Fascists in Faversham

I was disturbed and disgusted to receive through our letterbox a few days ago a flyer urging me to vote for the National Front in the general election May 6th. The result on 7th May will of course be that the local Tory has romped home, again, but the mere fact that the fascists are confident enough to put up a candidate is nauseating. It frightens me that they could somehow persuade someone to put these things through letterboxes. Or did they simply pay some poor desperate bastard (hopefully not an "immigrant") to do the job?

The candidate is a charmless looking man called Graham Kemp. Graham earnestly advises his readers that he has 4 children and that he is worried about their future. Graham "works as a football coach", apparently. Graham looks exactly the sort of twat that John Terry would be proud to call his friend.

I showed the leaflet to our children. I told them if they ever see Graham they have my permission to throw a brick very hard at his head. Naturally the usual parental message is that violence solves nothing, so this may cause some cognitive dissonance. But when it's a fascist on the receiving end then, let's face it, it's just damn good fun.

Need I add that Graham's leaflet is full of nonsensical racism, anti-EU toss, and guff about handing on to our children's children what our forefathers handed down to us?

The NF will, apparently, safeguard one's "freedom to choose your own workmates and friends". Yes, too right, that Gordon Brown coming round all the time forcing me to befriend Romanys and darkies and Poles, how fucking dare he! And as for bosses selecting our work colleagues, do they think they own the place or something?

Graham advises that he believes in "No foreign wars". Let me assure him that if his party were ever to win power they would be far more concerned with civil wars to have any time spare for dropping bombs on A-rabs.

Graham claims that "We believe that the Liberal, Labour and Conservative parties are quietly working together whilst pretending to be separate parties. Note the extraordinary number of Ministers and shadow Ministers who could be described as being of Eastern European (Marxist) extraction." I'm constantly amazed by that myself.

To be honest, I haven't decided which party I'll be wasting my vote on in this seat which is a shoo-in for the Conservatives, though it won't be the incumbent MP put it that way. I'm terrified though to imagine that in less than a fortnight the results might prove that dozens or even hundreds of fascists have voted for Graham. Please fellow citizens: whatever you do, don't do that.

A Borg Named Pete

I'm reading - five years late - Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. It's a dystopian kinda novel, so of course it sets its stall out by overemphasising certain words that clearly Mean More Than Usual: donor, guardian, carer etc. The dystopian schtick is, of course, that it will gradually become apparent just how different these meanings are. At a guess though, a carer will turn out to be an exploiter, guardians will be warders, donors will be anything but volunteers. It's a War Is Peace kinda thing yeah.
Generic verisimilitude this is called, and it's so annoying. If you write a fantasy novel then of course all the characters have to be called Zrotzker, and Kapok, and Zorbat. I can generally tolerate about four completely stupid names before I want to hurl the book away. But of course there's a subspecies of scififantasyknowalloids who like nothing more than drawing up sweaty little genealogies. Zorbat begat Aphoz, who slew Gortor, son of Zammar, near the frubag tree, with a candlestick.
Just what is so supposedly implausible about a Borg named Pete?