Walter Wolfgang and the man of Straw.

Tsk! Tsk! It seems I can’t leave the Asylum for ten minutes without the place going to Hell in a Handcart…

I had to take a little compassionate leave this to look after my euphemistic dog, Spike, who has been laid low with a painful middle-ear infection, poor thing. Temporarily deafened and with diminishing balance, he’d been staggering around the Nurse’s Quarters, bumping into the furniture, snarling at the occasional visitor, yelping frequently and making those pitiful Puppy-dog eyes at me. He also re-damaged the knee he dislocated earlier this year (Yes, I KNOW dogs don’t have knees… he’s a euphemism, remember?). The correct medical term for this condition is “Poorly”.

Anyhoo, I finally got him to the Vet who hoovered several pounds of vile gunk from his ears, and he’s now on the mend, thankyouverymuchforasking.

But what a godawful mess greeted me on my return! I had left Nurse Kravitz in charge of the British Annexe – especially inmates “Phoney” Blair, Gordon “Prudence” Brown and Jack “The Knife” Straw. All she had to do was keep the buggers heavily sedated, but you know what she’s like… memory of a goldfish, poor dear.

Inmate Brown distracted Nurse Kravitz from her 'Jumbo Book of Sudoko' with the vague promise of something sparkly (that wasn’t), and next thing she knew Blair had rounded up all the other patients, herded them all into Brighton Ward, and was holding a rally so everyone could agree how absolutely marvelous he is, how he loves us all so much that he’s NEVER going to leave, and how HIS shit doesn’t smell at all!


Suffering as they do from the grave misunderstanding that a Labour Party Conference nowadays has the slightest resemblance whatsoever to a proper democratic process involving debate and dissent, some of the braver Inmates naively tried to ask questions about the murderous occupation of the Ottoman Wing, only to be criticized and silenced by the party aparatchicks who were lurking in the shadows at the fringes of the ward waiting to pounce at the first signs of Democracy, on the orders of the leadership.


Things started getting a little nasty when Foreign Secretary Jack “The Knife” Straw was on centre stage, spouting his usual mealy-mouthed propaganda about how jolly decent it was of us to have joined in the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi men, women and children, how happy the Iraqis are that the British were in occupation again - just like the last time - and how he has no intention of leaving Iraq until George Bush and Ariel Sharon are satisfied that the entire region is engulfed in internecine conflict and is totally destabilized by civil war, abject fear and grinding oppression, making it easier to justify the absolutely outrageous theft of all their oil.

Getting into the full swing of his Fantasy Foreign Policy, Straw began to claim that in regards Afghanistan and Iraq, Britain had “worked hard to avoid war”.

This was all too much for one of our older residents, 82 year old Walter Wolfgang, who had fled from one set of fascists in Nazi Germany in 1937, and who, on recognizing a liar when he saw one, dared to shout two words - “Liar” and “Nonsense” - from the very back of the hall whilst Straw was in full conceited spurt.

Within seconds Walter was literally pounced upon by three goons who literally dragged him out of his seat by his jacket lapels, despite his urgent protestations that he had heart disease. They proceeded to throw him and a friend (who had dared to complain at the disgusting treatment of an old man) out of the Ward and onto the street. When Walter tried to get back in he was arrested under Section 44 of the Prevention of Terrorism Act. Yes, that’s right… the Prevention of Terrorism Act.


By tea-time yesterday, when the entire National Media was getting ready to show the entire country what a disgraceful sham the Labour Party Conference has become, the Labour Party issued a statement claiming falsely that Mr. Wolfgang had been warned three times about heckling.

The ensuing blistering criticism of this event temporarily humbled the mighty Party, and today saw a succession of slimy photo-op apologies being made in the general direction of Walter, even by Saint Tony himself.


Pie-loving Party Chairman, Ian McCartney insisted on being filmed shaking Walter’s hand today as a gesture of goodwill, and Blair made comments about how the event stewards were all volunteers, and sometimes maybe got over-zealous. He didn’t mention that a sizeable proportion aren’t volunteers at all… they’re professional bouncers. Bouncers aren't noted for giving a shit.

In interviews today Walter – a keen member of the Stop The War Coalition and Vice-Chair of Labour Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament - made some very pertinent points about the over-management of Labour Party conferences under the Blair regime, and the fact that the leadership had completely side-lined any discussion of Iraq.

(Incidentally, serving MP Austin Mitchell had his camera confiscated and the memory ilegally wiped by the police outside the venue for the heinous crime of photographing a queue...)

Another 80 year old was thrown out of a fringe meeting for sporting an anti-Blair badge on his jacket.

Elsewhere in Brighton the police were seen detaining a man wearing an anti-war T-Shirt, and bundling him into a Police van.


Watching all this on the battered TV in the Nurse’s Lounge, those of us who are older than the average boy band were given good cause to remember very lucidly how Labour Party conferences from the 1950’s to the 1980’s used to be very lively, exciting events.

Loud, impassioned debate on the floor was the order of the day. Ethics were king, and control-freakery by a leadership (who should be standing in the dock at the War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague instead of maintaining the criminal occupation of a sovereign state whilst sucking on the Chimp’s teats) was unheard of.


Previous Labour Prime Minister were often given a very hard time by the party delegates at these conferences, and that’s how it should be if we want to have a living, breathing democracy… which we obviously don’t have.

As a surreal footnote, the musical theme played over the PA system at the conference when Blair took the podium was (very bizarrely) Sham 69’s punk anthem “If the kids are united”, taken by pundits to be a dig at Gordon Brown’s aspirations to step into Blair’s shoes when he steps down.

Later that night BBC’s Newsnight programme invited the matured-but-not-cowed Sham 69 to perform an unplugged version of their classic. Taking the opportunity, Sham’s bemused front-man Jimmy Pursey had tweaked the lyrics appropriately for the benefit of our glorious Prime Minister:

For once in my life I've got something to say,
I want to say it now, but
now it's today.
Life has been given, to grab and enjoy,
So come on Tony,
let's all enjoy.

Oh Mister Brown, don't feel rejected,
'Cause it
was Tony who was elected.
And Mister Blair will take us there,
Just bring
'em Home, don't leave them there.

Just take a look around you Tony,
what do you see?
People with feelings, like you and me.
Understand him,
he'll understand you,
For you are him, Tony, and he is you.

Oh
Mister Brown, don't feel rejected,
'Cause it was Tony who was elected.
And
Mister Blair, we know you care,
So bring 'em home, don't leave 'em
there.

Freedom is given, to speak how you feel,
I have no
freedon, Tony, how do YOU feel?
You can lie to my face, but not to my
heart,
And if we stand together, Tony, this'll be the start.

So
Mister Brown, don't feel rejected,
'Cause your Nation was elected.
And
Mister Blair, we know you care,
So bring 'em home, don't leave 'em
there.

Yes, If the kids were united, they would never be
divided.
Yes, If the kids were united, they would never be divided.

...that's for Walter Wolfgang

I just thought I'd tell you all this so our American visitors can appreciate that they're not the only ones suffering from the creeping cancer of supression, and that we want the same end result from this as YOU do...

That's all for now, dear Visitors. I've got to go back to the Nurse's Accomodation Block and take Spike for his walkies!