Happy Christmas

I am now all ready for a 5 day massive blow out. I will cooking swan with all the trimmings. In fact my trimmings will have trimmings. As will the trimmings of the trimmings. And those trimmings will be more swan. And wine of course. If you can't enjoy good food and grog at Xmas when can you apart from every other bloody day of the year especially if some other bugger is paying for it.

I will now share with you my recipe for perfect sprouts even for those who hate them. Boil sprouts for 5 minutes. Slice. Fry in olive oil with some bacon. Add more bacon to taste. Remove the sprouts. Enjoy.

Nice to see David Cameron issue some words about Christian values last week. I am all for phony proclamations of vague faith. Cameron for example is a vaguely practising Christian in the same way that he is vaguely practicing at being a good prime minister.

His treatment of the marginalised in society is a real throwback to the good old days. And we are a traditionally Christian country in that we are still organising groups of people to head over to the Middle East to fight wars.

Still, Dave knows if he wants someone independent to chair a commission or write a report on religion and politics then I am the man. I am sure I can find it within my soul to presume to speak on behalf of the entire brolly sector on the role of Christianity whether they agree with me or not.

It is at this time of year that we remember the real meaning of Christmas. Commercialism.

Speaking of which one thing I am disgusted about is the bloody email Xmas cards I keep getting, especially one from Lester Twobobsworth, chair of the Brolly Lottery Fund. These are a disgrace and an affront to the centuries old tradition of producing expensive yet cheap cards with tacky pictures and trite messages that waste millions of acres of forest while producing profits for the manufacturers and stamp sellers.

Using social media as a way of disseminating seasons greetings is appalling. And with that, can I wish all of my blog readers a Happy Christmas.

Kim Bogg-il

It is with great sadness that one of the truly great power crazed evil deluded dictator figures has passed away. Not only was Kim Bogg-il a true master at self aggrandisement and speaking on behalf of people whether they liked it or not, he was a superb golfer and holds the record for most number of golf umbrellas used during a round.

It is a sign of his greatness that even after he died, his corpse was denying his death and then went out and shot 35 under at Pyongyang Municipal golf course.

And he was a keen promoter of brollies. Though I never take credit for the influence I have had on world leaders such as my bezzie mates Tony Blair and Benezir Bhutto, both of whom I influenced hugely, it is obvious that Kim Bogg-il clearly picked up some tips on leadership when I popped into to North Korea a couple of years ago. As I wrote at the time (September 2009):

"Today I am off to North Korea to try and have a word with the Dear Leader about his recent umbrella obsession (click here)"

And these posts outline what he may have gleaned from watching my style of stuff. See here and here.

So all very sad. At this rate there'll be no evil dictator pariah figures left for Western governments to demonise.

Instead the world has been left to contemplate its reaction to death of man capable of crazed words, beloved by some, as Ronnie Wolfe, writer of On the Buses has also died.

And I suspect that sadly today Ronnie Wolfe will become Mother Theresa to Kim Bogg-il's Diana.

Like a rash

I am all over the FT like a rash. A pink, blotchy, ill thought out, self scratching, self serving rash. As in a rash outpouring of rhetoric about the government's pink, well possibly not pink, but certainly blotchy, ill thought out, self scratching, self serving rhetoric of Bogg Society.

I said it would never work. I said it was nonsense. Now I say it is irreparably damaged though considering no one was ever sure what the fuck it was in the first place, it is hard to ascertain how this damage is assessed.

Still, it gets me in the papers again. I love to be known as controversial and iconoclastic. Even if it does more for my profile than for the causes of my members.

The BUBB Xmas party was a hoot. Hector Rule proved a remarkably adept balloon modeller though the inflatable gallows he left on my chair didn't go unnoticed. Nor the balloon knife he kept thrusting into my back. At least Fab Jobsworth was on hand to provide an excellent geography quiz. Mind you, it did drag on a bit as he had a question for each of the countries I have wangled a free jolly to this year.

I have been up to NCVO to try and sneak into their Xmas piss up and photocopy my arse on Sir Hubert's photocopier to give the BUBB one a rest this year. Despite the fact I am moving into Hubert's box room next year BUBB is definitely not merging with NCVO, largely because that would reduce the number of shindigs we now host separately, especially at this time of year. Yes, we will collaborate on things like canape menus and wine choices, and Hubert can haul his derriere over to my side of the office and make a xeroxed reproduction of it anytime he wants - shared backside office costs are a good reason to work together - but that is as far as it will go.

My Xmas cards are nearly done. Have sent one to Dylan Twirley saying he should be taken out in front of his family and shot for likening me to Jeremy Clarkson. I am nothing like Clarkson. A gobby, opinionated, self serving, shit stirring arse with a deluded sense of his own importance. I can't even drive.

But someone who is firmly off my list is my friend Deborah Allcock-And-Bull at the Directory of Gampal Strange. She is my friend and has been going round telling people for ages that my loan shark business is rubbish. I suspect that my friend Deborah is only saying this because she is running her own pay day loan racket on the side where wet people can lend a brolly at an extortionate rate of interest until they have chance to purchase a new one when they get paid that they then leave on a train two days later thus meaning they need another loan. A nice business model and one I am sure my friend Deborah is keen to protect.

Anyway, can't hanging around here blogging. Those pints and cosy country pub lunches won't consume themselves.

A handy guide to BBC bias

I am often struck by the frequency with which the BBC is accused of bias. Left wingers claim it is doing a fine line spinning for the Coalition and point to Nick Robinson as a prime example of its unfair stance while people on the right hand side of the political spectrum trot out the "stuffed full of bloody do-gooder lefties" line.

Now, I am well known for my contradictory politics, the Brollinger Bolshevik, a true champion of gampagne socialism, quaffing fine wines while discussing how to help the poor. Bashing the greed of bankers while chasing peerages and writing window dressing reports for the Eton elite. Naturally left leaning but with a right wing skew. And while it is possible that there are examples where the Beeb strays from impartiality one way on one subject and the other on another, realistically it can't always be biased both ways at the same time. Which suggests very clearly to me where the real bias lies.

People seem to mistake "bias" with "not presenting things in the same way as I want them presented to fit in with my entrenched ideological standpoint".

But hey what do I know? Maybe I am biased.

Leveson. The nosy bastard

The Leveson inquiry into press ethics and privacy and intrusion continues. It is somewhat ironic that the first I have heard about some of these lurid tales of celebrities is via a public hearing into how their privacy was defiled. He's a right nosy bastard this Leveson fellow. I wouldn't be surprised if he went digging around in the bins of the rich and famous when he isn't trying to get actors and the like to cough up their personal secrets. On TV.

And I must say I am pretty pissed off that I haven't been called as a witness myself. I am sure my phone must have been hacked, if only by Sir Hubert or Dylan Twirley (who has thankfully moved on from NAVCA but not before making some stupid points about supping with the devil that I can be hypocritically snide about).

I have had my battles with the press - yes, Canopy Finance, you know what I am talking about, although I did manage to string a half arsed vanity column pimped by Brolly Weekly for 63 years. The umbrella sector press have been unprincipled enough to publish deeply personal information about me, including opinions expressed privately just because I had already blabbed them on my blog. I ask you. Whatever next? Is nothing sacred any more? It used to be the case that what went into a publicly available blog stayed in a publicly available blog. Not any more. Iexpect they will even quote large chunks of this just to wind me up further (please, I beg you, I need the profile, these peerages don't bestow themselves you know. And God knows I have hoped and prayed they would).

If it is gossip Leveson wants, no one drops more names than me. I am as careless with personal information as Oliver Letwin walking in a park.

So come on Leveson, let me have my day on camera. If it's indiscreetness and tittle tattle for personal glory you are after then I am your man.

Latest on NHS competition

I am taking a brief retirement from retiring from blogging. Not much has happened to me to be honest since I was last here peddling my own brand of self publicising pomposity. I have again been conflicted by my hatred of the evil bankers and my desire to milk them for sponsorship money. I have been pounding the streets knocking on doors and trying to flog the loan of umbrellas, whether people want them or not.

In keeping with my desire to do as many jobs on top of the one I am paid for by BUBB members as possible I had a brief spell working as a diversity consultant for Tramlink in Croydon which involved me dressing in drag and chatting to fellow customers.

Oh, and my secondment as Jeremy Clarkson's scritpwriter seemed to go without notice.

But other than that it has been very quiet really. No overseas trips now for a couple of weeks. The furthest I have been is walking the dog in Richmond Park, herding deer etc. Though confusingly apparently people say I should now refer to Barkles as Farkles.

But I am very excited by the news that the NHS may be able to flog off patient records and medical data to private firms. Anonymously of course. As people may know I am a keen fan of competition in the NHS and MY report earlier this year made this very clear. Competition is not a disease. And if it were there would be a very long waiting list to cure it. And it is not a dirty word. Parasiticfuckvultures is. But not competition.

Therefore I am delighted that I can make some spare cash by auctioning off my medical history. I am even happy to waive anonymity.

So does anyone want to buy some information on when I was diagnosed with slightly high blood pressure? Who wants details of when I got a splinter just above my eye when I was 5 and needed stitches? Let's start the bidding at £3.50.

Diabetes check when I was 12 (negative). Yours for a fiver. Notes on my visit to the nit nurse in 1984? £1.50 and it's yours. £14 for info about the dodgy mole on my back that turned out to be harmless circa 1998.

If only I had a serious illness I'd be laughing all the way to the bank. It's so unfair

Can I charge higher for details of all the children in my family? Sick kids are the future of the profit driven privately run NHS after all so surely it is worth the private sector investing more now.

I will even throw in my my bank details while we're at it. It will save time for when the government accidentally leaks* them later on.

(*Sells them to fund wars in various countries)