. But beware - let them know this is how you see it and the relationship can quickly sour. They can decide this is how it is - you can't. So don't give all of the funny stuff to one half of the pair cos in this day and age NOBODY WANTS TO BE THE ERNIE.

Which brings us to the Clegg. Did this hapless patsy really want John Prescott's job? The eternal shadow, the man with the ever-lengthening job title and the ever-shrinking job? The man whose dissident political army is being led by a Corporal Jones with his "permission to speak" catchphrase.

Like I say - nobody wants to be the Ernie - nobody, it would seem, except this compliant Muppet.

Cowell at Sea

So Not-So-Simple Simon has taken his ball back - both balls and the rest of his 80s styled self to be more precise. He may have been the star and Svengali of America's most successful-ever Talent Show and the Highest Paid Male Performer on American TV but he wants MORE. He wants America, The World, The Universe and beyond and he doesn't want to share it with anyone. Except, apparently, the lovely Philip Green. But how long will this marriage of self-love and self-interest last? How long before little SC fills PG's ample boots with concrete and deposits him from their beautiful dollar-green boat? How long, in other words, before the All-Conquering Tsar of Talent TV rolls his eyes heavenward and compares his partner of convenience to a Karaoke Businessman and presses the eject button...

The Almighty

Watched one of those great little ZigZag stitch and blow jobs on the telly last night all about Cowell. If no advertisment for fashion, taste or music it turns out that SC is the perfect poster boy for the Rule of Nepotism. To whit: if at first, second, third or fourth time you don't succeed, get daddy or mummy or a combination thereof to touch up their wealthy and influential friends to deliver you a plum opening - or, in the Great Man's case, a whole pie full of plum openings. Then just hang around dressed as a blue dog or record executive (you can hardly tell the difference) until Opportunity Knocks and you become the richest and most powerful Talent Show judge in the History of Television. Baftas, knighthoods, the Legion d'honneur, Nobel Prize and a seat in the Upper Chamber are sure to follow. 

DAVE'n'NICK

The first in a new series that could run at least until the Autumn without a major row. How could one object to having the Nation's lives and livelihoods ruined by two such lovely, well-brought-up chaps?

Old School Ties

With unseemly haste little snot Gove has been handed the keys to the school gates by the Lib Dims. The Bliar virus to which this coalition seems to have no immunity is at the heart of the Public Schools By Any Other Name measures read out by Liz 2 at yesterday's parliamentary panto. And why not? Fettes alumna Bliar will see his damaging Academy policy coming safely to full implementation by the Eton and Westminster boys at the heart of the 'new' government. Goodbye Universal State Education, hello Selection, Triple Tiering and Class. And shame on you 'Labour' opposition if you don't shout it down at every turn. The signs, including Balls on yesterday's Newsnight, are not encouraging.

Faceless

Who would have thought that having friends could be so dangerous?

Noel at work

This is Noel - in my experience most workplaces have one .

Maygay

Now we've all heard of the Damascus and Deathbed versions but this week saw the introduction of something entirely new - the Question Time Conversion. With Dimbleby Uno, Ming the Elder and Saint Shami of Liberty in attendance, the unlovely Theresa of Maidenhead came up against a gloriously awkward question: "How can this country move forward when the new Minister for Equality is against gays adopting and transsexuals changing their gender." After an initial attempt to suggest that her opposition was a thing of the distant past, this particular Tory lady proved that, post-coalition, she's well and truly up for turning and dumped a dozen years of official support for anti-gay legislation and a lifetime of anti-gay sentiment with almost unseemly haste. She did, of course, couch her new homophilic tendencies in terms of stable relationships and the primacy of family (i.e. no sex please unless you're Straight) but it was an outstanding moment. However - and I don't know about you - it did all appear to be a teensy weensy bit sudden. A bit awkward. Dare one suggest, a little bit convenient in the Age of Coalition and Hiding Your True Light under a pink or purple tie. Or, as Shami and Caroline Flint suggested, should we all shout "Yay!" at the repentance of a long time sinner?

Coalition Blues

A friend recently accused me of ranting too much on my blog. OUT BLOODY RAGEOUS!!! accusation if you ask me - but still..in the interests of civilised debate I'm going to tone things down a bit. So I'm not going to say anything about the sight of Little Nick sitting meekly by the Bully's side awaiting orders during today's parliamentary love-in. One should admire his rectitude and politesse, his willingness to put National before Party Political interest. His silence...Well done tiny Clegg...

Enter The Milibands

The process of detoxification begins. Will it be Dave or Ed or Ed or Ed to lead (no longer) New Labour into a bright new shiny future? Or will it be somebody else? Who else is there? Yvette and Harriet have said no which apparently means there are no viable female candidates. What about a non-white candidate - Chuka Umunna or Dianne Abbott (divisive but a multiple box ticker)? What about an old person - Lord Kinnock or a post-coalition Vince may be a good outside bet. Or what about an alien (or two). What about the Brothers From Another Planet in the picture above? Do share your thoughts with me...

Coalition Tea Party

So there we have it - Osbourne gets Chancellor, Hague gets Europe (sorry - Foreign Secretary) and fuck-me shoes Theresa gets the Home Office and Women. And that other lot - you know, the Dims - they get Deputy PM (non-job), Business something or other (not the Chancellor), Climate Change Secretary (how appropriate) and Scotland (ultimate poison chalice - Scots hate the Tories and the Dims). I suppose the only consolation for the ninny Clegg is that he gets to go back to work as a Conservative which is how his career began. The Tories must be laughing in their troughs at just how simple it was to persuade these little lambs to agree to their own slaughter.

The Long Goodbye

So - a final kicker from Gordy and whatever the outcome who could fail to enjoy the sight and sound of Tory negotiators promising everything from electoral reform to the sale of their own children into the slave trade in exchange for the blessing of the now utterly hated St Nick of Lib. That other Nick - Robinson of Beeb - is apoplectic with undisguised Labour hatred. Throughout History's Day 4 accusations of impropriety and illegitimacy flew from his tight Tory lips rendering as entirely unnecessary the need for a Conservative politician to balance the BBC discussions on College Green. And where the bollocks is Big Society Dave in all this? Lib-Lab, Lib-Con, Tweedledee or Tweedledum(b), it's the Bully Boy who's emerging as the 'Great Ignored' of this post-election bun fight.

The Future Redefined

Apparently 'We' got it right. Dave 1 and 2 are locked in anonymous cells under heavily unarmed guards while the guardians of our future are locked in Eeny, meeny, miny, moe style 'constructive talks' designed to stitch up (oops - sorry, enable) the Lib Dem Con coalition-type thing that 'We' all apparently voted for. And who are the Men of Destiny (and they are all men, of course) entrusted with a Nation Hungry For Change's future? Step forward William Hague and John Major for the Tories and Paddy Pantsdown for the Libs. Spike Milligan once sang that he was "walking backwards for Christmas" - this lot will have us walking back to the future with no festivities at the end of the road. And while we're on the subject of CHANGE - can anybody, including those who voted for his party, really stomach the idea of Cameron as the next PM? To paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen's chilling putdown of the hapless Dan Quayle - "Toryboy, you're no Barak Obama".

Hung

And what a hangover! Forget the Key Players (whoever they are) and glory in the plotters and spinners lying nakedly on College Green. Pitched perfectly between those twin glories of British Theatre - Shakespearian Comedy and Whitehall Farce- what's not to love about this continuing drama? Oh joy it is to be alive at such times...

Trussssst In Me

The Morning After and we're all suffering from a giant hungover. The Toffs have gone all hurt and constitutional, the discredited Heirs of Kier are rolling seven-sided dice and Clegg is playing Kingmaker in Chief from his Bandwagon without wheels. All 'Big Society' Dave has got to do is prove that he can govern "in the public interest" as opposed to the public school educated interests of his narrow coterie of close supporters and it's Bullingdon's all round and pass the ammunition.

Git

Nothing to add - could be a very long night...

The Road

And so the end is near and as we reach the polling booth curtain who's going to win our X factor? My frolicksome facebook friends are voting for Man Of Last Fortnight's Moment, Nick. So's The Guardian, like they always used to. A Labour candidate just called Brown the worst Prime Minister - ever (even worse, presumably, than Sir Alec Douglas-Hume, Cameron's priviledged predecessor) and the Balls who would be Brown has advised a tactical solution to our potential Tory woes. Whatever the choice of tactics one thing's for certain - this ain't no beauty contest between the Three Graces but a down and dirty fight to prevent the Toffs from ushering in Thatcherism Deux under the guise of Caring Conservatism - Dubya's discredited pre-Election promise. Repel the Born-Again Fundamentalists, the Europhobes and the social dinosaurs patrolling the borders of Dave's Big Society from the Inside and stick a big red cross next to the Party that's Bigger Than Brown, warts 'n' all. Otherwise it's the Road to Somewhere You Won't In Reality Like At All come Friday morning....

I Confess

Every once in a while a cultural artefact comes along that is so close to perfection it tends to obliterate everything around it. In recent times PJ Harvey's White Chalk is an obvious example, this wet Bank Holiday weekend brought me another - the extraordinary Lourdes from director Jessica Hausner. Pilgrim Catholics on dusty coach tours shuffled and mumbled as slick willy priests promised miracles to the incurably sick and terminally ill. Or rather they re-defined miracles as things mostly to do with the soul when faced with the fact that the healing waters of Mary's tears (no I did not make this up) just don't work on the desperate bodies seeking a way out of their God-given burden. As per a previous post, Lourdes was ranked alongside Rome and Ireland in the Holy Trinity of Places For Catholics To Visit when I was a kid. Thank the Lordy Lordy we could never afford it.

Pillow Talk

What...what...WHAT was it like to be Sarah Brown this morning? Kids crying, marital kingsize double smashed to smithereens, duvet ripped to shreds, her husband the hero, a deflated blancmange of political self-harm, slumped by her side. What a morning after. Gordy licking bleeding stumps where once there were chewed finger nails, undone by a short fuse and not one but two tiny OAPs: Rochdale's very own Gillian Duffy and Sky's very owner Keith Rupert Murdoch AC, KSG. All the carefully crafted PR and meticulously chosen red wedges in the world will not be able to put this particular humpty dumpty back together again. Can't wait for the debate.

How To Be Funny2

Is Gordon Brown calling a bigoted old woman a bigot funny? Will today's Rochdale clanger rank alongside Kinnockio's "Waal alright!!" or Prezza's knuckle sandwich in the pantheon of Labour suicide notes? Personally I've still got a soft spot for Lord K's arse over tip moment on Brighton Beach in '83. Waal alright!!!

Half Empty

Yet more bearded wisdom

Half Empty

More bearded wisdom

Half Empty

So much noise, so much chatter, so much twaddle...Unlike the bearded one above I don't blame Fry, I blame Di and all that 'People's Princess' claptrap. Since the sainted one snuffed it in Paris a rash of roadside tributes have materialised in the wake of any untimely death, politicians have taken to calling themselves Tony, Dave or Nick and every Tom, Dick or Mary with a keyboard has the power to force our so-called leaders into humiliating apologies and cringe-making personal statements. In the absence of anything resembling a coherent political debate we have an avalanche of opinion, a mess of mea culpas and for the next five minutes or so, the phenomenon known as 'Cleggmania'.

The Years Of Achievement

Monday and that stupid Geldof song is whirling around my head. Weird weekend full of images of people in running shoes dressed as the Angel of the North or a pint of Tetleys desperately trying to get into the Guinness Book of Records. To leave a mark on history alongside the pork pie eaters, balloon bursters, pole squatters and fattest, thinnest, shortest, tallest homo sapiens of their generation. All trying to be somebody - anybody - as long as somebody else notices. Like Brenda Ann Spencer without the ammunition.

Cleggery

And so it came to pass - the GREAT DEBATE PART 2. Thanks to GD Part1 we now have confirmed what we always suspected (but couldn't be arsed to look up) that Dave Clegg (Westminster and Cambridge) is just as posh as Nick Cameron (Eton and Oxford). Striking ancestry, high-born wife, oodles of family loot. In other words as much a part of the 'political establishment' as he decries when referring to his two opponents. But who could fail to be amused by the flip-floppy flailing he induced in the sorry pair last week and hope for some more of the same tonight. Particularly if the Westminster boy can land a few haymakers on the smug mug of Cam. Gordy, quite frankly, looks too punchy already to deserve anything other than the hand of friendship and a place in the newly-elected Second Chamber.

Oh Mandy

Well - it could happen. Cable's been Clegged, Darling's been dimmed, the Bullingdon bubble has burst and we look like we're heading for a parliament that's not hanging by a chad but from the gallows of public indifference and indecision. Who better to wriggle into the Void than the Ermine Snake. Last seen tripping the light fantastic with a bewildered Blackpool golden girl, this might just be the moment that our favourite Spinmeister of Darkness has spent his wicked Wilderness Years planning for. And why not?

How To Be Funny

Mondays eh?

CamCams4

So, out-Blaired by Clegg on the Big Debate eh Dave? Does that mean that naughty Nick is a better Bliar than you or, as we all suspect, there is even less substance to your bid for power than there was to the gleaming 1997 Tone's great leap forward? All your Big Society, Great Ignored guff fell to the studio floor in front of an expectant nation like dust from a distant volcano. These rumblings off are going to get much louder Dave you air-brushed poltroon.

Big Society

More tripe from the man who would be PM. Keep it up Dave, you posh knob.

The Blame Game

Has anyone bothered to tell His Holeyness Pope Rat and his closest confidantes that they can't simply spin their way out of the self-inflicted mess they're well and truly in? The latest in a depressing and pathetic parade of papal apologists is no less a person than the rodent pontiff's second in command, a previously obscure bundle of prejudices named Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone. Last week Cardinal Angelo Sodano (I know, it's hard to keep up with all these cardinals) laid into the 'Zionists' (i.e. Jews) for stirring up the paedophile scandal; this week it's Bertone with the equally outrageous allegation that it was the gays wot done it. This whole mess could be laid at the feet (or any other anatomical part) of the sodomites. Nothing to do with celibacy, a culture of silence, or the ridiculous notion of papal infallibility. No it's the sons and daughters of Sodom and Zion that are to blame - uniting in common cause the Church of Rome and the perpetrators of the Holocaust. Not that that's ever happened before....

The Great Ignored

So here it comes at last - the Next Big Tory Idea. After the NI fix it's the Big Marriage Fix. A hansome 3 quid a week for the ones who stick together, whatever the weather, is 'Modern' Dave's idea of 'Change'. Half a billion quid of additional National Debt to enable the couples who hang in however trying the circumstances, to pick up the price of a Pint each and every week of the year for the rest of their matrimonially blissful days. Did I hear somebody shout 'Major'? The grey ghost of the grey man hangs over this sparkling 'New' policy initiative like a rain cloud at a wedding. What is this obsession with Marriage? And how in anybody's name is 3 quid going to keep the shoddy show on the road?

Social Networking

So, in the absence of anything resembling a decent policy differential (or even a decent policy), the three main parties have no choice but to bludgeon us with spin. Bliar's legacy lives on in the physical form of the slithering Mandy and the virtual reality of the thing called social networking. Teams of bright young things (i.e. people who know how to work a computer programme) are engaged in turning the twitteringfacebookingmyspacing masses into the reddish, blueish, yellowish 'friends' of Gordon, Dave or Dave 2. The kind of friends who spend their social networking time informing their so-called 'friends' that the sun is out or that they've just fed the cat.

The New Pope

I know, I know, I really should leave this child molesting cover-up thing alone but that would be playing right into their hands. A recent favourite of mine was the re-use of the geriatric pontiff's exceptionally offensive phrase "idle chatter" by Vatican lickspittle Cardinal Angelo Sodano as part of the Roman Church's Easter celebrations. According to the Cardinal, the Church would not be deflected from its infallible course by loose talk about p**doph*le pr**sts. Like who's handling their PR? Hopefully they'll take note of my cartoony suggestion above - if anyone can dig them out of the mountain of merde they're currently in (and you really are Cardinal S whatever you may want to think) Signore Silvio surely stands at the head of the pack. Prime Minister, corrupt businessman, TV Uber-Mogul, former crooner, ladies man, lifelong Catholic, rightwingextremist, Scandal survivor and National Joke - let's surround the shiny one in white smoke without delay, phone a few henchmen and clean up this mess right here, right now...Dominus Vobiscum everybody.

CamCams3

So Dave's gone all inclusive has he? NEW Dave vs OLD Tory ideas. BIG Society vs NO SUCH THING AS Society, REAL Change vs NO NEED TO Change, NHS vs Private. All tosh of course but the best one of all is his GREAT IGNORED. "They may be black or white. They may be rich or poor. They may live in the town or the country.” Hold on a minute Dave - RICH or poor? Since when were the Rich on the list of the needy? Does that include the shower of 'Ignored' multi-millionaire businessmen currently bleating about the 1p rise in NI to help Dave's shoddy cause? Dunno about Great Ignored - what I do recognise is the GREAT IGNORAMUS who once ran the PR machine for the late and hugely unlamented telly franchise known as Carlton TV. We really do need to keep talking about who you really are Dave.

CamCams2

And Lo! - it may soon come to pass that a public school tosser even oiler than the freshly tanned Tone may be installed as the Man Who Came To Save Us All sometime in May. David William Donald Cameron (call me 'Dave') husband of Samantha Gwendoline Sheffield (call me 'SamCam') is offering us a post-Obama commitment to change. Which is a bit odd. Conservatism = change Dave? Is that the same conservatism that my dictionary describes as "Favoring traditional views and values; tending to oppose change"?

CamCams1

Happy Good Friday everyone

The Exorcist

Oh joy of joys - just when you think you can't make it up along comes no less a figure than the Catholic Church's very own Chief Exorcist to defend the Pope and his cardinal cohorts against the forces of evil attempting to undermine their divine authority. Don Gabriele Amorth is his name and he's been the CE for over 25 years, dealing with 70000 cases of demonic possession along the way (no, seriously, I'm not making this up). "When one speaks of the 'smoke of Satan' in the holy rooms, it is all true - including these latest stories of violence and paedophilia" say Rome's answer to Max Von Sydow. The Don has recently published Memoirs of an Exorcist which has just shot to the top of my Amazon must-read list. All we need now is the opinion of the Vatican's Lord of the Witchdoctors for Benedict and his mates to clear up this mess once and for all.

Church Unity

We read at the weekend that a group of Anglican bishops are feeling discwiminated against. Whilst having some sympathy for the 56 year old hospital worker who wanted to wear her little gold cross to work it's all-too-predictable that this is what gets the bishop's exercised and not the continuing discrimination against women and gays in the laughably-monikered Anglican 'communion'. The bearded wonder leading this rabble mutters tut-tuttingly at each awful revelation of bishoply vitriol but has miserably failed to show any leadership when it comes to shutting these hate-filled clerics up. Who needs a bloody Church of England anyhow?

Spot The Difference

Nuns eh - doncha love 'em? Ghostly white brides of the only man in recorded 'history' to be born to a virgin. Pinch-faced celibates who present themselves as the embodiment of female suppression in a church where Mary worship does little to mask its indifference to 50% of the world's population.

God's Rottweiller

From my Catholic childhood I remember one particularly favoured form of priestly burial - the Mission. Errant or straying clerics were dispatched to some pagan stronghold (Africa, South America, the Far East) to save the locals from Satan. Not, of course, that we were given this as the reason for their departure. No, they were packing their bags as fast as they possibly could as a response to an unstoppable calling from the man upstairs. Yeah, right. As usual it was a win-win for the Church of Rome - priests with pre-pupescent proclivities were taken out of the homeland frontline and their presence across the globe made an invaluable contribution to the continuing quest for World Domination. It also meant double bubble for the straying men in black. Not only could they pack up their troubles in a glowing kit bag, they were also being given access to young and available recruits in distant and unmonitored lands.

Facebook Friends

United In Sin

As a kid growing up in a Catholic household and surrounded by the men and women in black, I was told that priests were benign representatives of God's will on earth, bishops were the closest thing to heaven that we were ever likely to encounter and that the Pope was a ghostly holy man who emerged from a puff of smoke. I also learnt that there were 3 perfect holiday destinations: Rome, Ireland and Lourdes. What I was never told was that where there were predatory priests with a predeliction for young children there was also a code of silence that made the Mafia's omerta seem like an invitation to bedlam. To paraphrase their own words: "Father don't bother to forgive them for they knew exactly what they were doing"

The Users

More Users

Losers

According to whatever source of news you favour, Facebook now has 400 million Users. Love that term 'Users'. It's the same label that's attached to illegal drug addicts and rhymes with losers.