The Common People

Ed, don't bother, mate

Rent a flat above a shop

Cut your hair and get a job

Smoke some fags and play some pool

Pretend you never went to school

But still you'll never get it right

'Cause when you're laid in bed at night

Watching roaches climb the wall

If you called your dad he could stop it all, yeah

You'll never live like common people

You'll never do whatever common people do

You'll never fail like common people

You'll never watch your life slide out of view

And then dance and drink and screw

Because there's nothing else to do

Austin Mitchell is an MP. Another with a degree in history. Lacking, therefore, in technical knowledge, you'd at least expect him to be useful with his first language. So. He's advised Ed Miliband to “get out and mix with ordinary people more”, and in that context, the 'ordinary' means 'as oppossed to hob-nobbing with the great and the good of Westminster. In case there's any doubt, he's added: “[Miliband needs to] bring issues down to the level [of ordinary voters]”.

Well. Austin. Ed.

I'd like to help, but I'll probably be too busy listening to Pulp's Common People on my walkman while pushing my chicken-dipper-filled trolley around Iceland, before settling down in front of Britains Got Singing Hairdressers, so don't bother popping round for a slap-up dose of ordinariness, and don't strain yourself finding a way of expressing the issues that's dumbed-down enough for even the likes of me to understand. I'll not be bothering to vote, as I understand there's five more Karl Ove Knausgaard books to read, and I've a huge long list of other, better things to be doing than wasting time at a polling booth.

I hope that you'll understand why that 'ordinary' hasn't gone down so well, and I hope you'll understand my pigeon-holing you as 'self-important, deluded, pompous Westminster asses'.

Oh, Austin, no doubt I'm too dumbed down and ordinary to understand your expenses fiddling either. Ten grand's worth of 'error'.

MM mentioned a Bill Bailey line, which I think applies to all MPs. They're like those plastic bags you see hanging high up in trees. It's a puzzle as to how they got up there, but no-one can be bothered to do anything about it. It must be awful having to speak in words of one syllable so that we ordinary folk can understand, and having to boss us about, because, otherwise, there'd be war, famine, disease, and we'd probably be killing off the planet. Oh. That's exactly what we have got after thousands of years of political and god-botherer rule. Doing a great job guys. Sorry we're too ordinary to be of much assistance...

...or, maybe, it's time for you inept, swindling, nest-featherers with your degrees in what happened in the past to clear off and let us have a go at looking after ourselves.