Well, the Witchfinder-General Sandy Burnham-Drownham won't be shafting the umbrella sector again, or anyone else for that matter, as we have neutered him. The Chuckle Brothers, Hector Rule and Geof Sachell, have literally cut his knackers off. It's the only language these people understand. If you make your name talking bollocks then that is the area we will target. Ed Balls beware.
I have also had a letter from the PM saying "thank you for your 3,404,684,789,485 letters on various things. You are solely responsible for the Royal Mail under performing. I can assure you that we are committed to the role of the umbrella sector, at least until the election. I cannot vouch for the lot that follow but you'd probably know more about that than me. Now piss off and let me run the country and enjoy it while I can."
So once again I say "don't buss the DIBB, sorry don't dobb the BISS, no, don't dust the BIBB". Don't diss the BUBB or we will be all over you like a bad suit, or like Ronnie Corbett's golf umbrella.
No one else could have pulled this off, indeed could have pulled Burnham-Drownham's nads off. It has been a classic mix of brute force, bullshit, whinging and more brute force.
As my Great Aunt Maude said to me: "Feel compelled to throw another log on the fire if you get cold. Or just throw the flaming thing at the Witchfinder-General and see if he burns. If he does you know he's found himself out."
Thursday, 25 March 2010
Unmasking my spoofer part 4
The quest to find out the identity of the comedian who spoofs my serious ponderings has taken another turn. On the road to Dartford no less. The person who is behind the parody must be someone with boundless dynamism spouting a lot of hot air. So it's no surprise to learn of an energy assessor in Kent going by the name of Stephen Bubb.
Tuesday, 23 March 2010
What roll the brolly sector?
Regular readers will be fully aware of my clear-cut confusion over those chaps in the City. You know, the fuckwit bankers and investment knuckleheads playing and hard and fast with our cash while at the same time being brilliant upstanding professional financial gurus prepared to fund many a boozy event and providing a pool of intellect with which to pack the boards of any organisation we may chair.
One thing they do do well is slick marketing and the brolly sector can learn a lot from the experts in this. Recently it was reported in London's evening rag Lowering the Journalistic Standard, that times were so hard at the Swiss giant Umbrella Banking Services (UBS) that they had been forced to use a lower grade of toilet paper in the staff lavs. This news was seized upon by brolly sector wonga wizards CCLA Unconfidential whose head of tapping-up-other-firms'- clients, Canadrew Gobinson, sent a cheeky missive to UBS umbrella clients offering his firm's services and enclosing a sheet of toilet tissue.
Not surprisingly, UBS have gone onstanc (got their cantons in a twist) but they haven't exactly been shy about aggressive marketing in the past and he who lives by the sword, single-plys by it as well.
This is a fantastic idea and I will be using it to try and poach some of Hubert's deluded membership at NCVO. They will all be receiving a piece of crisp Bogg roll later this week. Unused, naturally - I don't want to be accused of running a smear campaign.
Elsewhere, BUBB has been busy positioning itself on all of the big issues of the election. We have been wiping the arses of ALL the major parties and this week is the turn of Vince Cable. Vince is of course the greatest economic expert in the history of ever largely by virtue of never having had to actually do anything other than talk a good game. He correctly predicted the South Sea Bubble and the Wall Street Crash as early as last week. And in a hung parliament he who controls the cable has a very big advantage.
However, I would like to take this opportunity to distance myself from THE big talking point and election battleground right now. Just because I bumped into Dave Cameron (my local MP) and his delightful wife Samantha in Lidl the other week, rumours have quickly surfaced about my role in her pregnancy. All nonsense of course. If people are really looking for someone making an early bid to assume Cameron's position then surely Boris is a more likely candidate than me for many reasons.
Seriously, I do believe Dave is the father. Apparently he rang Gordon last night and repeatedly shouted: "Gordon, your time is up. Soon I'll be THE DADDY." And he has been bragging to his old Etonian chums about Samantha being "up the Bullingdon" with a "ciabatta in the aga". While Dave has done his bit to prove that not everything in Britain is broken and he still has plenty of blue lead in his pencil, there are strong reasons to believe that it was actually Lord Ashcroft who funded the lavish meal and champagne that led to the conception.
I am not at all sure of the suitability of Dave for PM now. You can't run a country on four hours sleep. We tried that experiment in the 80s and look what happened. Although if Cameron is thinking of taking some paternity leave and they need a temp, I am more than prepared to offer my services as an intern. Or maybe Dave is going to be one of these trendy full-time Dads you read about and lead Britain on a freelance basis.
One other rumour I would like to put to bed is that I have been molesting Lord Bladderwreck's sheep in Blacbury. What do they think I am, some sort of Cymru stereotype? Barkles did eat one the other week but other than that I have had nothing to do with them.
One thing they do do well is slick marketing and the brolly sector can learn a lot from the experts in this. Recently it was reported in London's evening rag Lowering the Journalistic Standard, that times were so hard at the Swiss giant Umbrella Banking Services (UBS) that they had been forced to use a lower grade of toilet paper in the staff lavs. This news was seized upon by brolly sector wonga wizards CCLA Unconfidential whose head of tapping-up-other-firms'- clients, Canadrew Gobinson, sent a cheeky missive to UBS umbrella clients offering his firm's services and enclosing a sheet of toilet tissue.
Not surprisingly, UBS have gone onstanc (got their cantons in a twist) but they haven't exactly been shy about aggressive marketing in the past and he who lives by the sword, single-plys by it as well.
This is a fantastic idea and I will be using it to try and poach some of Hubert's deluded membership at NCVO. They will all be receiving a piece of crisp Bogg roll later this week. Unused, naturally - I don't want to be accused of running a smear campaign.
Elsewhere, BUBB has been busy positioning itself on all of the big issues of the election. We have been wiping the arses of ALL the major parties and this week is the turn of Vince Cable. Vince is of course the greatest economic expert in the history of ever largely by virtue of never having had to actually do anything other than talk a good game. He correctly predicted the South Sea Bubble and the Wall Street Crash as early as last week. And in a hung parliament he who controls the cable has a very big advantage.
However, I would like to take this opportunity to distance myself from THE big talking point and election battleground right now. Just because I bumped into Dave Cameron (my local MP) and his delightful wife Samantha in Lidl the other week, rumours have quickly surfaced about my role in her pregnancy. All nonsense of course. If people are really looking for someone making an early bid to assume Cameron's position then surely Boris is a more likely candidate than me for many reasons.
Seriously, I do believe Dave is the father. Apparently he rang Gordon last night and repeatedly shouted: "Gordon, your time is up. Soon I'll be THE DADDY." And he has been bragging to his old Etonian chums about Samantha being "up the Bullingdon" with a "ciabatta in the aga". While Dave has done his bit to prove that not everything in Britain is broken and he still has plenty of blue lead in his pencil, there are strong reasons to believe that it was actually Lord Ashcroft who funded the lavish meal and champagne that led to the conception.
I am not at all sure of the suitability of Dave for PM now. You can't run a country on four hours sleep. We tried that experiment in the 80s and look what happened. Although if Cameron is thinking of taking some paternity leave and they need a temp, I am more than prepared to offer my services as an intern. Or maybe Dave is going to be one of these trendy full-time Dads you read about and lead Britain on a freelance basis.
One other rumour I would like to put to bed is that I have been molesting Lord Bladderwreck's sheep in Blacbury. What do they think I am, some sort of Cymru stereotype? Barkles did eat one the other week but other than that I have had nothing to do with them.
Friday, 19 March 2010
That had better have been worth it
Well what a complete and utter pile of shite that was. What a sorry charade. Six hours of bluster and rhetoric and saying how great the brolly sector is yet no concrete policies, only vague promises and soundbites and bullshit. I am of course talking about the BUBB Brolly Sector Tory Love-In Summit. The Tories had better get elected now to make the brown-nosing worthwhile. My nose was so far up the shadow cabinet's arse at times that you could see my nostril hair whenever one of them opened his (and it was always his) mouth to speak.
Things started badly when George Osborne was late. Actually, he wasn't late but as no one knew what he looked like he was left standing in the foyer looking sheepish. Apparently even his own mirror struggles to recognise him sometimes. A new film has just been released called the Osborne Identity where members of the electorate are asked to pick him out of a line-up. He craves a defining feature such as Alistair Darling's eyebrows.
And people kept spelling his surname wrong. As George puts it himself: "There is no u in Osborne, only me".
Osborne did speak well, to be fair. I laid down the BUBB challenge to the Tories - "more rain, more brollies, less wind" and he accepted it graciously. "From us you can expect promises for all the things you want to hear us promise." He also urged the brolly sector to "be professional and do things on the cheap while looking smart."
Great Aunt Maude followed him and spoke more waffle than the Bird's Eye potato department. And there was a succession of politicians within touching distance of power making promises emptier than Jordan's head. Their policies were so without substance that I have seen jelly houses built on epileptic quicksand that are more robust than the suggestions this lot trotted out.
"We need a procurement process to procure better procurement processes."
"We will stimulate social activity in depressed areas. We will make cider even cheaper."
"We will impose a top down approach to achieving a bottom upwards one."
"We will make up words such as upscale."
"We will encourage localism - ideas dreamt up over a few pints in the pub that seem great at the time but poor the next morning."
At one point I resorted to asking if anyone had any mephedrone to counteract the method drone we had heard all morning.
What did we learn at the end of the day? The brolly sector has lots of passion and great ideas (delegates knew that without having to pay for the privilege of being told it by people desperate for their vote), and the Tories are good at lip service but won't commit cash.
The only bit of interest came during the afternoon when apparently Osborne, who had skulked back to his anonymous office, was texting saucy pics of himself to the other shadow cabinet members along with a message "DO NOT promise any money or else I will send more of these".
At the end the feedback was positive. Indeed it was positively furious. I was surrounded by a crowd of baying delegates who felt cheated that there was no big announcement from George Osborne as advertised. To be fair we only promised this as a way of shifting more tickets.
People were also questioning their delegate fee going to fund a six hour showcase for the entire shadow cabinet. OK, there was no overtly party political stuff but when you are weeks from an election, how can anything the major politicians say not be viewed in that context to some degree?
Thankfully we seem to have got away with awkward questions in other areas. Such as the fact that I once again risked the blurring of my BUBB and Brolly Investment Business (BIB) roles by having BIB as a sponsor. People may query whether I should be using my influence at one organisation to help secure funding for a vanity project at another. That is, if any money actually changed hands. If BIB were merely listed as a sponsor to give them free publicity, that might also be misconstrued.
And hopefully no one will make any snide remarks about the fact that my vice-chair at BIB, Millicent Oddbin, is herself a prospective MP. And I bet you can guess for which party.
I have made a mental note to check the definition of "perception" and "conflict of interest". Just in case someone does end up putting two and two together. Because at the end of the day even if they make five the damage may well be done.
Things started badly when George Osborne was late. Actually, he wasn't late but as no one knew what he looked like he was left standing in the foyer looking sheepish. Apparently even his own mirror struggles to recognise him sometimes. A new film has just been released called the Osborne Identity where members of the electorate are asked to pick him out of a line-up. He craves a defining feature such as Alistair Darling's eyebrows.
And people kept spelling his surname wrong. As George puts it himself: "There is no u in Osborne, only me".
Osborne did speak well, to be fair. I laid down the BUBB challenge to the Tories - "more rain, more brollies, less wind" and he accepted it graciously. "From us you can expect promises for all the things you want to hear us promise." He also urged the brolly sector to "be professional and do things on the cheap while looking smart."
Great Aunt Maude followed him and spoke more waffle than the Bird's Eye potato department. And there was a succession of politicians within touching distance of power making promises emptier than Jordan's head. Their policies were so without substance that I have seen jelly houses built on epileptic quicksand that are more robust than the suggestions this lot trotted out.
"We need a procurement process to procure better procurement processes."
"We will stimulate social activity in depressed areas. We will make cider even cheaper."
"We will impose a top down approach to achieving a bottom upwards one."
"We will make up words such as upscale."
"We will encourage localism - ideas dreamt up over a few pints in the pub that seem great at the time but poor the next morning."
At one point I resorted to asking if anyone had any mephedrone to counteract the method drone we had heard all morning.
What did we learn at the end of the day? The brolly sector has lots of passion and great ideas (delegates knew that without having to pay for the privilege of being told it by people desperate for their vote), and the Tories are good at lip service but won't commit cash.
The only bit of interest came during the afternoon when apparently Osborne, who had skulked back to his anonymous office, was texting saucy pics of himself to the other shadow cabinet members along with a message "DO NOT promise any money or else I will send more of these".
At the end the feedback was positive. Indeed it was positively furious. I was surrounded by a crowd of baying delegates who felt cheated that there was no big announcement from George Osborne as advertised. To be fair we only promised this as a way of shifting more tickets.
People were also questioning their delegate fee going to fund a six hour showcase for the entire shadow cabinet. OK, there was no overtly party political stuff but when you are weeks from an election, how can anything the major politicians say not be viewed in that context to some degree?
Thankfully we seem to have got away with awkward questions in other areas. Such as the fact that I once again risked the blurring of my BUBB and Brolly Investment Business (BIB) roles by having BIB as a sponsor. People may query whether I should be using my influence at one organisation to help secure funding for a vanity project at another. That is, if any money actually changed hands. If BIB were merely listed as a sponsor to give them free publicity, that might also be misconstrued.
And hopefully no one will make any snide remarks about the fact that my vice-chair at BIB, Millicent Oddbin, is herself a prospective MP. And I bet you can guess for which party.
I have made a mental note to check the definition of "perception" and "conflict of interest". Just in case someone does end up putting two and two together. Because at the end of the day even if they make five the damage may well be done.
Wednesday, 17 March 2010
Our social impact!
I suspect now more than ever, there needs to be a sharper focus on the impact we have. Except we are far too busy being cool to measure it.
Our friends at New Fillcanopy Capital, led by Hermann Rockes, have produced a social impact manifesto. I haven't read it (reading ain't cool) but I am a firm believer in its importance. And no one has had more social impact in the brolly sector than BUBB. We are the kings of boozy launch parties and canape gorging. Can you measure that impact though? Only through waistlines and breath tests, I suspect.
And another example of the importance of impact is provided by the Farmer Giles Trust in an excellent report on its initiatives aimed at reducing reoffending. It has been peer reviewed by some top economists via Pro Bono Economists (an organisation that analyses the economy through the lyrics of U2) and so is hugely credible. Apparently they have been seeking evidence of impact for ages and happily can now stop saying that they still haven't found what they were looking for.
The report shows that working to tackle reoffending and educating brolly thieves so they are less likely to pinch a gamp again has had a staggering impact upon crime figures and presents huge savings for the state. In fact, so impressive is this work that we might need to sex down the report or else there will be no one left to go into the prisons that we will be running soon. And we can't have that.
In case I forgot to mention it before, we have our Tory Summit tomorrow and I am so bloody excited I am literally wearing a brolly for pants to save my trousers further punishment. We have decided to impose a cool dress code (shorts, flip flops, socks, shades, knotted hankies, Union Jack T-shirt). And we are so cool that Hector has hit upon the great idea of having brunch. Not lunch. However, my plan to ban uncool people from the building was vetoed on the grounds that we wouldn't have any speakers.
Our friends at New Fillcanopy Capital, led by Hermann Rockes, have produced a social impact manifesto. I haven't read it (reading ain't cool) but I am a firm believer in its importance. And no one has had more social impact in the brolly sector than BUBB. We are the kings of boozy launch parties and canape gorging. Can you measure that impact though? Only through waistlines and breath tests, I suspect.
And another example of the importance of impact is provided by the Farmer Giles Trust in an excellent report on its initiatives aimed at reducing reoffending. It has been peer reviewed by some top economists via Pro Bono Economists (an organisation that analyses the economy through the lyrics of U2) and so is hugely credible. Apparently they have been seeking evidence of impact for ages and happily can now stop saying that they still haven't found what they were looking for.
The report shows that working to tackle reoffending and educating brolly thieves so they are less likely to pinch a gamp again has had a staggering impact upon crime figures and presents huge savings for the state. In fact, so impressive is this work that we might need to sex down the report or else there will be no one left to go into the prisons that we will be running soon. And we can't have that.
In case I forgot to mention it before, we have our Tory Summit tomorrow and I am so bloody excited I am literally wearing a brolly for pants to save my trousers further punishment. We have decided to impose a cool dress code (shorts, flip flops, socks, shades, knotted hankies, Union Jack T-shirt). And we are so cool that Hector has hit upon the great idea of having brunch. Not lunch. However, my plan to ban uncool people from the building was vetoed on the grounds that we wouldn't have any speakers.
Still cool
We're so cool that fashion follows us. BUBB is the new black. We're so cool that it literally hurts. If we were any cooler we'd be cut into cubes and served in cold drinks. We'd set up a Cool Commission if we weren't too god damned cool to bother.
Today I will mostly be chilling on the patio with my work crew posse, preparing for the Tory Summit #torybubbshit
We're so cool that we never ever mention it.
Today I will mostly be chilling on the patio with my work crew posse, preparing for the Tory Summit #torybubbshit
We're so cool that we never ever mention it.
Tuesday, 16 March 2010
Cool BUBB
Only two days to go until our summit with the Tories. I am right proper excited about it I can tell you. A whole day schmoozing with the next government (or not), getting our ear bending in early before Hubert buggers things up with rhyme and reason. If you can't attend you can email robinbogg@hotmail.com with any questions you'd like to post to George Osbourne and the rest of the posh twit class warriors or leave a comment below. Rest assured I will pass it on.
Or if you like all of this new age social media real time stuff you can follow on Twitter, using the hashtag #torybubbshit. No doubt my spoofer Stephen Bubb will also be present in a virtual sense, using some wittily named parody hashtag such as #acevotetory or #bluebloodedbollocks or #tssummit.
It has long been known that BUBB is the coolest place in the umbrella sector, especially when describing relations with the other major umbrella bodies. Jobsworth, Rule, Sachell and Jerry are often in the media spotlight (bloody tabloids) but handle it well. Our secretaries are well tidy as well. What other umbrella body has such stunning talent? Which other major brolly organisation has a chief executive so willing to sing the praises of its staff on a blog in lieu of a decent wage? We are so cool. Effortlessly cool. So cool that we don't even have to talk about it. We're so cool that the kids are down with us, not the other way round.
We're so cool that sunglasses wear us. We're so cool that BUBB is a byword for cool at cucumber dinner parties.
So it is no surprise that our latest intern is a TV star. Yes, we have been promised the piano from 4 Poofs and a Piano when the popular camp harmony singing combo are made redundant once Wossy leaves the Beeb. It will prove invaluable for our impromptu karaoke nights.
Or if you like all of this new age social media real time stuff you can follow on Twitter, using the hashtag #torybubbshit. No doubt my spoofer Stephen Bubb will also be present in a virtual sense, using some wittily named parody hashtag such as #acevotetory or #bluebloodedbollocks or #tssummit.
It has long been known that BUBB is the coolest place in the umbrella sector, especially when describing relations with the other major umbrella bodies. Jobsworth, Rule, Sachell and Jerry are often in the media spotlight (bloody tabloids) but handle it well. Our secretaries are well tidy as well. What other umbrella body has such stunning talent? Which other major brolly organisation has a chief executive so willing to sing the praises of its staff on a blog in lieu of a decent wage? We are so cool. Effortlessly cool. So cool that we don't even have to talk about it. We're so cool that the kids are down with us, not the other way round.
We're so cool that sunglasses wear us. We're so cool that BUBB is a byword for cool at cucumber dinner parties.
So it is no surprise that our latest intern is a TV star. Yes, we have been promised the piano from 4 Poofs and a Piano when the popular camp harmony singing combo are made redundant once Wossy leaves the Beeb. It will prove invaluable for our impromptu karaoke nights.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)