He's Unbelievable

I'm just watchinga clip from today's PMQ's, where David Cameron is asking the Gorgon about thee Hazel Blears "Youtube if you want to" article, and why she is still in the Cabinet.

Now, I can understand why the Gorgon does not fancy the idea of answering this question - but it is a legitimate question nonetheless. He's a friggin politician - he doesn't have to answer it truthfully or concisely; in fact, it's pretty much his job not to. As PM at PMQ's, he's expected to deflect/parry/lie when answering uncomfortable questions - but he doesn't do either of these things. He pretends he just hasn't been asked, and talks about whatever he feels like, normally consisting of "do-nothing", "jobs", "mortgages", "help", "unemployed", and "action" on randomised looping. He doesn't even address the basic content of the question.

Now I can't really recall much of what PMQ's were like before Brown - I am a young 'un after all. I remember snippets of Blair at the podium, and very very vague images of Major, but little else. Someone with a little more age and wisdom can perhaps inform me - is this how PMQ's has always been done?

I accept as a given that since the dawn of time, politicians have lied and obfuscated and given oblique, unsubstantive answers to questions they didn't like. But the answer, however, should at least logically proceed from the question, even if it consists of utter face-saving rubbish, surely?

But the Gorgon doesn't even make a single attempt to address Cameron's questions at all, even vaguely or insincerely. And Cameron asks more or less the same question twice. But no, Gorgon just ploughs off on his own tangent. It's probably the most tedious, exasperating thing I've ever seen. He is, one hundred percent, absolutely clinically selectively deaf. There can be no question of that.

How can it be called Prime Minister's Questions, if the Prime Minister doesn't even address any part of the questions? It's beyond "not answering the question" - a phrase more often employed when a politician addresses the content of a question but fails to adequately and specifically answer it - and is far more like "pretending the question never happened."

It's beyond a joke. He is an utter, utter embarrassment to watch, knowing full well that, somehow, I am the citizen of a country led by that stammering oaf. PMQ's is kind of like really cringeworthy reality TV.

The concept pitched to the producers:

"Right, We'll get this really incompetent, arrogant, gloomy moron who is impervious to any criticism, justified or no, and make him the Prime Minister, and he has to take barrages of questioning by verbally-literate politicians every week, and we'll watch him crack and squirm and humiliate himself."

"Sign here. When can we start?"

Why is PMQ's called PMQ's? The "Q's" part of the acronym is 100% redundant. It's more like PMTWIR's (Prime Minister's Tangential and Wholly Irrelevant Ramblings). Nah, it probably won't catch on, but I like it. I tend to like things that are pointlessly convoluted and wordy.

P.S. If you haven't already, don't forget to petition our dear PM to resign. It's for the best.