PIGS and SWINE

I'm proud to say that I invented the acronym SWINE (Scotland, Wales, Ireland (Northern), England) yesterday afternoon. After posting it on the Telegraph's site under the name Dick Cleggaron, it has already seen rapid uptake in the parlance of the chattering classes after only 24 hours or so.

Seriously though, it is meant to elucidate the dreadful state of the UK's public finances. It's easy to go on and on about the PIGS, who are in a terrible mess, while carrying on as if life is a dream on Britain's sceptered island. Yet naming the UK as SWINE will hopefully make everybody wake up to the immensely precarious cliff edge that Britain's economy is racing towards at breakneck speed. The SWINE Britain is equal to and no better off than the PIGS.

Perhaps, if this acronym gains common usage across media outlets, it will focus the minds of the people and the economic leaders to take swift action to clear the deficit in the lifetime of this parliament. Let us hope that the esteemed coalition and its newly formed leader Dick Cleggaron pass by.

May isn't turning out to be too bad a month after all. The Greek crisis has been kicked into touch for a few weeks, and Britain has a new Prime Minister and coalition which will provide stable government for a few weeks more.

Now if only BP can cap their leaky pipeline at the bottom of the sea, the world can get back to normal. The chances of that happenning any time soon look very slim however. Now that the first pictures are emerging of the smallest leak which looks horrendous, heaven knows what the largest leak looks like - and in all probablilty BP knows as well, but are claiming that they can't release them yet.

Most people might suspect that they could release their visuals of the largest leak in the next 20 seconds if they so chose, but know that they would scare a higher percentage of people than a viewing of The Exorcist in a kindergarten. BP would for ever be associated with an iconic image of environmental terror equal in effect to the destruction of the twin towers. Such images would be instantly seared into the minds of the public, causing BP's share price and profits to plummet. So perhaps one shouldn't expect to see pictures of the largest leak anytime soon.

At last there is a Prime Minister in number 10. Congratulations to David Cameron, and also to Nick Clegg, and their respective parties. Perhaps after all the resulting coalition will be a good thing. One can take into consideration that the two parties between them have 59% of the popular vote, which is the biggest share for decades, and the first time which a majority of the country has voted for the leadership they are getting since the second world war. So congratulations to the British people are also in order, who now have a truly representative government.

Like most of the country I'm entranced by the complete shambles which has been left by a hung parliament. What amazes me even more is that anybody actually wanted a humg parliament in the first place. OK, true there's UKIP who expressly said they were out to get one, but that was just to piss off the Tories. But apart from the Tories, everybody else keeps on repeating the line 'the British electorate wanted a hung Parliament' It's become almost a mantra. If any sane person thinks about that for a minute, they would realise that it patently is not the case. Only LibDem voters may have wanted it, and half of them were probably so intoxicated by silky-skinned Clegg that they thought they were on their way to number 10. Which leaves about 12% of voters who wanted such an outcome, the first since 1974. But after being in this total horlicks for nearly a week, it's highly unlikely that anyone will want another one for the next 36 years.