Sense of proportion breakdown

There’s enough shit happening in the world, but trust a humourless killjoy to suck the fun out of life or truly make a mountain out of an anthill.  South Tyneside Council’s Ed Malcolm put his foot in it with an offhand comment about Tory Eric Pickles.  Malcolm said:

All these people, and one of the things they have all got in common, going from big fat Eric Pickles, right the way down, is they have all been involved in local government.

It probably isn’t the most professional thing to say as a councillor in a formal setting, but let’s be honest, Pickles is big, and fat.  Malcolm could have said ugly too, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Malcolm thought he was saying something clever, combining the mental image of Pickles’ portly stature with his considerable position as a Local Government minister.

But Councillor Ahmed Khan, who isn’t known for holding back his opinions of people, couldn’t resist firing off a Standards Board complaint.

I’m sure Eric Pickles is relieved that someone like Khan has his back.

On the other hand, Councillor David Potts was more reasonable and saw the funny side, and thought some kind of male beauty contest would be in order:

May I suggest that Ed put his photograph on http://www.hotornot.com and let the public decide between the two. My money is firmly on Eric Pickles.

Let’s get real, Malcolm is like a boy band cast off compared to Pickles, but then I suppose Councillor Potts thinks Pickles would get the bear vote.  Either way, I’m not thankful at all for Councillor Potts for actually introducing the concept of this beauty parade.

But that isn’t the most disturbing mental image of the day.

The phrase over on Bryan Atkinson’s Growing Old Disgracefully took the prize:

Must remember the wetsuit lube next time.

Bryan and wetsuit lube.  There’s really no need for that.  That image will take a lot of whisky to wipe from my memory.