Chief Whipping Boy
 

Just getting in practice for the inevitable competition . . . The answer to the question at the end seems to be that he can.


Chief Whipping Boy

See the labyrinthine webs
Spun by skilful media-spiders !
Traps for hapless pop-celebs
And for Tory cycle-riders
Looking down their lordly nebs
At the rest who’re not insiders
Public school or rich or debs,
Simply tax and vote providers
Also known as ‘effing plebs’ !
Can A. Mitchell brave his chiders
Till the tabloid interest ebbs?

Nice one! But it wasn't just the tabloids, or even the tabloids mainly. And by the way it was the dirty digger who ran with the Rotherham rape story when the Beeb and the Grauniad were too cowardly to do so.

Thanks, John. Mostly sparked by the curious resuscitation of the word 'plebs', though not fond of toxic Tories. Well, all the papers seem to behave like tabloids now. Wonder if the Cameron-Letterman encounter will surface in any of the competitions?

I cannot believe he really did not know what Magna Carta meant. A boy educated at Eton who knew no Latin? Impossible. I think perhaps he didn't want to sound too clever. No danger of the Labour leadership sounding that, eh?

Right now, how many people know who wrote 'Rule Britannia'? Not the MUSIC - any fool knows that. Who wrote the words? And who wrote the words for 'God save the King!' Off the tops of your heads mind. No looking up Wikipedia.

I bet Ann knows.

Indeed, probably a pose. Surely words like 'magnanimous' or place-names incorporating 'Magna' would give a clue, or quotations like 'Magna Est Veritas' ?

Letterman supplied the Rule Britannia answers. Off the cuff, I have a feeling God Save The King was part of a patriotic theatrical performance around the time of the 1745 rebellion (hence disrespectful references to the Scots in the verses now not sung out of deference to Salmondian sensibilities) so . . . Colley Cibber? Or someone not remembered for anything else?

Oh, all right. It was a bloke called James Thomson who made it for a masque called Alfred.

But for years I thought it was part of Purcell's King Arthur, though I realise now I was confusing it with "Fairest Isle" (Dryden).

Just as I thought Magna Carta was The Great Map (ref. cartography etc.) And only later discovered that there was another word for that, then - mappa, as in mappa mundi.

So a Carta is a charter, after all...

Who was it that came up with that pious truth about "a little learning"? Don't tell me, John. I know.

John, it sems the Blond B. agrees with us about Cameron and Magna Carta. Euccch! I must have a quick brain-shower.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2...on-magna-carta

Re 'God Save the King'. It first appeared in 'The Gentleman's Magazine' in 1745 (I knew that), possibly, but not certainly, by a chap called Henry Carey. The tune was used by Handel but he did not compose it. Nobody knows who did. Now - what other country uses the tune for its National Anthem? I got this from Wikipedia.The verse rarely used nowadays refers to General Wade crushing rebellious Scots. Where are you General Wade when we need you, eh?

Ooops!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qcmn5PBdNo

Good Lord! My answer was Liechtenstein. Ann, you are a treasure!

John, you are full of surprises. I thought this was what you'd had in mind.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ndc7a4NbG5A

Breaking news: Andrew Mitchell, the Conservative Chief Whip and protagonist of 'Plebgate', has just resigned. The Curse of Gnome clearly now has a competitor. Sorry, John W., one down, many more to go. Osborne the fare-dodger?

Serves the bugger right for giving all my money away to African dictators.

How (un)funny it seems to me that the UK government is cutting everything from spending on the armed forces to benefits for the disabled but the big political row is about whether an MP used the word pleb or not.

Julius Caesar was a pleb. Pompey was a patrician and a lot of good it did him.

It may be worth a note, if not a rhyme-driven paean,
That as a mere Old Rugbeian Andrew Mitchell himself was relatively plebeian.
Cameron's replaced the phoney 'un
With an Old Etonian.

Bravo, Jerome! Roll on the inevitable Plebgate comp.

Thanks. Adrian. Perhaps it will be ticketgate now, or a combination of recent coalition clangers.