"And they made good laws and kept the peace and saved good trees from being unnecessarily cut down, and liberated young dwarfs and young satyrs from being sent to school, and generally stopped busybodies and interferers and encouraged ordinary people who wanted to live and let live."

This is a piece I wrote in 2011 about a Tory MP who wanted to strangle people but was unable to construct a coherent sentence on the subject. ("The point is as I said earlier on this is about having deterrence. If you have strong deterrence like that, capital punishment will act as a deterrent. To have capital punishment would act as a deterrent. That’s the first point here....") This MP is now a minister for work and pensions.

http://www.andrewrilstone.com/2011/10/i-lied-3.html

Note: I did indeed abstain from reading all news media for about 6 months after writing this article, and have never felt the need to switch on Question Time or Any Questions or The Politics Show since.

This is an insurmountable opportunity.

Anon


I had intended you to be
The next Prime Minister but three
The stocks were sold, the press was squared
The middle-class was quite prepared
But as it is, my language fails.
Go out and govern New South Wales!

Belloc


"On its world", said Ford "The people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."

"Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy."

"I did," said Ford. "It is."

"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't people get rid of the lizards?"

"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."

"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"

"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."

"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"

"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?"

"What?"

"I said," said Ford, with an increasing air of urgency creeping into his voice, "have you got any gin? 

 Douglas Adams

I guess the first time I ever heard about a union, I wasn't more than eight years old. What I heard was the story of the two rabbits.

It was a he-rabbit and a she-rabbit that a pack of hounds was chasing all over the countryside, and finally these rabbits they holed up inside a hollow log. 

Outside the dogs was a-howling.

The he-rabbit turned to the she-rabbit and he said, "What do we do now?"

And the she-rabbit, she just give him a wink and said "We stay here til we outnumber them."

Woody Guthrie

It's 1988 now. Margaret Thatcher is entering her third term of office and talking confidently of an unbroken Conservative leadership well into the next century. My youngest daughter is seven and the tabloid press are circulating the idea of concentration camps for persons with AIDS. The new riot police wear wear black visors, as do their horses, and their vans have rotating video cameras mounted on top. The government has expressed a desire to eradicate homosexuality, even as an abstract concept, and one can only speculate as to which minority will be the next legislated against. I'm thinking of taking my family and getting out of this country soon, sometime over the next couple of years. It's cold and it's mean spirited and I don't like it here anymore. 

Alan Moore

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult, and left untried.

Chesterton

Top Ten Songs For Election Day

containing cryptic clues about how Andrew may be voting