The books have arrived!

EAT MY MASSIVE IMAGE

Book launch to be sometime in late August, hopefully between the 18th and 21st and most likely in a Chorlton pub of some description… probably Dulcimer.

I will let you know as soon as I know it myself.

It is in fact possible to buy the paperback on Amazon if you really really cannot wait for the launch, but the books at the launch will be going for £7, so you may want to wait. I am now begging auditioning fellow authors to do reading spots on the night.

Humming and hawing about showing the trailer as well… dunno if I can deal with my pals looking at a blown up version of my horrid face.

WATCH THIS SPACE

Lovely covers!

Ian Rogers, Montreal graphic designer and owner of the brilliant art blog Grey Not Grey is doing the cover for my upcoming release “Industrial Revolution”.

Ian has instructed me to tell you that these are “very, very rough, the equivalent of a digital ‘napkin sketch'” so, yeah, keep that in mind.

You have to take my word for the fact that they are all very relevant to the story in their own ways.

Number 1: Grey skies and broken glass

grey cover. Manchester buildings behind broken glass. Title in industrial font and upturned letters

Number 2: Face in ribbons

black cover. a man's face in red swirling ribbons. Title in white on the ribbons

Number 3: Creepy eyes!

black cover with a strip of flesh punctuated by two right eyes, one brown one blue. Title in splashy red font

I have polled my friends and family and one of them was a clear winner. See if you can guess which one.

Favourite comment so far: What kind of author name is ‘Rob Cutforth’?! ‘Steve’ King wouldn’t have cut it, change it to ‘Robert’ or ‘RT’. Yes ma’am.

One of those people

Self-publishing is a choice, yeah, a decision I made after years of careful thought. It’s political, man. Publishing houses are evil art destroying factories and agents are just heartless robots with chainsaws for arms and dollar signs for eyeballs. It has nothing to do with the fact that the book was rejected by all the agents I sent it to. IT’S A CHOICE I MADE, I TELL YOU.

Book club nerd

Don’t let anyone tell you self-publishing isn’t great. Why would I want to share all those fat profits with some sort of agent? What do they know about getting books published anyway? It’s not like they do it for a living or anything.

Being rejected isn’t soul destroying, it’s liberating! I just get so JAZZED by the idea of self marketing.

businessman dreaming of fanny

Nothing gets my blood pumping faster than the excitement of putting myself OUT THERE. In the world. With other humans. Branding, SEO, marketing campaigns… Finally, I’ll have an excuse to drink during the day, snort coke off a hooker’s tits and eat a monkey’s brain like a real, live, Ad Exec. I cannot wait to start selling things to my friends.

This is how I imagine it going:

Me: Hey buddy! How are you? Yeah, I know we haven’t spoken in years… how are you? Yeah, whatever, listen. Hey did you know I am a writer now? Yeah man. Got a book and everything. Yeah, it’s self published… hello? I HATE MY LIFE!

It reminds of that time my best friend in school, Josh, (not his real name) convinced me to attend a “business meeting” with him that turned out to be a pyramid scheme selling soap to old ladies. Josh is now living large as a born again christian with dreadful web design skills and a disturbing penchant for World of Warcraft. Incidentally, he’s also written a self published novel. It’s horrendous.

hellboy cosplay. man in background looking dubious. Caption not convinced

Luckily, unlike Josh, I am the king of social media. People love reading tweets from fake authors about their amazing self published books, am I right? Hey world! Check it out, Johnnie Dillhole from Antfart, Nebraska gave me three and a half stars on Amazon! And daddy said I’d amount to nuthin. Up yers, daddy!

But twitterers aren’t fools. If there is one thing I learned from the National Film Board of Canada, it’s that persuasion is better than force. You can’t just hit them over the head with your pitch, you have to finesse it. You need to trick people into buying a book by writing a funny joke. And use many many hashtags.

Knock knock, who’s there? BUY MY SELF PUBLISHED BOOK, IT’S GREAT #seriouslyitsawesome #book #self #published #amazing

What is my book about, I hear you scream? Fine, settle down and I’ll tell ya.

It is about a man who wakes up in a near-future, post-Apocalyptic Manchester with no memory except that of a machine that prints human beings. He has to survive long enough to retrieve his memory and find the machine. A difficult task what with all the zombies… THERE AREN’T ANY FUCKING ZOMBIES IN IT, STOP ASKING ME.

Anyway, the book is the best thing since To Kill A Mockingbird and it is totally what Harper Lee would’ve written if she was still alive. Out next month.

Thanks in advance for reading it.

Your pal,

Robert

EDIT: Harper Lee IS still alive? DAMMIT.

My background check form for prospective gun owners

Yesterday, Barack Obama announced “sweeping” new policies targeting gun violence in the wake of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary. I put “sweeping” in quotes because if it was in any other civilised country, the changes he suggested would be viewed as “the barest of minimums”.

Woman pushing a stroller whilst riding a segway. Caption America, Fuck Yeah


Banning military style assault weapons, background checks and limiting magazines to 10 rounds seems to be so obvious as to be positively silly, but this is yeehaw pow pow FUCKIN AMURICAH we’s talkin bout so any gun control is welcome. Even gun control as weak as this.

To beef up Obama’s law, I humbly submit my background check form to be completed by all gun shop owners at point of purchase.

 

Rob’s Gun buying background check thing

 

  1. Is the prospective gun owner a member of the NRA?

    No… move to question 2

    Yes… GUN DENIED

  2. Did the prospective gun owner smile like he was touching his first boob when you handed him the gun?

    No… move to question 3

    Yes… GUN DENIED

  3. Did the prospective gun owner say “I’ll be back” in an Austrian accent when you told him about the waiting period?

    No… move to question 4

    Yes… GUN DENIED

  4. Does the prospective gun owner think the US government bombed the World Trade Centre on Sept 11?

    No… move to question 5

    Yes… GUN DENIED

  5. Does the prospective gun owner have an eye patch?

    No… move to question 6

    Yes… GUN DENIED

  6. Is the prospective gun owner missing any fingers, toes or especially teeth?

    No… move to question 7

    Yes… GUN DENIED

  7. Is the prospective gun owner Rush Limbaugh?

    No… move to question 8

    Yes… GUN DENIED

  8. Is the prospective gun owner chewing gum or worse, a piece of grass/wheat?

    No… move to question 9

    Yes… GUN DENIED

  9. During the transaction, did the prospective gun owner use the word “Y’all” more than once?

    No… move to question 10

    Yes… GUN DENIED

  10. Is the prospective gun owner American or been American at any time in his life?

    No… move to question 11

    Yes… GUN DENIED

  11. Does the prospective gun owner have blond hair?

    No… GUN DENIED

    Yes… GUN DENIED

Penalty for selling a gun to anyone that fails the test is (obviously) death by firing squad.

If Canada had colonised the UK

What would the UK look like if John Cabot’s voyage went not from east to west across the Atlantic, but West to East?

Probably nothing like this but I was bored last night and hadn’t touched illustrator in awhile so I thought why not do a blog post that is bound to offend everyone who reads it? Apologies in advance.

map of UK with Canadian provinces taking the place of UK counties

Quebec

  • Has it’s own language
  • Run by separatists
  • Men put a disturbing amount of time/thought into their attire
  • Cultural capital of UK, contains its most beautiful city
  • Fantastically proficient at its national sport, terrible at soccer

British Columbia

  • Tradition of flirting with Socialism
  • Beautiful and full of lakes
  • Home of the United Kanata’s Green movement
  • Home of the UK’s best soccer team

Nunavut

  • Bloody cold
  • Home of the country’s indigenous people
  • Invaded by Norse sailors
  • People communicate by throat singing
  • Lots of blubber

Manitoba

  • Known for mining
  • History of violent protests against the government
  • Moustaches never went out of style
  • People known for their friendliness
  • Completely mad for national sport, despite being hopelessly shit at it

Saskatchewan

  • Country’s middle
  • Incest abounds on its fringes
  • Parts of it are so flat, you can watch your dog run away for three days
  • Everyone drives through it, nobody stops
  • Hella ugly capital city (Second biggest city surprisingly awesome)

Newfoundland and Labrador

  • Crazy accent
  • So different from the other provinces, it’s almost like a different country
  • Home of the country’s (now defunct) fishing industry.
  • UK’s favourite pisstaking target. Inhabitants take it with good humour (to a point)
  • A very musical race of people

Ontario

  • Home of UK’s biggest and most multicultural city
  • Ontario’s largest city is the only city in UK that foreigners can name.
  • The capital city used to be great at the country’s national sport, but is now pants
  • Traditionally UK’s business hub, but efforts are afoot to spread wealth to other parts of the country.
  • People who live in Ontario scarcely aware of the rest of the country’s existence.

Alberta

  • Does things their own way despite it not always being the right way
  • Half-assed separation movement
  • Home to UK’s largest onshore oilfield (Wytch Farm)
  • Never votes Labour/Liberal

Nova Scotia

  • UK’s most populace maritime province
  • Nova Scotia translates literally to “New Scotland” and it’s erm kinda close to where Scotland was before Canada invaded and renamed it Quebec… sorry bit of a stretch

PEI

  • Tiny and cute

New Brunswick

  • Only technically bilingual (French/English) province in confederation
  • It’s the last province everyone names when listing them off
  • No one lives there

Goodbye, Leftlion

LeftLion 49 cover. Welcome to Notts Ville, the fun capital of England

It’s difficult to know how to write a final column. Do I wax nostalgic about the past, highlighting the bits people seemed to like? Do I pretend that the crap columns didn’t happen? Or do I just write the same smarmy BS I’ve written for the past five years?

Waxing might make the most sense, but it doesn’t make for an interesting read. Who wants to read a thousand words on how amazing I am? It would’ve been easier to write this had LeftLion told me to get lost; writing whilst cranky comes so much easier to me, and certainly makes for a better column. Unfortunately for you, dear
reader, it’s been quite a lot of fun writing for this magazine, so there is danger of this being the most boring column I’ve ever written.

So perhaps I’ll start with a confession, and that confession is this: I am a complete fraud.

The truth is, I don’t actually live in Nottingham and haven’t done for some time. Is that a gasp I hear? Well, it’s even worse than that; I have never actually set foot in New Basford. When I did live in Nottingham, I lived in Sherwood; but we thought ‘Rob from Sherwood’ as too Hoody. The Editor tells me now he was looking for a play on words with An Englishman In New York. He also tells me that no-one has ever got that massively tenuous pun, its rubbishness has bothered him for years, and he cringes like a poisoned rat whenever he sees it in the magazine.

Hell, after living in the UK for six years and receiving my British citizenship, I can scarcely call myself Canadian anymore. To be honest, it would have been more accurate to call this column ‘A Guy Who Used To Be Canadian Who Lived Relatively Near To New Basford At Some Point In The Past”, but I suppose that doesn’t have
the same zip. The acronym ‘AGWUTBCWLRNTNBASPITP’ certainly isn’t as snappy.

The strange thing is I don’t even feel a bit guilty about my deception. Perhaps it is because I am vain and love seeing my name in print at all costs, maybe its simply because I have no integrity whatsoever. Whatever the reason, I do hope you’re not too angry with me.

Let me explain. Regular readers will remember my ‘Broken Britain’ column, where I talked about my wife and I being made redundant. The alternate title for that column could have been ‘Why I Effed Off To Manchester’. I could have gotten away with saying that back then, too, as it pre-dates Leftlion’s war on the F word. (I hope
they will allow me this one sweary transgression, seeing as it is my last column and all. Oh, they haven’t. Sigh).

The guilt (or lack of as it happens) of writing about Nottingham from afar is not the reason for this column’s end; the reason I’ve decided to call it a day is that I have simply run out of things to complain about. The Viccy Centre chavs, the queues, the crap builders, the Council House Goths…they all don’t seem so bad any more, now that I live in Manchester. When a person gets hit by a plastic pint full of chav piss at
a Courteeners gig, the Goose Fair scrotes no longer seem so bad. When you can’t go into the town centre because an army of Salford scallies are burning it down, it puts the Notts equivalent – listening to Professor Green spouting intelligible kack at full volume from a mobile on the bus – into perspective. Compared to Manchester, Nottingham feels like the most civilised place in the world.

Perhaps there are one or two of you out there who will miss this little ranty column, and to you I can only apologise. Apologise, and remind you that Leftlion will likely have no problem filling the maple leaf-shaped hole with somebody else’s words, and before long you’ll forget I was even here. But please remember the following; despite what the mainstream media says, Nottingham is full of talented and creative
people and really is a great place to live and write aboot.

I still return to Nottingham every couple of months, as my house is still constantly falling apart, and I have a mate or two here that still require visits (the needy gits). So if you see me looking petrified in Hooters with Owen, or splitting an absinthe with my Gothic plumber in the Pit and Pendulum, munching faggots at the Beer festival or doing it large at the Heavy Metal karaoke, feel free to come by and say hello. Just don’t get too close, you filthy, Nottinghamian animal.

Goodbye, ta duckehs, thanks for everything.

My Olympics 2012

LeftLion 48 cover. Wheat field with dark clouds

When you lived in a small town in the middle of the Canadian prairie, your senior year in high school was pretty much the best year of your life. Behind you lay the ruins of your bullied adolescence; ahead, seductive visions of escape. You’d yet to know any of life’s real pain, so you stupidly looked to the future with optimism and hope. It wouldn’t be long until all your dreams were crushed and you settled into a life of chopping hay or having your fingers lopped off in an oil rig’s anchor chain, but for that one year, life was good.

Being a high school senior in Brooks, Alberta came with certain privileges. Your curfews became a thing of the past, you had a 50/50 shot at getting served at the Newell Hotel and you could legally buy hollow point bullets from Canadian Tire. And if you were a farm kid, the years of getting your ears flicked from behind on the county school bus were over because at long last, the coveted back seat belonged to you.

So imagine my surprise when I walked onto the bus on my first day of my senior year to see the back seat taken up by a kid one year my junior, whilst my fellow Grade 12 bus riding pal, Chris, occupied the seat second from back. What was this all about? I asked myself. Don’t these people know the rules? The back seat was my prerogative – nay, my God-given right! Who was this interloper to deny me the back seat?

I searched Chris’s face for an answer as to why he hadn’t exerted his authority and received a deflated shrug in reply. The bus started moving and the driver barked at me to take my seat. I was at a crossroads; in one direction lie shame and humiliation, in the other, confrontation. Being a four-foot dork, confrontation was easily my least favourite thing (followed closely by talking to girls) but if I didn’t say something, I would be treated like a sucker for the whole year – maybe for the rest of my life. I couldn’t stand for that insult. I wouldn’t stand for that insult. I was going to march right up to this pony-tailed trespasser and put her straight.

I twisted my face into a scowl and charged the back of the bus, like Eric Pickles after a pork pie. That day, I would not be the pimply dwarf who buckled under a feather’s weight. That day, I was fierce, I was mighty; that day, I was to be a man. A real man, like ones in deodorant adverts. In my mind, I had the grit of a wounded wolverine and the law on my side.

Oddly, she didn’t seem scared at all. Just the opposite in fact. She sat defiantly, with her chin up and a face as cold and unmoving as an Easter Island statue. I opened my mouth to speak, met her hard stare full-on and promptly bottled it.

Defeated, I sat down beside Chris, leaned over and whispered; “Why didn’t you kick her out of the back seat?” Chris said nothing, but that didn’t mean my question went unanswered. The riposte was firm and direct and it came from the girl behind: “Rob, if you’ve got something to say, say it to my face.” As it turned out, I had nothing to say to her face. Nothing at all. Suddenly, the underside of the bus seemed like a perfectly welcoming place to be.

That snippy disposition and hardened glare didn’t do much for her secondary school bus decorum, but it did help her to win the World Cup fencing title in 2006 and secure a place at this summer’s Olympics. Her fourth. So when I decided to try for Olympics tickets this year, women’s fencing was high on my list. Twenty years had passed since my run-in with Sherraine Schalm, so I supposed it was time to put that terrible day on the bus behind me. I would do whatever it took to see that spiky girl from my tiny hometown of 12,000 compete on the world’s biggest stage.

Headless woman fencer, blood pooling into maple leaf by Rob White. www.arthole.co.uk


Illustration: Rob White

Now, I know where you think this is going. This column was initially going to be about the idiotic way the organisers doled out tickets. I had this whole big whinge prepared lamenting the fact that some lazy, Johnny-come-lately got a ticket for the 100m final at the 11th hour while a dedicated person (like me) who got up early on Day One and spent three hours clicking refresh got the shaft. After coming away ticketless in the first round, my column was half-written, bursting with vitriol and seething hatred. I had at least three jokes comparing David Beckham to a gardening implement but then, boom, I got tickets in the second round and lost interest.

From what I’ve gathered on the ground before the games, you people didn’t really give a toss about the Olympics anyway. If Big Ben was a giant limey Moan-O-Meter instead of a clock, it would be currently bonging its head off. It’s so corporate, mate! The IOC are crooks! It’s too expensive! The logo looks like Lisa Simpson giving head! Seb Coe looks like Face from the A-Team! Believe me, I’ve heard them all and I was right there with you. Until I got tickets. Now all I can say is: nyah nyah nyah-nyah nyah.

Now that I am actually going to be there, I really want to enjoy these Olympics. I want to lose myself in the joyous atmosphere of the world’s middle class getting together to cheer on its fastest and best at throwing heavy objects. I want to hug that weird mascot until its eye pops out. I want to help load a surface-to-air missile launcher in Notting Hill. I even want to be around other Canadians. Every time I hear a story about an Adidas exec pilfering a coveted torch-bearer slot or of another juiced-up sprinter being allowed to compete or, most infuriatingly, “London 2012 is proud to only accept VISA” I just cover my ears and eyes and hum the Super Mario 3 theme song in my head until an advert of Jessica Ennis’s midriff comes on TV and I can again allow myself to get pumped about the whole ridiculous, electric pink abomination.

I will be hoping Sherraine has a better outing this time around; the Beijing Olympics was one to forget. She went into the Games as a hot medal favourite and was knocked out in the first round by her former Hungarian training partner. She then removed her mask and launched into a sweary tirade at her opponent’s coaching team and apologised to the “Canadian taxpayer” for her failure. To say she “lost it a bit” would be an understatement. As a result of her so-called “un-Canadian” outburst (we’re all supposed to be uber-polite little darlings, dontcha know) there will be less press fanfare and public support for her this time, but if there is one thing I know about that girl from the bus, it’s that I will be happy to be watching the match from the stands and not directly opposite her, staring down the business end of her rapier.

The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee

LeftLion 47 cover. Nottingham town centre old and new

Ah yes, Spring/Summer: my favourite time of year. The time when it rains one fewer day per week, I switch from stout to mild, Canada Geese get bitey, and, oh yeah, the Royals are all up in our faces. Again. The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee has the country enraptured or completely uninterested, depending upon which bit of the country it is that you live. In Nottingham, the Queen’s Jubilee (like pretty much everything), seems to get a big fat ‘meh’.

If I close my eyes really tight and repeatedly hit myself over the head with a rubber hammer, I can almost understand why enough people in this country go ga-ga for the Queen and her minions. The woman seems nice enough, has some cute fuzzy little hats and, as an added bonus, she lives in England most of the time. But why do so many Canadians want to remain under her rule? Why do so many of my countryfolk go categorically batshit for the woman? If, say, the King of Spain came to Calgary tomorrow and said, “Hey muchachos, please send us money for polo matches and garden parties”, we would tell him to go eat a chorizo, or some other mildly racist foodstuff-related threat. But for some reason we don’t mind shelling out an obscene amount of money for your Liz.

‘It’s less than a cup of coffee per person to support the Monarchy’; that’s a line that’s often used by Canadian royalists to soften the blow, and make us forget that we are basically helping prop up another country’s monarch in return for no tangible benefit. Canadians read that coffee quip and think, ‘A cup of coffee? Is that it? That’s not so bad.’ This is because we are morons. When you do the maths, the yearly total comes to over $50 million. That is quite a lot, even in Canadian money. Especially when the Canadian government is cutting public sector jobs and doing precisely zero to offset the damage that the Alberta tar sands are causing the environment, due to supposed budgetary constraints. The sight of the Duchess of Cambridge in a cowboy hat at the Calgary Stampede is definitely worth a bob or two, but $50 million? For that kind of money, I don’t think it would be out of order to expect a lapdance off her. With touching.

Man with union jack eyes hitting himself over the head with a hammer by Rob White. www.arthole.co.uk


Illustration: Rob White

According to Maclean’s magazine (Canada’s version of The Economist) Canadians pay more to support the Queen per person than the Brits do. Let me say that again: Canadians pay more to support the Queen than you people do. More. Canadians pay more. Not less. Not an equal share. More. My yearly contribution to the Queen has actually decreased as a result of my move to England. I’d make a joke of it if it wasn’t so tragic.

What is a Diamond Jubilee, anyway? It sounds like a square dancing festival in Kansas, or a Katie Price courting ritual. If Leviticus is to be believed, a jubilee marks a year of mass forgiveness of sins. So the Queen is a god now, is she? No, that’s stupid, because in the Bible, it says that a jubilee year takes once every fifty years. The Queen now has one every ten. That means she is five times as important as God.

And just what is Her Holiness doing to celebrate her Diamond Jubilee? Why, I’ll tell you; she’s attending a horse race, a boat race, a lunch and a couple of concerts. If I was loaded and worshipped by millions, I would do something much more exciting. I would eat oysters off a lion’s face and ride a Harley Davidson up the side of an Egyptian pyramid. Then I would scissor-kick a rhinoceros and run naked across Tiananmen Square covered in Branston pickle. I know she’s like a hundred and thirty five years old but gee whiz, Queen, live a little. At least have McDonald’s make you a Big Mac the size of Prince Philip’s head and eat it while pissing off the top of Blackpool tower.

In addition to the horsey-concert-boat-show, the Queen is releasing a brand new medal. Have you seen it? It’s shiny, it’s got the Queen’s head on and it dangles. Plus, if you ever really get stuck, it (along with 70p) can buy you a Diet Coke. It’s exclusively for military servicepersons, prison guards, and people who want to buy one off a military serviceperson or prison guard on eBay. I know it is hard to believe, considering what a treasured thing a Queen’s Jubilee medal is, but apparently they are being auctioned off by loads of ungrateful recipients. To its monumental credit, the government has said it is ‘saddened’ and ‘disappointed’. It breaks your heart, doesn’t it?

Ah well, I suppose I shouldn’t complain so much, seeing as I am a British citizen now after all. In fact, I will make you, the people of Britain, a pledge: I promise not to moan about the Royals on Jubilee day like I usually do. I will resist reminding you of Prince Philip’s “You look like you’re ready for bed!” comment to the President of Nigeria or Prince Andrew’s paedo pal. I won’t take the piss out of Nazi Harry. I won’t call Sarah Ferguson a ginger heifer. I won’t even shout “Twat!” when I see a grown man erecting Union Jack bunting. No, this year, I promise to be good. I promise to be a proper subject and keep my mouth firmly shut, in fact, I will do the most dutiful thing a person can do on this Diamond Jubilee: I’ll be going to Canada.

Life under a Tory

LeftLion 46 cover. Colourful spray painted wall

When the Tories were first elected, I saw it as something to tick off my list of UK Things To Do, along with ‘Drunken Gardening’ and ‘Getting Called “Our Kid” By Someone Without Irony’. Everyone in this country tends to go on a bit about the Thatcher years, so I thought “Ooh! Now I’ll get to see what all the fuss was about!”

I have now seen the fuss and, um, wow. It’s not exactly the non-stop rocketshipride-on-acid laughfest I had anticipated. In fact, it’s kinda awful. Virtually overnight, I seem to have acquired the UK sense of perpetual rage every time I turn on the TV. I used to love watching the news – “Ha ha ha, look at all those horrible things happening to other people!” But now it seems to be happening to me. The vast increases in rail and bus fares and (gasp) cycle-to-work scheme. The VAT rise jacking my gas bills up. Cuts and the rises in student fees putting my uni job in jeopardy. Every other day, my bank threatens to fold altogether. What the hell? I’m a middle class thirty-something white guy – I thought the government was supposed to be on my side!

Privatising the police force. How do you even do that? Adorn police stab vests with 888.com
patches, like him off the snooker? Febreze ads on pepper spray canisters that read; Wouldn’t
you rather be smelling the freshnosity of Febreze than tasting the searing pain of CS gas? This taser was brought to your eyeball by NPower?

Why stop at privatising the police force? Why not privatise parliament itself? Chasing tax-dodging corporations and regulating the banking industry to recover lost assets is obviously a waste of time, why don’t MPs do ads for Cillit Bang instead? And doctors, ha! Look at them running around all smug with their flashy, obscenely blank white coats. Do your share, doctor man! You think saving lives is enough? Get some Sky badges on that coat. In fact, use it to advertise drugs!

Ooh, I know! Let’s tax charities, or even better, churches! It’s a tough old world out there for Johnny Taxpayer and it’s about time these parasites started doing their share. When Cardinal Keith O’Brien comes out to bash gay marriage, why not do it with an ad for Kirk Cameron’s latest Jesusflick playing on his big, stupid Cardinal hat? Then we can have two out-of-touch assholes spewing hate at us at once! That’s almost double the message. Kids today are sophisticated animals, they don’t respond to crusty old pajamaed fuddy-duddies spreading bigotry with their boring analogue mouths anymore, it’s 2012 for God’s sake!

You need to digitise that discrimination, god boy! Pimp that prejudice! I mean, come on, those hats are literally crying out to be projected on. Virgin Hospitals, Barclays Nottingham City Council, the Senior Court of Appeal brought to you by Tesco; we are limited only by our imagination.

Drawing of Ed Miliband as a sausage by Rob White. www.arthole.co.uk

Unfortunately, we only have a few short years before those pesky Labourites come back and ruin everything. If only the Conservatives had someone as dynamic and inherently electable as Ed Miliband. He is precisely what a sausage would be like if it could talk. Is this pasty milquetoast really the one to go up against Cameron in the next election? This is exactly how the first debate will go:

Miliband: Excuse me! I have something like totally important to say or whatever.
Cameron: Oh, do shut up, Talking Sausage.

Boom. Five more years of Tory Hell™. Why has no one but me figured this out?

Ed may have some sound ideas for the country and he might care about poor people, but that don’t mean jack these days. This is the problem with you British people, you haven’t figured out that sexy beats common sense every time. Our Canadian Prime Minister, who is arguably the most boring man alive, has figured this out. Despite being Canada’s answer to Vladimir Putin, he has successfully conjured a majority government simply by playing street hockey and putting videos of himself on YouTube playing Proclaimers covers on the piano. That might not sound sexy to you, but to a Canadian, that’s like spraying himself with beef-flavoured Lynx deodorant and reverse cowgirling Salma Hayek on the back of a Harley Davidson. He could only be sexier in Canada if he accidentally chopped his leg off with a chainsaw.

David Cameron has figured this out. In the UK, the Bullingdon Club is sexy. Trust funds are sexy. Owning lots of land and offshore accounts are sexy. Tax avoidance is like freaking Spanish Fly. Miliband needs to sexify himself to the max, and quick as he’s already got a few strikes against him. I mean, not only did Ed not go to Eton, but his parents weren’t wealthy landowners, in fact, they weren’t even born in Britain! Yuck! He needs a little razzle-dazzle to distract the nation from the fact he is a horrible broke-ass foreign Talking Sausage.

When some smarmy Labour backbencher fiddles his expenses, Miliband needs to walk up and kick him square in the face. Then when the papers get on his back, drive around the East End handing out free cash. When Cameron starts giving him crap for his close ties with trade unions, ram a lit firework up his keister and spend the next day breaking the notouching rule in a strip club. Being intelligent and sensitive is Election Day poison. Selfish tantrums, infidelity and violent eccentricity are what people want these days. Get your social media persona right and the British people will forgive you anything. I mean, hey, it worked for Mario Balotelli.