British politics more or less resolved for indeterminate period

Well, there we are. Conservatives get to fix the economy in the most cynical way they can come up with, but the Liberal Democrats get their reforms. The only question now is how bad they'll allow it to get before bailing. Lack of experience with coalitions, the general malaise and the little or no hope of ideological change in the government mean this might not last until the end of the year, if it wasn't for the horrible state of the Labour party. There won't be a competent opposition, maybe not for years. But there is some hope that the old Labour will come back, the social democratic party so thoroughly destroyed by Tony Blair. That would make a difference, and if this coalition holds, it may mean a brighter future where one of the richest countries in Europe isn't also the most in Debt, or has the highest teen pregnancy rate, etc.

British Political analysts struggling with concept of coalition...

There's no cute video for this. Anyway, British political commentators are struggling to explain to the public their own weird historical mutant of election law, where everything is an ad hoc gentleman's agreement. Aside from the fact that the Prime minister has to decide when he calls for an election, there's the case of the hung parliament where the sitting government actually gets to decide who to talk to first. But the Liberal Democrats have decided not to do that, not in the least because they wouldn't have a majority, even with Labour, but they would, with the Conservatives. But then, the conservatives aren't going to offer the Lib Dems Proportional representation, Which is what they need if they're ever going to be a viable contender in the future. Britain has one the most heavily gerrymandered district systems in the world, which is why the Liberal Democrats have 8% of the seats, when they have 23% of the popular vote. If the Conservative-Liberal Democrat government doesn't make it, then there is little to no hope of a majority government, unless there's a truly bizarre rainbow coalition in the works. If there's anything this election's proved, it's that the Liberal Democrats are right, Britain needs a major election reform so it can have the governments it needs, not this shit. And all the ranting and raving about how coalition governments are rife with 'horse trading' are just so much nonsense. Contra-moral sellouts labeled as compromise are the very soul of politics, and whether you dither and argue with coalition partners or extremists and lunatics within your own party is completely irrelevant.

Gordon Brown reveals human side...

Classic stuff. This looks more like the kind of thing that would happen on Yes Minister or The thick of it, than in real life. If you haven't been following the British elections, you probably don't care, but it might be genuinely interesting this time, seeing as the Liberal Democrats, who have been the second party in the country for years, until recent tory resurgence, might be needed to get a majority, which paves the way for a possible reform of the two-party system and the end of almost 30 years of right to center right domination in British politics. Gordon Brown's unending string of mistakes, of which this is just the most recent, are damaging, but mostly make both him and the Tories look bad for some reason. David Cameron is just a bit to eager and falls over these mistakes a bit too soon each time, but he's also just as stiff and useless as Brown is in reality. Not that the Liberal Democrats are a fount of Charisma, but they manage to look human most of the time. A hot summer of elections and coalition negotiations up ahead..

The second golden age...

Further rustling through my comics collection turned up the gems I became more interested in in the home stretch towards college, when beer money eclipsed comics for a few years. Vertigo was a weird mix of more adult-oriented material. When Alan Moore and Frank Miller revolutionised comics in 1986, Marvel did nothing, but DC decided to recruit some more Brits from 2000AD and it's competitors. The British comics scene took much more advantage of the total lack of interest from serious critics to move towards more underground and weirder stuff. Not being taken seriously meant doing whatever you felt like. Consequently the comics were tackling big issues, lacked meaningful censorship and attracted better writers. Vertigo imported these guys wholesale and set up the comics version of HBO, a well-funded mainstream home for non-mainstream material with a high emphasis on quality over quantity. Around '97 or '98 I was bored with the x-men and decided on a whim to subscribe to the four hottest vertigo/dc titles of the moment. I followed Hellblazer, Preacher, Hitman and The Invisibles. Consequently I got sucked into a mind-expanding world of shocking violence and evil occult shit. I specifically picked up the Invisibles because of a wizard magazine list of the weirdest things in the comic. If I hadn't done that I never would have gotten out of the x-ghetto, and would probably have lost all interest in comics forever.

The devil whisked the excise men away

I just came back from a lecture by a professor of medieval literature who was so damaged by years of trying to interest students in the middle ages that he spent about two hours cracking jokes about everything. It was sort of entertaining, but every semi-interesting point was drowned out by the next wisecrack. The thing that really got on my tits though, was the musical accompaniment, a series of earnestly performed British and Irish folk songs about leprechauns. I can't say I'm an expert on this kind of music, but I have a sneaking suspicion that like a lot of countryside traditions, this one stems from 19th century bourgeois angst about the industrial revolution. That would also explain why all these supposedly medieval songs have lyrics in recognisable modern English, with the occasional ye olde English touch, i.e. why they all sound like Gilbert and Sullivan present: A country lad goes a-courtin. I can't wait to tell the only Irishman I know about the leprechaun song and wait for the blast of bile to hit me.

Food porn addict

I didn't want to show a clip of one of the dozens of food porn shows I regularly watch, but the current incarnation of Masterchef, not the Loyd Grossman version parodied above, is one of the best. Top five would probably be:

- Masterchef
- Heston Blumenthal's In search of perfection
- Both Ramsay shows, but more kitchen nightmares
- Keith Floyd getting drunk somewhere
- Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations

Despite watching all this and owning half a dozen recipe books, I get the distinct impression from friends and family members that I'm not that good at it. Everyone always eats it, so it's probably not horrible, but most of the time they just marvel at my impromptu solutions to things like airdrying (a fan). Perhaps I'd have a better palate if I quit smoking, and I could finally find out if anything I've cooked is actually edible. If you don't know who Keith Floyd was, this pretty much encapsulates him:

The death of surrealism

I haven't been watching the new series of Shooting stars, but there is still the possibility of Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer coming back to do a sketch show. I really miss seeing stuff like this on a regular weekday. It's not that current comedy is boring or that this kind of stuff is always great, but it's all just so realistic and reasonable. It's almost like nobody wants to do it anymore, just having something weird and silly. There's still standups like Eddie Izzard, and the mighty boosh, but as a whole the last couple of years feel less and less like anything can happen, and more and more like, everything as already happened. This whole decade was like seeing that cloned sheep on TV, the most mundane kind of future you could imagine. In other words let's try and invent and rocket car or something before 2020, or just bring back surrealism.

Wardrobe eats children

I skipped the chronicles of Narnia first time around. There was a BBC dramatisation I could've seen when I was twelve, but for some reason it just didn't appeal to me. I felt no compunction whatsoever to see the Disney flick of a couple of years ago. Thank god for Christmas, I finally got to see it and was thoroughly annoyed. I don't know what it is about British Child Actors, but they raise my hackles. I always used to laugh at the stereotypical British villains in American films, but I get the point now. There's something deeply sinister about the accent, if not used in historical context, funny or ironic. I had an honest to god nightmare after seeing this film, about British Children wanting 'ever so much' to play with me. And this is all before taking the fact that that Lion is supposed to be Jesus into account.