Saturday, 9 July 2016

POLITICIAN GETS EDGE



The next Prime Minister of the UK will be a politician.

This shocking news follows heated debates on overnight radio talk shows and headlines in this morning's London papers, in a story only displaced by the devastating use of his military skills by an ex-US Army reservist in Texas, well-known as an oil-rich state with a heritage of gun-toting.

The next Prime Minister of the UK will come from the current government party, the Tories and is now a contest between the last two MPs standing. They will go before members of that party who will vote for one of them. In a long-cherished manifestation of a well-loved democratic deficit in the UK, the electorate will not vote for the leader of the UK, which is the person who has the power to blow the world up with nuclear weapons and lead the charge to war and ruin like a previous incumbent did, as revealed in a recent report.

Of course, with such high stakes to play for the candidates will be using all aspects of their experiences, characters and personalities to give them the edge so that their fellow party members will give them the nod.

A report appears this morning in The Times, a newspaper based in London not to be confused with The Times of India or The New York Times, The Irish Times, Antrim Times, Angling Times, Arab Times, China Times or The Times produced on a weekly basis in Brownsville, Oregon. No, this is The Times, owned by News Corp., a Rupert Murdoch business. Historically, the paper has been very close to the political and financial elites in London, so a front page article is a big thing for a challenger for the position of key holder of No. 10 Downing Street.

In this morning's front-page report one of the candidates offers a specific personal attribute as a reason why they would make a better Prime Minister than the other candidate. The question is what personal attribute could cause politicos and pundits, bloggers(!) and blabbers to get into the major froth that this report has produced? It appears both candidates are heterosexual, white and not living with a disability.

Can you fill in the gap in The Times headline?

Being a—gives me edge

While the candidate concerned has rejected the article as being the opposite to what was intended, the journalists who did the interview, Rachel Sylvester and Sam Coates, stand over it. They are reported to be reputable, and no doubt they can record spoken words and write copy and probably have everything backed up mightily. Some people might suggest that writing for a newspaper in the Murdoch stable of titles immediately draws into question their reputations, if not their technical abilities.

But what could it possibly be about a candidate that could, so early in an electoral contest, however democratically deficient, have led to this furore when one candidate claims a more real stake in the future of the country over the other one, said to be ahead in the polls of the 150, 000 members of the Tory party who will vote for the Prime Minister of the UK, a country of 65, 000, 000 people?

Rupert Murdoch won't let you see the full report on-line without paying money. The Guardian has its own version, free on-line. Between them you should be able to fill in the gap and all the other gaps such a headline leaves. One possibility is, of course,

Being a politician gives me edge












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