The Pratties 2015 – The race is on!

Posted by Pointman on December 3, 2015 · 114 Comments 

Okay youse guys and gals, it’s once again time to run the Climate Prat of the Year competition, also known as the Pratties.

Right, let’s clear the definitions, rules and boring regulation stuff first. This year, it’ll be the same procedure as last year and indeed the same procedure as it is every year.

First off, if you’ve been living a solitary existence in a cave and don’t know what a prat is, this rather comprehensive description should give you a good feel for the subtleties of prathood. As a cautionary rather than a censorious observation after the unsinkable Prof. Turkey’s win last year, I feel I must emphasise that a true world-class prat never actually recognises that the whole world around them thinks they’re a complete prat.

People look at them unblinkingly, mouths slowly hinge open, and the prat ploughs on, not so much regardless of the incredulous silence around them, but totally oblivious to it. If anything, they interpret such a reaction to their antics as shooting a double-barrelled combination of awe and wonder straight into the very heart of their paralysed audience.

The first round of the contest, lasting one week, is merely you adding a comment underneath this piece containing at most five names of people whom you think have been outstanding climate prats this year. I’ll say the same things I say every year, confident in the belief that as usual someone will ignore them anyway. It’s like watching a disastrous competitor in a hurdles sprint. They knock every one over without breaking stride and yet still manage to finish last. Don’t scoff, they’re still somebody’s baby.

Once the nominations close, any further nominations will be ignored. You can only nominate people, not organisations, and you can’t nominate the same person five times.

That last little caveat is an acknowledgement of the various attempts over the years to shall we say “game” the results of the competition. Given the subversive spirit of the competition, cheating as such isn’t exactly outlawed while the Pratties is in full rip. Let’s just say it’s traditionally somewhat of a greyish area we studiously ignore as long as it doesn’t get too outrageous and leave it at that.

The committee as usual will be on their guard but an absolutely original and outstanding hack of the competition will probably be let stand. Enterprise and innovation should always be rewarded – fair’s fair after all.

At the end of every day in nomination week, I’ll total up who’s been nominated in the comments and how many times and I’ll append an update to this article with the running totals. At the end of the week, the five people receiving the most nominations will go forward to the voting phase and all the other nominees will be dropped. In the event of more than five nominees receiving the same number of nominations, the final five going forward to the voting phase will be decided by a penalty shoot out.

The committee will simply shoot a few of them and continue doing so until there’s only the required five remaining.

Now that we’ve whittled the prats down to the top five, the nominations phase closes and the actual voting phase begins. A nice little polling widget will appear at the side of the blog courtesy of young Vladimir. At this point, I must say he’s very good at computer thingies and appears only by the very generous and kind permission of his absolutely lovely Mum after she and I finally patching things up over the Firebase Pointy misunderstanding, over which I totally accept I was in the wrong and she of course was always right all along. Sorry again Missus, sorry.

It’ll contain the names of the final five and you can vote for the one who you think should be crowned this year’s climate prat. Like everyone else, I want to clock off for Christmas, so you’ve only got a week and a half to vote before the poll closes and the winner is announced.

The only other thing you need to know about is the blinder prat option. The circumstance may arise that a world-class prat who’s not in the finals makes a blinder of a move and it’s of such high-end Richter scale prat magnitude that he simply has to be given a shot at the final, but at the expense of ejecting another finalist. Who gets the boot is at the discretion of the committee.

I think that about covers the rules & regs, apart from saying that the committee’s say is final in the event of any disputes.

Last year I took a bit of a bashing from people accusing me of unfairly advocating for a certain candidate, so this year I’m going to be scrupulously boring by not making any recommendations, implicitly or otherwise. I still think Leonardo was severely underrated as a prat, but there’s no denying the Turkey trotted away with the competition. That was his fifteen minutes I suppose.

However, it still falls to me to remind you of a few salient prats who’ve pushed their head up through the floating crispy snot on the surface of climate alarmism this year. Scanning through both this blog and other people’s, a few scattered names become apparent though I’m sure you’ll nominate your own little darlings and doxies.

Number one would be Barry Obama pronouncing in February that climate change was the biggest threat to humanity. Here he is laying a wreath at a people’s monument to the victims of those non-threatening Islamic terrorists in Paris at the opening of COP21 and another picture that same day of the climate crowd paying their respects as well.

That’s an easy hit I suppose but as I write this, I’m reading reports of some guy with an Arabic name and a woman he brought back from Saudi Arabia appearing at a party and shooting people in wheel chairs and their carers who were doing nothing more offensive than bopping along to Kool and the Gang.

They both appeared in combat suits, replete with fully automatic assault rifles and pistols but of course it was just another spur of the moment lone madman with unusually a murderess in tow and very definitely not an American Jihadi out for a big body count. That spin is really starting to wear pretty thin with everybody at this stage.

In the ordinary way of things, I really do like to write something light for the Pratties, but in that miserable bastard’s particular case, it’s all getting a bit bloody hard, with the emphasis on blood – the blood of the people he’s supposed to be protecting.

Spin doesn’t work too well on people in a wheelchair who’ve got a sucking chest wound.

Moving along to slightly less tragi-comedic grounds and because he’s clinically an idiot, we find Secretary of State John Kerry. What can one say of him? He’s totally concentrated on saving the world from climate change while artfully ignoring Vladimir “I’ve got no more territorial ambitions” Putin as he gobbles up the Crimea, never mind those ISIS guys. It’s what psychologists call displacement activity, akin to that old expression about rearranging deck chairs as the Titanic is sinking. Boy, did America duck a bullet when they rejected him as the next president. Like the riverines he was supposed to have served with said, he’s all mouth and trousers, piss and wind – and Putin knows it too.

Arguably, Western Europe has fielded an equivalent candidate in the leader of the Labour party, Jeremy Corbin. Thirty years ago he marched against the closure of coal mining pits and days ago marched in support of COP21 which if it had its way, would result in the closure of the last few remaining pits in Britain. Go figure. A strange man suitable perhaps for strange days. Time is out of joint.

The showbiz front has been remarkably quiet this year except for a little uptick last weekend in support of the Paris climate can can. We had Vivian Westwood attending at the front of the march but only for as long as the photo opportunity and then nipping off. The frocks she designs would be too expensive for most people, never mind the crowd of state educated middle class crusties electively living on welfare that she was rubbing elbows with at the demo.

As usual, that acting luvvie Emma Thompson was to the forefront of the photo opportunity, spouting wonderfully theatrical nonsense. The smell of ham coming off her acting could only be exceeded by sniffing Kermit’s fingers. She actually named her daughter Gaia and one can only hope the poor kid is attending a private school with a strict anti-bullying policy. Why not go the whole hog and call the poor girl Fred?

People like Leonardo and Bono have not said anything much this year. I think the former is sulking at not having been given his Nobel Peace Prize for last year’s efforts while the latter is still smarting under the assault of fans who’ve discovered he’d moved the tax domiciled base of U2 off-shore from Oireland to avoid paying any taxes on the zillions his band was earning. Let’s all give something to save the Earth goes the battle cry, but none of my bucks thank you very much.

Dontcha just lurve a real man of the people?

The establishment figures have all joined the media chatterati. Prince Charlie candidly admitted while chatting most earnestly to a stalk of asparagus or a free-range but bemused spider tethered to a lamppost outside Windsor castle (reports of source vary) a lot of stuff, very little of which can be revealed to you because of the slightly controlling conditions of any of his public appearances. Needless to say, he’s always been a prat and come the revolution brothers and sisters, that lamppost is reserved for him.

The spider gets a free pass though, even though he should have know better than listening to a proper Charlie, who’s no more than the blue-blooded imbecilic product of generations of inbreeding and some bastardised krauts masquerading as Englishmen.

The 300 pound gorilla in the room I’m reluctant to mention is of course the head honcho in the poncho, otherwise known as the Pope. Being a lapsed everything, I always had this stray hope in the back of my mind that establishment religion would somehow serve to be the final bulwark against the secular worship of the goddess Gaia, the last best chance the truly vulnerable had against the evil forces of niceness, but this year I’ve been proven wrong, and spectacularly so.

He now genuflects and gives obeisance with the rest of them before the green altar adorned with the grinning skulls of the poor and worries more about the survival of the Earth than his flock. Oh St. Peter’s rock, what has become of thee? Bowing down before graven images of false idols and what a shepherd he’s turning out to be. Interestingly, none of the Islamic sects of whatever Sunni or Shite stripe give a flying frigging infidel about global warming.

It’s good to know for sure who stands with you, or as in this particular case, who doesn’t. Bite down on it Kiddo, suck it in and grin, we really are on our own in this struggle, but realistically we always knew it was going to be a long haul. We’re still getting there against all the odds though.

Anyway, start nominating for all you’re worth. Drag out their worthless carcasses into daylight. It’s that magic payback time of the year and there’s not a damn thing they can do about it. This is your golden opportunity to do the worst and most damaging thing you can ever do to any fanatic – have a good laugh at them.

Nominate early, nominate often and nominate until you drop, and may the worst prat win.

Enjoy yourself.

©Pointman

Update 2. The finishing tape is in sight.

Nominations are now closed, the voting begins and may the worst prat win.

Update 1. Nominees and the number of their nominations to Wednesday 9th December in the year of our Lord twenty and fifteen –

Would anybody yet to nominate or who hasn’t yet used up all their five nominations, please consider Peter Wadhams. He’s pure comedy gold and deserves a place in the finals. It’d be a tough ask to find a funny side to the current leaders and anyway, if he becomes CPotY 2015, we can call off the hitman. Your nomination could actually save a life.

Barry Obama 38,

Prince “wingnut” Charlie 27,

Pope Gaia Franciscus Harkonnen 25mair,

Peter “they’re out to murder me” Wadhams 13,

Montana Wildhack 12,

Stephan “loopaper” Lewandowsky 11,

John “surrender monkey” Kerry 10,

Malcolm “don’t ever turn your back on him” Turnbull 8,

Charlotte “screechy cow” Church 8,

Jagadish “the money was only resting in my account” Shukla 7,

Emma Thompson 7,

Roger “another BBC tit” Harrabin 7,

Naomi “DNR” Klein 6,

Vivian Westwood 6,

Aaron Mair (Sierra Club President) 6,

Mark “BOEr” Carney 5,

Ken “and then there’s arseholes” Rice 5,

Hans Schellnhuber 4,

SS Obergruppenführer Johannes Cook 4,

Bill Shorten (opposition leader -Australia) 4,

Tim “the trougher” Yeo 4,

Offspring of the older Trudeau 4,

Karen Christiana Figueres Olsen 4,

Matt “BBC tit” McGrath 3,

Gavin Schmidt 3,

Maurice Strong (posthumous award) 3,

Lord Deben 3,

John Holdren 2,

David “old fart” Suzuki 2,

Tim “anusplierectomy” Flannery 2,

David Cameron 2,

Dr James L. Powell (director of the National Physical Sciences Consortium) 2,

Shelden Whitehouse 2,

Nuttily Bennett 2,

Dana “jaw-droppingly beautiful” Nuccitelli 1,

Jerry Brown 1,

Jamie Henn 1,

Paul Ehrlich 1,

Queen Lizer 1,

Bishop 1,

Gollum “my pretty pretty” Erdrogan 1,

Geoffrey “Pvt. Godfrey” Lean 1,

Bill “the irritating guy” Nye 1,

Ed Davey 1,

Paul Krugman 1,

Rajendra “octopus hands” Pachauri 1,

Wan Ki Moon 1,

Raul Griv 1,

Jezza Corbyn 1,

Andrew “intergalactic missiles” Weaver 1,

Lord Carnwath (UK Supreme Court) 1,

David “humanity is virus on the face of the Earth” Attenborough 1,

Justine Greening 1,

John D Sutter 1,

Paul Nurse 1,

Bob Ward 1,

Tom “more money than brains” Steyer 1,

Rachel (Premier of Alberta) Notley 1,

Mrs. Rab C. Nesbitt aka Nicola Sturgeon 1,

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Climate Prat of 2012 – we have a winnah!

Description of a climate prat.

Click for a list of other articles.

Filed under Article · Tagged with Climate Prat Award, Humour