I, Pod. Ha ha ha

Look what they have done to my town | Special Reports | Guardian Unlimited Politics:

I usually pass over Julie Burchill these days, on the basis of her last couple of decades worth of drug crazed overpaid rantings. But here, she's hit the nail. And about real old fashioned politics as well. In a book about Brighton Council and it's typification of New Labour shiny shiny; and in this extract in today's Grauniad. Check it out. Here she uses my own favourite metaphor about NuLab - the bodysnatchers...


"The Labour council that took power over this town in the mid-90s and still has power today is a very New Labour council, led by thwarted idealists, among others, who in the political wilderness of the Thatcher years mutated into strange, free-falling beings to whom power was not a means to an end, but an end in itself. In short, they became Pod Politicians: like their big brothers in government proper, they still went on about social justice and the brotherhood of man, but inside they'd gone all cold and creepy. Peter Mandelson is the greatest example, and in his irresistible rise from Lambeth councillor to Chief European Commissioner for Straight Bananas he serves as a lesson to all ambitious local bean-counters. They say politics is show business for ugly people, and in not one word or deed of Randy Mandy's have I ever been able to discern exactly why he chose to be in politics, apart from the fact that he isn't personable enough to make it in showbiz, which is obviously his first love. Every time I see Dale Winton I want to shout, 'You've got Peter Mandelson's life - give it back to him!'"