This is the first blog I’ve written in ages, and I’m afraid I have nothing better to offer than an incoherent rant.
You see, the thing is, I’m at home on my own, and I’ve just seen a photograph that has absolutely enraged me. And I have nobody to listen to me talk angrily about it. So I’m writing this in the hope that you may share my exasperation.
Here is the offending image:
I mean… what is this… I cannot even… what the… who do they… WHY? Just… why?!
Apparently, ‘Clean for the Queen’ is an actual real thing, something that has been backed by the Government. For clarity, it is NOT a storyline from ‘The Thick Of It’, or the subject of a newly resurrected ‘Brass Eye’. Believe me, I’ve checked.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m sort of behind the spirit of the campaign. I hate littering, and I like the thought of people working together for the betterment of their community.
The problem is, that by calling it ‘Clean For The Queen’, they seem to have entirely removed all sense of empowering social action, and instead turned it into a call for the peasants to clean up their shit so Her Majesty does not have to cast her eyes upon it.
I repeat, this is an actual 21st century initiative which has been backed by Government, and not the suggestion of some hysterical fruitcake posting a comment on the Daily Mail website.
But aside from the dreadfully patronising campaign it promotes, look at that picture. Just look at it!
You’ve got Michael Gove looking like a butch lesbian ventriloquist’s dummy that’s about to take its cycling proficiency test.
The allusion to the ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ crap that everyone got bored of in 2002, and now stands as the primary hallmark of a complete lack of imagination.
The bewildering notion that the best way to clean up a village is to roll out HENRY THE FECKING HOOVER.
The entirely superfluous exclamation marks after their stupid straplines.
The even more superfluous spaces between said stupid straplines and exclamation marks.
The more I look at it, the more apoplectic I become. I have things to do today, but I am absolutely seething. It has ruined my Sunday. I wish I was exaggerating.
‘Clean For The Queen’ day is on April 21st, by the way. I am planning to mark it by travelling to London and emptying a wheelie bin on the floor outside Buckingham Palace.
Then I’ll head to Westminster and kick Michael Gove square in the bollocks. The sniveling little prick.
You know I will. I really will*.
*I probably won’t.
Tom Parker. 