Super Injunction Farce

So it's Ryan Giggs. How many of you didn't know this? Not many. I thought so.

To put it quite bluntly, the whole super injunction saga for the past few weeks has been completely and uttely ridiculous. A gag on the media in order to cover up celebrity wrong doings, which, only apply to England and cannot possibly be policed online.

Let's face it, in this age of mass media and technology, one cannot possibly cover up information of this nature. Even if I had tried to avoid finding out who this "Top Premier League Footballer" was, I would have failed miserably. Facebook and Twitter are like the women's bookclub in a small village. The purveyors of gossip and rumour.

And isn't this just a complete mockery of our so called liberal democracy which supposedly gaurantees a free press? I mean, the very fact that a wealthy person can pay for the courts to control the media should have the North Korean government scoffing at our supposedly superior system.

If a famous person does something wrong or immoral, they should face up to the consequences. Part of the package (or curse depending on how you see it) of being in the public eye, is that the media will report and scrutinize your actions should they get any sort of whiff. It is harsh but then if they did not want this happening, they should not have have done what they did in the first place.

The Election - more exciting than I than I thought it would be

I don’t normally retract statements but I have to admit I was wrong when I wrote 4 weeks ago that we would have another dreary election and an inevitable shift of power to the Conservatives. It has indeed been a fascinating election tinged with voting controversies and shocking results.

I actually stayed up till the obscene time of 9am on Friday morning to watch most of the seat declarations.

Whilst I chuckled when home secretary Jacqui Smith was displaced in her constituency, I also sighed when colourful Lib Dem candidate Lembit Opik lost his supposedly very safe seat. It was a poor night for my supported party, the Lib Dems, who actually lost a few seats. This, I attribute to people fearing that their vote wouldn’t count and so decided to choose a candidate who was more likely to win – a perfect demonstration of why we need to reform the electoral system.

I also groaned when Conservative candidate Zac Goldsmith won in Richmond park. He was quite clearly the epitome of Tory – rich son of a billionaire, public school boy, upper-class accented.

The first ever elected Green candidate in Brighton was a perfect reflection of the area. Anyone who’s been to this coastal town will be aware of the strong tendancies of left-wing, liberal, environmentalism of the people there. Fantastic stuff for the Greens.

David Dimbleby and Jeremy Paxman were astonishing in the manner in which they managed to stay alert and lively throughout the whole night on the BBC’s election coverage. In fact, I often wonder what Paxman is on that keeps his bulldog personality ticking.

So now we have the first hung in 30 years. And I’m actually quite thrilled at the prospect of further political activity as Labour and perhaps the Conservatives struggle to form some of a government. Yes it was disappointing for the Lib Dems, but although they lost seats, they sit in a position of power as the other two main parties look to them to form a coalition government. It will be fascinating to see what unfolds.

The debates last night were won on coolness, not policies

Now if I’m being totally honest, despite my seemingly intellectual rants in previous blog entries, I don’t actually know as much about politics as most of you people seem to think I do. Aside from a politics A-level, a sociology degree, a daily inspection of the BBC news website and a regular splattering of Question Time…well, I guess I know as much as the average Joe off the street.


So I’m not going to bore you with an in-depth political analysis of the UK’s first ever election debate between the leaders of the three main parties, whilst wittily throwing in a few references to the Icelandic Volcano. That would bring an ash cloud of misery to all loyal followers of this blog.


No, what I am going to do instead is poke fun at the debaters much like the multitude of Facebook groups that have sprung in the wake of this event.
So David Cameron. Suave and smooth (both verbally and facially) he may have been, but he most definitely bore the brunt of most of the internet comedy. Yes anecdotes were a mainstay strategy of all three debaters, but the Tory leader took it to another level – starting almost every argument with an account of how he met someone last week. I’m watching a political debate here David – not one man’s memoirs of his journeys through gloomy England.


One of my mates aptly called it “Story time with David Cameron”. Furthermore, in one example, he highlighted how one of these individuals he met was black – despite it making no difference whatsoever to the point he was making. His predictable rhetoric was inevitably parodied with this brilliant little website.


On a substance level (and I do apologize for breaking my promise about not delving into a political analysis) I did not appreciate how he equated China to being as dangerous as Iran when it came to the topic of which countries were a threat to world peace with their nuclear weapons. This is in spite of China being a permanent member of the Nuclear Safety Council and a regular discourager of North Korea’s weapons testing. It was clear he was attempting to play on peoples’ fears – an approach which was regularly employed by the Bush regime and picked up upon by political film maker Michael Moore in his rather brilliant documentary ‘Bowling for Columbine’.



Do we want to live under a government that looks to frighten us into supporting them? I sincerely hope not.

Moving on, Gordon Brown was tedious as usual. I don’t know what it is about him, maybe it’s his voice, but he seems to tinge every speech and answer he makes with a dark cloud of gloom and doom. I certainly don’t want to hear another few years of his voice delivering news on how the economy is slowly and surely making a recovery. 

Additionally, he had an amusing habit of agreeing with most of the points Nick Clegg made. Is he a Lib Dem in disguise? Or are Labour planning to reinvent themselves again to create (god forbid) a fourth way? Of course this was picked up upon by the good people of the internet who dedicated a facebook group to his catch phrase: “I agree with Nick”.

I also found it rather amusing how Gordon Brown opted for a bright pink tie instead of the usual plush red of the Labour party. An allegedly bad-tempered, bulky Scott being tamed by a rather effeminate looking tie. Nice.

And finally, Nick Clegg. Well, call me biased, but I think he came out looking the best. Composed, charismatic and fresh. He didn’t resemble an old wreck like Brown or an overly polished plastic mannequin like Cameron. Perhaps those labeling him as the new Obama was a bit much (especially considering he’s not black) but he was cool, and for that adjective to be used on someone in politics is rarer than a Jeremy Clarkson endorsed ad campaign for People and Planet.



Of course he didn’t escape humorous criticism entirely with many poking fun at his views on scrapping Trident. But I feel he is perhaps one of the best leaders the Lib Dems have had in years. And whilst the prospect of them gaining power is still incredibly unlikely, he has done enough to make Labour and the Conservatives quake in their boots at the likelihood of a hung parliament.