“The memory of you lives on
— like the song of the Dodo Bird?”
From Fragments
By Bachchoo Comrades,

April.01 : In response to the millions of heartfelt entreaties I have received from the destitute, the desperate, the despairing and my own well-wishers and family, I have urgently consulted the family astrologers and have, with caution and reluctance, decided to throw my hat into the ring in the general elections for the British Parliament to be held on the May 6. Our party, the Post-Marxist Turpitudors (PMT) will be contesting all 600-and-something seats.

The electors of Great Britain and Northern Ireland should be aware that I refused all exhortations and invitations to join the final TV debate of the party leaders last Thursday, the shameful beauty contest between the ogre and Phantom of the Opera Gordon Brown for Labour, the snake oil and used toothbrush salesman David  Cameron for the Tories and the politician impersonator and hair-gel advertisement Nick Clegg for the so-called Liberal Democrats. My reasons for declining are self-evident: these gentlemen and the TV networks whom they are promoting have reduced British politics to the level of American Presidential elections and worse, to the frivolity of reality TV competitions in which the public vote for the the most pleasing performance.
It is no good the parties protesting that their intention was more serious, that these debates between the leaders of the parties were really opportunities to air the policies of each. The proletariat of Britain, whose hearts have been fed on fantasies, have grown brutal from the fare. Is it not true that on the reality shows in which hundreds of contestants, some of them struggling and deluded no-hopers, are encouraged to make noises and movements in cruel parody of song and dance in order to entertain the roaring crowds with the spectacle of unselfconscious failure? Haven’t these reality shows, Comrades, from Bigg Brother to The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent, deliberately presented grotesque fools and half-wits so that the general public can feel superior to the monstrous parade of humanity and vanity that they represent?
Don’t these shows owe their appeal to the instinct that the Roman emperors exploited when they threw Christians to the lions for public amusement or got hapless gladiators to fight till only one was left standing?  Should Britain really have to choose it’s future Prime Minister through such a demeaning, humiliating and self-evidently flawed process?
No, Comrades, no! Reject this frivolity and demagoguery and vote for PMT, the party that refuses to engage in this travesty of the democratic process.
Think of what the travesty allows these so called leaders to do! The Institute for Fiscal Studies, a capitalistic, reactionary but statistically reliable organisation has, after watching the debates and reading the statements on economic policy published by all three parties, come to the firm conclusion that none of them are telling the electorate the truth. There is an elephant in the room and these parties are chasing the cockroaches, pretending that they are the only creatures we can see. The economic elephant is the massive national debt that Britain has incurred in bailing out the failed world banking system. The institute asks the question: “How is this debt to be repaid so the country is solvent again, at least to the extent it was before the world banking crisis?” Each party has attempted to deceive the British public by  professing to have answered the question without making clear to the voters what the increases in direct and indirect taxation and cuts in government spending and therefore cuts in services they would have to impose would be. The institute attempts to quantify the lies or obfuscation of each party in answering this question. All three parties have declared how they will save or account for “x” billion pounds of the deficit. Each of the answers falls short by at least 75 per cent of the requirement in order to deal with the said deficit.
Comrades, the PMT is the only party that has a solution which will not entail taking a penny out of the pockets of the honest proletarian man, woman or family. Consider the fact that the global economic banking crisis was brought about by bankers, capitalists and their political accomplices. They did the crime, they must do the time. As my fundamentalist friends say, judgment has come and mercy has gone!
The PMT’s manifesto contends that there are in Britain a thousand individuals whose names the newspapers frequently announce, calling them the “rich list”. Individuals have been known to fight to get onto this ladder of fame. Let them now fight to get off this ladder of greed, because PMT has calculated that all their wealth, capital and assets in Britain and abroad, amount to billions of pounds and can easily cover the national debt. When PMT is elected as the government of this country we will nationalise every penny of the wealth of the top 1,000 “rich list” and if all that doesn’t cover the national debt that the billionaire bankers have got us into, we shall proceed to the second thousand on the “rich list” and so on down.
We are fully aware that most of these vultures have lodged their cash and ill-gotten gains in off-shore banks and enterprises. The PMT government will demand from these off-shore havens that the assets be declared and returned. Failing which the British armed forces, withdrawn from Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere will be strategically deployed to get from these sleazy off-shore-wallahs that which will now be  Britain’s. As they used to say, no quarter shall be shown.
What will become of the dispossessed individuals, the bankers, the sharks, the landowners who have oppressed the prols for thousands of years or made a quick buck in the last few? They will be free to set up their own re-education camps in land supplied by our government in the vicinity of Slough with full NGO access. There will be no water-boarding or water-skiing.
The next point of our manifesto promises the dismissal and disbandment of all parking attendants and traffic wardens and the possible revenge imprisonment of all those who have issued a parking ticket and fine to a 1999 model black Mercedes whose registration cannot at present be disclosed for security reasons.
Forward etc.!

Comrade FD Chief of Politburo (PM designate)

Farrukh Dhondy