Look After the Pennies and the Self-Serving Will Look After Themselves (2/4) by The Silver Fox

(1/4), (2/4), (3/4), (4/4).

It is not inconceivable, for example, that the publishers of tabloid newspapers may expend some little thought upon the matter of their sales figures. "Are we," they will ask themselves, "really appealing to our target market? Sure, the Tringo Bingo promotion hooks into the innate credulity and greed of our readers; likewise, reprinting that photo of Myleene Klass showering in her white bikini speaks to their cultural side. Is it really enough, though? Couldn't we do more to appease their craving for crass, reactionary horse-shit? The proles eat that up with a fucking spoon, after all..."

Consequent to such speculations, can an editorial decision to dust off the old chestnut about some local council funding a women-only bus stop be entirely ingenuous?

Similarly, it would be naïve to assume that an opposition party would find it unsporting to quibble with one or two governmental moves - although to what extent they would stretch that, we may never know. I suspect, mind you, that if any government announced that they had funded research that had resulted in the development of a tablet that cured AIDS, shadow-spokesmen of all hues would be scrambling around for a populist way of expressing the sentiment, "what are you pissing money away on that for? Let the streets be strewn knee-deep with the rotten bodies of benders! What about the kids, eh?"

Having said this, it is not surprising that a couple of projected items of government spending have caused some controversy; the possibility of them helping underwrite the troubled Northern Rock Bank, and the granting of a 25% Council Tax rebate to armed forces personnel serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Clearly, a lot of the criticisms can be written off fairly briskly as knee-jerk carping; a natural reaction from people trained by an inherently adversarial system to disagree any government initiative with as much vehemence and specious self-promotion.

Predictably, the most often-heard question has been, "who's going to pay for it all, eh? Tell us that - Mr Big Balls" (I paraphrase a little). I think it's fair to say that this question can be discounted from the get go, as the answer is as obvious to us as it is to the public-spirited politicians that pose it, viz - the same hapless cunts that paid for all your equally hare-brained/noble-but-flawed/downright cruel and bestial schemes when you were - or will be - running the show.

Continued ......next page (3/4)

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