toff on swans, toff on the causes of swans

Frankly there was already something about David Cameron's weirdly smooth smug potato-ey face that made me want to punch it even before the latest Conservative poster campaign. I suppose one might argue that it's not his fault he was born into privilege and wealth and therefore never had to do an honest day's work in his life whereby he might have acquired any coarse plebeian wrinkles or blemishes. But, on the other hand, one might say: fuck it, I still hate him. (There have also been rumours of the careful application of a spot or two of Oil Of Photoshop on the poster.) His daily moisturising regimen of rendered fat and brains from the flayed carcasses of working-class children must help keep his lily-white skin from getting chapped as well.

So the latest Conservative poster campaign was a bit of a red rag to a bull, really. Even leaving aside the comedy value of Cameron's hilariously doomed and unconvincing attempt to do a concerned look to camera conveying empathy and gravitas before resuming blazing away at foxes with a shotgun while swigging from a decanter of port and rolling around cackling in a big pile of money, it's just crying out to be defaced and/or parodied. And sure enough many many parodic efforts of varying quality have been produced, a small proportion of which can be found here, here, here, here and here. There's a few more on this military aircraft-themed message board - note how there's a gradual increase in aggressive right-wingery as the thread goes on, as befits the gradual eye-bulging approach to sexual climax of a group of men who obsess in a slightly inappropriate way about military hardware.

You can create your own Cameron poster if you like - here or (better) here. My first few attempts consisted solely of endlessly repeated strings of swear words and frenzied stabbing at the laptop screen with a screwdriver, but I eventually calmed down enough to produce this piece of reasoned yet hard-hitting political analysis.