Notes from Blighty – by Chris Cobb
Londoners have just gone to the polls to unseat their long-time mayor, Ken ('Red Ken') Livingstone, in favor of maverick Tory Boris Johnson. This outcome was considered so unlikely back in the autumn when Boris announced his candidacy that the bookies would give you 16-1 against. Boris, you see, was considered something of a buffoon, if not an outright liability, within the Conservative Party. That he was elected says something about rebellious Londoners who refuse to be dictated to by the pollsters and The Guardian; sort of like high schoolers electing the class clown as student council president in order to stick it to the school authorities.
Following are some of Boris's more infamous pronouncements:
On George W Bush
"The President is a cross-eyed Texan warmonger, unelected, inarticulate, who epitomises the arrogance of American foreign policy."
On using a mobile phone while driving
"I don't believe that is necessarily any more dangerous than the many other risky things that people do with their free hands while driving - nose-picking, reading the paper, studying the A-Z, beating the children, and so on."
On commuting
"I forgot that to rely on a train, in Blair's Britain, is to engage in a crapshoot with the devil."
On Euro-scepticism
"I can hardly condemn UKIP as a bunch of boss-eyed, foam-flecked Euro hysterics, when I have been sometimes not far short of boss-eyed, foam-flecked hysteria myself."
Tony Blair
"It is just flipping unbelievable. He is a mixture of Harry Houdini and a greased piglet. He is barely human in his elusiveness. Nailing Blair is like trying to pin jelly to a wall."
On becoming Prime Minister:
"My chances of being PM are about as good as the chances of finding Elvis on Mars, or my being reincarnated as an olive."
On Channel 5
"I don't see why people are so snooty about Channel 5. It has some respectable documentaries about the Second World War. It also devotes considerable airtime to investigations into lap-dancing, and other related and vital subjects."
On being sacked by Michael Howard
"My friends, as I have discovered myself, there are no disasters, only opportunities. And, indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters."
On how to vote
"Voting Tory will cause your wife to have bigger breasts and increase your chances of owning a BMW M3."
On why he voted for David Cameron as Tory leader
"I'm backing David Cameron's campaign out of pure, cynical self-interest."
On drugs
"I think I was once given cocaine but I sneezed so it didn't go up my nose. In fact, it may have been icing sugar."
On the City of Portsmouth
"Too full of drugs, obesity, underachievement and Labour MPs."
On tennis
"I love tennis with a passion. I challenged Boris Becker to a match once and he said he was up for it but he never called back. I bet I could make him run around."
On the Labour Party (or Papua New Guinea)
"For 10 years, we in the Tory Party have become used to Papua New Guinea-style orgies of cannibalism and chief-killing, and so it is with happy amazement that we watch as the madness engulfs the Labour Party."
On the Liberal Democrats
"The Lib Dems are not just empty. They are a void within a vacuum surrounded by a vast inanition."
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