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Anyone for badger?

Started by Gups, September 25, 2012, 12:08:10 PM

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Darth Wagtaros

PDH!

Barrister

I'm probably missing some context, but this amused me greatly:


QuoteNever mind all those badgers – we've got to save the Cleggster
The Deputy PM may be copping the flak, but think where the Tories would be without him, says Boris Johnson


By Boris Johnson6:14AM BST 24 Sep 2012384 Comments
Quick, before it is too late. It's time to save Nick Clegg. I have just read the Sunday papers, and the anti-Clegg feeling rises off them like a sulphurous cloud. According to one reliable analyst, the ratings of the Lib Dem leader are currently standing at minus 62 per cent – lower than Osama bin Laden. Expert after expert steps forward to give the Deputy PM a kick in the pants, and the overwhelming view is that he should be defenestrated before the next election. He is not just toxic for the Libs, say these pundits – he is contaminating the entire Coalition. Some talk of Vince Cable replacing him, some of Ed Davey.
So in the dwindling months we have available, it is time for us Clegg fans to echo those kindly folk who are trying to save the sweet furry badgers from the wrath of farmers. Never mind the badgers – save the Cleggster from extermination!
Here are 20 reasons why everybody, not just Tories, should be grateful to the Cleggster, a man who has effectively laid down his political life so that the government of the country can be carried on, and who has endured the most protracted political humiliation since the emperor Valerian was captured by the Persian emperor Shapur, and turned first into a living footstool, and then flayed and used as a rather striking wall hanging.
Some readers may find a few of the reasons inconsequential, stemming from my personal admiration for Nick Clegg. Most of them are deadly serious, and we start with the biggest of all, namely:
1. If it hadn't been for the good sense of the Deputy PM, we would still have Gordon Brown in Downing Street, biting his nails, chucking staplers around, and refusing to accept that it was his policies of reckless spending on an unreformed public sector that got this country into a colossal economic mess. A lot of people have forgotten that Gordon stayed in Downing Street for days after the election, like some Japanese soldier lurking in the jungles of the Philippines, and refused to accept that he had lost. It was the Cleggster who helped to winkle him out.
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2. And it is thanks to the Lib Dems that George Osborne is able to get on with the essential tasks of reform of the economy and deficit reduction. Clegg and co have been lightning conductors for the occasional jagged flashes of public anger that would otherwise have gone straight down the Downing Street chimney. It is a classic British story of self-sacrifice, in the mould of Captain Oates.
3. Without Clegg to take the abuse of Left-wing educationalists, it is doubtful that Michael Gove would be bashing on so fast, and so effectively, with his programme for free schools.
4. Without Clegg and the Lib Dems – who are in the front line of fire from their former friends in the welfare lobby groups – it seems most unlikely that Iain Duncan Smith would be able to get on with his programme of benefits reform. The Tories have gone one better than the Persian emperor, in the sense that the Lib Dem leader is not so much a wall hanging as a human shield.
5. And yet Clegg can say with truth that he has put the party of Lloyd George in power for the first time in almost a century.
6. And he has used that power to deliver some sensible things – like taking the poor out of tax, a long-standing objective of the Lib Dems that ought to have been Tory policy for ages.
7. And he is, when you meet him, a very nice chap indeed.
8. His wife, Miriam González Durántez, is every bit as lovely and clever and funny as she appears.
9. He reads novels, and has all sorts of literary friends.
10. He is very good at tennis, though for some reason he always seems to lose to the Prime Minister, in what his critics might see as a metaphor for the imbalance in their relationship.
11. He speaks several languages – a mark of civilisation, in my view – including Dutch, whose accent is so notoriously hard to get right that the former Dutch prime minister Josef Luns once declared that the effort of correct pronunciation made him feel "as if he was vomiting" (his political career came to an end shortly thereafter).
12. But his Europhilia has been kept in check. As long as he is DPM, he cannot be sent to be commissioner in Brussels – a stitch-up that would cause many of us to think of joining Ukip.
13. And while he has been in office, he has effectively demolished some of the worst and most opportunistic policies on which the Lib Dems used to campaign. Take tuition fees, which they always used to promise to scrap. It is thanks to his bravery and his much mocked U-turn that British universities are now on a sound financial footing.
14. It is thanks to the utterly hopeless Lib Dem campaign for Lords reform that we have been saved from an elected second chamber, with all the attendant jobbery and feuding.
15. And thanks to the useless campaign for AV that we have kept first-past-the-post in our elections, and been spared all sorts of other jobbery and feuding.
16. Every time he half-heartedly proposes some new wealth tax, he reminds us that he doesn't have a hope of delivering it, and he underscores the point that the Tories remain better on tax than the rest.
17. And yet he talks sense on many things. He is against a third runway at Heathrow, but sees the case for borrowing cheap to spend on infrastructure.
18. In fact, I have always thought that if you leave out Europe, he is probably a natural Tory.
19. He is certainly tough, and can take a joke.
20. And above all, amigos, it is thanks to Nick Clegg that we are not currently in coalition with Chris Huhne! Yes, before Huhne's wife allegedly showed the world how good he was at getting his points across, it was Huhne who was seen as the man to watch. Think of that, and thank heavens for Nick Clegg.
I say again, save the Cleggster from extermination!


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/borisjohnson/9561957/Never-mind-all-those-badgers-weve-got-to-save-the-Cleggster.html
Posts here are my own private opinions.  I do not speak for my employer.

Caliga

Badgers?

BADGERS?

WE DON'T NEED NO STEEEENKING BADGERS!!!
0 Ed Anger Disapproval Points

Razgovory

I've given it serious thought. I must scorn the ways of my family, and seek a Japanese woman to yield me my progeny. He shall live in the lands of the east, and be well tutored in his sacred trust to weave the best traditions of Japan and the Sacred South together, until such time as he (or, indeed his house, which will periodically require infusion of both Southern and Japanese bloodlines of note) can deliver to the South it's independence, either in this world or in space.  -Lettow April of 2011

Raz is right. -MadImmortalMan March of 2017

mongers

Boris is getting rather too big for his own boots.
"We have it in our power to begin the world over again"

Tonitrus

Quote from: Peter Wiggin on September 25, 2012, 12:34:35 PM
Quote from: Gups on September 25, 2012, 12:30:37 PM
Now show me a picture of a beaver.

I don't think NSFW pictures are allowed in OTR.

"It seems I've signed the death warrant of a whole army of beavers."
"Badgers, Minister. Beavers would have a navy."

Richard Hakluyt

Quote from: mongers on September 25, 2012, 07:06:31 PM
Boris is getting rather too big for his own boots.

Luckily he was born in New York, so may decide to run as President instead of settling for being PM  :hmm:

jimmy olsen

Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on September 26, 2012, 01:45:16 AM
Quote from: mongers on September 25, 2012, 07:06:31 PM
Boris is getting rather too big for his own boots.

Luckily he was born in New York, so may decide to run as President instead of settling for being PM  :hmm:
Why can't he do both and reunite the British Empire?
It is far better for the truth to tear my flesh to pieces, then for my soul to wander through darkness in eternal damnation.

Jet: So what kind of woman is she? What's Julia like?
Faye: Ordinary. The kind of beautiful, dangerous ordinary that you just can't leave alone.
Jet: I see.
Faye: Like an angel from the underworld. Or a devil from Paradise.
--------------------------------------------
1 Karma Chameleon point

Jaron

Glad there were no stupid honey badger jokes up in hurr.
Winner of THE grumbler point.

Brazen

Squirrel became popular a couple of years back. Squirrels eat nuts, seeds and vegetation, and I'd quite like to try one, they sound tasty. Badgers, however, east worms, insects and grubs. Generally carnivorous animals taste like crap. Especially ones on an all-slug diet.

Baron von Schtinkenbutt

Quote from: Brazen on September 26, 2012, 03:55:39 AM
Squirrel became popular a couple of years back. Squirrels eat nuts, seeds and vegetation, and I'd quite like to try one, they sound tasty. Badgers, however, east worms, insects and grubs. Generally carnivorous animals taste like crap. Especially ones on an all-slug diet.

I've never had it, but alligator is supposed to be pretty good.  Maybe that comes from being a reptile instead of a mammal.

Darth Wagtaros

Quote from: Brazen on September 26, 2012, 03:55:39 AM
Squirrel became popular a couple of years back. Squirrels eat nuts, seeds and vegetation, and I'd quite like to try one, they sound tasty. Badgers, however, east worms, insects and grubs. Generally carnivorous animals taste like crap. Especially ones on an all-slug diet.
Cousin Eddy said squirrels are high in cholesterol.
PDH!

Gups

Quote from: Baron von Schtinkenbutt on September 26, 2012, 07:15:31 AM
Quote from: Brazen on September 26, 2012, 03:55:39 AM
Squirrel became popular a couple of years back. Squirrels eat nuts, seeds and vegetation, and I'd quite like to try one, they sound tasty. Badgers, however, east worms, insects and grubs. Generally carnivorous animals taste like crap. Especially ones on an all-slug diet.

I've never had it, but alligator is supposed to be pretty good.  Maybe that comes from being a reptile instead of a mammal.

Alligator is OK, bit bland.

Malthus

The only proper way to eat roadkill is by grilling it on your engine block.
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane—Marcus Aurelius