The Death of Stalin (2017)

 

Daily Sketches: A Cartoon History of British Twentieth Century Politics by Martin Walker (Paladin Books 1978)

 

Bernard Partridge

Punch, January 29, 1908.

Partridge was. the heir to Tenniel in Punch’s pages, and by this time Punch’s cartoons carried all the authority of a statement from His Majesty’s Government (or at least so one German Ambassador told Berlin). There is an elegant ambiguity about this cartoon — the attacked capitalist is not sympathetically drawn, but neither is that sly grin on Keir Hardie’s face. It is not clear which side Partridge is taking. But the dog’s ferocity, and its French jacobin hat (a cartoon symbol of subversive foreign ideologies since French revolutionary days) show that Partridge was worried. The Leitmotif of potential class war is clearly present. There is an interesting echo of a famous nineteenth-century Punch cartoon, featuring similar dogs, and titled ‘Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war’. Partridge would have been familiar with it.

Burn baby, burn!

As I am pottering around on the desktop, another wee chuckle via social media. There's a lot to be said for gallows humour, though I'm still half-convinced that we can save the earth through me recycling the family cardboard toilet rolls week on week. 

Ever the optimist . . .  'This time next year we'll have a quorate ADM, Rodders'.

Carlin comes up trumps

File under the good stuff you find on Facebook.

“It's the old American double standard.

Say one thing, do something different. And, of course, the country is founded on the double standard. That's our history. This country was founded on a very basic double standard. This country was founded by slave owners who wanted to be free…”

[laughter and applause]

~George Carlin, from ‘What Am I Doing in New Jersey?’ (TV Special 1988)

The good stuff you find on Twitter . . .

 . . . capitalist politics in a nutshell.

Marxism in Television . . .

 

*Did you see what I did there? 

'I'd like to report a murder on the internet, officer.'

Count Binface won the internet today:

This is in response to this farcical piece of news. On what planet did Starmer's advisers convince him that this was a good political move? They must secretly fucking hate him.

Shine a light . . .

Oh, this is good . . .  this is very, very good. If I came up with a joke as funny as this, I'd be dining out on it for the next ten years.

Keir Starmer's biography by Tom Baldwin is due out on 15th February, taken from over 100 hours of interviews with Sir Keir
Here's some actual footage of the William Collins editor reviewing the final draft: pic.twitter.com/qTfviN1A9Y

— troovus (@troovus) January 6, 2024

Veep (2019)

 

Veep (2017)

 

Veep (2016)

 

Veep (2015)

 

Veep (2014)

 

Veep (2013)

 

Thatcher Stole My Trousers by Alexei Sayle (Bloomsbury 2016)

 

One of the unexpected ways in which my upbringing as the son of Communists had helped prepare me for the challenges of celebrity, an advantage that my fellow comedians didn’t have, was in the matter of staying true to yourself. The idea of the traitor, the sell-out, the apostate was central to Joe and Molly’s state of mind. Even when I was quite small we would be out shopping in town and  my mother or father would gesticulate towards some harmless-looking individual and say in a whisper, ‘See him over there trying on gloves, he left the Party over Hungary in 1956 and now he’s . . .’ Here they’d pause before revealing the full horror. ‘A Labour councillor!’ Or, ‘Don’t look, but that woman by the bacon counter, she used to be in CND but now she’s . . . joined the Air Force!’ At first I couldn’t see anything different about the people my parents pointed out but over time it did seem to me that they possessed a certain haunted quality, an air of sadness, and though their mood probably wasn’t helped by being whispered about in shops by a red-haired woman and a man in a trilby hat accompanied by a silent watchful boy I sensed that the main critical voice was within their heads, that they themselves were aware on some level of the abandonment of their younger more idealistic self and it corroded them from the inside.

I did not want to end up like that. The trick it  seemed to me was to not be blind to the many faults of the left while at the same time to try and stay true to those core values of workers’ rights, social justice and equality.

Me doing fund-raising benefits for left-wing organisations was an attempt to stay connected with those ideals.

As a left-wing entertainer it was accepted that you would inevitably perform unpaid at concerts in aid of various radical causes – doing benefits had become a sort of national service for alternative comedians. There was very little pleasure in appearing at them though. I did a bit about benefit concerts in my act: how you told a joke, then there was a pause while the audience vetted the joke for its political content, possible sexism, any hints of neo-colonialism, adherence to the theory of dialectical and historical materialism, and only once it was cleared would they laugh – it was like doing your material over a faulty phone line.

I went up to Sheffield to appear in a show at the Crucible Theatre in support of Nicaragua’s revolutionary, anti-American, pro-moustache Sandinista government. Following the show the cast and their friends were introduced to the guest of honour – David Blunkett the radical left-wing leader of Sheffield City Council. After the line-up Linda said, ‘I don’t like that man, there’s something funny about his eyes.'

The Death of Stalin (2017)

 

The Death of Stalin (2017)

 

The Left Left Behind by Terry Bisson (PM Press 2009)

 

“No TV news!” said Cap. “How are we going to figure out what is going on?”

“Alternative radio!” said Gotha. “Pacifica is still on!” She spun the dial again:

“…without the heads of state. The new Secretary General of the United Nations, Vlad, has declared a new World Government. And now for ten hours of uninterrupted harmonica music played by chimpanzees …”

“World Government,” said Gotha. “That’s got to be a good thing!”

The Death of Stalin (2017)

Carry On Columbus

These coronavirus jokes are just going to run and run.

PS - Mr. Griffiths is that rarest of breeds: he once voted for the SPGB.