chancers, fuckwits, d-listers, gobshites, loons and shoeless jackanapes

Have I left anyone out?

According to one report I heard yesterday, CCHQ has received more than 1,000 enquiries from people wanting to be Conservative candidates - another put the figure at 500. It's great that there has been such a huge response, but it has given party staff a major headache.

via. In the spirit of the times, I’m now pleased to announce an open primary between Katie the Dog and Stumpy the Gerbil, from which the winner’s name will go forward to Conservative Central Office. Apparently, Stumpy has chewed his own back legs off in an obvious attempt to appeal to the David Davis/territorial SAS butch Tory demographic. But Katie still has more fluffy Dave appeal.

UPDATE: There's a very strong candidate here, to wit a genetically engineered glowing monkey.

Comments

[ajay]

the David Davis/territorial SAS butch Tory demographic.

Yes, and on that subject, I have a question I'd like to put to Mr Davis: he joined 21 after leaving school, having failed to get good enough A-levels to get into Warwick. He then retook his A-levels the next year, did better, and went off to Warwick after all.
21 is based in London, so obviously he couldn't have stayed in while at Warwick. Selection is eleven months long.
Did he even get badged? Even if he did, he must have spent about a month in the regiment before going off to university... never has such a short military career attracted so much positive attention.

[Richard J]

I believe Stumpy, as a gerbil, is only a few generations removed from the Gobi desert, and therefore is completely unsuitable as a candidate for the Tories.

Strange coincidence though - I was thinking about the SAS this lunchtime, and how at odds their image is with what they actually do in practice.

[ajay]

how at odds their image is with what they actually do in practice.

Go on...

[Richard J]

Intel gathering and low-level counter-insurgency work, basically, epitomised by Oman and Yemen - all the macho training programme is really there for is to weed out anybody who doesn't have the inner strength, patience and willpower to sit around for a month on their own in the arse end of nowhere... The number of deliberate stand-up gunfights (as opposed to double tapping the odd Yemeni/IRA member) they've got into over the years is surprisingly low [1].

Now the Paras were basically selected for being homicidal nutters willing to be throw themselves under the T-64s of the Fifth Guards Shock Army...

[1] The infamous Bravo Two Zero is excluded on grounds of being a hideous balls-up.

[ajay]

Ah, I see.
I would make three points, though:
1) the Paras were actually originally selected for being homicidal nutters willing to throw themselves at Panzers. (1940 or so for the Independent Parachute Companies)
2) B20 was a horrible ballsup, but its original mission was indeed to sit in hiding for two weeks watching a road, which is a classic 22 long-range recce tasking and has been since 1942.
3) the number of deliberate standup gunfights they've got into is probably higher than you might think. They got into a fair amount of aggro in the Falklands, and have been doing a lot of hard arrest ops in Iraq, as well as kill/capture stuff elsewhere. Like the US SF, they've had a bit of mission creep recently away from hearts and minds and towards the bang/smash end of the spectrum.

[Richard J]

Without wanting to turn this into the 'Over-grown schoolboys with worrying militaristic fetishes' website - is there much reliable information about what exactly the SAS has been up to the last few years? They've been even more low-profile than usual, as far as I can see.

[ajay]

Well, Richard, I could tell you, but then I'd have to slot you.

[dsquared]

I vote dog. The gerbil and the monkey are a bit funny-looking and don't connect with the aspirations of Middle England.

[ajay]

I've just clicked through. Holy crap, the gerbil really did chew its own back legs off. I thought that was just jamie being hyperbolic.

In that case the choice is clear:

H Blears (Lab)
G Monkey (Lib Dem)
K T Dog (Con)
S T Gerbil (UKIP)

[Richard J]

A Lengthoftwobyfour (BNP)

[ejh]

never has such a short military career attracted so much positive attention.

Billy Bragg?

[septicisle]

I ought perhaps to be clear that he chewed just one of his feet off, and had a good go at the other one, so not quite his back legs reduced to stumps but still rather impressive when it comes to the pain barrier. Incidentally, Stumpy is up for a face to face debate with Katie, which I should imagine will prove enlightening.

[Chris Williams]

Thighgate! Imposter gerbil claims fake monopede status.

[Fellow Traveller]

I believe Stumpy, as a gerbil, is only a few generations removed from the Gobi desert, and therefore is completely unsuitable as a candidate for the Tories.

Some of the finest Tories in British history were born in the Gobi and other, even more remote and foreign, parts of the world.

As for the Paras putative willingness to throw themselves under the treads of Panzers during WWII - if so, why did they express such horror at finding themselves facing SS Panzer grenadiers and their tanks during Market Garden rather than the fat, middle aged reservists they'd been briefed about?

[ajay]

Ha. David Cameron is unclear about how many houses he owns, but Stumpy is unclear about how many feet he owns. That's not change we can believe in!

why did they express such horror at finding themselves facing SS Panzer grenadiers and their tanks during Market Garden rather than the fat, middle aged reservists they'd been briefed about?

"expressing horror" in the sense of "one under strength airborne battalion held up two SS Panzer divisions for a week"... seriously, I don't think you want to get into an argument about whether or not the Paras behaved like wusses at Arnhem.

[Fellow Traveller]

I object to the characterisation of the Paras as 'homicidal nutters' and the imputation of a charge of cowardice follows.

I believe horror amounted to the appropriate reaction to their circumstance given the rosy picture intelligence had depicted beforehand.

It didn't make them cowards to feel that way and I never said anything to that effect.

I can't envisage a group of 'homicidal nutters' responding to the situation in that fashion.

[Richard J]

'homicidal nutters' is a bit glib, true, but when (thinking particularly about their intended role in WW3 your basic role is to confront a numerically superior and better equipped enemy as a speed-bump to give NATO armour time to mobilise, you're basically selecting for people with quite of lot of aggressive tendencies and a certain absence of instincts about self-preservation...

The willingness to jump out of an airplane in the dark seems like a reasonable proxy for identifyng people with this uncommon combination of traits. (Other ways, of course, include wandering into a Glasgow pub with an RP accent.)

[dsquared]

did I miss the meeting where we all decided "let's bait Dan until he actually hunts someone down and kills them"?

[Richard J]

It's Friday afternoon, a lovely day out, and it's this or think seriously about ways of getting profits out of Brazil that don't involve people semi-seriously suggesting suitcases full of cash.

[dsquared]

Ask the lads at L@ngb@r, they're the go-to guys for large cash sums which are unaccountably stuck in a Brazilian account that nobody's allowed to see.

[ajay]

did I miss the meeting where we all decided "let's bait Dan until he actually hunts someone down and kills them"?

Dan Simon, or you?

Richard: emeralds are more compact than cash.

[Dan Hardie]

For those who really need this kind of SAS-and-Paras fetishism, there are perfectly good letters pages in 'Nuts' and 'Zoo', which have the advantage that their readers are actually meant to be wanking.

[Richard J]

I don't think we've been so much fetishing them, as politely sceptical about their institutional culture and popular images...

[ajay]

It worked!

[Dan Hardie]

No, you've speculated in a confident but embarrassingly erroneous way about something you have no first hand knowlege of, and as someone who has served as a Para-trained soldier in a war, and worked with SAS NCOs, I'm politely asking you to stop making a tit of yourself.

[ejh]

This piece requires a subscription (or access to a print version, which I have) which is a shame: notable is the section about "the pouch... filled with ears and other Argentine body parts".

[Alex]

It's Friday afternoon, a lovely day out, and it's this or think seriously about ways of getting profits out of Brazil that don't involve people semi-seriously suggesting suitcases full of cash.

Send your client an e-mail under a false name, claiming to be FROM THE DESK OF MS. CHARLES TAYLOR, DAUGTHER OF ONCE LIBERIAN DICTATOR.

[Dan Hardie]

Dsquared, do you still want me to bring those severed ears to the pub?

[Richard J]

Like home-made pork scratchings, right?

[ejh]

I once asked for pork scratchings in the Slug and Lettuce in Islington: they gave me Japanese rice crackers instead.

[ajay]

notable is the section about "the pouch... filled with ears and other Argentine body parts"

Not actually evidence of how violent the Paras were, but rather of how appallingly inedible compo used to be in the 1980s.