I was blog chatting (or whatever it is called these days) with a friend today and somehow politics came up. When I say politics I mean really silly politics. Our politics is grim. Very grim. One of the only fun elements is when one of our smallest parties enters the elections. The Monster Raving Looney Party. It’s almost as if Monty Python had entered politics. It was started in the 1960s by the musician called Screaming Lord Sutch.
This was the Party who had a real cat called Catmando as its joint leader for 3 years.
Some of its brilliant policy ideas have included:
- Make the tax system more complicated so that it is harder for companies to find loopholes
- Make it illegal to walk under ladders
- To prevent global warming all buildings will have air conditioning units on the outside
- All politicians should paint themselves permanently from head to toe in the colour of their party
- All socks to be sold in packs of 3 in case you lose one
- Introduce a 99p coin
- To save money they would only operate our nuclear missiles at weekends
- Build a really big wall (or hang on that’s not one of the Looney Parties policies).
The scary thing is that actually some of the ‘crazy’ policies they came up with have over years actually become rather sensible and have been adopted by the government. We have pet passports now and who was the first party to propose them. They jokingly proposed 24 hour licensing for places selling alcohol (had been very restrictive hours) and a few years later it became law. Back in the 1960s they campaigned to have the voting age reduced to 18 (now the law and how was this ever considered a mad idea).
Sadly they never quite get into government. Maybe because the looney vote is split. At the last election you had the Looney Party, plus you had a chap called Lord Buckethead, some guy dressed as a fish finger and some chap dressed as Elmo.
Some would argue that recent governments have been infiltrated by loonies.
What am I wittering on about. I don’t really know. I think the point is that when the world seems really bleak and sad. When you want to just stand outside, look at the heavens and scream. To hear your own tears raining down on this increasingly alien land. Just sometimes the only thing that keeps you going is a bit of silliness. It brought me back from the edge. Our dip into politics today certainly made our son laugh. It made him forget about his worries for a few minutes.
If the Looney Party has indeed a track record of starting sensible policies off then maybe they should come up with a policy of banishing sadness and anxiety. Maybe in a few years it becomes reality. I could vote for that.
