The noble Lord, Lord Buckethead

One aspect of electioneering in the UK that always cheers me up and helps keep it all in perspective is the fact that any idiot can put themselves forward to be voted for. Consequently, if some racist little fringe party—say, the BNP—tries to claim they're being "gagged" by the Libral Meeja by having their candidates appear on the platform wearing gags, they will always be upstaged by Lord Montgomery Formaldehyde Mmmmmmmngheeeeb-Whoops or whoever, standing behind them wearing a parrot costume and carrying a mallet.

I fondly remember watching the 1992 election, when John Major was waiting to hear the inevitable result in his Huntingdon constituency, dwarfed by the tall, silent man stood about five feet away from him. The man was called Lord Buckethead. He wore a long cape, and a bucket on his head. He lost his deposit, but he was a highlight of the election coverage in a way that John Major could never hope to match.

Lord Buckethead, it turns out, had form. He was also, to my mild disappointment, not simply a random creation for the purposes of making the Prime Minister look a bit silly, but trying to promote a film:

"Lord Buckethead" attempted to promote his movie in the UK by standing as a prospective MP for Parliament in both the 1987 and 1992 General Elections. Representing the "Gremloid" party (by which this movie is known in the UK) he stood against Margaret Thatcher in her Finchley constituency and somehow got 131 votes. Five years later in 1992 he stood against the then PM John Major in Huntingdon and got 107 votes. (IMDB)

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Went to see a friend in hospital on Friday. He currently has a tube stuck into his right kidney that drains it into a bag, though he’s assured this isn’t permanent. He was pretty chipper, considering, and certainly had enough energy to loudly refuse a bedbath. “I am a ship called Dignity”, he said at one point. I thought this meant he was out of his mind as a result of the various opiates he'd been fed the day before, and was disappointed to discover that it was in fact a Deacon Blue lyric, and then in the event they wore him down and he had the bedbath anyway.

He’s in a room at the London Clinic, up near Regent’s Park. It’s the kind of place that features all your regular cable channels and then a clutch of Arabic channels as well. When he first went to see the doctor there, the guy in front of him went in with his translator and his bodyguard. General Pinochet resided briefly at the Clinic after his arrest. The Queen Mum was a regular. The place is swimming in money. (Part of their secret is that if a visitor wants them to make a normal cup of tea outside of the 4pm-6pm window, it’ll cost £1.35.) He’s only there because he automatically gets private health insurance through his work.

So why did his IV machine have a big logo on the side saying “NHS Trust”? What the fuck is it doing in a clinic where the average guest’s personal turnover probably rivals that of Ghana? Why isn’t it—not wanting to be too ploddingly literal about this—in an NHS hospital? How often, realistically, does it actually get used by the national health? Are taxpayers still paying for this fucking machine?

As our Dear Leader addressed the European Parliament last week, he told them that governments could only gain legitimacy from listening to their people. Which of the people he listens to ever told him to fuck over the NHS? Was it any of you lot?