Party Time

I spent last night at a work party. There was a disco, but I don't dance. So I spent the evening dressed in a suit, watching the dancers, fingering the neck of my bottle of beer like a jaded travelling businessman at a disappointing strip-club.

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I've decided to condense some of my entries into a single paragraph, so I don't get bored of them.

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I was accused of murder, my alibi fell through, but luckily I avoided conviction by using hypnosis and a rope ladder. I'm currently in Paraguay, off my face on barbiturates.

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Good writing is good editing. (By which I mean good writing, rather than being the actual positive act of writing itself - writing words, I mean - is reliant not so much on the actual generating of output - again: words - but rather in the examination of any writing produced, and the identification of any words, phrases, ideas etc that could be excised to make the writing (words) more snappy. What you don't want is waffle. Not actual waffles, but extraneous writing, that might obfuscate your meaning by overloading the point you're trying to make with lots of extra information, unnecessary exposition, or cumbersome sentences, which may prove difficult to read, and could, in fact, mean that people end up not reading what you write through sheer annoyance at your longwindedness. So editing is really the key - perhaps the most important element, of producing effective writing.

I hope I've made myself clear (comprehensible and easy to understand).

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I missed the big leadership debate yesterday because of the aforementioned party.

I think I would have found it difficult to sit through anyway. I find live television embarrassing at the best of times, but three desperate men trying to act normal would make me cringe myself into a red ball of wince.

In an ideal world, there would be a better way to judge prospective candidates. The quality of someone's performance in a snappy, public-speaking contest isn't necessarily the best indicator of their ability to govern. But the truest measure would probably be a trawl through the minutiae of their past records and a mountain of paperwork.

And that may not appeal to the usual ITV audience.

I might watch the next one though. Then I can provide a breakdown of their every facial tick.

Really, the make-up people should have removed all ticks (and other parasites) from the faces of the candidates before broadcast. Unfortunately, the pesticide they use would have obliterated David Cameron.

Ha! Because he's an insect! Satire! SATIRE!

I could be on Radio 4, satirising everyone, making cutting remarks about their appearance, and parroting commonly held beliefs about the candidates!

Satire is the noblest art in the world. Cynicism, personal attacks and awful puns wrapped in a smug bundle of twat. That's me all over.

Part of me wonders if the satirists, the liberal journalists, and the sensitive comedians are secretly happy with the prospect of a Conservative government. They must me quite excited about being able to unleash all their bile at the party in charge. They can be rebels again; underdogs, the pygmies blowing darts at the dominant elephant (to steal a Bill Hickseanism).

Because even though everyone hated Labour, there must have been something in the back of their mind tempering the full force of their satirical weaponry, knowing that the Tories were loving every minute of it.

But once Cameron gets in, the gloves are off. We can return to the golden days of Ben Elton (and oh how we miss those), and all us left-leaning creative types can be defined by pure venomous opposition to the ruling party.

It's almost worth a lot of poor people getting poorer, and minority groups being discriminated against, just so Hugh Dennis and Rory Bremner can feel totally righteous in their scathing attacks on George Osborne's stupid face.