Unpresidented

So I went to America and Washington DC last week and came across what I mistakenly thought was a Black Friday sale. But it turns out I'd got my days wrong and Black Friday in America actually always falls on a Friday. And this was a Wednesday. It turns out that that I'd stumbled upon a riot in the capitol building. Literally a once in a lifetime event - unless you were 207 years old.

And on a side note, I bet if you were 207 years old, you'd be interviewed on the ITV Evening News and putting your longevity down to whisky, fine wines or smoking 20-a-day. If there's one conspiracy theory that I absolutely buy into it's that all of these things that the "man" tells us are bad for us are definitely what's keeping us alive, and they tell us sugar is bad for us because the post office staff can't cope with a population with an average age of 150.

Anyway, I was storming the capital and I was following a man with a flag who claimed to be a victim - and to be fair, he did seem like a loser, but that's quite possibly because he was carrying the flag of a side that lost a war.

Now some people get the wrong idea about these guys. And I think the confusion arises because what these fellas want is to find out who won the election and to make sure everything was fair and above board. Now there is a flag for American democracy and it looks like this:

but it's actually really hard to get hold of these in America because, for reasons that will never really become clear, they are often bulk bought in American schools where children have to pledge allegiance to them every morning in a thing that is in no way like a cult. Seems completely unnecessary to me. Flags don't need allegiance. They're flags. They don't want anything. If I went to an American school, I would be writing instructions on flags every night so when people came in the next day and pledged allegiance to them, the whole class have to stand on their desks and dance like Elvis whenever the teacher took a sip of their coffee. Really batshit instructions written on a flag so that all of the students had to obey it or break their pledge. "Move all of your desks to the playground and arrange them in the same rows out there but you may not step outside the classrooms!" Real Taskmaster style stuff.

Anyway the problem is because of all the schools buying these they can be really hard to come by, but luckily nobody wants the confederate flag on account of the fact that they were the losing side in a war and generally accepted to be the side of the dickheads. Unfortunately that means that those turning up just to see a fair counting of the ballots takes place do carry the flag of the side of the civil war who were fighting to preserve slavery and it's all too easy for the media to see a bunch of white people carrying a flag that was adopted by the people who wanted to own black people and leap to the conclusion that actually they're not really into democracy they just want to beat the shit out of someone, ideally someone they own. They're probably just the cheaper flags. We know how much these protestors love a bargain. Just like in the UK you can get a bag of broken or misshapen biscuits cheap in some supermarkets, in the USA you can buy hoodies for the third Captain America film cheaply if they've got the wrong release date for the movie on them.

Weird that they made such a basic mistake when Civil War came out in 2016, before the merch had to be pulled due to the wrong release date and the decision not to rebrand Marvel and Marvels Awesome Great Adventures after all, so this guy picked up a bargain, purely because he couldn't afford to buy a Black Widow or Black Panther 2 sweatshirt with the dates of actual films - being led by women and black actors who I'm sure he'd like to support - that might actually be released in 2021.

Mistakes were made at the Capitol protests. For a start they this confusion could have been avoided if they'd tied the slave owner flags to the railings outside and believe me this was the original plan. We even asked one guy to bring his cable ties in order to do this, but weirdly at the last minute the police moved the very barriers they had planned on attaching them to. And you wouldn't want to argue with a police officer now would you. I mean you could end up dead or receiving directions to the office of Nancy Pelosi, depending on if you were black or white.

Because of course the police are a very powerful presence in America. But it's important to know, in times like these especially, where the source of power lies in a country. Is it with the President or the House of Representatives or the Senate? Well reassuringly the most powerful force in America is actually the same as it is in the UK and the most powerful thing ever created is the velvet rope.

It is genuinely reassuring to know that even during a coup everyone stayed between the velvet ropes. It's the one rule nobody ever wants to be caught breaking and in a way that's good. Sure our next president may be fair game for assassination attempts, mob justice and beatings, but we can sleep a little safer at night knowing that the wax works of the former presidents are safe in Madame Tussauds. 

The truth here is that these people just wanted to make their voices heard, and they would have quite happily peacefully kneeled down before a football match if that wasn't the worst kind of protest possible, so really vandalising the home of your nation's proud democracy is the only way.

The capitol building was placed in a state of lockdown! Which meant that rioters were only allowed to steal the art works if they had a substantial meal first.

Joe Biden, a man who shares his name with a van that took all those Trump votes to the recycling plant, went on TV and told the president that he should speak out and tell the rioters to stop, which very unfairly distracted Trump and he missed the putt and the ball went straight passed the hole. So everyone agreed, at the president's insistence, that it was very unfair and they just put it down as a hole in 3, although some fake newser he was playing with pointed out he'd already taken 5 shots getting the ball to the green.

And to be fair to Trump he did go on TV and said "the election was fraudulent and we love all the people rioting in Capitol Hill." Now Trump is "not a stupid man" (source: Donald Trump speaking in 2018) and "has all the best words" (Source: Donald Trump speaking in 2016) and so sometimes you have to read between the lines. Whenever my wife says "Dan, I love you but..." it usually means that I should stop doing whatever it is I'm doing.

But the problem with rioters is that very often nuance and reading between the lines don't stand a chance. That's why Donald Trump had to spell out for them exactly how and when to march on the Capitol building in a public speech before hand rather than be more subtle about it or try to pass off the responsibility to Alex Jones or one of the other right wing thugs - honestly why they still let her host the One Show, I do not know.

If you missed the footage of Donald Trump stoking up the crowd by calling the election results "bullshit" by the way, then please don't worry, as it will not the last time that you see an angry mob in front of Donald Trump chanting "bullshit."

But I know we don't want to give Donald Trump credit for anything, but he did actually come out on TV and ask for rioters to stop what they were doing. He did that on Wednesday 13th of January, just ONE WEEK after the rioting. ONE WEEK! That's literally the lowest number of weeks. How could someone be expected to act sooner? I mean, yes I guess you could have minus weeks. He could have said "please don't start rioting" on 31st December 2020 minus one week after the riots happened, but honestly is he supposed to be able to predict the future? Look none of us could have acted quicker. The first indication that anything was even going to kick off was right at the very last minute...of 2016.

I don't want to come over all Fox News here, but Donald Trump's election that he won happened during the Obama administration, so isn't all this really Obama's fault?

Look the President really didn't have time to address the rioters any sooner. He was too busy on the phone to the president of Iraq who was sarcastically calling every 20 minutes to ask if he should send peace keepers to America to secure it's democracy. Meanwhile Trump considered mobilising the national guard, to attack Twitter who it was claimed had a little blue exclamation point they could deploy in 45 minutes.

Twitter had an interesting role to play in this as people across the globe spent the night glued to their smart phones doom scrolling through the latest developments on Twitter. And it made you realise what an astonishing future this really is. We were able to see what was going on live from the scene as it was happening thanks to reporters and bizarrely the people committing the illegal acts taking photographs of the people committing the illegal acts. And this is where crime has really gone down hill these days. Back in the good old days of wholesome Victorian prostitute murders (you know the kind of family friendly thing you could build a tourist attraction around, not these new grizzly murders that happen to people today and which absolutely nobody should profit off except for podcasters) back in the glory days of the Victorian Prostitute killings when a murderer did in a prostitute they might leave a calling card by which you would know it was them but not know who they were like a single rose petal, an origami ostrich or a glove that only fits OJ Simpson's hand if he really tried but he doesn't. You know the kind of mark that nobody could trace back to an individual. They didn't leave their literal calling card with all the details you'd need to trace them along with photographic evidence of them committing the crime. The Great Train Robbers would have been a lot easier to catch if Ronnie Biggs had been on Instagram.

I do think part of the reason a coup like this wont work though is because we're amazingly privileged to be able to watch events play out in real time on our mobile phones. I can't imagine what it was like for my parents generation who, when Watergate happened for example, would have had to gather in the hallway to read twitter on the landline.

A man called @Jack, the CEO of Twitter, was being deluged with tweets about how badly behaved twitter was being. Kind of like a letter writing campaign complaining that there were too many pictures of the Queen's head in profile. Eventually Mr Atjack displayed all the financial ingenuity you would expect of a man who's twitter bio just reads "#bitcoin" and took one of the most talked about people on his platform off his platform for 12 hours. Now in the old days someone who committed treason could be hanged but I take comfort from the fact that as a more enlightened civilisation, I can sleep through two thirds of a man's punishment for treason these days. Again, could twitter have acted sooner? Maybe. I mean, I guess if someone had previously tweeted an explicit threat such as "when the looting starts the shooting starts" you could then look at whether this person is the right "look" for your company, but again there were no signs that anything like this was going to happen until it was already half way through...the year 2016. And Twitter are strict! I once got a week long ban for telling people that they should leave stable doors open. Admittedly the horse was 1,600 miles away in Estonia by the time I got the ban but my point still stands.

Twitter is an interesting platform. One of the best things about Twitter is it never forgets, so it would be really embarrassing if the president of the USA who started these riots had tweeted say threats of harsher jail sentences for anyone who vandalised public property or had said say "when the looting starts the shooting starts" because imagine if people found those during the riots, you'd be quite red in the face if you forgot to get out of your sunbed while reading the news.

Right wing nutter Tomi Lahren tweeted in November that "If @realDonaldTrump were to lose (he won’t) his supporters will go to work tomorrow just as we do everyday. When Biden loses, his “supporters” will likely loot and riot. Tells you everything you need to know! #Trump2020" Well she was half right and also alt-right.

Washington DC bought in a curfew, and told the Qanon guys it was passed their bedtime and they weren't allowed any supper. So the business of counting the votes could continue. But not before Mike Pence gave a lovely speech about how much of a dick "a certain someone" was without naming names. He was just slower than Twitter but took well under six years to condemn a bully so good for him. Mitch McConnell even said some nasty things about the same certain someone and over here Boris Johnson was also having trouble remembering the name of Donald Trump when it came to calling out his actions. A lot was said about the disgusting scenes, but failing to directly name the man who caused them. Like if there was a racist painting or a scene in a play where an audience member was tied to a radiator while their life was threatened, you wouldn't just say "I don't really care for the painting" or "I felt the second act suffered a bit from the lack of musical numbers and the threat to rape Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez," would you not just complain about those scenes but also call out the artist and play write who wrote and painted those scenes?

Around the world people reacted to the news. Inspired by what they'd seen Lawrence Fox, both members of his fan club and a member of the Billie Piper fan club who never unsubscribed from the newsletter, stormed the Didcot Sainsbury's Local, and posed for photographs with their feet up on the fish counter demanding to know why one of the actors they employed was black.

Meanwhile Virgin #72 turned to her fella and asked "Why so glum?"
"Because I told them they were silly when they said I should play the long game and host The Apprentice instead," replied Osama Bin Laden with his head in his hands.

Of course others around the world were not surprised. I don't know for a fact that foreign powers were interfering but this guy clearly has a French flag painted on his face

You may think that a French Flag might be the stupidest thing to wear to a riot. Or maybe a hoodie that advertises the date and time of your riot (honestly, how could the police ever have seen this coming?). Or a Camp Auschwitz T-Shirt which is very very disgustingly stupid but in a slightly different way to our competition winner, who wore the stupidest thing to the riots:

His work ID. He was subsequently fired. I don't want to pander to pre-existing prejudices here but I think we all secretly knew already that people who wear their work lanyards after work were twats.

It's all over now and that just leaves one question: What next for Donald Trump?

While the president's immediate plans are obvious: hiding mouldy fish behind every radiator in the White House, shitting in the bottom drawer of his desk and dialling a premium rate number before leaving the phone off the hook until Joe Biden moves in, it seems like he may not have as much time for that as he wants.

You see it turns out that if you incite armed rebellion against the lawmakers of the country you govern, you might get impeached. Democrats - and Republicans numbered into the double figures (lets just leave it at that, it could be 99, it could be 10, I'll let you work it out) - voted to impeach the president an unprecedented second time, and this time America could be unpresidented.

With only 10 Republicans backing the call for impeachment, you wonder what could make the party of law and order and the constitution actually indict a president. Well again, this is maybe a good thing. A sign that America is becoming a more lenient and accepting place. You'll remember they were particularly harsh on Barack Obama during his term for sins such as wearing chinos. So perhaps they've rightly decided to lighten up. In fact when we broke into the offices of the senators we found a document in a Republican desk that they drew up outlining a softening of the rules in 2016. Remember at this point they hadn't named Donald Trump as their candidate and so their first choice of candidate appears on the document.

I guess the question now is, with just a week to go, will Donald Trump try for the hat trick? I think he should, but where can he go from here? As I see it he has three options to guarantee making history for the impeachment hat trick:

1. Use his Myspace page to tell an angry mob of thousands of armed men and women to storm and desecrate Tom Hanks

2. Use his Habbo Hotel to have a "perfect email exchange" with Boris Johnson offering a post-Brexit trade deal if Boris Johnson seduces Dr Gill Biden.
(Incidentally, Sir Kier Starmer did ask the Ukranians for any dirt they had on Boris Johnson's children. The Ukranian's are still working on the report and expect to have it ready within the century)

3. Put the nuclear codes in his MSN messenger name.

So one way or another that would appear to be the end of the Trump presidency. We hope we wont see much more of him. We already know he wont turn up to Joe Biden's inauguration, but fortunately at short notice the "what a sad little life Jane" guy from Come Dine With Me was available to replace him.

Let's see what happens next. Hopefully a return to civilised debate and reasoned politics, but if all else fails I guess we could just shout "Hunter Biden's Laptop" for a year and hope that makes a difference.

  

Europe - Should I Stay Or Should I Go?

"The notion of a whole load of countries working together with their neighbours and sharing laws is stupid"-say the people of the United Kingdom of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

New from the people who bought you Scottish Referendum comes the EU referendum. These things normally come in trilogies so look forward to the vote to see if Europe leaves the Northern Hemisphere in 2018 and the inevitable crossover movie the Ukraine Crisis in 2020 (watch out for a cameo from Putin at the end of the BBC Referendum results show credits is all I'm saying).

In fact there's an interesting crossover between English people who hate being run by some meddling central authority in another country and English people who would have been devastated if the Scottish had chosen to leave us.

This is a "once in a lifetime opportunity" to have your say on whether we remain in Europe or not. Unless you were alive in 1975, or end up living until the next time the Conservative party make a silly promise because UKIP are popular in an election year.

There are two main camps who get to be the official campaigns for remaining and leaving Europe. They are Vote Leave and Harder Better Faster Stronger by Daft Punk (Well, that's not their proper name, their proper name is something like 'If we stay together there's nothing we can't achieve' or 'Something inside so strong' or some shit that sounds like a song from High School Musical), these campaigns are given £7million of tax payers money to make their case. In the case of the Vote Leave, spending £7million of your money to convince us that the EU is a complete waste of money poses a more interesting challenge than any of the newspapers have yet commented on. This is probably because most of the press want to see us leave the EU too as ruling Britain and interfering British freedoms is, in their opinion, the job of a Australian-Victor-Meldrew Rupert Murdoch.

There is also a third campaign called "Grassroots Out" (abbreviated to GO, even though GO is a good enough name in itself) who want to maintain England's green and pleasant land by replacing all the grassroots with Astro-turf.

GO should not be confused with GOVE, an evil robot who has returned from a Utopian future to ensure history plays out differently this time.

There's also Better Off Out, Get Britain Out and Leave.EU. The Euro-septics [sic] will forever be kicking themselves that they didn't come up with Leave That, ewwww it's gross and Better Out Than In *fart noise*.

Boris Johnson is the figurehead for the Vote Leave campaign. It's believed that the former Have I Got News For You host is simply using this position to further his career as potential next host of The Generation Game. Boris did publicly say that he would not argue or debate against any of his Conservative colleagues publicly on the matter. And credit where credit is due, after he said that he didn't debate once with any of his colleagues for the rest of that day.

Boris Johnson campaigning to overthrow our unelected leaders in Europe as a power play to become the unelected Prime Minister of this country is the type of thing only he can get away with.

So should we stay or should we go? Here is a transcript of the first debate between the parties that should help clear things up.

HARDER, BETTER, FASTER STRONGER: We want to see a positive campaign, talking about the issues in Europe that affect British society, we will not resort to name calling like the ninkompoops on the other side.
ON YER BIKE CAMPAIGN: We too pledge to debate the issues rather than resort to name calling or making jokes about how he stuck his dick in a pig.
COME TOGETHER RIGHT NOW OVER ME: Galloway, Farage, Johnson, IDS are you going to side with that shower of bastards? Really?
IAN SMITH: *Cries* Did you hear what he called us?
DUNCAN SMITH: *Cries* Yeah. We're just trying to be nice people. I can't do this anymore. I quit.
LET'S STICK TOGETHER, COME ON, COME ON, LET'S STICK TOGETHER: The opposition are resorting to fear mongering. That is shameful. They're only resorting to fear mongering because they can't tell us what a Britain outside of Europe will be like. Who can say that when we leave Europe there won't be monsters under the bed, or an increase in big spiders or a new series of Piers Morgan's Life Stories?
PULL OUT AT THE LAST MINUTE: The other team are resorting to scare mongering, and resorting to scare mongering is just what the terrorists want, the terrorists have won.
OH NOW GO, WALK OUT THE DOOR, JUST TURN AROUND NOW, YOU'RE NOT WELCOME ANYMORE: There will definitely be more terrorists wanting to attack Britain if we stay in the EU.
YOU KNOW WE MADE A VOW TO LEAVE ONE ANOTHER NEVER: There will definitely be more terrorists wanting to attack Britain if we leave the EU.
WE ARE NEVER EVER EVER GETTING BACK TOGETHER: IMMIGRANTS

oooh.

Now the idea that we should close our borders to prevent terrorists getting here is a whole other debate. Actually we have slightly more border controls than most EU countries, but they are still a bit open which is nice when we want to go open a chippy in Benidorm but a cultural disgrace when someone opens a Polish foods shop in Luton.

Last I heard British people were leaving in droves (the newspapers word not mine) to join ISIS after being groomed on Twitter. We don't have a problem with foreign terrorists. We're making our own. We have too many if anything! We've started exporting them! And it's going to be harder to export things if we're not in the EU coz all the big countries will not give special rates to our little country. The In campaign say leaving will open the doors to terrorists, while the out campaign say remaining will open the door to terrorists. To be honest I'll back whatever side wants to put one of those little chains on the door so we can only open it a bit of the way. It'll be slightly amusing to see the whole of the UK on fire as Jihad Joe stands on the Isle of White saying "you were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!" That's the thing about terrorists though, they're crafty buggers, they'll sneak in through the window and neither side has made a provision for that. Terrorists aren't going to care about our borders. Maybe remaining in the EU is the equivalent of David Cameron leaving the back door key under a flower pot, but we have so much more border controls than any other EU country that we're really the equivalent of the guy squinting at a tiny photo on the intercom screen trying to read the ID of the guy outside the gates at the end of the drive. We are as secure as we can be.

Money and people go both ways. Yeah we give a lot of money to Europe but we get a lot back in one way or another. Equally a lot of British people choose to go and live overseas.

Let's look at some of the issues in the EU debate. The Daily Express reports that the EU is trying to ban something British at the same rate that the Daily Mail reports that something gives you cancer. If the EU really were a force for good they'd ban the same things the Daily Mail says gives you cancer.
Last week's EU Banned Item Of The Week is British Kitchen Appliances.

What they actually want to do is introduce new laws to make electrical equipment more energy efficient and friendly to the environment, so all new kettles will have new standards they have to meet. Of course there will be the unpleasantness of Angela Merkel sending the Gestapo round to every British home with a mallet to smash their pre-existing toasters but what can you do about that?

'How can they take away our British Kettles (made in Taiwan)?' we cry.

This story has a vague sense of truth about it, even if it's not quite law yet and is never going to affect toasters that have already been made. But what about other bans? Where are these straight bananas that we're supposed to have? Here's how that works:

BENNY LUX, MEP for Luxemberg's Monster Raving Idiot Party: Hey guys, I can't fit this banana back into my lunchbox without moving my twix. Wouldn't it be so much better if all banana's were straight and not curly?

PAUL TUGAL MEP for Spain: Yes Benny. Ignore Benny he's mad, we're never going to do that.

DAILY EXPRESS: EU WANT TO BAN OUR PROPER BRITISH BANANAS

NORMAL PEOPLE: Do the British even grow bananas?

The same kinda story arose in the papers when the EU suggested changing to energy saving lightbulbs which was reported along the lines of "EU TO FORCE YOUR GRANNY TO SIT IN THE DARK."
The EU at one point also threatened to ban British number plates on cars.

As someone with a 2:1 in creative writing I have to be impressed that they make people this emotional about their number plate. I wish I could generate as much national pride by making up a short story about how someone plans to change the font of those little numbers you get on telegraph poles - if I could you wouldn't have to read this shit.

Fucking EU! Trying to make us have horrible foreign number plates instead of proper British ones! We invented the number plate (maybe. It's plausible at least) on all our British manufactured cars! An Audi with a European number plate, the idea would make Henry Ford turn in his grave!

This means when you see a C on a number plate, for example, it wont be an English C but a French C. And the worst thing is, because there is absolutely NO SODDING DIFFERENCE, you wont even know its happening. Come on EU! Isn't it hard enough to remember 7 random characters anyway without having to remember that it starts with la or un, or whether it's male or female. Bloody French. Who won the fucking war!!

And what about the Italian ones?! "Did you get his number plate?" "Yes it was Y...VIII IX III IVXCC"

It's political correctness and health and safety gone mad.

What really annoyed Vote Leave was Barack Obama visiting, which if you listen to Boris was definitely a plot against him. Barack Obama poked his nose in and we all politely and patronisingly told him, "I don't think someone from the United States could understand what this is about, we're trying to work out if we are more powerful as part of a whole group of states or individually." Obama warned Britain that the US would be less interested in trading with us if we left the EU, which is awful as we think the US has a shiny we want. Meanwhile the senator for Colorado said....nobody knows, because in the 21st century on the world stage we don't care about one tiny little state. England are like Hawkeye, nobody really cares about us, but if we're part of the Avengers we have a little street-cred.

Much of the debate on both sides seems to be based on emotive meaningless crap. David Cameron likes to remind us that World War 1, World War 2, Bubonic plague, The Great Fire of London, the Ice Age and slavery all happened before we were in the EU. While Mike From London wrote the Metro to say "If Britain left the EU then it would become Great Britain again." It's opinions like that that require no more factual justification. If Mike from London is correct, before we risk everything leaving the EU why don't we give Great Yarmouth it's independence and see if it's any less shit.

The divide has split the Conservative party with the BBC reporting on the date being set for the referendum by saying "Downing Street today looks much the same as it always did..." What were you expecting? Cameron to erect an Eiffel Tower? Builders to start work constructing the Sagrada Familia on the steps of number 10? The Berlin Wall down the middle of the street with Cameron writing rude graffiti about Nigel Forage on one side and Ian Duncan Smith shouting "WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE! LEAVE! LEAVE WHILE YOU STILL CAN!" on the other

One Conservative said "It's sad Boris joined the leave side, and a lot of sensible ministers too" ‪#‎Burn‬

Boris wants to leave the EU, his dad wants to stay. Someone at BBC4 is putting together casting notes for a bio-graphical drama and phoning Jamie Laing from Made In Chelsea to see if he's free to audition.

The EU is terribly corrupt and inefficient and how democratic it is is really up for a lot of debate. It's almost deliberately confusing. There's a European President, a European Parliament, a European Commission, a European Council, a European Council of Leaders, a European court, and my whole A Level politics exam was based on which of those did what and who got to turn up to meetings. It proves a universal rule that if you don't want people looking into what you're doing make it boring. 

There are hopeless inefficiencies such as the famous butter mountain, which is a tragic waste because it's not even used for sport.

As both sides have been overwhelmingly awful and negative I thought I'd do one positive thing for both of them: In, we have great transport links to the EU countries, a lot of fees and admin usually associated with foreign travel. It's cheaper and easier in the EU than elsewhere and as of 2017 data roaming costs will be a thing of the past meaning we can take cultural holidays cheaply and snapchat the lot, and people of different cultures can come here with their selfie sticks.
Out: We have a greater say on how we're ruled, a more transparent system and direct accountability of our leaders, plus the only unelected spongers we have to pay are the House of Lords and the Queen.

The Out argument above seems to make more sense, and it involves a lot of fundamental freedoms and is more principled than 'cheap holidays,' but I think we are able to stay in Europe and do both. It'll be hard work, but we can. The systems of the EU are not great for transparency and direct accountability. In part that's our fault. We struggle enough to work out what's going on in the House of Commons (what is that noise they make when they agree on something? Why is it the same noise as a cow who has just had some very tasty grass?) so learning a whole system of EU voting and mooing is a daunting and confusing process. I got a B in A Level Politics and all I can really say for certain is whoever gets the most votes from the jury doesn't matter because the public votes will cancel those out and the winner of this year's Eurovision hosts next years. It is complicated, and nobody is doing much to make it any clearer. Let's be honest a breakdown of the EU institutions wont sell a newspaper and even as I type about apathy, I don't know the name of my MEP, I could google it, but I wont.

If we stay in, we're part of a big party of all these countries - and look if we vote out it doesn't mean we'll have a terrible time because we didn't go to your party, sometimes we just like being on our own watching Strictly. The EU will continue anyway, so I'll probably vote to stay in. Let's learn how the system works, lets do the hard work, and let's shout when it's unfair and silly and obstructive, that way we make Europe better. It's worth pointing out that all those things we shout at the UK parliament for too, and I'm sure we'll still have immigrants coming here and we'll just have to find another scapegoat other than the EU to blame for that. And in my idealistic, unrealistic, barely-thought-through, hippy, commie way, I like the idea that anyone can go live and work in another culture somewhere else in the world that suits them, and a line some Roman drew on a map a couple of thousand years ago shouldn't dictate our opportunities in 2016.

If it's a question of whether we're outside the tent pissing in or inside the tent pissing out then I say we stay in. Because EU regulations will force us to build toilet facilities a hygienic distance from the tent which is surely better.

Maybe we should have a referendum every few years to get all the Xenophobia out of some people and all the everyone-in-the-universe-can-work-together-united-federation-of-planets Star Trek crap out of liberals. Deciding we want to leave the EU is a decision between being ruled by people we don't really know or being ruled by Boris Johnson, it's bloody Sophie's Choice. We could have had a big debate that highlights all the issues in Europe and then turned up to the European Commission and said "here's what we're not happy with, sort it out," rather than whatever David Cameron was discussing behind closed doors with the European leaders before we had a referendum. Equally we could have found out the names of some or the faceless bureaucrats who are making the decisions and who disappointingly have faces - the liars. But I guess two teams of politicians loudly shouting racist at each other was worth the £7million.

Either way the most convincing argument I've heard in the last couple of month is this:

Wiff-Waff's Coming Home!

The Olympics is just around the corner - actually a short train journey away - as they've been saying for the last two years, so it's time for a blog in which I misunderstand a sport...again.

But first, let me take you back. Back to 2005. A world before TOWIE. A better and happier place. On 6/7/2005 Britain and France both waited tensely to find out who would be hosting the 2012 Olympics. To my young, uneducated mind there was no question about it, it should definitely be Ant & Dec. Alas, I had misunderstood for comedy purposes, it was to decide what country was to host the Olympics. For those who don't want to know the result look away now: We won. Queue footage of Seb Coe jumping up and down shouting "IN YOUR FACE!" at some Frenchies - is there anything more British? Even I can appreciate a good thrashing of the French. The best bit though is that, due to every company in the world wanting to associate themselves with the Olympics brand, EDF is now a major sponsor. So brilliantly, we won it but the French are still having to pay for it (EDF standing for Energy Du French or something, look you do the research, you're the one who cares about sport). In a way, we've all ready won.

But how did we defeat the French to the bid? Well, it seems by saying the word "legacy" more times than they did. The committee (hereafter referred to as Coe and co.) proved that London 2012 would have an impact long after the games and repeats of the games during rain intervals in the cricket have faded away. They hoped it would help with the ever-expanding obesity crisis by promoting sport and physical activity. Something at odds with the Olympics' other commitments to promoting McDonald's and Coca-Cola. Take it from a guy who used to work in Harvester, a sixteenth of an apple in a little bag is not a salad and while I love that McDonald's have never really committed to the whole healthy living thing (because nobody really wants them to) it does seem massively stupid for them to be sponsoring the world's biggest sporting event. The Olympics conjures up images of great sporting achievement, of great power, of history, of legacy (oh God, I'm becoming one of them), of human strength and power and brilliance, the official restaurant of that should, at the very least, be somewhere you have to book in advance, have table service and where the staff don't look at you like you've just shat on the table if you ask to see the wine list. McDonald's is delicious - up there on my list of favourite restaurants - but I wouldn't take thousands of visiting athletes and sports fans there if they came over to visit, we'd probably splash out on a curry or Chinese, something properly British.

Before we could have our Olympics, the Chinese had to hold their Beijing 2008 games. Annoyingly for us, it went incredibly well and the closing ceremony was just amazing. It ended with the most amazing fireworks ever. But a lot of people in London have recently been forced, against their wishes, to have a load of ground (well roof) to air missiles installed on their roof for the Olympics, so if that doesn't top Beijing's fireworks, I don't know what will.

Then, like the "19 Years Later" bit of the final Harry Potter film, the brilliance and beauty of the final instalment of the games was ruined by an unwanted, unneeded, badly performed little add on. Boris Johnson. He turned up to give a speech about Wiff-waff and about wanting to see men carrying oxen through the Olympic stadium, killing them with their bare hands and eating them. All the time Lord Coe stood behind him regretting being so damn successful at outbidding the French while Gordon Brown tried to keep his face out of shot. To my mind, the best bit of the Olympics.

Because the TV news, advertising industry, newspapers, pre-existing clocks or our memory wasn't going to be doing it constantly over the next few years, a big clock was built in Trafalgar square to count down to the opening ceremony, and almost straight away the clock stopped and someone had to be sent to find some AA batteries. Just in case you were thinking that I was making it up or describing the plot of brilliant comedy series Twenty Twelve...You'd be right...but by incompetent coincidence:

That sitcom/mockumentary also featured an hilarious episode where a bus transporting Olympic officials got lost in London's new Olympic transport system and took a whole four hours to arrive at the Olympic stadium so some of it is obviously just farcical and over the top.

From Kerron Clement, the American hurdler's, Twitter

Also, in  the news today: in the hotel where the German relay team were staying a Moose's head fell onto the proprietor's head and after a disastrous fire drill left him concussed he became very racist towards the German team despite his protestations that they started it.

So the stadiums have been built and sold to various football clubs to use after the Olympics, because, as a country, we're like kids at Christmas demanding the very expensive thing that cool ol' China's got, but we know we'll play on it once and then wont use it again, but it'll be nice to say we had it. Team GB have taken time out from their busy advert-filming schedules to do some training and we're nearly ready to go. Time then for the Olympic flame to be sent all the way from Greece. We did try and tell them that we all ready have fire over here (in fact some young people demonstrated this clearly on the streets of London about this time last year) but they said it had to be lit by the sun traditionally and we said "yeah, we don't have that." So they sent us some of their fire for people to carry around the UK on the end of a stick. The best of British, the formerly horrifically ill and Will.I.Am carried it. People who had an impact on British culture, great musicians, actors, television personalities or people who'd bravely overcome some kind of crippling illness ran about the country with it. I went to see the flame being carried past a second hand shop in Cheltenham. First up was a Coca-Cola bus full of people getting the crowd going and handing out free bottles of Coca-Cola or in my case, disappointingly, Coke Zero. Next up was a Panasonic bus, after the Coca-Cola one I was hopeful of people giving out free TVs, but instead I got a paper flag. Deeply upsetting, but not quite so bad as being given Coke Zero. Then a bus of other torch carriers came through and we politely wooped and waved our flags so they would think we knew who they were. Next up was a crew of skateboarders (I checked my watch, but it wasn't the 90s) who skated in formation along the route. They were very good, I thought, I sensed a lot of preparation had gone into this bit. Just goes to show that I know nothing about the Olympics, because they were shortly escorted off the road by the police and given slapped wrists all round. Finally, it was Samsung quad bikes (cool), Police motor bikes (cool), and a lady carrying the torch (warm - it's a torch!!). More woops and flag waving and then off to Nandos before going home to try and buy the Torch off ebay.

Interesting fact: the Torch relay is a relatively new tradition launched in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The most controversial Olympics ever maybe, but you can bet they didn't have the problems with security we've been reading about in the last week. So this Friday is when it all kicks off and one day you'll be able to tell your grandchildren "I was there!" or if you work for G4S "I wasn't there." Danny Boyle has put together an opening ceremony that promises to be very British, worrying as the last image of Britain he created was set on the drug fuelled council estates of Glasgow. Possibly the only time in games history where urine tests will be done for the opening ceremony. Probably the only bit I will watch is in fact the opening ceremony. Danny Boyle has promised that it will be typically British and will feature clouds and real grass, so that's something to look forward to. Especially if this clip from rehearsals showing David Cameron and the disembodied voice of Boris Johnson is anything to go buy. The Olympics will light up London, if only they hadn't bought energy saving lightbulbs:

"Ping-pong is coming home!"-Boris Johnson
"So no basically, it's all good"-Ian Fletcher, Head Of Deliverance 2012.

If you're wondering why I haven't mentioned this Olympic logo/random bit of graffiti, it's because...where do you start?