Shadowy dealings.

Special Ed, Leader of whatever is Left of the Labour party and of Her Majesty's (Gawd bless 'er) Moribund Opposition has announced his shadow closet. Once again, Hank Marvin has been excluded. It had to contain a certain number of those bereft of testicles, twice that number of tits, and also a certain number of women. He has exceeded Righteous requirements on all counts. Whether he has appointed anyone of any use remains to be seen. Not that he had a great choice to start with.

Some of those shadow people seem logical. Special Ed's job is to ask the Prime Monster questions and then be astonished when this new Prime Monster actually answers them. I wonder if Special Ed will be asking extraordinarily vague questions, and when he is going to ask about tractor production figures? I also wonder how long Cameroid will be able to resist the temptation to ask him if he'd like some crackers and Wensleydale or whether he's sure he's wearing the right trousers?

Then there's the Shadow Chancer, bearing the face of an aged Postman Pat who has lived a rather less than pure life and who has just reversed over his flat-and-wide cat. He has never known what he was doing in any ministerial post and has said so. His job is to look at everything Ozzy does and say 'It'll never work'. Not a demanding job at all.

The rather swollen Balls is the new shadow Home Secretary. As secretaries go, I wouldn't want him sat on my lap, nor would I want him in my home. I'm not sure what he's supposed to do. Then again, I never have been. Mrs. Balls has become a secretary too... ditto. At least her shadowy activities are confined to foreigners, or maybe foreign shadows?

Burn'em is no longer out to stop adult smokers burning 'em, he is now a shadow in the darkest corner of the education system. You know, that scary part down beside the boiler room. He's watching out for sneaky smoking kids down there and if he catches them he throws their tobacco into the furnace. Then he follows them home and eats their parents.

Someone called Meg Holier is the dark and dangerous shadow of energy and climate change. I've never heard of her before and probably never will again. Maybe 10:10 will press her button. I didn't even know the Coagulation had a Monster dedicated to changing the climate. I wonder if they can warm it up a bit? Despite all the newspapers saying it's the warmest it's ever been, the real world persists in getting colder every year. There should be a law against it, and there probably is. I'd ask a policeman but they're too busy guarding doggers.

A lot of these appointments make no sense. What is the purpose of Tessa's Jowls wobbling around as 'shadow monster for the Olympics'? What can she possibly achieve in that role? The Olympics is going to happen whether we can afford it or not. The homeless, the smokers, the drinkers, anyone looking a bit chubby and anyone not immaculately dressed are already destined to be cleared from a five-mile radius around the thing, so that it's hard not to wonder where they will find enough of the Perfect to constitute an audience. Even the athletes will be banned from smoking because none of the Righteous can imagine any smoker being able to run, jump, fight or swim more than a yard without collapsing. The Paralympians won't be allowed to smoke either, in case it stunts their growth or deforms their bodies.

The Olympic pistol shooting team have to leave the country to practise. Nobody will be allowed to smoke or drink or have sex (unless it's in a car surrounded by police) and even then they can't have a cigarette afterwards because that smoking-in-a-car thing, that's evil, that is. The entire Olympic setup is a shambles, and are we expected to listen to Tessa's Jowls telling us it's all the Coagulation's fault? What purpose can she serve as the shadow of the Olympics?

Many of those shadow closet-occupiers have a fancy title that allows them to do nothing of importance at all. The ones they are shadowing are irrelevant, in many cases, so the shadow is no more than a cloudy-day vague outline. They'll have shadow meetings with shadows of biscuits and tea, where they'll make shadow-puppets in the shape of the Brown Gorgon then ask it a question and nod in sage agreement when it doesn't answer. They'll consider shadow-tractor statistics and build rockets under ponds and sheep-shearing machines in the basement and - oh, wait, that's Special Ed's secret space programme and economy-boosting idea. Forget I said anything.

At least, in opposition, they'll be running the country more effectively than they did when in power. That's something, I suppose.

This shadow of a government has one interesting quality. Count Mandelstein won't touch it. He's gone back into the shadows that spawned him. Who knows what lies within his heart?

Oh, right...