Gabrielquotes

Breaking news: Pontypandy is becoming radicalised. An episode of the well-known documentary Fireman Sam has been withdrawn from circulation after it emerged that a page of on-screen ‘gobbledygook’ (pictured) was in fact an extract from the Koran “on the origin of existence, the Day of Resurrection, hellfire and the attributes of God”.

The show was pulled after Muslim groups protested that the page was treated disrespectfully, prompting comments on the Daily Mail website including, “Grow some large ones.”

Anyway: there are now concerns that the small Welsh village in which the programme is set has become Islamified, and to quell those fears, Gabrielquotes is now proud to release an updated version of the Fireman Sam theme music:

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When he hears that muezzin call,
Sam heads to the qibla wall.
He abandons work to pray
Five times every single day.

He fights fires without fear:
Fireman Sam – and he never has a beer!
Fireman Sam – you cannot ignore:
Sam is the Muslim next door!

He won’t let you come to harm
So long as you’re an imam.
He’s a brilliant fireman
But no hoses in Ramadan.

He leads a daring team:
Fireman Sam – and his views are not extreme!
Fireman Sam – you cannot ignore:
Sam is the Muslim next door!

Dislaimer: the author(s) of this blog would like to assure our Muslim readers that, no, we’re not bigots and this piece is a light satire of the current level of xenophobia in British society. We hope that this has cleared up any questions you may have had.

Disclaimer: the author(s) of this blog would like to assure our Islamophobic readers that, no, we’ve not become radicalised. The fact that we lightly satirise your racism doesn’t mean we support the terrorist attack in Nice. We hope that this has cleared up any questions you may have had.

Who remembers Nick Clegg?

“Gabriel Webber. Kill him.”

The Sunday Times does: one of their top journalists discovered that Clegg is being paid £115,000 a year in expenses out of the public duty costs allowance which is available to former Prime Ministers.

Eagle-eyed readers will immediately spot that Nick Clegg was never Prime Minister, and, indeed, was barely even Deputy Prime Minister.

He’s still an MP and continues to fund his office through those expenses, so it’s very unclear what he can be spending his additional £100k on.

Possibilities include:

• A captive breeding programme to try to halt the gradual extinction of Liberal Democrats
• Paying the tuition fees of 11.1 students
• Two jars of Ocado mayonnaise
• A life-size inflatable doll of David Cameron for some rose garden role-play
• A silly music video
• A sillier music video
• Erm…
• That’s it

Where’s Andy Coulson when you want him?

I remember the days when American elections were painfully jingoistic: when the candidates were desperately trying to outdo each other as to ‘who’s the most patriotic’.

And, annoying as those days were, they were far preferable to the current fad where a candidate openly commits treason at a party congress by calling for Russian intelligence agents to hack into the private email account of a former Cabinet member.

But it’s not as if the Democrats were behaving themselves at their congress. Not like in the good old 1870s, when Sir George Campbell happened to attend a local meeting of the Illinois Democrats, as described in his seminal book White and Black.

And honestly, even though he wrote it so long ago, the extent to which he found the whole experience utterly bemusing really leapt off the page:

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So, farewell then, VHS

In 1971, Japanese engineers Yuma Shiraishi and Shizuo Takano first invented the video cassette. But, fast forward 45 years, the last video player been manufactured so the technology is officially defunct.

A few years ago, I was leading on a summer camp for children and I organised a Kim’s game. I prepared a tray of objects for them to observe, before I took it away and they had to recite, from memory, everything that had been on it.

I happened to put a video on the tray. “What’s that?” they all asked.

Ugh.

A nice vintage Shiraz

I bet you all hoped that Surrey Partnership Ltd, aka. the Assistant Police & Crime Commissioner for Surrey, was out of our lives for good.

Just to refresh your memory, the then PCC Kevin Hurley decided he wanted Councillor Shiraz Mirza (pictured) to work for him, but since politicians are barred from such employment, they instead incorporated Surrey Partnership Ltd as a one-man company to evade the legal restriction, and appointed the company as Assistant PCC.

As soon as the foul-mouthed Hurley was decidedly voted out of office by an irritated electorate, I certainly assumed that Surrey Partnership was off the scene.

But no. Because he’s made a formal complaint against the new PCC, David Munro, for “racially motivated dismissal”.

Now this is interesting, because, as Mirza and Hurley repeatedly assured everyone from their own auditors to the press, the only appointment made was that of Surrey Partnership Ltd – and as a registered company, it seems unlikely that it has a race. Mirza himself never held any office, because, as we’ve established, as a local councillor, he is not legally allowed to work for a PCC at all.

So as far as one can tell, he is now complaining that he was unfairly dismissed from a highly-paid role which he never held and which it would have been unlawful for him to hold.

In fact, just the kind of sensible, rational, selfless chap we want to be in charge of law enforcement…

The news in briefs

• A Scottish Member of Parliament has been admonished for bringing her children with her to work. Apparently the youngsters made other MPs feel awkward that they were the best-behaved and most mature people in the room.
• Labour leadership contender Owen Smith has pledged “to create a shadow secretary of state for Labour dedicated to workers’ rights”, though critics say that the term ‘Labour minister’ would henceforth become too confusing.
• A Fox News correspondent has argued that the black slaves who built the White House were “well fed and cared for” – in sharp contradistinction to the Mexicans who Trump is going to have build his wall.

The ides of May

Well, as the radical cleric of time is hosed down by the fireman of destiny, and the former Deputy Prime Minister of fate is paid the expenses of eternity, it seems to be the end of the blog post.

In tonight’s episode, Fireman Sam was played by Abu Qatada and Nick Clegg by Auric Goldfinger. The VCR was created by Yuma Shiraishi and Shizuo Takano. Surrey Partnership Ltd was portrayed by Shiraz Mirza. This was an Gabrielquotes production!

“I have your children. If you want them to have any stake in the future, you’ll withdraw from the leadership race.”

That’s the message that Andrea Leadsom received from Theresa May last Monday morning.

This formed the endgame of a barmy Tory leadership ‘election’ filled with ludicrous twists and unexpected turns.

First there was Boris’ trolling: gathering all the nation’s top political journalists into a room to launch his campaign, only to tell them, “Lol I’m not running.” As one commentator said on Twitter: “Boris Johnson has withdrawn. Well, there’s a first time for everything.”

People were quite angry at this, though. Boris led the Leave campaign. He got the country into an almighty mess, without any clear plan as to how to fix it, and then waltzed the scene altogether leaving others to pick up the pieces and deal with the consequences. For more on the Chilcot report into Tony Blair’s lack of post-Iraq planning, visit www.iraqinquiry.org.uk

At the first stage of the election proper, Stephen Crabb and Liam Fox (pictured left) dropped out of the race, which is a shame because I would have quite enjoyed it if the remainder of the campaign had fundamentally been an Aesop’s fable.

At the second stage Michael Gove was eliminated:

And thus the scene was set for Leadsom v May, an opportunity for us to soak up the relatively unknown Leadsom’s views on homosexuality and workplace rights (clearly being a mother gives her such an edge that she wants to deprive others of the opportunity by abolishing maternity pay), and a grossly patronising “recipe for a perfect British society” which appears on her blog:

A Tory mum’s recipe for a perfect British society
Take one cup of Anglo Saxon determination;
Mix with a jugful of Muslim respect for the family;
Stir in a pinch of traditional Asian modesty;
Whisk with two tablespoonsful of military respect for authority;
Serve on a bed of East European work ethic;
And enjoy with a full glass of British belief in the freedom of the individual!

She said that she’d been hounded out of the Conservative leadership race by “dirty tricks” and unreasonable online abuse.

Bless.

And now we look forward to the Age of May…

…with David Davis, her new Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (or SEE-U)…

…and, oh, yes, Boris, the only foreign minister in the Western world who can’t successfully make it to Belgium without accidentally shutting down an airport and mobilising five fire engines.

But more importantly: Theresa May is in my ears and in my eyes:

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Sussexspending

Readers may remember that the Information Tribunal ruled against Sussex in March, and ordered the university to reconsider my request, which asked how much they had spent on legal fees in a previous case I sparked (and which they partly lost and partly admitted their own failures). The judge was quite scathing, and her abject humiliation of Sussex resulted in university staff labelling me “a name to strike fear”.

Rather cheekily, they reconsidered my request and Head of Information Management Alexandra Elliott decided to refuse it a second time.

The wallpaper in the Vice-Chancellor’s office

But the Information Commissioner disagreed, and now, 16 months after my original request, they’ve provided an answer.

The previous case about which I asked saw the university arguing that answering a freedom of information request would cause them commercial losses. But how much did they spend arguing this? Now we know:

£9,240

Absolute bloody bargain.

Why did Constantinople get the works?

It’s been a very busy period since we last spoke, even if we don’t count British politics. We’ve had an evil terrorist attack in Israel and a “nice terrorist attack” in France. But most intriguingly, following a highly dramatic attempted coup in Turkey – almost a stereotyped coup, involving, as it did, all the key hallmarks of coups including bridge closures, low-flying jets, kidnapped army officers and more – our new Foreign Secretary convened a crisis meeting of COBRA, the top-secret emergency council which comes together in the basement of Downing Street when the going gets tough.

It was attended by a wide range of luminaries from:

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the intelligence agencies, the Ministry of Defence, the Home Office and the Department for Transport. The ambassador and embassy staff in Ankara also joined by video link.

And what conclusion did these internationally renowned experts reach? It was very profound: according to the press release published after the meeting:

Officials agreed that we should monitor the situation on the ground closely over the coming days.

Great that we’re in such safe hands.

Labour

Let’s not forget Labour. Our credible opposition party is still ably opposing the government. Take this incisive question that Shadow Health Secretary Diane Abbott MP put to the government last month:

Which was answered by the Secretary of State for International Development as follows:

But now the Eagle has landed so everything’s going to change for the better. Right?

1 down

A 91-year-old pensioner from Nuremberg is facing prosecution after completing a crossword puzzle in an art gallery, only later to discover that it was a £67,000 piece of installation art which she’d just ruined.

Gabrielquotes has decided to provide its own topical crossword below – but be warned, I’m not going to warn you about whether or not it’s also worth a five-figure sum.

Across
4. A cold child’s bed which took seven years
5. What John Whittingdale likes
7. Number of months it took Sussex University to answer a Freedom of Information request
8. Bloody disaster
9. What John Whittingdale likes
10. Sussex’s Vice-Chancellor [spent 8,870,400 of these pursuing legal proceedings against me]

Down
1. Who respects their family most?
2. The main quality Asians bring to the UK
3. Bloody disaster
6. Andrea Leadsom’s views on climate change (and also an Egyptian river)
8. Sadly lacking in provinces

The ides of May

Well, as the Home Secretary of time has the fertility treatment of destiny, and the Energy minister of fate causes the nuclear spillage of eternity, it seems to be the end of the blog post.

In tonight’s episode, Andrea May and Theresa Leadsom were both a bit horrendous but Theresa considerably less so. The Boris Johnson was played by Foreign Secretary. Diane Abbot was played by Lauren Cooper. The President of Turkey was played by t.b.c. This was an Gabrielquotes production!