Red Ed's 2 minute biography.

Good at solving Rubik's Cube, but can't suggest any other skills of the top of his head. Describes himself as "too square" to have ever tried any drugs or even dared to indulge in a little underage drinking. Got beaten up a lot at school, and possibly thinks of Teri Hatcher, Rachel Weisz and Scarlett Johansson a lot in deeply private moments. Very firm on the fact that he's not married. All in all he sounds like just the person you'd want for a dinner party. As a waiter.

I have little doubt that Cameramong, who's at least as big a bell-end, was laughing his balls off reading that. And talking of balls, I expect Blinky was too. But then this all came out in a GQ interview with Piers Morgan, who as I recall was always pally with Blinky's mate and mentor, Snotty McMuncher-Broon, extremely part-time member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath when he can fit it in.

Wankers and cockslots, the lot of them.

Idiots.

I'm sure there are some people happy with the Cobbleition over this:

BRITAIN said it would cut the number of non-EU migrants allowed to work in the country by a fifth to a maximum of 21,700 a year, as it seeks to radically slash immigration levels.

Home Secretary Theresa May also announced plans to tighten student and marriage visas, as the government seeks to cut migration from the current level of hundreds of thousands of arrivals a year, to tens of thousands.

Oh dear. Look, I'm aware that I court some controversy by being in favour of open borders at least in principle, though I'm always careful to put a few conditions which I believe are absolutely essential prerequisites such as no taxpayer funded handouts, no free housing, no language assistance and no modification of the local culture. That's not an exhaustive list either, but you get the picture - the circumstances in which I'd support open borders are vanishingly unlikely under a government of any of the UK's main parties. All the same I'm still in favour of the ideal of free movement of money, goods, services and people, but even it's not even necessary to accept that much to see what a dumb idea a hard limit is. What do you do when your cap of 21,700 migrants is full halfway through the year? Tell applicants that they'll have to wait 'til the following year, perhaps. Okay, but it could be that among those number 21,701 and up is the world's most naturally gifted brain surgeon who suffered the misfortune of having been born in some war torn despotic shithole, and that they intended to leave the place and settle in Britain, dedicating their life and skills to the NHS. So what are they going to do when they hear, "Sorry, come back in six months?" They're probably going to go to another country rather than wait, and so Britain loses that talent maybe to here or New Zealand or Canada or whatever country is smart enough to welcome skilled migrants without shutting the door when an arbitrary number is reached. Doesn't even need to be a brain surgeon. It could be the stereotypical corner shop entrepreneur - doesn't matter as long as they're putting in. Why the fuck would any country want to limit the number of people who want to come in and work and contribute? Frankly it makes little more sense than NuLab's long term policy of inviting in every fucker who knows to get off the plane holding a hand out, palm up.

And on the subject of NuLab, or UnNuLab or whatever we're going to call them now, they're not to be out-fuckwitted by a bunch of Tories and LibDems. Oh, no.

As he embarks on a review of the party Mr Miliband, labelled Red Ed during the leadership campaign, warned his party not to expect, what he described as a quiet life.
In an indication of the tax policy he wants Labour to pursue, he said the 50p top rate of income tax for people earning more than £150,000 should be permanent.

Even dafter than Teresa May and the Cobbleition, and showing no greater understanding of the idea that people are free to move. Keeping out people who want to come in is hard but it's not a patch on keeping in people who've had enough and want to get out, and the more monied someone is the easier it is for them to leave one country for another. Either Red Ed is too thick to realise this and too ignorant of recent history to know that lower taxes increased revenue for Nigel Lawson, or he's simply a Laffer Curve Denialist who assumes that you can tax people to the point they simply stop working and still somehow get tax off them.

And this is precisely the kind of thing that keeps me opposed to both parties (I'm counting the Cobbleition as one party for the time being, though I sometimes count all of them as a single party with three wings). In their separate ways they're both equally committed not just to the big state and further loss of liberty but to continued stupidity as well. Dimmer leaders for a dumber Britain.

'Kinell.

Red Ed, rich man's friend?

Is Red Ed trying to ditch the 'Red' tag by sucking up to the wealthy and suggesting that child benefit should be available to millionaires? I'm not sure.

Asked whether he would condone handing out Government cash to the super-rich, the new Labour leader said he was against any move towards underminining the universal principal.

Despite the fact that the universal principle absolutely guarantees that people who don't need it will get it. Does that make any sense? Mr and Mrs Nuclearfamily with a full time job each might be grateful for the extra help child benefit brings for their 2.4 kids, though letting them both keep more of what they earn in the first place would be more cost effective and could probably benefit them even more in cash terms. But what will probably boil their piss even more than walking baby factories with designer jeans and fake tits getting it is the fact that everyone on The Sunday Times Rich List is entitled - entitled - to it as well, despite their collective worth being estimated at £335.5 billon. But as far as Ed's concerned that's fine.

"I'm in favour of that yes, and I'm in favour of it because it's a cornerstone of our system to have universal benefits, and frankly there aren't that many millionaires in this country," he told BBC1's The Politics Show.

"Families on £45,000 need child benefit in my view and it's a way that society recognises the costs of having kids."

Kids are not compulsory. Nor are they a right. Would you introduce a BMW benefit as a way of society (by which Ed probably means the state) recognising the cost of having a luxury German saloon? Of course you fucking wouldn't. Governments, left leaning ones especially, tend to look at that decision as an excuse for you to have even more money taken away from you, not to be given piles of money taken from other people. Having children isn't quite a positive choice in the same way that buying a new car is but they don't just show up one morning. Despite the occasional confused use of the term 'accident' for 'unplanned and not properly thought through' having children is something that can almost always be avoided if you don't want them, and so there is still a very large element of personal choice involved. When so many personal choices are something that attracts more tax what makes the choice to have, or at least not avoid, children something you get paid a universal benefit for even if you lose larger sums of money down the back of the sofa?

As for Britain's supposed shortage of millionaires, well, Ed, your mob did nothing to stop the one eyed madman who used to lead your party from chasing as many of them out of the country as he could, but despite that The Sunday Times suggests otherwise. Nor is the precise number that relevant anyway. Does someone with a Roman Abramovich size bank balance need child benefit? Of course they bloody don't, and I highly doubt Red Ed believes they do. But what he undoubtably does believe is that the state should have a role in everybody's lives on a personal, family, and financial level, and that is what universal benefit does achieve.

It's been pointed out that benefits for the middle classes are something of a sweetener to make them feel a little bit better about the amount of tax they pay. That may be true but I suspect there's a little more to it than that. To Ed and his fellow travellers anything that enhances the importance of the state and reduces the relevance of the individual is A Good Thing, and if that means giving money to people who don't need it, having first taken the money off them at gunpoint, of course, then so be it. Making any sense is not the object of the exercise. Making the state the ultimate arbiter is.

Edkita Milischev.

With all the slightly oxymoronic sounding 'New Labour is in the past' stuff flying about ooop North Raedwald and Dizzy have likened the Labour Party conference to the Soviet Union's 1956 Conference of the Communist Party. And so, particularly as Dizzy hoped someone would do it... here's Edkita Milischev.

It's not as hideous as Eddie Shaw a few posts back but he still looks like a Harry Potter goblin.

Political cover versions of hit songs #3.

And now it's time for one from the swinging 60s.

Or possibly that should be 'muppet'. I was thinking of doing 'Cunt on a Rope' but I don't remember any song by that name and I imagine Gotty's probably done it by now.

Political cover versions of hit songs #2.

By special request of the All Seeing Eye, who'll probably wish this was something he could unsee.

But it kills the song when the manager starts joining in.