It’s time to run the prat of the year 2018 contest.

Posted by Pointman on November 21, 2018 · 61 Comments 

It’s that time of year again. Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war. It’s Prattie time again! If you don’t know what the consensus opinion of what a prat actually is, you’ll get the skinny description by looking at this article. If you don’t fancy clicking that link, I wouldn’t blame you for such reticence as life is too short anyway, and you can’t be too careful.

A prat is the sort of person you meet at perhaps a social gathering and after ten minutes of politely listening to them rabbiting on and on about something nobody in the world gives a damn about and you’re doing the noddies, the syllogism bio-chip in your head is starting to do a full on Fukushima-style meltdown and you start to fantasise about an escape strategy, just to preserve the remaining shreds of your sanity.

In some alternative reality, there’s a world somewhere out there but far far away, and becoming even more distant by the minute, where one and one still does actually equal two, but seemingly not in this deranged person’s head.

Obviously your escape fantasy is as individual as you, but my one is well honed because of my personal cross to bear through life of seemingly being a prat magnet. I imagine myself announcing to them that they’re completely right about something that even an educationally sub-normal knuckle dragging chimp in a hurry knows at a glance is a load of bollocks.

And I can prove you’re right too.

Can you? Really?

Hook, line and sinker.

Okay, but you have to help me out with this, okay?

Sure.

A puppy-like look of trust, love and long-hoped for recognition of their particular mania appears on their face. You think, this is going to be soooo evil and naughty, but yet irresistible and so sweet. Nobody can resist temptation like that.

Okay, I want you to put both hands on your knees. They do so eagerly, necessarily bending over. You get behind them and turn them until they’re pointing in exactly the right direction, after some minute adjustments you make with your hands on their hips, you’re ready. You take six paces backward and then four to the left side. Johnny Sexton would be proud of your technique. A hush descends on the collected gathering in the room. The background music is turned off and people stop talking, stand still and stare expectantly. Complete silence descends. You wiggle your hands slightly until you’re prepared. It’s part of your routine.

You run at them, planting the best rugby kick of your life between his or her buttocks, neatly punting them across the room and through the window you’d carefully pointed them at. A cheer goes up in the room as the prat performs an involuntary but perfect double gainer on their way down to a hard landing on the tiled patio table two stories down and amid the crash of broken garden furniture and the tinkle of shattered glass.

You can hear the screeches of the women folk as they grab up the toddlers and carry them to a safe distance, while all the time looking daggers over their shoulder at the groaning prat sprawled on their back over the flattened table amidst the wreckage of tequila sunrises, prosecco and the remains of a few hefty vodka and oranges.

It’s just an escape fantasy, but you can’t help smiling until you reconnect back into the situation, the ambient background noise of reality gets turned back on again and you notice the little spark of joy in their darling little face that something they’ve said was just so bloody witty, you couldn’t help but smile.

Oh my dear God, what the fuck have I just done, you think to yourself. Now they’ll be attached to me like a bloody limpet mine for the rest of the evening. Lesson learnt, the escape fantasy is a good coping mechanism when cornered by a prat, but you’ve simply got to suppress any smiles of satisfaction as it sweeps to a magnificent but imaginary conclusion.

The procedure this year will be the same as it was last year and indeed the same as it is every year. It’s the usual political two-step. You go through a nominations stage, which is like the primaries, followed by an actual voting stage. The prats you’re nominating can be female, male, or whatever they self-identify as, but it has to be some sort of hominid, preferably of the species Homo Sapien.

You get one week to complete your nominations. You can do a maximum of five nominations by simply adding their names in one or more comments underneath this piece. As usual, your nominations must be a person, not an organisation, and as always, organisations will inevitably be nominated and duly ignored. Has anyone else noticed how reading skills have dropped off a cliff in the last decade or two?

A bit of advice here. It helps to think big in the primaries. If the person you’re putting forward is so local that only you, Dave behind the bar down at your local boozer and only three other people on the whole planet know their name, never mind of their very existence, you’re not going to get much backing for the candidate you’re nominating. Pick your prats from those the MSM adores. Aim high. I know, that’s a huge pool to pick your five out of, but as usual life gives you two choices; the shitty one and the other one is just so bad, it’s not even worth considering.

I’ll keep a running track of the number of nominations using the back of an envelope and a high-tech pencil I sharpen with a Swiss army knife that itself I sharpen with a miniature and therefore portable sharpening stone – a great piece of kit – that has served me well over the years, and at the end of the week, announce the top five you’ve winnowed it down to and are now the hardy survivours in the running for the grand prize. I’ll update the running totals of nominations daily in the nominations box at the top of the RHS.

Now we’ve got our fabulous five, further nominations cease to be valid, though I’m sure further nominations will continue to be made as usual and as usual ignored. I’ll once again figure out how the Poll Daddy widget works, stick the top five nominations up on the RHS in a voting box, and you get to vote for your fave candidate to be prat of the year 2018.

As always at this time of year, I resolve that next year I’ll jot down the names of world-class prats who hit the headlines in the coming year, but of course, I never do. Consarnit and God dammit, I will this year. Very defo.

In the absence of that list I never do, I’ll just throw out a few names to get the ball rolling.

Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the EU and a worthy candidate even when he’s sober. “Gestapo” Müller, leader of one of those lost patrol investigations who’s managed to uncover massive corruption at the FBI and DoJ before the CIA closed him down because he was getting too bloody warm.

I think Rep. Adam Schiff, whom Trump has renamed named Little Adam Schitt, is worth a look, if only because of those demented looking eyes and the crap that comes out every time he opens his mouth.

Angela Merkel has to be up there for the job of cultural destruction she did on Western Europe for the next half century before skipping out as the leader of the CDU, because she’d made them unelectable, despite what the machine controlled MSM in Deutschland were saying.

Don Lemon, might have a look in, but he’s a complete racist, so he doesn’t really profile into the being a complete prat, though his stable mate Acosta, who’s soon destined to kill off WH press briefings, certainly is.

I had considered Stormy Daniels, but she’s but an innocent lass exploited by the types of people like Michael Avenatti, who’s not only a lawyer (hang him right now) but also says all abused women should appear on CNN, except the ones he beats up himself.

Being an enthusiastic watcher of the EU imploding, Emmanuel Macron must be worth a nomination, as his popularity plummets to 25%. He showed he had true potential when world leaders gathered in Paris for the centenary of the armistice, and he took it upon himself to lecture them in public on the evils of nationalism. Come on, help him out. Without Angela to tell him what to do, his only friend in the political world is what’s commonly thought to be Castro’s rumoured bastard son, “Pretty boy” Trudeau. Might as well sit in a hot bath now Emmanuel with a razor blade and open your veins. For once in your life, get it right by the way, you don’t cut across the veins but down.

Obviously, Theresa May has to be a strong candidate. Anyone who seriously thinks agreeing a 585 page Brexit deal which is so bad for the country, that even the usual whiny Remainers are condemning it as worse than a no deal exit. If the Tories don’t manage to ditch her before the next general election, they’ll be toast, and they know it.

There do seem to be a large contingent of women leaping high to grab the brass ring of being, by popular vote, the prat of the year 2018. To name but a few and excluding Hillary, who’s a perennial in the pratties anyway, you’ve got Brenda “the fix is in” Snipes, Alexandria “high-pitched whine” Ocasio-Cortez, Nancy “I’m confused” Pelosi, Maxine “muddy” Waters (twice voted the most corrupt politician in congress) and many many more, especial in the fake news media.

As always in the nomination stage, you don’t have to use all your five nominations at once, so you can say nominate your most favourite, and then watch for the appearance of a massive prat you’d totally forgotten about in other people’s nominations, and then give them your unused nomination.

Cheating, as usual, is a kinda grey area in the pratties, and an imaginative attempt usually gets pointedly ignored. Anyway, I’m relying on the refined judgment and good taste of you patrons of the blog, to come up with the most deserving prat nominees for the final voting stage.

©Pointman

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Prat of 2017 – We have a winnah – Hillary Clinton!

Climate Prat of 2016 – We have a winnah – Justin Trudeau!

Climate Prat of 2015 – We have a winnah – Barack Obama!

Climate Prat of 2014 – We have a winnah – Chris Turney!

Climate Prat of 2013 – we have a winnah – Dana Nucitelli!

Climate Prat of 2012 – we have a winnah – Peter Gleick!

Description of a climate prat.

Click for a list of other articles.

Filed under Article · Tagged with Humour, Prat award