Sunday Paper Review: 7th November 2010

Our glorious leader, Nigel Farage, is popping up in the most unpredicted of places - and in a positive light, too. That the positivity should have stretched to the Independent on Sunday caught this blogger completely off guard, but there Nigel is, in all his newly re-elected glory in an opinion piece by Matt Chorley in which he asks "Can Clegg and Cameron patch up coalition cracks?".

With Cameron's constant promises on the repatriation of aspects of British national sovereignty now fatally exposed as worthless, the newspaper quotes Nigel as urging Conservative Party members to defect to UKIP, to seek genuine representation with us and away from the "most Europhile Tory party since Edward Heath".

Nigel says of Conservative EU-sceptics: "I regard them as friends, people like Philip Hollobone and Philip Davies, but frankly they are impotent, and what they ought to do, even given the vagaries of our voting system, is come and join UKIP."

And he adds: "There are millions of historically Eurosceptic Tory voters who will be utterly shocked and appalled at the direction of this Conservative-led coalition".

Elsewhere in the article, an unnamed senior Conservative backbencher complains of the Coalition: "...there is too much Liberal and not enough Conservative".

Worryingly for me, The Observer has just left me with the feeling that there's still a bit of latent leftist in me somewhere. I know...

But they report that under the new benefits system, unemployed people will be "ordered to do periods of compulsory full-time work in the community or be stripped of their benefits".

So, make the street sweepers and bog cleaners unemployed and give their jobs to the unemployed..? Is that it?

It sounds like a great whizz to get local authority jobs performed for free.

Project that forward, and the national average wage will be two-and-sixpence and we'll all be living on a satsuma per week.

All I need now is a few Dickensian street urchins to complete the scene... wannabe Fagin's everywhere are no doubt practising picking a pocket or two...

...I imagine, however, that instead of forcing the disabled to sell "sweet red roses, two blooms for a penny" throughout London's classier squares, they'll all have to hand out free copies of the Metro and the Evening Standard...

And all social housing will soon be abolished and anyone earning less than the average wage (£26,000 or so) will be forced to live in the Workhouse, no doubt.

How many billions did we give the banks again? How many billions do we give the European Empire every year? How much did MPs swindle us out of with their dodgy expense claims? Just wondered.

Now, I really must stop ridiculing the "...the terrorists are gonna get you!" narrative still being churned out by a political class which is desperate to justify itself to the people. "Look, you need Government and systems of coercion!"

No, we don't. We just need to be left alone.

Anyway. Get this from the Sunday Express. Ahem:

"AL QAEDA'S chief bomb maker Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri is understood to be planting explosives in gifts bound for Britain, Europe and the US. They would be timed to explode once the toys are in stores."

I'm sorry, but it must be a piss-take, a joke too far. Come on!

Is it just me... it conjures up images of Kevin McCallister being chased around Duncan's Toy Chest by the Wet Bandits.

Take that, you dirty animal of a terrorist! You've been smoochin' wit everybody!

Whatever you ask for this Christmas, don't ask for a ruddy printer. Printers are causing panic everywhere. Goodness knows how the staff of Comet or Staples sleep safely.

Anyway, The People reports that the police have apparently detained twenty of these rampaging printers, so the world is now a much safer place.

They blow their trumpet as such concerned guardians of our mortal safety with the opening gambit: "The sinister discovery of 20 dumped printers with an ink ­cartridge part missing from each one was being probed by anti-terror cops last night after a tip-off from The People."

...which, I'm afraid to say, I thought was jolly hilarious.

The report goes on: "Disturbingly, one of the machines was contaminated with white powder."

Cocaine? Come on, it is Salford Quays they're talking about.

It carries on... "The man said: “She found a white powder not unlike talcum powder inside a printer. She quickly washed her hands and got rid of the substance. It had no odour”..."

Yup, sounds like a coke dealer doing a drop to us.

Coming next week: Exploding fresh air. The public will be forced to wear gimp masks at all times. For their own good, obviously.

It's a bit of a quiet one over at the Sunday Telegraph whose focus seems to be on the strike at the BBC by members of the National Union of Journalists. The row is over changes to the pension scheme. Hardly that earth shattering or exciting to much of the public though, is it? The bigger question is how many of us are still watching the BBC to notice? Yeah, I know... we pay for it so we should, but nature shows by eugenics supporters, a load of climate apocalypse nonsense, promotion of the left wing agenda and a non-stop love-in with the European Union doesn't have much to commend itself. So, strike all you like, BBC workers. Just remember we, the people who are forced to pay for the ruddy corporation.

So, with the workhouse looming and the BBC still picking our pocket for a telly tax to fund pensions and repeats of things we did not watch the first time...

...feel delighted for the Germans and the Chinese who - according to a Mail on Sunday report - are set to make an absolute fortune covering the English countryside in bloody ugly solar panels.

Apparently, the entire county of Wiltshire will be made of perspex by the end of 2011. Or something.

All in the name of the great global carbon tax swindle, obviously.

Now, since the News of the World went behind a paywall, we no longer have pictures of men in pants or women in bras to ogle on a Sunday.

Still, if you can get off on Ann Widdecombe... no gimp mask required.