Mark Thomas Presents the People's Manifesto - Mark Thomas [13]
The policy that eventually won creates a three-lane pavement, based on the motorway model, the outside lane for the fast walkers and the inside for window shoppers and pushchairs. The middle lane will retain its traditional role of providing a home for the indecisive and those who really should be in the slow lane.
There will also be a pedestrian code taught to visitors, especially in large cities like London, with rules on standing on the right on tube escalators, waiting until people get off before getting on public transport, and teaching advanced emergency stop techniques when getting caught behind groups of Spanish students in Piccadilly Circus. It will also require teen visitors to fit indicator lights on the back of rucksacks, although this will have to be carefully coordinated with the police, who might overreact at the sight of a flashing rucksack in a city centre.
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THE DAILY MAIL
SHOULD BE FORCED
TO PRINT THE WORDS
‘THE PAPER THAT
SUPPORTED HITLER’
ON ITS MASTHEAD
THE DAILY MAIL currently denounces the British National Party and I am sure that old Lord Rothermere, one of the paper’s original founders, would disapprove of them too, though in his case it would be because they were a bit tame. Old Lord Rothermere had a penchant for leaders who romped around Europe in the 1930s waving their right arm in the air, and wrote in support of them before his death in 1940.
Rothermere was an anti-Semite who visited Hitler on several occasions and excused the Nazi violence as exaggerated.22 The fact that Rothermere wrote an article headlined ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts’,23 in praise of the British fascist leader Oswald Mosley, seems small beer by comparison.
The Daily Mail should be forced to print this on its masthead, although not because of a desire to stigmatise the paper, because frankly it has done a bang-up job on that task itself – it is, as Stephen Fry said, ‘a paper that no one of any decency would be seen dead with’. Nor is it to indicate the Mail’s right-wing tendencies. (If you don’t think the Mail is right-wing then you’re probably a reader and there is little anyone can do for you.) Nor is it to serve as a reminder that the paper has a history of supporting orchestrated indignation. The real reason the Mail should print the words ‘The paper that supported Hitler’ on the masthead is just to ensure there is at least one piece of factual accuracy on the front page.
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TO INTRODUCE A
PROHIBITION OF
DECEPTION ACT
THE QUESTION OF how we keep MPs honest was grappled in earnest by audiences the length and breadth of the country.
At least one policy every show declared that politicians should be hooked up to a lie detector every time they spoke in the House of Commons or were interviewed on the news. Indeed, most proposers went on to add that MPs should also be wired up to an electro-shock device that would be activated by untruths, though no one dared estimate the electricity bill, or considered the knock-on effects to the local economy as the entire borough of Westminster flickered on and off every Prime Minister’s Question Time.
Quite a few policies were aimed at getting MPs to give a straight answer during interviews, and again it was mostly suggested that they be electrocuted if they failed to respond with a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ where appropriate.
One more imaginative soul suggested that all political interviews should be conducted under the rules of BBC Radio 4’s Just a Minute, where