Ed Balls - quite the cunning stunt, isn't he?
Ed Balls - quite the cunning stunt, isn't he?
Your Reaper doesn't quite know why, but viagra cialis online pharmacy pharmacy Balls is one of these politicians who brings out more anger in me than most of the others. Perhaps it's the fact he constantly blinks as he lies his way through countless interviews. Perhaps it's the way he appears to have been coached by Gordon Brown into giving tractor statistics and meaningless answers to just about any question he's asked.
Perhaps it's because he replied with "So what?" in the House of Commons when David Cameron pointed out the country had its "highest tax burden in history". Perhaps it's his astonishing brass neck, which was shown during the leadership contest last year when he said in The Observer that "too many" British workers had been affected by migration policies under Labour.
Perhaps it's because of the way he changes his message to suit the political mood. When the economy turned to shit, he said those who advocated what he dubbed "light touch regulation" had been "routed". In other words, he said they were wrong. During his days as Chief Economic Adviser to the Treasury, something he did for eight years, he had previously been boasting about the same so-called light touch regime of City regulation he had been instrumental in creating. He's also on-record as promoting "a light touch approach at the global and EU level". I notice that he's been caught out again attempting to revise history today.
Perhaps it's the fact he's so stingy and miserly that he attempted to claim for two Rememberance Sunday poppy wreaths on his expenses. Perhaps it's because he's a self-serving little shit who's in politics simply for what he can get - and it's been a hell of a lot so far.
Or perhaps, to quote a tweet from Giles Coren, it's the fact that "the weasly turnip-faced cunt always smile[s] when he's saying mean things".
Like I said earlier, it's a total mystery why Ed Balls gets my back up.
You may have seen that this morning, news emerged that the economy shrank by 0.5% during the month of December. As Fraser Nelson points out, it's really not as bad as some are making out. Predictably enough, the opposition is being predictably opportunistic and is making hay of this. It's a pathetic statistic, to say the least, and it does raise interesting questions about how quickly we're going to get the economy back on its feet. All this would be considered by a Shadow Chancellor who had ideas and knew a thing or two about economics. Ed Balls, also predictably, has none of those things. He pretty much got his job by default.
He appeared on the Daily Politics today, and predictably yet again, he did badly. Just about all of the facts on this issue contradicted what he was saying, meaning no one could take him very seriously. Predictable? Yes indeed. Whilst not claiming outright that government spending cuts were completely responsible for the fall, he came close to it at several points. Andrew Neil, as ever, caught him out and when Balls came to replying, he just sounded like a worm trying to wriggle off the hook. It didn't work.
I once recall seeing an episode of Family Guy where Stewie Griffin took over the world. His first act was to pass a law demanding that, on seeing his father Peter, (or The Fat Man, as Stewie calls him) members of the public were obliged by law to throw apples at him. Perhaps a similar law is required in order to deal with Ed Balls' stupidity and obnoxiousness.
* Should anyone from the BBC be reading this, kindly let us bloggers embed these videos from the Daily Politics onto our blogs. We're not all evil, you know. We just like taking the piss out of Ed Balls.