Iain Dale, bless his cotton socks, has kindly brought The Voice’s attention to his blog posting yesterday, Top Ten Signs You Are About to Defect to the Lib Dems. Would LDV readers care to reciprocate in a suitably light-hearted manner, and come up with some Signs You Are About to Defect to the Tories?
Your suggestions below, please, ladies and gentleman…
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57 Comments
There’s only one.
You have a sudden urge to improve your child’s education by sending him/her to Eton Porny First School.
1. You find yourself doing things in a devious and underhand manner when it would have been easier to have done them honestly…
2. You start beginning blog posts with the phrase “Unbelievably, I find myself agreeing with David Cameron for once.” And do it more than once.
3) You have just been selected as number 2 on the list of European Parliamentary Candiates for your region seems like an obvious one…..
10 Signs Signs You Are About to Defect to the Tories
10. You can’t work out why the press call you a Z-list celebrity when you’re an A-List candidate
9. You find you have more houses than daily meals.
8. Your club is no longer open to both genders.
7. You start looking for excuses why neither your main residence nor any of your other houses are in the constituency your hoping to stand for.
6. You find the chauffeur tailing you as you cycle to work.
5. You find you’re idolising Margaret Thatcher (or her policies) watch out for J.G. Brown and A. Salmond defecting soon.
4. You throw out any policy documents you once had as its all being consulted.
3. You go to church praying that Gordon doens’t call a GE before the policy consultation groups actually produce some policy.
2. You refuse to answer to your given name for the first time in your life since leaving Eton. Instead insisting that people truncate your name to a blokish single syllable. Tar for Tarquin, Jez for Jeremy, Dave for David etc
1. Your hair takes on a post-wiff-waff untidy raffishness and your suits are constantly unbuttoned.
14. You are a hypothetical character in one of the many Tory blog posts of about a year ago predicting a swathe of Lib Dem defections to the Tories.
You read Iain Dale’s Diary avidly and give credence to his thoughts?
I’m just chuffed to have had a free plug, even if I’m not doing much blogging this weather!
“You eat babies” – there’s not going back after that one! 🙂
You didn’t get selected as a candidate and think its your God given right to be one.
Going back a bit – your father was Prime Minister (only if you’re male, if you’re female then defect to Labour).
You read Iain Dale’s Diary avidly and give credence to his thoughts?
Jennie, you go TOO far. Not even rabid Tories do that!
– You develop a hatred for any party that just won’t define itself by your simplistic left-right axis.
– You get confused about what the words “opportunist” and “careerist” mean.
– You think you’re In Touch.
You start giving credence to sub-David Icke fantasies about how the European Union is a monstrous conspiracy to enslave freeborn Englishmen.
– You describe every minor misfortune that occurs to you as ‘politcal correctness gone mad’
– You think that there is a reason for Jeremy Clarkson
– you think David Davis is really a civil liberty champion.
– You can listen to Ann Widdicombe’s voice without your face exploding
– You can listen to Ann Widdicombe’s ideas without your face exploding
– you become a tinnnnyyyy bit racist.
1) You have never been to a constituency association meeting where food was served as a buffet
You start to refer to the LibDems or the Lib/Dems.
You insist on referring to the ChairMAN (esp. with reference to women chairs), and make banal statements like “a chair is a piece of furniture!!” as if that is any more an intelligent thing to say than “a chairman is a mutant hybrid between human and furniture grown in top secret IKEA laboratories in Svalbard”.
You’re not entirely sure why planning committee meetings have to busy themselves with extensions of fewer than four rooms.
1. You think that Michael Gove is one of the great ‘Talents’ in British politics and not a self righteous prick.
2. You harbour a secret love for Tony Blair.
3. You think that Gordon Brown isn’t just incompetant but will actually bring about the apolocalypse with his Trotskyite views.
4. You actually agree with UKIP but don’t want to say anything in case you don’t get elected.
5. You ignore the fact that Nadine Dorries associates with homophobic evangelicals and support her ‘pro-life’ crusade anyway.
6. You think that Sarah Palin is somehow like Margaret Thatcher in the 80s???
7. You think that we need a Sarah Palin in the British Conservative Party.
8. You don’t think that Sarah Palin is a mental creationist who shouldn’t be allowed to run a jumble sale let alone be the vice president of the most powerful country in the world.
9. You thought Russel Brand went too far when he refered to George Bush as ‘that retard cowboy’.
10. You can read anything written by Janet Daley without wanting to rip out her eyes.
You like, Saj Karim and Cameron call your self a “Liberal Conservative”.
Thats only when like Saj you are nominated seconed by the Lib Dems and text your staff to tell them they are FIRED.
You’re willing to entertain the notion that William Hague is the greatest Prime Minister we never had and that it was just unlucky timing that confounded him.
(I conisidered saying Ian Duncan Smith but thought that would stretch the bounds of absurdity a little too far)
You think that, on balance, Pinochet did a lot of good things.
You can see no wrong in paying parliamentary allowances to members of your family for doing diddly squat.
You think you have a God given right to rule.
You describe as ‘political’ any view that is not in agreement with your position.
10- You were bullied at school and people are going to pay!
9- Politics is all about YOU rather than about people worse off than you
8- You affect mannerisms that think make you look posh, but just make you look like a tool
7- You don’t understand why some people got upset at your Spice Girls joke at the golf club dinner
6- You can ‘overthink’ issues. Politics is meant to be FUN.
5- You spend loads on a shiny Armani suit rather than a less ostentatious tailored suit
4- William Rees Mogg is a man of deep learning rather than an old gas bag
3- Your out of date BA Gold Card is still on your bag
2- Your rugby playing days were the best days of your life
1- You still harbour a little resentment to those Etonian types who think that they have a right to rule, but are actually the ones who sold Maggie out.
Steve:
10: I was bullied at school and people are going to pay.
9: Politics is all about me, not people worse off than me (all 3 of them)
8: I’m northern but I preferred it down south.. does that count?
7: Phew, I’m safe on that one.
6: I really do overthink issues. Politics is not fun. It is hard and difficult and it makes my brian hurt.
5: These things can be tailored? Wow.
4: Who?
3: BA Barracas?
2: I’ve yet to experience my rugby playing days.
1: Yeah, poor Maggie, those Etonian rotters!
Hmm.. am I about to defect?
I certainly hope not! 🙂
Don’t worry Charlotte. One thing about Tories is that they’re REALLY obsessed with Facebook! 🙂
Actually, James we are all obsessed with something. If DC can come up with a way to lose the excess weight I put on when I gave up smoking, even I might consider…
You suddenly feel the urge to post lots of subtly different comments to the same thread using different names.
You can’t understand why Vince Cable isn’t running the Lib Dems
You consider the password “1234” to be the height of security.
Sorry, had to be said.
You manufacture support for your point of view with imaginary friends.
PS – That Vince Cable could show Nick Clegg a thing or two!
Mysteriously, lots of people suddenly start thinking the same way you do on internet threads.
You start to think someone might be reading your email and wonder about changing the password.
And you think that the Lib Dems really missed an opportunity by not letting Vince Cable run the party permanently instead of just pro tem.
You’re convinced that the entire population can think of nothing but their disgust over the Lisbon treaty.
Pinochet? Pinochet??!!! My Boyce… Give us some credit! The Lady went totally of the screen on that one, and I expect she knows it.
You get irrationally upset about the idea of the Lib Dems having a Shadow Cabinet, despite the fact that their role is, um, to shadow the cabinet.
With reference to an earlier point, although you still get annoyed about the word “chair” being used to describe someone who chairs meetings, you don’t insist that members of the cabinet are called Cabinetmen for fear of being confused with furniture.
You are convinced that the BBC is involved in a vast liberal conspiracy against you all the time, including all the senior correspondents you get pissed at the Carlton with on a regular basis.
Not quite sure what you mean there Matthew. In her book Statecraft, Thatcher totally justifies her conduct over Pinochet. And people like Donal Blaney are still carrying the torch.
What a fantastically dull, pointless, humourless, dreary, unimaginative, witless bunch of suggestions. 10 signs you are a LibDem:
1.
You hit “submit” before completing your rant about how antastically dull, pointless, humourless, dreary, unimaginative and witless everyone else is.
What a fantastically dull, pointless, humourless, dreary, unimaginative, witless bunch of suggestions. 10 signs you are a LibDem:
1. Profoundly effete but resolutely heterosexual
2. Gay and just a little too proud of it.
3. Beard, obviously; sadly even on the ladies
4. Sandals.
5. All policies have an equal and opposite policy, providing the much needed all-things-to-all-people appeal.
6. Desperation never to be elected to government lest you should be called upon to implement the policies of Cloud Cuckoo Land elucidated in 5. above.
7. If you want to be leader you have a profound and suicidal flaw (drunkeness, closet homosexuality [see 1. above], geriatricity, cretinism).
8. Simultaneously attempt to be to the left of Labour (especially on tax policy) and to the right of the Conservatives (especially on tax policy), convincing no-one.
9. Fighting dirtier than a mud-wrestler.
10. Losing every election since 1918.
Actually in all seriousness you know you’re about to defect to the Tories when:
1) You’re a right winger hostile to liberalism on every possible level and..
2) You’ve been talking to the Tories about the possibility of defecting, and are told that you would never be selected as a candidate so…
3) Get yourself re-elected for 3 years in the world’s safest Lib Dem Council seat and, a week later, actually defect safe in the knowledge that no matter how angry people are, they can’t actually remove you from office.
Rumour has it, whenever this Councillor speaks in the Town Hall, and the Tories cringe, the leader of the Lib Dem Group mouths, “he’s your problem now!”
Oh Charlotte, shame on me for not remembering about HIM.
Hey Chas, thanks for your contribution, which I consider to be fantastically dull, pointless, humourless, dreary, unimaginative, witless bunch of suggestions.
If you’ll allow me to sum up your point of view?
haah libdums lolz ur teh gayz0rs!! loll1!!! policy FAIL
You’ve converted me. I’m going to leave these lib dems! Damn, wish I’d seen it before…
James Graham clearly doesn’t understand what a title is, so prefers to call a chairman a “chair” (which is indeed an item of furniture, as all my dictionaries from my childhood years to now confirm). Chairing is performed by members of mankind, and wo-man means “from the womb of man”.
To anyone who still doesn’t get it, I ask this question: what do you call a female Ombudsman?
Well, I’ll tell you, as there was one in the news a couple or so years back, dealing with the tax credits issue. Everyone but everyone referred to her by title as “Ombudsman”, even those normally afflicted with “thicko-speak” such as chair.
I suggest that Mr Graham and others of like mind learn something about the English language in this respect, and try to understand what a title is. For one thing, it isn’t gender-specific.
Well John Ward sould take his own advise as ombudsman is not a concoction of two English words which would suggest that the man element is gender specific. Unless he can give me an English derivation for Ombuds.
Instead it is from the old norse umbodhsmadhr meaning a “trusty manager, commissary” no doubt at somepoint us inflicted with English as national language decided that madhr was too difficult and construct for us to pronounce/spell whatever and it became ombudsman.
The Undertaker is at the door !
Chas – what a nasty little man you are. Proving my point: “You develop a hatred for any party that just won’t define itself by your simplistic left-right axis.”
A lawyer and a Lib Dem: how on earth do you know I am either nasty or little? I have written something that you don’t like, and you call me a nasty little man. Where’s your evidence, o lawyer?
You find yourself increasingly bored with Nick Clegg’s constant David Cameron impression.
Eh? Most of your 1-10 above suggest you’re fairly nasty. “Nasty little man”, however, is nought but a phrase.
I quite pleased with what you’ve written though, as it supports my prejudices about Tories.
You come to the conclusion that cutting taxes & freeing trade would help the economy grow but are told this is “illiberal” nowdays.
You start to wonder what a Liberal army might look like ?
You realise that Cold Play is for girls
You notice that Liberals keep ordering everyone around.
You begin to wonder if your atomistic soulless adherence to 18th century rationalism is actually as modern as you once thought.
You begin to appreciate art produced before Mac Fly.
You start thinking outside the prgressive orthodoxy ie for yourslef
In summary – YOU GROW UP
Dear, dear Newmania,
Why do you waste your time with us? Wouldn’t you be better off taking your case to someone who gives a damn, rather than giving us more cause to deliver leaflets and campaign against Conservative candidates?
Or is this some sort of cunning plan and you’re really a Liberal Democrat in the ideological equivalent of drag?
What concerns me about this is the numberr of people discussing what in charge of a meeting is. Now that’s what I call substance. Twits.
Easy, you stop thinking about anything other than yourself.
You lose the ability to laugh at yourself, obviously.