Balls is Prescott

Ever since the Today programme on Friday March 7th, Ed Balls, our Secretary of State for Schools, Family and Children, has been destroying my concentration. He runs through my head like a cheap tune whose title I can't remember. He has come up in almost every conversation I've had. I am now thinking of stopping people in the street and saying 'That Ed Balls eh....'. I'm pretty sure what will follow is that now familiar explosion of anger beginning, 'That bastard, he.....!'. The first problem is that Balls is so flagrantly not cut out to be a politician. His appearance on that Today show was heroically incompetent. John Humphrys sliced, diced and sauteed the poor fool so effectively that I began to sorry for him in spite of the fact that he appeared to be doing to A levels what he has done to everything else he touches - ballsing them up. The second problem is that he exudes invincible arrogance. As I think I have said before, he has a 'Wapshott' face in which a certain airy blandness is combined with a shadowy smirk suggesting absolutely groundless faith in his own intellectual powers. There is something so utterly tasteless about the man. Look, for example, at the house he owns in Castleford - it appears to have no windows which may explain why he blinks so much when he goes outside. The point is, I now realise, that he is John Prescott's replacement. Prezza was employed by Blair and Brown to be so perfectly ridiculous that he made them look good. Ever since his departure, the government has been dangerously exposed. But now Balls has risen to such prominence, now he is routinely blamed for everything from bad schools to bad weather, he has become the new Prescott. Normal service has been resumed.