Celery, radishes, carrots, and dodgy dumplings

Tag : celery

Mad moments at the Lib Dem conference. In the morning, Nick Cleggwas chopping celery at a cookery college. Maybe he'd misheard. "Inthe present economic climate, we are going to have to cutsalaries." Or the spin doctors have decided that preparingvegetables is the key to the next election. Tories will say grimly:"We won't take key marginals unless Cameron can trim radishes intothe shape of flowers." Gordon Brown will demonstrate how to get ridof the woody bit in the middle of carrots.
Lembit Opik was travelling on one of those mobile ball things thatlook like a unicycle designed by James Dyson.
He is running, or possibly rolling, for the presidency of theparty, though he seems likely to lose to Ros Scott, a baroness fromSuffolk.
If this happens, it will be a remarkable achievement, since nobodyappears to know who she is or what she looks like. I asked one ofher supporters, wearing an "I'm 4 Ros" badge, what her surname was."I don't know," he revealed.
I feel sorry for Lembit, who ran against Simon Hughes last time,and must have assumed that he would walk it this time. His badgessay "ipik opik", which sounds like an east European dumpling madeof cabbage and rotting potatoes.
The problem is that his private life is just too public.
Some men woo women with fine wines and chocolates. Lembit asks ifthey'd like to be a 16-page spread in Hello! magazine. Now hisCheeky Girl has gone he will need another amazing publicity coup.Who will he choose? Noemie Lenoir off the M&S ads? AmyWinehouse? Margaret Thatcher?
The good news for Lembit was that an analysis of all Lib Dem MPs'votes showed that he is the most libertarian of the party's 63 MPs.The bad news is that when this was announced at a fringe meeting itwas greeted by loud and plainly ironic cheers.
Back in the hall, Chris Huhne was harnessing the power ofalliteration. Lib Dems love alliteration. "Posturing on penaltieswill not cut crime!" he said. He wanted a consensus on a criminaljustice system that works, "not what titillates the tabloids!" Hewanted to tackle "poor police performance"; they should sharpen uptheir act to "catch criminals to cut crime".
Even Charles Kennedy was at it. The former leader made a well,though not hysterically, received speech.
He believed the party should be unashamedly pro-European. "Ourclarion call must be clear and consistent!" he said. He added: "Ifour trumpet sounds a certain tune, we will reap the harvest thatfollows."
What world do these people live in?
Do they imagine voters saying: "I was tempted by the Tories, butseeing how Nick Clegg handled that celery, the way Chris Huhneplans to cut crime through alliteration, and Charles Kennedy'sdazzlingly mixed metaphors - it's the Lib Dems for me!"