Children’s Car Booster Seats and EC Directive
It is .. utterly incredible that the state should now be trying to prolong our national car seat agony
individual choice .. or .. international coercion
Has Labour gone finally potty in asking the cops to spend their time poking their noses into the back seats of our cars…
We need proper standing committees with the power to mandate ministers, and to refuse to accept directives even if they are decided at a majority vote
Brussels is taking a big liberty with children’s booster seats
Of all the sensations of joy and release that Nature in her kindness has bestowed on the human race, there is little or nothing to beat the moment when you get rid of the baby’s car seat.
It beats getting off a long-haul flight. It beats taking off a pair of ill-fitting ski-boots after a hard day on the slopes. It verges, frankly, on the orgasmic. As you take the wretched thing to Oxfam, you thank your stars that never again will you have to grapple with that incomprehensible buckle.
Never again will you stand sweating over your baby as it screams and writhes and sticks yoghurt in your ear. Never again will you have that struggle of wills, as the child’s efforts to escape become ever more desperate and violent, and you grow later and later in setting off on your journey.
For children and parents alike that precious moment – when it is deemed that the offspring are capable of sitting on their own in the back with only a seat belt – is one of the pleasures of growing up. It is a rite of passage, a moment of pride and childish prestige.
It is, therefore, utterly incredible that the state should now be trying to prolong our national car seat agony. How old do you think they have to be before the nanny state will let your kids sit in the back without a car seat? Did I hear six? Did I hear seven? No, my friends, we are being asked to put our children in plastic booster seats until they reach the ripe old age of 12 or attain a height of 135cm, whichever is the sooner.
When I first heard of this plan I thought it must be some garbled echo from one of Bill Cash’s froth-flecked Eurosceptic digests. But as of this week, millions of hard-pressed British families have been stampeded to the shops, where they have been forced to pay as much as £30 for these ludicrous plastic banquettes, and my feelings of disbelief have gone, and I find myself shocked by the depth of my own anger.
If people decide that they are not going to comply with this crack-brained law, and they are not going to buy a banquette booster-seat for an 11-year-old, then they will have my complete sympathy. If the overworked police of this country decide they have better things to do than flag motorists down and measure their children to see whether or not they are more than 4ft 5in, then they will have my full support.
If they decide that they are not going to waste their precious time fining parents up to £500 for driving a 134cm 11-year-old without a booster seat then they will, in my view, be exercising robust common sense.
Has Labour gone finally potty in asking the cops to spend their time poking their noses into the back seats of our cars? Why the hell are we doing this, when violent crime is going up, when burglary has been virtually decriminalised, and when the number of children killed in car accidents has been steadily diminishing for the past 20 years?
Between 1981 and 1985 there was an average of 18 fatalities per year of children aged eight-11 using roads in the United Kingdom. That had fallen to 12 in the period 1994-98, to 11 in 2002, and in 2004 the total number of fatalities stood at four – an astonishing reflection on the growing safety of cars, when you consider how enormously they have increased in number.
I would resent this law badly enough as an infringement of my liberty to decide how to convey my own children in my own car. But the main reason why I am so angry is that this stupid and impertinent law was not even generated by the British Government. It wasn’t some gentleman in Whitehall who decided he knew best about booster seats. It wasn’t even the brainchild of the UK health and safety industry. It is, of course, an EU directive, which means that elected British politicians have been given neither the means nor the opportunity to contest it – or even to debate it.
This EU directive, 2003/20/EC, arises because a few years ago some lonely and bored European Commission official was persuaded (no doubt by the booster seat industry) that in some circumstances children under 135cm would be safer with booster seats.
So a directive was drawn up. Even if any EU government had dared oppose this “child safety” measure, that government could have been simply outvoted – while looking cavalier about the wellbeing of our little ones. The UK therefore apathetically connived in the exercise, and the directive was sent for “scrutiny” before parliament’s European Scrutiny Committee.
Needless to say, there was no discussion or “scrutiny”, since the huge volume of EU legislation makes this impractical. As it rubber-stamped the directive (and bear in mind that there is no way Parliament, at that or any other stage, could have said no) the committee did ask two questions. How much would these seats cost the average family, and how many lives would be saved?
Four years later, long after this directive has become irreversible, the Government has replied. They don’t know how much it will cost, they say, but the measure “might save” the lives of 1.5 children per year. In the whole country.
OK folks: you do the maths. You think how many millions of car journeys are there involving children every day. You might decide that it is still worth installing booster seats for all under 135cm. But with odds like that it should surely be a matter for individual choice and not international coercion.
What enrages me is that this was not even discussed in one of the Commons’ three European Standing Committees, and what enrages me more is that even if it had been discussed, it would have made no difference.
We need proper standing committees with the power to mandate ministers, and to refuse to accept directives even if they are decided at a majority vote. Otherwise we will find that the law of this country – the law affecting the personal lives of millions, and their children – is not made in this country; and that is a perfect and justifiable reason for massive civil disobedience.
130 Comments
Found out yesterday it’s nigh-on impossible to get three booster seats across the backseat of the car and they can’t sit in the front as there’s an airbag. Hmn, risk breaking the law or the childs neck? No contest, sorry Tone.
And of course my name’s not really Julian, it’s….
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Steven L-I can’t see it being offensive to Muslims, after all, lots of Pakistani Muslims like watching dancing Indian girls in Bollywood movies.
Do they ? I do talk a lot of rubbish sometimes I must admit.( I dont take myself as seriously as it looks )
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Oh dear, remember I said I’d try to find a link/ref for ‘This Sceptic Isle’? I applied to the author and it seems he won’t talk to me. Awwww. (I’m also guessing you’re not wringing your hands over this) Call me solipsistic but I’m guessing this has nothing to do with Guido’s blog. I don’t that he’s gone undergound in some eye-popping Hitch-huff. I think it’s me folks – I’m obviously a hairy scary Mary.
Back to Bollywood then..
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idlex said:
This set me pondering over my afternoon pint and ciggie, gazing out over the little English river that slides slowly by the ancient pub.
Lovely posting, Idlex
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The car seat law has targeted kids up to i think 11. I think it wud be much better to do it by height. Some 11 year olds are 5’8″ and certainly dont need a booster seat.
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Gemma
I think it has been done by height too. If they reach a certain height before their twelth birthday then they are exempt-do not quote me on this though. i wonder how this will work in practice though. I mean it is normally fairly obvious how old a young child is, but how can the police be certain of the ages of children say, nine and over? Is this how labour will force everyone to carry photo-id cards I wonder?
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Gemma – it is by height it’s 135cm I think. Any Mothercare now has a big measuring stick like those you see at fun-fairs – are you tall enough for this ride? A few of the 6 yr olds at school are only just short of it.
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k said:
how can the police be certain of the ages of children say, nine and over? Is this how labour will force everyone to carry photo-id cards I wonder?
My thoughts exactly. Will Nulab will use the same intimidatory methods that are now the norm in respect of TV licenses? If so, we, conveniently for Nulab, wouldn’t even have to have a child in our cars to fall within the scope of these regulations, as the onus would be on us to prove, if stopped, that we don’t have children and therefore don’t need booster seats. Mandatory Chip and pin ID cards for all drivers would be the only means for drivers to prove that. Another back door route for forcing ID cards on us?
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Good point, Flo. You can almost hear it: “For the safety and protection of children, every child will in future carry an ID card to avoid putting their own lives, and those of others, at risk by riding in a car without a booster seat when underage.
Some irresponsible drivers are still exposing vulnerable children to danger by letting them ride without this important safety device and it is vital that the police are given the resources necessary to identify those at greatest risk.
We are determined to reduce the number of young people killed or seriously injured on our roads. This is just one of many Government initiatives designed to eliminate the carnage…”
See how easily the “unassailable truths” slip into place while the last vestige of logic goes out the window.
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I’m not sure Labour will last long enough; this kind of thing takes longer to impliment when you’re talking about children, because of the legal challenges. What will be interesting to see is how the Tories handle this once/if they form the next government. They’re going to be bound by it whether they like it or not, but I expect ID cards won’t form any part of their requirements unless Cameron gets a loud request from the voters (which Boris has already had: see Ask to See my ID Card and I’ll Eat It).
In completely unrelated news, ATTENTION CLASSICS FANS!
There’s a new movie about the Battle of Thermopylae coming out in 2007, and the trailer is just the coolest bit of film in the known universe. I will send you to this blog post of mine for the info, as I know you Tories would hate it if I directed you to Daily Kos, where I found it in the first place.
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NEWMANIA, A MILLISECOND OF MY TIME WILL I AFFORD THEE!
To quote Victor Meldrew:
“What language are you talking in now? It appears to be Bollocks!”
Effective EU legislation blocking, amending and delaying have always been instigated by the British EU contingent!
Lightheartedly I refer all to the amazingly laconic 2-year incident over choice of colour of the cover of the proposed new European passports. The British input succesfully changing the official colour choice name from “Bordeaux Red-Violet” to “RAL standard 4004″.
This effective change saw the imperative and crucial dilution of French influence on the matter (i.e. “Bordeaux”!). However, due to possible lack of research they inadvertently approved a colour standard name of the German Standardisation Committee!
Rule Britannia! (and Caledonia & North Hibernia!)
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PaulD said:
See how easily the “unassailable truths” slip into place while the last vestige of logic goes out the window.
Exactly. Or as my Nulab fixated friend once told me, a strategy of ‘soflty, softly, catchee monkey’.
These seatbelt regulations are classic Nulab. A prime example of how Nulab’s spin doctored, drip, drip, drip, hegemony by stealth extends and consolidates their vice like grip on our, once free, minds and nation.
One, seemingly benign, apparently illogical, directive after another, in a continuous stream of, apparently useless regulation, is laid down in soft, muddy layers. Few notice that this soft ooze has the properties of quicksand and hardens into sedimentary rock as enduring as granite. On that rock stands the fortress of Nulab. This is what Nulab’s ‘joined up government’ is really all about, laying down enough of the right sort of soft ooze to make their fortress almighty and impenetrable.
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There’s one crucial principle Nulab have forgotten in their, frantic, headlong rush to establish a granite-like, hegemonic fortress around their ruling, intellectual elite. All such hegemonies, whether Nulab’s, or prior to that, the Thatcherite establishment’s, are riddled with injustice, lies and contradictions. And these are the seeds of their own destruction.
Such hegemonies inevitably collapse under the weight of their own injustice and lies. Which is what we’re seeing now and what we saw with Thatcherism.
There’s always a fault in the rock of ruling class hegemonous fortresses, because they’re always untempered by reality, real consent, real democracy. And the Excalibur of real democracy is always embedded in that fault – until a modern day Arthur (or, in the case of Blair, a gifted impersonator) along with us, the silent majority, extracts it, holds it high, and the whole rotten edifice of the dying elite comes tumbling down.
That’s why Cameron has twin dragons to slay, Thatcherism as well as Nulab. He’ll do it too. Go Cameron!
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Stephen Ladyman, Road Safety Minister seems to disagree with Boris’s 1.5 lives statistic.
On his road safety website he said:
“Small children need the protection that baby seats and child seats are designed to provide. Seat belts are designed for adults. Children who have grown out of child seats still need to use booster seats and booster cushions. We estimate that these changes could prevent over 2000 child deaths or injuries each year.”
There is comprehensive guidance on the ammendment to the ‘seat belt’ regulations on his site. The Q&A section even covers the eventuality that your offspring has to travel in an emergency vehicle, and said emergency vehicle does not have an adequate booster seat. The answer to this ponderance is:
“The new regulations will include an exemption for emergency vehicles, including police vehicles.”
So there you have it. If PC Plod needs to give your kiddies a lift home, he can do so without using a booster seat!
Makes sense really I mean who is going to pull him over and fine him £30 anyway.
It get’s better though, as ever the regulations are completely unenforceable owing to an exemption for ‘unexpected neccesities’.
There you have it, as usual those who know how to play the system, and don’t mind lying to the old bill, will get off scot free as always, while the honest or uninformed driver will continue to be persecuted as an easy source of government revenue.
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And if you have three kids, you’ll have to give one of them growth hormone or just mail him to wherever he’s supposed to be. Interesting population-control tactic.
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raincoaster said:
And if you have three kids, you’ll have to give one of them growth hormone or just mail him to wherever he’s supposed to be. Interesting population-control tactic.
Or does someone high up in the EU or Nulab have shares in people carriers?
Conflict of interest claims have been made about a number of Nulab Ministers. Such a claim is examined by the Mail On Sunday in respect of Home Office Minister and former Blair aide, Liam Byrne. Liam has a major shareholding in E-Government Solutions Ltd, a company he founded, which has contracts with 8 police forces and is bidding for more and is interested in NHS contracts. The Home Office is, of course responsible for the police and Liam was recently Police Minister.
Though, since the press have asked about these shares, Liam’s spokesperson has announced that he’s selling his stake, apparently.
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‘Or does someone high up in the EU or Nulab have shares in people carriers?’ (Auntie Flo’)
Someone in the car industry once told me, quite casually, that ‘Mercedes run the EU’.
He seemed a reliable source of info as well. He also told me (much to their annoyance when we rang them up as schoolkids to enquire about it for our business studies project) about the £200million+ DTI grant Jaguar got for the X-type, 3 years before it was announced publicly.
This was before the Audi/VW/Seat/Skoda empire really took off however. I would imagine now that the VW/Audi group have quite a bit of clout with the EU.
I would further imagine that the industry as a whole would prefer the responsibility for ‘booster seats’ is placed on the driver and aftermarket companies rather than the manufacturers.
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Steven_L said:
Someone in the car industry once told me, quite casually, that ‘Mercedes run the EU’.
Why am I not at all surprised?
Equally worrying is the US Carlyle Group’s major shareholding in QuinetiQ, a high tech part of MOD organisation, DERA – Dr Kelly’s former employer. Q appears to have still been part of the MOD in 1901 when it messed up the project to digitise the 1901 census. However, at some later stage Q appears to have swallowed up DERA and to have become a PFI, though it may by now have become wholly privately owned. Carlyle has, or has had, a number of former political and military leaders on its payroll, including John Major and George Bush’s father. Bin Laden’s brother is supposed to have been affiliated to the group at one stage.
Will Cameron stamp out such conflicts of interest and the shameless mixing of politics and business which seems to be as much the hallmark of the UK under Blair and Nulab as it is in the US under Bush?
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“Small children need the protection that baby seats and child seats are designed to provide. Seat belts are designed for adults. Children who have grown out of child seats still need to use booster seats and booster cushions. We estimate that these changes could prevent over 2000 child deaths or injuries each year.”
So will labour be introducing seatbelts and booster seats into school buses and public buses then. The last time I heard few school buses had seatbelts or booster seats and none forced children to wear them and public buses never have them in the first place. I heard a few days ago that a woman died from a broken neck when the bus she was traveling on braked, so obviously there are dangers on public transport too.
Ok, it will be expensive for Labour to do, but as 2000 children a year could apparently be saved from death or injury then I am sure they would not quibble if their first aim is to protect children.
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Auntie Flo said:
Nope, Thatcher was nobbled. Thatcher didn’t lie. She was feeling her way through the lies and always on Britains side. Whatever her mistakes, break her in the middle and she’d have the Union Jack running through it. She negotiated the 66% cap in Europe and had learned what the European issue really was and didn’t like it – NO! NO! NO!
She wasn’t rotten, she was nobbled.
It’s just a personal opinion Flo not backed up by links or clever quotes but Cameron is a PR pretty boy who is not fit to hold her handbag.
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‘Will Cameron stamp out such conflicts of interest and the shameless mixing of politics and business which seems to be as much the hallmark of the UK under Blair and Nulab as it is in the US under Bush?’ (Auntie Flo’)
In other words will Cameron stamp out global capitalism? I sincerely doubt it. Cameron has already signalled with his visit to India that he wants to embrace globalisation.
In what Bush describes as the ‘free-world’, everything revolves around money. People are free to live their lives according to separate moral values, but don’t expect the cut-throat world of international business and finance to play by any rule-book other than the one they have written.
Apparently about a third of the worlds money is now held in off-shore tax havens. Demand at home for investment, wealth and jobs controls government policy towards international business.
I think the global village, the free world, western democracy or whatever you want to call it is here to stay.
The most shameful thing about it all in my view is not a few politicans using their contacts and influence to make a few bob on the side, it is what has happened to peoples pensions.
Strikes me as a bit of a rip-off.
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A-SINNICK
Oh joy, someone has finally not taken me vastly more seriously than I intend. I `m not quite sure I understand what your view is though. I `m sure it’s my fault but I would be grateful if you would explain in words an idiot would understand (this idiot) what your position is.
On the EU I think, I think this.
1 It is an old fashioned barrier to global trade and without it the supposed threat of exclusion from trade is a myth
2It is corrupt and wasteful
3 It is an attack on democracy by diluting and misplacing the voter’s choices at elections
4 It is a source of bad laws. For example the Freedom of Services (file under don’t get me started but if anyone wants to know I will explain my objections)
5 It is against everything I prefer as a `Romantic Conservative` by way of turning delightful differences into ugly homogeneity.
What would your 5 pointer be is your have a millisecond? I am entirely open to counter arguments
B_RAIN COASTER – I have read and enjoyed you recent postings and wish to gratuitously praise them and by inference you. I thought your recent criticism was a bit mean but I shall continue to try to improve my input (Like the Greenham woman put down?)
STEVEN L `it is what has happened to peoples pensions. ` Did you, like me, find the lack of fuss about this epic tax grab amazing?
Lots of good stuff. I want to praise Conservative women many of whom I met at a super duper party last night in Fulham. Stylish, sexy, clever confident, witty, good humoured , irresistible and good at dancing . If there was no other reason ,and there are many , this would suffice for taking an active role in local Conservatism .I also want to praise the Naughty North London Rap Collective who featured at the wonderfully heterogeneous Clissold Park Fair today Went to mock and stayed to rock . Brilliant. I `ll leave you in their style
Police aint feelin` it wit the attitude we gotta go so.. So drop a beat.. Say peace((PEACE!), say love, (LOVE!) ,check it …
……We out o `here .
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jaq said:
Nope, Thatcher was nobbled. Thatcher didn’t lie. She was feeling her way through the lies and always on Britains side.
I’ve a signed photo of Thatcher, which I treasure, jaq, I’m hugely proud of her for being our first female PM and for some of the, much needed, reforms she achieved. She made a speech at one of my professional organisation’s anniversaries and I shall always remember standing in the Crypt at Westminster, totally entranced, as all of those around me were, by this surprisingly tiny, beautiful little woman with such delicate hands, who’s charisma and presence filled the whole crypt.
Like you, I cheered her on when she stood up to the EU elite and said ‘No!’. She was amazing, a legend in her own time and there will never be another like her. I almost voted for her – yet I’ve never been an Old Tory.
So why was the great Iron Lady nobbled?
My cat’s jumping on my key board, so will have to move her and get back to you in a while with why I believe this happened
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By Thatcher’s third term, in common with so many others, I so disliked her that I eventually bought one of those Thatcher portrait mugs with a dagger shaped handle in her back, the one that commemorated Thatcher’s night of the long knives.
Why was she nobbled? I believe she nobbled herself. In a manner so very reminiscent of Blair, Thatcher became increasingly vain and arrogant, belligerently confrontational, her crude monetarist policies in the midst of a recession were more and more divisive. Thatcher transformed herself into a one woman dictatorship. Just like Blair, she would not budge an inch from the strait jacket rigidity of failed policies. She would listen to no one, lost contact with the electorate and our concerns and took huge pleasure in emasculating her Cabinet. Thatcher was the prototype for Blair’s, much greater, subversion of our democratic process.
Cut off inside her bubble of arrogance and self delusion, Thatcher lied alright – to herself as much as to us. Everything’s great and so am I, her spin claimed. In complete denial, she neither saw nor would acknowledge, the misery she’d generated: 3 million unemployed and her Chancellors constantly raising interest rates sky high, to the point where almost everyone struggled to pay their mortgages. Did you not have a mortgage then, jaq?
From the depth of denial as intransigent as Blair’s, Mrs T could delude herself, but she could not delude the electorate or her colleagues any longer. That’s what nobbled her, jaq, her dictatorial style and policies derived from her chilling arrogance and self deception.
The memory of Thatcher’s divisiveness and her dismissal of centre politics is now so deeply entrenched in the electorate that, even the word Tory, evokes in UK’s collective consciousness the old memories of hatred and distrust of Thatcher. If a young Thatcher returned now, the majority of the electorate wouldn’t touch her with a barge pole. In their hearts, Old Tories must know this too, because even they have changed woken up and smelled the coffee of unelectablity, that’s why they elected Cameron as leader. And that’s why this life long Liberal will be voting for Cameron, because he’s made the Conservatives a human and one nation Party again. I trust Cameron, I could never trust Thatcher or any politician evoking the memory of her arrogance and divisiveness.
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FLO – I have just read your narrative of the `iconography` of `Thatcher`. I hope you won’t mind if I add a couple of thoughts . The alternative comedy `Fatcher` has grown in importance since her `betrayal` .The left via their BBC hirelings have invented a time when everyone hated this most popular Prime Minister . The truth was very different of course but this myth has a lot of currency . David Cameron by his opposition to the left wing invention has sought to reposition the Conservative party centrally and it has been understandably perceived as an especially un chivalrous piece electoral cynicism on his part. I am not much of a sentimentalist but even I gulped a bit after the 9.11 speech.
I also trust David Cameron but you should not be under any illusions that he is other than grimly detemined man.He can only go so far treading on the toes of the people he will expect to deliver his leaflets
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…the misery she’d generated: 3 million unemployed and her Chancellors constantly raising interest rates sky high [Auntie Flo]
How many would be unemployed today if Labour and the EU hadn’t created a zillion public sector non-jobs, of which booster seat monitoring is just one example (wrenching it back on topic)?
Similarly, for interest rates read taxes. The only difference is that Gordon has done it by stealth. In that respect you can call him a clever sod than Maggie.
And is there a Prime Minister in history who hasn’t gone out in a blaze of criticism (or a coffin), apart from, arguably, Attlee, Churchill and Lloyd George? Such is politics and the nature of being voted out.
No, Thatcher’s downfall was a growing public realisation that Greed is not necessarily Good. It is one thing even the most ardent Thatcher fans agree on – the ones I talk to anyway.
Serious question: Could someone remind me of some specific causes of “TBW” syndrome at the time?
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That should have been cleverer sod.
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PaulD – “No, Thatcher’s downfall was a growing public realisation that Greed is not necessarily Good. It is one thing even the most ardent Thatcher fans agree on – the ones I talk to anyway.” Actually no, the public had nothing much to do with Thatchers downfall, her own collegues stabbed her in the back.
Auntie Flo pretty much had it right, these things just tend to happen that way. But I maintain that she was always honest in her intention. Comparing Bliar and some of his tactics is like comparing the Devil to the Angel Gabriel.
And yes I did have a mortgage then. Social hysteria and financial trends didn’t stop me doing my homework nor making sensible choices.
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Well said JAQ . I agree that MT `s faults stemmed from principle whereas TB`s stem from the lack of it.I do think FLO is saying things that a vast number of people believe though
Gordon Brown probably does have some sincerely held beliefs but given what they are I`m no happier however hard he tries to rebrand
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Missed GB’s speech but saw he’s trying to block the end of inheritance tax, tight-fisted c-c-c-chancellor.
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I’ve got a better idea, forget booster seats, just ban children getting in the cars between 7-9am and 3-5pm, Monday to Fridays during term time, then they’d have to walk to school and they might get a bit of exercise and that really would benefit their well being.
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Yes they could walk to school past all those people who get ‘care in the community’ you know the ones who have untreatable mental illnesses and can’t be detained, housed, or cared for in any way. Then there are the peadophiles who’ve gained anonymity to protect their human rights. Oh and the bullies and drug pushers. Nutters who just won’t go away. Belligerent drunks and gangs of the youthful unemployed. Yes let’s get more kids out on the streets. Where I live they’d get quite a lot of exercise, unless they were below the age of about 14 when they’d be caught pretty quickly. You’ve got to love England, if only because it’s not Darfur.
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Slightly off point here, but I recently heard that if someone commits a crime while on probation they can still be considered a success of the probation system. Apparently if the conviction or arrest takes place after the probationary period then they are not considered to have failed despite the fact that the crime was commited while on probation. Remember the men who kidnapped, raped, tortured and stabbed to death a sixteen year old schoolgirl while on probation-well they too are considered by labour to be successes and form part of the statistics that labour use to show how successful probation has been.
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Steady on, Jaq. Things aren’t that bad. You’re playing into the hands of those whose livelihoods depend on the scare tactic that “something must be done”.
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Well, blow me down with a stealth tax, old Gorgon Brown’s a BSL signer!
‘This is the Britain I believe in’, wild eyed Gordon told us, in his newly Anglised, Blairised and hyperventilated voice. All the while crushing a tiny, imaginary, globe in his, pitifully gnawed and bloodied, paws, before greedily clasping it to himself.
Good grief, I thought, the man’s having a Barbarella style orgasm on power. Any minute now and his hair will frizz.
‘Where the strong help the weak’, he continued, as he made the the BSL sign for ‘give it to me’.
Not much doubt who the weak one is in your book, or what the strong will be giving you, eh, Gordon? Money and power driven orgasms.
‘Whereby all contribute’, he said, as he made the BSL sign for theft and drew the proceeds lustfully to his breast.
‘Whereby our society becomes stronger’, he added, as he made the sign for war, divorce and violent upheaval.
Bloody terrifying, I call that performance. The man’s lust for power knows no bounds. Batten down the hatches and prepare for the worst, world out there.
I’m not joking about the BSL signing – I sign. Would anyone happen to know if Gordon has or had any deaf friends or relatives? A hearing person who signs, or has signed, a lot often finds it spilling over into their conversations. Though, in his case, there is another explanation…
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Oh, blast. I meant newly Anglicised, of course.
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newmania, I have no malice against you but I appreciate the greater restraint you’ve shown in the comments lately. Effusive compliments are not neccessary, although they are always appreciated.
Never have I thought you were Eliza. She’s been around off and on for months; besides, her poetry is much filthier than yours!
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Are we back onto poetry raincoaster? I’m bored, I could write a poem. I haven’t written one for ages. Here goes:
Now Boz was a tory MP,
As blue as the antarctic sea,
He rose near the top,
But only to drop,
A clanger on Papa New-Guinea.
Now the isle d’nt apprec’ate the joke,
Some wom’n went chatising the bloke,
She said ‘it’s sheer rot’,
‘We cook people in pots’,
‘Like you we’re just ord’nary folk’,
The media reaction was quiet,
No-one knew whether to buy it,
But Boz did annouce,
‘I read every ounce’,
‘Humans form part of their diet’.
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oh god
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You do spend time moaning about poetry raincoaster, could it be more than everyone else spends writing it?
A poem for Gordon
How doth the little chancellor,
improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Thames,
On every golden scale!
How cheerfully he seems to grin,
How neatly spread his claws,
And welcome all your taxes in,
With gently smiling jaws!
With apologies to Lewis Carroll.
(see I don’t write the stuff, I just steal it)
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I’m not anti-poetry at all. Nobody’s a bigger Mac fan than me. My objections to verse in the comments did not begin until we began to be treated to poetry that was apparently written by the zygotes, rather than the neurons. Every new outbreak of poetry carries with it the risk of inflaming the already highly flammable dreadful erotic poetry impulse to which more than one of the commenters have fallen prey.
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What have you got against sex with rhythm?
And I refute any hint of a charge, the nearest I’ve got to writing erotic poetry is one about a bacon sandwich. I can be serious about some things but I have a firmly juvenile approach to anything erotic.
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I like Steven-L’s and jaq’s poems, Raincoster. Though I do echo your fear about awakening that lunatic…shhh, you know who..
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In view of Newmania’s name, I’d better clarify my view in the above, it does not refer to him.
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I have nothing against sex with rhythm. Or even sex with white boys.
But I don’t look for it in the comments on a blog post about child car seats.
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it was a joke raincoaster, just a joke.
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You don’t have to tell me!
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Can someone settle an argument: is this the same Boris Johnson who discussed beating up a journalist with a fellow public schoolboy a few years ago?
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Spot on Boris. Tell it how it is and how this useless bunch of has beens drop their pants to whatever madness the EU thinks up next. I wonder now as ever if half the legislation pumped forward by Brussels and I wouldn’t mind if it was good legislation, isn’t created by over inflated half wits who have to justify their existance at the trough.
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According to the Department of Trade and Industry, statistics, 18 people were injured by artifical grass in their own home in 2001.
In the same year, 71 unfortunate souls were injured by cattle grids in their gardens.
I fear brussels has a fair bit more legislating to do!
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