The one with politics all over the gaffe.
August 7, 2010 5 Comments
Source Guardian.co.uk
When the coffee house phenomena hit the States we still had the humble cafe (pronounced caff). Several years later the cafe has all but disappeared and in its place are the egregious green & white caffeine oubliettes. It took several years but America found a way of exporting them to our peaceful land. We lapped them up.
My first job was working in a coffee shop in a shopping centre, churning out ‘Expresso’ and ‘Frothy Coffee’ by the vat load like some Indian sweatshop worker (this was in the day before the minimum wage). I produced these bastardised coffees to the general public and they queued up in their thousands as if they were the best things since sliced bread (which is ironic really as we also sold that but like Pacman and Amstrad computers it just wasn’t that popular anymore, replaced by the grandiosely titled Wrap). We all wanted to be ‘Friends’, to sit around all day talking about sex & relationships. We couldn’t stop the invasion, in fact we welcomed it.
We’ve allowed it to happen again. Only this time it’s not addictive hot beverages, this time we get bad political oratory. We all mocked the Americans for voting in a man that was more into his gaffes than a cockney describing his house. You would have hoped that we learnt the lesson of history, well we didn’t.
Over the past week, our illustrious leader Dave Cameron, has thrown a few in of his own. What with his comments on World War 2, his demonstration of world class diplomacy with his ill-advised India pandering comments about Pakistan. Then came his comment yesterday when he stated that Iran had nuclear weapons. His PR machine span the line that the PM had simply mis-spoken, of course he knows that Iran doesn’t have nuclear weapons (yet) and he just made an error. I’m not a politician, I didn’t go to Eton, I didn’t even do that well either at school, college or university for that matter. However, even I know that if you’re going to screw up, don’t do it about nuclear weapons. It’s probably a good thing that the Conservative pin-up, Lady Thatcher (or as she was known back then ‘The Milk Snatcher’ or ‘That woman who stole my job and then my community) was in charge during the Cold War and not him otherwise who knows what damage could have been done.
Having a quick trawl through the YouTube archives, I’ve found Dave’s recent gaffes as well as a couple of older ones, just in case we were thinking that the pressure of the job was getting to him.
The one with Cameron and the Gay gaffe
The one where Cameron equates China and Iran
The one where Cameron rewrites history
The one where Cameron accuses Pakistan of promoting terror and thereby pissing off nearly a billion people
The one with Cameron, the public, Iran and the Nuclear weapons.
… just for laughs The one where Cameron checks the cameras are on him and his excellent Blair impression.
Con-Dem Nation 
Enough is enough. JNR implies you’re a junior partner! That’s it. We all know what he means! Pakistan do promote terror. I don’t care who that annoys! Also, Mikey, although you use a simile, thus it’s a device used in fiction, how dare you compare your life, in Cheshire, to that of a child working in a sweatshop in India. YOU have ZERO in common with this individual. They don’t moan on any level like you do!!!! Last post is poor. You’re much better, brighter and bigger than this. Bring back the old Mikeymatthews! WE MISS YOU!
I’ll take your point that this wasn’t the best of posts…but you weren’t there at that coffee shop, it was hell…furthermore the shopping centre was in Cambridge not Cheshire.
I hope the next post will be more to your liking…I was searching for an idea with this really…just posting videos is lazy blogging…inspiration was not forthcoming.
Lazy….. Yes!!! Easy! The politics of the criticism is easy. Promote and sell me a better world. Policies please…not simply an entrenched political view that attacks all that’s done and said and doesn’t see the bigger scripture!! Mikey… I LOVE YOU!!!
Hey,
Thought id try leave some feedback; Interesting post but I wasn’t sure exactly what you are trying to get at – admittedly I haven’t followed or read the rest of your posts (witch I should havedone before making this post). Were you trying to show that the conservative leader is just not fit to lead? it is very easy to highlight someone’s faults, you could have swapped all those videos of Cameron for any labour figure and probably found as many gaffes – I also don’t know ideologically where you sit, Cameron and Blair are one and the same and to have a future party leader that does not conform to the stereotypical ‘young’ & ‘Charismatic’ features will be a political anomaly like Brown – I think more discussion on the policies the parties are trying to pedal would be more helpful… the power of a party leader is very very hard to quantify 😛
I take you point Chris…some of your questions would have been answered through the other posts. For example, the point about policies I think are addressed through other posts as they involve more discussion of where the coalition sits. The point of the blog really is to highlight examples of where the coalition is getting things wrong and to highlight how things could be different if someone else was in charge. Have a read of the other posts and see if you enjoy them a bit more.
Finally, as I replied to someone else earlier…this was a lazy post, just sticking some videos on a blog hardly provides any political insight.