A Thousand Milibands in a Band.

It was the Labour Conference! I expect you watched little else, glued as your were to your screen by an unwavering support for the left wing. Ed Miliband gave his best rendition of someone who isn't hateful (Although didn't manage to portray someone who isn't boring. His speech is below the "Public loos with views" video story. Ed Miliband is objectively less interesting than the developments in portable excretion devices). He opened with some jokes (If I ever make a political speech to an audience thousands, I think it'd be an ideal place to test out how good my scriptwriters' jokes are too), which pained me. It's a Labour conference, not the Edinburgh Fringe. Just tell me what overarching and unachievable policies you'll idly promise the nation. And what a great bunch of policies they were. Starting with "Journalists' Register", a licence for reporters. And if they misbehave, that licence gets revoked. Similar to doctors and drivers, except when they screw up, someone/some people die, whereas when a journalist screws up, either ethically or factually, they get sued for libel or criminal activities. Logic dictates that if a journalist keeps getting sued, people won't want to hire him. Still, fundamentally bizarre as an idea, seemingly put in there deliberately to garner public support after the phone hacking fiasco (Far be it from me to suggest Labour are doing things with anything other than the purest of intentions). Speaking of not doing things with the purest of intentions, Miliband attacked companies for being ruthlessly capitalist, despite the fact they don't exist to make friends, or act as a force of moral good upon the nation, they exist to accumulate wealth. Portraying them as requiring morals simply isn't fair, it's up to governments to enforce morals on them. Corporations are like toddlers, specifically toddlers who really, REALLY love biscuits. you've got to smack their hands when they steal your biscuit tin, or you'll be left going "Who's had all my custard creams!?" with a toddler covered in crumbs going "It wasn't me" with biscuits in their mouth. The Government needs to protect biscuits. If corporations were moral beings, I doubt their sole reason for existing would be the gathering of wealth.

General, non-policy points made by Miliband: Labour wants to regain the trust of the British public. They want to make this clear, because some of us might have been confused by their lies. I was personally surprised, because I expected them to try and alienate me further. (This sort of thing annoys me. It's like when all the major parties say that they're going to be tough on crime. Of course you are. You all are. But you've all got to tell me this, individually, in case I go "My god, the Tories haven't explicitly stated they're going to be tough on crime. I guess this means they're going to let murderers run riot with a chainsaw and no remorse.". Honestly, we get it, you're all very tough on crime. Let's stop babbling on about this and go to stuff you actually disagree on so that I can differentiate you, although that's increasingly hard with identikit politicians and everyone moving to a centrist-right position. We don't have to keep saying the obvious).

Factfile on Ed Miliband

Ed "The Head" Miliband was born in 1969, and went to the same school as other, more famous luminaries, N-Dubz, where he earned his nickname, for having an unusually large head. After this, he went to Oxford and studied PPE (Unusual for a British politician). Little is known of his life between this and working for the treasury, although some Labour fans speculate that he spent 40 days and 40 nights wandering alone in the desert, and that he wrote all the Spice Girls' hits under a psuedonym. Whilst working for the treasury, he was granted a twelve month sabbatical in order to teach a course at Harvard, whereupon he was granted access to then-Senator and presidential-hopeful John Kelly. Upon his return, he was made chief economist for the country. He left this post to run for parliament in Doncaster North, a place dear to his heart, as he had spent exactly no years living there before the election. After winning the safe Labour seat, he was quickly promoted into cabinet. From there, his rise to stardom has been meteoric.

Other Stories that are thankfully not Miliband related include:
The EU wants to bring in a new financial levy of one thousandth of every transaction between institutions, or one ten-thousandth on trades in derivatives. This is, of course, an unthinkable sacrifice for the poor, defenseless banking sector to make, and Britain, last bastion of hope and joy, has vowed to protect this charming little infant from such ludicrous taxes of 0.1%. Ostensibly, the fear is that, such an insane tax hike on the poverty-stricken financial sector (Which, as well we know, more than pays its way already with the current taxes it pays) will cause it to up sticks and leave the expensive, shiny buildings in London and move elsewhere. Personally, I'm pretty certain they're bluffing. HSBC repeatedly threatens to move to Hong Kong, in the face of more financial regulation (Of course, regulators are like Dementors in Harry Potter, swooping in and destroying everything banks know and love, like the ability to shove the global economy towards a cliff then go "Look out, you'll knock it off! Would you look at that. You just broke the economy. What's the world coming to when you can't leave nice things on the edge of a cliff?", and threatening to leave completely is sort of their last Patronus spell. That is a Harry Potter-tax analogy. you do not see many of them in the wild), and increased taxes ("Pay to use the services you provide by making this an ideal place to work? Are you mad. No no, we'll have none of that nonsense") which apparently makes it financially unsuitable for them to work here. I bet Somalia could lower its taxes to 0% and it wouldn't encourage HSBC to move their operations out there.

That's the news. Ish. Two stories. I'm rusty. Give it time. I'll get it back.