Friday 13 June 2008

Battle for the Planet of the Apes


Keeping the Planet of the Apes theme going, I see that Rupert Murdoch's former top monkey at the Sun, Kelvin MacKenzie, says he's "90% certain" to take on David Davis, in the Haltemprice and Howden by-election. The former Sun editor (now on reduced banana rations and writing a weekly column for the paper he used to rule with a sneer of cold command) is apparently standing on some sort of bizarre anti-civil liberties ticket.

I was complaining the other day that it was getting increasingly difficult to vote wholeheartedly for or against political candidates, because so many seem to be standing for the same ill-thought out consensus and don't want to give hostages to fortune by having firm beliefs about concrete issues. Now we've got the prospect of a straight fight between somebody who stands up and says that liberty, civil rights and civilization in general are good ideas and a hooting, excrement-hurling tabloid chimp who couldn't tell habeas corpus from a banana. Bring it on!

Just in case I might be in any doubt about whose side to take in this scrap, up popped ex-spin-meister and all round slimeball Alastair Campbell on The World at One today to rubbish David Davis' pro-civil rights campaign. If Kelvin MacKenzie and Alastair Campbell are trying to rubbish something, you just know that whatever it is has to be worth defending. So for once, some voters might be given the chance to choose between two clearly different agendas. If you ask me, (which I know you probably won't), it's a pretty easy choice - a bit like being asked, on a warm evening whether you'd like a cold beer, or would prefer to have scalding battery acid hosed down your throat. Almost makes me wish I was registered to vote in Haltemprice and Howden....

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