Come Dancing

Britain was rocked this week by the scandal involving the continued participation of John Sargeant in the celebrity ballroom show Strictly Come Dancing. John is a hopeless dancer but the viewing public, who are now chronically and in my view very healthily unable to take telephone votes seriously, kept voting for him to continue in the show. His competitors complained, suggesting that the show was all about the dancing (which is why they hired a bunch of b-list celebs instead of actual dancers) and John was forced to fall on his sword. The whole episode brought back bad memories for yours truly. Yes, a similar thing happened to me back in the 50s when I was disqualified from the National Hokey-Cokey championship for putting it in when I should have been shaking it all about.

Further down the news schedules, naturally, I have noticed numerous government ministers, Labour Party backbenchers and various apologists have been working hard to rechristen the dog's breakfast that used to be the British economy 'the global financial crisis which started in America.' This is known in the trade as the 'I never done nuffink, honest' defence (it is similar to the 'A bigger boy made me do it' defence which they used after the Iraq war went pear shaped), and it is popular amongst governments of all stripes because it lets you blame the Americans for everything. For the millionth time I find myself thankful that the government no longer employs spin since Honest Gordon took over.

Gordon has been accusing the Tories of 'lacking compassion' for pointing out that it might not be wise to respond to a crisis caused by irresponsible borrowing with a massive splurge paid for with irresponsible borrowing, as someone might ask for it to be paid back. I have a great deal of sympathy for Gordon's view. My own family has suffered quite severely recently thanks to some dubious investments and I shall be attempting to cheer them up by buying them fabulously extravagant Christmas presents. I can't afford this, obviously, but I have solved this problem - I have already stolen their credit card details and that will easily cover the cost!