Freedom Chips

A highly smackable face, airbrushed or not

Ho; I say! Blighty is not faring very well. Turns out Gordo isn't even PM anymore! Instead he's writing a book about the origins of the banking crisis and how he had all the ideas for Star Wars. From what I can piece together, a crossbow cannibal briefly wrested the premiership from Brown before the Tories were able to slash the national crossbow arrow budget, leaving the cannibal helpless.

Enter David Cameron, who inspired across the land -- even before cutting the country's budget to the bone -- a most visceral feeling of disgust. "He's trying too hard and he's just got a face you just want to hit. I'd love for him to knock on my door, I'd give him what for," said Jeanne King of East London during the election. Ms. King didn't likely vote for Cameron, and the rest of the country certainly didn't. But Cameron is now in charge, thanks to the unfortunate alchemy of the UK's mix-n-match American/European electoral system, wherein only two parties gain serious votes, but when neither gains quite enough one of the two Goliaths must make deals with with their putative David. This year, the slingshot was wielded by Liberal Democrat Nick Clegg, a Europhile polyglot with a Spanish wife and Dutch mother. He was sick of the same old politics, but cured when neither the Consvervative or Labor party earned enough votes to make their man prime minister. Then he was kingmaker!

Clegg is now deputy prime minister, a post that as far as anyone can tell involves keeping Cameron's seat warm when he's not there (literally) and bringing him coffees and cakes when he is. He recently made an official visit to Germany, where he spoke in German, presumably proffering a formal apology for his German cactus arson.

Cameron's real right-hand man is George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer (a fancypants name for finance minister), who last week delived the axe blow to what the Tories see as a bloated budget bequeathed by Labour. The new budget is a bit of a gamble (as was the last), with Obama telling Cameron, "Chill, dude," taking the philosophy that our nebulous malevolent overlords the markets are at heart a video ho, wooed by the flash of cash and the swagger of a rapper borrowing record label money to lease a Bentley, or in the markets' case, a country borrowing yuan to lease a future.

Freedom Chips has no idea who's right but is excited 'cause not only is it a gamble, it's a gamble we can gamble on.