Para-Olympics Day 5: Shame About the Politicans.

And the fact it took me around seven attempts to log on via my home Internet connection at around 22:10.

Anyway. Today the para-Olympics has been rather subdued. In part this is because people have still been dealing with the fallout from the Oscar Pistorious incident yesterday. Seriously you can pretty much take any word, phrase or sentence from that story and paste it directly into any conversation you may be having about anything.

The main reason for the strange atmosphere though is that today the British Parliament (well House of Commons) is back in session following their summer recess meaning that the government of the British para-Olympic hosts is officially back in business. Unfortunately most of our Members of Parliament (MP's) were actually at the Olympic park instead. Well some of them were in the House because liberal-left veteran Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn who you may remember from the 1980's, his work with the Palestinian cause and from being the MP who has the Court of Protection (COP) within his constituency tabled an emergency question about the UK Border Agency (UKBA) and the London Metropolitan University (LMU). Since then LMU have announced that they are taking legal action against UKBA to overturn the decision to stop them issuing visa's to foreign students. Exactly what sort of legal action is being undertaken has not been made public but I suspect it is an application for Judicial Review. On the subject of Judicial Reviews the Department of Transport (DoT) has announced that is delaying the awarding of the West Coast Rail Line until Virgin Trains application for Judaical Review has been considered. Right up until the application for Judicial Review this was a nice little story about trains and public/private contracts. Unfortunately from the moment the Judicial Review application was made the government decided to use it as a metaphor for my grandmother's COP case as a way to reassure the public that it had carried out full legal due diligence. Therefore the news that they're now waiting for the a decision on the the Judicial Review could be interpreted as an admission that due diligence hadn't been fully followed. Elsewhere in the Commons Labour's Stephen Twigg (he beat Micheal Potillio in 1997) had an angry exchange with Conservative Education Secretary Micheal Gove about the GCSE boundaries. I didn't get to hear the entire debate but I gather the key points of discussion was whether "moving the goalposts mid-way through the term could be considered rough justice?" and the government won't be ordering the exams boards to look again at the grades so any student who want and better result will have to re-apply (a possible provocative reference to my grandmother's COP case.)

Apart from having the attention span of a very small child the main reason why I was unable to listen to the full debate is because most of Britain's news/politics media spent most of the day outside the Prime Minister's official residence at number 10 Downing Street trying to pick up clues about the rumoured cabinet re-shuffle which is more or less officially going to take place on Tuesday (4/9/12). As Britain is currently led by a coalition made up of the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrat Party (LibDems) any cabinet re-shuffle could have dramatic implications for the coalition because part of the coalition agreement is that the LibDems must have a certain number of MP's in ministerial roles. If they don't get them the coalition could collapse and Britain would be plunged into a snap General Election. Therefore when it is announced I may or may not have to break my daytime silence but I won't know if I believe it or not until I see it. Two things we do know already is that the Right Honourable Ken Clarke doesn't give sh*t about whether or not he loses his Minister for Justice role because he's already got one of those special garters that means that he automatically gets invited to all the best state occasions. Also Andrew Mitchell has been moved from Secretary of State (senior minister) for International Development to the Conservative Party Chief Whip. As the name suggests the role of a Chief Whip is to keep a parties MP's in order although sadly these days the role features lots of gentle negotiation rather then any actual whipping. The fact that Mr Mitchell is salaciously being described as a former UN Peacekeeper is meant to give the impression that there are serious rifts within the party.

One Conservative Party Minister who is seriously worried about his job is the Chancellor of the Exchequer (senior finance minister) George Osborne. I'm sure the Olympic family is well aware of this though because George Osborne was in the Olympic stadium to watch TeamGB's Stephen Osborne place 5th in the men's T51 100m final and when George Osborne presented a medal he was booed loudly. By contrast former Labour Prime Minister and Chancellor Gordon Brown was cheered loudly by the Olympic crowd. This rather pantomime performance was simply an attempt gauge international opinion about George Osborne's competence as Chancellor because there are some who think he's an idiot and other's who think I have associates who might be moving the goalposts.

In an effort to add further confusion to the days proceedings some of the lesser members of the British Royal Family have been on display. The day started with Prince Andrew (I believe now fifth in line to the thrown) abseiling down the Shard building in central London. Primarily this gave him plenty of opportunity to talk about things like "moisture", "slippage" and "the feeling of being just about to step out over the edge." However as he was accompanied by the wife of current Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs William Hague (Ffion) and because the Shard is built with Qatari money this was also an opportunity to raise the issues of Syria and Libya and remind the world that as a trade representative Prince Andrew is the guy Britain uses to stay on very good terms with some very violent and very rich nations. Also while former editor of the Sun newspaper Rebekkah Brooks appeared in Court over alleged phone hacking offences Prince Harry (third in line) made his first public appearance since the Sun newspaper publish naked photographs of Prince Harry whilst on holiday in Las Vegas. In an effort to make sure that nobody had any choice other then to talk about the Prince Harry scandal including my analysis Prince Harry's re-emergence was heavily trailed with a news story of a boy who was scheduled to attend the same charity event telling Prince Harry that "He'd better keep his clothes on." Prince Harry surprised everyone though by appearing at the Olympic park before the footage of the charity event had been released to the public. As for the charity it was a sick kids do thrown by the Wellcome Trust and the pharmaceutical giant Glaxsmithkline Beechmen (GSK) how both have questionable records under the Nuremberg Conventions on medical research I should probably find out more about it seeing as how I own it now along with the Wellcome Trust's patent on the word "Tablet."

One TeamGB athlete who has been doing surprisingly well though is the wheelchair tennis player Peter Norfolk who has got through to the doubles Gold medal final on Wednesday (5/9/12). Although I haven't seen him play I suspect his success is due in no small part to the confusion that the Olympic family have been feeling over the death of two adults on a boat on the Norfolk Broads. It now appears that the man strangled his female partner before killing himself and leaving his partner's 13 year old daughter alive on the boat. I don't know why people are confused though because as soon as I saw it I dismissed it as either a straight up suicide or a straight up murder/suicide. You tend to get a spate of them when the enthusiasm of the summer (August) begins to make way for the depression of winter (September).

Oh and apparently Rihanna has been causing more trouble in Paris so in a fit of drunken enthusiasm which I may come to regret I'm now going to start following her on Twitter. The idea being that if Britain's got the knives out for her I may as well attempt to shorten the blades.

23:30 on 3/9/12.