You have until December 31st to vote:
This decade has been the Decade of the Git. There is one overwhelming reason for this, more of which later, but first, what is a git?
A git is not powerful, is not confident, competent or socially useful. A git is an oxygen thief, a sponge, a sneak and a backstabber. A git is not a bully. A git is someone who stands behind the bully to feel big. Of course the bully is nothing without his posse, which, in many ways, makes being a git worse.
Git is not an adequate pejorative for someone like George Bush or Rupert Murdoch. A git is someone like Christopher Hitchens or, better still, James Murdoch who recently bastardised the good work of Charles Darwin to glorify his Dad’s business practices.
For the last twenty to twenty-five years Britain has been turned into the Land of the Gits. Roughly ¼ of the working population is now employed in financial services. While very few of them are out and out bankers, it is indicative of what our society has become. The British economy no longer makes anything useful or substantial. It specialises in finding new and innovative ways to bilk money out of the global system and spray it around in the form of credit.
Britain is the Git of the Globe. Appropriately enough the British government is said git in state form. The United States is the international bully, violent and cruel. What’s more it spent 8 of the last 10 years bragging about the misery it inflicts.
But, as we already mentioned, George Bush is not a git. The American President was, is and always will be a mass murderer. It makes no difference if he happens to be a smirking frat boy or an eloquent senator.
But for every bully there’s a buddy, and George Bush had Tony Blair.
State Sponsored Gits
First amongst gits is Tony Blair. Probably the runaway favourite, in his ten years of power our former Prime Minister combined the dignity of the highest office a commoner can aspire to with the degrading, unctuous manner of a waiter at a monkeys tea party. If you’re not sure, remember two words: “Yo Blair”.
But he was also a big fat liar. He didn’t just lie about the big things like weapons of mass destruction, he even peppered his passing anecdotes with absurd falsehoods. He was after all the 14 year old who managed to stow away to the Bahamas on a plane that never existed.
And now he’s a multi-millionaire! What a git!
The job spec for Home Secretary includes: “desirable qualities: vicious, cowardly, authoritarian, must continually redefine right wing to the point of infinite lunacy”. But there is a clear trend. The declining quality of Home Secretaries means that by 2012, Britain’s prisons and police will be run by a blue-arsed baboon, we will all have barcodes on our head and everyone under 35 not in the army will be preventatively jailed.
That said we would like to thank two particular former secretaries from the heart of our bottom. First up David Blunkett, the man who told Asians in Bradford their (still) imprisoned sons were “whining maniacs".
But special thoughts are reserved for Jack Straw, the turd that wouldn’t flush. He’s not stupid like, say, Ben Bradshaw or Hazel what-exactly-do-you-stand-for-except-election Blears. Jack Straw is a sly customer who learned his trade in the NUS.
The Labour Party has spent the last fifteen years pretending class doesn’t exist, except to counterpose class to race, hence the alleged concern for the “white working class”. Gary Younge was right when he said, if any one person can be blamed for the rise of racism and fascism in Britain its Jack Straw (granted a big if). This is a man happy to band words with Nick Griffin, but who, apparently, is unhappy speaking to his constituents constituents if he can't see their faces (goodness knows how he copes with telephone conversations).
Sub Gits
Or, perhaps, lesser gits. Politics is full of them. Denis McShane is a favourite of mine. He seems to be New Labour’s favourite intellectual attack dog, let off the leash to growl at Guardian readers. He has fearlessly pressed argument after specious argument, too many to list. A good example would be where he linked the fall of the Weimar Republic and the rise of Hitler to the “ideological vanity” of the USPD in breaking from the mainstream SPD in 1917.
Our other nomination in the Sub Git category is Geoff Hoon. He was the man who got up in parliament and said Britain (by which was actually meant the British military base in Cyprus) was 45 minutes from attack by Iraqi missiles. Then it was pointed out that the 45-minute warning referred to standard Iraqi battlefield weapons, not long-range missiles. It turned out he was just… lying, something like that.
Oh, and according to Geoff Hoon Masters of War is a good song, but it’s about a particular war, not wars in general.
Ex-Left Gits
The choice is almost overwhelming. What makes the former lefties who rallied to the Bush war drive particularly gittish; the worship of power, perhaps? The only force left capable of effecting democratic change is the US army, don’t you know?
Perhaps it’s the constant projection their own circumstances onto their opponents. By definition anyone who objects to war for whatever reason will be an unrepresentative, elitist minority based mostly in the media and liberal professions… Quite.
Most of all it’s their creeping, persistent demonisation of Muslims. From Christopher Hitchens cluster bomb fantasies to Martin Amis’s ‘thought experiments’ in collective punishment, these people are heading on a fascist train of thought. This is doubly sickening as (1) they project their fascism onto their intended victims but (2) are always far away from the blood and the tears shed in their name.
Meanwhile actual full-blown fascists have returned to our streets, carrying the logic of the supposed war against Islamic extremism to its logical conclusion. This should finally silence the ex-left. I say should, of course the calamities in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon and Somalia haven’t shut them up so far. Let’s not hold our breath. They are gits after all.
TV Gits
Away from the world of politics there are gits in abundance. In civil society a git is best defined as someone who doesn’t so much spread misery as just make life that little bit worse, that extra bit degrading and idiotic.
TV in particular is degrading and idiotic. TV’s biggest gits, in no particular order:
Simon Cowell – It’s very easy to poke holes in programmes like Pop Idol or X Factor… so I don’t see why we shouldn’t. They used to say that if you knew how sausages were made you’d no longer eat them. Simon Cowell took TV cameras onto the killing floor. Judging by the state of the singles charts vegetarianism is catching on.
Not so much as cannibalism, mind you. Apparently the best bits of X Factor are the early episodes, where Cowell and crew get to hilariously crush the dreams of talentless no-hopers. This is merely a televised revival of the carnival freak show. It’s a designedly demoralising experience. The chief difference between the freaks on parade and the audience is the freaks turned up for the audition.
Everyone involved in Strictly Come Dancing – I can’t be bothered to learn their names. Anyway, the upshot of the reality TV boom is everything has to be turned into some kind of contest. By 2012 our blue-arsed Home Secretary would most likely have introduced Strictly On Probation.
Strictly Come Dancing has been singled out partly because of its name. There was Come Dancing TV show where amateur dancers competed for a prize. Anyone can understand that. Come Dancing is an invitation to participate. Strictly Come Dancing on the other hand is gibberish. It means nothing other than oh-we-would-like-you-to-think-of-the-film-Strictly-Ballroom-while-you-watch-this. Do you mind if I don’t?
But we mostly hate SCD because it’s currently sustaining the gurning cadaver of Bruce Forsyth, who would surely die if we refused to pay him any heed; such is his Faustian pact. We hate him and the racist git Anton Du Beke.
My Family – whose family is like that? If Kris Marshall were in my family I’d change my name.
The Simple Life… of parasites. It’s a very, very simple life. Attach body to host. Remain there.
Friends – why did it take so long to crush this paper tiger? There’s no plot, no jokes, no one approaching a rounded, realistic character. Apparently one man watched every episode from every season non-stop back to back and suffered hallucinations by the end. Serves him right.
Ant and Dec – I have a sense of dignity, get them out of here!
We would all laugh knowingly at the The Apprentice. Look at the gits who run our world, tells us what to do and where to go, poison our language with jargon, degrade our culture, pollute our atmosphere and then run off with all the money. Look at them! Then the recession hit, and it wasn’t so funny anymore.
Internet Gits
Most of the internet is dull and wasteful (the damage inflicted by this blog is bad enough, though mitigated by it’s deserving lack of readers). Blogging has become a deeply fashionable cause for concern amongst journalists. Who’d pay 60p for some pompous frog’s opinion on Parliament when some git is on the internet giving it away for free?
But most blogging is low-grade shite, by low-grade shite, for low-grade shite. The most prominent stuff is often by chair straighteners and paper clip counters in Westminster chattering with the self-regard of courtiers, the vanity of the elephant man. If we had to pick one at random we’d go for Ian Dale and dumb lists.
But a special shout out goes to Andy Newman. I was going to say a lot more, but let's keep it simple. There's a reason the Beatles never sang Back In The DDR.
Charity Gits
Moving on, two more popular choices: Bono and Bob Geldof. Since Make Poverty History was made history we’ve been able to say this.
Bono, of course, has been prostituting his band’s declining legacy for quite a while. One notable low was U2 shilling for Ipods. But the nastiest moment had to be his Labour Party conference speech, where he described Tony Blair and Gordon Brown as the Lennon and McCartney of Global Development. Ugh!
Bob Geldof doesn’t really have a legacy to spoil (one hit doesn’t count as a legacy). Nonetheless he did manage to stand on a Make Poverty History platform and, without blushing, say he was tired of teargas and batons (giving the game away about what MPH was really about). When did that git catch as much as the faintest whiff of teargas?
Comedy Gits
Little Britain seems to consist of men in drag, class racism and ooh err missus prurience. Have the last twenty years of alternative comedy just been in vain? It would be almost bearable if there were some kind of knowing edge to it. Judging by Matt Lucas’s interview in the Guardian (“to be honest with you… Sasha Baron Cohen is in a class of his own”) he’s as vapid as his characters.
Michael McIntyre: or Boris Johnson with dyed hair. I’m sorry but the Sex On Fire routine doesn’t make up for the other hour and twenty eight minutes of wibble, wibble, woo.
Excuse me, Jimmy Carr, when did rape become funny? Did I miss a meeting?
Musical Gits
Queen + Paul Rodgers… who asked for that? Queen + Paul Rodgers almost certainly = Unexpected Tax Bill Tour.
Dave Grohl: hey, wasn’t he in Nirvana back in the day? You wouldn’t have guessed.
Oasis – a band sustained by the adoration and disposable income of plumbers, sales reps and Sports Science students. Since halfway through What’s The Story (morning glory) each new album has been an egregious waste of time and effort. Thankfully they split up this year. If there’s any sense left in parliament it should pass a law forbidding them to ever reunite.
The Red Hot Chilli Peppers have made the same album for the past ten years. Damn, why didn’t I think of that? Gits!
Paul McCartney – wrote Freedom. Its working title was Give War A Chance. Bad enough. But he and his buddies then put on a Concert for New York City (cause New York really needs the money). The attacks were horrific and crime, but why do we put up with rock stars who think getting up on stage to bang out their greatest hits is a solution to society’s great problems? Are we that stupid and debased?
Sporting Gits
Sir Colin Leslie Hoy, rides round and round and round on a bicycle. Well done you. Britain (by which we mean the British Olympic Team) won a record number of medals at the Beijing Olympics, in cycling, sailing, rowing, horse riding… Wait a minute; they’re all sports where you sit down.
Miscellaneous Gits
In years gone by the case of Ben Elton would be filed under comedy git. The only problem is he hasn’t done anything funny in over a decade. Residents and eagle-eyed tourists will know there’s a giant gold statue of Freddie Mercury above the Dominion Theatre on Tottenham Court Road, celebrating 8 ‘glorious’ years of We Will Rock You.
This means said musical is as old as the War on Terror. Both should be fought with equal vigour.
Prince Harry of Hewitt: nazi, soldier, oxygen thief; can’t you just see him as a future dictator? I bet he only has one bollock. 
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