only in Finlandia

 transport and communications ministers,at their Q&A session with kids
courtesy of Krista, a.k.a. Finland

Hipsters

On a love story

France, le 7 mai 2012

I HAVE A MASTERS IN COMMUNICATION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Apparently afterwards Phil Davison "WENT HOME AND HAD A HAM SANDWICH!!!!!!!!!"

Here's the Hollywood trailer version.

With the caps lock still on, but a more poetic machinegun stream-of-consciousness delivery, Jimmy McMillan of the Rent Is Too Damn High party represents the opposite side of the US political spectrum.

Though he comes across as a bit (ok, a lot) of a novelty sideshow in the short clips, he makes more sense when writing about the banking bailout and in the longer extracts from the debate on youtube.

Whatever it all means, US local politics sure tops Huddersfield council elections in the surreal stakes.

No they can't/ A bunch of arse, yesterday

Now I wouldn't normally delve into the murky world of politics here, but the Gruaniads's April fools spoofs of Gorden Brown's election campaign are a refreshingly funny poke at the depressing state of debate in Britain.

Almost reaching Daily Mash levels of blunt cynicism. But then again I suppose that can never get near the blunt cynicism of politics itself.

UPDATE: Labour have now released this effort as an official campaign poster.

Apparently this was the best in a competiton for labour supporters to come up with campaign ideas. The mind boggles as to what the 1000th place effort must have been like.

UPDATE 2: And the race to the bottom of the barrel has now begun in earnest with Gordon Brown announcing a May 6th date for the general election. It's at times like this that I'm glad I live outside of Britain with no TV.

Again, the Mash sums it up better than any of the mainstream media does: Brown asks for five more years of Ed Balls. and But we hate ourselves, Britain tells Brown

Nutters

Great article by Alexander Cockburn on the state of America.

Just think - a president elected on a huge wave of popular hope, unable to twist a single arm in his own party, unlikely even to pass financial reform amid the greatest wave of public hatred of Wall Street since the 1930s, trying to pass off as health 'reform' a gift to the insurance industry of 30 million new customers, to be required by law to pony up insurance premiums and then be cheated.

and

Among these Glenn Beck legions a solid fraction were surely one stroke or tumour away from financial ruin, yet are still ready to tear to tiny pieces any advocates of publicly funded health insurance as though they were hawking the Communist Manifesto at a Christian revival meeting.