Merry Xmas

Now all the elections are over, I am quite satisfied with the results. Unfortunately, one or two of my followers did not get the support they should have from the idiot public. But even so, enough of my people got in to ensure further progress in my career. Now I can control all the other Ministers' funding, I really have the power to be the new Peter Mandelson.

Even better, I have impressed upon my new frontman that I am an expert linguist, who should take care of all the foreign relations. This will enable me to continue my in-depth first hand studies of the high-end business travel industry. We used to have a tourism industry here, until my colleagues and I wisely refocused the economy on financial services, so I like to see what it could have happened if we had let things go on as they were.

It is the festive season, and there will be much hard partying to get out of the way before I have to worry about work. So I shall sign off and wish you all a Merry Christmas and taxably Prosperous New Year.

Another one for the suckers

Naturally, we in the government have complete faith in our policies. Sometimes we do wonder, however, if the hoi polloi get suspicious about our image. Ex-broadcasters always do well in elections here. Because we do not have much of a party system, voters just vote for names that they recognise. We already have one washed-up ex-newsreader who has been a loyal mainstay of our government. people grumble about him being a drunken buffoon, but he got elected and he is one of ours. We are now going to build on his success by parachuting in a bimbo from a breakfast radio show. She has not got a clue about anything political. That makes her a lovely blank slate to impose our views on. She has the right background to be one of us, and her bubbly broadcast persona will fool the idiot voters brilliantly. I cannot wait to see her elected by her fans, especially as she is a big fan of mine in turn.

We have Got Him

I am very proud of my fellow ministers this week: Our Chief of Police is an import from the mainland. He could never get his head around the way we do things where I live. This week, however, we found a way to get rid of him and his disrespect for our friends.

A few months ago, somebody found some kids' bones and teeth under an old orphanage. The orphanage used to lose some of their brats from time to time, but nobody cared. They did not have families and nobody else minded. The smart-alecs from our local police, however, saw the bones and thought they would check out a crackpot theory that the bones are what happened to the lost brats. I suppose it could have been true, but they were just poor orphans, so what would it matter if they did end up in the cellar anyway? The police then go and have a big, expensive investigation with loads of bad publicity. Even worse, they asked nosy questions about who let the orphanage get on with its business in the traditional way, as if something had been hushed up. All this was making the government look bad. The Chief of Police had to go.

Well this week, we pulled a brilliant one. The new detective on the case said there hadn't been any murders after all. This meant we could claim the Chief was incompetent for saying there might have been and checking to make sure there wasn't. After all, he should have just taken our word for it that the government knew how to run things properly, even back then before my generation took power. So we have kicked him out and blamed him for losing loads of money that could have been spent on important stuff like consultants and civil servants.

He, of course, is whining that checking out human remains in funny places is what police do. Our resident awkward backbencher is leaking what we are up to left, right and centre, too. Fortunately he is a bit flaky and totally charmless, so we are going to put it about that he is just a conspiracy theorist and paranoid about everything. As long as we can keep the media away from these two, and the chief's ex-sidekick I reckon we should get away with it all. By the time I am up for re-election we will have made sure it has all been forgotten.

They have got the spin wrong

I shall have to get Glenn to sort out the local newspaper for me: Usually they can be trusted to get the spin right on reporting the Government's achievements, but today they have really let me down.

As I have said before, I need to get the best professional help that I can find. In my work as an international statesman, that means sparing the taxpayer no expense, in obtaining the services of those consultants, who can be presumed, by the level of their fees, to be the very best in their fields. Moreover, as it is a core policy of our government to outsource as much of our local economy as we can to national and international `corporations, it is essential that I find consultants who know the national and international situations, and do not distract themselves by taking local circumstances and interests into account. Therefore I have to look elsewhere to find my experts. We would never succeed in building our capital into a booming modern city of 125,000 or 150,000 people, if we were to listen to those who still see it as a sleepy little port and resort, with no building higher than a church steeple.

Anyway, I have already been spending almost a million pounds of the public's money each year, on obtaining the most expensive possible advice. For that money, I not only get ideas that nobody who actually lived here would dream of putting forward, but I am also protecting the public's confidence in their Government. You may not believe that, but this is how it works:

By implementing the boldest dreams of our consultants, we create a reassuring impression of a Government that is open to new ideas and dynamic in its pursuit of progress. But, the blade cuts on the back stroke, too: When the bold initiatives fail, as cutting-edge schemes so often do, we can offload all responsibility for them onto the consultants, and assure our subjects that we did not personally make the failed plans. Then we can hire more consultants and repeat the cycle until it does come right.

So you see, it all makes perfect sense. So why did they not headline the story with something appropriate, like “Investing heavily in our future” instead of something that could be misinterpreted as disapproving, like “Big spenders”? The editor will have to answer for his misjudgement.

Revenge!

The trouble with the web is that, at present, there is no vetting of who is a fit and proper person to be allowed an internet connection. This means that instead of just finding people like me and my friends on it, there are postings from all sorts of horrible oiks who do not respect their betters as they should.

There is a rumour that some people have even been lampooning me! Apart from my distinguished career as a statesman, I also went to a very posh school and came from a long line of local landowners. I do not think that somebody as important as me should have to put up with it.

Fortunately, I can get my revenge. One of my old schoolmates has, surprisingly, turned out to be a very important and influential person on the internet, or so he says. He is even the Gay Rights Expert on a website called Why G*******. He is using the information that he has picked up from the websites he has helped with, to go after the people who have sent me up. I suppose it is against the Data Protection Law, but he went to a very posh school, too, so the Police will not be allowed to charge him. Anyway, if they do not shut up, he will persecute them and get them. And if he screws up and picks on someone too clever or tough for him I can deny it all. I Just Asked for Some One Nice to defend me but I do not officially know if any Maverick supporters of mine are going too far.

Sound thinking about economics

The lower-class leftie idiots who don't agree with my policies accuse me of neglecting economic diversity.

Of course, this is a terrible slur. Under my inspiring leadership, our mighty financial services industry is always coming up with new, ever-more-cunning “solutions” and “products” to increase the diversity of the economic help that we can offer to the world's rich.

Admittedly, I don't bother much with old-fashioned industries like farming and tourism, that attract uncouth foreigners to work in them anyway. Besides, these sunset industries are just wealth generation. The real easy money is in wealth capture, like international financial services. Who wants to be a mere fisherman, when they can be a pirate?

Another sound piece of economic thinking that the oiks do not appreciate is my support for outside business over locally owned business. We have had a terrible situation, where tradesmen can carry on as if they were the equals of the landed gentry, through succeeding at mere commerce. However, by pursuing my enlightened strategy of replacing local firms with outside ones, wherever possible, these jumped-up nobodies will be brought back down where they belong, and we can get back to ruling without hindrance.

The great thing about financial services is that they produce an endless supply of virtual money, so that it no longer matters if all the real money is being siphoned off by outsiders.

So Proud

I am so proud: I used to be in charge of Planning. While I was, I approved a world class hotel at the entrance of our capital's harbour. Unfortunately, the witty allusions to inter-war industrial architecture in its design went right over the heads of the local plebs, and many of them have been very rude about it.

Now, however, I have been vindicated. Our splendid hotel has just won a national architectural award, against stiff competition from all over the British Isles.

So, see how soundly we Ministers join up our thinking: Our next big project at the harbour will be a world class incinerator, way beyond the size of anything ever seen in such a small place before. We shall put this on the opposite side of the harbour to mirror the visual impact of the award-winning hotel. To any visitors that still might come to do business here, it will seem like sailing between Scylla and Charybdis. What an exciting prospect: Surely yet another award will be coming our way.

Hello

Hello everybody. I am Phlo Ozo, the famous international statesman. Even David Cameron has a website these days, so I thought I would have one too. Actually, Cameron's is a bit embarrassing sometimes, so I shall get my friend Glenn to give me some professional help. (People are always saying I should get some professional help!)

I have just been re-elected with over eight thousand votes by my adoring public. There are some negative cynics out there, who try to make a big deal out of two-thirds of the voters wanting somebody else. However, really this just shows how well our electoral system works. You see, we have managed to almost abolish party politics, where I come from. So, all the oiks and plebs scatter their votes around the greens and lefties and other riff-raff, while the natural ruling class unite behind their leaders and we just rise above them. Perfect democracy in action, with none of this nonsense about having to worry about the little folk, that so much of the Western world has trouble with.

Anyway, now I have a blog of my own, I can tell all the world about my proven track record, and show off the soundness of my thinking about how to carry on as before.