Historical Moustache of the Week

This is the point where we really, really starting phoning in our idea of “an update every day”.

That’s a photograph of Thomas E. Dewey, 47th Governor of New York and Republican candidate for the 1944 and 1948 Presidential elections.

This after he’s already been a candidate for the 1940 Republican ticket, a race in which he’d been the early favourite, only for growing conflict in Europe convincing many Republicans that at 38, not to mention him leading the liberal faction of the GOP, he was considered far too young to lead the nation in wartime.

By 1952, accepting his style just wasn’t rocking enough for 1950s America, he declined taking part in the presidential primaries. Instead he threw his support behind ultimately successful Republican Presidential candidate Dwight Eisenhower, proving to be one in the eye for his bitter rival within the Republican party, conservative Ohio Senator Robert A. Taft.

That’s not why we admire him, however. We think his name will live on throughout history for one very special reason.

Just look at it. It’s like a trained caterpillar. Marvellous. What did Taft bring to the hirsute table?

Sweet Fanny Adams, that’s what.

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As Relevant Today As It Was Then (Well, Partly)

From the race for the 1944 US Presidential Election, a campaign film in support of Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt bagging a second term. We really like it.

As every schoolboy knows, FDR subsequently romped to victory, Thumping Republican candidate Thomas E. Dewey by 432 electoral votes to 99. Yes, he actually received 25,612,916 votes at the ballot to Dewey’s 22,017,929 in a contest that appears more one-sided than it actually was, but hey, that’s modern democracy.

The upshot of all this is that if Ed Milhouseiband (see what we did there?) wants a realistic chance of winning the next election, he’d better get on the blower to Aardman soon as*.

(*We know the next election won’t be for just under four years, but claymation isn’t quick.)

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BrokenTV’s Boardgame Bacchanal: Part Three

With the election looming ever closer (LIVE ELECTION NIGHT BLOG HERE FROM 9.30PM THURSDAY), what better time to prepare for a night of recounts, swings and ITV getting everything slightly wrong than by playing a quick game of THE PARTY GAME (Crown & Andrews), Paul “Timing, I Think” Eddington’s “hilarious political sendup”? Put on your best Robin Day box tie and join us in our photo epic tour…

First, the packaging. Caricatures of the main party leaders – CHECK.

Jim Hacker MP peering cheekily over the top of his spectacles – CHECK. Looking good so far. +5 POINTS

Even a nice bit of blurb on the bottom of the box, which you don’t see on many board games. One interesting part there where the box says “Whether you are Democrat or Labour, Green or True Blue”, which for a second made us wonder if it had been hurriedly adapted from a game based on US politics, and the makers had forgot to change one of the party names over. But, clearly, it means Liberal Democrat, and we’re being a bit thick. But who on earth calls them “Democrats”, as opposed to “Lib Dem” or just “Liberals”. So, one point off for using the wrong word, and another making us feel stupid. –2 POINTS
 

As we established in our previous update, it’s only really correct that board games have the rules printed on the inner lid of the box. No reason why, it just is. Sadly, The Party Game rules are issued on a leaflet, incurring a penalty, though this is reduced on appeal, because they are in full colour. 
–1 POINT

 

And what a nicely formatted rule sheet it is. 
 

Even including a splendid breakdown of the colours by party: +5 POINTS

So, what do we get in the box? We’re not expecting much, what with it costing us just 50p from a car boot sale, but we may well be surprised.
 

WE ARE SURPRISED AND IMPRESSED. Absolutely loads to tinker with there. A map of Britain, divided into squares (+6 POINTS). Four different types of game card (+4 POINTS). Monopoly-type money, only substituting the currency with numbers of votes (+6 POINTS). And three whole sheets of pop-out rosettes, which can be placed on the constituency squares in order to reflect your popularity (+6 POINTS). And hang on, what’s that?

An egg timer! A blimmin’ egg timer! (+12 POINTS)

Probably best we go through the rules, just to see what all this stuff is for, eh?

That’s all fair enough. So, how can you earn votes? Well, for the most part, this is a regular board game, where players move around the board by throwing dice. Most of the squares you can land on offer the player a chance to earn votes, in a number of entertaining ways:

MAKING SPEECHES – This is our favourite. As the rules have it, “When landing on a speech square, the speech must be 1 minute long and it should reflect the point of view of the political party the player represents. Political waffle is allowed.” So, that’s where the egg timer comes in. Keep talking for a whole minute without “any undue hesitation”, and you win 10,000 votes.

We like this already. The party you represent throughout the game is chosen by rolling a dice, as on the list of parties a few pictures back. So, if you happen to have chosen, say, SLD, you’re expected to talk for a minute about their policy on a chosen topic. Don’t know what the SLD’s political outlook actually is? Tough, there are no clues in the rules. This is good, as it’ll annoy people who vote for whichever party leader seems nicest in real life because they don’t actually bother finding anything out about politics, but still vote, meaning most election campaigns are spent primarily pandering to such people. +5 POINTS.

What kind of topics are you expected to talk on?

Corporal punishment, nuclear waste disposal, unemployment, trade unions. All fairly 1980s stuff. Hang on, what’s this?

A policy on “Married women at work”? “If elected, my party’s policy is for married women to leave the workplace, as their pretty little heads should be concentrating more fully on producing babies and scrummy cakes, and darning my socks. Is that sixty seconds yet?” Truly a different age. Antiquated political hot potatoes aside, this is a brilliant thing to have in a board game. A political version of Just A Minute, all because you happened to land on that square? Absolutely love it. +15 POINTS

Back to the rules, and the next way to shore up your vote count.

ANSWERING QUESTIONS – “When landing on a question square the next p[layer picks up the appropriate card and reads it out. If the player answers the question correctly, he/she gains the number of votes written on that card.” So, what kind of light fluff can we expect to have on these cards? “What number in Downing Street does the PM live at?” “Complete the name of Britain’s first female Prime Minister, _____ Thatcher?” Eh?

Oh. Crikey. According to the box, this game is for people “aged 12 and up”. Any 12 year old child who was any good at this game must have been a really precautious brat. Like that famous clip of a teenage William Hague at a 1970s Tory Party Conference, in fact. Here are the answers to those questions:

 

So, sorting the men from the boys, there. And ladies from the girls, obv. +4 POINTS

The next way of getting votes: LADDER OF SUCCESS - “The player gains the number of votes written on that card.”

So, a slightly easier way to pick up votes. What sort of things can you expect to see on those cards?

 

All quite worthy, but nothing really befitting the whimsical expression of Paul Eddington’s face on the box. Come on, do something Sir Humphrey would suppress a smirk at.

   That’s more like it. +5 POINTS.

There are also ways you can lose votes, of course, Such as landing on a “Greasy Pole Card” (the opposite to the Ladder of Success card), or landing on the ‘Disaster Corner’ on the board, which loses you all your current votes. Or, you could land on the “Call An Old Woman A Bigot” square! Eh? Eh? Ah, please yourselves.  +4 POINTS

All this carries on until the map is completely filled with rosettes. at which point the person with the most constituencies is declared Prime Minister. No vote tampering, mind.

It does all sound a bit long-winded, but an extra-nice ‘Connect 4’ factor is added to proceedings. As the rules state, “if a player is able to place four electorate rosettes on the map adjoining each other in either horizontal, vertical, or diagonal lines, this is considered a swing in their favour and the player is given a free electorate as a reward”. So, it’s taking in aspects of Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit, Just A Minute, Connect 4, AND Yes, Minister? Holy exit polls, that’s quite extraordinary. +20 POINTS

So, all that considered, might we have a new leader in Board Game Division One? Yes!

BOARD GAME DIVISION ONE

1. THE PARTY GAME: 94 POINTS

2. TVTimes Television Quiz Game: 48pts

3. Bread: -11pts

 

Don’t forget to tune in tomorrow at 9.30pm for our LIVE ELECTION NIGHT BLOG, by the way.

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Griffin Ravers

A few thoughts tonight’s Question Time, where Britain’s most prominent comedy fascist, Nick Griffin met a suspiciously tiny audience of Question Time viewers. Seriously, that must have been one of the tiniest crowds we’ve seen for an episode of QT, especially so considering it took place in Television Centre. Next week’s episode from the sleepy north Wales seaside town of Llandudno is likely to have a much larger audience. They should have let some of those people from outside into the studio. They certainly seemed quite keen to attend the recording. Anyway, this is mostly culled lazy from what we’ve said earlier on Twitter, so if you’re following us on there, expect much of this to sound familiar.

Near the start of the show, Baroness Warsi made a reference to a quote from the BNP’s Mark Collett. The actual transcript goes like this:

Baroness Warsi: “When today we talk about how Churchill is referred to by the BNP, I’d like to refer to one quote, which I’m going to have to have some bleeps in, which is from Mark Collett, who is the BNP’s director of publicity…”

Nick Griffin: “He’s not.”

Baroness Warsi: “He basically said this; “"Churchill was a fucking cunt who led us in to a pointless war against other whites, the Nazis, who were standing up for their race”."

Really, Nick? Because from what we can find, including on far-right website Stormfront.org (link), he actually is the BNP’s Director of Publicity, or at the very, very least was quite recently. We’ve tried to find reference to him on the BNP website, but for some reason the search function isn’t working. Can’t imagine why.

For the record, doing a Google search for the words “Mark”, “Collett” and “BNP” brings up a very interesting web page in second place:

Far be it from us to reflect on the accuracy of said web page, as we have no idea of the facts involved, but still, interesting.

INTERESTING FUN FACT! We were able to copy and paste the above Collett quote from the NorthWestNationalists blog (who we’re not going to link to, but if you really want to find it it’s easy enough to Google). Entertainingly, they censored the words “fucking” and “cunt”, because naturally they wouldn’t want anyone to get offended by the content of their website, would they?

It was interesting to note Griffin’s repeated claims that holocaust denial is a crime in the UK, and that as he’s never actually been convicted for the crime of holocaust denial, he surely can’t be a holocaust denier. As every schoolboy knows, it’s only actually a crime in Austria, Germany and France. Anyway, here’s a Fun Fat Hitler Fact for you all: Nick's "Holocaust myth" quote – specifically:

"I am well aware that the orthodox opinion is that six million Jews were gassed and cremated and turned into lampshades. Orthodox opinion also once held that the Earth was flat … I have reached the conclusion that the 'extermination' tale is a mixture of Allied wartime propaganda, extremely profitable lie, and latter witch-hysteria."

was from 1998. Now, on tonight’s show he claimed that

"I can't tell you why I used to say those things anymore than I can tell you why I have changed my mind, I can’t tell you the extent to which I’ve changed my mind, because European law prevents me from doing so."

Except, of course, it doesn’t even remotely do so. Anyway, with that in mind, he made no attempt to actually tell us why he did change his mind (our theory: he hasn’t, only he’s realised there aren’t many votes in expressing that sort of thing), other than saying something about hearing about it on  the radio since then. But be fair, when he originally said those words in 1998, Griffin was merely a young and impressionable 39 year old. Why, he was barely out of nappies! We’ll wager that most people say things at the stupidly young age of 39 that they later regret, like “I’ll never buy a pair of slippers!”, “You’ll never catch me listening to Terry Wogan in the mornings”, or “ooh, cheap tripe? Get in!”

Another choice quote from the pudgy nationalist:

“My policy is for a truce with Islam.”

Is that why the BNP website carries juxtaposed imagery of smiling pure and white English children with a shot of hajib-wearing Muslim women, as below? What are they hiding, eh Nick? Why, they aren’t even wearing hajibs with huge St George’s crosses printed on them. Coming over here, hiding their presumably sneering faces, laughing up their sleeves and being given free houses and that.

At one point, Dimbleby interrupted mass panel disquiet after a Griffin outburst with the words: "If you all attack on different fronts, we'll get nowhere." Sadly, he didn't add "...if Hitler taught us anything, it’s that, eh Nick?"

One point where Griffin really tried to connect with the masses was when he stated, on the subject of homosexuality, how:

“I’ve said that a lot of people find the sight of two grown men kissing in public really creepy. I understand a lot of homosexuals don’t understand that, but a lot of us feel that way. A lot of Christians feel that way, Muslims, all sorts of people.”

From that, we can’t help but wonder if Griffin’s feelings only extend to “grown men kissing in public”. Does he think that if it were two young boys kissing in public, he’d be putting a supportive arm around their shoulders while saying “go on, make the most of it. Why, in a few years what you’re doing now will be wrong, so make hay while the sun shines”? Or does he just spend entire evenings at home, on his own, sitting by his fireplace, thinking vigorously about two grown men kissing each other in public, and pondering just how that makes him feel? Either way, we’re sorely tempted to write a series of slash fiction stories about him and Abu Hamza, just for the sheer heck of it."'Put your hook there and sort of wiggle it about a bit', cooed Nick."

Sad to say, there are a couple of slightly depressing conclusions to make from tonight’s programme. Firstly, that hundreds of thousands of people will go to work in the morning, and jokingly ask their colleagues if they saw Question Time, only to receive a reply along the lines of “yeah, I thought what he said was too bloody right” from their previously respected co-workers. We frigging hate it when things like that happen.

Secondly, the alarming realisation that for every single person from the “too bloody right” brigade, who’d nodded sagely when Griffin spewed out the bilious theory that gay people are allowed to be gay “as long as they keep it behind closed doors”, their vote come the general election will count just the same as the vote of someone who’d pored over local politics, BBC Parliament coverage, Hansard and Private Eye for the last ten years. Maybe voter apathy isn't always a bad thing...

In summary: sigh. Here’s an entertaining image to end things on a relative high, culled from the pages of B3TA, and Jpeg genius Monkeon:

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