Just back from seeing In The Loop with Owen, Andrew, Matt and Caroline. As a big fan of The Thick Of It I knew this was going to be good but, wow, I don’t know if there will be a film I’ll enjoy quite as much for a long time. Fantastic stuff: I laughed all the way through and (the mark of a good film) didn’t check my watch once. Go see this!

Of course, the flip side is that it comes across as a brutally realistic portrayal of politics. This, one could argue, is a tad depressing. Not unlike the prospects for the UK, actually, and Owen and I had a good time enraging one another on the way home by imagining the upcoming weariness of a Conservative government. It’s all so predictable already: watch out for the token right-wing nasties thrown to the back benchers at times of trouble (bribes for marriage! inheritance tax cuts! privatised police!) which will punctuate the mundane, day-to-day rubbishness. (I originally put ‘privatised police’ as a bit of a joke, but the more I think about it the more plausible it becomes.) This is nothing, however, when it comes to the threat of the BNP in June. People sometimes shrug their shoulders about this since they’ll never be more than a pungent smell from the sidelines. They’re missing the point. Powell didn’t win, either, but it sets a tone of racism which sinks deep into local communities. So, if you wouldn’t mind, could everyone who’s just received one of those pretty white poll cards for 4th June vote please. Labour, Lib Dem, Green, even Tory – I don’t really mind, but just do it

Ooh, this is clearly going to come out as a bit of a rant. And they never get any comments! So here’s a funny picture instead

Shameless distraction

(Oh, and I’m going to steal an anecdote from Owen because it’s a good one: he overheard someone proudly announcing that for his 21st birthday his mother had bought him private health insurance. Who does this?!)

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