Time to link arms and spread the love

The Friday Thing

LIFE AND OTHER BITS: SO, what can we expect in Oldham now that Nick Clegg and David Cameron have been holding hands in the garden of number 10?

Will the Tory-Lib Dem love-in spread its Cupid wings to Oldham? Will the council’s Tory group leader Jack Hulme be pictured embracing Howard Sykes (admittedly he’d need an arm extension) on the old town hall steps?

Suddenly we have to think the unthinkable and imagine the unimaginable. At least with the old tribal politics Tory and Labour didn’t like each other much but they had one thing in common — they both hated the sandal-wearing, save-the-whale Lib-Dems.

Will Tory Central Office be sending out an edict — or a Mills and Boon — telling Jack and his Tory chums to link arms with their newfound friends and hokey cokey round the borough boundaries?

Local Labour leader Jim McMahon has made it clear that he’s having none of this fluffy, togetherness politics.

“People have voted with their feet,” said Jim which, you have to admit is a pretty smart thing to do, holding a pencil between the toes not being the easiest of manoeuvres. Mind you, they do some odd things in Failsworth.

They’ve even brought John Battye out of the wilderness (or should that just be the shadows from where our very own Machiavellian Mandelson has been tugging on quite a few strings for some years).

Not surprisingly, perhaps, the Lib-Dem leader turned to his favourite topic to sum up his party’s fortunes in the local elections.

“That’s the way the cookie crumbles,” said Howard and probably went home for a pie.


IS there really anything attractive about wearing your trousers so low that people walking behind you can see your underwear or, even worse, an inch or two of builder’s bum?

We know that fashion knows no boundaries, either in the cut of trousers; the length of skirts or how much flesh should be on display but do people who leave home dressed (or undressed) in this manner look in the mirror before they go out?

Maybe they have the same mirror as Snow White’s wicked witch.


FINAL WORD: Is the Wartime Weekend in Saddleworth (now under the catchy title of The Yanks are back in Saddleworth) really an opportunity for those who were never in the armed forces to don fancy dress and strut about the villages saluting one another?

Or is it preparation for a declaration of independence?