Black Country news and blogs Friday 19 September 2014
The Plastic Hippo
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This is the day 
The Plastic Hippo 18 Sep 14
The polling places have closed, the ballots have been cast and the votes are being counted…
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Deep in the heart of Texas
The Plastic Hippo 17 Sep 14
Every few years the Lone Star State of Texas huffs and puffs and threatens to leave the United States of America…
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Good morning North Korea
The Plastic Hippo 15 Sep 14
The BBC has today found itself at the centre of controversy as thousands of confused viewers and listener jammed the corporation`s switchboard with complaints of baffling, inaccurate and misleading news reporting…
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Potpourri
The Plastic Hippo 13 Sep 14
To speak ill of the dead is usually considered disrespectful and to raise a parting glass to celebrate the passing of a former human being is, in some quarters, viewed as a mortal sin…
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Who`s afraid of Fiona Woolf?
The Plastic Hippo 8 Sep 14
There was a time when it was relatively simple to kick something toxic into the long grass and be fairly confident that the general populous would not notice the stench…
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Wishing on a star
The Plastic Hippo 6 Sep 14
My God; it`s full of stars Politics by anecdote is no politics at all and when a politician justifies flawed policy by spouting spurious anecdotal evidence you can rest assured …
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Grandma`s footsteps
The Plastic Hippo 1 Sep 14
What`s the time Mr Wolf…
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Sutton Hoo?
The Plastic Hippo 28 Aug 14
He might have a lot on his tiny mind at the moment, but it is possible that South Yorkshire PCC Shaun Wright is considering making a large donation to the election fund of the bringer of earthquakes the mighty Douglas Carswell…
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Lesbian lizards from space
The Plastic Hippo 26 Aug 14
It is surprising how quickly the world returns to normal after a week or so away and once the front door has been forced open against the pile of correspondence and once the countless emails have been ignored, it is almost as if the holiday never …
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Bright young things
The Plastic Hippo 17 Aug 14
There has been some rather lurid speculation that a small group of Old Etonians are formulating the manner, style and objectives of government but this conspiracy theory is as unbelievable as the outrageous allegations made against famous, white, …
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Deepening like a coastal shelf
The Plastic Hippo 15 Aug 14
Of all the important things taught at seats of learning both great and small, how to be a parent stands little chance of being included on the curriculum…
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A nasty smear
The Plastic Hippo 11 Aug 14
If anyone is qualified to know stuff, then God knows there is precious little for humanity to be either cheerful or proud about at the moment but, as we descend into barbarism, we can always rely on the Farage Army to keep our spirits up…
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Another Walsall pub vandalised
The Plastic Hippo 9 Aug 14
Going…
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Over-promoted, incapable, incompetent
The Plastic Hippo 6 Aug 14
Enjoying yet another holiday in Portugal pointing at fish, David Cameron will be delighted that Baroness Sayeeda Warsi has picked her moment to jump overboard just as the nets of moral outrage snag the truly awful coalition government…
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All over by Christmas
The Plastic Hippo 4 Aug 14
Today, the beginning of the First World War will be marked with solemn remembrance of the soldiers who fell and the civilians who perished; there is little point in commemorating the 1918 Armistice…
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Laws unto themselves
The Plastic Hippo 1 Aug 14
It is irrelevant to ask who Nicky Morgan is because the correct and only answer is that she is not Michael Gove…
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Sober in the morning
The Plastic Hippo 30 Jul 14
When a leader of the opposition feels that it is necessary to give speeches and interviews to apologise for being physically unattractive, the tipping point between reality and abject absurdity has been reached…
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The people have spoken
The Plastic Hippo 25 Jul 14
Well, to be precise, 2250 people have spoken which is about 22 per cent of those eligible to vote in the Walsall Birchills-Leamore by election…
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In the Ghetto
The Plastic Hippo 23 Jul 14
On a bright and sunny Walsall morning another little shady deal is born in the ghetto…
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Eyeless in Gaza
The Plastic Hippo 21 Jul 14
It was no less a visionary than Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi who allegedly said that an eye for an eye leaves the world blind…
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Rump Parliament
The Plastic Hippo 18 Jul 14
Given the long history of British democracy, it is almost reassuring to know that politics in 1648 was just as sordid as politics in…
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Ozymandias
The Plastic Hippo 16 Jul 14
It wasn`t exactly a JFK moment or an Elvis moment or even a John Lennon moment but the day after Bastille Day 2014 is now carved into memory…
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Sleep well
The Plastic Hippo 11 Jul 14
In these dark and perilous hours, my thoughts and prayers are with my fellow British citizens as we face the most grievous emergency to ever threaten the very existence of our proud and free nation…
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In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida
The Plastic Hippo 8 Jul 14
As a family, we are experts at dealing with unexpected calamity and the occasional crisis but Sunday proved to be cataclysmic as the full horror of the collapse of internet network connection visited our humble home…
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Ready to Rumble
The Plastic Hippo 5 Jul 14
Just when you start to think that politics could not descend any further into the cesspit of disgraceful opportunism, along comes another piece of low life ready to plumb new depths of disrespect…
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Nat King Cole
The Plastic Hippo 2 Jul 14
Decades before Will Smith`s fictional Fresh Prince migrated from West Philadelphia to Bel Air, singer and pianist Nat King Cole tried upward mobility for real…
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Journalism is not a crime
The Plastic Hippo 28 Jun 14
The scandalous detention and outrageous conviction of three Al Jazeera journalists in Egypt is an affront not just to freedom of speech, but is also confirmation that corrupt governments will stop at nothing in attempting to control an independent …
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Waiting for an Alibhai
The Plastic Hippo 22 Jun 14
The idea that Michael Fabricant would actually punch Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in the throat is as fanciful as the likelihood of the member for Lichfield being capable of aiming a punch without missing…
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My enemy`s enemy
The Plastic Hippo 18 Jun 14
Diplomacy, according to Winston Churchill, is the art of telling people to go to hell in such a way that they ask for directions…
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Wake up and smell the coffee
The Plastic Hippo 14 Jun 14
Enjoying a breakfast consisting of a croissant and a cup of strong Turkish coffee, a person from Scotland informed me of the news of the day via a radio manufactured in Taiwan…
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The Jumblies
The Plastic Hippo 10 Jun 14
The notion of rote learning as espoused by Michael Gove suggests that if you memorise and recite something often enough, then dull repetition will be miraculously converted into knowledge…
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Gove vs. Reality
The Plastic Hippo 8 Jun 14
With the best will in the world and summoning up all remaining reserves of compassion, empathy, forgiveness and basic humanity, it is impossible to like anything about Michael Gove…
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Los Reyes Catόlicos están muertos
The Plastic Hippo 6 Jun 14
The origins of a united and powerful Spain can be traced back to the marriage of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile in 1469 and although they might only have been teenagers, when they later succeeded to their respective thrones – Ay …
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Let`s do the time warp again
The Plastic Hippo 1 Jun 14
Whenever there is a shift in political balance, regardless of its magnitude, it is inevitably described as a lurch to something other than the status quo…
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Farage 24
The Plastic Hippo 25 May 14
Now that state broadcaster Farage 24 has declared Nigel Farage to be the winner of both the 2014 and the 2015 General Elections, the publicly funded station can return to its bumper, post-election summer schedule…
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One trick pony
The Plastic Hippo 21 May 14
Setting aside the slapstick buffoonery and deeply unpleasant hate-mongering, the one they call Nigel Farage has already achieved something quite remarkable…
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Glib Dem apocalypse
The Plastic Hippo 18 May 14
Nick Clegg might be in possession of the shameless guile required to hype a public profile but he sadly lacks the arcane skill of necromancy…
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Get orf my land
The Plastic Hippo 16 May 14
The unpleasant downside of the usual knockabout fun provided by local and European elections is the sorry spectacle of witnessing dysfunctional dregs of society emerging from the cracks in the pavement to seek 15 minutes of political attention…
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Flag of convenience
The Plastic Hippo 13 May 14
There is much to be admired when a nifty bit of lateral thinking neatly side-steps an obviously embarrassing problem…
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There`ll always be an England
The Plastic Hippo 10 May 14
There now follows a party political broadcast on behalf of the little England party which is also the UK entry in the 2015 Eurovision Song Contest…
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A year of living dangerously
The Plastic Hippo 7 May 14
In slightly less than 364 days, polling stations across the United Kingdom will open for business in the great general election of…
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Catch a tiger by the toe
The Plastic Hippo 3 May 14
I never use the words poisonous unfunny pillock and would never use them apart from on those occasions when I actually use them or when describing Jeremy Clarkson…
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Not Even Worth A Rotten Kipper
The Plastic Hippo 1 May 14
After careful consideration and to quell intense media speculation, I have decided that I will not be standing in the forthcoming by election in Newark; wherever that is…
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Insult and injury
The Plastic Hippo 27 Apr 14
Great fun can be had by hurling deeply offensive insults and aiming blood curdling threats of physical violence at real and imagined opponents in the strange reality television world of politics and football…
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As good as a rest
The Plastic Hippo 24 Apr 14
Change, be it geologically imperceptible or earth shatteringly violent, shares the inevitability of both death and taxation…
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He is risen
The Plastic Hippo 21 Apr 14
In these days of dissenters, heretics and false prophets, it is important to make clear that David Cameron did not compare himself to Jesus Christ and did not claim to be the Messiah; he`s just a very naughty boy…
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Through the looking glass
The Plastic Hippo 17 Apr 14
If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense…
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Careless in the community
The Plastic Hippo 13 Apr 14
In imagined nostalgia, there was a time when a community was defined by its pub, church, post office and school and life in merry old England revolved from cradle to grave with reassuring certainty…
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Miller`s tale
The Plastic Hippo 8 Apr 14
Regardless of hysterical media frenzy, the fate of the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport remains completely and utterly inconsequential and even if Maria Miller resigns or is banished to wander the barren corridors of the Welsh Office …
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Return to sender
The Plastic Hippo 6 Apr 14
There was no ring of the doorbell or a knock on the door but the sound of a metallic slap was definite evidence of something coming through the letterbox…